Existentialism

“When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.”

Reading “Existentialism is a Humanism,” I found it interesting to learn how Jean Paul-Sartre puts a heavy emphasis on the moral weight we each carry as individuals. I do think we have an immense responsibility of creating the world we want to live in, but often times we don’t recognize this in our day to day lives. For example, when I was a freshman in high school, I would cheat on every test in my geometry class. At the time, I didn’t think it really mattered. I wasn’t hurting anybody and all I cared about was getting an A in the class. The problem was that I was creating a false image of myself for my classmates. My peers started to see me as smart, and so did my teacher, but this image that they were attributing to me was all based on a lie. On top of this, I was teaching others how to cheat and encouraging my peers to engage in behavior that was detrimental for learning. This may be a silly example, but following Sartre’s train of thought, I was making lying and deception a permissible action for other people. My actions may have caused others to also get into the habit of cheating which may have also had ramifications in their learning for years to come. The point i’m trying to make is that all our actions have an impact on others, no matter how small or big. Our small acts of kindness may have an immensely positive impact on the future even though when we look at them in the present, it looks like we haven’t created any change at all. Reading Sartre, I got the sense that our actions have a lot of power, for good and for evil, and that we must not think of ourselves as helpless individuals.

In his essay, he also defines the word “abandonment” within existential philosophy by saying the following : “And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end.”   In here,he is trying to make the point that we must seriously consider what it means to say that God doesn’t exist. He goes on to explain how some of his fellow philosophers still try to find moral values outside of ourselves without God, but Sartre sees this as a lack of understanding of what the belief in no God actually entails. Without God, we are responsible for our own actions, our own morals, and the morals of the world. We are living not in a world that has existing values outside of ourselves, rather we are living in a world in which we create those values ourselves. To make this point clear he states that an existentialist would agree with Dostoevsky’s quote “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” I agree with Sartre that if there is no God everything is permissible. This is not to say that if you don’t believe in God you can’t act ethically. It means that if you don’t believe in God, you have to accept that there is no objective standard of what is Good and what is Evil. We are the ones responsible for determining what is Good and what is Evil. Since we are the ones dictating what is Good and what is Evil, we can make Good and Evil whatever we want them to be. Therefore, everything is permissible.

This line of thinking, however, seems a bit problematic for me. Can we trust our standard actually seeks to bring about Good? Can we trust that our standard is actually a standard that benefits society as a whole? What is Good? How do we prevent only a certain group of people from gaining power and dictating what is Good and what is Bad? How do we prevent the powerful from dictating a morality that oppresses those below them and only benefits the powerful? These are some of the questions that come up for me when entertaining Sartre’s idea of freedom. It seems that it turns into a battle of wills. Whoever has the most power dictates what is Right and what is Wrong rather than Right and Wrong being actually things that exist outside of ourselves.

It seems to me that Simon De Beauvoir tries to build an ethics that doesn’t allow everything to be morally permissible. She rejects this view that everything is permissible within existentialism. De Beauvoir makes it clear that we are condemned to be free and that our freedom is intertwined with other peoples freedom. Meaning, in order to be truly free, we must also will the freedom of others. Seeking to diminish the freedom of others, whom have also been condemned to freedom like yourself, would diminish your freedom and therefore hurt you. Following this train of thought, what ever diminishes your freedom is Evil, and whatever protects your freedom, and increases your freedom, is Good. It seems that Simon De Beauvoir does try to create a standard by which we can truly judge certain things to be Wrong, and certain things to be Right while still being an Existentialist.

I personally believe that there is a God and disagree with Sartre’s assertion “existence precedes essence.” I also believe there are objective standards for what is Good and what is Evil. Nevertheless, I do find Sartre’s and De Beauvoir’s take on morality interesting and engaging.