Critically examine Sartre’s views on death, freedom, and the existing individual as essence
Abstract
This paper includes an examination of the views held by Jean-Paul Sartre on death, freedom, and the existence of an individual’s essence. The focus point of my essay is on Sartre and his views, however I included brief descriptions of Soren Kierkegaard’s views on relatable topics. In order to give the reader context to further understand my analysis, I incorporated an explanation of how an existentialist would think compared to one whom does not normally think existentially in regards to free choice. Through the amalgamation of different sources, both primary and secondary, I formulated an essay, to the best of my abilities, that shines light on the inside of these two existentialist’s minds.
***
Jean-Paul Sartre. Soren Kierkegaard. Two names that immediately strike the mind when someone mentions the topic of Existentialism. One an atheist, the other a strong believer in God. Two conflicting beliefs about life, death, and everything in between that beautifully come together on common ground of man’s freedom and his existence of life. My essay would not be complete without the mentioning of the difference between an existentialist thinker versus the normal mind, Sartre’s surmise of the absurdity of the world, anguish of his thinking, and his impression of freedom. In a literal and spiritual sense, I will be mentioning the contrasting yet similar views Kierkegaard holds on freedom in relation to desires and death, and I will allude to the similarities and subtle differences between these two existentialists.
In Sartre’s first novel, La Nausée, he depicts his main character, Antoine, to be standing on a train when Antoine suddenly notices one of the train seats and focuses in on it. Rather than briefly scanning this insignificantly meaningless train seat with his eyes, he begins to critically overthink the meaning of this seat, ultimately forgetting what the seats’ purpose even is and experiences a moment of confusion. This moment of confusion is what Kierkegaard would categorize as “vertigo” and Sartre calls the “absurdity of the world.” This philosophy is the root of what it means to be a Sartrean. “To be Sartrean is to be aware of existence as it is when it has been stripped of any of the prejudices and stabilizing assumptions lent to us by our day-to-day routines.” To explain this so called “absurdity” in depth, let us take a simple example of sharing dinner time with your partner, and put a Sartrean twist to the mix of it. “A Sartrean would strip away the surface normality to show the radical strangeness lurking beneath. Dinner really means that when your part of the planet has spun away from the enemy of a distant hydrogen and helium explosion, you slide your knees under strips of chopped-up tree and put sections of dead animals and plants in your mouth and chew, while next to you, another mammal whose same genitals you sometimes touch is doing the same.”
This brings me to my next point, angoisse, or anguish. Sartre believes in an anguish of existence. The scariness of asking questions about our existence or existentia, are only intimidating in themselves due to the fact that they force us to think about certain things we would not normally think about, thus causing this feeling of anguish. This is because us as humans were not given some sort of pre-determined, pre-ordained, handbook of how we are supposed to live our lives, let alone some sense of purpose (other than what one chooses to put value upon). Sartre strikes me as being completely enveloped in everlasting questions and therefore comes to the conclusion that he will never be able to reach an exact answer about anything he asks due to the fact that ultimately anything is possible.
To elaborate on Sartre’s perspective of freedom and his belief that anything is possible, we have to assess one of his most profound philosophical views which which is that we are all free. He seems to assess everything in life, in a very distinct and literal way. He questions life on a deeper level and confronts the scariest thoughts to the fullest. He is well aware of the intimidation that accompanies the questions he ponders so intently about, however he pushes himself to do so, for the sole reason that these scary questions about life are also encompassed by liberating dimensions.
Sartre and Kierkegaard were both intrigued with the concept of freedom and what it truly means to be free. The main circumstance that establishes differentiation between an “ordinary man” and an existentialist, is that for the latter, they know what it means to be free. I shall explain further in the sense that many men believe that the ability to choose between one option and the next is the value of freedom, while an existentialist believes that the awareness to know when one doesn’t have a choice is even more valuable. The power to achieve “particular goals” does not in itself hold any power at all. In other words, it is only common sense to recognize that man believes he is most free when there is no obligation to make a choice between two things or when the “best” choice is seemingly obvious; thus not really giving him any choice in the first place because that the correct one is already (to all intents and purposes) chosen.
Robert G. Olson explains this concept rather well in his book An Introduction to Existentialism when he says, “an individual exposed to a situation which obliges him to become conscious of his freedom is thus more free than the individual not so obliged.” What is trying to be conveyed within an existentialists’ opinion, is that man is most free when he “becomes conscious” of that fact that while even though he may have a choice between two things, he may not be truly expressing his freedom seeings he is being forced to make a choice between two things in the first place.
Kierkegaard can come into analysis with this ideology of Sartre’s, in the sense that Kierkegaard believed that if a man wishes to attain a goal badly enough, he will follow the crowd in hopes of attaining it. “The falsehood first of all is the notion that the crowd does what in fact only the individual in the crowd does, though it be every individual.” Elucidating this, Kierkegaard is essentially explaining a sheep in a herd: this sheep has the option to follow the herd and the goal that this herd shares. The sheep also has the option to stray from the herd and follow the goal of their individual self. Kierkegaard is trying to get to the bottom of how this herd, comprised of many individual sheep, ends up coming to the consensus of one direction, and why this direction of the herd is “untruth.” In relation to Sartre’s point of the “right” choice already being chosen out for you, Kierkegaard is highlighting the fact that the “right” choice seems to be obvious and would be to follow the herd, but this is falsehood seeings it deprives the individual sheep of making that choice for himself in the first place. Ultimately any herd is comprised of many individual sheep and the movement of the herd cannot flow unless each individual sheep decides to do so.
