Jean-Paul
Sartre's
EXISTENTIALISM
AND HUMANISM
Translation
by Philip Mairet
Digital
electronic transcription by John O’Loughlin
Transcription Copyright © 2023 Centretruths Digital Media
___________________
My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism
against several reproaches that have been laid against it.
First,
it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair.
For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any
action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a
contemplative philosophy. Moreover,
since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois
philosophy. This is, especially, the
reproach made by the Communists.
From
another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious
in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the
neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the
brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic critic,
Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles.
Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for
leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in
isolation. And this, say the Communists,
is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity - upon the Cartesian
"I think": which is the moment in which solitary man attains to
himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other
men who exist outside of the self. The ego
cannot reach them through the cogito.
From
the Christian side, we are reproached as people who deny the reality and
seriousness of human affairs. For since
we ignore the commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing
remains but what is strictly voluntary.
Everyone can do what he likes, and will be incapable, from such a point
of view, of condemning either the point of view or the action of anyone else.
It
is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition
"Existentialism and Humanism."
Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but
we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that
existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human
life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every
action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is, of
course, that of over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a lady who,
whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of nervousness, excuses
herself by exclaiming, "I believe I am becoming an
existentialist." So it appears that
ugliness is being identified with existentialism. That is why some people say we are
"naturalistic," and if we are, it is strange to see how much we
scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems to be much frightened or
humiliated nowadays by what is properly called naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by
Zola such as La Terre are sickened as soon as they read an
existentialist novel. Those who appeal
to the wisdom of the people - which is a sad wisdom - find ours sadder
still. And yet, what could be more
disillusioned than such sayings as "Charity begins at home" or
"Promote a rogue and he'll sue you for damage, knock him down and he'll do
you homage"? ['Oignez vilain il vous
plaindra, poignez vilain il vous
oindra.'] We all know how many common sayings
can be quoted to this effect, and they all mean much the same - that you must
not oppose the powers-that-be; that you must not fight against superior force;
must not meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with
some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the
support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since
experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm
rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the people who are forever
mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are told of some more or less
repulsive action, say "How like human nature!" - it
is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that
existentialism is too gloomy a view of things.
Indeed, their excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying
them is not so much our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the
doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is - is it not? - that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review the whole
question upon the strictly philosophic level.
What, then, is this that we call existentialism?
Most
of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required
to explain its meaning. For since it has
become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that
painter is "existentialist." A
columnist in Clartés signs himself "The
Existentialist," and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so
many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any
novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in
the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which,
however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the
least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians
and philosophers. All the same, it can
easily be defined.
The
question is only complicated because there are two kinds of
existentialists. There are, on the one
hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel,
both professes Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst
whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and
myself. What they have in common is
simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence
- or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?
If
one considers an article of manufacture - as, for example, a book or a
paperknife - one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of
it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paperknife and
to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception
and is, at bottom, a formula. This the
paperknife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and
one which, on the other hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose
that a man would produce a paperknife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its
essence - that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made
its production and its definition possible - precedes its existence. The presence of such-and-such a paperknife or
book is thus determined before my eyes.
Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and we
can say that production precedes existence.
When
we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a
supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we
may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that
of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we always imply
that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least
accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is
creating. Thus, the conception of man in
the mind of God is comparable to that of the paperknife in the mind of the
artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as
the artisan manufactures a paperknife, following a definition and a
formula. Thus each individual man is the
realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine
understanding. In the philosophic
atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is suppressed, but not,
for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence; something of that
idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in
Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses
a human nature; that "human nature," which is the conception of human
being, is found in every man; which means that each man is a particular example
of an universal conception, the conception of
Atheistic
existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater
consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose
existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be
defined by any conception of it. That
being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence
precedes essence? We mean that man first
of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself
afterwards. If man as the existentialist
sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with
he is nothing. He will not be anything
until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there
is no God to have a conception of it.
Man simply is. Not that he is
simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he
conceives himself after already existing - as he wills to be after that leap
towards existence. Man is nothing else
but that which he makes of himself. That
is the first principle of existentialism.
And this is what people call its "subjectivity," using the
word as a reproach against us. But what
do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a stone or
a table? For we mean to say that man
primarily exists - that man is, before all else, something which propels itself
towards a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a
subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a
cauliflower. Before that projection of
the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only
attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing or
willing is a conscious decision taken - much more often than not - after we
have made ourselves what we are. I may wish
to join a party, to write a book or to marry - but in such a case what is
usually called my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more
spontaneous decision. If, however, it is
true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is
that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire
responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for
himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality,
but that he is responsible for all men.
