Sartre and Radical Freedom

On October 29, 1945, a chaotic crowd packed into the Club Maintenant in Paris. People fainted from the heat and chairs were broken in the frenzy to hear philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre speak. He was there to explain a radical new idea. Imagine, he said, a paperknife. A craftsman makes it with a purpose, an 'essence,' already in mind. For centuries, philosophers assumed humans had a similar blueprint, a fixed nature. Sartre disagreed. He argued that because there is no divine craftsman, 'existence precedes essence.' We simply are. We exist first, as a nothingness, and only then, through our choices, do we create who we are. This placed the total weight of meaning and identity squarely on the individual. The implications were immense.