ဒါကေတာ့ ယန္းေပါဆတ္(Jean paul sarte) ေရးသားခဲ့တဲ့ ျဖစ္တည္မႈ၀ါဒသည္ လူသားဆန္၀ါဒျဖစ္သည္ ဆိုတဲ့ စာတမ္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ မူရင္းကို တိုက္ရိုက္ေလ့လာနိုင္ဖို႔ မူရင္းအတိုင္း တင္ျပေပးလိုက္ပါတယ္။
Jean-Paul Sartre 1946
Existentialism
Is a Humanism
Written:
Lecture given in 1946
Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre,
ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989;
First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956;
Translator: Philip Mairet;
Copyright: reproduced under the “Fair Use” provisions;
-
- - - -
My purpose here is to offer a defence
of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.
First, it has been reproached as an invitation to
people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is
barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely
ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy.
Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois
philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.
From another quarter we are reproached for having
underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what
is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and
beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according
to the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both
from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of
account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this,
say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity –
upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains
to himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with
other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.
From the Christian side, we are reproached as
people who deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs. For since we
ignore the commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing
remains but what is strictly voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will
be incapable, from such a point of view, of condemning either the point of view
or the action of anyone else.
It is to these various reproaches that I shall
endeavour to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition
“Existentialism is a Humanism.” Many may be surprised at the mention of
humanism in this connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we
understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our
sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a
doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an
environment and a human subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is,
of course, that of over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have
lately been told of a lady who, whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a
moment of nervousness, excuses herself by exclaiming, “I believe I am becoming
an existentialist.” So it appears that ugliness is being identified with
existentialism. That is why some people say we are “naturalistic,” and if we
are, it is strange to see how much we scandalise and horrify them, for no one
seems to be much frightened or humiliated nowadays by what is properly called
naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La
Terre are sickened as soon as they read an existentialist novel. Those who
appeal to the wisdom of the people – which is a sad wisdom – find ours sadder
still. And yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity
begins at home” or “Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down
and he’ll do you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to
this effect, and they all mean much the same – that you must not oppose the
powers that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle
in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance
with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not
the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since
experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm
rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the
people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are
told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like human nature!” – it
is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that
existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests
make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but,
much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine
that I am about to try to explain to you is – is it not? – that it confronts
man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review the whole
question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that we call
existentialism?
Most of those who are making use of this word
would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has
become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter
is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,”
and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no
longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel
doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the
latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however,
they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings
the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for
technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.
The question is only complicated because there
are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians,
amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics;
and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger
as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is
simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence
– or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we
mean by that?
If one considers an article of manufacture as,
for example, a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an
artisan who had a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the
conception of a paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production
which is a part of that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the
paper-knife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and
one which, on the other hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose
that a man would produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us
say, then, of the paperknife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the
formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition
possible – precedes its existence. The presence of such-and-such a paper-knife
or book is thus determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world
from a technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.
When we think of God as the creator, we are
thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we
may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of
Leibnitz himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the
understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows
precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God
is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes
man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan
manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each
individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the
divine understanding. In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the
notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is
prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in
Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that
“human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man;
which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception,
the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man
of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in
the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the
essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in
experience.
Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a
representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist
there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being
which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is
man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that
existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters
himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the
existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is
nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes
of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a
conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives
himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after
already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is
nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of
existentialism. And this is what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word
as a reproach against us. But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is
of a greater dignity than a stone or a table? For we mean to say that man
primarily exists – that man is, before all else, something which propels itself
towards a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project
which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus
or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self nothing exists; not even
in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what
he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually
understand by wishing or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more
often than not – after we have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a
party, to write a book or to marry – but in such a case what is usually called
my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision.
If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible
for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every
man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for
his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is
responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own
individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism”
is to be understood in two senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of
them. Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual
subject and, on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It
is the latter which is the deeper meaning of existentialism. When we say that
man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but
by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For
in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he
wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an
image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that
is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are
unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and
nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover,
existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion
our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we
find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed,
for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may
choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that
membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude
that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not
commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my
action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to
take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though
this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire,
I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the
practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I
am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning
myself I fashion man.