Olson states that most of an individual’s choices are insistent on a so called “objective situation” combined with a “subjective motive.” He uses an example of one’s choice between two apples in a group of apples. He explains that given the choice between one apple over another (which ever apple was chosen), was most likely chosen from the group of apples because it was the most juicy (objective situation) or the most red (subjective motive). In continuation with this thought, logic is said to have two components that of which man is not only responsible for the virtues that come to him, but also the sins he commits. Thus bringing forward, “The question of free choice arises only when the objective situation and a subjective motive determine or dispose one to act in a manner which one apprehends in some way to be wrong or injurious to one’s own best long-range interests.” This is to say that if a hungry boy came along and wished to have one of your apples even though you wanted them all to yourself, and your dentist told you not to bite into apples for a specific amount of time due to your cavity filling, then the one holding the apple would be faced with the decision of whether or not “to resist the determining influences” of the situation and subject motive, in order to begin questioning their undetermined choice of what to do. To give the apple away or to not give the apple away, to eat or not to eat.
Sartre said that the act of freedom comes with obstacles but these so-called obstacles would not even exist if it were not for our own free choice to begin with. He says that “if the object appears as soon as it is simply conceived, it will no longer be chosen or even wished for.” I personally believe Sartre held an interesting viewpoint on mankind’s desire to have free choice, in the sense that he basically believed that we want what we cannot easily have. If we strive to get something and it takes a long time to achieve it, we may continue to work at it for the sake of feeling as if we were able to overcome the obstacles that were put in our way. On the other hand, if that thing we are desiring and working for is simply handed to us without an effort, our desire to achieve it, is cut short and we quickly move on to the next desire we had on our lists of desires to achieve. Sartre basically describes the value of our desires decreasing the more easily available they are, and increasing the greater the challenge of achieving that desire becomes.
In order to exist, man must desire. This could be translated into the fact that when a man is desiring something, he is also showing that he is lacking something thereof. Thus proving he is still incomplete, unfulfilled and yet to be complete and fulfilled. This concept of freedom goes hand in hand with the existence of man as a being. I associate Sartre with the concept of “lack” or “lacking” due to his belief that in order for man to exist, he must also desire something and once that desired something is achieved, man goes on to replace that former desire with a new one. The result of this constant cycle could be better put as a man’s lacking of fulfillment in life as he lives day to day chasing a idea of something that lay in the future and may or may not be achieved. “…Man is a being who exists only by projecting himself beyond the present into the future.” Only once one reaches death, has he truly reached a point of complete desire fulfillment.
Sartre believed that even if a man could achieve the act of fulfilling each and every one of his desires, he still would not reach a state of complete happiness due to the fact that it is in human nature for man to hold an “overarching desire for the impossible.” The reason Sartre believed complete happiness or fulfillment to be possible only once death has taken the man, is because of the fact that it is not until after death that a man's true essence can even be defined. We live our lives in this constant cycle of desires only in order to achieve and begin again, but after death, the “true life history or individual essence,” is finally revealed to the world and only then does this cycle make any sense. “In other words, man makes his own history [and] by his own choices.”
I found a connection worth mentioning between Sartre and Kierkegaard in their common view of a man’s dilemma revolving around free choice. The way that these two thinkers approach the topics of freedom and death, I hold this kind of interpretation: Kierkegaard presents a more profound, sharp optimistic position, while Sartre was one to think that life was a consistent cycle of being thrown two options and given the choice to choose between the two, which gives me an essence of pessimism.
Sartre struggled to find where the origin of the choice lies and similarly Kierkegaard was invested in the analysis of the individual’s choice amongst the crowd (ultimately also posing a choice to man) to choose your own path or follow the one already paved. Either way, there are only two options to choose from and thus you are forced to make a decision and either one can be as scary as the other (in terms of you not being able to control what happens next).
From my research I found Sartre was one to overthink to his highest potential. Even though Kierkegaard was one to enjoy in depth analysis, he was more grounded to Earth in the sense that he focused on first hand possibilities rather than hypothetical situations or examples. I was able to conclude that Sartre and Kierkegaard, although the two held drastically different writing styles and structure of ideas, were tied together through an underlying curiosity for man’s freedom in his existence leading up to his death.
Bibliography
Kierkegaard, Soren. Begrebet Angest. Princeton University Press , 1980.
Life, The School of. YouTube, YouTube, 7 Nov. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQsZxDQgzU.
Kirkpatrick, Kate. “Sartre Does God.” USAPP, 25 July 2017,
blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/sartre-does-god/.
Oaklander, L. Nathan. Existentialist Philosophy: an Introduction. Prentice Hall, 1996. Chapter 3 Kierkegaard: The First Existentialist, pages 94-120
Olson, Robert G. An Introduction to Existentialism. Dover Publications, Inc., 1962.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. La Nausée. Éditions Gallimard, 1938.
Sartre, Jean Paul. “Paris Alive: The Republic of Silence.” The Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944, Vol.174 Num. 6. pp. 39–40.