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Theological Language and the Nature of Man in Jean-Paul Sartre's Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Jasper Hopkins
Jasper Hopkins
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University
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Extract

There is no more prominent atheist today than Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet serious students of Sartre's philosophy are struck by his unabashed use of theological idiom. This use is so extensive that Professor Hazel Barnes in her translator's introduction to Being and Nothingness comments:

Many people who consider themselves religious could quite comfortably accept Sartre's philosophy if he did not embarrass them by making his pronouncement, “There is no God,” quite so specific.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , January 1968 , pp. 27 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1968

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References

1 Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), xxviiiGoogle Scholar. Referred to hereafter as BN.

2 Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 14fGoogle Scholar.

3 Metaphysics, 980a 21.

4 Sartre, J.-P., Saint Genet, translated by B. Frechtman (New York: Mentor Books, 1963), 43fGoogle Scholar.

5 E.g., Desan, Wilfred, The Tragic Finale (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 165Google Scholar: “Sartre … proves not that existence precedes essence but that essence (logically) precedes existence; that is to say, that human existence does not create itseif in some wild and unlimited freedom but follows a general scheme which is called human essence or human nature. [Hence Sartre's discussion is self-contradictory.]” See also p. 162.

Actually Sartre's statements concerning human nature are inconsistent on any interpretation other than the one offered in this paper (and they raise some doubts even about this interpretation). Compare, for instance, the following passages in BN: (1) “When I described consciousness, I could not discuss a nature common to certain individuals but only my particular consciousness, which like my freedom is beyond essence. …” (BN, 438); (2) “Certain original structures are invariable and in each For-itself constitute human-reality” (BN, 456). In support of the present interpretation note BN, 476,552.

6 De Casu Diaboli, Ch. 4. Cf. Genesis 3:5.

7 BN, 615. Cf. BN, 575, where Sartre speaks of the Man-God.

8 Saint Genet, op. cit., 27.

9 Cf. Heidegger, , Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (London: SCM Press, 1962), 331Google Scholar: “In the structure of thrownness, as in that of projection, there lies essentially a nullity. This nullity is the basis for the possibility of inauthentic Dasein in its falling; and as falling, every inauthentic Dasein factically is. Care itself, in its very essence, is permeated with nullity through and through. Thus ‘care’ — Dasein's Being — means, as thrown projection, Being-the-basis of a nullity. … This means that Dasein as such is guilty, if our formally existential definition of ‘guilt’ as ‘Being-the-basis of a nullity’ is indeed correct.”

10 Cf. Saint Genet, op. cit., 14, with the statement at BN, 612, that “there is no such thing as an ‘innocent’ child.”

11 These arguments are reconstructed from BN 58, 80, 88, 90, 622f.

12 Sartre, J.-P., Existentialism and Human Emotions, op. cit., 51Google Scholar.

13 Nietzsche, F., Ecce Homo in The Philosophy of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 1954), 833Google Scholar.

14 E.g., “Each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo.” The Transcendence of the Ego (New York: Noonday Press, 1957), 98fGoogle Scholar.

15 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), Vol. II, 33–36Google Scholar.