High-Flying French Filosophy

I think my dear friends Danielle and JED are making some mistakes when it comes to characterizing existentialism. Existentialism does NOT say that stop at the observation that individuals are free to determine their own destiny--it says that people can't treat themselves as essential (i.e. possessing a defined, fixed character). The great conflict that Sarte begins with is the contradiction in the human mind between the fact that we undeniably have 'facticity,' or a material aspect to our lives/memories/past that shapes who we are, and our 'transcendence,' or ability to move beyond the materialistic qualities that shape us. As much as we can't be chained to our facticity, however, Sarte also says that we can't just ignore it. In Being and Nothingness, he uses the example of a gay man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality. He has two voices telling him different things--one a denier, and the other a capitulator to the title of 'homosexual.' Sarte rejects the denier because the gay man's homosexual actions exist in the real world--the way we talk about past actions implies that they have relevance and cannot simply be ignored.

The answer Sarte gives the gay man is to accept the contradiction--the absurdity--of being both a determinate and indeterminate being. While discomforting, I think he does offer us a way out. We have to act only for ourselves, not anything else, and then we'll truly be in line with our natural metaphysical condition.

Two problems with this:

1. I think people do actually have an essence. Evolutionary psychology, linguistics, and anthropology are steadily chipping away at the idea that people are 'blank slates' waiting to be filled with choices. Sarte obviously didn't have access to this info, though.

2. Sarte thinks existence simply 'is'--why does he use the verb 'to be' in a transitive sense when we're always thinking about the outside world (because we're unfortunately always defining ourselves in terms of objects, hence why we say 'to be something') but then treats 'to be' as intransitive when it comes to existence. Could existence be a property as well?