This may enable us to understand what is meant by
such terms – perhaps a little grandiloquent – as anguish, abandonment and
despair. As you will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by
anguish? – The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His
meaning is as follows: When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising
that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a
legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot
escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many,
indeed, who show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising
their anguish or are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in
what they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you
ask them, “What would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders
and reply, “Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask
oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape
from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who
lies in self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in
his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies.
By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that
Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel
commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it
really was an angel who had appeared and said, “Thou, Abraham, shalt sacrifice
thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed
an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? A
certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that people were
telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But who is it
that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what, indeed, could
prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that
it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from
heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or some pathological
condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to me?
Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person
to impose, by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never
find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice
speaks to me, it is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is
not that of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is
only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show
that I am Abraham: nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform
actions which are examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole
human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct
accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right to
act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man
does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with
which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction.
It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have
borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes upon
himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their
death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a
higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation
by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty
men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders
know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the
very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a
plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it
has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which
existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through
direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. Far from being a
screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.
And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite
word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is
necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The
existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which
seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the
French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said
something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do
without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding
world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must
have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered
obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife,
to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this
subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same,
inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In
other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call
radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover
the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of
God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The
existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does
not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in
an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori,
since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere
written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since
we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If
God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for
existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God
does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything
to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that
he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never
be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human
nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is
freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with
any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have
neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of
justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I
mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not
create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is
thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The
existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a
grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain
actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that
man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a
man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his
orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he
chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is
condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine
article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took
this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is,
it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however,
it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be
fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a true saying. But in
the present one is forsaken.
As an example by which you may the better
understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of
mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was
quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his
elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young
man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him.
His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of
his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in
this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England
to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to
live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his
disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also
realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his
mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live,
whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action
which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to
set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the
way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put
into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by
two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed
towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end
infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous
– and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating
between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of
personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more
debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to
choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with
charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is
hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the
more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim,
the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim
of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a
priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian
ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well;
if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a
means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are
fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid
of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating
my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract
to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains
but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and
when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction
in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I
love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be
avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on
the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does
one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother
was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say
that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money
for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my
mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can
only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by
which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to
justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.
Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment
which is play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly
distinguishable one from another. To decide that I love my mother by staying
beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these
are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that
one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to
say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action,
nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may
say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if
you seek counsel – from a priest, for example you have selected that priest;
and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other
words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice.
If you are a Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are
collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide
to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the
resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the
kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what
advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free,
therefore choose, that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show
you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics
will reply, “Oh, but they are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every
case, who have to interpret the signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the
acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of
that order in the following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of
rather severe setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in
poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution,
where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s
sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and
honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to
grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle
in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup – he failed in his
military examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total
failure: it was a sign – but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in
bitterness or despair. But he took it – very cleverly for him – as a sign that
he was not intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of
religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He interpreted
his record as a message from God, and became a member of the Order. Who can
doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his
alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of
reverses – as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a
revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire
responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide
our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.
As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression
is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon
that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which
render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these
elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may
be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the
appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of
possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that
are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the
possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to
disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can
adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said,
“Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the
same – that we should act without hope.
