What Jean-Paul Sartre Actually Said About Time
All 5 Jean-Paul Sartre passages on time, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Jean-Paul Sartre returns to time five times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. French existentialist novelist and philosopher. Held that existence precedes essence — we are condemned to be free, and to bear the weight of our choices.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is time for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Jean-Paul Sartre passage on time
“To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.”
“If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.”
“I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”
“I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.”
“Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Jean-Paul Sartre is not offering five opinions about time; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Jean-Paul Sartre applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to Jean-Paul Sartre.
You can choose the easier year or the harder, better one.
Argued as existential challenge: You are treating growth as a responsibility, not a mood. The risk is worshiping difficulty for its own sake.
A group accepts you only when you hide a real part of yourself.
Argued as authentic freedom: You are refusing bad faith: the bargain where comfort costs your selfhood. The risk is turning every compromise into betrayal.
Work through these yourself
- You can choose the easier year or the harder, better one. — argued from existential challenge and several competing positions
- A group accepts you only when you hide a real part of yourself. — argued from authentic freedom and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Henry David Thoreau and Immanuel Kant all address time too, and they do not converge. Reading Jean-Paul Sartre alone gives you a coherent position; reading Jean-Paul Sartre against Albert Camus shows you what the position is actually choosing against.