Existenialism is a Humanism, 1946
Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sarte 1946Jean-Paul Sarte 1946
Existentialism is a Humanism
Written: Lecture given in 1946
Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian
Publishing Company, 1989;
First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956;
Translator: Philip Mairet;
HTML Markup: by Andy Blunden 1998; proofed and corrected February 2005.
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 is a 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”? 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 Clartes 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 professed 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
paper-knife – 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 paper-knife
and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that
conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife 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
paper-knife 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 paper-knife 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 paper-knife in
the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a
conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, 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 a
universal conception, the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so
far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois
are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental
qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which
we confront in experience.
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 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 realize 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 favorite 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 a priori existence ascribed to
them. It must be considered obligatory a 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 a 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.
Dostoevsky 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 the 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 England to join the Free French Forces or of staying
near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived
only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge
her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he
performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding
her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an
ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose.
For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a
Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers
he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself
confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate,
but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to
an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason
ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was
hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of
sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope
but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could
help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says:
Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way
which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one
owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful
aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise
aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a
priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic
says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I
remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means:
but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting
on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the
combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother
as a means. 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.
While 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 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 success, 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, in so far 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 to 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 where the Russian revolution will lead. I
can admire it and take it as an example in so far as it is evident, today, that
the proletariat plays a part in Russia which it has attained in no other nation.
But I cannot affirm that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the
proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see. Nor can I be sure that
comrades-in-arms will take up my work after my death and carry it to the maximum
perfection, seeing that those men are free agents and will freely decide,
tomorrow, what man is then to be. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide
to establish Fascism, and the others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let
them do so. If so, Fascism will then be the truth of man, and so much the worse
for us. In reality, things will be such as men have decided they shall be. Does
that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit
myself and then act my commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that
“one need not hope in order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I
should not belong to a party, but only that I should be without illusion and
that I should do what I can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social
ideal as such, ever become a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever
may be in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon
nothing.
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 in so far 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 Racine is
the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we
attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is
precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own
portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem
comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it
puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that
dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams,
abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him
negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else
but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by
his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his
definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series
of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that
constitute these undertakings.
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 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 pre-determined 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
a 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 labor and to die there. These limitations are neither
subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective
aspect of 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 purpose
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 reconceive 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 center 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 does not matter 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 a 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 value, 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 a priori. Does one ever
ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? 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 a
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 a 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 for him to prefer
another. 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. [Mouvement Republicain
Poputaire] 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, 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 my own. 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 realize 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 on
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 a
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
attitude exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might prefer, in
resignation, to give up her lover while 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 a 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 Nausée 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-itself 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 airplane, “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 Man.
Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will
never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no
right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult,
after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian
humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We do not
want a humanism like that.
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, and can grasp objects only in relation to his
self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center 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 realize 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 confining their own
despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.
Further Reading: Simone De Beauvoir Archive | Marxism & Ethics | Ethics of
Ambiguity, de Beauvoir 1947 | Marxist Humanism | Marxists Internet Archive
Jean-Paul Sartre Archive | Value_of_Knowledge
