Biography by Peter Landry at blupete.com.
Excerpt:
Sartre's Theory of the Universe:
"There is no ultimate meaning or purpose
inherent in human life; in this sense life is 'absurd'. We are
'forlorn', 'abandoned' in the world to look after ourselves
completely. Sartre insists that the only foundation for values
is human freedom, and that there can be no external or objective
justification for the values anyone chooses to adopt.
To Sartre human life is an "unhappy consciousness,"
a "useless passion"; well, I do not go along with Sartre's
theories, in this respect, at all. I believe that one's life is,
in itself, a value; and the objective standard for one to follow
is that which advances this value. Holding one's own life as the
ultimate value, a person can see the importance of the right choices
among the many, choices which it is hoped will lead to the protection
and advancement of an individual's greatest value, that individual's
own life. But outside of Sartre's view that life is an "unhappy
consciousness," a "useless passion"; much of what
Sartre said makes sense, and counters the dangerous notions of
Freud
and his ilk. For instance Sartre emphatically rejects the idea
advanced by Freud that certain mental events have unconscious
causes. Emotions, he says, are not outside the control of our
wills, if one is sad it is because one chooses to be sad; we are
responsible for our emotions; we are, ultimately, responsible
for our own behavior. According to Sartre, man is free and being
conscious of this fact, can bring on pain, or anguish; and typically
we try to avoid the consciousness of our own freedom.
Being
and Nothingness
