Jean-Paul Sartre does not translate in our Modern World

Sartre is clearly the existentialism master. His bleak views of humanity have shaped the ways in which aesthetic existentialists view the world.

The quote below represent, quite aptly, his philosophical outlook.

"Existence is prior to essence. Man is nothing at birth and throughout his life he is no more than the sum of his past commitments. To believe in anything outside his own will is to be guilty of 'bad Faith.' Existentialist despair and anguish is the acknowledgement that man is condemned to freedom. There is no God, so man must rely upon his own fallible will and moral insight. He cannot escape choosing."

Although-as this quotation would imply-the individual's actions and choices are key to his own existence, most cannot agree with the ways this existence is personified through the eye's of the existentialist. I for one will not agree with the philosophies of Sartre, his peers, or those in the arts influenced by existentialism. I am of the opinion that the concept of existentialism is a theory which has been embraced to try and portray life as a constant, isolated struggle, and to some extent I feel that it has been glamorised through literature as humanity's "will to power".

In "Being and Nothingness" (a rather appropriate title, which conveys the existentialist persuasion), Sartre said, "There is no ultimate meaning or purpose inherent in human life; in this sense life is absurd". Life is anything but absurd. It has great meaning and poignancy; both in a psychological and reproductive sense. It is madness for Sartre to rebuke the value of life. Life and the interaction in life only furthers humanity's moral greatness and makes for a more comfortable and enjoyable life, and for one to be existential in the modern world is to deny what is all and good within society.

A further aspect which I would like to pick up on as far as Sartre's philosophy goes, is he rejection of basic Freudian concepts, concepts of which one could only perceive as common place and obvious in modern society. Freud argued that who a person becomes is often related abck to the individual's past i.e. childhood, when the ego is installed. However Sartre argues that an individual has the abitly to reshape it's own values. Although in some sense Sartre is correct as people's values are often changed; they are usually changed by others via interaction, and furthermore to argue that we are not driven by our past is madness.