Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialism: radical freedom, and responsibility for what you do with it.
Ideas
- Existence precedes essence
- There is no human nature handed down in advance. You exist first, then make yourself through what you choose.
- Bad faith
- Pretending you have no choice, by hiding behind a role, a duty or a circumstance, is how people lie to themselves about their freedom.
- The look of the Other
- Being seen by another person turns you into an object in their world, and that is where shame and conflict start.
In their words
“Existence precedes essence.”
“Man is condemned to be free.”
“Hell is other people.”
Start with
- Nausea (1938)
- No Exit (1944)
- Being and Nothingness (1943)
- Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
