Sartre: Philosophy in an Hour

Existence precedes essence , he insisted. We are born as meaningless entities in a meaningless world. If we want to make something of our existence, we need to actively create our sense of who we are and what we amount to. Many of us, like Stevens, shirk the responsibility of defining the meaning of life.

Instead of autonomously creating ourselves, we let ourselves be defined by our social and professional roles. We focus on playing out pre-scripted parts. The better we become at the performance, the more natural the performance seems to be.

How did you like the book?

Perhaps deep inside, we have the sense that we are cheating ourselves. We know that the real challenge in life is to become something unique. Yet this path is hard — intolerably so. It is much easier to play out a role and let life pass us by.

Jean-Paul Sartre: more relevant now than ever | Books | The Guardian

And so we give up on the task of being meaning makers. We sit back and watch our meaningful opportunities trickle away down the cracks of history. Stevens treated himself like a thing. What are you doing there with your black suit, your bow tie, your cold and dignified manner? Sartre would tell Stevens: People are not things.

As human beings, we are more than the social roles we inhabit. We are our social identities plus the freedom to transcend them. If facticity ties us down, transcendence sets us free. The trouble is that when we think about who and what we are, we usually think about our facticity. We draw up a list of facts: We describe ourselves as if we were things. It takes the ambiguity out of life. The downside is that we sacrifice our existential freedom.

Human beings are not things. We are creatures of potential. As creatures of potential, we are constantly reaching beyond the facts that define us in the hope of becoming something more than we are today. Fired by imagination and desire, we transcend the present in the direction of the future. This act of imaginatively leaping beyond the present is existential freedom.

We all have it and we all use it. But far too few of us make it central to life. Too many of us are like Stevens the butler. Stevens denied his freedom for the greater part of his life. He experienced it briefly en route to reconnect with Miss Kenton. He abandoned it again as he turned for home.

The Night Sartre Became Famous

He was never destined to be free. Free human beings are disruptive by nature. Instead of accepting the range of social and professional roles that are given to them, they violate, destabilise, and transform these roles in the process of creating the future. The world is full of drones devoted to the status quo. Be a meaning maker. Celebrate your existential freedom. Reblogged this on maha's place.

• People who bought this also bought....
• Youre Not Alone.
• Sartre: Philosophy in an Hour.
• Sartre: Philosophy in an Hour Audiobook | Paul Strathern | www.newyorkethnicfood.com;
• Women Only: Exclusive Hypnosis for Women!

Reblogged this on Executive Coaching Practice and commented: Really interesting post Tim, thanks for sharing. Extremely relevant for me and a lot of folk I know working in local government, and elsewhere for that matter. Both of the latter make meaning of their lives by acting —in the moment— on the opportunities that life throws their way, instead of focusing on an immutable image of self-identity. Your remarks about high school English classes remind me of the first lessons I received on Sartre in UG university.

There too the focus was on nihilism, with Sartre leading the heroic charge out of despair. For me, existentialism has always been a hopeful doctrine. I grew up in a fairly dull middle class environment, and at the age of 18 or 19, the idea of making big choices that would define my life seemed powerful and ultimately optimistic. There is a great deal of life experience behind this post. Reblogged this on Relationships Can Be Hell. Really enjoyed reading this.

• Jean-Paul Sartre - Wikiquote.
• Inscrivez-vous sur Kobo et commencez la lecture numérique dès aujourd'hui!
• Sartre: Philosophy in an Hour by Paul Strathern;
• The Eighth Glass (The Eighth Glass Series Book 1)?
• Oeuvres de Grégoire de Nazianze (French Edition).
• Henry Bauchau, une écriture en résistance (French Edition).

Complete Works of Ovid Delphi Classics. The Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. The English Civil Wars The Complete Works of Franz Kafka. Works of Martin Luther. The Art of War.

Jean-Paul Sartre: more relevant now than ever

Medieval Cult or Modern Nemesis? Odd True Tales, Volume 1. The Critique Of Pure Reason. Philosophy in an Hour. The Spirit of Venice. Throughout his life, Sartre agonised about the purpose of literature. However, the last pages of his enduringly brilliant memoir Words , published the same year as the Nobel refusal, despair over that function: But the story is odder than that.

He was offered it anyway.

Sartre had a few — at least about the money. Is this still the case? Though he was lionised by student radicals in Paris in May , his reputation as a philosopher was on the wane even then. Indeed, Derrida would spend a great deal of effort deriding Sartrean existentialism as a misconstrual of Heidegger.