Translated from: Verein zur Förderung des marx. Pressewesens, Munich 1991.
Great philosophers and their little mistakes
Jean-Paul Sartre –
Existence as problem and worldviewIn the early 1950s, a whole generation of young Frenchmen and Europeans, as long as they were members of the loftier, more intellectual set, began hanging around in turtleneck sweaters and black berets in cafés; there they stirred copious doses of “nausée” into their coffee, heroically stared into the eyes of “néant” and felt insanely “thrown into the world.” That’s not all: they hung out at night in cold basement bars, listened to the same old jazz music over and over again, and lured women (or men) into bed by claiming how terribly indifferent they are to everything. More than a few actually committed suicide, and even Uwe Barschel felt nausea in his final hour – everyone, however, had to subsequently hear the charge that nausea exists to be endured.
The father of this movement, Jean-Paul Sartre, derived his appeal from his rejection of the moral glorification of everything done by modern humans – also known as values – and for his embrace of the idea that humans are condemned to be free. This earned him the accusation of nihilism, which was extremely unfair, because for him free will turned out to be the sole moral center. This philosopher didn’t like thinking in any other categories than guilt and responsibility.
How Christian hypocrisy is perfected in an obsession with justifications
“If God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses. This is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free.” (Existentialism and Human Emotions)
Why would Sartre want to deprive humanity of its Gods and its values? Sartre noticed at least this much: Christians and other moralists have the peculiarity that they constantly invoke higher values and commandments. By pointing to universally accepted, indisputable goods, they give their desires and actions the appearance of universality. Both the self-righteousness with which a Christian attests to his own good conduct and accuses himself of having been wicked serve no other purpose than to extol this attitude to everyone else as required or – what’s the same – to grant absolution in the name of these higher values for what has been done. In any case, hypocrisy is at work. It always deems that no particular interest counts for its own sake – otherwise humans wouldn’t have to constantly be claiming higher things when pursuing their interests. Conflicts of interest are thus assumed, but at the same time firmly denied. This denial, however, is no relinquishment of one’s own objectives, but should win over the opposing side in the name of supposedly shared interests, ultimately for one’s own benefit. Consequently, no conflict is resolved in the way its substance requires.
The moral approach, therefore, does not eliminate conflicts, but elevates them to a new level, as each person tries to hold others accountable to “shared” values. Everyone presents themselves as the most credible representative of these values, while immediately discovering that others are wrongly appropriating these values for their own self-interest. The accusation of hypocrisy leveled against others is followed by a demonstration of one’s own integrity, and vice versa. Because this goes back and forth, each person is once again in the next moment the arbiter of this accusation, thereby distancing themselves from the not so difficult insight that the common interest claimed by all sides is a lie.
What everyone wants to have seen through in others, Sartre discovered in everyone. He therefore did not polemicize against the abuse of high values, but against their use altogether, because he considered it fundamentally dishonest. He was bothered by the inevitable discrepancy between actions and their higher justifications. That’s why he wanted to get rid of God and the realm of values altogether. However, no sooner had Sartre intellectually dispensed with God than it occurred to him that humanity was once again “condemned,” even more so now and with no way out.
But why condemned? Wouldn’t it be a blessing, not a curse, if all this hypocritical posturing, the endless apologizing and justifying, the whole moral charade, simply disappeared? Sartre apparently didn't see it that way. What bothered him wasn’t the justifying, but that people can so easily get out of any jam by justifying themelves with higher values. If one is really condemned to take responsibility for one’s actions when freed from higher values – then, before whom and by what standard? It’s a contradictory demand; one should justify oneself and at the same time deny the authority or grounds for the justification. The individual should apologize, but he is “alone, with no excuses.” So the critical philosopher Sartre replaced the security of some sort of higher meaning to which humanity can appeal, which he rebuked, with his fabricated individual stripped of all determinate moral convictions who grapples with the absolute will to live without morality. With the repudiation of the bright realm of values, however, Sartre did not abandon the double standards of moral argumentation – for him, there are still interests and duties, desires and obligations. The individual is not simply supposed to focus on his own self-interest. Rather, he is supposed to create his own morality. Duties, yes – but only his own! What a difference from “established” morality! As if any moralist has ever demanded submission and servitude to foreign precepts, and as if anyone who submits to moral standards hasn’t already recognized them as their own deeply personal ones! Sartre’s self-responsible individual is therefore to be guided only by what his own self advises – but he should see this as a comprehensive program of duties. He is to constantly examine himself to see whether what he does of his own free will is serving as a good role model for humanity.
