A Modified Existentialism
Sartre claimed that existence precedes essence. There is no human nature. (Existentialism and Human Emotions, Citadel Press, 1987, p. 15) In my view, taken literally, this assertion is quite dubitable.
Sartre says that human beings just turn up in the world; only after this existential happenstance do we conceive of, define, and will ourselves to be. “Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” (p. 15) Here’s one problem: arguably, the existence of a human person (Sartre uses “man”) who can conceive, will, invent, define, and structure his own life presupposes the existence of a being with something like a human nature — or at least the nature of personhood. Here’s another: if each human person defines himself/herself, the result is that there are many different self-definitions, likely driven by what Kant called “the boisterous importunity of inclination.” (Critique of Practical Reason, Dover Publications, 2004, p. 169.) Whatever such self-definition is, it is not an essence (i.e., a set of essential characteristics possessed by all human beings). Sartre should have said that existence precedes subjective self-definition.
But I have an existential bent and have always appreciated Sartre. In his way, he was a penetrating thinker. And he was on to something, though I think he exaggerated the point. One might modify Sartre’s point as follows: a human being exists and then is free, over a lifetime and largely by his own effort, to contribute to his own process of becoming a more fully developed human person. One might call this the process of individuation. On this view, one is born with a human nature which is to some extent a set of potentialities. Over time, one actualizes these abilities via one’s free and rational effort. Let’s call this diachronic labor the appropriation of essence. Hence, existence precedes actualized and appropriated essence, yet in a significant sense human nature (or something like it) precedes human existence.
A question arises: What is the weight of this existential freedom?
Whether you are a theist or not, this is a significant question. On theism, the fact that you are free is not an accident. Nevertheless, you didn’t choose to be free. You were created to be free. Nobody asked you for your consent (which, by the way, you’d already need freedom in order to provide). And you are responsible for what you do with it. Moreover, there is no escaping your freedom; you can’t, for instance, bury it in the ground; for that would be a free choice to hide from your freedom, and you’d risk severe condemnation for your cowardice and bad faith. (See Matthew 25:26) You are morally obligated to invest your freedom wisely. And it is largely up to you to determine how to do this. What a heavy burden!
On the other hand, if there is no God and thus no divine creation of human beings, then the fact that you are free is something of a cosmic accident. Still, however, you didn’t choose to be free, and you can’t escape it. You were thrown into the world, as Sartre puts it. And you are forlorn — not in the sense of being abandoned, since there is no cosmic Person to abandon you, but in the sense of being hopeless that your life has objective value or purpose. If there is no God, we humans are in the absurd and wretched state of being persons who seek meaning and purpose in a world that cannot support our seeking. It’s an absurd situation in the sense that there is an unbridgeable gap between our natural searching and that for which we search. And it’s a wretched sitation in the sense of being bleak and lamentable.