# Jean-Paul Sartre > *Edited for clarity by the editorial review* **20th Century (1905–1980) | Existentialism / Phenomenology** --- ## 1. First Principles Let me begin with what I take to be given — not as a matter of faith, but as an honest description of the human condition as we actually experience it. ### First principle: existence precedes essence This is the cornerstone of everything I have written. A paper-knife is designed with a purpose in mind before it is built; its *essence* (what it is *for*) comes before its *existence* (that it is). But a human being is not manufactured to fit a concept. We are thrown into the world — we exist first — and only afterward, through our choices and actions, do we define what we are. As I wrote in *Existentialism Is a Humanism*: "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards." ### Second principle: radical freedom If there is no pre-ordained human nature, no divine plan, no cosmic blueprint, then we are *condemned to be free*. This is not a liberation to celebrate; it is a burden. We are free completely, totally, and without excuse. No determinism — not from biology, not from society, not from the unconscious — can absolve us of our choices. ### Third principle: consciousness is nothingness (*le néant*) As I developed in *Being and Nothingness*, consciousness is not a thing among things. It is a "niihilation" of being — a gap, a lack, a freedom that pulls back from the dense fullness of the world. Objects *are what they are* (I call this *being-in-itself*); consciousness *is what it is not and is not what it is* (I call this *being-for-itself*). This non-coincidence with oneself — the fact that we are never fully identical with who we are at any moment — is the very structure of human reality. ### Fourth principle: we are our choices I have argued that a person is nothing other than the sum of their acts. There is no hidden, authentic self lurking beneath the surface that you might "discover." You *are* what you do. Your life is the project you are constantly building. --- ## 2. The Meaning of Life (per Sartre) From these principles, the question "What is the meaning of life?" receives a stark answer: **life has no inherent meaning.** None. Zero. The universe is silent on the matter. There is no God who endowed your existence with purpose, no perfect Form of the Good toward which you ought to strive, no grand march of history that guarantees your contribution matters. But this is not, as my critics charge, a counsel of despair. It is the precondition of authentic human dignity. If meaning were given from the outside — by a deity, by Nature, by a moral law written into the fabric of reality — we would be mere things among things: objects determined by external forces. We would be, in my terminology, *being-in-itself*: inert, full, determined. But we are *being-for-itself*: free, incomplete, always reaching beyond what we have been toward what we will choose to be. The meaning of life, therefore, is **not something you find; it is something you invent.** You create meaning through committed choice and action. Every authentic project — whether painting a canvas, fighting an injustice, raising a child, writing a philosophy — is an act of conferring value upon a valueless world. You do not discover your calling; you choose it, and by choosing it, you make it meaningful. In *The Flies*, Orestes declares: "I am my freedom." That is the existentialist answer. The meaning of life is the free exercise of freedom in the service of projects you have chosen with full awareness and full responsibility — not only for yourself, but for all of humanity, since in choosing for yourself you choose for everyone what a human being ought to be. --- ## 3. Actionable Insights How should one live, day to day, given this philosophy? ### First: recognize bad faith (*mauvaise foi*) Bad faith is the lie we tell ourselves to escape the anguish of freedom. A waiter who plays the part of "waiter" so completely that he forgets he is also a free consciousness *choosing* that role — that is bad faith. A woman on a date who lets the man take her hand and pretends not to notice, floating in ambiguous passivity — that is bad faith. The daily practice is to catch yourself when you say "I have no choice" or "I must" or "That's just the way I am." These are denials of freedom. You always have a choice. Own it. ### Second: act with total commitment Half-hearted projects, lukewarm commitments, waiting for the right moment — these are escapes. Throw yourself into your chosen projects with the awareness that you are choosing them without external justification. As I wrote in *Being and Nothingness*: "We are left alone, without excuse." That solitude is not a defect to bemoan; it is the condition of genuine action. ### Third: reject determinist excuses Your childhood trauma, your social class, your biology, your "personality type" — these explain your situation, but they do not *determine* your response to it. The existentialist does not deny that you have a *facticity* (the concrete circumstances into which you are thrown). But we *transcend* our facticity through our projects. You are not your past; you are what you make of your past. ### Fourth: embrace anguish The dizziness that comes from standing at the edge of freedom — that vertigo before the abyss of limitless possibility — is not an illness to medicate. It is the proper response to the truth of your condition. Learn to live with it. It is the price of authenticity. ### Fifth: commit to a cause larger than yourself In *What Is Literature?