DE Weekly: Sartre, Facticity, & Transcendence
Below is an archived email originally sent on April 28, 2025.
Sartre, Facticity, & Transcendence
Throughout their rigorous study of the human condition, the existentialists introduced and coined key words to represent the important concepts of their philosophies. Two of these key concepts are facticity and transcendence.
Facticity refers to the concrete facts of an individual’s existence––birthdate, birthplace, physical appearance, the social class one is born into––which are inescapable and cannot be changed.
Transcendence refers to the idea that, despite facticity, individuals can go beyond these limitations and create a new life apart from them.
While many existentialists discussed these two concepts, it was Jean-Paul Sartre who introduced his own mastery of them. Both facticity and transcendence were key parts of Sartre’s philosophy; for him, transcendence represented an avenue to create meaning in life.
Why is this?
For starters, Sartre held that, as human beings, we are in a constant state of “projecting” ourselves into the future; that is to say, making decisions toward an end already in mind.
We exist in time with a past, present, and future, informing ourselves with decisions from our past to make decisions in the present so that we might project a better future.
Like many ideas of his, he borrowed his understanding of our relationship with time from Martin Heidegger (whose own concepts of temporality and Dasein were key in informing much of Sartre’s philosophy, but we’ll save those ideas for another time).
Also for Sartre, facticity and transcendence were joined inextricably, at odds with each other at times, yes, but equally important to one another.
Although Sartre saw facticity as a potential limiting factor to our freedom in life, he also recognized it as a foundation of our existence. It forms our being––our essence––and lays the bedrock upon which we exist and live.
In this way, our facticity represents the “givenness” of our life––the aspects of our essence we were given without choosing, including our existence itself. Up from facticity lies the freedom for the creation of one’s self.
The most poignant quote of Sartre’s to keep in mind when discussing his ideas, I believe, is, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
I like to emphasize the first words, “Man is condemned to be free,” as a reliable shorthand. It works in this instance to explain how he views facticity and human freedom itself.
Existentialism emphasizes individual freedom as the way to find meaning in life. There is no inherent meaning; meaning is different for all of us; we can create our own meaning, etc. …
The catch is that it’s not as easy as it sounds. There are forces to reckon with along the way––forces of the world, not to mention other people to reckon with.
This is where transcendence runs into “the Other.”
As we acknowledge our individual facticity and attempt to achieve our own transcendence, we might be disrupted by the perspective of the Other. In other words, it becomes more difficult to transcend our facticity if we encounter the Other (and we will encounter the Other).
Sartre calls this concept transcendence-transcended.
As if it wasn’t hard enough to escape the limitations of our freedom… I have good news, however.
Like all lots in life, once we identify and accept the parameters of possibility, we can work to make the right choices and transcend our limitations.
This is the existentialist call to transcendence. The human call to transcendence. We can and must live to transcend our facticity through consciously searching for meaning.
Sartre argues that facticity is distinct from human nature––in fact, that there is no such thing as a pre-defined human nature which we experience at all.
I tend to think otherwise.
I think our consciousness of our existence is our human nature, that it constitutes the very nature of our humanity. I think our desire for transcendence of our own facticity is what frees us from our condemnation of freedom, and leads us to meaning.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Another Sartre-heavy edition, I know. I’m going to try and highlight some other existentialists in upcoming newsletters. Time to branch out…
For more content, follow @TheDailyExist on X. For other social links, click here.
I write this newsletter for free–I love sharing my thoughts with you all, and I’ll continue to do so for free. But if you like what I write and want to show your support, you can always click here to share a tip. Thanks for keeping me going–it’s much appreciated.