[Translated by Bernard Frechtman, from Existentialism and Human Emotions,
Philosophical Library, 1957, and by P. Mairet, from Existentialism is a
Humanism, Philosophical Library, 1949. Edited by J. Carl Mickelsen.]

I should like on this occasion to defend existentialism against some charges
which have been brought against it.

First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate
quietism because, since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider
action in this world as quite impossible. We should then end up in a
philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we come in
the end to a bourgeois philosophy. The communists in particular have made
these charges.

On the other hand, we have been charged with dwelling on human
degradation, with pointing up everywhere the sordid, shady, and slimy, and
neglecting the gracious and beautiful, the bright side of human nature; for
example, according to Mlle. Mercier, a Catholic critic, with forgetting
the smile of the child. Both sides charge us with having ignored human
solidarity, with considering man as an isolated being. The communists say that
the main reason for this is that we take pure subjectivity, the Cartesian I think,
as our starting point; in other words, the moment in which man becomes fully
aware of what it means to him to be an isolated being; as a result, we are
unable to return to a state of solidarity with the men who are not ourselves, a
state which we can never reach in the cogito.

From the Christian standpoint, we are charged with denying the reality and
seriousness of human undertakings, since, if we reject God's commandments
and the eternal verities, there no longer remains anything but pure caprice,
with everyone permitted to do as he pleases and incapable, from his own point
of view, of condemning the points of view and acts of others. I shall today try
to answer these different charges. Many people are going to be surprised at
what is said here about humanism. We shall try to see in what sense it is to be
understood. In any case, what can be said from the very beginning is that by
existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in
addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting
and a human subjectivity.
. . . . .
What is meant by the term existentialism?
. . . . .
Actually, it is the least scandalous, the most austere of doctrines. It is intended
strictly for specialists and philosophers. Yet it can be defined easily. What

[2]

complicates matters is that there are two kinds of existentialists; first, those
who are Christian. among whom I would include Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel,
both Catholic; and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists among whom
I class Heidegger, and then the French existentialists and myself. What they
have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you
prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point.

Just what does that mean? Let us consider some object that is manufactured,
for example, a book or a papercutter: here is an object which has been made by
an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept. He referred to the concept
of what a paper-cutter is and likewise to a known method of production, which
is part of the concept, something which is, by and large, a routine. Thus, the
paper-cutter is at once an object produced in a certain way and, on the other
hand, one leaving a specific use; and one can not postulate a man who
produces a paper-cutter but does not know what it is used for. Therefore, let us
say that, for the paper-cutter, essence-that is, the ensemble of both the
production routines and the properties which enable it to be both produced
and defined-precedes existence. Thus, the presence of the paper-cutter or book
in front of me is determined. Therefore, we have here a technical view of the
world whereby it can be said that production precedes existence.

When we conceive God as the Creator, He is generally thought of as a superior
sort of artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether one like
that of Descartes or that of Leibniz, we always grant that will more or less
follows understanding or, at the very least, accompanies it, and that when God
creates He knows exactly what he is creating. Thus, the concept of man in
the mind of God is comparable to the concept of a paper-cutter in the mind of
the manufacturer, and, following certain techniques and a conception, God
produces man, just as the artisan, following a definition and a technique,
makes a paper-cutter. Thus, the individual man is the realization of a certain
concept in the divine intelligence.

In the eighteenth century, the atheism of the philosophers discarded the idea of
God, but not so much for the notion that essence precedes existence. To a
certain extent, this idea is found everywhere; we find it in Diderot, in Voltaire,
and even in Kant. Man has a human nature; this human nature, which is the
concept of the human, is found in all men, which means that each man is a
particular example of a universal concept, man. In Kant, the result of this
universality is that the wild-man, the natural man, as well as the bourgeois, are
circumscribed by the same definition and have the same basic qualities. Thus,
here too the essence of man precedes the historical existence that we find in
nature.

[3]

Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if
God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes
essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that
this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by
saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists,
turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man,
as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is
nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made
what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to
conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also
only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of
existentialism. It is also what is called subjectivity, the name we are labeled
with when charges are brought against us. But what do we mean by this, if not
that man has a greater dignity than a stone or table? For we mean that man first
exists, that is, that man first of all is the being who hurls himself toward a
future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future. Man
is at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a
piece of garbage, or a cauliflower nothing exists prior to this plan; there is
nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. Not what he
will want to be. Because by the word "will" we generally mean a conscious
decision, which is subsequent to what we have already made of ourselves. I
may want to belong to a political party, write a book, get married; but all that
is only a manifestation of an earlier, more spontaneous choice that is called
"will." But if existence really does precede essence, man is responsible for
what he is. Thus, existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of
what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And
when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that
he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all
men.

The word subjectivism has two meanings, and our opponents play on the two.
Subjectivism means, on the one hand, that an individual chooses and makes
himself; and, on the other, that it is impossible for man to transcend human
subjectivity. The second of these is the essential meaning of existentialism.
When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us
does likewise; but we also mean by that that in making this choice he also
chooses all men. In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a
single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man
as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same
time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We
always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good

[4]

for all. If, on the other hand, existence precedes essence, and if we grant that
we exist and fashion our image at one and the same time, the image is valid for
everybody and for our whole age. Thus, our responsibility is much greater than
we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind. If I am a
workingman and choose to join a Christian trade-union rather than be a
communist, and if by being a member I want to show that the best thing for
man is resignation, that the kingdom of man is not of this world, I am not only
involving my own case-I want to be resigned for everyone. As a result, my
action has involved all humanity. To take a more individual matter, if I want to
marry, to have children; even if this marriage depends solely on my own
circumstances or passion or wish, I am involving all humanity in monogamy
and not merely myself. Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for
everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In
choosing myself, I choose man.

This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms--perhaps a little
grandiloquent--as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon see, it
is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? The existentialist frankly
states that man is in anguish. His meaning is a follows--When a man commits
himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will
be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of
mankind--in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete
and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who show no such
anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their anguish or are in
flight from it.
. . . . .
Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own
choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof
whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it
is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an angel.
If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say
that it is good and not bad. . . . . So every man ought to say, Am I really a man
who has the right to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by
what I do? If a man does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly,
the anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to
quietism or inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to
those who have borne responsibilities.
. . . . .
And when we speak of abandonment we only mean to say that God does not
exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to
the end. . . . . The existentialist finds it extremely embarrassing that God does
not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an
intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no

[5]

infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that the
good exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the
plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote if God did not exist,
everything would be permitted; and that, for existentialism, is the starting
point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in
consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within
or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if
indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one=s
action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there
is no determinism--man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if
God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could
legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a
luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. We are left
alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned
to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless
at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is
responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the
power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent
upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which,
therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his
passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help
through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he
thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that
every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every
instant to invent man.