Sartre's Philosophy Of Atheistic Existentialism

In our present society, we all are able to live and interact with each other in a community, that is, a group of people who live in close association with one another and share common attitudes, identity, or interests, under an established and enforced code of law. This system of justice primarily projects a standard of basic ethics which are generally agreed upon despite of different belief systems, cultural norms, and religion. For example, theft is clearly not tolerated by our justice system and may be considered an act founded upon bad morals. Now imagine a society without any standard definition of morality whatsoever because everyone has crafted their respective ideas of justice and morals which may or may not agree with one another.
If someone were to murder his neighbor in cold blood, who is to say they are wrong or right? Could anyone place any sort of judgment upon these individuals’ actions and decisions? With Sartre’s philosophy of Existentialism, there are no universal ethics that can guide our choices, so everyone has to choose their own morality. As a result, I believe that a human community in an Existentialist world where its inhabitants can coexist in harmony and structured order cannot exist because there is no overall agreement as to what we can define morals to be. Sartre represents a philosophy of atheistic Existentialism that concentrates on the concept that defines humans as “a being whose existence comes before its essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept of it” (Sartre 22).
Rather than deny or attempt to disprove God’s existence, it only asserts that if God does not exist, then Man is the only one whose “existence precedes essence.” Even if God is present, his existence would not change this idea or make any difference. As one whose “existence precedes essence”, Man is initially nothing when he first comes into the world because he does not have any pre-essential properties or purpose. He merely exists until he becomes what he conceives and wills himself to be later
on.
Sartre considers us to be in a state of abandonment and freedom because of the lack of God. He affirms, “This is the starting point of Existentialism. Indeed everything is permissible if God does not exist, and man is consequently abandoned, for he cannot find anything to rely on - neither within or without…In other words, there is no determinism - man is free, man is freedom” (Sartre 29). Therefore, this results in significant consequences of a particular reality where we hold a solitary position in the universe because there is no divinity or external source of objectivity that can guide our moral decisions and values. Because there is nothing that we can depend on to determine morality and human nature, we are left to decide who we are to be and be responsible for everything we do without any excuses. This responsibility that derives from abandonment warrants us to also be in a state of despair and anguish.
In this particular state, Sartre describes Man to be in anguish and despair because he is also responsible for others through his choices and actions. Not only does he choose who to be as an individual, he is also “a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be…” (Sartre 25). To clarify his meaning, one could liken this concept of anguish to a CEO in charge of his corporation and employees. In this, not only is the boss responsible for the management of his own corporation, he oversees the productivity and actions of his workers. However, because he is a CEO, his decisions and actions result in some ramifications. As a result, the boss is in anguish because no matter what decisions he makes, he knows that it will affect everyone involved. By making such choices, he inevitably feels the same anguish in which Sartre’s philosophy describes as our responsibility to ourselves and mankind.
In relation to morality, Sartre does not believe in any external sources that we can base “goodness” or morals upon. He declares, “Man makes himself; he does not come into this world fully made, he makes himself by choosing his own morality, and his circumstances are such that he has no option other than to choose a morality” (Sartre 46). Because Sartre also denies the belief in a common human nature, there are no internal sources of morality either, so each individual is then forced to choose and define himself through his choice of action.
Consequently, if each person were to choose his own morality, then how can anyone ever pass moral judgment on one another when everyone has different opinions of what is, for example, right or wrong.
In addition, who is to say that one individual’s ideas of moral concepts supersedes the ideas of others’? Sartre does argue that “we may judge that certain choices are based on error and others on truth. We may also judge a man when we assert that he is acting in bad faith…my answer is that I do no pass moral judgment against him, but I call his bad faith an error” (Sartre 47). Sartre agrees that we cannot pass moral judgments, but at the same time, how can we form judgments out of good or bad faith as well as error and truth? Robert Alexy, who argues that absolute, objective, or necessary moral elements exist in Law, Morality, and the Existence of Human Rights, affirms, “If there exist no necessary moral elements, for instance human rights or universal principles of justice…extreme injustice would not exist either” (Alexy 6). Good faith is the only criterion which Existentialism acknowledges, yet it is an extremely vague term that I cannot envision its realistic applications in an Existentialist world. It does not seem logical that Existentialism recognizes good faith because there is no overarching concept of what is considered good or bad. Therefore, in Existentialism, we do not have the authority to consider someone to be in good or bad faith. If we were to apply this to a
human community based upon the ideas and concepts of Existentialism, the main problem becomes evident in the lack of a system or code of justice. There would be no court system with judges and juries because good faith is not concrete enough to place any judgment on anyone. Likewise, Jacques Hardré, in his work, Sartre’s Humanism and Existentialism, evaluates Sartre’s Existentialism in order to critique how Existentialism is not humanism. He insists, “If man is alone judge of his actions and if he recognizes no established moral code, it seems difficult to understand how he can live in a community or how he can accept the democratic way of life” (Hardré 545). As a result, a community in this circumstance cannot exist, but rather, a group of individuals who simply live close together.