Existentialism’s core problem is choosing between duties without any ready formula

Evidence

One day during the Occupation, Sartre said, an ex-student of his had come to him for advice. The young man’s brother had been killed in battle in 1940, before the French surrender; then his father had turned collaborator and deserted the family. The young man became his mother’s only companion and support. But what he longed to do was to sneak across the border via Spain to England, to join the Free French forces in exile and fight the Nazis — red-blooded combat at last, and a chance to avenge his brother, defy his father, and help to free his country. The problem was, it would leave his mother alone and in danger at a time when it was hard even to get food on the table. It might also get her into trouble with the Germans. So: should he do the right thing by his mother, with clear benefits to her alone, or should he take a chance on joining the fight and doing right by many? — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 31

Categorization

• XREF: This is the famous ‘young man’ dilemma from Existentialism and Humanism — the paradigmatic illustration of Kierkegaardian anguish and bad-faith-resistant decision used in every existentialism primer. — connects to: Existentialist ethics demand acting as if the fate of humanity rests on each choice — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 919; Existentialist ethics proceeds from lived experience rather than abstract moral calculus. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 33
• SEED: A thread on extreme moral dilemmas — which system offers anything beyond Sartre’s insistence that we simply choose? Useful counter-material against ethics-as-algorithm thinking.

Broader Connections

• Existentialist ethics demand acting as if the fate of humanity rests on each choice #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 919
• Existentialist ethics proceeds from lived experience rather than abstract moral calculus. #qualifies (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 33