sartre's 'existentialism and humanism'

The main ideas of Sartre's philosophy as expressed in "Existentialism and Humanism" can be summed up in a few basic points:

1. "Existence precedes Essence" - which is an ontological claim, that one must exist already in order to investigate the essence of that existence

2. Subject-Relative Constructive Ethics - which is a meta-ethical position, in the sense that it is a claim about ethics as a whole. There is no static, objective ethics to speak of, yet individuals have the power of creating their own ethical standards through their personal investigations of their own essence. And

3. Humanistic Marxism - which is an ethical/political position. Each individual will eventually reach conclusions, through the construction of their own ethics, approaching a humanistic Marxism. That is to say, that their ethical stances will be human-centered and equalitarian.

Each of these positions is causally independent. One can defend any of these three basic points without holding either of the other two; but Sartre combines these three to form the basic tenants of his Existentialist Philosophy. Because they're independent of each other, they can each be critiqued independently. Further, they can be critiqued in relation to each other. What I shall be doing, however, within the limited scope of this paper, is to critique at least a bit each proposition independently. I will leave the problem of their consistency untouched (although I suspect they cohere as well as Sartre would have liked).

1. 1. "Existence precedes Essence" is a quotation of Sartre's that could be taken one of two ways. It is either trivial or false. If by "existence precedes essence" he means that it is necessary for a cognizant person to be alive in order for it to investigate their own essence, then that seems to me to be a trivial point. Of course someone has to have the property of existence in order for them to have any thoughts whatsoever. However, if by this ontological claim he means to say that in order for any human being to have an essence they must first exist, I don't see how this is true. We can figure out the essence of any human being just as we figured out the essence of gold, or the essence of electricity: through scientific investigation. Gold's essence is a substance having the atomic number 79, the essence of electricity is what Einstein figured out, and the essence of Humanity is having 46 chromosomes and the only living members of the Homo genus. So to me this claim is rather nonsensical.

2. 2. Having an ethical system of subject-relative constructive ethics has many potential advantages as well as many drawbacks. If all ethics is is a series of claims reached by each individual through their own constructions, then there is obviously a sense of empowerment that each individual attains. In this sense, Sartre is very similar to Nietzsche, who would have agreed with his vision of individuals creating their own ethics. However, to me this reeks of a self-help manual more than a rigorous examination of what the true meanings of "right" and "wrong" are. IF this is all that ethics boils down to, there are no real truth values to ethical statements, only truth values as assigned by each individual. What then, if anything, do we use as a basis for grounding our morality? Do we use consensus between independently attained ethical propositions held by individuals? But then we slide back into a kind of utilitarianism that I believe Sartre wouldn't agree with either. My point here is that, as of right now, I can't make a decision as to whether I like Sartre's meta-ethics or not, but I feel that this kind of idea might as well be Dr. Phil's.

3. 3.I won't touch the third point.

So where does this leave Sartre? I don't think he's in very good shape if any of my criticisms hold.