Quotation
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“Anguish is the feeling of being responsible for all people through one's own choice.”
Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism · Modern · 1946
What does it mean?
Anguish is the feeling of being responsible for all people through one's own choice. He distinguishes it from fear. Fear is of something in the world. Anguish is of myself, because nothing excuses the choice, and the choice fashions an image of a human being. A rival reading hears anxiety in the clinical sense, or Kierkegaard's dizziness borrowed without the theology. The lecture is using a word his audience knew from Kierkegaard and from the war. Another reading thinks the responsibility for all people is grandiose.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A paraphrase of the lecture's account of anguish, in the territory of Mairet and of Macomber. Anguish is not fear of an external threat. It is the feeling of a choice that proposes an image of humanity. The card compresses that account.
Where it comes from
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Approximate date: 1946.
How to use it
A junior doctor in Birmingham chooses a pattern of shifts that others will have to live with, and feels more than tired. If the feeling is only fatigue, it is not his anguish. If it is the sense that the pattern says how a doctor may treat a rota, it is closer. The lecture does not solve the rota. It refuses the excuse that one is only following a nature, or only following orders, as if the following were not a choice.
A mindset reading
The lecture's anguish, abandonment, and despair are redefined so they are not the moods the words suggest. Quote the redefinition or do not quote the mood. The paraphrase here is the redefinition of anguish only.
Understand the philosophy
This is the same 1945 lecture. Mairet and Macomber are the translators named for it. The Words, his autobiography, has a line about having become a traitor that this card does not use, because the English is not secure enough to put in quotation marks.
- ethics
- freedom
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
Anguish is the feeling of being responsible for all people through one's own choice. He distinguishes it from fear. Fear is of something in the world. Anguish is of myself, because nothing excuses the choice, and the choice fashions an image of a human being. A rival reading hears anxiety in the clinical sense, or Kierkegaard's dizziness borrowed without the theology. The lecture is using a word his audience knew from Kierkegaard and from the war. Another reading thinks the responsibility for all people is grandiose.
Did Jean-Paul Sartre really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A paraphrase of the lecture's account of anguish, in the territory of Mairet and of Macomber. Anguish is not fear of an external threat. It is the feeling of a choice that proposes an image of humanity. The card compresses that account.
Which work is it in?
Existentialism Is a Humanism Approximate date: 1946.