Existentialism Is a Humanism

Existentialism Is a Humanism: chapter-by-chapter summary

The book is a single lecture with no chapters, so the parts below are our own labels for its natural stages.

Part 1: Answering the critics

Sartre gave this talk in Paris in October 1945, a few months after the war in Europe ended. Existentialism had become a fashion and an insult at once. Communists accused it of keeping people still and brooding on despair. Catholic critics said it was gloomy and dwelt on human ugliness. Sartre promises to answer both sides. He describes existentialism as a doctrine that makes human life possible and says every truth and every action involves a human setting and a human point of view. This matters because the whole lecture is a defence, so each idea is shaped as a reply to someone.

Part 2: Existence comes before essence

Here Sartre states his main principle. Take a paper knife: a craftsman first imagines what it is for and then makes it, so its purpose comes before the object. Religious thinkers often picture people the same way, as made to a design in God's mind. Sartre says that if there is no God, nothing designs us. A person first turns up in the world and only afterwards defines himself. He adds that even atheist philosophers of the eighteenth century kept the idea of a shared human nature, and he rejects that too. This matters because it is the foundation of everything else: freedom is not an add-on but the basic condition of being human.

Part 3: Anguish, abandonment and despair

Sartre names three feelings that follow from this freedom. Anguish is the awareness that when I choose, I choose for everyone, as if I were setting a model of what a person should be. Abandonment, sometimes translated as forlornness, is the discovery that no god or fixed moral law tells us what is good, so we must decide alone. Despair means we can count only on what lies within our own power to do, and cannot rely on other people's hopes or on history to deliver results. Sartre insists these are not reasons to freeze. They describe an honest person who accepts responsibility and then acts, and anyone who claims to feel no anguish is hiding it from himself.

Part 4: The student's dilemma

To make this concrete, Sartre tells of a young man who came to him during the German Occupation. His brother had been killed in the 1940 fighting, his father leaned toward collaboration, and his mother depended on him. He could stay and care for her, or leave to join the Free French forces. Sartre notes that Christian ethics says to love your neighbour but not which one, and that Kant's rule never to treat a person as a means does not choose between helping one person and serving many. No rule or feeling can settle it, because the strength of a feeling is shown only by what a person does. The young man must invent his own way. The example shows that hard cases are decided by commitment, not by principles.

Part 5: Subjectivity and other people

Critics said Sartre trapped people inside their own heads. He replies that subjectivity is the starting point, not the end. Following Descartes, the one certain thing is my own awareness, “I think, therefore I am.” But in knowing myself I also meet other people, because I need them to learn who I am. Sartre calls this shared ground intersubjectivity. There is also a human condition: everyone must live in the world, work, live among others and die, and these limits are universal even though each person lives them differently. This matters because it answers the charge that existentialism cannot be shared. Because we choose for all, our choices are also proposals about what a human being can be.

Part 6: Why it is a humanism

Sartre now returns to the accusations. Existentialism is not quietism, he says, because a person is nothing but the sum of his actions. The coward makes himself a coward by what he does, and the hero makes himself a hero, so neither can blame a fixed nature. It is not pessimistic about people either, because the future is not yet written. He rejects the kind of humanism that praises humanity as if it were already great and complete. His own humanism holds that people are always unfinished and must go beyond themselves. He adds that even if God existed, nothing would change, since people must still find themselves. Existentialism keeps human beings and their freedom at the centre, and that is why he can call it a humanism.

Key people and terms

• Jean-Paul Sartre: French philosopher and writer (1905–1980). He delivered the lecture in Paris in 1945 to answer attacks on his ideas, and it was published the following year.
• The young student: an unnamed pupil who asks Sartre whether to stay with his mother or join the Free French. He stands for anyone facing a real moral choice that no rule can settle.
• The paper knife: Sartre's example of an object whose purpose is planned by a maker before it exists. He uses it to show how people differ, because nobody plans us in advance.
• Existence precedes essence: the lecture's central principle. A person first exists and only then, through actions, becomes what he is. There is no blueprint, no built-in human nature that decides for us.
• Anguish: the weight of knowing that each choice is also a model for everyone. Sartre treats it not as simple fear but as the feeling of a person who takes responsibility seriously.
• Abandonment: the situation of having no god or fixed moral law to tell us what is good. It is not a complaint about being alone but a plain fact that comes with being free.
• Despair: living by relying only on what we can actually do, without counting on others or on history to guarantee results. It is not an excuse for doing nothing.
• Bad faith: pretending we are not free by blaming feelings, circumstances or character for what we choose. Sartre sees it as a way of lying to oneself to escape responsibility.
• Humanism: for Sartre, the view that people are always unfinished and must create themselves. He rejects the idea that humanity is already admirable and complete.

Applying it in real life

The lecture works best as a spark for your own thinking. Pick one question and test it against your life instead of only retelling Sartre.

• Think of a choice you made because “that is just how I am.” Does Sartre's view change how you see it?
• Sartre says every choice also shows what a person should be. Which of your recent choices could you defend if everyone did the same?
• Where do you blame circumstances, feelings or other people to avoid deciding? Is that what he calls bad faith?
• Does the student's dilemma have a right answer? Do you agree that no rule can settle it?
• Is a philosophy with no fixed human nature hopeful or frightening to you, and why?

To use the ideas, write down one decision you are avoiding and say what you would choose if nobody else could decide for you. Notice excuses that begin “I can't, because I'm the kind of person who…”. When a friend asks for advice, share your reasons rather than a rule. One caution: this lecture is a popular introduction, not the whole of Sartre's thought, which is developed at length in Being and Nothingness (1943).