What is the meaning of life according to Jean-Paul Sartre

The French philosopher, novelist and essayist Jean Paul Sartre He defended man’s freedom and absolute responsibility for his actions. What, in your opinion, is the meaning of life.

Jean-Paul Sartre was the thinker of freedom. She was born in Paris in 1905, she studied philosophy when she was twenty—during which she met her future partner, the feminist activist Simone de Beauvoir—and she wrote works that laid the foundations of ‘existentialism.

This current of thought has left a profound mark on Western modernity. Sartre was also a great prose writer, whose talent earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, although he refused it due to his principles.

Jean-Paul Sartre: what is the meaning of life

The existentialism founded by Sartre defends it The individual is free and totally responsible for his actions. In this it transforms the meaning of each person’s life into an intimate creation and an individual ethic, separate from any external belief system.

What is the meaning of life? What should I do? Danish thinker Sören Kierkegaard pioneered the idea of ​​existential angst by considering the decisions people are forced to make in life.

Jean-Paul Sartre opened these questions to give some effective answers: nothing special has been achieved in this life, the nature of man is freedom, what the human being is condemned to is being free.

According to their ideas, men and women can always choose. Each of the decisions they must make throughout their lives – a job, having a relationship or not, having children or not – are an exercise in constant freedom.

In his work he insists that if people feel that someone else decides for them, it is because they give up this freedom, perhaps because they prefer the comfort of being members of a system in which things are imposed.

The ideal for Sartre It is that of a conscience exempt from any determination. Man is free because he does not have or need any external determination thanks to the preconscious structure of consciousness.

Man is condemned to freedom

In 1945, the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre He held a conference in which he expounded the principles of existentialist philosophy to explain his position and defend it from the constant criticism he had at the time.

A year later These thoughts were published worldwide in a book entitled “Existentialism is a Humanism”, a text that was the key to this whole movement.. There he carries out an analysis of the human condition and the meaning of existence.

One of the most important ideas of this work is presented through this quote, as it analyzes concepts such as freedom and reflects on the scope of man’s individual responsibility: “Man is condemned to be free.”

It is necessary to highlight that the author rejects the idea that there is a superior being who determines the course of life; Sartre and his wife Simone were atheists. And, based on this basic idea, it is assumed that every human being is responsible for his own existence, his own actions and decisions.