L'existentialisme est un humanisme

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Existentialism and Humanism (dt. The Existentialism is a Humanism ) is an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre , which was first published in 1946. Sartre had given it to the Paris Maintenant Club the previous year in almost identical form . It is closely related to Sartre's extensive main philosophical work L'être et le néant ( Being and nothing ), published in 1943 , whose main theses the essay is intended to popularize in order to counter the misinterpretations and misunderstandings that have arisen in the meantime.

However, the relevance of the work has been considerably reduced by recent research, which is mainly due to the large number of inexact formulations that Sartre is said to have made out of “popularizing intent”. The essay is therefore often a leading component of courses on Sartre, but rarely the subject of specific research.

He holds a transitional position in the author's thinking between L'être et le néant and the Critique de la raison dialectique ( Critique of Dialectical Reason ) published after the Second World War in 1960 .

Main theses of the work

1. Existentialism is an optimism

First, Sartre comments on the accusation that existentialism is dark, ugly and scandalous. The communists would accuse existentialism of creating despair, because according to it all solutions are blocked and action is therefore completely impossible. Christians, on the other hand, would criticize existentialism for ignoring the beauty of life and only showing human shame, the shabby, cloudy and sticky.

Sartre considers both allegations to be inappropriate. He eliminates them with the argument that existentialism is a doctrine that makes human life very possible. Every truth and every action would involve a human milieu and a human subjectivity. Existentialism by no means tries to plunge people into despair. It is not atheism in the sense that it exhausts itself in the proof that God does not exist, but declares that even the existence of God would not change anything. Man must find himself again and convince himself that nothing can save him from himself - not even valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is an optimism , a doctrine of action.

2. Existence precedes essence

This thesis, one of the most basic of existentialism, Sartre explained like this: "If God does not exist, so there is at least one being in which the existence of the essence precedes a being that exists before it can be defined by any concept, and this being is man or, as Heidegger says, Dasein. ” This means that man first enters the world, but only then defines himself. According to Sartre, humans cannot be defined because initially they are nothing. "Only then will he be, and he will be as he was created."

This thought comes up again in existentialism - until then it was assumed that God created man by means of a certain procedure and according to a concept, just as the craftsman makes a letter opener according to a definition and a procedure. Sartre gives the following example: “If you look at an object produced, for example a book or a letter opener, then this object was made by a craftsman who was inspired by a concept; he was referring to the term letter opener and also to an existing manufacturing process that is part of the term - basically a recipe. The letter opener is at the same time an object that is manufactured in a certain way and on the other hand has a certain use. […] So we say that with the letter opener, the essence, the essence - that is, the entirety of the recipes and the properties that allow it to be produced and defined - precedes existence. [...] We are dealing here with a technical view of the world in which production precedes existence. "

The atheistic philosophers of the eighteenth century removed the idea of ​​God, but not the idea that essence precedes existence. These believe that man is the owner of a human nature that defines the concept of man - this is in complete contrast to the existentialist assumption that there is no human nature and that man only has to define himself after birth .

3. Man is nothing other than what he makes himself

This “first principle of existentialism” - also called subjectivity - is the logical continuation of the thought just explained that the existence of essence precedes it. If we create ourselves, we would also have to determine how we want to create ourselves - we would have to decide for ourselves how we want to live. Man is responsible for what he is. The first intention of existentialism is to bring each human being into possession of himself and to give him total responsibility for his existence. However, he does not only bear this responsibility for his individuality , but for all people.

So man has to make a choice about his life path. He will be fully convinced of this choice, since what he chooses can never be bad for him. What he chooses is always good, and nothing can be good for just one person, it must be good for everyone. Sartre describes this in the following words: “Our responsibility is much greater than we can imagine, for it affects all of humanity. [...] If I - a more individual matter - want to get married and have children, even if this marriage depends solely on my situation or my passion or desire , I draw not only myself, but all of humanity on the way to Monogamy . So I am responsible for myself and for everyone, and I create a certain image of the person I choose; choosing me, I choose people. "

4. Fear is a condition of action

An important thesis of existentialism is: “Man is fear.” What does that actually mean and where does this fear come from ? According to Sartre, the thought that with his choice of life he is not only making a decision for himself but for everyone should frighten people. He could not escape the "feeling of his total and deep responsibility" if he was aware that he was a legislator for all of humanity. Man must always ask himself what would happen if everyone acted like this. In addition, he had to worry about whether he was also the one who had the right to act in such a way that humanity could follow his deeds. If he does not ask himself that, he is preventing fear from arising - but this is wrong.

Because the fear that people should feel when answering these questions is a simple fear that everyone knows who once had a greater responsibility. At this point Sartre gives the example of an officer who is responsible for an attack and thus for the decision about the life and death of a certain number of men. Even if the officer receives orders from above, these are broad and must be interpreted by him - the life of several soldiers depends on this interpretation . It is impossible that he does not feel a certain fear when making his decision. This fear is one that every responsible person knows. It does not prevent him from acting; on the contrary, it is the condition of his action. Because this fear leads to the fact that a decision is not made too quickly and is therefore perhaps irresponsible. " It is not a curtain that separates us from acting, it is part of acting itself."

