Existentialism and Humanism

"Serious Sartreans get quite annoyed with this book because it’s a very accessible, easy-to-read, non-technical, public lecture. Many Sartreans think that unless you’ve read Being and Nothingness from cover to cover and pored over the footnotes, you don’t really understand Sartre. For them, people like me who say, ‘I like Sartre, I like Existentialism and Humanism ’ are a bit like people who say ‘I really like Wagner, that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is a great tune,’ but have never sat through the Ring Cycle. Let’s put that aside, because it is a great essay, irrespective of how representative of his thought it is. The reason I wanted to include it is that in contemporary Britain, atheists and humanist organisations are keen to stress the cheerful side of atheism. The British Humanist Association, like other humanist associations worldwide, uses a happy human symbol. There’s this idea that because so many people have this misconception that life without God is dark, meaningless and without purpose, you’ve got to emphasise the extent to which joy, happiness, meaning, and morality are possible without a belief in God. Of course I do think that’s true, but there’s also a danger of overstating it. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter 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. I find this absence more comical than tragic — though it has its tragic side. You see the same basic, existentialist ideas in the Monty Python films, and the appropriate responses there are not anguish, abandonment and despair, but ironic humour. Life is absurd, so you laugh. That seems about right. Whereas for Sartre, life is absurd, and therefore you go ‘oh my (non-existent) God’ and put your head in your hands. It is important to bear in mind that there are difficulties, there are problems, and for all that I agree that meaning and value are possible without God, the thought that this is all there is—and everything that matters to us is going to be extinguished, and in a moment I could die, and nothing would be left behind, and everything I worked for would just disappear, from my point of view— is a disturbing thought. Yes. I realise I’ve included this book even though there is very little in it I agree with 100 per cent. On that point, and many others here and elsewhere, he overstates it. I don’t think when you choose for yourself, you choose for all humankind. I suppose what he means is that when you choose for yourself, you endorse something as at least in the possible range for all of the rest of mankind, unless you’re making a complete exception of yourself. So there is a claim to universality there implied by choice. Now, of course, most of the time the rest of the world isn’t even going to notice, so that doesn’t really matter. But I think it is true— and this is where, perhaps, you get some moral seriousness in an atheistic world view that some people claim to be lacking—that simply by virtue of the need for consistency your choices inevitably express values which go beyond your own preferences. So, for example, if someone tucks into a factory-farmed pig, they’re implying that this is acceptable, that it’s all right that we live in a society where animal welfare is given so little respect. That’s right. The student wants an answer, and Sartre doesn’t give it to him. Sartre says, basically, you have to make up your own mind, and what he’s trying to get over to the student is that he can’t abdicate his own responsibility by choosing any kind of authority. What’s interesting about that is—although I’ve chosen it as an atheist book—is that I actually think Sartre overstates the importance of the absence of God for existentialism, because that same point about that difficulty of choice and responsibility you get before Sartre in Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, in his Fear and Trembling , talks about Abraham’s decision, about whether or not he’s going to go ahead with the sacrifice of his son Isaac, as requested by God. Now, why should this be troubling? Some people say you do what God tells you to do. But in Kierkegaard’s telling, even if you believe in God, and even if you believe that God has command, ultimately, you’re the only person responsible for your decision. So, as far as Abraham is concerned, is God trying to test him? Woody Allen does a good skit on this, where God is very cross with Abraham for going ahead with the sacrifice, and Abraham protests, ‘Well, I’m just showing how obedient I am, God.’ God replies, ‘No, what you’re showing is you’ve got no moral fibre, and that if someone tells you to do something in a booming, modulating voice, then you’ll do anything.’ That’s actually a really important point. Absolutely. It seems a bit odd for me in the text that, at points, he suggests that the crucial thing for existentialism is that it takes seriously the idea that there is no God, but much of what he actually says doesn’t depend on that at all. Even if you have a religious belief, you may still have this issue. Certainly at this point in his career, he did overestimate the extent to which we are free to do what we want. As I understand it, Simone de Beauvoir had a more realistic view of human freedom, coming at this from the perspective of a woman of her time. She saw that in order to realise their potential freedom, many women had to have the shackles of patriarchy removed, and some women themselves didn’t realise their own capabilities, because they were so acculturated to believe that they had to fulfil certain roles. I think a more realistic view is that it’s unrealistic to expect people to be able to release themselves purely by force of their own will. You need other people or social structures to be different in order for you to really realise this. Then, even once you’re beyond that, once you’re seeing things as clearly as possible, there are huge constraints on our choices. He doesn’t really take those constraints seriously, in Existentialism and Humanism at least, and as I understand it this is something perhaps he did struggle with more in his later work, but I’m afraid I’m not the one to tell you exactly how he resolved the issue."