Jean Paul Sartre Research Paper

Two of the greatest French existential writers were the colleagues and lovers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The two existentialists had an open relationship for most of their lives. They would often read each other’s writings and were influenced by each other, helping them come to conclusions about different topics. Both writers were atheists, putting more power in man’s hands, than in the hands of higher beings. Jean-Paul Sartre writes about how existence precedes essence or being for itself. A lot of philosophy talks about Human nature or what it means to be. It is looking for a definite answer or pre-determined purpose. Even Plato’s “forms” fit into “being in itself” or essence preceding existence. An example of something …show more content…
Their purpose is to cut things and they cannot choose to do anything else. People on the other hand have the ability to choose what they want to become. Sartre believes you exist first and then you decide who you want to be. This ability to decide or choose is man’s freedom, and this freedom is both a blessing and a curse. Man’s freedom eliminates the notion that man has “Human Nature” or a set purpose. Sartre says “Man is what he makes of himself”. However, we are not completely free. There are some things that are out of our control. This is called Facticity and these are things you are born into like race, sex and age. Although you cannot change these things you are much more than your facticity. Sartre explains that you have transcendence, that you have the ability to move beyond what you are born into. Your starting point does …show more content…
She says absolute standards are for absolute beings. We are free to develop our own human ethics, and ethics as an existentialist concentrate on freedom. If there are no absolute ethics then everything becomes permitted. Man becomes responsible for the world and instead of looking to god for what is right or wrong, he looks at himself. Without God to erase our mistakes we must be more careful about what we do. She says you must distinguish between ambiguity and absurdity. “To declare existence as absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won.” She compares ethics to art and science in that they are always changing and never set in stone. She says ethics are never complete or whole, but always changing, a work in progress. Beauvoir also explains that with ethics there is no such thing as “a priori” nothing is self-evident , every situation is different and ethics must be