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 cre-ation, 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 accompa-nies 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