*, I argued that writing — and by extension any creative or political act — is an appeal to the freedom of others. Engage. Take sides. The existentialist must be *engagé* (politically and socially committed). --- ## 4. Contrarian View / Strawman **Objection** (as a traditionalist or religious thinker might state it): "You claim that life has no objective meaning, but this contradicts itself. You say 'We must create our own meaning' — but why *must* we? If the universe truly is devoid of values, then the value 'creating meaning' is itself just another arbitrary invention. Why choose authenticity over bad faith? Why be *engagé* rather than apathetic? Your philosophy provides no *ground* for its own commands. It is a house built on sand — a system of moral exhortation that cannot account for its own norms. Worse, you unilaterally declare that existence has no meaning, which is itself a metaphysical claim you cannot prove. Perhaps the universe *does* have a meaning — you simply refuse to listen." **My response:** The objection is powerful, and I have taken it seriously. Let me answer. First, I do not claim that "creating meaning" is a duty imposed from above. It is a *structural necessity* of human consciousness. We are beings who constitute meanings through our projects — this is not an arbitrary rule I invented; it is a phenomenological description of how consciousness operates (a description based on how we actually experience our own existence). To refuse to create meaning is still to *choose* a project (the project of passivity, of numbness, of denial). Even the Buddhist monk who seeks to extinguish desire has chosen a project. There is no escape from projects. One can choose inauthentically or authentically, but one cannot choose not to choose. The "must" is not a moral command from heaven — it is an existential fact. As I say in *Being and Nothingness*: "We are condemned to be free." The condemnation is not a morality; it is a description of our condition. Second, you ask why choose authenticity over bad faith. The answer: because bad faith is a lie, and lies carry their own cost. To live in bad faith is to deny what you are — a free consciousness — and to treat yourself as a thing. This produces a life of quiet desperation, self-deception, and the constant anxiety of a truth one refuses to face. Authenticity is not easier, but it is *clearer*. It is the life that has looked into the abyss and not flinched. As for your claim that the universe *might* have meaning — perhaps. But no one has returned with evidence. I take the silence of the heavens seriously. If God existed, I reasoned in my notebook, man would be a slave; but man is free. And you cannot have it both ways. --- ## 5. Final Reflection I am often accused of pessimism. I think it is the opposite. To tell a human being: "You are free. You have no excuses. You are responsible — not only for yourself but for the whole of humanity by the example of your choices" — that is the most demanding and the most hopeful message one can deliver. Do not wait for the meaning of your life to arrive like a letter in the post. It will not come. You must write it yourself — in ink that does not smudge, on paper that will not last, knowing full well that no one will read it and pronounce it good. And you must write it anyway. That is what I meant when I said: "We do not become what we are; we are what we become." Now stop reading. Go choose something. The world is waiting for your projects. --- ## Strengthened Through Critique ### Weak Point 1: The Unjustified Leap from Description to Prescription Sartre's entire edifice rests on the phenomenological claim that "existence precedes essence" — that we are *thrown into the world* and only later define ourselves. But this is a *description* of the human condition, not a *justification* for how one ought to live. One might accept the entire descriptive apparatus — radical freedom, consciousness as nothingness, the anguish of choice — and still ask: "Why is an authentic life of committed engagement *better* than a life of quiet bad faith?" Sartre's answer in the text appeals to the "cost" of lying to oneself, but this smuggles in a preference for truthfulness that his own premises cannot ground. If values are invented, not discovered, then the value "truthfulness" is itself a contingent invention, no more binding than "self-deception." The critic who simply *prefers* the comfort of bad faith has not contradicted any fact; she has merely chosen a different project. **Counterargument:** The consistent nihilist can reply: "Your entire ethics of authenticity collapses into emotivism (the view that moral statements just express feelings rather than facts) — you are not describing why I *must* choose