Jean-Paul Sartre — Existentialism Is a Humanism

34 published claims from this book.

• A person is nothing but the sum of his actions and undertakings
• Absence of God entails the absence of any fixed human nature.
• Absurdity means the choice grounds all reasons and reasons-for-being
• Accusations of existentialist pessimism mask anxiety about real choice
• Anguish is not paralysis but the necessary condition of responsible action.
• Cowardice and heroism are deeds, not inborn temperaments.
• Every human act makes the absolute through free choice
• Existence precedes essence and carries a subjective quality in human reality.
• Existential humanism rests on transcendence and subjectivity, not a cult of man.
• Existentialism is accused of teaching passive despair and quietism
• Existentialist despair means relying only on what lies within one’s own will and action
• Existentialists share the belief that existence precedes essence
• Feelings cannot justify actions because only actions measure feelings
• Free commitment is absolute even while cultural patterns are relative
• Human universality is perpetually made by choice, not given in advance.
• Man is condemned to be free because he creates neither himself nor his values.
• Manufactured objects have their essence fixed before their existence
• Materialism reduces persons to mere objects, while existentialist subjectivity grounds human dignity.
• Moral choice persists unchanged across historical situations
• No external sign can certify a divine command, so man must choose alone.
• Passion and divine signs provide no excuse for human actions.
• Sartre replaces universal human nature with a universal human condition of shared limitations.
• Suicide bombers are not cowardly although their acts are brutal
• The absence of divine design obliges us to act without hoping for cosmic outcomes
• The Cartesian cogito is the only absolute truth grounding all other knowledge.
• The cult of humanity leads to Comtean humanism and fascism
• The future is virginal and unscripted, awaiting man’s fashioning.
• The idea that essence precedes existence survives even in atheist and Enlightenment thought.
• The meaning we assign to setbacks is wholly our own responsibility.
• The refusal to choose is itself a choice.
• The unique person is an absolute totality not reducible to any empirical desire
• Trying to deny one’s responsibility presupposes the very universal value it refuses.
• Values are invented by people since there is no a priori meaning
• Without a universal human nature, confidence in strangers is groundless.