Comparing Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism And Humanism

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In the excerpts of Jean-Paul Sartre’s anthology Existentialism and Humanism, as translated by Philip Mairet, Sartre takes a humanistic approach in an effort to connect Marxism and Existentialism within the context of art. The time in which these ideas were formed society was emerging from a period of utter chaos, war, and dictatorship. Existentialism and Humanism, written in 1946, has clear influences of the Dada movement (1917-1950): “a constellation of social protest and art movements … against the First World War as well as the European culture that had fomented it” (Eskilson 433). Sartre and other contemporary philosophers attempted to make sense of the chaos in which society was rising from, and to quelm the dissonance of a life in which …show more content…

This essence is vital to the creation of said paper knife, and so, the essence of the knife precedes its existence (Sartre 600). Sartre then discusses the idea of God as the supernal creator: of which he creates, God had known precisely what it will be. He finds comparable that an artisan creating a paper knife had also known the formula for the craft, and had preconceived what they were creating. Sartre uses his previous analogy that man is the only creation that exists before its essence. With the idea of God in mind, man’s essence is known as a conception in the mind of God, and thus man’s essence precedes its existence. However, considering Atheistic Existentialism, it can be supposed that there is no God to have a conception of man, then man is the only embodiment of which existence precedes essence (Sartre 600). He further develops and even attempts to justify his claims by clinging to the philosophical ideas of the enlightenment, in which society abandoned the ideas of God and divinity, but did not abandon the idea of an essence prior to existence. With this dialogue, Sartre places power back into the hands of humanity; by developing a philosophy of life and existence, he makes for himself an undeniable truth to live

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