Daniel Williams: Sartre and Lewis

Recently in my Existentialism course I read a few selections from philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheistic existentialist. Unsurprisingly, what intrigued me most was his position on values and ethics. Sartre based his ethics on the notion that "existence precedes essence," which means that mankind defines itself subjectively, and that no external meaning is given to man. This meant that, for Sartre, moral values were defined by our choices rather than by reference to any external standard of morality. Lewis, of course, wrote extensively on ethics, and naturally I could not help comparing the ideas of these two men.

The most obvious contrast between the two is that Lewis would have disagreed vehemently with the suggestion that moral values are based on choices, or are otherwise subjectively defined. Whether one reads Mere Christianity or The Abolition of Man, it is easy to find Lewis' counterarguments. In the former, Lewis argues for "Natural Law," by which he means that moral facts exist independently of human preferences and decisions and instead are based on some external standard, namely God. He warned that subjectively based standards would render fruitful moral discussion impossible, because there would be no way to compare and judge each standard. In the latter work, Lewis warns about the danger of recreating moral values. He argues that either one must accept traditional morality, arbitrarily pick and choose parts of it, or recreate values entirely. He believes the second choice is irrational, and that the third choice would ultimately recreate human nature, thus eliminating whatever humanity was left in mankind.

I do recall Sartre mentioning that there is no such thing as human nature, since it is all defined after existence. As I see it, this opens the door to precisely the sort of dangers that Lewis warned of in The Abolition of Man. But even if Sartre's philosophy is not regarded as dangerous in that respect, I still think another of Lewis' warnings would apply: that there is no such thing as happiness or meaning apart from God. I think this existentialist attempt to define all meaning as subjective will ultimately force one to conclude that there is no such as meaning in the universe, that all meaning is illusory. Judging by the works of C.S. Lewis, I think that he would agree.

Now, while I have been mostly critical of Sartre's work here, I do think there are some intriguing ideas that he puts forth in his writings. For example, his examination of consciousness, if not totally correct in my view, nevertheless provides a unique way of thinking about what it means to be a conscious, sentient being. I even think that the notion of defining oneself, which is inherent in most existentialist philosophy, is useful and not necessarily contrary to the Christian faith Lewis and I share: I think that we, having been given the ability to create like our Creator, are at least partly capable of creating and defining some aspects of ourselves. Altogether, I found it an interesting and entertaining endeavor to compare the ideas of Lewis and Sartre, and I think that it allowed for some valuable insights into how human nature and values are defined.