Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialism · France, 1905–1980
The lens
The Sartrean lens reads an event by refusing the alibis people offer for their conduct, holding that existence precedes essence and that human beings are, in the phrase from Existentialism Is a Humanism, condemned to be free. Its vocabulary is radical freedom, facticity, and above all bad faith—the self-deception by which a person disowns their freedom by pretending their role, nature, or circumstances left no choice. This lens asks who is hiding behind necessity, examining the waiter, the official, or the functionary who performs a role so completely as to disclaim the choosing self beneath it, a maneuver Being and Nothingness dissects as fleeing anguish into the comfort of being a thing. It reads appeals to orders, duty, or human nature as attempts to convert freedom into fixed essence. From the analysis of the look it attends to how being seen by others objectifies and how people struggle over that objectification. Where other lenses locate causes in structures or drives, the Sartrean lens returns responsibility to the choosing individual who remains free even in constraint. It notices the excuses dressed as facts, the sincerity that is itself an evasion, and the anguish that both freedom and its denial provoke.
Takes
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