Existentialism is a Humanism Cheat Sheet

Existentialism is a Humanism Cheat Sheet

I. Sartre’s Purpose: to defend existentialism against several criticisms

II. Main criticisms:

a. Inviting people to remain in despair

b. To fall back into a middle-class luxury of a impractical philosophy

c. Denying the reality and seriousness of human society because they deny

the existence of God and his values and, therefore, no one can condemn

anyone else.

III. Main refutation: how can it be wrong to question tradition and class

consciousness? We say that all possibility lies within man.

IV. Existentialism has become trendy and seems to mean nothing at all, but in

fact, it does:

a. Atheist existentialism: God does not exist. Man is the center of human

reality.

b. Existence precedes essence: Man first exists and defines himself

afterward by his actions.

c. Man takes responsibility for himself and in doing so, he takes

responsibility for all men because all our actions engage or influence or

even shape humanity.

d. We are anxious because we cannot escape this responsibility for all

humanity.

e. “We are alone, without excuses…man is responsible for his own

passions.”

V. Example: a student of Sartre wants to know if he should go off to war or stay

with his mother who is all alone. Sartre says he must act alone on his will.

VI. Marxist criticism of existentialism: Your actions are limited by your death,

but you can count on others to carry on your fight or message

a. Refutation: No one can count on anyone else, and we are made of what

we, the individual, do. No one else can do our work, and no one else

should.

VII. We cannot judge others; we can only judge whether his choices are founded

on truth or error, and we can judge a man’s sincerity.

VIII. Existentialism is a humanism in that there is only one universe, and it is the

universe of human subjectivity.