JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Existentialism49Man presents himself as a choice to be made. Very well. He is, first and foremost,his existence at the present instant, and he stands outside of natural determinism. Heis not defined by anything prior to himself, but by his present functioning as anindividual. There is no human nature superior to him, but a specific existence is givento him at a given moment. I ask myself whether “existence” taken in this sense is notanother form of the concept of human nature which, for historical reasons, is appearingin a novel guise. Is it not very similar—more so than it looks at first sight—to humannature as it was defined in the eighteenth century, the conception which you say yourepudiate? For this reappears in and very largely underlies the expression “the conditionof man” as it is used in existentialism. Your conception of the human condition is asubstitute for human nature, just as you substitute lived experience for commonexperience or scientific experiment.If we consider human conditions as conditions defined by X, which is the X of thesubject, and not by the natural environment, not by positive determinants, one isconsidering human nature under another form. It is a nature-condition, if you like,which is not to say that it is definable simply as an abstract type of nature; it isrevealed in ways much more difficult to formulate for reasons which, in my view, arehistorical. In these days, human nature is expressing itself in a social framework thatis undergoing a general disintegration of social orders and social classes, in conflictsthat cut across them, and in a stirring-together of all races and nations. The notion ofa uniform and schematic human nature cannot now be presented with the same characterof generality nor take on the same aspect of universality as in the eighteenth century,an epoch when it appeared to be definable upon a basis of continuous progress. Inthese days we are concerned with an expression of human nature which both thoughtfuland simple people call the condition of man. Their presentation of this is vague,chaotic and generally of an aspect that is, so to speak, dramatic; imposed by thecircumstances. And, in so far as they do not want to go beyond the general expressionof that condition into a deterministic enquiry into what the effective conditions are,they maintain the type and the scheme of an abstract expression, analogous to that ofhuman nature.This existentialism does depend upon a notion of the nature of man, but this timeit is not a nature that has pride in itself, but one that is fearful, uncertain and forlorn.And, indeed, when the existentialist speaks of the condition of man, he is speaking ofa condition in which he is not yet really committed to what existentialism callspurposes— and which is, consequently, a pre-condition. We have here a preengagement,not a commitment, not even a real condition. It is not by accident, then,that this “condition of man” is defined primarily by its general, humanist character. In