Topics Philosophers

Question I've been reading a little about Existentialism lately and it has most definitely piqued my interest. Coming from a background where both "nurture" and "nature" have me statistically set on a bad path, I am inspired by the ideas of self-reliance of which Existentialists speak. What I don't fully understand, however, is how so many Existentialists (such as Sartre and Camus) seem to be avid supporters of communism or socialism. It seems contradictory, or at least paradoxical, that a philosophy based on the principle that you "are the sum total of the choices you make" would prescribe to socialist ideals. Is there some main idea that I am missing? Thank you for your time, kevin, 17

Accepted:
March 17, 2006

Comments

An excellent question. There are two ways of answering this. First, historically, a philosopher like Sartre developed over his long career, and the ‘pure’ existentialism that he espoused in the 1940s is greatly modified in the political thinking of the 1950s and later. However, this is probably not a very interesting answer. I mention it only because sometimes we can fall into the trap of asking ‘what does Sartre (or Kant, or whoever) say about X?’ without specifying which Sartre or Kant.

A more interesting answer concerns the type of political, psychological and social illusions that go, it is argued, hand in hand with capitalism, and which are dispelled by socialism or communism. Insofar as existentialism develops a metaphysics of the true nature of reality, of the self, and of social relations between selves, then an authentic existence would be one that implicitly or explicitly, recognises these truths and in particular does not take a falsehood as an excuse for abdicating responsibility for its decisions. If there is a form of social and political organisation that serves to encourage these truths, or embody them, then the existentialist would be in bad faith if she did not espouse this form of organisation. Socialism or communism, in different ways, were held to do just this. Consequently, there is no perceived contradiction between existentialism and these political commitments.