Jean-Paul Sartre
1905-1980 · Existentialism · Household name
Sartre was a French existentialist who held that you exist first and make yourself afterward. No human nature is handed to you, so every choice is yours and the responsibility has nowhere else to land. He named the standard dodge bad faith, the pretence that your role or your circumstances left you with no choice at all. He wrote for the stage as well, which carried the argument past philosophers.
Signature
The position Sartre is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Horizontal
- Agency
- Radical Freedom
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Constructed (8 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Sartre refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Anarchy / Vanguardism
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Radical Freedom
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Phenomenological Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Self-Sovereignty / Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act / Expression
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Other
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation / Living Memory
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Existence Precedes Essence
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Cause
What is your primary bond and loyalty?