Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre describe the existential condition in similar terms: we are confronted with a world without fixed meaning, where we lack an essential human nature, and where emotions like anguish and anxiety dominate our senses. Both agree that the world sans God and sans coded morality opens up a kind of human freedom or a “possibility of choice,” according to Sartre (33). I believe the authors diverge, however, when it comes to describing what we should do with the freedom granted by existentialism.
The absurd figure in Camus—the individual who has come to terms with their existential condition—lives for the maximum “quantity of experiences” (Camus, 60). The three figures Camus presents who embody this “ethic” of quantity might do a good job of illuminating precisely Camus’ meaning for absurdity, but they are also vain, destructive, and individualistic to a fault. In rejecting fixed morality, they’ve become people who you probably wouldn’t call “good” under most principles.
Besides their embrace of absurdity, Sartre might observe that these three figures all shirk responsibility, a central tenet in his defense of existentialism. Sartre describes the existential condition as a constant process of becoming: given that existence precedes essence (see paper-cutter analogy, pp. 34), humans are responsible for their own process of becoming. Since we all collectively face this problem, mankind is universally in a process of becoming. Sartre argues that the individual action thus constitutes a universal action… since my own becoming is tied to everyone’s becoming. Sartre writes, “I build the universal in choosing myself” (53). Sartre reaches the conclusion that, in the face of existential freedom, the thing that constitutes who or what we are, both individually and universally, is our choices. This leaves us with an enormous, anguishing sense of responsibility. Following Sartre’s conclusion that the self is undetermined and it’s our responsibility to define who we are, it also seems fair to argue that, without this responsibility, we have no self.
One purpose of Camus’ figures is their demonstration of the insufficiency of ethics or morals in the face of absurdity. They demonstrate that actions are unintelligible against these coded standards if we banish hope. Sartre seems much more hesitant to banish ethics. While he certainly rejects religious ethics or secular ethical codes that similarly attempt to measure actions against an a priori standard, Sartre leaves space for an existential ethics that values “knowing whether the inventing that has been done, has been done in the name of freedom” (59). Although we don’t know enough to judge actions as ethical or unethical, we can judge whether actions have been done in the name of mankind’s freedom.
To the extent that Camus remains concerned with our individual recognition of absurdity in the hope that we individually come to terms with our condition, Sartre delivers a more communitarian theory.
