Sartre: Freedom, But Do We Want It?

Jean-Paul Sartre, who died in 1980, is one of modern Frances most popular philosophers; at the same time, much of his actual work has been somewhat neglected for a long time. As the centenary of his birth approaches, however, that seems to be changing - interest in his ideas and writings is growing in both America and Europe.

Scott McLemee writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Awareness of ... freedom can be terrifying. Sartre gives as an example the experience of vertigo while standing on a cliff: One is aware that the freedom to move just a few inches would mean plunging into an abyss. But human beings are exceptionally good at hiding from our own freedom, a condition Sartre calls "bad faith." We treat our routine actions and familiar roles as if they were built into the order of the world, rather than something we are responsible for creating.

This was not simply a philosophy urging people to pull themselves up by their metaphysical bootstraps, however. It became a tool of social criticism. In the pages of Les Temps Modernes ... Sartre interpreted, and denounced, the bad faith embodied in anti-Semitism, imperialism, economic exploitation, and other forms of domination.

Unfortunately, Sartre's legacy does not consist entirely of challenging ideas about freedom and human liberation. His hatred for the oppression he found in Western capitalism led the philosopher into some extraordinary displays of bad faith of his own. ... Indeed, it often seems that, for much of his life, Sartre's deepest instinct when faced with a totalitarian movement of the left was to find something encouraging to say.

The above covers some of the basic points of McLemee's article - if you are interested in Sartre or existentialism, I recommend reading the entire piece. Sartre's works were filled with ideas that could be fascinating or horrible, even at the same time.

Read More:

• Philosophy 101
• Sartre: Biography
• Philosophy of Religion
• Review: Sartre, by Neil Levy.