Jean-Paul Sartre Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Jean-Paul Sartre - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the roots of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialist-Marxist understandings are deeply embedded in the objects of freedom (analytically) and personal struggle (history/personal struggle).   It is not only impractical to separate Sartre from his time-period, it is impossible.   Dissolution of people’s identities both spiritually and historically was being realized through the tragedies of World War I and World War II.   Combining these significant destructions with new perspectives concerning Psychology (through Freud, Jung†¦), Philosophy found a seemingly different path explaining â€Å"who we are† and â€Å"what is our purpose† as humans.   Sartre was heavily influenced by literature and art and through this media suggested an approach to perceiving the world as it is; ugly, grotesque’, self-absorbed.   This movement towards a more realistic or negative view of life differed greatly from the â€Å"Hope† offered by Leibnitz, Aquinas and other ‘positivists’.   Accordingly, Sartre felt the backlash from â€Å"Hopeful-ists† resulting in Sartre’s â€Å"Existentialism Is a Humanism† lecture in Paris, France 1944. In â€Å"Existentialism Is a Humanism†, Sartre spells out what Existentialism actually is.   Sartre says there are two kinds of Existentialist â€Å"the Christians...and atheistic existentialists† the latter being the group Sartre belongs to.  Ã‚  ... Perhaps Sartre’ wished to embolden and/or disarm his Christian detractors by enlisting Gabriel Marcel as a co-conspirator since Marcel, a converted Catholic, first â€Å"endorsed but later repudiated† (SEP) the Existentialist label. Adding a supremely ironic twist is Sartre first repudiating then endorsing the label of ‘Existentialism’ himself (Sartre.org). Sartre may have been reading Kant and his â€Å"Utilitarianism† by including Christianity as a default proponent; by utility. Sartre suggests the commonness of existentialists is the belief that â€Å"existence precedes essence.† This idea is novel in the scheme of Philosophy. Greek thought or philosophy from Plato suggested a â€Å"Realm of Forms† as the perfection of anything conceivable in perfect form. The ‘thing’ observed had a ‘perfectness’ illustrated in the â€Å"Realm of Forms† above and beyond the common illusionary perception of a living hu man being (Plato 68). Sartre defined reality as production of each individual perceiver’s understanding or capabilities without a definite ‘template’ or guide about what may or may not be true of the ‘thing’ perceived. This is Sartre’s ‘Freedom’ supposition: â€Å"Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself† (Sartre 5). Here, Sartre follows closely in the footsteps of Spinoza by exacting ‘God’ from the realm of reality and describing a ‘natural’ or humanistic understanding of reality. Freedom, to Sartre, is not a political or societal extension; although it can be. Freedom is breaking the chains of bondage from â€Å"determinism† of perhaps, Calvinistic Christianity and allowing man the complete dominion of his or her own