Nietzsche Vs Sartre

Starting on the foundation that God does not exist, both Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean Paul Sartre agree that affirming this premise results with consequences on our ethical values. Sartre himself even said “God does not exist and we have to face all the consequences of this.” But although they are unified in this regard, the philosophers differ significantly on how they think one ought to act. To understand their differences in how they approach existentialist ethics, an outline of what both are retaliating against--the ethical system of Christianity--is necessary to elucidate why exactly they diverge.

Beginning with Nietzsche, throughout his works he proclaims his despise of the moral structure left over from centuries of Christendom. Even

They both argue that when God is removed from the picture, what is left is a world in which one can create meaning and make choices by defining themselves through what they want to be instead of discovering how they are through a relationship with God. However, it is important to note that this distinction is what precisely makes these existentialist thinkers not nihilists. Although they do believe the world is inherently void of meaning prescribed by God or otherwise, Nietzsche and Sartre do not think that giving meaning to the world is impossible. They just underscore that it is formed and created by individuals through experience instead of existing a

God does not exist, and when accepted as such, it is senseless to play by the old rules of the old game. Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols, “When you give up Christian Faith, you pull the rug out from under your right of Christian morality as well....Christianity is a system, a carefully considered, integrated view of things. If you break off a main tenet...you smash the whole system along with it.. For Nietzsche, the humanist creed “good without God” or Sartre’s belief that when one makes a choice, one is imposing that choice for all people is no different. To consider the universal, e.g. what would be good for all people, is only Christian morality masquerading as freedom. In the end, Nietzsche’s observation that Christianity has a ruthless hold on Western thinking proves to be true, and can even be spotted in the writings of existentialists like Sartre in the 20th century. Living without God and Christian morality is extremely difficult and takes plenty of courage, but, as Nietzsche would argue, no other way of life is more worth living for the amount of liberty and creativity it can