Review: Existentialism is a Humanism

Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having just finished Nausea, which I didn't like, I started on this essay (a lecture, actually), and I was impressed at how different it was. This is well-written, well-explained, really clear and to the point, with good arguments, straightforward explanations - and some good quotes to boot ;) ! How did Sartre write both Nausea and "Existentialism is a Humanism"? Clearly he is better at philosophy than novels…

This book defines succinctly what is existentialism, and explains how to apply it to ethics, and how it can help us think about decisions. Now I appreciate how important his maxim is, "existence precedes essence". It was striking how the author emphasizes not freedom, but responsibility. That the ultimate consequence of existentialism, and of the proposition that there is no God (at least not the personal God envisioned by most religions), is not that we are free to do anything, but that we are ultimately responsible for everything we do. Also, I was particularly surprised that the essay reads like a call for action - that all idealism, well-wishing, hoping, potential, it's all useless unless it's backed up by action!

I had read elsewhere criticism that Sartre's existentialism is useless as an ethics framework because it does not give advice on what to do in certain situations - like the example given in the essay, in which a student asks Sartre what to do in a specific situation (no spoilers!), and Sartre only tells him he is free to choose. The criticism is the kind of "of course he is free, that is useless advice!". But I don't think that's fair criticism. First, Sartre explicitly explains how existentialism is not meant to provide answers for specific problems, only a framework on how to think about the problems; second, the answer is actually useful: it dispels the notion that there is a correct answer, like it would be given by a priest or by a Marxist revolutionary (two examples he uses throughout the text), which are easy to guess what they would be in the situation. Sartre is very pointedly saying that neither is correct - which is a definite and informative answer. Although ultimately this doesn't resolve the student dilemma, it clarifies that other systems of ethics don't solve it either!

One thing that was unclear is how establishing the existence of the self also establishes the existence of others. That that part seems to call out to previous work - he seems to allude to something that was said before but I couldn't tell what, so maybe in a previous book? It was not ever clear what he was referring to.

Although I do like his position that existentialism is not meant to provide a framework for making decisions, it is still a weak point of his concept of existentialism. In contrast, I think that de Beauvoir exploration of existentialism is way better because it does address this point; that is, it still does not make easy decisions, but it gives a framework, that can help an individual to think about how to make the best decisions, how to select between one choice and another - in de Beauvoir's case, roughly speaking, the ethical choice is about increasing the freedom of *others*.

Towards the end, Sartre also states the point that to will freedom for yourself, authentically, requires you to will freedom for others - the same as the thesis of De Beauvoir's Ethics. However, while I do find this point very appealing, he doesn't make it clear how to go from one to the other - there is a leap in logic, same as when he states that recognizing the existence of the self implies that of others, and now the will to freedom for the self implies that of others. It's possible that he explores this is explored in more detail in his longer works, but here, it feels like a tenuous link.

At the very end, Sartre makes the case that existentialism is a type of humanism. First, he addresses the fact that in his most famous work, Nausea, he attacks (makes fun? humiliates?) humanism. But here he says that in Nausea, he was attacking the usual formulation of humanism, but not humanism as he sees it. And then he tries to explain his view of humanism, and completely loses me, because he tries to define as the "relation of transcendence […] with subjectivity […]", while trying to explain what these mean, but it's just very opaque what he means. But then he brings it back to something more approachable, that existentialism is the notion that man is the only one who can decide for himself what to do (and is thus *responsible* for man), that it is a call to action, and it is ultimately optimistic, because it drives man to find and realize himself.

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