5. Man is abandonment

According to existentialism, the feeling of abandonment results from the fact that God does not exist and that one has to draw the consequences from it. French professors who tried to establish a secular morality around 1880 said something like this: "God is a useless and costly hypothesis , we will delete it, but certain values ​​must nevertheless be taken seriously and regarded as existing a priori in order for there to be a morality, a society that gives an orderly world; being honest, not lying, not beating your wife, making children, etc. must be compulsory a priori. ” These scholars, who wanted to introduce a morality without God, noticed that a society without norms is not possible, that it is otherwise immoral and anything but civic order will come to pass. In doing so, they came up with values ​​that already appear in this way or something similar in the Bible - in the Ten Commandments . For every form of government that is to be valid for an entire people , norms must exist. But how should these be given a priori - that is, from the start - if there is no God? With God, every possibility of finding values ​​in a spiritual heaven disappears because there is no infinite and perfect consciousness. Since we are on a plane where there is nothing but man, there is nowhere established that good exists.

The starting point of existentialism is a statement by Dostoevsky "If God does not exist, everything is allowed." Thus, man is abandoned, because he can neither find support nor excuses outside of himself. We have no values ​​or instructions that could justify our behavior. We're alone with no excuses. So we are free.

6. Man is free

The freedom plays generally a big role in Sartre's philosophy and existentialism. Man is free because there is no determinism , because there is nothing by which to orientate himself or to orientate himself. That is why he has the opportunity to design himself, to develop his own values ​​and norms and to be the only one to determine himself. Sartre denies any constraints based on external social, natural or divine instructions - these are constructions that do not relieve people of responsibility for what they do.

Sartre not only sees this freedom as something positive, he even writes: “Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, and yet free because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for all that he does. ” So freedom means as a privilege to give things a meaning according to one's own standards and to find his peace in and with them. Freedom also means condemnation of having to do this for a lifetime, with the risk of choosing the wrong act.

7. There are no set morals

Sartre also deals with the development of values ​​and with the question of whether there is a universally valid morality . He comes to the realization that Kant's philosophy must be wrong on this point, he rejects the categorical imperative .

Sartre describes the case of a student of his who, on an important matter, vacillates between two types of morality, neither of which can be assessed as right or wrong from the outset. This student seeking help wondered whether he should go to England to join the French armed forces or stay with his lonely mother, who was dependent on him.

So he had to choose between the morality of sympathy , individual devotion and a more stretched morality (which was of more questionable effectiveness). He could not orientate himself according to any generally applicable values. In this case, how could he know which decision was morally better? Even if he was guided by Christian teaching that one should be merciful, sacrifice oneself for one another, and choose the thorniest way, he would get no answer. For which way is the thorniest, with which decision would he act more mercifully? This question cannot be solved. It is therefore certain that in this case there is no a priori correct morality. This leads Sartre to the conclusion that there can be no fixed morality.

8. Cogito ergo sum

Sartre agrees with Descartes ' thesis about human knowledge. He writes: "There can be no other truth as a starting point than this: 'I think, therefore I am', that is the absolute truth of self-attaining consciousness." Any other theory would strike out the truth because outside the Cartesian cogito would be all objects only probable and “a doctrine of probabilities that is not tied to a truth falls into nothing. [...] So for there to be any truth, there needs to be an absolute truth; “ In addition, Descartes' theory is the only one that gives people dignity because it is the only one that does not make them an object .

In existentialism, however, Descartes' doctrine is modified to the extent that in cogito one can discover not only oneself but also others. Through the I-think we would reach ourselves in the face of the other and the other would be as certain for us as we were ourselves. "So the person who reaches himself directly through the cogito also discovers all others, and he discovers them as the condition of its existence. He becomes aware that he cannot be anything (in the sense of saying one is witty or one is angry or one is jealous) unless others recognize him as such. [...] The other is indispensable for my existence, as well as for the knowledge that I have of myself. ” So if you need other people in order to recognize yourself in order to exist at all, the judgment is the one Other falls over you, decisive.

9. Existentialism is a humanism

Finally, Sartre commented on the accusation that he was asking whether existentialism was a humanism . In disgust he wrote that the humanists were wrong, that he had made fun of a certain type of humanist - this had led to a misunderstanding of those interested in philosophy about his statement that existentialism was a humanism. Sartre now explains the two different meanings that the term "humanism" has.

First, humanism can be understood as a theory that sees people as their purpose and highest value. This implies that one can attribute value to people based on the grandiose deeds of certain people. He gives an example: “With Cocteau, for example, there is humanism in this sense, when in his story 'Le Tour du monde en 80 heures' a figure declares that man is great because he flies over mountains in an airplane. This means that I, who do not build the aircraft, can enjoy these special inventions and feel responsible and proud because of the special deeds of some people. ”In his opinion, this is absurd, because only a dog or a horse can do one Make an overall judgment of the person and declare that they are great. (They would, however, be careful not to do that.) It is completely unacceptable for man to judge man. Existentialism will never declare people to be the end, since it is always to be created. That would lead to a cult of humanity (in the manner of Auguste Comte ). And this in turn ends in the closed humanism of Comte and ultimately in fascism . Sartre categorically rejects this kind of humanism.

The kind of humanism to which he relates existentialism means the following: Man is constantly outside himself; by designing and losing himself outside of himself, he brings man to existence. There is also no other universe than the human - the universe of human subjectivity. He understands subjectivity in the sense that man is not enclosed within himself, but is always present in a human universe. He describes this philosophy as humanism insofar as man is reminded that there is no other lawgiver than himself and that in this abandonment he makes decisions about himself (cf. 5. Man is abandonment ). People are also shown that they do not realize themselves by turning back to themselves, but by constantly searching for a goal outside of themselves.

literature

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul: Is Existentialism a Humanism? Ullstein, Frankfurt 1989 - ISBN 3-548-34500-X
  • Jean-Paul Sartre L'existentialisme est un humanisme Editions Nagel, Paris, 1946 ISBN 2-07-032913-5 (1996 ed., Gallimard)