PHL 366 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Existence Precedes Essence, Jean-Paul Sartre, Irreducible Complexity
17 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Being individual is more important than being rational. There is no pre-given nature or essence to human existence. The underground man"s insistence that he never managed to become anything and that it is. Impossible for an intelligent man to become anything anticipates one of the core ideas of existentialism. That is, the difference between existence and essence. For the existentialist philosopher, human beings are not determined by any pre given nature. Rather, we shape who we are through our free choices; this is an ongoing and endless process. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself sartre: man is not inherently anything. There is a stark difference between the existing human being and other objects in nature. Whereas an object has a positive being a fixed essence or nature an existing subject has no such essence, always in the process of becoming.
