1001Philosophers

Friedrich Nietzsche vs Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre read Nietzsche carefully as one of the founding voices of existentialism, and his Being and Nothingness can be read in part as a philosophical reckoning with Nietzschean themes — the death of God, the radical contingency of value, the freedom and burden of self-creation.

At a glance

Friedrich NietzscheJean-Paul Sartre
Dates1844 – 19001905 – 1980
NationalityGermanFrench
EraModernContemporary
Movements Existentialism, Continental Philosophy Existentialism, Continental Philosophy, Marxism
Profile Friedrich Nietzsche → Jean-Paul Sartre →

Where they agree

Both held that existence is fundamentally without given meaning, that any meaning must be created by the existing individual, and that what passes for objective moral order is the projection of human projects onto a world that does not supply it. Both were as much literary as philosophical figures, and both took the analysis of bad faith — Nietzsche's herd morality, Sartre's mauvaise foi — as central diagnostic tools.

Where they disagree

Nietzsche held that the death of God is not a uniform liberation but a diagnostic occasion: most who lose God collapse into nihilism, and only the higher type can affirm life on its own terms through the creation of new values. Sartre democratized the move: every human being is condemned to freedom, every choice is a project of self-creation, and authentic existence is available to anyone who refuses bad faith. Where Nietzsche's freedom is aristocratic and reserves itself for a higher type, Sartre's is universal and demands engagement of everyone. Their politics diverge accordingly: Nietzsche distrusted democratic and socialist movements as expressions of slave morality, while Sartre committed himself to a leftist politics of universal liberation.

Representative quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • “Postcard to Franz Overbeck , Sils-Maria (30 July 1881), tr. Walter Kaufmann , The Portable Nietzsche (1954)”

    I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor , and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza : that I should have turned to him just now , was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely

  • “Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

    Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

  • “Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865-06-11, [ specific citation needed ] quoted as epigraph in Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)”

    Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

Jean-Paul Sartre

  • “Hell is other people.”

    Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru... vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... ah! Quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer, c'est les autres.

  • “Existence precedes essence.”

    L'existence précède et commande l'essence.

  • “Man is condemned to be free.”

    Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1946

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