He sat in the Café de Flore, a cigarette perpetually burning between his fingers, surrounded by a haze of smoke and high-octane ideas. Jean-Paul Sartre wasn't just some dusty academic living in a library; he was a celebrity, a political firebrand, and a man who famously turned down a Nobel Prize because he didn't want to be "institutionalized." People usually think of philosophy as something that happens in books. For Sartre, it was something you did over an espresso or on the streets of Paris during a protest.
Existence precedes essence.
That’s the big one. It’s the phrase that launched a thousand black turtlenecks. Basically, it means you aren't born with a "soul" or a "destiny" pre-written by God or biology. You’re just here. You're a blank slate. You're a "nothingness" that has to be filled up by choices. That’s terrifying, right? Most of us spend our lives looking for a "purpose," but Jean-Paul Sartre argued that looking for a purpose is like looking for a ghost in an empty room. You don't find purpose; you invent it.
The Burden of Being Truly Free
We say we want freedom. We scream about it. We fight wars for it. But Sartre thought that once we actually get it, we realize it's a nightmare. He called it being "condemned to be free."
Think about that for a second. Condemned. Usually, we associate freedom with a beach vacation or winning the lottery. Sartre saw it as a heavy, crushing weight because if you are totally free, you have absolutely zero excuses for who you are. You can’t blame your parents. You can’t blame your boss. You can’t even blame "the way the world is." If you're unhappy, or if the world is a mess, and you aren’t doing anything about it, that’s on you. Honestly, it's a pretty brutal way to look at life. It’s also incredibly empowering if you have the stomach for it.
What is Bad Faith?
Sartre had this concept called mauvaise foi, or "bad faith." It's essentially lying to yourself. You know when someone says, "I have to do this, I have no choice"? Sartre would say they're full of it. You always have a choice. Even if the choice is between doing something you hate and getting fired, or doing it and keeping your job—that’s still a choice. When we pretend we are objects acted upon by the world rather than conscious agents, we are living in bad faith. We’re acting like a waiter who mimics the "idea" of a waiter because he's afraid to just be a human being with terrifying options.
He used the example of a woman on a first date. Her date takes her hand. If she leaves it there but pretends she hasn't noticed, she's in bad faith. She’s treating her hand like an object, a piece of meat, rather than a part of her body she is choosing to let stay there. It’s a tiny, mundane moment, but for Sartre, it’s the core of the human struggle. We are constantly trying to turn ourselves into things so we don't have to deal with the anxiety of being people.
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Hell is Other People: The Famous Misunderstanding
You've probably seen the quote "Hell is other people" on a t-shirt or a cynical Instagram post. It’s from his play No Exit. Most people think it means Sartre was a hermit who hated crowds or that he thought everyone else was annoying.
Not quite.
What he actually meant was that other people are the "mirror" we can't escape. When someone looks at you, they turn you into an object in their world. They define you. They decide if you’re "the funny one," "the loser," "the hero," or "the creep." You lose control of your own image the moment someone else enters the room. That’s the "hell." You are trapped by the gaze of others, and you can never truly see yourself the way they see you. It's a psychological tug-of-war that never ends until you die.
The Simone de Beauvoir Connection
You can't talk about Jean-Paul Sartre without talking about Simone de Beauvoir. They were the ultimate power couple of the 20th century, but they didn't do the whole white-picket-fence thing. They had an open relationship that lasted over fifty years. They were intellectual partners first, lovers second, and they never even lived together.
This wasn't just about being "edgy." It was an application of their philosophy. If you believe in total freedom, how can you "own" another person through a marriage contract? They made a pact: they would be "essential" to each other but allowed for "contingent" loves. It was messy. It involved a lot of drama and some pretty questionable behavior involving their students, which modern biographers like Sarah Bakewell have scrutinized heavily. But it showed that Sartre wasn't just writing theories; he was trying to live them, for better or worse.
Sartre and the Politics of Action
After World War II, Sartre went full-blown Marxist. Sorta. He was never a member of the Communist Party, but he was obsessed with the idea of the "engaged intellectual." He believed that if you're a writer and you aren't using your platform to fight oppression, you're failing at your job.
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- He supported the Algerian revolution against French colonial rule.
- He went to Cuba and hung out with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
- He sold banned Maoist newspapers on street corners in Paris just to get arrested.
He was a man of extremes. Sometimes this led him down some dark paths, like when he defended political violence or turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Soviet gulags for too long because he didn't want to "discourage the working class." He was human. He was flawed. He was often wrong. But he was never indifferent. To Sartre, indifference was the ultimate sin.
Why Existentialism is Actually Optimistic
People call existentialism "depressing." I get it. Talking about "nothingness" and "nausea" (the title of his most famous novel) doesn't exactly scream "good vibes." But if you look closer, it’s the most optimistic philosophy out there.
If there is no pre-set meaning to the universe, then you are the artist of your own life. You aren't a broken machine. You aren't a sinner in need of saving. You are a creator. Every morning you wake up, you get to decide what matters. If you want to spend your life saving cats, or writing code, or just being a decent friend, that meaning is just as "real" as any religious or cosmic destiny.
Sartre's work is a call to action. It’s a slap in the face to anyone waiting for a sign from the universe. The sign isn't coming. You are the sign.
The Later Years and the Legacy
By the 1970s, Sartre was almost blind and his health was failing, largely due to a lifetime of drinking, smoking, and taking amphetamines to keep up his writing pace. He remained a symbol of resistance until the end. When he died in 1980, 50,000 people showed up for his funeral procession through Paris. Not for a politician or a rock star, but for a philosopher.
Can you imagine that today?
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We live in an era of algorithms and data-driven decisions. We’re told our genes determine our health, our zip code determines our wealth, and our social media feed determines our opinions. Sartre’s message is a direct challenge to that. He’s the voice in your head saying, "No, you're still choosing."
How to Live Like Sartre (Without the 50 Cigarettes a Day)
If you want to take something practical from Jean-Paul Sartre, it’s not about reading Being and Nothingness from cover to cover—honestly, it’s a dense, difficult book that even philosophy students struggle with. It’s about the mindset.
Stop waiting for permission.
Most of us spend years waiting for the "right time" or the "right feeling" to start a project, leave a relationship, or change careers. Sartre would tell you that the feeling follows the action, not the other way around. You define yourself through what you do, not what you "intend" to do.
Identify your "Bad Faith" moments. Start noticing when you say "I can't" when you actually mean "I'm afraid to." It’s a subtle shift in language that changes how you view your own power. You might still choose not to do the scary thing, but at least you’re being honest about the fact that it’s a choice.
Embrace the "Nausea." That weird, sinking feeling you get when you realize how big the world is and how small you are? That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. It’s the feeling of total freedom. Instead of running away from it with distractions, sit with it. That’s where your real life begins.
The legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre isn't found in a dusty classroom. It’s found in every person who realizes they aren't a victim of circumstance, but an architect of their own existence. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s deeply uncomfortable. But as Sartre would say, that’s exactly what it means to be alive.
Next Steps for the Aspiring Existentialist:
- Read "Existentialism is a Humanism": This was originally a lecture Sartre gave to defend his ideas against critics. It’s much shorter and more accessible than his other works.
- Watch or Read "No Exit": It’s a one-act play. Three people in a room. It perfectly illustrates his ideas on social dynamics and the "gaze."
- Audit Your Decisions: Pick one area of your life where you feel "stuck." Write down three choices you could make today—even the radical or "bad" ones—just to remind yourself that the door isn't actually locked.