Slide 1
Sartre saw a life as shaped through choices
Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism emphasizes that human beings shape themselves through choices. A ready-made essence does not fully determine what someone becomes.
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The view does not mean people choose their birthplace or every circumstance. Sartre distinguishes given facts about a situation from the way a person takes them up through projects and action.
Slide 2
Choices bring responsibility for how one lives
For Sartre, choices express a way of valuing and living. Treating an action as merely the inevitable output of a role can evade responsibility.
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Imagine a manager saying the job required a decision while ignoring available alternatives. The example does not prove that every alternative was easy; it asks whether the role fully explains away the agent's participation.
Slide 3
Bad faith treats a changing person as a fixed thing
Bad faith involves evading the tension between our given situation and our capacity to act beyond it. It can treat a person as only a fixed thing.
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The opposite evasion is to pretend that circumstances impose no limits at all. A complete account of agency must acknowledge both what is already given and the choices through which a life develops.
Slide 4
Another person’s gaze changes self-awareness
Sartre investigates how another person's gaze can make us experience ourselves as an object. Social relations are central to his account of self-consciousness.
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Being noticed while doing something embarrassing can abruptly change how an action feels. The example illustrates a shift in perspective, not evidence that every relationship is reducible to shame or surveillance.
Slide 5
Responsibility does not mean control over everything
Taking responsibility does not require claiming control over everything. It requires examining how action participates in shaping a life within real conditions.
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Returning to the manager, identifying constraints and alternatives is more informative than either total self-excuse or unlimited self-blame. The philosophical task is to describe agency accurately rather than erase one side of the situation.
Sources
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy