A Critique of Sartre’s Existentialism

The basis for Sartre’s existentialism is that the human is nothing more than the ensemble of her own acts, made according to her freely chosen choices. The human is absolutely free to make of herself and her “facticities” what she will, and the choices she makes today is the reason for her situation tomorrow. She may not have chosen to be born; she may not have had any say as to the situation into which she would be born. Nevertheless, her aims determine the value of her facticities, or those aspects of her lived situation which she encounters in working towards her aims. No condition is wholly intrinsically bad; surely it is the human’s responsibility to make of herself what she will.

It is hard to question this new commandment that says, “Thou shalt be responsible for thyself.” Will any challenge to this be anything more than an excuse made in bad faith? Yet there is something so Republican sounding about this; i.e., so wrong… Might we consider some concrete situations to analyse Sartre’s claims? We will consider three young people who desire the same thing: university scholarships to study medicine. To make things more concrete and specific, we will place these three students in 21st century Kuala Lumpur, and we will divide them mainly according to racial categories. Certainly desire itself means nothing; these three students all act to attain the scholarships.

Student A is a middle-class Malay boy. He studies a reasonable amount for the public examinations and is repaid handsomely. His 6As, 2Bs and 1C get him a full government scholarship to study medicine in Dublin.

Student B is a lower middle-class Indian girl. She studies much harder and does much better in her public exams, scoring 8As and 1B on a different marking-scale than Student A. She is only offered a seat to study Agricultural Science in a backward public university, and so chooses to do Form 6 instead, in the hopes of finally getting a seat in the medical or biomedical engineering faculties. She gains a near-perfect CGPA but again, is only offered Veterinary Science. She takes it up for lack of other options. She is not offered a discount on tuition and instead has to take up a loan.

Student C is an upper middle-class Chinese girl. She badly wants to become a doctor and, knowing how hard the competition is for seats and scholarships among Chinese students, she spends night and day studying. She achieves straight As for her public exam, again on the tougher marking-scale. She fails to get even an interview for government scholarships. A local private college gives her a scholarship to do a pre-university programme which she breezes through. Her parents take out a loan to put her through a private local medical university.

Students A, B and C are all free to do with themselves as they will. Students B and C knew how hard it was going to be for them, yet they insisted on aiming for a medical degree. Their facticities determined their actions: Student A did not work as hard and do as well in the exams because he did not need to. Students B and C did need to and they acted accordingly, yet even then neither achieved the most satisfying results. Sartre’s answer may well be, “Too bad, but life is like that. Doesn’t mean you aren’t free.” Yet what freedom is this, which “has not the power to transform me instantaneously into what I decide to be” (Freedom 447)?

It is not so much that Students B and C could not obtain government scholarships or seats in public medical faculties that is a challenge to Sartre’s notion of individual freedom. It is precisely his failure to recognise the constraints on their motivations. Students B and C acquire their motivations from the expectations that come out of their relationships with their parents and others. They carry the burden of their parents’ expectations that they become doctors. The desire to become a doctor does not arise ex nihilo and the facticities that obstruct them are not neutral to start off with. Students B and C got a raw deal and anguish on their part comes not out of an inability to face their freedom but precisely out of these “facticities” that are obstacles, were meant to be obstacles, and have obstructed the paths on which they were set.