Existentialism Essay

The philosophical study of existence is referred to as existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher who believed in the existentialism principles pioneered by Soren Kierkegaard, Saint Augustine, and Blaise Pascal long before he was born (Mart 50). In the twentieth century, Sartre expressly declared that “existence precedes essence,” which is a fundamental formulation of existentialist. To date, this concept has served as the main or central claim of scholars and researchers in the existentialism paradigm. This paper examines the meaning of Sartre’s remark that ”existence precedes essence” and its consequences for human existence. The belief that all the things in the world have an already predetermined set of ideal characteristics is referred to as essence. For instance, the primary objective of making a chair with a back and four legs is for people to sit on. This case is not always true because a chair can have three legs or no back after it is damaged. In contrast, existence refers to the actual details of a particular thing in the world (Mart 50).

Analyzing the phrase “existence precedes essence”; there is no human nature in the world because God does not exist to conceive it (Sartre 29). The existentialists’ fundamental idea is that human beings are not tied down to some predetermined characteristics or patterns that they must observe and fit (Mart 53). Due to the diversity of the human beings, people deal with challenges in life differently and depending on the circumstances at hand. Moreover, human beings may develop meaning and place some unique values on things in the world since their freedom is unbounded.

Works Cited

Mart, Cagri Tugrul. ”Existentialism in Two Plays of Jean-Paul Sartre.” International Journal of English and Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 2012, pp. 50-54.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. Routledge, 2002.