Existentialism is a Humanism

A Book Review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s iconic work

I was always under the impression that this was a key text for existentialism, but it’s not the case. It is just a transcript of a talk he gave in 1945, and it’s quite short. The beginning of the book, after the preface and introduction, is the best. It touches on some of the key themes of existentialism, most famously, Satre’s ideas of “existence precede essence”.

Human beings cannot be a priori defined. We have no intrinsic nature, and there is no objective grounding for any values besides the ones we choose to follow. “man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards”. Notions of freedom and responsibility are also highly emphasized.

Something that I found rather disappointing in the book is that it is heavily embedded in the historical and social context of the time. I had hoped that this would go deep into existentialism, but it was not the case. Beyond the basic introduction mentioned above, the talk is mostly about refuting criticisms from the public and intellectuals at the time against the movement of existentialism. It is just as political and social as philosophical. I’m sure that this was of huge importance at the time, but it loses significance in our current time.

There isn’t that much writing from Satre himself. Out of almost 100 pages, only 40 are actually his thoughts during the talk. The preface adds 7 pages, an introduction 17, and an incredibly long rant by Pierre Naville during the Q&A 11 pages, and ends with a 25-page commentary on Camus’ The Stranger.

The preface and introduction were good, and they try to provide some background to what made the talk happen, along with some caution of viewing Satre through this work alone, as it was incredibly limited and aimed at a non-philosophical audience. The Pierre portion was not that enjoyable and heavily political.

The commentary on Camus’ novel was great. It explored the theme of the absurd in “The Stranger” and connected it to his later work the Myth of Sisyphus. Something I didn’t like is that a large portion of it was focused on the literary style and also made several comparisons and analogies to other works that went over my head. At the least, I was lucky enough to have read both Stranger and Sisyphus’ works, but for those who haven’t, this portion will be almost useless. In addition, I’m not sure if it fits that well with the talk. While it provides great insight into Camus’ thought, I find that his absurdist philosophy differs a fair bit from Satre’s existentialism, despite some similarities.

I wouldn’t say it is a bad book, but if you were very optimistic as I was, beware that it might be a bit different than what you expect. A very small portion of the book is actually his ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ talk, and even within the talk, a lot of deals with social and political concerns of the time. It might still be worth checking out, especially in the beginning, as it does give a decent introduction to Satre’s existential philosophy, but I would personally try to find that text as a stand-alone. If you want something deeper into Satre, and more focused on his philosophy, then I think any Satre introduction book would be a better fit.

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Tiago V.F.