The 7 Things I Don’t Like About Sartre’s Philosophy

Sartre. Jean-Paul. The man who made nausea cool.

The Frenchman who thought existence was one giant practical joke with no punchline. People call him a genius. A revolutionary. A philosopher-king of despair.

Me? I call him a pain in the ass.

Look, I’ve read Being and Nothingness.

I’ve chewed through Nausea like a dog gnawing on a rubber bone.

I get it. We’re condemned to be free. The world is meaningless.

Every choice is a burden. Life’s a cruel improv show with no script and no exit sign.

But let’s get real. Sartre’s philosophy, for all its dark poetry, has some serious problems.

Here are the seven things I don’t like about Sartre’s existentialism.

1. Radical Freedom Is a Prison

Sartre says we’re free. More than free. Totally, terrifyingly, absurdly free. No gods, no masters, no fate, no excuses. Just you, naked in the universe, shackled only by your own cowardice.

But let’s be real. That’s not freedom. That’s a life sentence in solitary confinement.

He wants me to believe that every decision—what socks I wear, whether I take the bus or walk, whether I stay in bed or get up and drag myself through another day—is an act of pure, unfiltered choice. That I am the sole architect of my existence, chiseling my fate out of the raw stone of reality.

But what about the blood in my veins? The codes written in me before I ever took my first breath?

Some of us are born with weak hearts. Some of us are born with nervous systems that set off alarms over nothing, like an old car whose engine light never goes off. Some of us inherit a grandfather’s rage, a mother’s depression, a great-uncle’s tendency to drink his way through life.

Genetics isn’t some footnote in existence—it’s the prequel. It sets the stage before we even know there’s a play happening. So when Sartre tells me I’m completely free, I want to laugh. I want to show him my family tree, with its shaking hands and broken dreams, and ask him where exactly he thinks my “radical freedom” begins.

Does the son of an addict “choose” to crave the bottle before he’s even old enough to understand what thirst is? Does the woman with panic attacks “choose” to have her body betray her in the middle of the grocery store?

Sartre would say yes. He would say that even our fears, our impulses, our chemical imbalances—those too are choices. If we don’t own them, we’re lying to ourselves. Living in “bad faith.”

But maybe the lie is his. Maybe the real bad faith is pretending we start at zero when some of us are already running with weights tied to our ankles.

2. The Whole “Bad Faith” Guilt Trip

Sartre’s got this concept called “bad faith.” Basically, if you ever lie to yourself—if you ever pretend you’re not free—you’re being inauthentic.

You’re a coward. A fraud.

But here’s the thing: everyone lies to themselves. We have to. Otherwise, we’d go insane.

Take the guy who works a 9-to-5 job, comes home, drinks a beer, watches reality TV, and convinces himself he’s happy.

According to Sartre, he’s living a lie. But maybe he just doesn’t want to stare into the abyss every morning while brushing his teeth. Let the guy enjoy his beer.

3. He Treats Love Like a Power Struggle

You ever fall in love? Get weak in the knees? Want to write bad poetry and hold someone’s hand like an idiot?

Sartre thinks love is just a battle for dominance. A chess game where the only goal is to control the other person.

He writes about it in Being and Nothingness—says we try to “possess” our lovers while also trying to stay independent.

Basically, love is a never-ending war between freedom and control.

Sounds romantic.

Sure, love has its power struggles. But sometimes, love is just a Sunday morning.

A slow breakfast. A joke that lands perfectly. Not everything is a Nietzschean death match, Jean-Paul.

4. “Hell Is Other People”—Except When It Isn’t

Sartre gave us one of the greatest, most bone-chilling lines in all of philosophy: “Hell is other people.” A phrase so sharp it could slit a throat.

It’s the kind of line that burrows into your brain and stays there.

You hear it when you’re stuck in an elevator with a stranger who won’t stop clearing his throat.

You hear it when you’re trapped at a family reunion, pretending to care about your cousin’s new diet.

You hear it when you’re crammed on a subway at rush hour, some guy’s elbow in your ribs, everyone sweating, nobody making eye contact.

Hell is other people. Of course it is.

But then, like a magician ruining his own trick, Sartre backpedaled. Said people misunderstood him.

What he really meant was that hell isn’t other people themselves—it’s seeing yourself through their eyes. It’s being judged, reduced, turned into a character in someone else’s story.

Alright. Fine. I get it. There’s a horror to that, too.

The slow suffocation of being observed. The weight of a gaze that shrinks you, locks you in place.

The feeling that no matter what you do, someone somewhere is filing you into a box labeled “not quite enough.”

But let’s be real. Sartre’s original line was too good—too raw, too true—for him to take back.

The world took it literally because the world already knew it was right.

Hell is other people. The ones who talk too much, the ones who don’t talk enough.

The ones who make promises they never intended to keep.

The ones who make you feel small without even trying.

The ones who remind you of the parts of yourself you wish you could forget.

And maybe worst of all—the ones you love, because they can hurt you the most.

Sartre can revise his meaning all he wants. The rest of us are still stuck here, shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same stale air, waiting for the exit door that never opens.

5. He Overcomplicates the Simple Stuff

Sartre could take the simplest idea and bury it under a mountain of words.

For example, instead of saying, “People try to escape responsibility,” he writes, “Man is condemned to be free because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Instead of saying, “We feel weird when we think too hard about existing,” he gives us a 600-page book called Being and Nothingness.

I get it.

He was a philosopher. It was his job to overthink things. But sometimes, you just want a guy to say, “Yeah, life’s weird,” and leave it at that.

6. He Hates on Bartenders for No Reason

There’s a scene in Being and Nothingness where Sartre absolutely roasts a waiter.

The guy is just doing his job—pouring drinks, taking orders, wiping down the bar—and Sartre decides he’s a perfect example of “bad faith.” The waiter, he says, is too much of a waiter. Too mechanical. Too polite.

Maybe the guy just doesn’t want to get fired, Jean-Paul. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s got kids at home and doesn’t have the luxury of contemplating ontological nothingness between margarita orders.

Give the man a break.

7. He’s a Bit of a Hypocrite

Sartre preached radical freedom. No gods. No masters. No blind obedience.

But then he spent years flirting with Marxism. Even supported Stalin for a while.

So let me get this straight: We’re all supposed to be radically free, but it’s cool when a dictator tells people what to do?

Sartre eventually distanced himself from Stalinism, but still. If you’re going to be the high priest of existential freedom, maybe don’t cozy up to totalitarianism.

The Sartre Survival Table

Problem	Why It’s Annoying
Radical Freedom	Every choice feels like a life-or-death crisis.
Bad Faith	Sartre guilt-trips everyone for being human.
Love is War	Love isn’t just manipulation, Jean-Paul.
Hell Is Other People	He backpedaled on his best quote.
Overcomplication	Could have said it in five words, wrote five books instead.
Hating on Waiters	Let the bartender live, man.
Hypocrisy	Preached freedom, dabbled in authoritarianism.

Alright, so I just spent 2,000 words tearing this guy apart. But here’s the twist: I still like him.

I don’t like everything about him.

His philosophy is a migraine in book form. His writing is a labyrinth with no cheese at the end. But damn, he makes you think.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe Sartre wasn’t supposed to be right—maybe he was just supposed to shake you up a little. Make you uncomfortable.

Make you question why you even like Frosted Flakes.

So yeah. Sartre pisses me off. But I’d still buy him a drink.