Delusions about freedom, a fanatical sense of responsibility, and the exquisite pangs of conscience
“When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be.”(ibid.)
Sartre turns the individual human into an atheistic substitute God: one who follows the nonsensical logic that his purposes and actions are not subject to any standards that exist separate from him, but “at the same time” bring about nothing but “shall” clauses that must be obeyed all the more attentively. Will is thus the same as shall. On the one hand, Sartre’s moral individual puts his needs into a critical relation with a fictional “human nature” in order to make sure he is well advised; on the other hand, however, he does not need to measure himself by this human nature because he is, after all, already this human nature himself. What remains of the commandment to justify oneself is the sheer formalism of conscience. A nagging conscience measures its actions against an image of itself that closely resembles its own highly personal ideal of human excellence, one in which all legal and ethical standards are typically included. If such a person then stumbles upon a need that makes this image look bad, the voice of conscience reaches out quite weakly to this type of moral idiot. A conscience compares what is desired with what is morally obligatory. And the difference that is identified does not lead a seasoned moralist to reject the moral imperative that he has violated, nor to one day judge what he desires on its own merits. On the basis of this lasting difference, Sartre develops his ideal of a convergence between “what one wants” and “what one ought” to do. The existentialist moralist thus has the distinctive task of measuring his will by his will. The mere fact of having wanted something – regardless of what it is – that’s supposed to plunge a person into deep problems of conscience: “Did I also want what I wanted?” he must now constantly ask himself. From the standpoint of a fanatical sense of moral responsibility, this question is enormously significant. If the will coincides with the conscience, no one can escape the call of conscience. What it should do then is, of course, another question. The only thing that follows in practice is that the individual annoys himself with stupid questions: “Can you justify this to yourself?”, “Who do you see in the mirror?” This is the self-critical pick up line of a moral subject in the Sartrean vein. The existentialist-moralist also grapples with credibility problems – this time self-referentially, in regards to the value and uniqueness of his own personhood. And hypocrisy is not left behind either; the cheap alternative which is put forward here is: “I can do whatever I want.” No one needs to be judged or criticized anymore because they have already subjected themselves to the most rigorous scrutiny. The need and interest are good simply because one wanted something. According to this logic, everything that is done voluntarily is therefore acceptable. The cheapest form of justification comes into play. Everything is excused if one just admits to it. In this sense, it’s nothing new: this way of justifying one’s mistakes is still mastered by every modern individual who has learned to use his individuality as an argument.
This man, of all men, whose philosophy is nothing more than a call for the most vain self-reflection; someone who never had an objective judgment to offer on any question because he always advocated a moral perspective in which the subject should judge himself; someone who, by stripping morality of its standards, very consistently aimed at the conclusion that everything really is all right; he, of all people, successfully established a reputation as a critical fixture who always set an example, at least with his “political commitment.” What does criticism even mean here?
“If I am mobilized in a war, this war is my war; it is in my image and I deserve it. I deserve it first because I could always get out of it by suicide or by desertion; these ultimate possibles are those which must always be present for us when there is a question of envisaging a situation. For lack of getting out of it, I have chosen it. ...Of course others have declared it, and one might be tempted perhaps to consider me as a simple accomplice. But this notion of complicity has only a juridical sense, and it does not hold here. For it depended on me that for me and by me this war should not exist, and I have decided that it does exist. There was no compulsion here, for the compulsion could have got no hold on a freedom. I did not have any excuse; for … the peculiar character of human-reality is that it is without excuse.”(ibid.)
