"Sartre's Existential Humanism Part 1"
by Jeff Mason

"If you have no nature, then nothing constrains your actions. You must make an existential choice everyday to continue to be the sort of person you have been up until now. You must make the big choices of life alone. It is no good seeking advice, for by the time you have decided whose advice to seek, you have already made up your mind what you are going to do. Conscious deliberation simply confirms a prior choice.

As free conscious beings we are responsible for our actions and their consequences. We are also responsible for our non-actions and their consequences. Nothing grounds our projects. We stand on a void, and it makes one dizzy to look down. All the common certainties vanish, and suddenly human lives appear false, as though everyone was trying to be something they are not, or trying not to be something they are. No one takes responsibility for the free acts they make of their lives. This is bad faith. The truth does make you dizzy at first, but you have to get used to it.

We have to live without excuse from now on, without a transcendent crutch, without a purpose or a meaning. There is no designer who made us according to some pre-conceived pattern. We have to make ourselves in a world we did not choose. Life is contingent and can be snuffed out at any second, will be snuffed out at some second in the future. Our existence is de trop, superfluous, extraneous to requirements. Every one must live with a kind of ontological insecurity induced by the awareness of mortality. This is the famous `Existential Angst' or `Dread' signified by a black beret and turtleneck sweater, French cigarettes and espresso. We must lose the last of our innocence, or fall back into self-deception. We have to find a way to live with anxiety and to use its energy creatively, not escape into bad faith. Our situation in the world is risky and scary, but we have to face up to it."