JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Existentialism51In these days, unfortunately, humanism is a word employed to identify philosophictendencies, not only in two senses but in three, four, five, or six. We are all humaniststo-day, even certain Marxists. Those who reveal themselves as classical rationalistsare humanists in a sense that has gone sour on us, derived from the liberal ideas of thelast century, a liberalism refracted throughout the contemporary crisis. If Marxists canclaim to be humanists, the various religions, Christian, Hindu and many others, alsoclaim above all that they are humanist; so do the existentialists in their turn and, in ageneral way, all the philosophies. Actually, many political movements protest no lessthat they are humanist. What all this amounts to is a kind of attempt to re-instate aphilosophy which, for all its claims, refuses in the last resort to commit itself, not onlyfrom the political or social standpoint, but also in the deeper philosophic sense. WhenChristianity claims to be humanist before all else, it is because it refuses to commititself, because it cannot—that is, it cannot side with the progressive forces in theconflict, because it is holding on to reactionary positions in face of the revolution.When the pseudo-Marxists or the liberals place the rights of the personality aboveeverything, it is because they recoil before the exigencies of the present world situation.Just so the existentialist, like the liberal, puts in a claim for man in general because hecannot manage to formulate such a position as the events require, and the onlyprogressive position that is known is that of Marxism. Marxism alone states the realproblems of the age.It is not true that a man has freedom of choice, in the sense that by that choice heconfers upon his activity a meaning it would not otherwise have. It is not enough tosay that men can strive for freedom without knowing that they strive for it—or, if wegive the fullest meaning to that recognition, it means that men can engage in the strugglefor a cause which over-rules them, which is to say that they can act within a framegreater than themselves, and not merely act out of themselves. For in the end, if a manstrives for freedom without knowing it, without being able to say precisely how or towhat end he is striving, what does that signify? That his actions are going to bringabout a succession of consequences weaving themselves into a whole network ofcausality of which he cannot grasp all the effects, but which, all the same, round off hisaction and endow it with a meaning, in function with the activity of others—and notonly that of other men, but of the natural environment in which those men act. But,from your point of view, the choice is a pre-choice—I come back again to that prefix,for I think you still interpose a reserve. In this kind of pre-choice one is concernedwith the freedom of a prior indifference. But your conception of the condition and thefreedom of man is linked to a certain definition of the objective upon which I have aword to say: it is, indeed, upon this idea of the world of objects as utilities that you