What do we have here? A critique of war? Of those who are complicit in it? It’s clear that Sartre doesn’t like them. But such a critique would surely have to include a judgment about what they are complicit in. That, of course, is out of the question for Sartre, because he prefers to view war from his own perspective: justifications and excuses are made, and that – not the matter itself! – bothers him greatly. So much so that he wants to put an end to it. Where others justify their complicity in war by citing objective constraints such as the draft, Sartre has a truly radical argument on hand: he simply denies any compulsion whatsoever. Sartre “refutes” the participant who claim he had no other choice by pointing out that he had “other possibles” open to him – “suicide or desertion,” for which one is also executed in war. But even if we assume these were indeed the alternatives, then the philosopher could just shut up for once. After all, no contribution to success in life can be expected from him in this situation. What can you possibly do right when you have three equally shitty alternatives? But Sartre doesn’t shut up. He finds the very hopelessness of the situation extremely interesting, precisely because it brings free will into play. That’s why Sartre deliberately constructed the situation to be so hopeless. He knows the difference between the perpetrators and the victims of war – “no doubt others have explained it...” – but this difference doesn’t fit his concept. That would bring up a completely different alternative, namely to put a stop to the perpetrators, and that would destroy his entire philosophical vision of freedom. So he can proclaim the good news that freedom cannot be suppressed by anything, that everything happens of free will, and that war therefore also “exists” “through” the free choices of its victims. And this cynicism is no one-off. With the freedom to choose anything as the object of one’s will, as one’s purpose, the circumstances that the will encounters in the world are also supposed to be chosen and willed. Even the most hideous alternatives, which no one would truly choose for themselves, testify, according to Sartre, to the creative freedom of the will. And indeed he could only detect coercion if the world worked like a puppet show, if no will were coerced, but humanity simply would functions mechanically, devoid of any calculation. The philosopher thus denies the reality of extortion. For it is certainly extortion when one is given the “choice” between two evils. The fact that, instead of eliminating the threat, one can then choose the lesser evil, meaning that every act of blackmail is based on the will – after all, the other party is supposed to render a service! – Sartre interprets as proof that one has thus willed the evil out of free will. The reason for this denial of coercion is that by generally justifying every absurdity and every atrocity with the free will, Sartre puts the blame squarely on the individual for his own situation. Complaints about this situation are therefore out of the question. Whenever such complaints are raised, the philosopher must wag his index finger and respond to the complainant with a hearty “It’s your own fault!” – “man is his situation.” This, however, is also the only possible case in which, from the standpoint of existentialist philosophy, criticism is warranted. After all, it demands nothing more than a clear affirmation of who one is. That’s why Sartre didn’t have any objection to an honest, convinced fascist.
“Being and Nothingness” - or: How to prove the meaninglessness of existence and what one gets from it
A theory of existence is extremely interesting, for philosophers anyway, and for an existentialist, of course, it’s almost indispensable. This is where truly universal thinkers can indulge their need to ponder everything all at once – and strictly according to principles. They casually overlook the minor drawback that their principle, existence, is incredibly abstract and that their theory documents the intellectual poverty of its producers more than the wealth of knowledge they pretend to possess. After all, they are not even interested in knowledge, but in answers to the question of a meaning that allows everything to be interpreted in the light of a deeper necessity. In pursuing this issue, philosophers even before Sartre stumbled on the discovery that the yearning for such unalterable necessities which reasonable people must obey can only be satisfied by leaving the reason why they exist alone. Every specific reason has for them the defect, not that it makes the thing it explains unalterable, but rather that it indicates where you have to focus if you don’t like it. In this precarious theoretical situation, the philosopher Heidegger came up with the salvaging idea of introducing existence itself as its own ground. Sartre was thus able to build on the philosophical tradition, and did so by meticulously copying Heidegger’s ontology in his main theoretical work, Being and Nothingness:
“Being is. … We may summarize these first conclusions by saying that being is in itself. … Being is what it is. Uncreated, without reason for being, without any connection with another being, being-in-itself is de trop for eternity.” (p. lxvi)
Everything that exists exists because it exists. This is an interesting contribution by philosophy to the project of “knowledge.” And it powerfully documents how tirelessly philosophy has worked throughout its history to advance itself. Whereas Heidegger said, “Being is itself,” Sartre focuses his formulation on the core of the statement: “Being is.” And while Heidegger’s main work was titled “Being and Time,” Sartre counters with his 786-page “Being and Nothingness.” The choice of title alone announces a real difference. The category of nothingness clearly appealed more to the French existentialist than to the German one, and he justifies this with the following necessity:
