An Introduction to Existentialism

According to James, the whole “intellectual apparatus” of mankind has as its sole purpose the resolution of conflicts between the individual’s instincts or between the individual and his environment. It is simply an instrument by

Thus one may best describe the fundamental project of the human reality in saying that man is the being who projects to be God. . . . And if man possesses a preontological comprehension of the being of God, it is neither the great spectacle of nature nor the power of society which have given it to him. Rather God . . . represents the permanent limits in terms of which man understands his being. To be man is to strive to be God, or, if one prefers, man fundamentally desires to be God.

Although Sartre denies that man has an essence or nature if by this one means that God or Nature has predetermined him to pursue certain goals to the exclusion of others, he does not deny that man has an essence or nature if by this one means that it is possible to discern certain universal and necessary structures within the human condition.

follows from this that in so far as a man is conscious of his freedom, his natural and social environment will take on the character of a brute fact, something contingent, absurd, alien; for consciousness of freedom is also consciousness of the fact that meaning comes to being through us.

The person who denied the truth of “Either John was born in 1950 or he was not born in 1950” should not be accused of lack of insight into eternal verities, but rather of misunderstanding or misusing language.

First, what and how much can mankind expect to know? The answer to this question will depend largely upon one’s theory of being, or ontology. Second, what are the methods by which men may acquire whatever knowledge is possible? The answer to this question will depend upon one’s theory of knowledge, or epistemology.

First, what and how much can mankind expect to know? The answer to this question will depend largely upon one’s theory of being, or ontology.

First, what and how much can mankind expect to know? The answer to this question will depend largely upon one’s theory of being, or ontology.

In this context, however, humanism is taken to mean the doctrine mentioned in the last chapter according to which the individual can and should identify with the species mankind, putting the interests of mankind at large above his own or those of any other single individual.

It is man the feeling being who is tortured by the realization of his limits in space and time. Even, therefore, if he could transcend these limitations through the exercise of the intellect, he would not find in that act of transcendence the salvation he seeks.