Sartre is the founder of existentialism philosophy, and his famous conclusions such as "Existence precedes essence" and "Others are hell" have influenced many people.
Attracted by Sartre, it is because there is such a puzzle that is difficult to solve: in contemporary society, people are increasingly insecure, the competition is increasingly fierce, and their desires are infinitely extended. It always seems difficult to stop in a hurry. As Gauguin said, "Where do we come from? Who Are We? Where are we going? " The eternal proposition, which we can't answer, gradually loses ourselves and falls into nothingness.
Let's look at Sartre's annotation. Sartre believes that people are born without essence, and essence is acquired and freely chosen through consciousness. Because of his free choice, human nature is not fixed, and I am not who I was yesterday. The choice of consciousness is a very pure and personal matter. Everyone's choices are different, so people's nature is different.
Knowing this premise, why people feel insecure in this world can be explained by existentialism. Although people are free to choose their own essence, they can't stand the uncertainty of their own essence. This situation makes people feel uneasy, so they try to fix their own essence, avoid constantly denying themselves and change the pain they bring.
Zhou said in the article "The Charm of Philosophy": "Man is at the intersection of time and space. As an instant and finite existence, he longs for eternity and infinity. The initial philosophical interest of human beings began with the search for the invariance in change and the absolute in relative, just to give a general explanation of life and combine the instantaneous existence and eternity of human beings. " However, can people find constancy in change?
Sartre is pessimistic about this issue. He is dismayed to see that people are always in a state of vacillation because of their own consciousness and the consciousness of hatred. As long as people are alive, they can't find their own firmness. So, people face nothingness. When a person has no self, the world is nothing to him. With himself, this self is essentially empty, so he still faces the feeling of nothingness. However, Sartre believes that because of this, the unique dignity of human beings was born, and he proudly declared: "It is this nothingness that is the basis of the will to act." In other words, living is meaningful because of nothingness. Nihility is the primitive form of all our actions.
Although Sartre is pessimistic, we can also try to look at the positive side of this view. Suppose a criminal killed someone today. He knows that he made a wrong choice about his nature today. If he can fully understand Sartre's theory that people can freely choose their own nature, it should be easy to be a good citizen the next day. Obviously, this is absurd in the real world. A classic line from a popular youth soap opera a few years ago: "If apologizing helps, why did the police do it?" This fully illustrates the absurdity of this assumption.
Today, Sartre is still idealistic. When we tried to find the sweet spring to answer our puzzles in his philosophy, we found that it was constrained everywhere. Many times, we have no freedom of choice. The so-called people in the rivers and lakes can't help themselves. This famous saying, which has been around for thousands of years, is still valid today. And Sartre seems to be out of date.
Sartre's existentialism swept the European continent during World War II. People in the ruins, Sartre gave them the greatest spiritual comfort. Everything in the past is unbearable, and we should choose a better life. When the European economy began to take off, Sartre also withdrew from people's sight. Why is this happening? In fact, it is not difficult to understand that the ruins in reality and nothingness in philosophy can be well unified. History chose Sartre, and personal experience shaped his thoughts. Once self and ego are combined, generation will exert great power.
Let's go back to the beginning, our confusion. We tried to explain our nothingness with existentialism, but found that Sartre was only tossing himself, and we learned a little about Sartre's experience, especially his love with Beauvoir, not only tossing himself, but also tossing his partner. So what we can do is still unknown. Maybe the answer we can give ourselves is: Don't torture yourself. Perhaps it can be summed up in one sentence: live like a mortal, experience like a poet and think like a philosopher.
Sartre
After World War II, existentialism occupied an important position in French ideological circles and established Christian existentialism. Some writers spread through literary creation, expanding the influence of existentialism. French existentialism is basically divided into two schools: Christian existentialism represented by Wei Yi and Gabur El Marcel; Atheistic existentialism represented by Jean Paul Sartre, albert camus and De bovar is also called Sartre's existentialism, or existentialism for short.
France was full of negative decadence and pessimism in World War II, and intellectuals became cynical and bohemian because of depression, loneliness, abandonment and no way out. Therefore, Sartre's existentialism, which puts personal life, freedom and existence first, is greatly welcomed by the bourgeoisie and intellectuals and regarded as the most fashionable philosophy by them. By the 1950s and 1960s, it had become the most popular philosophical trend in Europe.
On the basis of studying Christian existentialism, Douste abandoned Kierkegaard's religious mysticism, inherited and developed Husserl's irrationalism, and formed his own philosophical thought-atheistic existentialism. Since then, the development of existential philosophy has entered a new stage, which is usually called contemporary existential philosophy. Existentialism puts forward three basic principles: first, "existence precedes essence", and human existence precedes essence. "First of all, people's existence, appearance, appearance, and then explain themselves." The so-called existence, first of all, is the existence of "self", which is the existence I feel. If I don't exist, then nothing exists. The so-called "existence precedes essence" means that "self" precedes essence, that is, people's "self" determines their own essence. The second is that "the world is absurd and life is painful". It is believed that in this "subjective" society, there must be conflicts, struggles and cruelty between people, full of ugliness and sin, and everything is absurd. And man is just a poor man in this absurd and cold situation. This world can only give people endless depression, disappointment, pessimism and negativity, and life is painful. The poor are like this, and so are the rich. The third is "free choice". This is the essence of existentialism. The core of existentialism is freedom, that is, people are absolutely free when choosing their own actions. It believes that people in this world, everyone has their own freedom, and they can make "free choices" in the face of various environments, what actions to take and how to act. "If existence really precedes essence, people will never be able to explain their behavior with reference to a known or specific human nature. In other words, there is no determinism-people are free. People are free. " Sartre believes that if people can't make "free choice" according to their own will in front of things, such people will lose their individuality and "self" and can't be regarded as real existence. Sartre's existential philosophy is not only the ideological core of existential literature, but also the ideological basis of various schools of postmodern literature.
Existentialism is a philosophical irrationalism, which emphasizes individuality, independence and subjective experience. Nietzsche was the first to put forward. Soren kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Jaspers and martin heidegger can be regarded as their pioneers. Especially in the 20th century, it spread widely. French philosopher Sartre and writer albert camus are its representatives.
Its most famous and clear initiative is Sartre's motto: "l'existence précède l'essence". He means that there is no moral or external soul except human existence. Morality and soul are created by human beings in existence. People have no obligation to abide by certain moral standards or religious beliefs, and they have freedom of choice. Judge a person by his behavior, not by who he is, because a person is defined by his behavior. Existentialism denies the existence of God or any other predetermined rule. Sartre opposes any "resistance" factors in life, because they narrow the space for people to choose freely. If there is no such resistance, then the only problem a person has to solve is which way he chooses to take.