Essence

Essence names what a person has been: the past that takes shape as life is lived, rather than a pre-established pattern of human nature. In Sartre’s account, concrete existence comes first, and each person makes an essence through living. The concept therefore treats a person’s past as consequential without making it a fixed blueprint for what that person must become.

Definition and Relation to Existence

Sartre identifies essence with what has been and calls it a person’s past. Existence, by contrast, means concrete, individual being here and now. Since human nature has no pre-established pattern, a person makes an essence while living; the distinction places the formation of what one has been within the course of existence rather than before it.

Consciousness and the World

The account of Essence belongs to a broader description of consciousness as being-in-the-world. Consciousness is not a container holding representations of things: a table is in space, beside a window, not inside consciousness. Consciousness is positional, directing itself beyond itself toward an object, and its judgments, practical activity, and present inclinations are likewise aimed outward. Although not every consciousness is knowledge, knowing consciousness is knowledge of its object, and it must also be conscious of itself as knowing that object.

This outward orientation is essential to the relation between existence and the world. The for-itself is not a sealed entity later connected to a separate world; it is a relation to the world. By denying that it is being and surpassing that negation toward its possibilities, it makes a world and discloses particular things as instrumental. Essence’s connection to the past thus sits within a conception of human existence that is already involved with a world, not detached from it.

Past Without a Blueprint

Calling essence a person’s past does not make the past a complete, pre-given definition of human nature. Rather, the past is what a person has made through living. Existence remains concrete and individual in the here and now, while essence names what that life has become in retrospect. The formulation holds together continuity and openness: a person’s lived history matters, but it is not an advance pattern that dictates a universal human identity.

This distinction also clarifies the contrast with accounts that begin from an established nature. Sartre’s description rejects a pre-established pattern for human beings; each person makes an essence as life proceeds. Essence is therefore neither an inner object lodged in consciousness nor a template that precedes existence. It is the past understood as the result of a life being lived.