Resources that fit

Units and bundles for this topic

Sartre and the Priority of Existence is the unit built around this question. The Existentialism Bundle adds anguish and bad faith, Sartre and neuroscience, and de Beauvoir and Camus for $49.90, and Upper Secondary Complete covers all 24 units for whole-course planning.

The teaching problem

What the phrase actually claims

Start with the contrast Sartre himself uses in the lecture. A manufactured object is made according to a conception. Someone decides what a paper knife (in the unit, a pair of scissors) is for and how it should be built, and only then does the object exist. Its essence, meaning its purpose and defining nature, comes first. Sartre argues that human beings are different. In his atheistic account there is no creator whose plan fixes in advance what a human life is for. So a person exists first, meets the world, and defines themselves afterwards through what they actually do. Essence is not cancelled; it comes later and is never finished while the person is alive.

The second half of the claim is what students usually drop. Sartre does not say people have no bodies, no history or no social position. The unit's concept page calls these given conditions facticity, and the explanation is direct: the thesis concerns the absence of a predetermined purpose for a human life, not the denial of bodily properties or social conditions. Freedom here means having to take a position towards the possibilities your situation actually offers. A related term is the project, an orientation towards possibilities that only takes shape in action. That is why Sartre puts so much weight on decisions people live out rather than on how they describe themselves.

A worked example makes this concrete. Case M1 in the unit: scissors are designed for cutting, and a student's family wants her to enter a particular profession. A classmate says both cases are identical because the purpose is already fixed. Students turn Sartre's reply into two premises and a conclusion. Premise 1: an object made according to a prior conception has its purpose before it exists. Premise 2: no prior conception fixes what a human life is for. Conclusion: for humans, existence comes first and self-definition follows through action. The family's plan is a social demand, not a blueprint of her essence. It can still restrict her options, and that pressure deserves to be taken seriously.

A sequence that works

How to teach existence precedes essence in five steps

The steps follow the four sections of the student book and finish with a practice assessment that tests the common misreading.

1. The manufactured object examplePages 3–7. Present the scissors and the family career plan without the worked answer. Students reconstruct the analogy, mark where Sartre would reject it and write the argument as two premises and a conclusion. Close on the debate question: does social pressure by itself refute Sartre's thesis?
2. Self-projection and actionPages 8–12. Lea calls herself helpful but turns down three feasible opportunities without explanation. Omar wants to help but is caring for a relative. Neither takes part. Students build a matrix of intention, opportunity, decision and outcome to see why the same visible result does not mean the same responsibility.
3. Choosing an image of humanityPages 13–17. A student copies an assignment and says it affects only her. Students trace the effects on assessment, trust and shared rules, then state Sartre's responsibility argument and an objection to its scope. Strong answers separate empirical consequences from Sartre's wider claim about all humanity.
4. Humanism without a fixed essencePages 18–22. Students compare two readings: "Anyone can become anything if they want" and "People must take a position towards possibilities within their situation." They decide which fits Sartre better and write a corrected 100-word introduction for younger students, which shows quickly whether the distinction has landed.
5. Practice assessmentSet Practice 1. A career guide tells students they are completely free and anyone who misses a goal chose wrongly, citing Sartre. A student points to money and family duties. Students reconstruct the claim, analyze it with existence, project and facticity, and judge it. Marking is out of 100.

Where it goes wrong

Misconceptions to plan for

Primary text

Using Existentialism Is a Humanism alongside the unit

The unit uses original paraphrases, clearly labeled as such, rather than extracts from a published translation. That keeps the reading level manageable and avoids copyright problems, but it does not replace the primary text. The teacher guide lists the Yale edition and a historical English translation of the lecture as sources, and notes that close analysis of Sartre's own wording needs lawful access to an edition. A practical approach is to teach the first section from the student book, then give students the passage on the manufactured object from your own copy and ask them to check the paraphrase against it.

The comparison is useful in its own right. Students can look for what the paraphrase leaves out, where Sartre's wording is stronger or more hedged, and whether the scissors example changes anything compared with his paper knife. It is also worth showing them that the lecture was a defense of existentialism against accusations of despair and arbitrariness, which explains its tone. For a class working towards essays on existentialism, that short exercise in reading against a paraphrase is good practice for handling secondary summaries in general. It also shows you quickly who has understood the argument and who has only memorized the slogan.

Fair criticism

Teaching objections without straw men

Students enjoy attacking Sartre, and the most common attack is that he ignores poverty, illness or discrimination. That objection has force, and the unit takes it seriously: the fourth section ends on how responsibility can be understood without blaming disadvantaged people for every limitation. But the guide insists that fair criticism reconstructs the claim before naming its precise limitation. If a student argues against "you can become anything", they are arguing against a position Sartre does not hold. The unit's Lea and Omar case shows why: both fail to take part, yet only one of them is using a situation as an excuse, and students have to see that difference before their criticism lands.

A good routine is to require one sentence of reconstruction before every objection. The feedback pages help here. Instead of writing "reflect more" on a weak paragraph, you ask the student to write a countercase where their conclusion fails. Practice 2 gives them a clean target: a school assigns students permanently to career groups using a short personality test and claims it reveals each person's true essence. The expected answer separates the empirical validity of the test from its normative use, which is exactly the move the best critics of Sartre make.

Questions teachers ask

Frequently asked questions