THE NATURE OF SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM

Author(s): KENNETH N. DOUGLAS

Source: The Virginia Quarterly Review , SPRING 1947, Vol. 23, No. 2 (SPRING 1947), pp.
244-260
Published by: University of Virginia

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26439356

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 THE NATURE OF SARTRE'S
EXISTENTIALISM
By KENNETH N. DOUGLAS

have been treated with scant consideration on the

EXISTENTIALISM and continent.
North American its prophet, Jean-Paulmorbidness,
Bohemianism, Sartre,
corruption, publicity-seeking at any price—such are the charges
made or inferences to be drawn. This is a regrettably casual dis
missal of a movement, literary and philosophical, whose two
aspects are rich in promise when taken separately, and in their
interplay enhance and fecundate one another. The literary
works may best be judged after they have been made available
to the English-speaking world; but since philosophical treatises
are neither so promptly translated nor so widely read, and since,
in this case, the philosophy is not merely a background but the
very ground the literary creations advance on, or, to use a
happier image, the pole round which their multicolored sphere
revolves, I have set myself the task of explaining, as simply as
possible, what Sartrian existentialism is.
Thinkers and writers are not always their own best advo
cates, or the best "vulgarizers" of essential doctrines. As a start
ing point we shall, consequently, reject Sartre's own definition
of existentialism, "a doctrine according to which existence pre
cedes essence," and the slightly longer, paradoxical pronounce
ment, "man is condemned to be free; he is free to bind himself,"
and we shall begin by stating that three factors should, or may,
be distinguished. They are Sartre's works, his action, and his
philosophy. The first two will be briefly treated, in order that
the accent may fall on the third.
Let, however, something be said about Sartre the man, and

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 245

the field not entirely given over to his detractors. He is shor

yes, but not a dwarf, and ugly, if the vast majority of huma
beings are; otherwise no. What struck me about him during
lectures is this: he is not a younger edition of the so charmin
elderly French professor on a cultural mission, who gesticula
with such grace and vents a sonorous belief in France's etern
destinies. Sartre strives for no effect, he makes no attempt
shock; indeed one might more appropriately speak of his
terity. His aim, it appeared, was to express himself in terms t
the audience could grasp. His subject-matter was equally f
of rhetoric. In dealing with the French Resistance, for exam
he did not exaggerate the part it played. Without its help
allied nations would have won the victory or gone down
defeat; it was, nevertheless, important for the future of Fran
since those who died, those who were tortured, were witness
that not all Frenchmen had capitulated to the invader. T
survivors, Sartre said, had a vague sense of shame after the lib
tion. Not they, but their dead and mutilated comrades had b
the true witnesses. The Greek word for witness, it will be
called, is martyr. Replying to questions after his lectures, Sar
showed no indignation or amusement when a question reveale
ignorance or lack of comprehension. He tried to find an answ
suited to the condition of his interrogator.
Now about forty-six years old, Jean-Paul Sartre has writte
passionately from a very early age. He was also an outstandin
student, as was proved by his admittance to the Ecole Norma
Supérieure in Paris. The French Government shouldered th
by all the expenses of his university education. Sartre then t
the usual course of teaching in the French secondary sch
system, a much more intellectual proposition than high scho
teaching in the United States. He taught philosophy.
His first novel bore the title "Nausea"; for the hero sudden
became aware that the fundamental quality of existence, and
every single thing including himself, was nauseousness.
only pure element in the midst of a universal, nauseous ni
mare was, for Antoine Roquentin, a jazz refrain. And he set

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246 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

