Sartre's Existentialism: Human Condition, Freedom and Bad Faith

Sartre's Concept of Human Nature

Sartre's Existentialist Project: Sartre considers that human nature is not fixed or predetermined. He holds that there are no possible characteristics or comparisons that define human beings beforehand. He defends that human beings are originally nothing; only their choices and actions make up their personality.

However, there is one thing common to all of human nature, which we all call the human condition. Sartre introduces the concept of the human condition, which are the limits that all people face in the world. These are the following boundaries:

• Being cast into the world
• Having to work
• Living in the midst of others
• Being mortal

The Four Inevitable Facts of Human Life

Every individual must confront these experiences, which are inevitable and which each person resolves in a distinct way according to the vital choices they make. With these four points, Sartre refers to the inevitable sociability, freedom, and poverty or material necessity that are part of our existence, along with the indigence and obligation that lead to different forms of social organization.

Every project, however individual it may seem, has a universal value in the sense that it is understandable to others. This is what it means to be human.

Conditioning and Freedom

Sartre does not deny human existence or the conditioning that surrounds it. Obstacles are created by the self, freely. Human beings are free and cannot choose not to be free; they are condemned to be free. Their acts, which they perform consciously, give meaning to their own environment and to their past. Their past will always be part of their environment and they cannot change it, although they can change the meaning they give to it.

Nothing is ever fully transformed; what may be considered objectively as only one thing can be lived in many ways. The human being has the possibility of choosing, even when faced with determinism.

Bad Faith

Bad faith is a form of self-deception in which one is conscious of one's own freedom, yet pretends that the future is already determined. It is a simultaneous state of knowledge and ignorance, in which the person hides their freedom and anxiety behind a mask. Bad faith is a self-deception, while lying is deceiving others.

Sartre gives the example of a young woman who leaves her suitor's hand where it is, without giving any clear indication of her intentions, so that she does not have to make a decision. Bad faith is opposed to authenticity. We cannot say a priori what the right action is in any given situation; we must choose and take responsibility for our choices.

The Fundamental Project of Being

Although each person has a different project, there is a basic structure of being common to all: being-for-itself, which is consciousness and nothingness at the same time. This concept matches the ideal of God, which is fundamentally the desire to be God. All human projects, acts and choices reflect this desire in different ways. However, the idea of God is contradictory, because consciousness is the negation of being-in-itself.

As a consequence, the human being is a useless passion. Life lies in the divine aim, which is opacity, because we are in the end nothing but our existence, just as we are death. At birth and at death, life has a superfluous meaning. Suicide is not a solution, because freedom remains and death does not eliminate absurdity.

Nausea and the Contingency of Existence

Things simply exist, and existence is contingent: it is just there, without reason. Human beings are indifferent to it and are unable to offer a full explanation of why things exist. That which exists, exists in the world; that is all, and it gives what it is. This experience is what Sartre calls nausea.