1001Philosophers

Jean-Paul Sartre vs Martin Heidegger

Sartre's Being and Nothingness is in significant respects a French existentialist appropriation of Heidegger's Being and Time. Heidegger himself rejected the appropriation, and his Letter on Humanism was a polemical response to what he saw as Sartre's misreading.

At a glance

Jean-Paul SartreMartin Heidegger
Dates1905 – 19801889 – 1976
NationalityFrenchGerman
EraContemporaryContemporary
Movements Existentialism, Continental Philosophy, Marxism Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Existentialism
Profile Jean-Paul Sartre → Martin Heidegger →

Where they agree

Both held that the analysis of human existence — what Heidegger calls Dasein and Sartre the for-itself — is the proper starting point for ontology, both held that traditional philosophy has misconstrued being by treating it on the model of a substance, and both took anxiety, mortality, and authenticity as central existential phenomena. Sartre's vocabulary is unintelligible without Heidegger's behind it.

Where they disagree

Sartre read Heidegger as offering a philosophy of human freedom and self-creation: existence precedes essence, and we make ourselves through our choices in conditions of radical contingency. Heidegger insisted that this is humanism in a sense that misses the point of his thought: the priority is not human freedom but the question of being itself, of which the human is one site of disclosure rather than the center. Heidegger's later work treats human existence as the place where being shows itself; Sartre treats human existence as the source from which meaning is projected onto a meaningless world.

Representative quotes

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

Martin Heidegger

  • “Language is the house of Being.”

    Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins.

  • “Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.”

    Letter on Humanism (1947)

  • “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

    Das Bedenklichste in unserer bedenklichen Zeit ist, dass wir noch nicht denken.

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