Why We Can't Escape Responsibility for Our Choices, According to Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was a man who stood apart. A towering figure in 20th-century philosophy, he famously refused the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote the landmark novel Nausea, and shared a legendary intellectual partnership with Simone de Beauvoir. But what did Sartre actually write about? How did he understand freedom, and why do his ideas continue to provoke and inspire us today?

Sartre is a central figure in existentialism. Philosophers under this banner rarely agreed on everything, but they were all fascinated by a special category: existence. For existentialists, the starting point is that we are all “thrown” into the world. We don't choose our family, our social class, or the physical and mental traits we are born with. This is our given situation, the hand we’re dealt. It's as if we are all playing characters with pre-set strengths and weaknesses. A crucial property of this existence is that it is finite. Imagine standing before a legendary stone that offers several paths forward. No matter which you choose, every path eventually ends. That final stop, the impossibility of any future choice, is what philosophers like Heidegger called the end of existence—death.

A Project of Our Own Making

Sartre, however, proposed a revolutionary idea that puts humanity at the center of its own universe. In his view, a person first exists, and only then do they define themselves. Life itself is the highest value. A human being is, first and foremost, a project that is lived subjectively. We are not like mold or a cauliflower, which simply grows according to a pre-written natural code. A person cultivates themselves.

For centuries, philosophers often argued that our "essence"—our fundamental nature or purpose—was more important than our mere existence. Sartre flipped this entirely. He argued that man comes first. Think of a knife. A craftsman makes a knife with a purpose in mind: to cut. If the purpose is cutting vegetables, it will be designed to be small and easy to handle. A two-handed sword would be a poor choice for slicing a tomato. The idea of the knife—its essence—comes before the physical knife is ever made.

But a person, Sartre insists, is not a Swiss Army knife. We are not born with a pre-determined purpose or a standard we must live up to. We have no divine craftsman who designed us for a specific task. Because we have no original purpose, the choice of what to do, what to be, always remains with us. In choosing for ourselves, we each create an image of what it means to be human.

The Heavy Weight of Freedom

This lack of a pre-set blueprint means we cannot blame our actions on external causes. We are fully and completely responsible for what we do. This responsibility is terrifyingly vast, extending not just to ourselves, but to all of humanity. Sartre believed that when we choose something for ourselves, we are in effect choosing it for everyone.

He gave an example: "I want to get married and have children." Even if this choice seems based only on my personal passion or desire, by making it, I am not just committing myself to the ideal of monogamy; I am affirming it as a valid, valuable choice for all of humanity. My free choice becomes an example, a potential norm that puts pressure on those who might not have wanted a family. In this way, every personal decision echoes universally. We think of the ancient Phoenicians as a society of seafarers, even though it's obvious not all of them actually went to sea. A collective identity was forged by the actions of some. This is why Sartre famously said that we are "condemned to freedom." We are free, but that freedom comes with an inescapable and profound responsibility.

A World Without a Blueprint

Sartre made a distinction between two types of existentialists: religious thinkers like Karl Jaspers, who saw God as the ultimate source, and atheists like himself and Heidegger. The atheists, Sartre argued, took the idea further. It wasn't enough to say, as Nietzsche did, that "God is dead." They followed this idea to its logical conclusion: if there is no God who could have conceived of human nature, then there is no model for it. There is no blueprint.

This leads to a different understanding of the transcendent—that which lies beyond our immediate, rational understanding. For religious thinkers, this is God. For atheistic existentialists like Sartre or Albert Camus, it is something more ambiguous, an inexplicable and sensual aspect of reality. It's the recognition that some things happen without a clear, rational cause, a kind of "secret ingredient" that is actually nothing at all—an empty space where we are free to become whatever we choose.

Sartre often returned to a line he attributed to Dostoevsky: “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” For Sartre, this was the terrifying truth of our condition. We are alone, with nothing to cling to for justification, neither inside ourselves nor out in the world. There are no excuses for our actions. With no guiding principles other than our own choices, every action is a source of deep anxiety.

"Hell is Other People"

If there is no divine judgment, what is hell? Sartre offered his own interpretation in his play No Exit. The story features three people who have died and find themselves in what they expect to be Hell. But there are no flames or torturers. It is simply a locked room with three sofas. Their endless suffering comes from each other. At first, they all pretend to be respectable people, but their true sins are eventually revealed. One character, Garcin, finally realizes that no physical torture could compare to the constant mental anguish of being judged by the others. You can't escape their opinion of you.

Sartre later explained that this famous line—“Hell is other people”—is often misunderstood. He meant that our very sense of self is built upon the judgments of others. Because we have no built-in template for what a person should be, we look to others for clues. We try to adapt, to meet their expectations, to see ourselves as they see us. This is why Garcin, even when the door to the room swings open, does not leave. It is more important for him to prove to the others that he is not a coward than it is to escape. Even in death, he is trapped by their opinions.

This is precisely the kind of label Sartre himself sought to escape. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize, he refused it. He believed that such an award would put undue pressure on his readers. The authority of the prize would transfer to him, and people would no longer be able to evaluate his work objectively, on its own terms. He wanted to remain simply a man, not an institution—a man defined only by his ongoing project of existence.

References

• Sartre, J.-P. (2007). Existentialism Is a Humanism (C. Macomber, Trans.). Yale University Press.

  This short book is based on a lecture Sartre gave in 1945 and serves as one of the most accessible introductions to his philosophy. It directly addresses the core tenets discussed in the article, such as the principle of "existence precedes essence" (p. 20-22), the knife analogy (p. 19-20), and the profound responsibility that comes with freedom, where choosing for oneself is to choose for all humankind (p. 24-29).

• Sartre, J.-P. (1989). No Exit and Three Other Plays (S. Gilbert, Trans.). Vintage International.

  This volume contains the play Huis Clos (No Exit), the source of the famous quote analyzed in the article. The line "Hell is other people!" ("L'enfer, c'est les autres!") is spoken by the character Garcin near the play's conclusion, crystallizing the theme of being inescapably defined by the consciousness and judgment of others (p. 45).

• Sartre, J.-P. (1992). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Washington Square Press.

  This is Sartre's masterwork and the dense, philosophical foundation for his ideas. While the entire book is relevant, the sections on freedom and responsibility are particularly pertinent. Sartre outlines his concept of absolute freedom as a fundamental aspect of human consciousness and explores the anxiety (or "anguish") that arises from the realization that we are "condemned to be free" with no excuses for our actions (Part Four, Chapter One, especially p. 553-556 in this edition).