Abstract:

In this paper, I explain how the argument presented by Sartre has helped in my thinking about the existence and nature of God. I explain Sartre's philosophical ideas and reasoning before expressing agreement and application. Topics covered are existence preceding essence, forlornness, condemnation to be free, despair, quietism, total involvement, and meaning and value. I conclude by showing how I have adopted many of Sartre's prescriptions, rejected only a few, and have developed a better understanding of my divine through the process.

The simplest and yet most profound summary of my understanding of Sartre's existentialism is as follows: “What they have in common is that they [Christian and atheistic existentialists] think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point.”¹ This coupled with the statement: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”² form the core philosophy Sartre builds upon. Everything else that follows is built upon these central ideas, and from them come several of the tenants of my experience of the sacred.

The concept of essence preceding existence has been the prevailing idea throughout religious history. It is where we derive the notions of 'human nature' and what it is 'like' to be human. It is what allows for morality to be relative to a transcendent 'good.' It speaks to a divine creator, or at least architect, which understands what we are supposed to be. It can even be drawn out to a justification of predestination. Sartre categorically denies all of the above but asserting that we find ourselves existing without a given pattern, expectation, essence, which we must fulfill in order to be considered a 'good person.'

It is through “existence precedes essence” that Sartre can dispel with the notion of God as commonly understood. We are without a great architect which has decided what we shall be, and along with that, without an external moral code to be inherited as divine. Sartre introduces another term here, one that he says Heidegger was found of: “When we speak of forlornness . . . we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this.”³ Clearly Sartre does not cheerfully proclaim the death of God, but rather observes that if indeed existence precedes essence, there are consequences to face. “The existentialist ... thinks it very distressing that God does not exit, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.” “He [mankind] can't start making excuses for himself.”⁴

What then comes of this condition? Simply that: “. . . man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet, in [all] other respects is free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” “. . . man is responsible for his passions.”⁵ Sartre then illustrates these ideas by relating a story told of a former student of his.⁶ The student is conflicted between what he sees as two goods and is unable to come to a decision of what to do by appealing to any ethical system he is familiar with.

He studies what Kantian deontology prescribes without success. He questions the greater good to stay with his mother and not participate in a larger action he feels passionately about or leave his mother to be involved knowing it will grieve her. He discovers the forlornness of not having a heavenly moral court to weigh his case. He feels torn by his passions and finds an ultimate responsibility pressing upon him. In short he grasps the consequence of his condemnation of freedom and finds existential despair:

“As for despair, the term has a very simple meaning. It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible.” “. . . possibilities are to be reckoned with only to the point where my action comports with the ensemble of these possibilities, and no further. The moment the possibilities I am considering are not rigorously involved in my action, I ought to disengage myself from them, because no God, no scheme, can adapt the world and it possibilities to my will.”⁷

The relief the former student finds is a realization that by choosing one option or another, no harm is ultimately done, for a choice must be (even attempting to not choose is making a choice) and it is upon himself only to make the choice: “Actually, things will be as man will have decided they are to be. Does this mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No[!]”⁸ To live life is to be engaged in it; to make choices purely and without hesitation; to own your actions and be authentic to who you are, for “. . . reality alone is what counts, that dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations.”⁹

Sartre goes on to speak more directly of our freedom from predetermined essence and the necessity of our condition to affirm life. “There's always a possibility for the coward not to be cowardly any more and for the hero to stop being heroic. What counts is total involvement; some one particular action or set of circumstances is not total involvement.”¹⁰ There is nothing more to life than what we make it, and without the limits imposed by an appeal to others, there is nothing to fear during our journey through life. “[Man] realizes that he can not be anything (in the sense that we say that someone is witty or nasty or jealous) unless others recognize it as such.”¹¹ What is important is that we make choices and move towards ends we have determined to be important to us. That others view us in a certain way is only as important as we choose it to be, and it is only through their choices that we are to be seen in such a light.

This grants us and endless array of possibilities to be and to become exactly what we find is important for us to become. “Historical situations vary; a man may be born a slave in a pagan society or a feudal lord or a proletarian. What does not vary is the necessity for him to exist in the world, to be at work there, to be there in the midst of other people, and to be mortal there.”¹² Everything beyond that is an open book waiting to be written only by the individual living the life.

This ultimate freedom follows directly from the assumptions lied out at the beginning. Without an external source of morality, we are left with but one option: create values which are important to ourselves, and “. . . to say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.”¹³ Furthermore, “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.”¹⁴ It is these final statements of Sartre's existentialism that most inform my relationship to the sacred.