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Jean-Paul Sartre may be the most famous atheist of the 20th century.
As such, he qualifies for anyone's short list of "pillars of unbelief."
Yet he may have done more to drive fence-sitters toward the faith
than most Christian apologists. For Sartre has made atheism such a
demanding, almost unendurable, experience that few can bear it.
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The Pillars of Unbelief—Sartre by Peter Kreeft 30/9/19 4(26
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The Pillars of Unbelief—Sartre by Peter Kreeft 30/9/19 4(26
with independence, and because (2) the only God he can conceive of
is one who would take away human freedom rather than creating
and maintaining it—a sort of cosmic fascist. Furthermore, (3) Sartre
makes the adolescent mistake of equating freedom with rebellion.
He says freedom is only "the freedom to say no."
But this is not the only freedom. There's also the freedom to say yes.
Sartre thinks we compromise our freedom when we say yes, when
we choose to affirm the values we've been taught by our parents, our
society, or our Church. So what Sartre means by freedom is very
close to what the beatniks of the `50s and the hippies of the `60s
called "doing your own thing," and what the Me generation of the
`70s called "looking out for No. 1."
Yet he also says that since there is no God and since we therefore
create our own values and laws, there really is no evil: "To choose to
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The Pillars of Unbelief—Sartre by Peter Kreeft 30/9/19 4(26
Sartre's atheism does not merely say that God doesn't exist, but that
God is impossible. He at least pays some homage to the biblical
notion of God as "I Am" by calling it the most self-contradictory
idea ever imagined, "the impossible synthesis" of being-for-itself
(subjective personality, the "I") with being-in-itself (objective
eternal perfection, the "Am").
God means the perfect person, and this is for Sartre a contradiction
of terms. Perfect things or ideas, like Justice or Truth, are possible;
and imperfect persons, like Zeus or Apollo, are possible. But the
perfect person is impossible. Zeus is possible but not real. God is
unique among gods: not only unreal but impossible.
Sartre's most famous play, "No Exit," puts three dead people in a
room and watches them make hell for each other simply by playing
God to each other—not in the sense of exerting external power over
each other but simply by knowing each other as objects. The
shocking lesson of the play is that "hell is other people."
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The Pillars of Unbelief—Sartre by Peter Kreeft 30/9/19 4(26
We cannot help agreeing with William Barrett when he says that "to
those who are ready to use this [nausea] as an excuse for tossing out
the whole Sartrian philosophy, we may point out that it is better to
encounter one's existence in disgust than never to encounter it at
all."
We can only pity him for that, and with him the many other atheists
who are clear-headed enough to see as he did that "without God all
things are permissible"—but nothing has meaning.
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