The word "subjectivism" is to be understood in two senses, and
our adversaries play upon only one of them.
Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual
subject and, on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter which is the deeper meaning
of existentialism. When we say that man
chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself;
but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all
men. For in effect, of all the actions a
man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one
which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes
he ought to be. To choose between this
or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we
are unable ever to choose the worse.
What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us
unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we
will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for
all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than
we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose
to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to
signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man,
that man's kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that
view. Resignation is my will for
everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all
mankind. Or if, to take a more personal
case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision
proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby
committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of
monogamy. I am thus responsible for
myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would
have him to be. In fashioning myself I
fashion man.
This
may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms - perhaps a little
grandiloquent - as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? The existentialist frankly states that man is
in anguish. His meaning is as follows -
When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only
choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding
for the whole of mankind - in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense
of complete and profound responsibility.
There are many, indeed, who show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising
their anguish or are in flight from it.
Certainly, many people think that in what they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you
ask them, "What would happen if everyone did so?" they shrug their
shoulders and reply, "Everyone does not do so." But in truth, one ought
always to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor
can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of
self-deception. The man who lies in
self-excuse, by saying "Everyone will not do it" must be ill at ease
in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it
denies. By its very disguise his anguish
reveals itself. This is the anguish that
Kierkegaard called "the anguish of Abraham." You know the story: An angel commanded
Abraham to sacrifice his son: and obedience was obligatory, if it really was an
angel who had appeared and said, "Thou, Abraham, shalt
sacrifice thy son." But anyone in
such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed an angel and secondly,
whether I am really Abraham. Where are
the proofs? A certain mad woman who
suffered from hallucinations said that people were telephoning to her, and
giving her orders. The doctor asked,
"But who is it that speaks to you?"
She replied: "He says it is God." And what, indeed, could prove to her that it
was God? If an angel appears to me, what
is the proof that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they
proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness
or some pathological condition? Who can
prove that they are really addressed to me?
Who,
then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own choice, my
conception of man upon mankind? I shall
never find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it is still I myself
who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as
good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham:
nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are
examples. Everything happens to every
man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and
regulated its conduct accordingly. So
every man ought to say, "Am I really a man who has the right to act in
such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I
do." If a man does not say that, he
is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the
anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction.
It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who
have borne responsibilities. When, for
instance, a military leader takes upon himself the
responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their death, he
chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt he acts under a higher command, but
its orders, which are more general, require interpretation by him and upon that
interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish.
All leaders know that anguish. It
does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition of
their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality of
possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realise that it has value
only because it is chosen. Now it is
anguish of that kind which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall
see, makes explicit through direct responsibility towards other men who are
concerned. Far from being a screen which
could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.
And
when we speak of "abandonment" - a favourite word of Heidegger - we
only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the
consequences of his absence right to the end.
The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible
expense. Towards 1880, when the French
professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something
like this: - God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without
it. However, if we are to have morality,
a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should
be taken seriously; they must have an à
priori existence ascribed to them.
It must be considered obligatory à
priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one's wife, to bring up
children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject,
which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in
an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words - and this is, I believe, the
purport of all that we in France call radicalism - nothing will be changed if
God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and
humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which
will die away quietly of itself. The
existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does
not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in
an intelligible heaven. There can no
longer be any good à priori, since
there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that "the
good" exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now
upon the plane where there are only men.
Dostoievsky once wrote "If God did not
exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is
the starting point. Everything is indeed
permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he
cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without
excuse. For if indeed existence precedes
essence, one will never be able to explain one's action by reference to a given
and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism - man is
free, man is freedom. Nor,
on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or
commands that could legitimise our behaviour.
Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of
values, any means of justification or excuse.
We are left alone, without excuse.
That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself,
yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this
world he is responsible for everything he does.
The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a
destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate,
and which, therefore, is an excuse for them.
He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a
man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his
orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he
chooses. He thinks that every man,
without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent
man. As Ponge
has written in a very fine article, "Man is the future of man." That is exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the
future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is, it would be false, for
then it would no longer even be a future.
If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is
a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him - then it is a true
saying. But in the present one is
forsaken.