for Paris to write something that might emulate its purity. So

it would appear that at this period, 1937 or 1938, Sartre be
lieved in salvation by art.
On the technical side, as a philosopher, Sartre published sev
eral books or pamphlets dealing with the mental image, the
emotions, and the imagination. Articles analyzing the proce
dures of Faulkner and Dos Passos foreshadow the influence of
American writers on his own work. "The Wall," a collection
of short stories, already reveals to the sufficiently alert how tales
can be used to illustrate or work out philosophical attitudes.
World War II changed Sartre's daily round and, in some
important respects, his outlook. For him it meant military ser
vice, capture, an internment camp, escape, and resistance. In
this period of mingled activity and qjiforced contemplation, he
came to see that art, which had been his idol, does not abolish
the real world, that one cannot escape from the real world, that
salvation, if there is any, must be found in life. With this in
mind, and influenced by the German philosopher Heidegger,
he wrote his philosophical treatise, "Being and Nothingness."
His first play, "The Flies," succeeds in combining literary
distinction and immediate political appositeness. Passed by the
censor for performance in occupied France, it is nevertheless
an attack on the collaborationists of Vichy. Orestes returns to
Argos, slays the rulers Egistheus and his own criminal mother
Clytemnestra, and withdraws, leaving the people of Argos to
work out their salvation alone. For Orestes has learnt that men
are free, and that the gods are powerless against the man who
knows it. This play is perhaps Sartre's most positive work to
date, with its message, especially striking in that period of
French collapse and demoralization: "Real life begins on the
far side of despair." The second play, "No Exit," has already
been presented in New York. The action takes place in Hell,
and the thesis developed is that Hell contains no devils with
pitchforks or cauldrons of boiling oil. "Hell is other people."
However, this does not form the whole of Sartre's teaching
about others.

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 247

Since France was liberated, Sartre has worked on a

"Roads to Freedom." The first volume, "The Age of
presents a hero who has always striven to remain free
from everything. As a result he finds himself free to d
to drift at random, to despise himself. The other char
equally amorphous. In a second volume, "The Respite
offered a Dos Passos-like panorama of the Munich episo
its panic and shameful sense of relief. It ends on a
from Daladier, who is looking at the cheering crowds
comed him when he returned from signing away Czech
"The .. .s!" he said. The figures of the first part are sw
with the rest; presumably the third volume, to be c
Last Chance," will reveal how the hero finds genuine f
Plays, novels, philosophical works—something still is
a review. And in 1945 Les Temps Modernes began pu
Was the title suggested by Charlie Chaplin's film "
Times"? That too was a protest against the mechani
man. Sartre's Preface-Manifesto called for "une littérat
gagée," not a chained or hired literature, but a pledg
untarily bound, an enlisted literature.
Who is reached by this manifold activity? No doub
ber of self-styled existentialists are intellectual snobs,
philosophical culture and basic seriousness. But int
snobs follow where others have led. Nor will the influ
Sartre be found only among admitted disciples: all t
affected whom some aspect of his writings and lecture
terested and attracted—or interested and repelled.
repeller, Sartre has enjoyed a colossal success. He is cau
cross-fire from left and right. As an atheist, he is att
believers; as a non-Communist, by Communists. If t
bullets, the effect would be deadly; but a barrage of w
fortify rather than annihilate.
His trilogy, in particular, has inspired a lyric horror
tain conservative critics. Whatever its own value as lite
it has called forth literature. These cries of "shocking!
curiously prudish, Anglo-Saxon flavor. Sartre himself

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 248 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

that the defeat of 1940 has left a feeling of inferiority, so that

some Frenchmen have become very sensitive to the traditional
English and American charge of immorality in French novels.
But he sees also a deeper reason for their revulsion. They can
read with equanimity the naturalistic novels of Zola, forerunner
of Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and so many other American novel
ists, since Zola presents his characters as entirely moulded by
heredity and environment, and so not responsible for the vile
ness of their lives. With Sartre, on the other hand, each person
age is despicable because, being free, he chooses to be despicable.
And the reader cries out in protest. Unable to deny the facts,
he prefers with Zola to explain them away. What these critics
fail even to attempt to show is why such "unspeakable deprav
ity" should appeal to anyone. Here is my attempt to do so.

II

Sartre offers a way of salvation, and in new terms. It is not

any kind of Marxism or materialism or positivism laying claim
to scientific objectivity. Nor is it an appeal to return to the
Christian faith. To the young man told that he must bow to the
authority of church or state, or that science has disposed of free
will and proved us pawns, Sartre says: "You are free! You are
conscious of your freedom, your very anguish proves it. Accept
your freedom, accept your anguish, and you will find that real
life begins on the far side of despair."
That, if you like, is the prospectus. Now to enlarge upon it.
Philosophy, according to the traditional view, is a deductive
system. Starting from a limited number of basic truths, it builds
up an elaborate structure by logical means. Spinoza, for ex
ample, presented his philosophy in the form of a treatise on ge
ometry. But the word "system" reminds us above all of Hegel.
In his system, everything makes sense. The historical point of
view reveals to us the rhythm of becoming, the thesis stirs up its
antithesis, and in the synthesis both are reconciled.
A challenge was hurled against the system, not in the name
of a rival system, but on behalf of the existing, individual man.
The challenger, and ancestor of all later existentialists, was

