Jean-Paul Sartre Questions and Answers
Jean-Paul Sartre
What are Sartre's definitions for these three terms "anguish," "forlornness," and "despair"? How does he distinguish...
Sartre uses these three similar terms to define very specific things so that he can clarify very specific emotions. Anguish, forlornness, and despair all have similar denotations, but Sartre uses...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre says "when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we don not only mean that he is responsible for his...
Sartre's quote here seems paradoxical in that it equates one's self and identity to that of the race of humanity as a whole. Obviously, to say that someone's responsibility over their self is...
Jean-Paul Sartre
What is your reaction to Sartre's perspective on freedom? Do you find his view liberating and inspiring, or do you...
Perhaps one of the most famous lines attributed to Sartre is "man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." Sartre's notion of freedom...
Jean-Paul Sartre
"What is Literature?" According to Sartre's point of view, what does he want to explain with this text?
Sartre thought that meaning is essentially unfixed. Humans give an order and meaning to the world. We do not make the world, but we do give it meaning. To use the old example, if a tree falls in...
Jean-Paul Sartre
What is the meaning of Sartre's statement that "man is condemned to be free"?
What Sartre understands by freedom is the unique ability of human beings to rise above their given condition. Plants, rocks, and animals don't have this ability, only humans. Contrary to what...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre says, "when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his...
Existentialism does not occur in a vacuum. Granted, it is not a church or a prescriptive ideology, but it is born by a community into a community. Paul Tillich says it is the "natural ally of...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialism in story "The Wall" by Jean Paul Sartre.
Existentialism is a cultural, literary, and philosophical movement that arose largely as a reaction to the unreflective optimism and belief in progress of the nineteenth century. It is not a set of...
Jean-Paul Sartre
In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre argues that humankind's existence precedes its essence. What does this mean,...
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French writer, philosopher, and political activist who was widely influential in the burgeoning existentialist movement of the twentieth-century. Existentialists believe that...
Jean-Paul Sartre
How is sexuality portrayed in Sartre's short stories?
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a French writer and existentialist who was the recipient of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature. Among the many topics Sartre examined in his voluminous writings...
Jean-Paul Sartre
"What is Literature?" by Sartre: How is it different or similar to any other philosopher's point of view of...
Reflecting his views on existential responsibility, in "What is Literature?", Sartre proposes that the author and reader ideally engage in a dialectical "going-and-coming" relationship: It is the...
Jean-Paul Sartre
As we all know, what characterizes philosophy is its (complicated/ambiguous) language. Thus, simplicity and clarity...
The distinction between a choice in which the consequences fall on one's own shoulders and a choice in which the consequences fall on the shoulders of others is a meaningless distinction in the...