ABSTRACT
Abandonment, anguish, despair: these are the key concepts in JeanPaul Sartre’s public lecture ‘L’Existentialisme est un humanisme’ (literally ‘Existentialism is a humanism’). The lecture, first delivered in Paris in October 1945, and later translated and published as the short book Existentialism and Humanism, is probably his most read philosophical work. He later regretted its publication. Yet despite its flaws, it can still fire the imagination and offer genuine insight into aspects of human choice and responsibility. It also serves as a bridge to his more complex work Being and Nothingness.
