Greatest Philosophers In History | Jean Paul Sartre
Summary
TLDRThe video script delves into the life and philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, a pivotal figure in existentialism. It explores his belief in 'existence precedes essence,' emphasizing individual freedom and responsibility. Sartre's existential angst, phenomenology, and the concept of 'bad faith' are highlighted, illustrating the human struggle to find meaning in a seemingly absurd world. His influence, from novels like 'Nausea' to his philosophical works, shaped modern thought, advocating for self-determination in the face of life's inherent meaninglessness.
Takeaways
- 📚 Jean Paul Sartre was a prominent existentialist philosopher who revitalized the movement post-Søren Kierkegaard.
- 🌟 Sartre's existentialist philosophy gained popularity after World War Two, offering hope amidst the collapse of traditional values.
- 👶 Sartre was born in Paris in 1905 and was influenced early by classical literature through his grandfather Charles Schweitzer.
- 🎓 He studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, where he developed a reputation as an unconventional thinker.
- 💕 Sartre's relationship with Simone de Beauvoir was open and non-monogamous, and she was a significant influence in his life.
- 🌐 Sartre's existentialism emphasizes individual existence, freedom, and responsibility in an absurd world.
- 🏆 He declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, rejecting the idea of becoming part of the establishment.
- 📖 Sartre's novel 'Nausea' depicted existential angst, portraying a protagonist alienated by his own existence.
- 🤔 His philosophy is encapsulated by the phrase 'existence precedes essence', challenging the traditional essentialist view.
- 🚫 Sartre's existentialism is inherently atheistic, as the existence of God would imply a predetermined essence for humans.
- 🔍 Phenomenology, as explored by Sartre, is the study of consciousness and how we experience reality through our perceptions.
- 🙅♂️ 'Bad Faith' is a concept where individuals deny their freedom and responsibility, often making excuses to avoid difficult decisions.
- 🏛 In 'Being and Nothingness', Sartre discusses consciousness, free will, and the struggle of humans to find meaning in a meaningless world.
- 👥 'The Look' and 'Being For-Others' are concepts that explore how others' perceptions of us affect our self-awareness and identity.
- 🚬 Sartre's health declined due to workaholism and heavy smoking, leading to his death in 1980 from lung complications.
- 🕊 His death was marked by a massive public outpouring, reflecting the profound impact he had on both philosophy and the public consciousness.
Q & A
Who is Jean Paul Sartre and what is his significance in the history of philosophy?
-Jean Paul Sartre is a French philosopher, novelist, and cultural critic known for his work in existentialism. He is considered a key figure in modern thought, having revitalized existentialism after the death of Søren Kierkegaard and influenced many areas of philosophy and culture.
What is Existentialism and how did Sartre contribute to its popularity?
-Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom, and choice in an apparently absurd and meaningless world. Sartre contributed to its popularity by reviving and popularizing existentialism after World War Two, offering a message of hope during a time when traditional values were collapsing.
What was the impact of Sartre's personal life on his philosophy?
-Sartre's personal life, including his upbringing by his mother and grandfather, his physical appearance, and his experiences of bullying, contributed to his focus on the individual's struggle for meaning and identity. His personal experiences with freedom and responsibility are reflected in his existentialist ideas.
What was the significance of Sartre's relationship with Simone de Beauvoir?
-Simone de Beauvoir was a prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher. Her relationship with Sartre, both romantically and intellectually, was significant as they influenced each other's work and became lifelong companions, challenging traditional monogamous relationships.
How did Sartre's experience as a prisoner of war influence his philosophical development?
-Sartre's time as a prisoner of war allowed him to read and be influenced by Martin Heidegger's 'Being and Time,' which greatly impacted his philosophical views. This period of confinement and reflection likely deepened his understanding of existential angst and the human condition.
Why did Sartre decline the Nobel Prize in Literature?
-Sartre declined the Nobel Prize in Literature because he was horrified by the idea of becoming incorporated into the establishment. He wanted to maintain his independence and did not want his work to be associated with any form of institutional recognition.
What is the concept of 'Existence precedes essence' as proposed by Sartre?
