several philosophical currents that take man’s existential situation as their
point of departure. We generally talk of twentieth-century existential
philosophy. Several of these existential philosophers, or existentialists, based
their ideas not only on Kierkegaard, but on Hegel and Marx as well.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Another important philosopher who had a great influence on the
twentieth century was the German Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived from 1844
to 1900. He, too, reacted against Hegel’s philosophy and the German
‘historicism.’ He proposed life itself as a counterweight to the anemic interest
in history and what he called the Christian ‘slave morality.’ He sought to effect
a ‘revaluation of all values,’ so that the life force of the strongest should not be
hampered by the weak. According to Nietzsche, both Christianity and
traditional philosophy had turned away from the real world and pointed toward
‘heaven’ or ‘the world of ideas.’ But what had hitherto been considered the
‘real’ world was in fact a pseudo world. ‘Be true to the world,’ he said. ‘Do not
listen to those who offer you supernatural expectations.’ “
“So ... ?”
“A man who was influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was the
German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger. But we are going to
concentrate on the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from
1905 to 1980. He was the leading light among the existentialists—at least, to
the broader public. His existentialism became especially popular in the forties,
just after the war. Later on he allied himself with the Marxist movement in
France, but he never became a member of any party.”
“Is that why we are meeting in a French cafe?”
“It was not quite accidental, I confess. Sartre himself spent a lot of time
in cafes. He met his life-long companion Simone de Beauvoir in a cafe. She
was also an existential philosopher.”
“A woman philosopher?”
“That’s right.”
“What a relief that humanity is finally becoming civilized.”
“Nevertheless, many new problems have arisen in our own time.”
“You were going to talk about existentialism.”
“Sartre said that ‘existentialism is humanism.’ By that he meant that the
existentialists start from nothing but humanity itself. I might add that the
humanism he was referring to took a far bleaker view of the human situation
than the humanism we met in the Renaissance.”
“Why was that?”
“Both Kierkegaard and some of this century’s existential philosophers
were Christian. But Sartre’s allegiance was to what we might call an atheistic
existentialism. His philosophy can be seen as a merciless analysis of the
human situation when ‘God is dead.’ The expression ‘God is dead’ came from
Nietzsche.”
“Go on.”
“The key word in Sartre’s philosophy, as in Kierkegaard’s, is ‘existence.’
But existence did not mean the same as being alive. Plants and animals are
also alive, they exist, but they do not have to think about what it implies. Man
is the only living creature that is conscious of its own existence. Sartre said
that a material thing is simply ‘in itself,’ but mankind is ‘for itself.’ The being of
man is therefore not the same as the being of things.”