Existence precedes essence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Existence precedes essence - Essay Example Throughout Sartre’s philosophical writings, from Being and Nothingness to Nausea, Sartre develops and argues in favor of this concept. This essay considers my personal belief in existence precedes essence, implementing one of Sartre’s seminal texts, Existentalism is a Humanism as reference. In considering my personal concept of whether existence precedes essence, I realize the truth is a complex issue. Through Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre in large part argues from an atheistic perspective. For instance, he writes that the, â€Å"atheist existentialism is rather more coherent. It declares that God does not exist, yet there is still a being in whom existence precedes essence, a being which exists before being defined by any concept, and this being is man or, as Heidegger puts it, human reality† (Sartre, web). In my personal formulation of the concept, I tend to side with Sartre in denying a creationist concept of reality that has an intended purpose for liv ing beings. However, I also recognize that simply because Sartre denies the existence of an objective God, this does not also prove that existence precedes essence.