“The necessary condition for our saying no is that non-being be a perpetual presence in us and outside of us, that nothingness haunt being.” (p. 11)
Sartre thus proceeds from his already familiar view of human nature, according to which humans are responsible for everything because they are so free that for them it is always “possible to say no.” And this view of human nature is now given a theoretical foundation. Note the sequence: Sartre wants to be able to say no. One must not ask to what and, above all, why. That is apparently irrelevant. There is no situation that he finds objectionable, no circumstance he dislikes. His truly groundless negative attitude is simply established beyond any occasion for it. However, it shouldn’t look random. Therefore, a reason, a quasi-objective necessity must be found for this predetermined principle. It is still, admittedly, a bit general. The creation of nothingness follows the logic of empty doubling, which quite methodically lays claim to a relationship which, in terms of content, it isn’t: in order to be able to say “no,” the no must exist as something independent. The negation is preceded by nothingness as a condition of its possibility without one side being distinguishable from the other. Both are as empty of content as the relationship between Being and Be-ing. This raises a profound problem:
“If Nothingness can be conceived neither outside of Being, nor in terms of Being, and if on the other hand, since it is non-being, it can not derive from itself the necessary force to "nihilate itself," where does Nothingness come from?” (p. 22)
According to Sartre, nothingness cannot be understood in either way, but must nevertheless exist because it is needed for moral reasons. But if nothingness exists, it is Being and not nothing. So nothingness cannot exist, but then it doesn’t exist. Problems, problems! But that doesn’t matter. Sartre changes the subject and asks the question, “Where does it come from?” With this question, the philosopher moves on to the next round, in which he wants to trace the condition of possibility of the condition of possibility of saying no. Suddenly, there is talk of a “force” that is “necessary” because otherwise no one would engage in the interesting activity of “nothingness.” But where does one get it and not steal it? No problem for a mind of Sartre’s caliber. After all, he still has his image of humanity as an eternal naysayer up his sleeve, and now – to close the circle – he pulls it out again as the solution to the riddle surrounding this ominous force: “Man is the Be-ing through whom nothingness comes into the world.” This means that the theoretical foundation of the image of humanity is tautologically “derived” from itself, so that, conversely, the concept of humanity can now be deduced flawlessly from this theory:
“Descartes following the Stoics has given a name to this possibility which human reality has to secrete a nothingness which isolates it – it is freedom.” (p. 24)
The whole thing is not only utter nonsense, but also quite exhausting for that very reason. It is therefore permissible to ask what the reward for this effort is. It consists of an alternative interpretation of Heidegger’s theory of existence, which Sartre shares from A to Z. In their deliberations on the Being-Nothingness problem, the two crackpots do not differ in the slightest. They assert exactly the same thing, namely that existence is its own ground, from which they each derive their instructions for humanity. And in these, they want to differ significantly! One sees from this that nothing at all follows from a theory of existence. However, this can also be seen as an opportunity to interpret it in an alternative way. While Heidegger interprets the core statement that existence is its own ground as: “The meaning that the whole world of philosophy is searching for lies not behind existence, but within it,” Sartre interprets the same statement as: “There is nothing behind it, so everything that exists is meaningless and ‘superfluous for all eternity’.” Unlike Heidegger, Sartre inflates the latter’s dull worldview into a theory of the free subject’s self-realization. Everything that man does is done for one purpose only: “the realization of his freedom.” The most mundane tasks of daily life become the fulfillment of a philosophical mission. Sartre calls on humanity to counter its “thrownness into nothingness” by recognizing the meaninglessness of its actions: although the world is indeed meaningless, they should not allow the negative answer to the question of meaning to defeat their need for meaning. Meaning is not to be found in the world, but in humanity’s relation to itself. By appealing to humanity to seek meaning within itself, Sartre methodically perfects the question of meaning by taking seriously the idea that the question of meaning is devoid of any objective basis and is solely the product of those who ask it. An affirmative attitude toward the world has no good reason in the world; it is based solely on the decision of the individual – and that, of all things, is supposed to speak for this attitude! And therein lies its reward. It demands indifference to one’s own concerns and interests, where everyone is resigned to constant empty self-reflection and principled self-accusation as their freedom, their meaning, and theur highest pleasure, so that they can do justice to their nature.
