Philosophers that disagree with Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism?

There are two philosophers who come to mind, both of whom were part of the same French philosophical circle as Sartre.





The first is Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The differences between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty are complex and demand a basic understanding of phenomenology, so I can only outline the basics here. For Sartre, we are "condemned to be free." For Merleau-Ponty, we are condemned to have meaning. For Sartre, my history and environment cannot define who or what I am. Merleau-Ponty challenges this position by arguing that we are historical beings, and we would not be who we are if it were not for our environment, history, and personal relationships. Merleau-Ponty, moreover, criticizes Sartre's account of freedom and suggests that Sartre was too hasty in assuming that the self has absolute freedom. For Merleau-Ponty, the human being is always in a situation with cultural, environmental, and physical conditions that limit the choice that can be made. Sartre thinks these limits can be put aside, but Merleau-Ponty suggests that without these limits no choice at all can be made. Both thinkers agree there is no stable self, but Merleau-Ponty does not base this position on a doctrine of absolute freedom.





A second thinker who poses a challenge to Sartre is Emmanuel Levinas, who argues that selfhood is inseparable from the relationship with other people, and that selfhood is essentially ethical in its structure. For Sartre, "hell is the other person," and so the other person is really a source of conflict. For Levinas, the other person is the source of ethical meaning. For Levinas, the other person is not primarily a source of conflict, but gives to my life an ethical meaning that it would not otherwise have. Secondly, Sartre defines the self as "being-for-itself," which means that it is concerned primarily with its own projects. For Levinas, the self is "being-for-the-other,"; selfhood is irreducibly tied to relationships with other people.





Now, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Levinas all agree on one basic thing: human experience is not grounded in an epistemological relationship with the world (i.e., knowledge). Before we can "know" things, we are always already thrown into the world, and the self "lives" life before we reflect on it. That is, each of these thinkers is largely influenced by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (against the philosophy of Edmund Husserl).





Hope some of these remarks make sense to you!





Cheers.|||Sarte and myself never got along in college. I disagree with him and I told that to my instructor. He helped me transfer to literature but he bothered me there as well. Have you read Camus's the outsider by the way?