Analysis Of Jean Paul Sartre's Existentialism And Human Ethics

French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre believes that you should live your life according to authenticity instead of happiness. Sartre defines authenticity as focusing on an individual 's freedom by making his or her own decisions. In this paper I will explain how I am free using Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotion. Sartre says human beings are free when they are being authentic by living according to their moral character, which is determined by your responsibility for your actions, responsibility for mankind, and responsibility for your attitude. To be responsible for your actions you must be aware of your freedom, be able to act on it, and be accountable for it. If you can say yes to all these then you are authentic in your actions. Sartre says that if we are not authentic in this area …show more content…
Here he is saying that when we make a choice for ourselves we are also making a choice for all of mankind because, “there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be”(Sartre 5, 1957). So, when we make a choice we are making a choice that reflects what we want mankind to be like. If we make a choice that reflects mankind in a poorly we feel anguish towards this decision because we not only made ourselves look bad, we made mankind look bad as a whole. The last area is responsibility for attitude; it is impossible to not have an attitude so you become authentic in the way you choose your attitude First you must choose your attitude towards a situation, then you must be comfortable with the attitude you have chosen and voice within you. If you are not authentic with your attitude then you have a strong feeling of despair, which “has a very simple meaning. It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible” (Sartre 12, 1957). Here he is