I finally met with Sartre earlier today for brunch. It was a pleasant experience, but at times awkward, for he was constantly being interrupted by autograph seekers and the like. He was cordial to them, but I could sense his irritation. As I promised, I have here posted the interview.
Me: Hello sir. How are you? Thank you very much for coming.
Sartre: I am fine and you're welcome.
Me: You have mentioned in the past that many of the people who interview you are not qualified to do so. I hope I don't fall in that category.
Sartre: Well, whether or not you do, it is still the duty of a philosopher to make his doctrine as accessible as possible, even to the uninitiated.
Me: Alright then. I was hoping we could discuss the principles of your philosophy, your Existentialism, which you presented last month for the Club Maintenant. But before we do so, could you summarize or define what Existentialism is exactly? I know you defined it in various different ways during the lecture, but I had trouble seeing which was primary and which were secondary.
Sartre: There is a difficulty here in that the word can be used in so many ways. And even if you do not use the word equivocally, one can still look at the meaning from various angles. I think the best way of initially understanding the term,as I said in my lecture, is to define it as an attempt to draw all of the conclusions inferred by a consistently atheistic point of view.
Me: So in order to be an Existentialist one must first deny the existence of the Deity?
Sartre: Or at least deny that God has any interest in human affairs. He either does not exist or merely brought man into existence and then said: "Be what you will, I have no care."
Me: So is this one of the primary principles of your philosophy?
Sartre: It's a principle insofar as it's a prerequisite. What's important here, however, is the denial of human nature. If God does not exist, then there is no master plan for humanity. There is no moral obligation, no ultimate or overarching meaning to life in general, and no final causality as the Ancients believed. There is no preconceived model for man in the mind of God. There is no way in which we ought to be. We just are.
Me: So Existentialists do not meddle in proofs for God's existence or non-existence?
Sartre: Precisely. We leave that task for others. We assume that God does not exist, as far as man is concerned, and go from there. Now this leads to an important metaphysical claim that is the foundation of our entire philosophy. This is the idea that existence precedes essence.
Me: Do you mean in general, with all things, or just human existence and human essence?
Sartre: Well, as far as last month's lecture is concerned, lets just say this is the case when applied to man.
Me: Alright. What does this mean?
Sartre: Perhaps it is best understood by contrasting it with the opposite idea: the claim that essence precedes existence. This was the belief of classical philosophy. Its proponents thought that the concepts of all things were invented by God, and later brought into existence through an act of creation. They believed, for example, that what it is to be a man was universally established by God, making human nature immutable and eternal. We Existentialist, on the other hand, taking as our starting point the non-existence of God, hold that man "first materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself." (He quoted his lecture)
Me: Is this the reason why you say that man is utterly free to choose what he will become, since he has no innate determination or constraints?
Sartre: Yes. And a consequent of this is what I call the anguish of responsibility. Since man determines himself in front of everyone, he is no longer able to find excuses for his behavior or being. He is the sole cause of what he has become. You were asking earlier about principles? This is the first principle of Existentialism.
Me: I see. But surely you don't want to say that man has the potential to be anything he wants? For no matter how hard a man may wish to be a bird, he cannot actually become one. Is there not at least a certain basic level of constraint upon him?
Sartre: Certainly one must admit, what we call, a universal human condition. Man must live among others, have a body, and eventually die. But these conditions do not comprise an essence, they merely limit his situation in the world.
Me: Now I am confused. I'm not at all clear as to what you mean by essence. Essence seems to me precisely what determines and limits the manner in which a particular thing exists. When we ask, for example, what the essence of man is, we are really asking this question: what common qualities do all individual men posses by which we call them men? Let me start over. In order to give a common name to a multitude of individual things we must first see something in all of them that is the same. Why are we able to call both you and I men? It's because we share certain innate qualities. These innate qualities make up the essence of man, the what it is to be man. Is this not the notion of essence that one finds in the writings of the Ancients and Scholastics?
Sartre: What you are talking about might be better termed a definition. But, nevertheless, what I mean when I say that existence precedes essence is that we cannot refer to anything but ourselves as the cause of our being or actions. We cannot say things like "Well, man is just naturally selfish," or "he was raised that way."
Me: So, in a way, we can say that essence precedes existence, but that this essence is in no way a final or efficient cause of man's action and ultimate being (the what he has become).
Sartre: I guess. Again it depends on what you mean by essence.
Me: Let me ask you a different question. In your lecture you quoted Dostoevsky when he wrote: "If God does not exist, everything is permissible." Do you agree with this statement?
Sartre: If one is to be consistent in his atheism he must agree with it. If one is truly an atheist, one must bear the full consequence of that belief. In modern times there is a certain political tendency to remove God from public life, but at the same time hold to a type of "secular morality." To us Existentialists, this is absurd. You hear all the time of atheists speaking about good and evil, and right and wrong. I don't know what they mean. They are clearly not willing to face up to their own claims.
Me: Do you think that what you are proposing gives any kind of future to man? If there is no God, nor any morality, how are we to continue living with any kind of hope?
Sartre: I believe that Existentialism is a very optimistic doctrine. It states that man is fully capable of making anything of himself. There are no longer any excuses, just a vast sea of opportunity.
Me: But there is no way of praising or blaming a man for what he has freely chosen to become.
Sartre: No
Me: So if I choose to become a mass murderer, I am no worse than the most honest man in the world?
Sartre: Correct. If a man chooses to become a monster, that is his choice.
Me: And, under your doctrine, the honest man would be just as much a monster. In fact words like monster, virtue, praise and blame,and the like are rendered meaningless according to the Existentialists.
Sartre: I suppose. [long pause] Well its about 12:30, so I must be off.
Me: Thank you again for meeting with me. I hope it wasn't too much of a bother.
Sartre: Not at all. Not at all.
[We both began to walk out of the restaurant}
Sartre: We certainly live in a strange world. Its our job to make some sense out of it all.
Me: Agreed.
Sartre: Well, so long then.
Me: Goodbye.