-The concept of 'Existence precedes essence' is a fundamental tenet of existentialism, suggesting that individuals are born without a predetermined essence or identity. Instead, they create their essence through their actions and choices, emphasizing the importance of individual freedom and responsibility.
What is the philosophical concept of 'thrownness' and how does it relate to Sartre's views on human existence?
-'Thrownness' is a term coined by Martin Heidegger to describe the condition of an individual's arbitrary birth into a given family, culture, and historical moment. Sartre addresses this concept by arguing that despite these limiting factors, they do not limit our freedom, as existence precedes essence.
How does Sartre's concept of 'Bad Faith' challenge traditional views on human nature and responsibility?
-Sartre's concept of 'Bad Faith' is a way of denying our fundamental freedom and responsibility. It involves accepting something as true for the sake of convenience, even when it contradicts our freedom to choose and act. This challenges traditional views by suggesting that we often deceive ourselves to avoid the discomfort of making difficult decisions.
What are the main themes explored in Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'?
-'Being and Nothingness' explores themes such as consciousness, bad faith, the existence of 'nothingness', free will, and authenticity. It delves into the idea that individuals can always choose their actions, even in situations that appear to limit their freedom.
How does Sartre's concept of 'The Look' influence his views on social relationships and self-consciousness?
-Sartre's concept of 'The Look' explores the experience of being seen and how it can transform our self-perception from being a subject to an object in others' views. This concept suggests that our self-consciousness is tied to our awareness of how others perceive us, challenging the idea of a fixed self and emphasizing the role of social interactions in shaping our identities.
Outlines
📚 Introduction to Jean Paul Sartre and Existentialism
This paragraph introduces the series on the greatest philosophers, focusing on Jean Paul Sartre, a key figure in existentialism. Sartre, known for his influence on modern thought, worked as a philosopher, novelist, and cultural critic. Born in Paris in 1905, he was raised by his mother and grandfather after his father's death. Despite physical insecurities, he excelled academically and developed a bohemian reputation at the École Normale Supérieure. Sartre's philosophy gained popularity post-World War Two, offering hope amidst societal changes. His existentialist ideas emphasized individual existence and responsibility in a seemingly absurd world, reviving the philosophy after Søren Kierkegaard. Sartre's personal life, including his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir and his wartime experiences, influenced his work. His novel 'Nausea' and his public lecture 'Existentialism is a Humanism' are highlighted, along with his rejection of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.
🌌 The Absurdity of Life and Sartre's Phenomenology
This section delves into Sartre's concept of 'The Absurdity of the World,' where life's mundane activities are juxtaposed with the vastness of the universe, illustrating the inherent absurdity of human existence. Sartre's phenomenology is introduced as a study of human consciousness and the experience of reality. His famous proposition 'Existence precedes essence' challenges the traditional essentialist view that essence defines existence. Sartre argues that humans are born without a predetermined essence and must create their own through actions, likening life to a blank canvas to be painted. The existentialist concept of 'thrownness' is discussed, describing humans' arbitrary birth into the world and the resulting freedom and responsibility. Sartre's atheistic phenomenology is emphasized, asserting that existence without a creator leads to a life of self-determination.
🕊️ Freedom, Authenticity, and the Challenge of Bad Faith
This paragraph explores Sartre's views on freedom and the existential angst that arises from the realization of complete autonomy. He posits that humans are 'condemned to be free,' born without a choice but burdened with the responsibility of choices made in a life filled with possibilities. The existential concept of 'thrownness' is further explained, emphasizing that despite life's arbitrary start, individuals are not limited by uncontrollable factors. Sartre's belief in an atheistic phenomenology is reiterated, with the absence of God implying the absence of a predetermined essence. The idea of 'Bad Faith' is introduced, where individuals deny their freedom and responsibility by making excuses and accepting convenient untruths. Sartre criticizes this self-deception and encourages embracing the freedom to define one's life's meaning.
