What Would Jean-Paul Sartre Say About Chicago?

By the New Acropolis Chicago Team

At rush hour on the Red Line, in a crowded office tower, or walking past lakefront wind that seems determined to test your character, it is fair to ask: what would Jean-Paul Sartre say about Chicago? He would probably not begin with architecture, food, or sports loyalty. He would begin with the human being standing in the middle of all that movement, faced with choice.

Sartre was a philosopher of freedom, responsibility, and the uneasy truth that we are always shaping ourselves through what we do. That makes him surprisingly relevant to city life. Chicago is a place of energy, ambition, inequality, reinvention, neighborhood loyalty, and constant pressure to define yourself. Sartre would likely see it not just as a city, but as a stage on which human freedom becomes impossible to ignore.

Who Was Jean-Paul Sartre?

Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris in 1905 and became, over the course of his long career, one of the most recognized intellectuals of the twentieth century: a philosopher, novelist, playwright, and political essayist who insisted that ideas must have consequences in real life.

His most important philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, was written during the German occupation of Paris and published in 1943. Dense and demanding as a text, its central insights filter into everything he wrote afterward. He also wrote the novel Nausea, the play No Exit (which gave us the line "hell is other people"), and delivered a landmark public lecture in an overflowing Parisian hall in October 1945 called "Existentialism is a Humanism," which became the popular introduction to existentialist thought even though Sartre himself later had misgivings about it.

He spent most of his life in intellectual partnership with the philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and refused it, an act consistent with his lifelong suspicion of institutions and official recognition. He died in Paris in 1980, and tens of thousands of Parisians followed his funeral procession through the streets.

What makes Sartre useful is not the famous gestures but a quality of mind: the insistence that freedom is not something we can admire from a safe distance. It is a condition we live, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The Philosophy: Existence Before Essence

Sartre's most important claim can be stated in three words: existence precedes essence. This sounds technical but it unlocks something significant.

Much of Western philosophy, and a great deal of ordinary thinking, assumes that human beings have a fixed nature: something we essentially are, built in before we arrive. For religious thinkers, this comes from God. For others, from biology, society, or culture. Either way, the idea is that what we are precedes who we become.

Sartre reversed this entirely. For him, we exist first and define ourselves through everything we choose and do afterward. There is no hidden script. There is no predetermined self waiting to be discovered. We appear in the world without instructions, and then, through every decision we make, we become what we are.

This sounds liberating. It also closes off every excuse. Sartre made famous a phrase that follows directly from this: we are condemned to be free. Condemned because we did not ask for this freedom and cannot set it down. Even refusing to choose is a choice. Even acting on autopilot is, at some level, chosen.

Two ideas follow from this that appear throughout his work. Bad faith is the condition of lying to ourselves about that freedom: pretending we have no choice when we do, shrinking into a role and calling it fate, saying "that's just how I am" when what we mean is "I would rather not decide." It is a comfortable untruth that Sartre had little patience for. Anguish is its honest counterpart: the feeling that comes when we recognize we are always shaping ourselves, one decision at a time, with no guarantee of the result. The goal, for Sartre, is not to escape anguish. It is to act through it honestly.

What Would Sartre Say About Chicago and Freedom?

In a city like Chicago, that condemnation becomes impossible to ignore. Urban life multiplies possibilities. Career paths branch in every direction. Communities overlap. Cultural influences compete for attention. We can reinvent ourselves, but that freedom often feels less like a gift and more like a burden.

Sartre would not romanticize that burden. Many people want a script. They want to be told who they are by their job title, social background, political tribe, or neighborhood identity. These things matter, but Sartre would warn against letting them become excuses. A person can work in finance, teach in a public school, manage a restaurant, create art, or care for family and still face the same question: am I living by conscious choice, or have I handed my life over to habits and expectations?

Chicago, in this sense, would be for Sartre a teacher. Its pace exposes us. It reveals whether we are actively choosing our values or simply being carried along.

The City and the Temptation of Bad Faith

Chicago offers endless scripts. The hustler. The insider. The polished professional. The cynical survivor. The activist who never rests. The creative who turns identity into a brand. None of these are false in themselves. The problem begins when a person hides inside them.

Sartre might look at a city that prizes productivity and ask whether people are mistaking activity for purpose. He might ask whether success has become a costume that protects us from deeper questions. Am I busy because my work serves something meaningful, or because silence would force me to confront myself? Am I loyal to a cause because I truly believe in it, or because it gives me a ready-made self?

This is where Sartre can be uncomfortable, but also genuinely useful. He does not let us blame the system for everything, even while recognizing that systems are real. He asks each person to reclaim inner honesty. That does not solve every structural problem, but it does begin to restore something harder to take away: personal dignity.

Sartre Would Not Ignore Chicago's Contradictions

A serious reading of Sartre cannot stop at individual lifestyle choices. He understood that freedom is always lived in conditions we did not choose. A person is free, but not floating above history, economics, race, or class. Chicago makes this plain. It is a city of great beauty and deep fragmentation, with strong communities and painful divisions existing side by side.