As
an example by which you may better understand this state of abandonment, I will
refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following
circumstances. His father was
quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a
"collaborator"; his elder brother had been killed in the German
offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but
generous, burned to avenge him. His
mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his
father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this
young man. But he, at this moment, had
the choice between going to
If
values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the
particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in
our instincts. That is what this young
man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, "In the end, it is feeling
that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought
to choose. If I feel that I love my
mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her - my will to be avenged, all
my longings for action and adventure - then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for
her is not enough, I go." But how
does one estimate the strength of a feeling?
The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the
fact that he was standing by her. I may
say that I Love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of
money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, "I love my mother enough to
remain with her," if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this
affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and
ratified. But if I then appeal to this
affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover,
as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is
play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly
distinguishable one from another. To
decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the
upshot of which is that I do so - these are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the
deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek
within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some
ethic, formulae that will enable me to act.
You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for
advice. But if you seek counsel - from a
priest, for example - you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already
knew, more or less, what he would advise.
In other words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself
by that choice. If you are a Christian,
you will say, Consult a priest; but there are
collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide
to turn: which will you choose? Had this
young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration, he
would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what
advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose - that is to
say, invent. No rule of general morality
can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, "Oh, but they
are!" Very well; still, it is I
myself, in every case, who have to interpret the
signs. Whilst I was imprisoned, I made
the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a
member of that order in the following manner.
In his life he had suffered a succession a succession of rather severe
setbacks. His father had died when he
was a child, leaving him in poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship
in a religious institution, where he had been made continually to feel that he
was accepted for charity's sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied
several of those distinctions and honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to
grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two - this was a trifle
in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup - he failed in his
military examination. This young man,
then, could regard himself as a total failure: it was a sign - but a sign of
what? He might have taken refuge in
bitterness or despair. But he took it -
very cleverly for him - as a sign that he was not intended for secular
successes, and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity and of
faith, were accessible to him. He
interpreted his record as a message from God, and became a member of the
Order. Who can doubt but that this
decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and
his alone? One could have drawn quite
different conclusions from such a series of reverses - as, for example, that he
had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he
bears the entire responsibility. That is
what "abandonment" implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.
As
for "despair," the meaning of this expression is extremely
simple. It merely means that we limit
ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum
of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always
these elements of probability. If I am
counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I
presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram
will not be derailed. I remain in the
realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond
those that are strictly concerned in one's action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities
under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its
possibilities to my will. When
Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather than the world," what he
meant was, at bottom, the same - that we should act without hope.
Marxists,
to whom I have said this, have answered: "Your action is limited,
obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of others. That is, you can count both upon what the
others are doing to help you elsewhere, as in China and in Russia, and upon
what they will do later, after your death, to take up your action and carry it
forward to its final accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover, you must rely upon this; not to do
so is immoral." To this I rejoin,
first, that I shall always count upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, insofar
as they are committed, as I am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity
of a party or a group which I can more or less control - that is, in which I am
enrolled as a militant and whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon the unity and
the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train will run on
time or that the tram will not be derailed.
But I cannot count upon men whom I do not know,
I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon man's interest in the
good of society, seeing that man is free and that there is no human nature
which I can take as foundational. I do
not know whither the Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example
insofar as it is evident today, that the proletariat
plays a part in
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 insofar as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum
of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." Hence we can well understand why some people
are horrified by our teaching. For many
have but one resource to sustain them in their misery,
and that is to think, "Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to
be something much better than I have been.
I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is
because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not
written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or,
if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not
find the man I could have lived with. So
there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and
potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness
that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions." 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
In
the light of all this, what people reproach us with is not, after all, our
pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism.
If people condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters
that are base, weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only
because those characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we showed that
the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or by the
action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors, psychic or
organic. People would be reassured, they
would say, "You see, that is what we are like, no one can do anything
about it." But the existentialist,
when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on account of a cowardly
heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his
physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a
coward by his actions. There is no such
thing as a cowardly temperament. There
are nervous temperaments; there is what is called impoverished blood, and there
are also rich temperaments. But the man
whose blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice
is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has
done. What people feel obscurely, and
with horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a
coward. What people would prefer would
be to be born either a coward or a hero.
One of the charges most often laid against the Chemins
de la Liberté is something like this - "But,
after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into
heroes?" That objection is really
rather comic, for it implies that people are born heroes: and that is, at
bottom, what such people would like to think.
