Jean-Paul Sartre

Have you ever stared at something utterly ordinary—a chair, a doorknob, your own hand—and suddenly it felt strange, even foreign? Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy begins in such moments of disorientation. In works like Nausea and Being and Nothingness, Sartre argues that beneath the layers of routine, language, and obligation lies a raw, unsettling reality: existence itself, unfiltered and absurd. But within that strangeness, he finds not despair, but the possibility of radical freedom. Existence, he insists, has no built-in meaning; we are condemned to be free—to invent ourselves moment by moment.

Sartre’s ideas are both terrifying and exhilarating. If nothing in the universe comes with instructions or divine justification, then you are completely responsible for giving your life direction. You can no longer hide behind your job title, relationship status, or social role; those are constructs you choose to inhabit—or abandon. This freedom, however, often produces anguish—the frightening realization that everything you do is an invention, not a necessity dictated by nature or God.

Existence Before Essence

One of Sartre’s most quoted formulations is that “existence precedes essence.” In plain terms, that means you are not born with a predetermined nature or moral script. A paper cutter is made with a purpose—to cut paper—but you are not. Human beings exist first, and only later define what they are through choices. This reverses centuries of philosophical thinking that assumed people were born with souls or destinies designed by God (as in the views of Aquinas or Descartes). For Sartre, there’s no divine plan, only you, thrown into the world, left to decide what kind of person to become.

That might sound like liberation—but it’s also a kind of existential vertigo. Imagine standing on a cliff’s edge, realizing there is nothing stopping you from stepping forward except your own decision. That, for Sartre, is what life is like: every second is a choice, and every choice constructs the meaning (or meaninglessness) of your existence.

The Shock of the Absurd

In his novel Nausea, Sartre dramatizes this realization through the character of Antoine Roquentin, who suddenly feels nauseated by the sheer being of things—a tree root, a chair, his own body. The familiar becomes strange, as if he’s seeing the world without the comforting filter of names and categories. Sartre calls this confrontation “the absurdity of the world.” When you stop taking things for granted, everything appears contingent, meaningless, and even grotesque. This isn’t nihilism for its own sake—it’s an invitation to wake up. By seeing how bizarre ordinary life really is, you also see that nothing is fixed; everything is open to reinterpretation.

Freedom and Anguish

Once you recognize that the world has no built-in meaning, you face the true weight of freedom. Sartre insists that humans are “condemned to be free”—condemned because we did not choose this condition, yet cannot escape it. Freedom is inescapable because every time you act, even by refusing to decide, you choose. You cannot avoid responsibility for your choices, no matter how much you wish to hide behind social roles, traditions, or excuses. This realization often provokes what Sartre calls anguish: not mere anxiety, but the raw awareness that you alone are the author of your life script.

Bad Faith and Self-Deception

Most people flee from this anguish through what Sartre terms “bad faith”—a kind of self-deception in which you pretend not to be free. You might say, “I have to work this job; I have no choice,” or “I can’t leave this relationship.” These are comforting lies that hide the truth of freedom behind social conventions. Sartre’s famous example is the waiter who performs his role mechanically, exaggerating his gestures, convincing himself that he is a waiter rather than a person who happens to be waiting tables. Bad faith, in short, is living as if your identity were fixed by circumstance rather than self-invention.

Freedom in Politics and Society

Sartre’s existentialism isn’t just about private psychology—it has political implications. He believed that capitalist societies manufacture a sense of necessity through money and labor. People begin to think they have to work certain hours, earn certain incomes, or conform to consumer ideals. For Sartre, this is collective bad faith: a giant denial of freedom orchestrated by economic systems. His sympathy for Marxism came from its potential to expose and challenge this illusion, though he criticized communist regimes for falling into new forms of dogma and bad faith themselves.

Why Sartre Matters Today

Sartre’s thought remains vital because it demands honesty about your freedom and your capacity for change. In a world of algorithmic feeds, career tracks, and social media identities, it’s easy to live according to prewritten scripts. Sartre would urge you to see through those illusions—to recognize that the defining story of your life is unwritten until you write it. His brand of existentialism isn’t about reckless freedom or individualism at all costs; it’s about ethical responsibility. Since there’s no external authority to dictate right and wrong, your choices define not just your essence but the kind of humanity you endorse for everyone.

In the pages that follow, we’ll explore Sartre’s key ideas in depth: the weirdness of the world, the reality of radical freedom, the traps of bad faith, and the social systems that shape or suppress our choices. By the end, you’ll see that Sartre’s existentialism isn’t a philosophy of despair—it’s a challenge to live authentically, to own your freedom fully, and to see the absurd not as meaningless, but as the stage on which true self-creation begins.

Sartre once said that philosophy begins when the familiar becomes strange. His first lesson, drawn from his novel Nausea, is that the world is far weirder—and less stable—than we ordinarily believe. When we stop labeling objects and experiences with routine categories, we catch glimpses of a raw, unfiltered existence that can feel nauseating or absurd, but also deeply enlightening.

