The Ideas of French Existentialism in the Drama of Jean-Paul Sartre

Abstract

The article analyses J.-P. Sartre’s philosophical plays, their main ideas and the moral conflicts of the characters. Sartre largely expressed the features of the crisis of European culture in the first half of the twentieth century. The problems of freedom, responsibility, loneliness and existential choice that were on the agenda then are relevant again today. On the threshold of a change of cultural paradigms we are also experiencing a crisis of spiritual values, turning to the basic categories of ethics, and dealing with complex moral and political issues. In this context, many of the problems touched upon by Sartre take on new meanings. Particularly important today are the issues of responsibility for personal choice, in particular the understanding of the inevitability of choice, the involvement of everyone in the events taking place, the need to express and defend one’s position. Refusal to make a choice is in itself a choice, we are in any case engaged. The problem of the choice between the personal and the social, between the observance of the fundamental precepts and the commitment to the common cause, also acquires new meanings. Sartre’s ethics is anarchic and socially significant at the same time. The philosopher rejects God as the guarantor of justification and some supreme, governing force, but asserts an ethics of personal responsibility. The article analyses the understanding of love, which the French existentialist interprets as sacrifice in his plays. From Sartre’s point of view, a person is a project of the self, a person can level bad deeds with good deeds and vice versa. Thus, the philosopher in his plays demonstrates the possibility of everyone’s struggle with his passions, personal perfection without higher intervention. The conclusion is that Sartre places the ethical above the aesthetic, affirms the involvement of everyone in the social situation, and demonstrates the application of philosophy in real life. His main ideas are not only of academic interest today, but also of practical interest.