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 249

Sören Kierkegaard, an eccentric Copenhagen bachel

vinced Christian, who in his lifetime (1813-1855)
largely unread. What about the suppressed "the
quired, when the thesis is a man? He exists at one tim
place. How can he know or adopt the point of vie
versal history? Against Hegel's ideal of an objectiv
retical attitude to life, Kierkegaard demanded that su
be pushed to the utmost, that the individual should e
the utter uniqueness of his own existence. No ready-
jective" solutions! Let one inner voice clamor again
inner voice in a process of "infinite reflection," that e
a victory for one side but in exhaustion. This final si
debate will be followed, perhaps, by the "leap of f
pared with the intensity of this inner conflict, the o
pales. Kierkegaard neglects questions of church or
and the foundations of a Christian society. The ma
true Christian are failure in this world, anguish, and
Kierkegaard's anarchical Christianity was one forer
present-day existentialism. Beside his we must plac
of another unmarried, unemployed eccentric w
Kierkegaard, proclaimed the death of God. But Nie
although he did speculate on the ordering of the uni
primarily interested in the condition of man. The co
man—that is the theme of the new philosophizing; a
ready we find within it the opposition of faith in
nial of God, represented in France today by the
Sartre and by Gabriel Marcel, whose Christian exi
preceded the Sartrian by about fifteen years.
What have the two bachelors in common that is
new? It is worth while dwelling on this a little, for
we may realize the sort of question that Sartre and o
entialists, including his bitterest opponents, have
swer. Where the answers set one against the other, th
they have in common form the terrain on which th
ing to do battle. If people argue about who made the
least they agree that it was made by someone.
The most prominent feature of Western civiliza

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 250 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

development of science; that is, of techniques which to an am

azing degree have made Westerners lords of the natural world.
Many things which previously had to be accepted with resig
nation as "acts of God," as a testing of us in this vale of tears,
epidemics, for instance, a high infant mortality, crop failures,
uncertainty and delay in travel and communication, all these
and many other foes have been countered or circumvented.
Men now dream of a long life filled with security and comfort,
ideals which would have shocked the deepest instincts of reli
gious leaders in the Middle Ages. And religion, a dim glow con
trasted with these scientific pyrotechnics, has lost much of its
prestige. The sense of dependence on the unknown, of being
"in the hand of God," is weakened. What matters, men feel, is
the outside of things, and everything must be examined, dealt
with, "fixed," from the outside. The grave danger here is that
men should come more and more to treat their fellow beings
merely as objects, replaceable like broken machine parts. Con
sider the "iron laws" of classical economics, by no means dead
in men's thinking, or the ultimate, crazy paroxysm of faith in
techniques, the Nazi "new order." And each man, his inner
being shrunk in importance, no longer an immortal soul striving
for salvation and, as such, the concern also of his temporal and
spiritual rulers, is fretful and dissatisfied. All paths lead to dis
traction, all are centrifugal, while the center, the individual
with his unique, inexchangeable subjectivity, is neglected and
forgotten, a garden choked with weeds.
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard remind us that the wheel of
existence, like every wheel, has a hub, and that objective, scien
tific descriptions omitting this fact, even if they are added up or
co-ordinated, can make no claim to adequacy. To forget the
hub is to forget what makes the wheel go round. Thus nascent
existentialism was a recall, not essentially to belief in God, to
any particular faith, or to the alleged necessity of "having faith."
It stated again, for it needed restating, that the proper, the one
ineluctable study of mankind is man, round whom all things
revolve. The sciences perforce deal with things from the out
side, and theology had grown timid, traditional in the wrong

