Jean-Paul Sartre's Existence Precedes Essence

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The argument Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, presents on existentialism helps to prove the foundation which is “existence precedes essence”. Existentialism is normally understood as an ideology that involves evaluating existence itself and the way humans find themselves existing currently in the world. For the phrase existence precedes essence, existence’s etymology is exsistere or to stand out while the term Essence means “being” or “to be” therefore the fundamental of existentialism, literally means to stand out comes before being. This can be taken into many different ideas such as individuals having to take responsibility for their own actions and that in Sartre’s case the individual is the sole judge of his or her own actions. According to him, “men is condemned to be free,” therefore “the destiny of man is placed within himself.” This ideology revolves around an individual’s personal concern, commitment, and how unique they are. In Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism, he gives an example of what Sartre views as abandonment that his student had to go through. Sartre’s definition of abandonment is referring to God not existing and having to choose your own fate without the help of anyone else due to no one having the ability to make our decisions by ourselves. Sartre’s Student was faced with a proposition of going …show more content…

We can make our own decisions that can cause other choices to arise as well as consequences due to how almost every choice has a form of consequence that follows. However, some of those options are formed due to another’s actions causing us to not fully be able to make a true decision ourselves without outer life interfering. Existentialism in today’s world still shows occasionally, such as someone choosing to go to college over going directly into the work force, yet it is normally combined with numerous other ideologies to form one’s main thought