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Jean Paul Sartre Research Paper

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Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a philosopher screenwriter and a novelist. He is known for writing and publishing books one being “Being and Nothing less”. He was widely recognised as France’s leading philosopher. Sartre applied his novels, plays and biographical studies to act on social and political issue of his time. He adopted the term existentialism from his pre philosophers Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Kierkegaard believed that people choose one either to search for pleasure in life, commitment to family, work and social responsibility and that they concentrated on religion and the divine. Sartre had strong views regarding this as he believed that people were not created for any particular purpose, either by god or evolution or anything …show more content…

Existentialism is the philosophical movement inspired by phenomenology that developed in the 20th century under the influence of Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Albert Camus (1913-1960), and Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) and of course Sartre. It stresses the existence of the individual as a free agent who is burdened with personal responsibility and whose existence cannot be investigated objectively, being revealed by reflection of existence in time and space. It tends to disparage scientific methodology and acknowledge and to reject objective values. (Oxford Dictionary). Sartre came with the concepts that there are three main concerns central to existentialism. 1) Individual human beings: existentialist believed individuals are unique, the way they live life and their situation they encountered. 2) Meanings or purpose of human lives rather than with scientific or metaphysical truths, even if the latter are about human beings. 3) Freedom on the ability of each individual to choose not just particular actions, but his or her attitudes, projects, purpose, values, or lifestyles. Existentialist wanted people to act on these concerns and exercise the freedom. Other part of becoming the existentialist philosopher involves the division those who believe in the existence of God as the creator, ruler of the universe (theist) and those who doesn’t believe in God …show more content…

This is a typical existentialist rejection of generalisation about human beings and human lives. He express that our existence precedes our essence; we have to create our own essence. He acknowledges that there are biological factors that contribute to our existence for example our need for food, metabolism and sexual impulses. The most basic thing we can say about human being is that we are radically free, to be anything except to not be free. “”Condemned to be free” he is saying that our conscious knows that it is not an object that it ponders, that many things are not the case, and the we lack many things. He termed his notion of “nothingness or negation”. According to him we are free to imagine and choose other possibilities. Nothingness being our desire to change things makes them different not to be as they were and negation being free from our minds and

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However, at the end of the day, the choice one person selects is truly their own. Whether or not someone involves themselves in certain activities is up to man. Additionaly, Existentialism is the belief where God did not create us for a purpose. It is up to man to decide our journeys. Similarly, Eve and Trueblood conclude their lives are their own paths and chose their actions for personal reasons.

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The harsh realities of the industrial revolution created a climate of fear and anxiety about the human condition, which made many people more receptive to existential ideas. The birth of the existential movement took place following World Wars I and II and influential philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre, who were in conflict with the predominant ideologies of their time, were committed to exploring and understanding human experience. Existentialism has three main branches; Christian existentialism represented by Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel and May; aethestic existentialism represented by Sartre, Camus and Nietzsche and Jewish existentialism represented by Buber, Yalom and Frankl. (Professor M.L.O Rourke Handout October 2016). The Humanistic version of existential therapy predominantly thrived in America, through the work of Yalom (Van Durzen,

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Sartre argues the idea of human nature without God and a “heaven of ideas”, because there is no God to create us according to his plan. Human beings just appear on the scene for no reason and cannot appeal to anything above them to give their lives meaning or direction. This concept is forlornness. In Sartre’s eyes, man must come to grips with the fact that he is alone in his decision making. He states by saying that humans occupy the ontological category of “the for-itself.”

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