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 251

sense, and subservient. The existentialists, I would be

to say, are Prometheus—they stole the sacred fire of the
from the theologians. But unlike them they recognize
ternal authority with power to declare, "Thither you sha
here halt, for here is taboo." The fire they have stolen
a possession, but a question and a quest: who am I, who ar
The new philosophy needed a method. Were existent
to employ the rational, deductive procedures of a Spin
the medieval scholastics? Or like nineteenth-century p
phers aping the natural sciences, were they to build u
philosophy on objective observation? No. The new o
required a new tool, and the philosopher who developed
Edmund Husserl. He called his method "Phenomenology
Husserl started out from Descartes' "I think, therefore
But Descartes had been in too great a hurry and, relapsin
the old argumentative ways of the scholastics, had neg
his great discovery of "absolute certainties." These w
thoughts or cogitations, that is to say, whatever prese
self to his mind. Do I see a man, or an angel, or is it an h
nation? That is uncertain, but it is certain that a man-like
appears before me, and I can set about describing it. So H
calls for a radical application of Descartes' discovery an
to found not another system but an open, descriptive
ophy. "Back to things!" he proclaimed. We need not de
real world, but placing it "between parentheses" we conce
on the phenomena that appear before us. Perhaps they are
but what we imagine is equally present to us, and has
vantage of being more easily manipulated.
It can readily be seen that this new-style philosophy req
in some measure, the skill of the imaginative writer,
begin to understand how Sartre can turn from novel t
sophical works and back to novel-writing. But the tasks o
elist and of philosopher have not become identical, fo
the latter also describes, he aims at a generalized descr
For example, try to describe a house, any house, defi
word "house." The result, if you succeed, will be abso
general and of no specific application. Incidentally, yo

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 252 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

probably not have gone out to look at houses, for you know
what a house is. And that is the goal: to describe, to get to
know, explicitly, what we knew already but could not put into
words. The test of other men's labors in this field can only be an
appeal to your own experience. Does it corroborate what they
say? If not, all argument is over before it can begin. Experience
has the first and last word.

Husserl was a pure intellectual whose loftiest aim was to

describe the working of the consciousness. But a disciple, and
betrayer, as Husserl regarded him, Martin Heidegger, set aside
the master's ideal of an absolutely certain philosophy in whose
development many minds could co-operate, and used Husserl's
methods for ends of his own. Phenomenology, he declared,
names the method only; the raw material to which it is applied
is the life of man, man's existence.
Heidegger's philosophy is expressed in an opaque and highly
original terminology. It will not be expounded here. It need
only be said that Heidegger is an existentialist of the atheistic
persuasion, that he flirted with Nazism but apparently did not
enjoy it, and that his book ("Being and Time," still unfinished)
was read with profit by Sartre.
Sartre had already used Husserl's method for his studies of
the emotions and imagination. The 708 pages of his "Being and
Nothingness" undeniably move within a Heideggerian frame
work, but everything is thought anew, many of Heidegger's
favorite notions are cast aside and, supreme blessing, Sartre
the competent teacher gives concrete examples of what he
means. Some of them would surprise earlier philosophers. He
analyzes the experience of being seen, the significance of plac
ing one's hand on another's body, the difference between the
viscosity of honey and the sluggish liquidity of a purée, the
inevitable frustration of the sadist.

Ill

The world of Sartre may be approached through a familiar

gateway. Omar Khayyam had been propelled "Into this uni

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 253

verse, and why not knowing"; A. E. Housman was "a str

and afraid In a world I never made." For Sartre also m
"thrown" into the world; he did not ask to be born. Nev
less man is responsible, totally responsible, because he is fr
Free, yet from birth on we find ourselves in a world of e
lished values. The day may dawn, however, when we r
them with suspicion. Why do we accept what we accept as
and good? And after each new answer the question again ar
why? There is no end, no logical end to our asking. Finally
realization may come that these values are values precise
cause we accept them. On what are they based? In the la
alysis, on nothing, on the nothingness Sartre evokes i
book's title. Each man, then, creates or at least chooses his
values. Furthermore, he does not choose for himself alon
for all mankind; through this choice which helps to shape
future, he has committed all mankind. Sartre reminds us t
Immanuel Kant had said, "Always act as if you were
giver." But the problem, for Kant, was relatively simple, s
he believed that the moral law was revealed to us. The man
the other hand, who with Sartre has become aware of h
solute freedom, and of his consequent total responsibili
seized by anguish.
Men are not pure minds, creatures given up exclusive
contemplation. They create their values, not by thinkin
by acting them. Each of us, turned to the future, is led on b
project he would bring to fulfillment. Fundamentally,
man is his own project: he is not yet, he plans to be. It is in
sense that Sartre conceives of existence, the brute fact o
existence, as preceding our essence, the essential being we
to incarnate. Each one of us suffers from this eternal futu
this eternal "not yet," and seeks to escape from the void wi
or to fill up, we may say, the pit of the stomach (the glutt
attempt very literally to do just that).
Perhaps the reader has been irritated, for some time pas
our casual assumption that the will is free. Free will or det
nism, the latter in other circles called predestination: that