👥 The Social Implications of Existence and the 'Look'
The final paragraph discusses the social aspects of Sartre's philosophy, introducing the concept of 'Being For-Others' and how societal relationships are influenced by perceptions and self-images. Sartre's phenomenological concept 'The Look' explores the experience of being seen and how it transforms one's self-awareness from subject to object. He argues against the existence of a fixed self, suggesting that identity is performative and based on actions rather than inherent characteristics. The narrative of a person spying through a keyhole exemplifies how quickly one's perception can shift from subject to object under the gaze of others. Sartre's belief that social interactions are inherently adversarial is presented, culminating in the discussion of his play 'No Exit,' which illustrates the discomfort of coexisting under the constant scrutiny of others. The paragraph concludes with reflections on Sartre's life, his death, and his enduring influence as a philosopher who challenged traditional thinking and encouraged individuals to create their own meaning in life.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Existentialism
💡Absurdity of the World
💡Phenomenology
💡Existence Preceding Essence
💡Anguish
💡Thrownness
💡Bad Faith
💡Being and Nothingness
💡The Look
💡Freedom
💡Authenticity
Highlights
Jean Paul Sartre was a key figure in the philosophy of Existentialism, emphasizing the individual's existence and existential angst in an absurd world.
Sartre popularized Existentialism after the death of Søren Kierkegaard, bringing hope to post-World War Two France.
Sartre's philosophy saw people taking responsibility for their actions as an opportunity for existential thought.
Sartre's upbringing and personal struggles influenced his focus on the mind and existential philosophy.
At the École Normale Supérieure, Sartre developed a reputation as an unconventional thinker and befriended Simone de Beauvoir.
Sartre's time as a prisoner of war and reading Heidegger's 'Being and Time' greatly influenced his philosophy.
Sartre declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, rejecting incorporation into the establishment.
Sartre's philosophy attempted to reconcile Existentialism with Marxism, leading to a form of anarchism.
Sartre's novel 'Nausea' encapsulates existential angst and the absurdity of the world.
Sartre's concept of 'The Absurdity of the World' highlights the inherent meaninglessness of everyday life.
Sartre was a leading figure in phenomenology, focusing on the experience of reality through human consciousness.
In 'Existentialism is a Humanism', Sartre declared 'Existence precedes essence', challenging traditional essentialism.
Sartre's philosophy posits that individuals create themselves through their actions, not by predetermined essence.
Sartre described 'thrownness' as the condition of being arbitrarily born into a world without inherent meaning.
Sartre believed that the absence of a God allows for true human freedom and existential responsibility.
Sartre's concept of 'Bad Faith' explores the denial of freedom and responsibility, often through self-deception.
In 'Being and Nothingness', Sartre discusses consciousness, free will, and the existential struggle for authenticity.
Sartre's theory of 'nothingness' introduces the idea that consciousness allows for the conceptualization of non-existence.
The desire to attain Being-In-Itself represents the human longing for absolute control and identity.
Sartre's concept of 'The Look' explores the experience of being seen and its impact on self-consciousness and identity.
Sartre's philosophy emphasizes that life's lack of inherent meaning allows individuals to create their own purpose.
Sartre's death in 1980 was met with an outpouring of public grief, reflecting his significant cultural impact.
Transcripts
This is the Greatest Philosophers In History series, where we analyse the most fundamental
ideas of the most extraordinary philosophers in human history.
In this episode, we’ll be exploring the philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre.
Jean Paul Sartre had a great influence on many areas of modern thought. A writer of
prodigious brilliance and originality, Sartre worked in many different genres: as a philosopher,
a novelist, and a cultural critic. Sartre is one of the key figures in the philosophy
of Existentialism, which emphasises the existence of the individual or human subject who faces
existential angst in an apparently absurd world. Sartre is credited for revivifying
and popularising Existentialism to the world after it had remained quite stagnant since
the death of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. It was no accident that his philosophy reached
a wide public for the first time during the immediate aftermath of World War Two. France
was an exhausted country and Sartre’s ideas brought a message of hope, the old frameworks
of value on which people lived on were collapsing, including family values and Christian beliefs.
Sartre saw that people were starting to take responsibility for their actions and for him
this was a great opportunity for his philosophy. Sartre was born in Paris, in 1905. The only
child of his father, an officer of the French Navy, who died when he was just two years old.
He was raised by his mother Anne-Marie, whom he was very fond of and his grandfather
Charles Schweitzer, who introduced Sartre to classical literature at an early age.
