Sartre held every act creates an image of humanity we ought to be

Evidence

‘My life and my philosophy are one and the same’, he once wrote in his diary, and he stuck to this principle unflinchingly. This blending of life and philosophy also made him interested in other people’s lives. He became an innovative biographer, publishing around two million words of life-writing, including studies of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet and Flaubert as well as a memoir of his own childhood. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 53 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Sartre illustrates this with the example of reading with pain in the eyes. If I am reading while my eyes are in pain, the pain colors my experience of reading. I do not know my pain, I live it. My body is constantly present as me. I am not conscious of it, but as conscious, I exist as my body. “To be conscious is always to be conscious of the world, and the world and body are always present to my consciousness although in diff erent ways” (BN, 439–40). As I am reading with pain in my eyes, my body is always present; it forms the background of my consciousness, a painful one as my eyes hurt. I can pay attention to the pain and make it the focus of my experience, or I can focus on the reading itself. But even if I choose the latter, the pain is not expelled from my consciousness. If my body or one of its parts hurts, my consciousness is a hurtful consciousness. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 98 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Beauvoir, however, argues later in Th e Ethics of Ambiguity, “I concern others and they concern me. Th ere we have an irreducible truth. Th e me-others relationship is as indissoluble as the subject-object relationship” (EA, 72; MA, 104). So understood, Beauvoir comes to see Others as essential and not merely factually necessary. Contrary to Sartre’s ontological individualism, Beauvoir argues for an intrinsic ontological interdependence. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 184 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre replaces universal human nature with a universal human condition of shared limitations. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 23; Sartre made freedom and personal responsibility the burden of his resistance allegory — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 511; Sartre wrote philosophy in literary, novelistic form centered on human freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 25 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Sartre’s conviction that life and philosophy coincide drove his biographical writing #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 53
• For Sartre the body forms the inescapable background of all consciousness #complicates (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 98
• Beauvoir holds Others as essential, challenging Sartre’s ontological individualism #complicates (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 184
• Sartre equated writing with living itself #complicates (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 969
• Sartre’s own writings drift from lived body toward instrumental body #complicates (0.70) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 99
• Embodiment is the necessary contingent condition anchoring consciousness in the world for Sartre #complicates (0.70) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97