Sartre's Existentialism Is a Humanism › The Three Pillars: Anguish, Abandonment, Despair

Sartre identifies three fundamental experiences that arise from recognizing radical freedom: anguish, abandonment, and despair. These terms sound bleak, but Sartre insists they describe inescapable features of the human condition that we must face honestly rather than flee from. ::: {.callout-note title="Anguish"} The feeling that arises when we recognize that our choices commit all of humanity along with ourselves. When I choose, I choose for everyone. I implicitly declare that this is how a human being should act. The weight of this universal responsibility produces anguish. ::: Anguish is not mere anxiety about outcomes. It is the recognition that in choosing for myself, I am choosing for all. When I decide to marry, I implicitly affirm that marriage is a valuable human institution. When I lie, I implicitly declare that lying is acceptable human conduct. I cannot escape this universal dimension of my choices by pretending they affect only me. Sartre illustrates this with the example of a military leader who must decide whether to send his troops into battle. He cannot hide behind orders from above. He interprets those orders, decides whether to follow them, and bears responsibility for the deaths that follow. The anguish of command is not weakness but clear-sightedness about what decision-making actually involves. ::: {.callout-note title="Abandonment"} The recognition that we are alone in our choices, with no external authority (God, nature, society) that can make our decisions for us or guarantee their correctness. We are abandoned to our freedom. ::: Abandonment does not mean loneliness in the ordinary sense. It means that no external source can relieve us of the burden of choice. Even if God exists, Sartre argues, we must still decide whether to obey God's commands, how to interpret them, which claimed revelations to accept. The religious person who says "God told me to do this" has still chosen to believe that voice was God's, chosen to interpret the command in a particular way, chosen to obey. The responsibility cannot be transferred. The same applies to moral systems, social conventions, psychological drives, or political ideologies. You can follow them, but you choose to follow them. You cannot hide behind them. "I was just following orders" is the paradigmatic expression of bad faith: the attempt to deny the freedom and responsibility that define human existence. ::: {.callout-note title="Despair"} The recognition that we must act without certainty about outcomes and without relying on forces beyond our control. We can only count on what depends on our will or on the probabilities that make action possible. ::: Despair, for Sartre, is not hopelessness but the refusal of false hope. It means accepting that you cannot control how others will respond, what circumstances will arise, or whether your projects will succeed. You can only commit to your actions and accept responsibility for what depends on you. A student who hopes to pass an exam cannot rely on hope alone, only on studying. A revolutionary who hopes for social change cannot rely on historical inevitability, only on organizing, persuading, acting. Despair is the honest acknowledgment that the future is genuinely open and that our actions are the only thing we can contribute to it.