Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

fully responsible for their actions, inevitably leading to human anguish and dread. Sartre
explains further:
What is meant here by saying that existence
precedes essence It means that first of all,
man exists, turns up, appears on the scene,
and, only afterwards, defines himself. Not
only is man what he conceives himself to be,
but he is also only what he wills himself to
be after this thrust toward existence... Man is
nothing else but what he makes of himself
(Sartre, 1957:15).
44
Jean-Paul Sartre
Even as Existentialism deeply influenced postmodernism, so Jean-Paul Sartre
profoundly influenced the postmodernists and thus requires special attention. Some have
argued that Nietzsche, not Sartre, was the greatest of the Existentialists -- but Sartre was
certainly significant. As a teenager in the 1920’s, Sartre was attracted to philosophy
while reading Henri Bergson’s, Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Sartre
studied in Paris at the elite École Normale Supérieure, which also trained other prominent
French thinkers and intellectuals. He graduated in 1929 with a doctorate in philosophy.
Sartre (1905-1980) was drafted into and served with the French army from 1929-1931,
after which he worked as a teacher. In 1938, Sartre wrote the novel, La Nausea, which
remains one of his most famous books, expressing the horrible taste of life, hence nausea.
Sartre argued that no matter how man longs for something different, he could not escape
the insanity of living in the world.
In 1939, he was among the many thousands drafted for French military service because
of the German aggression. The Germans captured Sartre in 1940 at Padoux. He spent
nine months in Stalag 12D at Treves, until released in April 1941 due to poor health. He
escaped to Paris where he joined the French Resistance, helping to found the resistance
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa