Existentialism is a Humanism

The Preface, by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, places “Existentialism is a Humanism” in historical context and argues that the lecture should not be regarded as a definitive or complete statement of Sartre’s views, or even as an adequate introduction to his definitive text, Being and Nothingness (1943).

“Existentialism is a Humanism” is a stenographer’s record of a lecture Sartre gave at the Club Maintenant in Paris, in 1945. Sartre’s eagerness to convince his audience that his philosophical approach was a form of humanism stemmed from the public’s hostility toward his work: Sartre’s philosophy had acquired a reputation for being anti-humanist.

Christians disapproved of Sartre’s atheism, found his philosophy too materialist (i.e. not spiritual enough), and claimed he had “arbitrarily [made] a cult of Being-in-itself” (ix). The Left, claiming that Sartre placed too much emphasis on individual freedom and not enough on impersonal economic forces, considered Sartre’s existentialism reactionary and subjectivist. Both sides abhorred Sartre’s notions of contingency, abandonment, and anguish. There was a general perception that both Sartre’s fiction, which lacked positive heroes, and his philosophy, from which the tabloids reproduced formulations such “Hell is other people” and “Man is a useless passion” out of context, were demoralizing stuff, and not at all what was needed to bolster the battered spirits of post-war Frenchmen and women.