[For existentialism, the choice for oneself is the choice for a
world, for commitment to a plural world. Returning to Sartre today
means not accepting the distracted somnambulism of our societies,
because we have only one life and only one planet.]
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CONDEMNED TO FREEDOM, SARTRE SOUGHT EXISTENTIAL RESCUE  
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Claudio Tognonato
May 12, 2023
Il Manifesto Global
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_ For existentialism, the choice for oneself is the choice for a
world, for commitment to a plural world. Returning to Sartre today
means not accepting the distracted somnambulism of our societies,
because we have only one life and only one planet. _

,

 

In 1943 Paris, the city, which had surrendered to Hitler in 1940, is
still under siege by German troops. Hotbeds of resistance are being
organized by the _maquis_, various partisan groups opposed to the
occupiers. Basic necessities are lacking, the war has been going on
for years and no glimmer of peace is in sight. Paris has emptied out:
it is a city with no subway, no light, no coal or electricity, and it
is difficult even to find candles. In this climate, the publisher
Gallimard dares to publish _L’être et le néant_ _(Being and
Nothingness)_, a 724-page work written by a new philosopher named
Jean-Paul Sartre.

During the occupation, Sartre participated in the Resistance as part
of the Socialism and Freedom group, but first and foremost, he wrote.
Together with Simone de Beauvoir, he would take refuge near the stove
at the Café de Flore, at 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain. Every morning
they would arrive early to get a seat near the source of warmth and
spend the whole day scribbling on sheets of paper and commingling with
other intellectuals. Rumor has it that the owner, Paul Boubal, took
many months to realize that the quirky, cross-eyed gentleman with the
fake fur coat and the pipe always in his mouth had brought his café
to the center of Paris’s cultural movement.

Now, to commemorate the work’s 80th anniversary, Il Saggiatore
offers a new Italian edition of _Being and Nothingness_, this time
with a preface by Massimo Recalcati (744 pages, 28 Euros, translation
by Giuseppe Del Bo). Let us try to expound on some essential points of
existentialism, which continue to make it a necessary perspective for
understanding the present.

During the war, Sartre wrote with great passion and declared that he
had a goal – he said, “I want to give a philosophy to the postwar
period.” An ambitious thought, but there is no doubt that he had
ideas and was convinced of their validity. He wrote even as a
prisoner: captured by German troops, he managed to carve out space and
time to continue his reflections (found today in the _Notebooks of
the Phony War_). His motto was “never a day without a line,” and
he lived his life around two activities: reading and writing.

However, he did not want to be an intellectual who observed human
affairs from the window of his ivory tower; instead, he proposed a
mode of thought rooted in the world that makes commitment into a
reason for existence. Because, if one cannot escape one’s era, it is
better to live it intensely. He also says this in the preface of the
first issue of his magazine _Les Temps Modernes_: “We do not want
to lose anything of our time; there have perhaps been better ones, but
this is ours and this is the life we have to live.” So, the idea is
to live one’s time to the fullest – but how? Sartre gives no
directions – right after the end of a world war with millions of
dead, after the collapse of all certainty, he declares that there is
no morality to preach.

There are no recipes: living is a challenge, the human being does not
have an essence to realize nor any commandment to follow; they are not
done, but always in process, and they will have to invent themselves.
They have a void before them, a horizon open to infinite
possibilities.

After the liberation of Paris, this perspective spread through _Being
and Nothingness_ and the impactful series of Sartre’s other major
writings and cultural initiatives. Between 1944 and ’45 Sartre
published several plays that went on to be staged, such as _Behind
Closed Doors_ and _The Flies_. The first two volumes of the
novel _The Roads to Freedom_ came out, as well as numerous writings
on politics, philosophical and literary criticism. He wrote
in _Combat_, the magazine edited by Albert Camus, and his byline was
often featured in the newspaper _Le Figaro_.

Furthermore, in October ‘45 he started the magazine _Les Temps
Modernes_; on the editorial board, along with Sartre and Beauvoir, we
find first-rate intellectuals such as Raymond Aron, Michel Leiris,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Olivier, Jean Paulhan and Francis
Jeanson; its cover was designed by Pablo Picasso. Philosophy became
the fashion: Juliette Gréco, the bohemian from Saint Germain des
Prets, the female voice of postwar France, became the muse of the
existentialists. Then came Boris Vian with his trumpet, cementing the
presence of intelligence and high commitment among the bacchanalia
that marked the spring of Liberation.

The existentialist turn took off in ‘46 with Sartre’s lecture
(later published as _Existentialism is a Humanism_) in which he
effectively translated the main notions of _Being and
Nothingness_ into popular language. The hall was packed: students,
literati, politicians, journalists were there, waiting for that
diminutive cross-eyed person everyone was talking about; someone
fainted, the police intervened to bring some order.

It was in this atmosphere that Sartre introduced existentialism,
confessing that he hadn’t been the one to name it, and went on to
expound on a series of ideas that form the foundation of his
philosophy. At the center of his thought is the human being; the
particular human being is the single subject we find everywhere,
trying to survive in a world of constraints, who is in distress, but
also an individual who, even under conditions of maximum coercion,
remains free.

For existentialism, freedom is constitutive: it is the only constant
that distinguishes the human species. Sartre said human beings are
“condemned to be free”: condemned because it is not easy to decide
and living is a risk. Every action involves the renunciation of other
possibilities, as the individual doing the choosing is limited while
the opportunities are inexhaustible. We are conditioned by the world,
by history, by culture, by our past, but all this does not determine
us.

Furthermore, the search for self takes place within a jungle of inert
objects of the human world that give us clues from their passivity.
For our condition, however, the important thing is liberation – that
is, what we choose to do with all the inert and mute baggage we carry.
To act is to respond to the challenge, a small shift that makes a
person a totally unconditioned being. We are abandoned to our own
devices, but free – here is a form of anti-humanism, a humanism
without presupposed models, a kaleidoscope of diversity.

_Being and Nothingness_ is a complex and captivating work, philosophy
written by a man who would become a Nobel laureate in literature. The
work paves the way toward overcoming “Heidegger-like” philosophy,
far removed from the human being living in society. The concrete human
being is not an abstraction: in the face of so much freedom, they are
tormented, they suffer, they depend on the limits set on them by a
body that is adverse to them, yet an indispensable instrument that
allows them to be present. The individual is never just individual:
they are already outside, in the world, where they perceive themselves
as other than themselves, mirror themselves, reflect themselves, judge
themselves.

Individual freedom is actually a pluralistic freedom, a precious good
and at the same time a burden of responsibility, because we are
responsible for what we do but also for our silences, our failures to
act, our omissions. For existentialism, the choice for oneself is the
choice for a world, for commitment to a plural world. Returning to
Sartre today means no longer accepting the distracted somnambulism of
our societies, because we have only one life and only one planet.

* existentialism
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* freedom
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* Jean-Paul Sartre
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