Existentialism Is a Humanism

Paperback, 128 pages

English language

Published July 24, 2007 by Yale University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-300-11546-8
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OCLC Number:
80180903

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It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity.

The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for …

1 edition

Subjects

  • Movements - Existentialism
  • Philosophy / General
  • Movements - Humanism
  • Philosophy
  • 1913-1960.
  • Camus, Albert,
  • Etranger
  • Existentialism