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254 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

old debate, and one that is still unsettled. So instead of advanc

ing arguments in support of Sartre, although he himself is ready
and willing to produce them, I shall make the trite remark that
an unsettled debate is an undecided one. He who chooses to be
lieve that everything, himself included, is rigidly determined,
and the man predestined to feel that he himself is free—both of
them are at liberty to do so; they are not shutting their eyes to
overwhelming proof of the contrary.
There is another answer on behalf of free will, and a final
answer, within the framework of phenomenology. You will
remember that what seems to be, according to this school, is,
it certainly seems to be. And this world of appearance is the
only world that human beings have at their disposal. The at
tempt to set up an imaginary "real world," behind the "world
of illusion" we really know, is a mistake. So ask yourself, do I
feel, do I act as if I were a free being? Do I feel I have the choice,
say, between ordering a cup of coffee and a cup of tea? If your
answer is "yes," that is sufficient; we can proceed. If "no," then
stop right here. There is no basis even for an argument. It is
amusing, by the way, to reflect on the gloom that nineteenth
century scientists released, with their determinism which took
all joy and value out of life. Now, in the twentieth century,
these people arise who preach a radical free will. Result? Gloom.
"Anguish," they say themselves, and their opponents on left
and right hasten to agree. The moral probably is that most
human beings prefer to divert themselves in the muddy waters
of confusion (Sartre might substitute the term "swamp"), or,
expressed more kindly, they may avoid fanaticism and occa
sionally attain wisdom by refusing absolute allegiance to any
theory whatsoever.
Returning, then, to the "ever future hollow," to ourselves,
we must underline the antithesis between people and things,
between subject and object. This also is a very old distinction,
but Sartre succeeds in producing, by persistent harping on it, a
somewhat novel discord. His terms are for-self and in-self. The
object, the in-self, has the advantage of being there, now, fully

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 255

and completely. It does not "look before and after, And sig
for what is not." It just is, and its most typical form is the soli
contrasted with the hollow living individual, fleeing from th
present and trying to become the non-existent future. He
a for-self, conscious of himself and so divided against himself
Even if he achieves his ambition, becoming the essential se
he has projected, Celia's husband, for example, the author of a
best-seller, the champion tree-sitter of Little Rock, he fin
that a goal attained is a goal no longer. Like the traveler w
has struggled to reach a point on the horizon, he beholds
fresh vista ahead, separated by new, wearisome miles.
Discouraged by this insatiable desire which goads him on
further exertions, anguished, too, by the necessity of making
a choice, life's traveler tries to find a way out. He may de
that he is free to choose, and accept the authority of a party
a church, or blame his condition on an all-powerful heredi
"What can I do? My father was a drinker." But this is a choic
also, and he never quite succeeds in hiding the fact from h
self. Sartre asserts that not even the lunatic is entirely fooled
by his imaginings; if he were, why should it be dangerous to s
gest that he is not really God Almighty? Sartre calls this
tempted self-deception bad faith.
So men envy the simple, undivided presence of the objec
They try to imitate the deadliness of the hurled stone or t
raging fury of the forest fire. But by the word "object" Sart
does not understand alone a thing in three dimensions. An
thing is an object that can be an object of thought, that we c
be conscious of. And there is one supreme object luring a m
astray: not the stone or forest fire, but his own past. He trie
—it seems an easy task—to identify himself with his past. Th
shell-shocked soldier returns to his early childhood. The m
who failed several times may try, by failing again and aga
to be a failure. The little fellow repeatedly told he is a "b
boy" sets out to be a bad boy in a big way, an "essential" w
These attempts are futile, Sartre declares. The object do
not exist for itself, since it has no consciousness. The hum

