Sarah Bakewell's at the Existentialist Cafe

Sarah Bakewell’s at the Existentialist Cafe

But that turns out not to be right, and Sartre, actually, does have a Big Idea. It’s that choice is the fundamental activity. “Existence precedes essence,” he put it, meaning that we are defined by the decisions we make more so than who we are, i.e. by any sort of identity. It follows from there that — as if in the polar opposite of determinism — we are making decisions, choosing our being, every moment of our existence. And it follows from there as well that, even if so many of our choices have precious little impact on the world around us, that that doesn’t make any of them less real. Our inner lives, and our constant choices, have as much power to them as anything in the ostensibly material reality. “To wrest oneself from moist, gastric intimacy and fly out there to what is not oneself” was how Sartre — euphorically if a bit disgustingly — wrote of the goals of existentialism.
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