Marxists, to whom I have said this, have
answered: “Your action is limited, obviously, by your death; but you can rely
upon the help of others. That is, you can count both upon what the others are
doing to help you elsewhere, as in China and in Russia, and upon what they will
do later, after your death, to take up your action and carry it forward to its
final accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon
this; not to do so is immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always
count upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are
committed, as I am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or
a group which I can more or less control – that is, in which I am enrolled as a
militant and whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect,
to rely upon the unity and the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning
that the train will run to time or that the tram will not be derailed. But I
cannot count upon men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence upon
human goodness or upon man’s interest in the good of society, seeing that man
is free and that there is no human nature which I can take as foundational. I
do not know where the Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it
as an example in so far as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a
part in Russia which it has attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm
that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the proletariat: I must
confine myself to what I can see. Nor can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will
take up my work after my death and carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing
that those men are free agents and will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is
then to be. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to establish Fascism,
and the others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so,
Fascism will then be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In
reality, things will be such as men have decided they shall be. Does that mean that
I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and
then act my commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that “one need
not hope in order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should
not belong to a party, but only that I should be without illusion and that I
should do what I can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as
such, ever become a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be
in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.
Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let
others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is
precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality
except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but
what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is
therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his
life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our
teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and
that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be
something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love
or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who
were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I
had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could
devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So
there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and
potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness
that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in
reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of
love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving;
there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The
genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine
is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should
we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is
precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own
portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem
comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand,
it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable;
that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive
dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define
him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else
but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by
his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his
definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a
series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of
relations that constitute these undertakings.
In the light of all this, what people reproach us
with is not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If
people condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters that are
base, weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because
those characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola,
we showed that the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity,
or by the action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors,
psychic or organic. People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that
is what we are like, no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist,
when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is
not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not
become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he
has made himself into a coward by actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly
temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called
impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose
blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the
act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is
defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with
horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What
people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the
charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberté is something
like this: “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them
into heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people
are born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think.
If you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it
and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born
heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating
and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes
himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a
possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being
a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case
or particular action that you are committed altogether.
We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number
of the reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be
regarded as a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as
a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the
destiny of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man
from action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and
that the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level
therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment.
However, we are still reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within
his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.
Our point of departure is, indeed, the
subjectivity of the individual, and that for strictly philosophic reasons. It
is not because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon
the truth, and not upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking
real foundations. And at the point of departure there cannot be any other truth
than this, I think, therefore I am, which is the absolute truth of
consciousness as it attains to itself. Every theory which begins with man,
outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses
the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no
more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to
a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable one must
possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be
an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained
and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of
one’s self.
In the second place, this theory alone is
compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man
into an object. All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including
oneself as an object – that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way
different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a
table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human
kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the
subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly
individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own
self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too.
Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say
“I think” we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we
are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who
discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the
others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He recognises
that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or
that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as such. I cannot
obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of
another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any
knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery
of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which
confronts mine, and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or
against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say,
that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what
he is and what others are.
Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in
each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there
is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance
that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition
than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less
clarity, all the limitations which a priori define man’s
fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable:
man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a
proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of
having to labor and to die there. These limitations are neither subjective nor
objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of
them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere
recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if
man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not freely determine
himself and his existence in relation to them. And, diverse though man’s
purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign to me, since every
human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to surpass these
limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate oneself to
them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal
value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be
understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the European
of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations
in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the
Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is universality,
in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. Not that this
or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again and
again. There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive
man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say
that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being
perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also make it
by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This
absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.
What is at the very heart and center of
existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which
every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment
always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its
bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result from such
absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism
and the absolute character of the Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may
say, if you like, that every one of us makes the absolute by breathing, by
eating, by sleeping or by behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no
difference between free being – being as self-committal, as existence choosing
its essence – and absolute being. And there is no difference whatever between
being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised in history – and
universally intelligible being.
This does not completely refute the charge of
subjectivism. Indeed that objection appears in several other forms, of which
the first is as follows. People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you
do,” and they say this in various ways.
First they tax us with anarchy; then they say,
“You cannot judge others, for there is no reason for preferring one purpose to
another”; finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this
choice of yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.”
