You are free; choose, that is, invent

Jean-Paul Sartre

I recently discovered Sartre. I had heard of him years ago. I remember that in my classes on international relations theory I learned that he was the partner of Simone de Beauvoir. I also remember that when I read the essay The Call of the Tribe by Nobel Prize–winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa, I learned that Sartre had been a major influence on him, especially during his years as a socialist militant. That influence later turned into deep disappointment when Vargas Llosa heard Sartre claim that words (written words) did not have much impact on changing reality. At the time, I didn’t understand this. After reading Sartre, I think I now see what was behind that statement.

Reading Sartre was one of my greatest discoveries of 2025. My interest in him emerged while I was reading an article about imagination and cities, in which the author cited Sartre several times. I then discovered that one of Sartre’s earliest books was The Imagination, a topic I have been studying as part of my master’s research. Another book I came across was Existentialism Is a Humanism, which helped me understand the existentialist tradition more clearly.

When Sartre said that words do not have a strong impact on changing reality, he was not necessarily saying that words do not matter. What he meant is that, for him, what truly matters in the world is not what people say they will do, but what they actually do.

Existentialism, especially the version promoted by Sartre, argues that human beings do not have a fixed essence; they only have existence, and from there they continuously create themselves through their actions and circumstances.

This position responds to its counterpart, largely inspired by religion, which assumes that human beings have a predefined purpose. Sartre, however, argues that a superhero is a superhero because they chose to be one, not because they were born to be one, and the same applies to a villain. As he put it: “You are free; choose, that is, invent.”

There are several interesting aspects of this way of thinking.

I believe existentialism can feel deeply liberating. We live in a society shaped by many deterministic ideas that often limit our freedom of action. These ideas are largely influenced by religion. When something happens, whether good or bad, it is often explained as part of a divine plan, ignoring the real and concrete reasons that led to that event. For Sartre, this is ultimately irrelevant to the existence of God. Even if God exists, he argues, human beings are constantly inventing themselves, correcting themselves, creating and destroying; always acting (because even “not acting” is a form of action). In the end, all this doing constitutes human existence. It defines what it means to be human, not because God commanded it, but because human beings decided it (consciously or unconsciously) through their choices.

This perspective can be liberating and frightening at the same time. Liberating because, on a personal level, our lives are not determined by a plan external to us; our lives can follow the path (or paths) we choose. On a collective level, it means we can choose the kind of government we want, the forms of organization we adopt, and so on.

But it is also frightening, because if we are free to choose and to invent, the question becomes: what is the best path? This is difficult enough at a personal level, and even more complex at a collective one, where multiple and often conflicting wills coexist. How do we know what to choose? Which path is the right one? I think this is where ethics and reason come into play.

Despite its unsettling nature, existentialism offers a ray of hope. The same freedom that allows us to make mistakes is the freedom that allows us to correct them. In that sense, existentialism is optimistic: there is always the possibility of changing direction, since human beings do not have a predefined destiny.