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256 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

being cannot become an object, an in-self, except by dying,

thereby ceasing to exist as a for-self. Consequently this basic
desire, the desire to be an in-self-for-self, is contradictory. To
take a previous example, the man who succeeds in being a fail
ure has succeeded—and so is not a failure; while the man proud
of "being" a success has idolized his past and artificially hobbled
his future. God, if He existed, would be an in-self-for-self, His
existence coinciding perfectly with His essence. We humans,
also, long to be "as gods," to become our own essence, but in
volved in this insuperable contradiction we needs must fail.
"Man," it does not surprise us to read, on the last page of Sar
tre's "Being and Nothingness," "is a useless passion."
Nevertheless we are, in part, objects; we have bodies. Some
times the opposing desire seizes us, and like the old Greek phi
losopher who blushed to think he had a body, we would exist
as a pure consciousness, a seeing eye that cannot itself be seen.
If this were possible, other people could not wound us by seeing
and treating us as objects we do not want to be, the awkward
youth, the person who has just committed a social solecism, the
wealthy client who must be humored. This unrealizable long
ing explains "peeping Tom" activities, and the pleasure so many
of us derive from sitting on the terrasse of a café and watching
the world.go by. We fancy ourselves for a moment outside the
world, and in a position to enjoy it as a pure spectacle. This is
true, above all, in the theater, where the spectators are gods
looking down on the human turmoil, while the performers
satisfy the reverse illusion, and exhibit themselves as an essence,
the essence of beauty, or baseness, or heroism.

IV

What is to be done? Retire from life, refuse to commit one

self to any project whatever? Obviously not, for to refuse is
to choose and to project oneself. Sartre recommends, as the first
step on the road (and as the Buddha had done before him), a
lucid view of man's condition. We are better prepared to act
when this insight is ours, and we fully realize that every deci

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 257

sion is arbitrary, that its outcome cannot live up to our exp

ation, and that goals are transitory—once they are reached,
must abandon them, must choose and struggle towards ot
goals. "Man is condemned to be free. He is free to bind
self."
Men live together. They need each other, in the first place, in
order that they may remain alive. Beyond that, they need each
other. For each of us seeks to know himself, and many aspects
of ourselves can be seen only by others, we can learn of them
only through others. Am I witty, aggressive, self-centered, sly,
easily annoyed? The terms have little meaning for the castaway
on a desert island. Nor can this information be obtained from
creatures I am trying to debase to the level of objects, as slaves,
"perfect" servants, members of "subject races." My freedom
requires theirs, and requires that they realize their freedom.
Phonograph records repeating the editorials of a daily paper,
whether it be guided by Hearst, Marshall Field, or Goebbels,
cannot tell me who I am. We not only must live together; in a
very large measure we are free men or slaves together.
I myself feel no irresistible, vulgar impulse to arrive forthwith
at a final estimate of Sartre's philosophy. The remarks that
follow are impressionistic, and should be taken as queries rather
than judgments. The first query may very properly concern
the central feature, the anguish felt in face of nothingness, in
face of the bottomlessness of everything, anguish aroused, that
is, by our unbounded freedom. Very well, let us admit that this
is so. But has Sartre examined other emotions, anger, joy, hilar
ity, as possible reactions to that nothing on which everything
reposes? Just as Sartre distinguishes anguish from fear, which is
fear of something, I may mark off gladness at some particular
occurrence from joy, real joy, joy for no reason at all. If the
reader wishes to develop his own existentialism on a basis of
truculence, or ennui, or amazement, he is free (of course!) to
go right ahead. My first choice might be faith, not belief in this
or that, but faith in nothingness, faith, if need be, against all
reason. "Yea, though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee." Yet

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258 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

these considerations, it should be noted, do not render negligible

a philosophy of anguish; they merely situate it as one among a
number of possible philosophies. Common to them all is this:
they make explicit our relationship to the same thing, not to
some one object or notion, but to the ground of all things, which
is bottomless. And there I am willing to abandon this train of
thought. The interested reader can pursue it further with Lao
Tze, for example, or the Zen school of Buddhism; or by himself.
The "death of God" heralded by Nietzsche also calls for
comment. Sartre does not repeat the phrase, but to some de
gree, I feel, it represents his position. He himself probably never
had any strong belief in God, but he has grown up in a culture
where, as he sees it, God has just died. The despair from which
people suffer is the hangover that lingers when the dream of sal
vation has vanished. It is clear that members of other groups, not
taught to believe in a future life and a loving Heavenly Father,
react in a less catastrophic way to the realities of death and
separation. Sartre maintains, of course, that a philosophy must
be of its own time, indeed cannot escape it; but is this attitude
not rather of the day before yesterday? Horror at the empty
heavens and the cooling earth was widely expressed round about
1870 and earlier. I suspect that Sartre, a writer of extraordinary
talent, is led away from the undivided truth by a weakness for
the dramatically effective. "Even if the universe should crush
him, man," he very nearly says, with the seventeenth-century
Pascal, "would still be nobler than that which kills him, for he
knows that he will die, and the advantage the universe has over
him, of that the universe knows naught."
In Sartre's own terms, is he not overstressing the opposition
between the individual and the "objects" that appear to him?
For men do not look at the world through a peephole, they are
in it, and Sartre has insisted that the primary, undivided, and
indivisible reality is being-in-the-world. He forgets his hyphens
and dwells too exclusively on the conflict between man, with
his inescapable freedom, and the external world which is in-itself
but not for-itself. I can think of only two passages in Sartre's