If you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing
about it and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are
born heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives,
eating and drinking heroically. Whereas
the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes
himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give
up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total
commitment, and it is not by a particular case or particular action that you
are committed altogether.
We
have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against
existentialism. You have seen that it
cannot be regarded as a philosophy of quietism since
it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of man, for no
doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is
placed within himself. Nor is it an
attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him that there is no hope
except in his action, and that the one thing which permits him to have life is
the deed. Upon this level therefore,
what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. However, we are still reproached, upon these
few data, for confining man within his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.
Our
point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual, and that for
strictly philosophic reasons. It is not
because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon the
truth, and not upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking
real foundations. And at the point of
departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I think, therefore I
am, which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it
attains to itself. Every theory
which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory
which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito,
all objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which
is not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable, one must
possess the true. Before there can be
any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a
truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it
consists in one's immediate sense of one's self.
In
the second place, this theory alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an
object. All kinds of materialism lead
one to treat every man, including oneself, as an object - that is, as a set of
predetermined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and
phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human
kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate
as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have
demonstrated, it is not only one's own self that one discovers in the cogito,
but those of others too. Contrary to the
philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say "I
think" we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we
are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in
the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the
condition of his own existence. He
recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is
spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as
such. I cannot obtain any truth
whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence,
and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate
discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation
of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will
without doing so either for or against me.
Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that
of "inter-subjectivity." It is
in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.
Furthermore,
although it is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence
that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of
today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of
man. By his condition they understand,
with more or less clarity, all the limitations which à
priori define man's fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man
may be born a slave in a pagan society, or may be a feudal baron, or a
proletarian. But what never vary are the
necessities of being in the world, of having to labour and to die there. These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an
objective aspect to them. Objective,
because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and
subjective because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live
them - if, that is to say, he does not freely determine himself and his
existence in relation to them. And,
diverse though man's purposes may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign
to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to
surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate
oneself to them. Consequently every
purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of
a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the
European of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same
limitations in the same way, and that he may re-conceive in himself the purpose
of the Chinese, of the Indian or the African.
In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose
is comprehensible to every man. Not that
this or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again
and again. There is always some way of
understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has
sufficient information. In this sense we
may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it
is being perpetually made. I make this
universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the purpose of
any other man, of whatever epoch. This
absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.
What
is at the very heart and centre of existentialism, is the absolute character of
the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a type of
humanity - a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter
what epoch - and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which
may result from such absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the Cartesian
commitment. In this sense you may say,
if you like, that every one of us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating,
by sleeping or by behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being -
being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence - and absolute
being. And there is no difference
whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily localised - that is,
localised in history - and universally intelligible being.
This
does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism. Indeed that objection appears in several
other forms, of which the first is as follows.
People say to us, "Then it does not matter what you do," and
they say this in various ways. First
they tax us with anarchy; then they say, "You cannot judge others, for
there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another"; finally, they
may say, "Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you
give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other." These three are not very serious
objections. As to the first, to say that
it matters not what you choose is not correct.
In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to
choose. I can always choose, but I must
know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal,
is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice. For, when I confront a real situation - for
example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the
other sex and able to have children - I am obliged to choose my attitude to it,
and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in
committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no à priori value whatever, it can have nothing
to do with caprice: and if anyone thinks that this is only Gide's
theory of the acte gratuit
over again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory
and that of Gide.
Gide does not know what a situation is, his "act" is one of pure caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds
himself in an organised situation in which he is himself involved: his choice
involves mankind in its entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he must
marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In any case, and whichever he may choose, it
is impossible for him, in respect of this situation, not to take complete
responsibility. Doubtless he chooses
without reference to any pre-established values, but it is unjust to tax him
with caprice. Rather let us say that the
moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.
But
here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not propounding
an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach
us even with that. I mention the work of
art only by way of comparison. That
being understood, does anyone reproach an artist when he paints a picture for
not following rules established à priori? As everyone knows, there is no pre-defined
picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the composition of a
picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely that which he will
have made. As everyone knows, there are
no aesthetic values à priori, but there
are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in
the relation between the will to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow
will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as
irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very
well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting
it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.
It
is the same upon the plane of morality.
There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have
to do with creation and invention. We
cannot decide à priori what it is that
should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of
that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might
appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever;
he was obliged to invent the law for himself.
Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his
mother - that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity
as his moral foundations - would be making an irresponsible choice, nor could
we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found
ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but
choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his
commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our
choice.
In
the second place, people say to us, "You are unable to judge
others." This is true in one sense
and false in another. It is true in this sense, that whenever a man chooses his
purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that
purpose may be it is impossible to prefer another for him. It is true in the sense that we do not
believe in progress. Progress implies
amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always
changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the
time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery - from the time of
the war of Secession, for example, until the present moment when one chooses
between the M.R.P. and the Communists.
We
can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses in view of others,
and in view of others one chooses himself.
One can judge, first - and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but
it is a logical judgment - that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he
deceives himself. Since we have defined
the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help,
any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some
deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.
One may object: "But why should he not choose to deceive
himself?" I reply that it is not
for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment
of truth. The self-deception is
evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man's complete liberty
of commitment. Upon this same level, I
say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values
are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values
and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me,
"And what if I wish to deceive myself?" I answer, "There
is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so, and that
the attitude of strict consistency alone is that of good faith. Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral
judgment. For I declare that freedom, in
respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself;
and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself,
in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom
as the foundation of all values. That
does not mean that he wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the
actions of men of good faith have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of
freedom itself as such. A man who
belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain concrete ends,
which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom for freedom's sake, and in and
through particular circumstances. And in
thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of
others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man
does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged
to will the liberty of others at the same time as mine. I cannot make liberty
my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely
authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that
he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at
the same time I realise that I cannot not will the freedom of
others. Thus, in the name of that
will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon
those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their
existence and its complete freedom.
Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with
deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards.
Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is
merely an accident of the appearance of the human race upon earth, - I shall call
scum. But
neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane of strict
authenticity. Thus, although the content
of morality is variable, a certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a will both to
itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the formal and the universal suffice for
the constitution of morality. We
think, on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when
we come to defining action. To take once
again the case of that student; by what authority, in the name of what golden
rule of morality, do you think he could have decided, in perfect peace of mind,
either to abandon his mother or to remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always concrete, and therefore
unpredictable; it has always to be invented.
The one thing that counts, is to know whether
the invention is made in the name of freedom.
Let
us, for example, examine the two following cases, and you will see how far they
are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take The Mill on the Floss. We find here a certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who is an incarnation of the value of passion and
is aware of it. She is in love with a
young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young woman. This Maggie Tulliver,
instead of heedlessly seeking her own happiness, chooses in the name of human
solidarity to sacrifice herself and to give up the man
she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man
with his real value, would have declared that a grand passion justifies its
sacrifices, and must be preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as
would unite Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she would have chosen
to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she would
also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if life made that demand upon
her. Here we are facing two clearly
opposed moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing that in both
cases the overruling aim is freedom. You
can imagine two attitudes exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might
prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover whilst the other preferred, in
fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior engagement of the man she
loved; and, externally, these two cases might appear the same as the two we
have just cited, while being in fact entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina
is much nearer to that of Maggie Tulliver than to one
of careless greed. Thus, you see, the
second objection is at once true and false.
One can choose anything, but only if it is upon the plane of free
commitment.
The
third objection, stated by saying, "You take with one hand what you give
with the other," means, at bottom, "your values are not serious,
since you choose them yourselves."
To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if
I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that we invent values
means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense in life à priori.
Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and
the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a
possibility of creating a human community.
I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of
humanism: people have said to me, "But you have written in your Nauseé that the humanists are wrong, you have even
ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon
that?" In reality, the word
humanism has two very different meanings.
One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the
end-in-himself and as the supreme value.
Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau's story Round
the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he
is flying over mountains in an aeroplane, "Man is magnificent!" This signifies that although I, personally,
have not built aeroplanes I have the benefit of those particular inventions and
that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and
honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to
man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the
dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon
man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools
as to do - at least, not as far as I know.
But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon
But
there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this:
Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself
beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by
pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, he is
himself the heart and centre of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human
universe, the universe of human subjectivity.
This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense
that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with
subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever
present in a human universe) - it is this that we call existential
humanism. This is humanism, because we
remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus
abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by
turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which
is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realise
himself as truly human.
You
can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the
objections people raise against us.
Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full
conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of
plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means - as the
Christians do - any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is
something different. Existentialism is
not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the
non-existence of God. It declares,
rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point
of view. Not that we believe God does
exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what
man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him
from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic,
it is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confusing
their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.