Moments of Uncanny Awareness

The protagonist of Nausea, Antoine Roquentin, discovers this during a mundane tram ride. Touching the seat beside him, he suddenly sees it without its familiar function. The word “seat” no longer fits; it’s just a lump of matter, grotesque in its own right. Sartre calls this an encounter with the “absurdity of the world.” The moment strips away our cozy narratives, revealing how arbitrary our understanding of reality is. The world doesn’t come with meanings attached—we supply them.

You can try the same experiment in your own life. Think about the act of “eating dinner.” Beneath that phrase hides the bizarre image of humans chewing dead plants and animals while the planet spins through space. Or take your job: a daily ritual of button-pressing and sound-making in exchange for papers or numbers on a screen. These reframings can be unsettling, but they also free you from the illusion that life’s structures are natural or inevitable.

From Discomfort to Clarity

Sartre doesn’t dwell on this weirdness simply to unsettle you. He wants you to see that the normal world operates under a spell of habit and language. Once that spell breaks—even briefly—you gain access to a deeper perspective. Things don’t have to be the way they are. Existence is fluid, not fixed. By exploring its strangeness, you also rediscover its possibilities.

This isn’t just philosophy; it’s an exercise in awareness. When you learn to look at the world without assumptions, you grasp the freedom woven into its fabric. It’s in these uncanny moments that Sartre’s existentialism begins—when you wake up to the fact that you’re not living in a world of settled meaning, but one of infinite potential.

Sartre’s second major theme is unsettling but central: you are completely free. Even when you believe you have no choice, that belief itself is a choice. For Sartre, human existence is defined by a continual process of choosing and re-choosing who we are. We are not bounded by any divine plan or psychological essence; we invent our lives through our actions.

Freedom as a Condition

Sartre calls this condition being “condemned to be free.” Condemned, because you can’t escape it. Freedom isn’t optional; it’s baked into the human condition. Even in situations of constraint—under oppressive systems or personal obligations—you still decide how to respond. The Nazi prisoner who refuses to inform on a friend, the worker who dreams of quitting despite poverty—both affirm their freedom in choice.

The Weight of Responsibility

For Sartre, with freedom comes anguish. Anguish isn’t fear of doing wrong—it’s the dizzy awareness that nothing compels your choices but you. Imagine realizing that every decision creates not only your self but sets an example of what a human being should be. There's no higher authority to absolve or guide you. This burden is terrifying and liberating in equal measure.

When you feel trapped, Sartre would urge you to test your assumptions. What if you could leave your job, your city, even your identity behind? You might say, “I can’t,” but he would reply: “You choose not to.” Recognizing that difference is the first act of freedom.

If freedom is our inescapable condition, why do most of us live as if we aren’t free? Sartre’s answer: bad faith. This is his term for the self-deceptive ways people deny their own freedom by pretending to be bound to roles, identities, or circumstances.

The Waiter’s Illusion

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes a waiter whose movements are comically precise—too quick, too eager. The man acts as though he were born to serve, as if his essence were “to be a waiter.” Sartre sees this as bad faith. The waiter hides behind his role to avoid the anxiety of freedom. He is not simply a waiter; he is a free being who chooses, moment to moment, to play that role. In convincing himself otherwise, he lives in bad faith.

Bad Faith in Everyday Life

You might recognize this in yourself when you say, “I couldn’t help it,” or “I have to do this.” Parents, workers, students, lovers—all fall into bad faith when they identify completely with their societal labels. It’s a form of comfort: if your identity is fixed, you’re spared the anguish of constant choice. But the cost is authenticity. Sartre believes the authentic life requires acknowledging our choices—even when they confine us.

Living authentically doesn’t mean abandoning all commitments; it means recognizing them as chosen. Staying in a job or a relationship because you’ve freely decided its value is different from clinging to it out of fear or inertia. Bad faith is the refusal to face freedom; authenticity is the courage to own it.

For Sartre, the greatest collective form of bad faith is capitalism itself. Economic systems, he argues, train people to think their lives are dictated by necessity—by money, status, or production. The capitalist myth tells you that your worth is measured by your output and income, not by your own choices or values. This, Sartre says, is a lie that imprisons entire societies.

Money as a False Constraint

When you say, “I’d move abroad if I could afford it,” or “I can’t quit my job because of money,” Sartre hears the voice of bad faith. Money becomes an invisible cage, a convenient reason not to take responsibility for your deeper desires. He saw this passivity as a moral and political issue. Freedom isn’t only private; it has to be shared and nurtured through just economic structures.

Sartre and Marxism

This critique led Sartre toward Marxism, though cautiously. He admired Marx’s vision of a classless society that freed people from material domination, but he rejected rigid communist orthodoxy. For Sartre, Marxism needed existentialism’s ethical core—a reminder that systems should serve individual freedom, not replace one form of dogma with another. His rebellious act of refusing the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature was, in part, a protest against the commodification of intellectual life.

Though Sartre’s political program was unfinished, his challenge remains vivid: how can we design societies that support rather than suppress authentic choice? His thought invites you to question the economic and cultural forces that shape your sense of what’s possible—and to see that every “necessity” may in fact be a choice waiting to be reclaimed.