What Jean Paul Sartre Taught Me...

“Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.”  

                                         photo from: danassays.wordpress.com

Sounds decipherable… isn’t? Heard or read it somewhere? Oh well, this statement was familiarize by a controversial existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre. What he means is that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings or simply that man, in the course of his life, has invented himself and all the values, meanings, truth, justice and religions; so man’s essence is a spin-off of his existence.

Do you agree?

SOMEHOW I do because in my life, I have been independent since I was a child, the values, meanings, truth, justice and faith taught by my parents were slowly fading as I was growing up due to the entities around me, I was the one who decided whether the values imparted by these entities were good or bad, whether these meanings and truth were deviant with the norms of the society, it was still me who decided to invent which values, justice and faith must I acquire in my life. I feel so free because of it! That is why I somehow believe in Sartre’s perspective with regards to this but I know something lacks in my decision. I know I need something else to complete it. Sartre also claims that his philosophy is rather optimistic as it encourages men to act despite the harshness of reality and that is what I’m doing. Even though that I have been experiencing a lot of hardships, pain, stress and pessimism in my life, I still try to look at the positive side of things despite all of this, I still am living my life as if I don’t have problems around me. So does it mean that my existence is free of conditions? I don’t think so, because our life and freedom is absolute and it is made up of facticity and transcendings. Facticity is where conditions of our existence are evident or simply it is our past while transcendings are the potentials and possibilities that we are going to encounter in the future. But what makes it complicated? Nothingness! How can nothingness enter the picture? It is because humans are the nothingness of yesterday and tomorrow!

I know its getting more complicated… haha!!!