Existentialism is a Humanism

Existentialism is a Humanism is a public lecture delivered by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1945 and published in 1946 that summarizes key tenets of existentialist philosophy for a broad audience. The lecture responded to contemporary debates involving Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and other figures, situating Sartre within postwar intellectual life centered in Paris, France and in dialogue with thinkers associated with Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium.

Background and Context

Sartre delivered the lecture amid the aftermath of World War II and the French Resistance, when debates about responsibility and freedom engaged public figures such as Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone Weil, and institutions like the Université de Paris and the Collège de France. The talk addressed contemporary readers influenced by texts from Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard as well as continental movements shaped by Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson, and members of the Académie Française. Intellectual networks linking Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, and Geneva framed exchanges involving journals such as Les Temps Modernes and venues like Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots. Postwar political anxieties tied Sartre’s rhetoric to figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and debates in assemblies like the United Nations General Assembly.

Summary of the Lecture

Sartre opens by defending existentialism against charges made by critics linked to Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Blanchot, and commentators associated with Christianity in the person of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. He frames existentialism in continuity with predecessors such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche while positioning it against Hegelianism and metaphysical systems associated with G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and René Descartes. The lecture advances the claim that existence precedes essence, articulates a conception of human freedom in response to determinist readings linked to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, and insists on responsibility that resonates with political debates involving Jean-Luc Godard’s contemporaries and public intellectuals like Raymond Aron and André Breton.

Key Themes and Arguments

Sartre emphasizes themes traceable to Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche: radical freedom, individual responsibility, authenticity, and anguish. He argues against essentialist accounts associated with Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Platonism, asserting that humans define themselves through projects in the world, a contention debated by commentators connected to Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gaston Bachelard. Sartre’s account engages ethical questions raised in relation to figures such as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and political implications linked to Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. He addresses bad faith in dialogue with psychological traditions influenced by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, and aesthetic or literary resonances with authors like Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Victor Hugo. Debates about subjectivity involve philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza. Sartre’s ethics—emphasizing choice and the universalization of projects—intersects with thinkers like John Rawls and critics such as Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno.

Contemporary Reception and Criticism

Contemporaneous responses ranged from praise by proponents connected to Les Temps Modernes and intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to critique from Catholic thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and existential Christian writers including Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers. Critics in the Anglo-American world—linked to institutions like Harvard University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and journals such as The New York Review of Books—included readers influenced by analytic philosophers like G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Marxist critics associated with Georg Lukács, György Lukács, and Theodor Adorno questioned Sartre’s political adequacy, while others tied to Albert Camus raised concerns about relativism and commitment. Debates extended to intellectuals in Italy such as Antonio Gramsci’s heirs, and to circles around Prague and Budapest where readers of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos engaged existentialist claims.

Influence and Legacy

The lecture consolidated Sartre’s public profile alongside Simone de Beauvoir and influenced mid-20th-century culture in France, United States, United Kingdom, and throughout Latin America and Asia. Its impact appears in literature connected to Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and in political movements influenced by figures like Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and intellectuals tied to Algerian War debates. Academic disciplines at institutions such as the Sorbonne, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and University of California, Berkeley incorporated existentialist themes into curricula alongside studies of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Later philosophers—Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard—engaged, critiqued, or transformed existentialist premises. The lecture remains a touchstone in discussions involving ethics, literature, and political theory across archives and collections like the Bibliothèque nationale de France and university presses in Oxford, Cambridge, and New York.

Category:Jean-Paul Sartre Category:Existentialist works Category:Philosophy lectures