(1905-1980)
(1905-1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris in 1905 and studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1924-1929. He became a Professor of Philosophy at Le Havre in 1931. After teaching at La Havre, and then in Laon, he taught at the Lycee Pasture in Paris from 1937-1939. At the end of WWII, Sartre began living as an independent writer.
Although Sartre's philosophy is drawn from many sources (Husserl's idea of a free and fully functional consciousness and Heidegger's existentialism), the existentialism that Sartre formulated and popularized is fully original. Sarte is unique in that no other major philosopher has also been a major playright, novelist, political theorist, and literary critic. In 1964, he was offered the Nobel Prize for Literature, but declined the offer.
Sartre lived with, taught and influnced French essayist, novelist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, his lifemate.
Jean-Paul Sartre spent his time trying to prove that reality is inherently absurd. The problem, according to him is that we would all like to exist independent of a made-up meaning, but we can't; it's impossible. He was responding to the philosophies of Heidegger and Husserl.
He said that in addition to being what we are, we are conscioius of being. This is a problem because we can't simply be conscious of ourselves being without bringing along some kind of meaning along with our consciousness. Any meaning we add isn't neccessarliy better than any other meaning we could have added instead. As a reslut, we get lost in our own freedom to come up with any of several possible meanings. If we could just be without any meaning at all, like an inert object, we might feel better about things, but we can't. Or, if there is some meaning that presupposed our being that we could hold onto as a necessary truth, that would be okay, but there isn't. We can't do without meaning, but there is no single right meaning or even a way f figuring out the best meaning.
As a result, there's no purpose behind reality; nevertheless, we still need to decie what to do with our lives. Sartre called this redicament absurd.
Sartre said that not only do you choose what to do, but in choosing, you choose who you are. What's more, you choose out of nothing. Whatever reasons you have for the choices you make aren't enough grounds for making that choice. As a result, you have to make a lot of your choices just for the hell of it. Our making choices without good reason to make those choices is also absurd.
� 1997
Background Copyright Shamyn Whitehawk, 1998
Jean-Paul Sartre