As a teenager, he was frequently bullied, in part for having a strabismus in his right
eye, a problem with eye alignment. He was also very short, standing at around 5 feet
tall in his adulthood, he felt that he had an ugly physically appearance and focused
all his energy on his mind. He studied philosophy and psychology at the
École Normale Supérieure, one of the most prestigious graduate schools in Paris that
was the alma mater for several prominent French thinkers and intellectuals. He quickly developed
a reputation as an unconventional bohemian figure. The student who came second to him
in their final philosophy exams was the writer Simone de Beauvoir, a prominent feminist and
fellow existentialist philosopher. The two became inseparable and lifelong companions,
initiating a romantic relationship, although it was quite open and they were not monogamous.
Sartre served as a meteorologist in World War Two and was captured by German troops,
spending nine months in prison. During this time, he read Martin Heidegger’s Being and
Time and was greatly influenced by it. Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in
Literature, but he declined it. He was the first Nobel laureate to voluntarily decline
the prize. He was horrified by the idea of becoming incorporated into the establishment.
By this time, Sartre had become a household name. He was often seen frequenting cafés
where he wrote while he chatted with his colleagues. He remained a simple man with few possessions
and was actively committed as an activist, taking part in various strikes.
On one occasion he was arrested for civil disobedience. French president Charles de
Gaulle intervened and pardoned him, saying that “you don’t arrest Voltaire”.
Although Sartre spend much of his later life trying to reconcile the individualist philosophy
of Existentialism with the collective vision of Marxism, ending up in a sort of anarchism,
we’ll be focusing on thoughts of the Existentialist Sartre, not his later controversial political life.
Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, gave a name for existential angst. He considered it as
one of his most precious novels, it portrays Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified
at his own existence and finds it meaningless. He lives alone, has no friends, and usually
eavesdrops on other people’s conversations and watches their actions. It is written in
the form of a diary, in which he documents every feeling and sensation about the
world and people around him. He finds situations and inanimate objects
imbued with meanings which bear the stamp of his existence, all that he encounters in
his everyday life is permeated with a horrible taste, evoking in him a sense of nausea, especially
his freedom. In a passage from the book, he states:
It is believed that Sartre used the term Nausea
after reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where it is used and associated
with contemplating the mediocrity of humanity.
Have you ever looked at a word hard enough and had the thought of it seeming unusually
strange? Almost as if it were the first time you’ve heard the word?
For Sartre, this feeling extends way beyond words and things and encapsules the whole
of life. He calls it “The Absurdity of the World.”
Consider having dinner with your partner. You are essentially part of a habitable planet
called Earth, in the midst of the milky way galaxy, sitting down on chopped up wood which
people use to make chairs and tables and you put pieces of plants and meat in your mouth
along with your partner, with whom you one day hope to procreate with and start a family.
This is the true absurdity of the world and we live our lives immersed in it.
Sartre is also a leading figure in phenomenology,
a branch of philosophy that offered a radical account of the workings of human consciousness.
In other words, it is experiencing reality as we experience it with our perceptions,
distinguished from the world as it really is.
He studied under Edmund Husserl, the world’s leader in that field. He felt that he found
an entirely new way of seeing man’s existence in the world.
To understand Sartre’s view of what phenomenology is, a good starting point is his 1945 public
lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism”, which was later made into a book, he declared
his famous proposition that for human beings “Existence precedes essence”, that is
the fundamental tenet of Existentialism. Ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle
believed that every object had within it an essence. The essence of a thing is a specific
thing within an object that need to be there for that thing to be considered as whatever
it is. If this thing for some reason did no longer have this specific property, it’d have
lost its identity and would therefore become something else.
Take for instance a knife, if it lacked its blade, it would just be a colourful handle
of a sort. In other words, it’d have lost its essential property or the essence of that
knife, a quality that is necessary to make it what it is.
This extends to every single object, including human beings. Every human being is born with
this essence; thus, essence precedes existence. This is the core philosophy of Essentialism.
This theory remained strong since the time of ancient Greek philosophy right until the
20th century. Here is where Sartre comes in, and asks: what if we are born without an essence?
