JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AD 1905-1980
2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”
Doing research on these men and seeing how idea upon idea was being laid down to construct the stronghold that we have today in our Western Hemisphere we see how the above verse is the outcome of their philosophy. Shooting in schools, disrespect for teachers and parents alike, severe drug addiction and a host of other things can be traced back to the overall philosophy or worldview, especially in our higher education that has been espoused – now working itself out in our streets.
Kevin Swanson in his book called Apostate brings out that Jean-Paul Sartre not only defined the 20th century man, but was also the guide and philosopher for millions of youth from the 1940’s to 1960s. His paternal and maternal grandparents raised him. His grandfather on his father’s side was an atheist who had a number of extramarital affairs that affected Jean-Paul in his overall outlook on life. His teen-age years were lived out in rebellion and following a pattern of stealing, lying, etc.
The movie screen brought this teen-age rebellion to light with the movie Rebel Without A Cause played by James Dean in 1955 and helped bring in the rebellious 60s. I found the Lord in 1961, but I still had a rebellious spirit that was directed against the so-called establishment. If it was not for the Lord reaching down and saving me I would probably have been one of those ‘hippies’ making my journey from Kabul, Afghanistan to Kathmandu, Nepal to Goa, and India. However, I still made the trip, but with the life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Like so many before him, Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas were formed in college as he read the works of other philosopher’s especially Friedrich Nietzsche. Sartre’s life was filled with debauchery with alcohol, drugs sexual encounters. Some of his best works, according to his biographers, were written while under the influence of alcohol. He was certainly the best example for the sexual revolution of the 60s. He was a heavy smoker consuming two or three packs of cigarettes a day. Perhaps this is what caused his death with edema of the lung in 1980.
Jean-Paul was an atheist. He was an “existentialist man.” Do not let the word, existentialist, scare you. Kevin Swanson says: “Existentialism is the deification of self; or to put all of this deep philosophical jargon into language that a two-year old can understand, existentialism is selfishness.”
Does this sound familiar? “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”
For God to be God – He must be the source of all reality, of truth and existence. Basically, what Jean-Paul Sartre and other humanist philosophers have done is to try and replace God with themselves. According to Sartre “each human being is seen as absolute master of his own soul, if he chooses to follow his path of action and courage.” Have you ever heard people say, “I am the master of my soul,” and wonder where the saying came from? Now we know. With Sartre’s type of existentialism he (man) determines his own opinions, ethics, actions and own morality. In other words, he has made himself God.
In Sartre’s writing he often talks about being free. Being free for him is to be alone. For Sartre “hell is other people.” This would seem to be one of the reasons why we have such loneness in the Western world today. We have what we call the “alienation of 20th century man.”
Quote from his book called The Nausea: “I live alone, entirely alone. I never speak to anyone, never; I receive nothing, I give nothing… When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the fiends. You let events flow past; suddenly you see people pop up who speak and who go away, you plunge into stories without beginning or end: you make a terrible witness. But in compensation, one misses nothing, no improbability or, story too tall to be believed in cafes.”
This philosophy of loneness makes sense when it is carried to its logical conclusion. When you are your own god you do not want competition from others who are trying to achieve godhead. You do not want any interference or competition. We see this in our culture today, but more so in Europe than the USA, but we are close behind. The outworking of Sartre’s philosophy is seen in the increase of divorce rates, deterioration of family units, abortions, and the break-up of relationships, etc.
God has created us for community and without community we will dry up and wither away. What a responsibility the church (God’s chosen people, not frozen people as someone once said) has for combating this ideology with the weapons that He has given us in tearing down this stronghold. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)
