“I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.”
In this passage, Sartre encourages people to have a little sympathy for themselves. Essentially, he argues that humans have been thrust into the world with no explanation. From there, they are forced to "carry the weight of the world... alone without any help." This kind of relentless responsibility is something Sartre acknowledges as difficult to live with.
“Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.”
Progressing his argument, Sartre imbues life with a kind of meaninglessness. He illustrates this argument here by stating that it is the same to be a leader of nations or a person who gets drunk alone. In doing this, Sartre emphasizes the fact that nothing is objectively meaningful.
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us”
Here, Sartre claims that we have no choice about what happens to us in life. However, we can choose how we react to it. This idea reflects certain principles from Stocisim, namely the idea that we only have control over our own thoughts and actions.
Satre's existential argument seemingly reduces human existence to nothingness. This being said, Sartre also suggests that there is great freedom in being human, as an individual can decide what kind of life they want to have. Essentially, to be human is to be able to choose how they experience the world around them, as nothing is inherently meaningful in an objective sense.
