Modern French Thinkers
Term 1, Week 1
Sartre 1:
The Basics of Existentialism, and
L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme
‘Jean-Paul Sartre’
(http://www.sartre.org> 3 September, 2014)
Background to Sartre’s Existentialism
• Education: doctorate in philosophy
• Interest in psychology
• Early fiction: La Nausée (1938), Le Mur (1939)
– Humans beings free, but freedom = responsibility: without
commitment, no meaning
• War: imprisonment;
writing; resistance
• Earlier existentialist
thinking
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Angst
Individual
Free will
Authenticity
Existence = having the right to
choose who you are = living a
life of commitment
• Immanence and transcendence
•
•
•
•
•
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
• Kierkegaard’s existentialism
+
Husserl’s methods
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938)
Phenomenology
• facts of immediate
experience
• descriptive analysis of lived
experience
• starting with things
[phenomena] themselves
• learning about others by
understanding their
subjective descriptions
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
• Sein und Zeit (Being and Time,
1927)
• Ontology: study of nature of
being, existence &/or reality
• Human existence = active
participation in the world:
Dasein (‘being-there’ or ‘beingin-the-world’).
• Authenticity versus bad faith
Atheistic Existentialism
‘[L]’existence précède l’essence.’
(Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme, p. 31 et passim;
cf. L’Être et le Néant, p. 613 et passim)
• Le corps vécu
Sartrean Existentialism
Existence divided into
être-en-soi (being-in-itself of objects that simply
are: rocks, sea)
AND
être-pour-soi (being-for-itself; human
consciousness, responsible for own actions,
decisions &c).
Sartrean Existentialism
Human beings
• existential dread
• condemned to freedom
• making own meaning in life
• commitment
• absolute freedom = radical choice
• absolute responsibility for self & actions
Sartrean Existentialism
L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme
• Defence of existentialism
• Public lecture
Some Key Terms
Existentialism
Existence
Freedom
Anxiety/dread/angst
Authenticity
Bad faith
Philosophy
Phenomenology
Ontology
Consciousness
Essence
L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme
Some starting points
• Defence? From whom?
• Intended audience versus
actual audience?
• How effective explanation
of existentialism?
• Convincing stance on
existentialism as positive
and optimistic?
• Message(s) – philosophical,
political &c?
• Inclusiveness: gender bias?
• Tone, register, complexity
• Choice of examples