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 SARTRE'S EXISTENTIALISM 259

literary works where there is some suggestion that the bond

between perceiving individual and perceived object, and their
in-ness in the world, once realized, have a very special savor. In
these passages the "object" perceived is the fundamental truth
that the perceiver himself is unfounded and must be his own
founder. Orestes, the hero of "The Flies," is suddenly caught
up by this realization, and abandons the feather-light, false lib
erty of his youth for the heavy burden of a freely assumed en
gagement. For him it meant the slaughter of his mother and
her consort, as those active in the Resistance had to will the
death of Germans and of French hostages also. Mathieu Delarue,
in the second volume of Sartre's trilogy, sees through his false
conception of freedom as non-engagement, escapes from the
morass in which he clung to others, and makes a trial voyage on
the ocean of freedom with and through responsibility. We may
suggest that in other circumstances also unity is felt, a participa
tion in something that envelops the self and its object. Rowers,
footballers, hunters are not only struggling against others; they
know that they are moving in a field of forces which determines
them and which they determine. Musicians too know it, and
dancing couples, plowmen, painters, craftsmen in general.
Perhaps Sartre will later find opportunity to treat the theme of
individuals who, without losing sight of their freedom, realize
themselves as in-the-world, in society and in nature.
Existentialism cannot mean that you take somebody else's
word for things. It would be ironic if Sartre, who affirms that
men drowning in their freedom have only straws to clutch at,
should find disciples clutching on to him as their life-raft.
Imagine the situation. Just as in the country districts of North
ern Ireland, adolescents succeed in being more or less genuinely
stricken with a "conviction of sin," pious young existentialists
of the atheistic fold would labor away to acquire the stigma of
the chosen, an all-engulfing anguish, and any outbreaks of ir
repressible cheerfulness would make them absolutely miserable.
No, existentialism is not that. It is a recall from the distrac
tion of distractions, whether those we favor be idle amusements,

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260 THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

hard work, good works, or the search for efficiency, for better
techniques. It is a recall to ourselves, and may be presented as the
voice of conscience (Heidegger does so, in a few moving
pages). The way back does not necessarily involve the abandon
ment of activity, or introspection: the same amusements, hard
work, et cetera, may offer the means, provided that we see them
as functions of our own selves, and ourselves as centers for sift
ing, rejecting, accepting, and co-ordinating them. Provided,
above all, that we keep on asking why, why, and why again,
until this childlike repetition grown unbearable drives us to
make the reply beyond all logic and debate, the existential: "Be
cause I choose to do so!" In these centuries that have witnessed
the rise of science and the expansion of industrialism, economic
man, biological man, social man, and many other impostors have
made us forget man. Existentialism is a crusade on behalf of
forgotten man, of the man who feels, and thinks, and does,
against man as an object to be tested for aptitude and achieve
ments, tabulated on charts and reduced to a punch card, experi
mented upon, causally explained away, utilized, fired, junked,
liquidated, cremated, or atomized. Sartre has begun to play his
part, to write his part, in this project. In view of certain fast
spreading misconceptions, the preceding paragraphs have sought
to characterize his basic attitude. But when his works at last
become available (and by what else should Sartre be judged?),
it will be found, perhaps, that his greatest gifts are not lavished
on philosophical abstractions, even the relatively concrete ab
stractions of an existentialist philosophy; that his greatest claim
to creative originality lies in plays and novels with their bold
immediacy of an imagined real life, wherein essences struggle to
free themselves from the utter contingency of existence, in
order to stamp upon existence their own image.

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