Sartre discovers Marxism – or: How Marx overlooked the problem of existence
Sartre always followed the spirit of the times. In doing so, he never strayed from his one and only idea. While Heidegger in the 1940s was the spirit of the times, someone philosophers simply could not ignore, Sartre in the 1960s turned to Marx, who was fashionable among intellectuals at the time. He consistently translated his existentialism into the phraseology of a “Marxist worldview.”
He explicitly stated that Marx’s scathing criticism of commodities and money, wage labor and capital was not particularly high on his agenda. His interest was in Marxism as an anthropology.
“Marxist theory is the only one that grasps man in his totality, i.e., starting from the materiality of the conditions.”
That, of all things, is what Sartre finds appealing about Marxist theory. While Marx criticized class society and for this reason couldn’t stand idealists who always see one and the same mythical creature, “humanity,” in wage workers and capitalists, tenants and landlords, bankers and beggars, Sartre likes precisely this harmonizing art of abstraction and even considers it the hallmark of Marxism. With the phrase “materiality of conditions,” Sartre tries to make it seem like his theory is very close to real life and the “concerns of workers.” In reality, of course, he is merely peddling yet another philosophical-abstract idea of man. Where Marx analyzes wages, profit, crisis, cost price, etc., Sartre discovers the peculiar problem that man cannot recognize himself in certain “structures”:
“The very concepts used in Marxist research to describe our historical society – ‘exploitation’, ‘alienation’, ‘fetishization’, ‘materialization’, and so on – are just those that directly relate to existential structures.”(Materialism and Revolution)
Marxism provides existentialism with a fabulous proof that the existing society is nothing but an obstacle to existentialist freedom, thus offers a brilliant opportunity to grapple with and affirm it. In the revolutionary working class, Sartre finds the most beautiful and universal example of the eternally failing and consistently heroic struggle of the “projecting” individual who finds no meaning in the world. So it is clear that Marxism is actually also a kind of existentialism. An imperfect one, admittedly. Marx missed the main point: that “existence is a scandal.” Sartre, whose studies of Marx converted him into an enthusiastic supporter of the proletariat, insofar as he learned to understand it “as the incarnation and vehicle of an idea” (which one?), must therefore make up for what Marx neglected. Namely, the clarification that the situation of the working class is nothing but the problem of existence, which man must prove himself worthy of. Ultimately, poverty in capitalism can also be understood as an opportunity to find one’s identity. Sartre thinks this is best served by revolutionaries:
“The revolutionary has overthrown the myths of the bourgeoisie, and the working class has undertaken, through a thousand vicissitudes, victories and defeats, to forge its own destiny in freedom and in anguish.”(ibid.)
Note: Sartre’s goodwill is earned by pursuing his idea of freedom, which comes into play equally in “victory and defeat” – it doesn’t matter! – rather than upon the success of one’s own cause. But why talk at length when the master himself says it: one will “understand that I consider existentialism to be an ideology because it is a parasitic system...” (With this “parasitic,” by the way, Sartre proves his pro-worker stance!)
The critic and his “political commitment”
What is someone committed to when he believes that everything is all right that is done with free will and proves that everything is done with free will? Under fascism, Sartre was an anti-fascist; under democracy, he was a communist; and real socialism turned him into an anarchist sympathizer. He admired Andreas Baader for his “practical commitment to the idea of freedom” and the “courage” of the French Maoists whose banned daily newspaper he sold in a – admittedly futile – attempt to get arrested. Throughout his life, Sartre didn’t give a damn about what those he associated with wanted. His “commitment” was always and only to free will. Where people sincerely stood up for their convictions, he was completely indifferent to their cause – he went along with them, at least in spirit. And for the philosopher Sartre, other people’s sincerity proved time and again to be stinkingly reactionary and moralistic because of their willingness to sacrifice. Whenever a cause faced difficulties, Sartre was never far away. His “commitment” was therefore not aimed at the practical success of those he was “supporting.” He was fascinated by a powerlessness that doesn’t have a chance but never gives up. These were his criteria, and whenever something changed in that regard, he turned away in “disappointment.” We owe the following diary entry to this kind of “engagement”:
“We were never more free than during the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to our faces and had to take it in silence. Under one pretext or another, as workers, as Jews, or political prisoners, we were deported en masse. Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our suppressors wanted us to accept. And because of this we were free. Because the Nazi venom seeped into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment.” (The Republic of Silence)
During the Resistance, the state persecuted its political enemies while the existentialist idiot Sartre celebrated their situation as a moment of true intellectual freedom, felt extremely “valued” for his drivel, and supported those whose lives were in danger with “gestures” whose “weight of a serious commitment” he did not wish to deny!
