The existentialism is a humanism

the existentialism is a humanism is a philosophical work of Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1946 and considered as the talk of its philosophical design, the Existentialisme.

Origin of the work

The club " Maintenant" was creates with the release. It is animated by Jacques Calmy and Marc Beigbeder which organizes in the Room of the Exchanges, in Paris, the October 29th, 1945 at 8 p.m. 30, a conference whose Jean-Paul Sartre is the speaker. Topic chosen, with the lecturer: “Existentialisme is a humanism”.

The demonstration is announced, with high expenses, in the principal daily newspapers and the organizers have some concerns as for his success. But this evening will exceed all the hopes. Boris Vian made a report in of it the Scum of the days : broken scuffles, chairs, ladies in pâmoison, Sartre obliged to play of the elbows to cut through a path until the estrade.

The existentialism had been born. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir was going to become the whooping-cough of a whole generation.

However, it was not envisaged to make a publication of it. This one was undertaken by the Nagel editor, in 1946, without the agreement of Sartre. The text now published is published almost in a rough state with a presentation as well as many explanatory notes making it possible to guide the reader. These notes were written by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre.

Sartre presents its Existentialisme and answers criticisms to it made by Christian thinkers or Marxist, and in Particulier by the communist - which it wishes to approach. It constitutes an extremely clear introduction , although simple, with the existentialism, and can without the least being difficulty read by people not accustomed to philosophical texts more difficult. However the too great simplicity of this text led Sartre to disavow it philosophically. It can be with the rigor only one introduction to its thought.

Concept of direction of the expensive History with Hegel - but that Marx admitted not to have anything inescapable - is strongly rejected. According to Sartre, the freedom of the Homme is such in his characteristic to become that null cannot even predict very coarsely which turn the History will take tomorrow. That leads it to reject the Optimisme Marxists (that Marx did not divide) over the “following days which sing” and which can extremely well never not be with go.

Kantian morals is also criticized for its formalism. Sartre takes the example of an young man having the choice between dealing with his/her mother or joining the resistant ones to London. In both cases, the maxim of its action is not moral since it sacrifices necessarily a " end in soi" by reducing it to the row of “means”: to give up his/her mother being the means of rejoining London, of giving up the combatants being on the other hand the means of dealing with his/her mother… The morals of Kant does not give an answer in a conflict of duties (to have subsidiary or civic duty). Ultimately, one always only chooses.

It is the illustration of its famous, and specific, Théorie of the cowards and the bastards: " the ones which will hide, by spirit of serious or deterministic excuses, their total freedom, I will call them cowards; the others which will try to show that their existence is necessary, whereas it even of the appearance of the man on the ground, I am the contingency will call them salauds" .

The posterity will retain two sentences of them, as Aphorisme: “the existence precedes the gasoline” and “the man is condemned to be free”.

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The existentialism is a humanism

Origin of the work

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