What if when we are born, we are to determine what our essence will be? What if existence
precedes essence? In other words, an individual creates himself through what he does, he is
what he does. Just as a painter paints on a blank canvas, we invent what will eventually
appear on the canvas. In that way, our life is a work of art and every action defines
us. However, the moment when you realise that
your existence is not founded upon any past objective facts, that your existence consists
of what you’re going to make of it, it becomes a slightly horrifying realisation.
For Sartre human beings live in anguish, or
the feeling of total and deep responsibility, not because life is terrible, but because,
as he says:
We are born without a choice, yet here we are born into a world with so much freedom
to choose while simultaneously held responsible for everything we choose to do in this existence
that we didn’t choose to have. We are condemned to be free.
In Existentialism, this is known as thrownness, a word coined by Martin Heidegger. It is the
condition of an individual’s existence upon being thrown into the absurdity of the material
world, arbitrarily born into a given family, within a given culture, at a given moment
in human history. Heidegger calls these “givens” facticities.
Sartre addresses that these limiting things that we don’t have control over do not limit
our freedom. As he says:
Since existence precedes essence, there is no design for a human being, there is no God.
For Sartre, phenomenology has to be atheistic. Assuming that God exists and has created everything
would mean that essence precedes existence, the opposite of Sartre’s view. We therefore
exist first and only then do we end up trying to make sense of things by way of science,
religion, political ideology, philosophy, or anything else.
That is quite a difference from Kierkegaard’s view of Existentialism, for him, you can’t
do Existentialism without God, for Sartre it works the other way around. As you can
see, these existentialists have really different ideas even while pertaining to the same philosophical
movement. Sartre tries to rebuild the idea of freedom
taken out of the Christian culture, getting rid of the power of God on human life. He
believes that if God exists man is not free, and if man is free God does not exist.
If God is dead, or as Dostoevsky said:
So, if there is nothing that preordains our human nature, then we must be free. We can
then begin to set our own meaning to our life. Once we exist, it is our job to discover our
essence. Freedom is one of the most important aspects of Sartre’s philosophy, to understand
how truly free you actually are. However, once you realise that you are completely
free – you begin to feel dread of the amount of possibilities that are open to you, everything
is possible. It is you who has to decide the meaning of
your life, when you realise that your freedom is completely without direction or guidance,
it produces a sort of dizziness or nausea, which is why Sartre regards freedom as a condemnation.
Man is nothing but his life and actions, and this is horrifying.
A common trap that people fall into is what
Sartre calls Bad Faith, a dominant theme of his work. Bad faith is a way of denying the
fundamental nature of our freedom and responsibility, it is a way of making excuses for ourselves.
We accept something as true that really isn’t that convincing to us, but because it is convenient
and easy for us to believe in. Sartre talks about a hypothetical waiter,
he does not like his job, he goes to work day after day and does not feel fulfilled,
but when he thinks of applying to a different job or asks himself the difficult questions
that would come along with that sort of life choice, he convinces himself that it’d be
better to just to remain a waiter. For Sartre, this is nonsense, it is Bad Faith.
We are free individuals that can choose the meaning of our life. We convince ourselves
that we actually don’t have a choice: we need the money, to pay the bills, feed our
family, and so on. And that being unhappy at the current job is just how life is.
Sartre would say that it is entirely self-imposed, it is self-deception. It is something that
people do to avoid making difficult life decisions, desperately trying to avoid temporary discomfort
in the present moment, which comes from the ability to choose and be free, telling oneself
excuses. We put ourselves in long-term agony, in an attempt to avoid short-term discomfort.
Sartre's masterwork and major philosophical
work of his life is Being and Nothingness, which became the core of Existentialism.
He speaks of consciousness, bad faith, the existence of “nothingness”, free will and authenticity.
The idea that individuals can always choose their own actions, even in situations which
appear to enslave them. He begins with the origin of negation, the
empty nothingness or opposite of being. Our conscious existence introduces the idea of
nothingness into the world. What this means is that we are able to conjure up things that
aren’t physically visible to us. For example, you might see your bed because
its right in front of you, but you can also not see a pyramid, you can imagine it being
there, and thus your experience of the current room is altered and structured around the
fact that there is not a pyramid in it. Sartre believes consciousness involves making
ongoing distinctions between things and yourself. He explains that making these distinctions
that make things appear as they do in our experience, also involves their continuing
to not appear to be other things. It is a process of negation.