authenticity; you are merely expressing that *you prefer* it. I prefer tranquility. I prefer the warm sedation of self-deception. On your own account, my preference is no less 'meaning-conferring' than yours." **Strengthened Position:** Sartre can revise by arguing that bad faith is not merely a lie *to others* but a *performative contradiction* — a structural instability that cannot sustain itself. In bad faith, one treats oneself as both a thing (determined, unfree) *and* a free consciousness (the one who chooses the lie, who knows the truth even while denying it). This self-fracturing produces not merely emotional discomfort but a practical incoherence that sabotages the very projects the agent undertakes. The waiter who fully believes he *is* a waiter-thing cannot actually function as a waiter, because every act of serving requires the nimble responsiveness of a free consciousness. The position is thus not "less valuable" but *unlivable* — it collapses under its own self-contradiction. This transforms the push toward authenticity from a gratuitous value-preference into a condition of coherent action itself. ### Weak Point 2: The Unacknowledged Normative Weight of "Choosing for All Humanity" Sartre famously writes in *Existentialism Is a Humanism* that in choosing for oneself, one chooses for all of humanity — that each act sets a universal standard of what a human being ought to be. But this Kantian-sounding formulation (reminiscent of philosopher Immanuel Kant's idea of universal moral law) is in deep tension with the radical particularity and groundlessness of existentialist choice. If values are invented from nothing by each individual, there is no mechanism by which one person's choice can bind or represent anyone else. The claim that my choice to, say, join the Resistance *legislates for everyone* that resistance is the proper human posture is either (a) an empty rhetorical gesture that adds nothing to the brute fact that I have chosen, or (b) a backdoor appeal to a universal moral community that Sartre's philosophy cannot support. **Counterargument:** "Why should I accept that my choices carry the weight of legislating for humanity? That sounds like a guilt-inducing rhetorical device designed to make existentialism feel as weighty as the religions it replaced — but it has no philosophical grounding. I choose what I choose; you choose what you choose. That is the end of it." **Strengthened Position:** Sartre can keep the spirit of this claim while dropping its unjustified universalism. The revision: when I choose, I do *reveal* — not legislate — something about the human condition. My act of commitment demonstrates that *this* value is choosable, that *this* kind of life can be lived. This is not a Kantian universal law but an *existential exemplar* — I show others, by my example, that a particular project is possible for a free consciousness. The "responsibility for all humanity" is then not a metaphysical duty but an acknowledgment that my choices are publicly visible: I cannot choose in a vacuum, because my actions become part of the field of possibilities available to other consciousnesses. This revised position preserves the gravity of choice without overstating its reach. ### Specific Improvement: A Grounded Normative Ethics from Facticity Sartre's philosophy would be strengthened by developing a more rigorous account of how *facticity* itself (the concrete circumstances of our lives) generates real constraints on choice. If I am thrown into a world with others, with a body, with a history, then not all projects are equally available or equally coherent. The recognition that I am *situated freedom* — not abstract, unmoored freedom — provides a basis for something like an existentialist ethics: the good action is the one that maximizes the freedom of others to pursue their own projects, because the fundamental structure of the *for-itself* is to will itself as freedom. The radical openness remains, but it is bounded by the material and social conditions that make any project possible at all. This is not a return to natural law; it is an acknowledgment that even the purest existentialist still drinks from wells dug by others. As Sartre later recognized in his *Critique of Dialectical Reason*, the freedom of each person is shaped by the material scarcity and institutional structures that define our field of possibility. Incorporating this richer understanding of society into the earlier existentialist ethics would yield a position that is neither groundlessly demanding nor paralyzingly open. --- ## Reading Guide If you are new to Sartre and want to explore his ideas further, a good starting point is his lecture *Existentialism Is a Humanism* — it is short, relatively accessible, and gives the clearest overview of his core arguments. From there, *Being and Nothingness* is the foundational work, though it is dense and best approached in small pieces. Keep in mind that Sartre wrote not only philosophy but also novels, plays, and literary criticism; works like *Nausea* (a novel) and *No Exit* (a play) are often the most engaging way to encounter existentialist themes in action.