Why We Experience An Existential Crisis - The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre

Existential crisis, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s framework, isn’t a sign that life has collapsed—it’s the moment people confront the fact that nothing in advance guarantees meaning. Born without choosing one’s circumstances, body, or place in time, a person eventually faces the problem of deciding what to do with what has been done to them. Sartre’s central claim—“existence precedes essence”—captures the idea that humans are not manufactured with a built-in purpose. Unlike a paper knife, made for a specific function before it exists, people must create their own purpose through living.

That absence of predetermined meaning produces a second, sharper problem: anguish over choice. If there is no external authority designing a life plan, then every decision—what to believe, who to be, which path to take—becomes both necessary and uncertain. Sartre treats this not as despair but as the price of freedom: people are condemned to be free, meaning they cannot escape responsibility for how they shape themselves. Even refusing to choose counts as a choice, because inaction still commits someone to a stance.

Sartre also identifies a common escape route: “bad faith,” a self-deception that shifts responsibility outward. People may cling to popular templates, blame circumstances, or pretend their identity is fixed by forces outside them. The psychological payoff is temporary relief from the anxiety of freedom, but the cost is losing one’s authentic self and the real structure of the world. In other words, bad faith dampens anguish by lying—while also narrowing the range of genuine self-making.

Sartre’s view of identity follows from this. A person is “nothing else but what he purposes,” and is “the sum of his actions.” Meaning, then, is not discovered like a hidden object; it is forged through choices and commitments. Life’s inherent meaninglessness becomes, paradoxically, the condition for freedom—freedom to decide what matters, to pursue chosen values, and to build a life that can be owned.

The transcript pushes the practical edge of this philosophy: most decisions cannot be fully validated in advance, and regret often follows either path—whether someone stays or leaves, agrees or disagrees, marries or divorces, takes a job or quits. The uncertainty of outcomes never disappears. What remains is not finding the one “correct” course, but practicing self-honesty and virtue—living in a way that can be revisited without selling oneself short.

Ultimately, the existential burden is framed as a gift with a cost. Facing the abyss of choice and responsibility is difficult, but it humbles and clarifies what it means to be human. Sartre’s ideas land as a reminder to take responsibility for one’s life so thoroughly that the harshest critic is not oneself—because the most important authenticity is the one people maintain internally, even when others judge, disagree, or become upset.