Existentialism and Humanism
Sartre's short, famous lecture on freedom and responsibility in a world without God.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s lecture of 1945, delivered to a packed hall in Paris, is the most accessible statement of his existentialism. He argues that existence comes before essence: there is no fixed human nature and no God to set our values, so each person is responsible for what they make of themselves. He illustrates the point with a student torn between his mother and the Resistance.
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Julian Baggini
What you see in Sartre represents that tradition in thought pointing to troubling aspects of accepting a world without God. There are difficulties involved. Primarily, it’s this issue around responsibility. Without God, there’s nothing to fall back on as an authority, nothing to tell us what the right way to live is, or what the correct moral code is, nothing to show us what makes life meaningful. We really do have to make that decision for ourselves. That profound responsibility generates anxiety, anguish and despair, Sartre says.
Interview · February 2016
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