Sartre And Ethical Decision-Making Analysis

According to Sartre, human decision-making that fails to recognize the necessity of making choices in the face of a lack of solid grounds for doing so fails to effectively take responsibility for choices. In order to make a properly Sartrean existentialist choices, you must understand that every action you undertake is not a product of external structures and cannot be justified by external codes but rather is an intentional personal choice that has no rationale outside of yourself. You must understand that even your most banal choices, preferences, and activities are part of a process of creative production of ethics. Human choices are not determined by external guidelines like legal codes, religious authority, or human nature. Instead, human choices dynamically mark out the essence of what it means to be a human. Locating the basis for a choice in something outside of your own self, such as the advice of a friend or a moral norm, is, for Sartre, an unacceptable externalization of moral responsibility. To correctly make a choice in a Sartrean manner, you must be consciously engaged, each time you are making a choice, in a project of marking out the …show more content…
For Sartre, choices are inevitable and ever-present. They are unavoidable. In all situations humans are condemned to choose. Attempting to avoid a choice between two options is not truly to evade the necessity of a difficult choice but rather to make a purposeful choice of a third option; avoidance. Deciding to not choose between two restaurants, for example, does not avoid making a statement about what people in a similar situation should do because avoiding a choice is not passive and is instead elective. Choosing to not choose has all of the ethical consequences of an active choice. It, like an active choice, makes a statement about what action is best: in this case, the lack of an active