Sartre, Kierkegaard, and the Weight of Freedom

Existentialism is less a unified school of thought and more a family argument — a group of thinkers who agree on the question ("What does it mean to exist as a conscious being?") and disagree about almost everything else.

The shared premise is that we are thrown into the world without a predetermined purpose. A hammer is designed to drive nails — its essence precedes its existence. But humans are the reverse: we exist first, and then we must create our own essence through our choices and actions.

This sounds liberating, and it is. But it's also terrifying. If there's no script, then every choice is yours — and so is every consequence. You can't blame your nature, your upbringing, or the stars. Sartre called this radical freedom, and he argued that most people spend their lives running from it through what he called "bad faith" — pretending they had no choice when they did.

Søren Kierkegaard, writing decades before Sartre, is often called the father of existentialism — somewhat ironically, since he was a devout Christian. Kierkegaard argued that rational thought alone can't address the deepest questions of existence. At some point you must make a leap — of faith, of commitment, of identity. You can't reason your way into being a person. You have to choose to be one.

Jean-Paul Sartre stripped away Kierkegaard's religious framework and arrived at something starker: we are entirely alone in our freedom. Other people complicate things further — not because they're malicious, but because their gaze forces us to see ourselves from the outside. We become objects in their world, and they in ours. This mutual objectification is the source of much human conflict.

Sartre's famous play No Exit places three characters in a room together for eternity. There's no torturer, no fire, no pitchforks. Just three people forced to confront themselves through each other's eyes — which turns out to be quite enough.

Camus is often grouped with the existentialists, but he rejected the label. His disagreement with Sartre was personal and philosophical: Sartre believed freedom carried an obligation to political engagement. Camus believed you could revolt against absurdity without subscribing to any particular ideology. Their public falling-out in the 1950s was one of philosophy's great breakups.

The Assembly takes Camus' side — but we invite Sartre and Kierkegaard to dinner anyway. Tenet IV: all traditions welcome.