A Fleeting Glance at "Sartrism"

The philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre rests upon a mother-idea: granting man absolute freedom. Nothing constrains the freedom of our deeds and acts. In order to give man all this freedom, bound by no condition whatsoever, Sartre was compelled to abolish every existence prior to man: no heaven above his heaven, no roof above his roof, no cause above his own self, no essence above his reality. Man begins from man.

Sartre says, in substance:

If we look at a thing made by man — a house, for example, or a knife — we see that the maker first of all conceives an image of the house or the knife: the intellectual design that guides man in his work, since he can make nothing whose image he does not, before all else, conceive in his theoretical mind. Add to this that the thing has a definite usefulness, and that man does not undertake to make a thing whose usefulness he does not know. Hence the saying that essence, with respect to the thing (the house or the knife, for example), is prior to existence. Essence, in this place, is the sum of the qualities by which the thing is defined — length, breadth, depth, form, color, utility — and then the means by which it is made. The existence of the house comes after its essence, and its essence is an idea in the mind of man. The house was, first of all, an idea; then the idea turned into reality, and there was existence.

And when we imagine God at the work of creation, we picture Him — most often — as we picture the man who makes a thing. We picture Him as reasoning before He wills; that is, we grant that will follows reason, to some extent, or at least accompanies it. We picture God knowing, with precision and exactness, what He creates in the creation of beings. We picture Him designing first, then realizing. This means that the image of man, in the mind of God, is like the image of the house in the mind of man. God makes man according to a definite conception, and by definite methods as well, just as the carpenter makes a door of wood, relying on the prior plan he lays down in the design. Thus man becomes a creature who realizes a definite plan existing in the mind of God — who realizes a comprehensive image which is "humanity." Here too we see that essence is prior to existence: "humanity" first, then man afterward.

As for man — in Sartre's view — he differs entirely from this conception. Man is an existent who has no essence. Man was nothing before he came to be. He is the existence that wills its own existence, in its surge toward existence; he is the existence that conceives itself after existing. He is, from the beginning, a project of existence, living his existence setting out from himself, since nothing exists in the world of ideals prior to that project. Existence, here, secretes essence; that is, man is according to what he projects for himself. And if man, in Sartre's eyes, cannot be defined, it is because he is a nothingness at the start — that is, nothing before he comes to be. Man first, then humanity afterward. Therefore man is responsible, in full, for what he is. Existentialism, in Sartre's eyes, is what lays upon man the absolute responsibility for his existence, since no one chooses the good for him, or leads him by the hand to virtue. Man must create his good (and this good may lie in what is agreed to be evil). Man must create his evil (and this evil may lie in what is agreed to be good). The upshot is that man is existence first, and valuation comes afterward — an existence, like the existence of God, prior to good and evil, which begin with what he sets about doing. His existence is a freedom without end.

Man's freedom resembles the freedom of God in its essence. Man's deeds, good or evil, begin from man himself. And is that a complete freedom, which is bound by two tablets of values, the first of command (that is, the good) and the second of prohibition (that is, evil)? And what meaning would there be, after this, for the great responsibility that man must be — the responsibility which alone makes man a man, in the image and likeness of God?

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Sartre says: "Man must go to the farthest limits of responsibility — limits that man appoints for himself, whether God exists or does not exist. This means that man's existence always rests — whether we will it or not — upon choosing in a free manner. When I say: it is the will of God, I have already chosen, before that, between belief in God and disbelief in Him.

"Many are the Christians who say to the atheists: you chose your atheism, and you chose it in the fullness of your freedom. You chose it out of cowardice, or strength, or weakness. What matters is that you chose not to believe in God.

"But these Christians refuse this very same argument when it is turned back upon them. Have they not chosen also? They chose belief in God. They chose the approved morals, with their sternness and their apriority (a priori). They chose the desire to obtain absolute certainty, or, on the contrary (since not all Christians possess certainty), they chose to live after the manner of Pascal — men who search in anguish and pain.

"However that may be, they resolved — first — upon choosing God, or upon believing that they know nothing and that they pass their lives in searching, or upon saying that God is not. The point of departure is always a free choice — or a decision, as we most often say today."

This philosopher says: I want to make man absolutely responsible for his entire existence, whether God is or is not. Absolute responsibility requires absolute freedom. And freedom is not absolute unless it is without fetter or shackle. Therefore man is entirely free, in the good he does and in the evil he shuns. He is the originator of truth and the creator of falsehood.

Here I see a rupture in the Sartrian edifice. If the discoverer of truth is the one who cries: this is my good, and this is my evil; if it is man who evaluates, beginning from man, declaring things beautiful or declaring them ugly; if man stands behind man — that is, if he is the alif and the ya, in all he does — if it is he who brings things into being, then I see no necessity (after that) for him to be responsible. And before whom would he be responsible, so long as Sartre sets no other roof above man's roof, to question and to judge? Responsibility requires a questioner and one who is questioned, and requires also that the questioner stand above the questioned, so that there may be reward in what is lawful and punishment in what is forbidden.

What use is there — consequently — in the existence of good and evil, so long as man cannot punish himself, when he begins from himself? Sartrian existentialism, then, stands before one of two things: either it worships God without haughtiness toward Him, so long as it believes in the existence of responsibility; or it abolishes responsibility, so long as it does not believe that good and evil issue forth from God — otherwise its statements fall apart, and the creep of contradiction steals into them.

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Moreover, this enormous problem — the problem of God — cannot be settled apart from the idea of death. Were there no death, atheism of its kind would be an easy matter, since there would no longer be any necessity for the existence of God, so long as man remained in this life, secure from the evil of annihilation. For this reason it is the atheist's duty — at the very least — to free himself from the sting of death, so as to be quit of God. This is what the atheist must do if his thinking is to be consistent; otherwise his atheism remains bubbles of talk. Descartes — he whom his own soul tempted, more than once, to be haughty as well — felt the necessity of overcoming death, if atheism was to come out consistent. He felt that it is the atheist's duty — if he would rebuke God and revile Him — not to doubt, not to desire, and not to lack perfection. He felt that it is the atheist's duty to lavish upon himself the infinite perfection he would wish to be, whereas in the end he is only what he is in fact: a finite imperfection. He said: "And this is sufficient proof that I am not the creator of myself. Therefore the infinite perfections I wish for myself (are not the work of my hands. They have been entrusted to another)."