These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it
does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is
possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I
must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it
may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and
caprice. For, when I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a
sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to
have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect
I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also
commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a
priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice: and if
anyone thinks that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit over
again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory and
that of Gide. Gide does not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of pure
caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds himself in an organised
situation in which he is himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its
entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he
must marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In any
case, and whichever he may choose, it is impossible for him, in respect of this
situation, not to take complete responsibility. Doubtless he chooses without
reference to any pre-established value, but it is unjust to tax him with
caprice. Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the
construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite
clear that we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries
are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of
art only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an
artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a
priori. Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As
everyone knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist
applies himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to
be made is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are
no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear
in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will
to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow
will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do
with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work
of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand
very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was
painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.
It is the same upon the plane of morality. There
is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with
creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that
should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of
that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might
appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever;
he was obliged to invent the law for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this
man, in choosing to remain with his mother – that is, in taking sentiment,
personal devotion and concrete charity as his moral foundations – would be
making an irresponsible choice, nor could we do so if he preferred the
sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found
ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but
choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define
man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us
for irresponsibility in our choice.
In the second place, people say to us, “You are
unable to judge others.” This is true in one sense and false in another. It is
true in this sense, that whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment
in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is
impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not
believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same,
facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice
in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was
a choice between slavery and anti-slavery – from the time of the war of
Secession, for example, until the present moment when one chooses between the
M.R.P. [Mouvement Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.
We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said,
one chooses in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself. One
can judge, first – and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a
logical judgment – that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and
in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives
himself. Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice,
without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of
his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.
One may object: “But why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that
it is not for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an
error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The
self-deception is evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s
complete liberty of commitment. Upon this same level, I say that it is also a
self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me;
I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time
say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I
wish to deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but
I declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency
alone is that of good faith.” Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment.
For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no
other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend
upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and
that is freedom as the foundation of all values. That does not mean that he
wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the actions of men of good faith
have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A
man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain
concrete ends, which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in
community. We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular
circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends
entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon
our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon
others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty
of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I
make that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely
authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that
he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at
the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in
the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form
judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary
nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this
total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall
call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when
it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall
call scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane
of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a
certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a
will both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the
formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We think,
on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when we come
to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by what
authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he could
have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or to
remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always concrete,
and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one thing that
counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of freedom.
Let us, for example, examine the two following
cases, and you will see how far they are similar in spite of their difference.
Let us take The Mill on the Floss. We find here a certain young woman,
Maggie Tulliver, who is an incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of
it. She is in love with a young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an
insignificant young woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking
her own happiness, chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself
and to give up the man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in
Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which
endows man with his real value, would have declared that a grand passion
justifies its sacrifices, and must be preferred to the banality of such
conjugal love as would unite Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to
marry. It is the latter that she would have chosen to sacrifice in realising
her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she would also sacrifice herself
upon the plane of passion if life made that demand upon her. Here we are facing
two clearly opposed moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing
that in both cases the overruling aim is freedom. You can imagine two attitudes
exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might prefer, in resignation, to
give up her lover while the other preferred, in fulfilment of sexual desire, to
ignore the prior engagement of the man she loved; and, externally, these two
cases might appear the same as the two we have just cited, while being in fact
entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina is much nearer to that of
Maggie Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus, you see, the second
objection is at once true and false. One can choose anything, but only if it is
upon the plane of free commitment.
The third objection, stated by saying, “You take
with one hand what you give with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are
not serious, since you choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I
am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father,
there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And
moreover, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this;
that there is no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is
lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else
but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a
possibility of creating a human community. I have been reproached for
suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me,
“But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you
have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon
that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings. One may
understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as
the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s
story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters
declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is
magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally have not built
aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I
personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by,
achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe
value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That
kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a
position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is
magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at least, not as
far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce
judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an
existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined.
And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could
set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in
Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We
do not want a humanism like that.
But there is another sense of the word, of which
the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is
in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist;
and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is
able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in
relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his
transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the
universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive
of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of
self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in
himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call
existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no
legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for
himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but
always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some
particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.
You can see from these few reflections that
nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us.
Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from
a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of
plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do –
any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something
different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust
itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that
even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not
that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that
of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand
that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence
of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action,
and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that
Christians can describe us as without hope.
