"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance"
About this Quote
Sartre’s line lands like a cold splash: existence isn’t a story with a plot, it’s a fact with no author. “Born without reason” isn’t just atheistic swagger; it’s a demolition of the comforting idea that life arrives pre-loaded with purpose, design, or moral bookkeeping. In Sartre’s hands, the universe doesn’t hate you. It simply doesn’t notice you.
The most provocative phrase is “prolongs itself out of weakness.” Sartre isn’t sneering at ordinary people so much as stripping away the romantic varnish we put on survival. We like to narrate endurance as heroism or destiny; he calls it inertia, habit, fear, appetite, social pressure - the small, unglamorous forces that keep a body and a biography going. The subtext is brutal: if you want your life to mean something, you don’t get to claim you were “meant” to. You have to make it, against the grain of your own passivity.
“Dies by chance” completes the assault on narrative. Death isn’t a final chapter that seals the meaning of a life; it’s contingency, accident, timing. That randomness is what makes Sartrean freedom so expensive. If nothing guarantees significance, you can’t outsource responsibility to fate, God, or History.
The context matters: mid-century Europe, two world wars, the collapse of old certainties, and existentialism’s refusal to offer replacement consolations. The sentence is engineered to offend our craving for reasons - and to force the reader into Sartre’s central wager: meaning is not found, it’s authored under pressure, with no cosmic safety net.
The most provocative phrase is “prolongs itself out of weakness.” Sartre isn’t sneering at ordinary people so much as stripping away the romantic varnish we put on survival. We like to narrate endurance as heroism or destiny; he calls it inertia, habit, fear, appetite, social pressure - the small, unglamorous forces that keep a body and a biography going. The subtext is brutal: if you want your life to mean something, you don’t get to claim you were “meant” to. You have to make it, against the grain of your own passivity.
“Dies by chance” completes the assault on narrative. Death isn’t a final chapter that seals the meaning of a life; it’s contingency, accident, timing. That randomness is what makes Sartrean freedom so expensive. If nothing guarantees significance, you can’t outsource responsibility to fate, God, or History.
The context matters: mid-century Europe, two world wars, the collapse of old certainties, and existentialism’s refusal to offer replacement consolations. The sentence is engineered to offend our craving for reasons - and to force the reader into Sartre’s central wager: meaning is not found, it’s authored under pressure, with no cosmic safety net.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
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