Existentialism is a humanism

Abstract

Methodological study of the world-famous French philosopher, playwright, writer J.-P. Sartre (1905-1980) is devoted to the reasoned coverage of the cultural-philosophical achievements of existentialism as a teaching that enables human life and accepts as an axiom the statement that every truth and every action presupposes an environment and subjectivity, which is organized either as a behavior or as a deed. The fundamental principle of this doctrine is formulated in the form of the maxim: “existence precedes essence”, in other words, “it is necessary to proceed from the subject”, which became the indisputable ideologeme of the existential movement for decades. And this means that a person firstly exists, meets, appears in the world and only then is defined and acquires authenticity; therefore, he is primarily a  p r o j e c t that is experienced and realized subjectively, thus creating a person out of himself. This is where the humanistic meaning of the worldview doctrine of existentialism emerges: it gives each person ownership of their real being and places full responsibility on them. Moreover, naturalistic determinism is denied in this doctrine, because it supports the opinion that there is no human nature, just as there is no God who would have conceived it. Therefore, the essence of a person is in an irrational plane, associated with complete freedom of actions, feelings of sadness and suffering, spontaneous waves of existential fear, insurmountable absurdity of social everyday life, ultimately with randomness and the experience of abandonment-loneliness. In these dramatic circumstances of a world full of vanity and senselessness, a person is doomed to be free, with the potential of his own consciousness to create personal values and determine the meaning of life, to exist for the constant fulfillment of himself, to establish himself in relations with others through the totality of his actions, expanding the inner horizons of both his own authenticity and specific intersubjectivity. He is always face to face with a changing situation, therefore the choice is always a choice in a clearly defined situational context of being. Therefore, existentialism is a philosophical doctrine of action, a person’s presence in the world, and therefore an optimistic, liberating, humanistic teaching.