Sartre and Suicide

Sophie’s World Reaction:

I suspect after reading the very hectic and absurd “The Garden Party,” most everyone’s blog will encompass its surreal events. For the sake of being mildly unexpected, I will instead center this blog on “Our Own Time.” Out of the two philosophers mentioned in this chapter, Jean Paul-Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche, I want to focus my attention on Sartre. Sartre said some pretty interesting things in the book that I was surprised to learn of. For starters, many philosophers we’ve read of so far and tried to give their own view of the meaning of life and what man’s part in this whole ordeal is. One thing that Nietzsche proposed that the others didn’t was the entirely new concept of the possibility of there not being a meaning at all and man’s thought process on that. We have heard the proposition of maybe everything just happened coincidentally and there isn’t any rhyme or reason but we haven’t touched base on where this puts people and how people should and would react to this theory. Sartre emphasized that man has the earning to live for a reason and if man can’t find a reason to live or why they live they are left with three options. One of those options is to commit suicide. Sartre even said “the absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusion… and without resignation of either.” I was thrown aback when reading this and reminded of a quote that said “to be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.” This quote correlated perfectly to what Sartre states and makes me question who are the absurd and who isn’t.

Real World Connection:

Sartre talking about the absurd man and committing suicide brought back memories of taking psychology. I remembered the same quote I mentioned earlier about being ill adjusted to a deranged world in psychology and for a while had been readjusting my thoughts on suicide. I know suicide is something that in my opinion should not be encouraged but should not be deemed as horrible and immoral either. I had grown up in a family that believed so strongly that suicide was a sin and it almost made it seem like people who commit suicide have in turn committed a crime against humanity. I started feeling that it wasn’t right to be criticizing someone who committed suicide. I feel that someone doesn’t just commit suicide for no reason, something pushes them to their limit and they feel as though the only way to feel relief is to let go entirely. To me, people who are pushed to the brink to commit suicide went through enough already and it isn’t right for others to judge and put something else on their plate by saying they wronged everyone else. They went through so much and I feel that to blame them and push them down even further even after they are gone is the worst thing someone can do. For that reason I see where Sartre is coming from and I don’t think it is absurd for someone to believe there is no meaning and feel an emptiness inside. Sometimes I even feel like I am too dumb to really grasp the plausible reality of an empty world and meaningless life and that’s why I don’t feel the temptation of committing suicide.