A person is nothing but the sum of his actions and undertakings

Evidence

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” … But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. … Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 18

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Sartre’s core thesis of existentialism as action, directly opposing quietism and the comfort of ‘unused potentialities.’
• XREF: Pairs well with Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity and with the reading purpose’s aim of an accessible statement of existentialist ethics. — connects to: The individual’s concrete being grounds and fills the universal, not vice versa — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 689; The unique person is an absolute totality not reducible to any empirical desire; Man has no substance but is constituted as a disappearing subject of habit (+4 more)
• SEED: The ‘Racine’s unwritten tragedy’ argument is a sharp counter to productivity-vs-potential cultural narratives — an essay angle on how we evaluate unfulfilled promise.

Related

• The unique person is an absolute totality not reducible to any empirical desire (similarity 0.90)
• The individual’s concrete being grounds and fills the universal, not vice versa (similarity 0.80)
• Every human act expresses the whole person, not a fragment (similarity 0.80)
• Human existence means transcendence and constant action, not passive repose (similarity 0.79)
• Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature (similarity 0.79)
• Materialism reduces persons to mere objects, while existentialist subjectivity grounds human dignity. (similarity 0.79)
• Sartre replaces universal human nature with a universal human condition of shared limitations. (similarity 0.79)
• Jean-Paul Sartre — Existentialism Is a Humanism (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Man has no substance but is constituted as a disappearing subject of habit #corroborates (0.85)
• An individual justifies himself only through a future-oriented project, never through present facticity #expands (0.85)
• Every human act expresses the whole person, not a fragment #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1334
• A person’s real philosophy is expressed in action, not declared belief #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1180
• A person made great only by their role cannot survive its removal #exemplifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 565