Jean Paul Sartre: Existence
Jean Paul Sartre was French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. Explore interesting quotes on existence.“This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”
Reflections on a chestnut tree root.
Nausea (1938)
Context: Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.
Lecture given in 1946 (Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989;) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm (1946)
Context: Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.
Inès reiterating to Garcin that they cannot ignore one another, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)
Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays
Inès, describing her path to Hell, Act 1, sc. 5
Source: No Exit (1944)
“Existence is prior to essence.”
Part 4, chapter 1
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Variant: Existence precedes and rules essence.
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”
Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre.
Nausea (1938)
Source: Existentialism Is a Humanism, lecture http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm (1946)
Context: What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.
“I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.”
Act 1
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Nausea (1938)