The aesthetics and psychology of existentialism
Jean Paul Sartre was in fact a philosopher by profession, but became known to the general public only through his literary outpourings – and that wasn’t by chance. The theory of the “thrown-ness into nothingness” can only be presented truly authentically in artistic fiction. Whether this is conducive to an enjoyment of art is another question. In the novel “Nausea,” Sartre indulges in the ideal of an absolute fulfillment that he hopes his actions will bring him but do not, which is why the longing for it fills the pages in a rather nauseating way. With his protagonist Roquentin, Sartre questions the true meaning of existence, which apparently cannot be enough in itself. What Camus accomplished with “The Plague,” Sartre accomplishes with the novel’s hero himself. Roquentin does not need an extreme situation in order to be completely “himself” – on the contrary, for him, in “Nausea,” there is no situation that is normal or not extreme! Cardboard boxes, benches, suspenders, his own hand – everything affects the hero in a strange way. However, the nausea that sets in with beautiful regularity over its 187 pages is, of course, not just run-of-the-mill nausea, but a deeply philosophical impulse:
“So this is nausea... Now I know: I exist – the world exists – and I know that the world exists.” In what follows, Roquentin makes the discovery that actually “too much” (“de trop” – wow!) exists, but finds at least one good thing about his implausible sensibility: “I feel so far away from them, on the top of this hill. It seems as though I belong to another species.”
By them, he means, of course, ordinary mortals. In order not to get carried away with his sense of elitism, the man of another species is a bit “ashamed” of “his existence” in the end, sighs that it is a “sin,” and in this way bids his fitting existential-pious goodbye to the reader. For people searching for meaning, this is a worse discovery, namely that they stand there just as screwed over as Christian sinners, but not even allowed to hold on to a supreme being in heaven as compensation. And what do they do in this desperate situation? They go to the theater and savor the message. The depicted sufferings, tribulations, and self-examinations are not meant to be taken too seriously: rather, they provide portentous material for intellectual self-indulgence. Anyone who is capable of living through such select esoteric problems is quite rightly allowed to know that they have elevated themselves above the rest of the world. So it is no wonder, and only fair, that existentialism found expression in an elitist cult of the individual. Whereas the poet Sartre declared that all his thoughts and wishes were a painful attempt to try to believe with self-confidence in nothingness as an expression of freedom, his flock of intellectual followers saw this as testament to their own attitude toward thinking: it immediately dawned on them that it should be difficult to find meaning because they interpret all the meanings they have long ago found as something that could only have been obtained in special ways. And it is with this pretension that they began reading Sartre in the first place, so that they could feel validated by the occasional effusions of meaning they then uncovered. This was a privilege of the educated class who made existentialism fashionable as a habitus of protest and who were able to reconcile this very harmoniously with the promotion of their bourgeois existence. For the lower classes at that time, there was Brigitte Bardot’s pout, which was simpler but essentially expressed the same thing, which is why the zenith of JPS and BB’s success coincided at around the same time.
Today, the trappings of that era have long since become socially acceptable, and nonconformity is so commonplace that no one would think of finding a philosophical thinker under a turtleneck sweater. The attendant worldview is a relic in the history of philosophy, and the thinker who invented it was already in his lifetime enshrined in the pantheon of La Grande Nation. Everyone paid their last respects to Sartre, who in his old age was also physically blind, which posthumously refuted him once again in his belief that the philosophy of radical commitment would even scratch the world in the slightest.
Quotes, unless otherwise noted, from:
Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.