“… [Humans] don’t have a ‘nature,’ contrary to all other beings and things in the universe; we exist in the world, with freedom to choose our path, and thus our existence precedes our essence. But that puts us in a state of anguish, from which we would like to escape (in bad faith), but we cannot, because we are condemned to be free” (Rosenstand, 2018, p. 515).
Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy of virtue ethics stands in contraction to many, believing that human life is without predetermined meaning, whether by divine appointment or via evolutionary growth. Sartre further defines this history debating, “… man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards… Man simply is… Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself… [and] that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his
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“… [Man] realizing 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” (Rosenstand, 2018, p. 516). Putting it plainly, the actions we take are confirmed as acceptable for all people to take. There is an example of students cheating on an ethics testing – some of whom site such an action is not really deplorable as it stood taken in their own best interest. However, from the point of view of Sartre, if this action was truly stamped out for all as acceptable, there would likely be much more cheating for the sake of a grade result. In turn, students would learn less, grades and education would mean less, and likely the entire education system would be uprooted as it was no longer helpful in teaching. Yet, for one who views human virtue as Sartre does, a world where our values are validated through the actions of all, the weight of those decisions move away from self-focus, and to that of our whole