Sartre’s Denial of Human Nature

The whole existential thinking-philosophizing of Sartre arises from the conviction and the argument that there is no human nature; that is, Sartre’s existentialism in its entirety is grounded in a denial of the existence of something that might be called human nature.

For Sartre, there is no fixed, pre-determined, unchanging, necessary, stable, and already decided universal essence or nature joining together all human beings and hence confining them to specific pre-established and pre-decided ways of being or ways of existing in the world.

Sartre’s denial of the existence of human nature is grounded in how he thinks towards, problematizes, and responds to the traditional distinction between the notions of essence and existence, that is, between the whatness of the thing and the mere existence of that thing in the world. 

Sartre rejects the view, holding sway and shaping philosophy since Plato, that there exist unchanging, fixed, stable, pre-determined, necessary, and universal essences or natures that precede and therefore determine, decide, establish, and govern the accidental and fleeting existence of the things in the world.

For Sartre, terms such as “essence” and “nature” are problematic because they distort and fail to comprehend the being of the human being, that is, the being of the for-itself. 

If terms such as “nature” and “essence” are to be retained and held fast to, Sartre says, then the essence of the human being is the absence and lack of any essence and the nature of human beings is to have no nature at all. There is nothing that a human being is, according to Sartre. 

There is nothing that a human being is, for the nothingness dwelling in the for-itself and separating it from itself renders impossible any coinciding of the for-itself with itself or its choices of itself. This impossibility of coinciding grants the for-itself absolute freedom, according to Sartre. 

This absolute freedom, which is rendered possible because of the nothingness separating the for-itself from itself, allows the for-itself to continuously create and re-create itself and its destiny. 

In a word, the nothingness that lies at the heart of the for-itself separates it from itself and hence renders impossible any possibility of encountering itself in itself as fullness, necessity, fixity, or completion. That which cannot coincide with itself is never itself, it will never be or reach itself; it is what it is not, and it is not what it is. 

This is why, for Sartre, the for-itself is itself radical freedom; a freedom rendered possible, necessary, and even inevitable by the being of the for-itself itself; a freedom that must be acknowledged so that authenticity could take place, since refusing or negating this freedom delivers the for-itself into bad faith.

This radical freedom, which joins together all human beings through their being, should not lead to the conclusion that there exists what might be called universal human nature, according to Sartre. This joining together, this togetherness, through being, Sartre says, is merely a characteristic of the human condition. 

Finally, in Existentialism Is a Humanism, Sartre opposes and rejects the traditional prioritization of essence over existence by reversing it. “Existence precedes essence” is Sartre’s argument against the existence of human nature; it is, in fact, his argument for his whole existential thinking-philosophizing. 

“Existence precedes essence” means that human beings first exist in the world, in their worlds, and then choose, create, decide, and determine themselves, their paths, and their destinies; constantly and repeatedly.  

This means that there does not exist what is unchanging, necessary, stable, pre-determined, or already decided in the being of the for-itself; there is nothing that precedes the for-itself or determines how it exists in its own world; there is nothing that confines human beings to pre-determined or already decided ways of existing in their own worlds. That is, there is no human nature.