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decadent_and_depraved 's review for:
Existentialism Is a Humanism
by Jean-Paul Sartre
"Whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation."
This paragraph pains me, for here, Sartre is so close, so unbelievably, agonizingly close, to describing something real, something far more bitter, far more dreadful than his conception of the man doomed to freedom. Sartre, I ask you, how does the man choose? And, oh, I ask you, why do you retain a notion that man is able to choose, that his will is free, even after ousting God? No, Sartre, the pill one must swallow would be, to the majority, akin to arsenic. For I know how people look at me when I tell them that I must not judge a man or scorn him for his actions. I know that man, much like me, did not choose, for I am still unable to locate neither, a chooser nor the ability to choose. In truth, when I look at man, I see society looking back at me. In that sense, you are right to point out that when the man acts, he acts for the whole of humanity, yet you are mistaken to hold him responsible for those acts.
This paragraph pains me, for here, Sartre is so close, so unbelievably, agonizingly close, to describing something real, something far more bitter, far more dreadful than his conception of the man doomed to freedom. Sartre, I ask you, how does the man choose? And, oh, I ask you, why do you retain a notion that man is able to choose, that his will is free, even after ousting God? No, Sartre, the pill one must swallow would be, to the majority, akin to arsenic. For I know how people look at me when I tell them that I must not judge a man or scorn him for his actions. I know that man, much like me, did not choose, for I am still unable to locate neither, a chooser nor the ability to choose. In truth, when I look at man, I see society looking back at me. In that sense, you are right to point out that when the man acts, he acts for the whole of humanity, yet you are mistaken to hold him responsible for those acts.