A table continues to be a table, it is not an animal, an automobile, or an abstract formula.
In other words:
Thus, perception is a negative process and consciousness affects it by nihilating, to
encase in a shell of non-being.
The theory of nothingness is central to Sartre’s philosophy. He distinguishes between two kinds
of being: consciousness or what he calls the Being For-Itself, which is the source of all
meaning. And on the other hand, a mode of existence that simply is, which is not conscious
and is relevant only to inanimate objects, the Being In-Itself.
One of the problems of human existence for Sartre is the desire to attain Being-In-Itself,
which he describes as the desire to be God, a longing for full control over one’s destiny
and for absolute identity, only attainable by achieving full control over the destiny
of all existence. The world is meaningful to us because we,
the For-Itself, give meaning to the In-Itself. The For-Itself uses the world to try to give
itself some kind of definition, but it is pure nothingness.
Sartre doesn’t believe you can define humanity, whatever we are is so free that we can constantly
redefine whatever we are. Nothing could ever become necessary for us. Therefore, we are
a kind of nullity. But we must have some kind of content, we need to become, what he calls
an In-Itself For-Itself. That is, we need to become conscious of having some meaning
and content. All of our activity is understood by trying
to cover up our nothingness and delude ourselves into thinking that we have an identity, some
kind of content and meaning in our lives. But since we really don’t and can’t have
it because we are pure freedom and nothingness, we are a futile passion or in despair. So,
we are constantly in bad faith, we are the kind of being that needs something that we can't have.
In addition, he later adds the Being For-Others, which englobes the whole of society. He states
that many relationships are created by people’s attraction not to another person, but rather
how that person makes them feel about themselves by how they look at them. Whenever Sartre
thought about what other people were thinking when they were looking at him is fundamental
to his existence and to all his writing.
The Look is a central concept in Sartre’s phenomenology. It is the exploration of the
experience of being seen. You are a subject, but if someone gazes into you for a long time,
you start becoming hyper aware of yourself as an object in other people’s views.
What we think of self-consciousness is actually our consciousness of the world. For Sartre,
there is no such thing as a self, an essential being that we truly are. This is merely a
security blanket of an idea which he tries to get people to abandon. His whole argument
is that there is no predetermined character which makes you be who you are, who you are
is a function of what you do. Sartre gives the example of a person looking
through a keyhole into a bedroom. He is behaving as a subject, but the experience of being
caught seeing through the keyhole immediately makes this person aware that they are a person
looking at a bedroom behind a closed door, whereas before they were just looking at the scene.
This person has been transformed into something
that was just trying to see and listen to the conversation, to a person with a nauseating
feeling of shame, proving that we are always under the eyes of other people. Thus, we are
all objects in the eyes of others. There is no way that people can feel entirely
comfortable with each other, it is always going to be impossible to think of yourself
simultaneously as someone who is going around the world acting in it and being an agent,
and also to think of yourself as being an object that other people are observing.
The entire social realm is based on adversarial
aspects. In his book No Exit, Sartre illustrates the difficult coexistence of people, because
we are unable to escape the watchful gaze of everyone around us, which alienates us
and locks us in a particular kind of being, which in turn deprives us of our freedom.
Sartre’s physical condition deteriorated,
in part because of his workaholism, but also because he was a notorious chain smoker.
He died in 1980 from swelling of the lung. Over 50,000 people took to the streets of Paris
to follow his coffin and millions watched on television. No philosopher had ever had
a bigger following. He was a philosopher who thought against himself,
against everything given to him by society and education, he spent his life testing the
limits of traditional thinking. The fact that life is meaningless gives us the opportunity
to give it a meaning. It is precisely because it doesn’t have a meaning in advance that
we are justified in creating one. In a world with increasing anguish and despair,
Sartre teaches us that we are in control of our lives, that we are allowed to build it
the way we want with our own values.
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