Sartre would resist both easy optimism and easy despair. He would reject the idea that a city's inequalities completely erase human agency. He would also reject the comforting illusion that personal ambition alone explains everything. Freedom is real, but it is exercised within limits. The moral task is not to deny those limits. It is to respond consciously and courageously within them.

That perspective matters now. It keeps us from becoming passive, but it also keeps us from becoming naive.

Identity Is Never Finished

Chicago is a city with a strong sense of self, but also many selves. It is proud, practical, artistic, wounded, resilient, ambitious, and often misunderstood from the outside. Sartre would likely find that interesting because he believed identity is never finished. We are always becoming.

This applies to cities as much as individuals. Chicago cannot be reduced to one story. Neither can you. Sartre would challenge the urge to define ourselves by a single label, whether inherited or self-created. Identity is not a fixed object to discover once and for all. It is a living project.

That idea can be quietly liberating for anyone who feels stuck. If you think of yourself as the anxious one, the overlooked one, the overachiever, the one who always starts over, Sartre would ask whether you are turning a past pattern into a prison. He would not tell you to ignore your history. He would ask you not to surrender your future to it.

Responsibility Is Where Sartre Becomes Practical

Sartre is often treated as dark or abstract, but one of his most useful lessons is painfully concrete: you are responsible for your choices. Not for everything that happens to you, but for how you answer it.

In Chicago, that might mean asking different questions about ordinary life. What kind of coworker am I becoming? What habits am I practicing every day? Am I helping create a more human neighborhood, workplace, or family culture, or am I adding to indifference? Sartre would remind us that values are not mainly declared. They are enacted.

This is where existentialism meets service. If freedom is real, then contribution is not optional for a meaningful life. We do not become ourselves in isolation. We become ourselves through action, relationship, and responsibility. A philosophy that begins with freedom should, if followed honestly, mature into solidarity.

That is an important correction to a shallow reading of Sartre. He was not saying, do whatever you want. He was saying that your choices reveal what you believe a human life should be. That gives every action moral weight.

Anxiety Is Not Always a Sign Something Is Wrong

Many people in cities carry a low hum of anxiety: the next rent payment, the next deadline, the next relationship decision, the next civic crisis. Sartre would not be surprised. Anxiety, for him, is often the feeling of freedom itself. It appears when we realize no one can choose in our place.

This can sound severe, but there is something hopeful in it. Anxiety is not always proof that you are lost. Sometimes it is proof that you are awake. The challenge is to let it become clarity rather than paralysis.

That requires practices Sartre himself did not always spell out gently, but they follow from his thought. Pause before acting from impulse. Notice where you are hiding behind a role. Ask whether your routine reflects your real values. Seek communities that support honesty rather than performance. In that sense, applied philosophy becomes something lived, not merely discussed.

Would Sartre Admire Chicago?

Probably not uncritically. He would see vanity, injustice, distraction, and self-deception alongside the courage, labor, creativity, and fierce human desire to build a life that matters. He might offer the same challenge we found in asking what Confucius would say about the city: a place does not save us and does not doom us. It reveals us. It gives us circumstances, pressure, relationships, and tests. Within those, we choose.

Chicago, like every human life, is unfinished. So are you. That is not a flaw. It is the opening through which freedom, responsibility, and purpose can enter.

Philosophy begins there. If you want to explore it alongside others, in a community built for exactly that kind of honest conversation, the first class is always free at New Acropolis Chicago, in the Ravenswood neighborhood. We will be here.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Jean-Paul Sartre?

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French philosopher, novelist, and playwright widely considered the father of existentialist philosophy. His most important philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, published in 1943, explored human freedom, consciousness, and responsibility. He refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 and spent his career insisting that philosophical ideas must have consequences in real life.

What did Sartre mean by existence precedes essence?

Sartre argued that human beings have no predetermined nature or purpose built in from the start. We exist first and define ourselves through our choices and actions afterward. This means there is no fixed self to discover, only a self we are continuously creating. It is a liberating idea, but also a demanding one: if we are always shaping ourselves, we are always responsible for the result.

What is bad faith in Sartre's philosophy?

Bad faith is the condition of lying to ourselves about our freedom. It happens when we act as if we have no choice when we do, hiding behind a role, a social expectation, or a habit and calling it fate. Sartre saw bad faith as one of the most common human tendencies and one of the most important things philosophy can help us recognize and resist.

What did Sartre mean by condemned to be free?

Sartre used this phrase to describe the unavoidable weight of human freedom. We did not ask to be free, and we cannot escape it: even refusing to choose is itself a choice. The phrase captures something uncomfortable and honest: we are always authoring our own lives, whether we acknowledge it or not, and we are responsible for what we make of that authorship.

How does Sartre's philosophy apply to everyday life?

Sartre's most practical insight is that values are not declared but enacted. Every choice we make, from how we treat a coworker to what we spend our attention on, reveals what we actually believe a human life should look like. That makes ordinary decisions carry moral weight and makes self-examination not an indulgence but a form of responsibility.

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Authorship Note

The philosophical content and teaching methods are consistent with the values of New Acropolis Chicago. While artificial intelligence assisted in organizing the article, creating image artwork, and translating ideas into clear, practical language, the final outcome is a product of collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence.