Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Existence precedes essence — we are nothing until we make ourselves; man is condemned to be free
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Existentialism Is a Humanism |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Constructed |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Time is the medium of self-creation through choice. The future is genuinely open; existential freedom is genuinely creative.
Space
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Standard background.
Matter
Existentialism Is a Humanism
The body is the situation through which freedom engages the world; substantival, real, but not philosophically central.
Observer
Existentialism Is a Humanism
The Sartrean observer is the radically free for-itself — embodied, plural (always with the look of others), actively constituting itself through choice. Moral authority is constructed; no metaphysical agency.
Energy
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Not directly engaged.
Information
Existentialism Is a Humanism
Real choices constitute real selves over time; no preserved cosmic record. Personal information not conserved across death.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Sartre himself disowned the lecture as a popular simplification. Heidegger's Letter on Humanism reads it as missing the philosophical point of existential analysis. Many of the slogans have been philosophically refined in subsequent existentialist work (Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty); the lecture's longevity is partly that of a manifesto rather than a rigorous philosophical statement.