Literary and Philosophical Quotes -- Philosophers -- Jean Paul Sartre
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Quotes by Jean Paul Sartre 4
Jean Paul Sartre, born June 21, 1905, Paris, France, died April 15, 1980, Paris. French writer and philosopher. A leading , he wrote literary works, such as the autobiographical novel Nausea (1938) and the play No Exit (1944), and philosophical volumes that include Being and Nothingness (1943). Sartre declined the 1964 Nobel Prize for literature.
If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.
Atheistic existentialism...states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.
Everything has been figured out except how to live.
There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.
The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.
Existentialism is nothing less than an attempt to draw all the consequences of a coherent atheistic position. It isn't trying to plunge man into despair at all. But if one calls every attitude of unbelief despair, like the Christians, then the word is not being used in its original sense. Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. There you've got our point of view. Not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue. In this sense, existentialism is optimistic, a doctrine of action, and it is plain dishonesty for Christians to make no distinction between their own despair and ours and then to call us despairing.
More Quotes by Jean Paul Sartre: Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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