The Works of jean Paul Sartre

Adopting and adapting the methods of Phenomenology and, particularly, the work of Martin
Heidegger, Sartre set out to develop an ontological account of what it is to be human. The basis
of his Existentialism is found in his early book "Transcendence of the Ego" of 1936, was
developed in "Being and Nothingness" of 1943, and refined and summarized in "Existentialism is
a Humanism" of 1946. But he also believed that our ideas are the product of experiences of real-
life situations, and that novels and plays describing such fundamental experiences have as much
value for the elaboration of philosophical theories as do discursive essays. Thus, his novels such
as "Nausea" of 1928 and the "The Roads to Freedom" trilogy of 1945 to 1949, were also
important vehicles of his thought, as were his plays like "The Flies" of 1943, "No Exit" of 1944
and "Dirty Hands” of 1948, and his volume of short stories, " The Wall". A whole school of
absurd literature subsequently developed. In Sartre's Existentialism, "existence is prior to
essence" (or, put a different way, the existence of humans precedes consciousness), in the sense
that the meaning of man's life is not established before his existence, and man is "thrown into"
into a concrete, inveterate universe that cannot be "thought away". Thus, it is what we do and
how we act in our life that determines our apparent "qualities". As Sartre put it: "At first [Man] is
nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be".
Sartre firmly believed that everyone, always and everywhere, has choices and therefore
freedom. Even in the most apparently cut-and-dried situations, even in the face of what appears
to be inevitable, a person always has a choice of actions, whether it be to do nothing, whether it
be to run away, or whether it be to risk one's very life. This freedom is empowering, but it also
comes with responsibility. Sartre famously declared that "man is condemned to be free"
(meaning, free from all authority) and, although he may seek to evade, distort or deny that
freedom (what Sartre called "mauvaise foi" or bad faith"), he will nevertheless have to face up to
it if he is to become a moral being. Individuals are responsible for the choices they make, and for
their emotional lives, but because they are always conscious of the limits of knowledge and of
mortality, they constantly live with existential dread or "angst". In his essay, "Existentialism is a
Humanism", seen by many as one of the defining texts of the Existentialist movement, Sartre
described the human condition in a succinct summary form: "Man is nothing else but that which
he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism." Thus, freedom entails total
responsibility, in the face of which we experience anguish, forlornness and despair, and genuine
human dignity can be achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions. Sartre
concluded from his arguments that if God exists, then man is not free; by the same token, if man
is free, then God does not exist. Atheism, then, is taken for granted in Sartre's philosophy, but he
maintained that the "loss of God" is not to be mourned. On the contrary, in a godless universe,
life has no meaning or purpose beyond the goals that each man sets for himself, and individuals
must therefore detach themselves from things in order to give them meaning.