Existentialism isnt a prescriptive doctrine like a religion it is merely a description of the human condition. A lot of posts by those attacking existentialism seem to think of it as though it tells you how to live. In fact the majority of Sartre's work is a description of the French way of life and was written because he was asked to define what it was (essentially) to be French.
Existentialism is a philosophical understanding of the human condition, a way of viewing man in relation to the world.
Well yes but Sartre did not just write this stuff because he felt some great compulsion to tell everyone what he thought, essentially his work was commissioned by the french authorities, and by the commision for the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg. His freedom and responsibility texts describe what it meant and would mean to be French. He was commissioned to do this because the authorities were concerned that defeat during the war would mean a loss of French national identity after the war. At the war crimes trials he also used the freedom and responsibility papers to define the basis upon which pleas from the defendents would be heard and the basis upon which judgement could be made. In effect he was the architect of the philosophy with which the criminals would be tried. He didnt write that stuff to tell people HOW to live(a PREscription), but as a DEscription of how people actually live under ordinary conditions. 1) so that french citizens could once again reclaim national identity, 2) so that the lawyers and judges could have a frame of reference or a backdrop which defined ordinary ethics and decency, so that they could determin whether any of the criminals deserved leniency or punishment. They were essentially measuring the distance between the compulsion to act under orders and the level of decency that one should expect from subordinate officers. That required virtually a whole philosophy of freedom and responsibility.
