Without God as the supreme authority, responsibility becomes meaningless and society descends into chaos.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Hayagrīva: And this is a very short section on Jean-Paul Sartre. Thee...
Hayagrīva: Thee... He is a contemporary French philosopher.
Hayagrīva: Probably the most famous of the French philosophers.
Hayagrīva: Perhaps the most well known philosopher in this century. He calls himself an existentialist. He calls himself an atheistic-existentialist in that he believes that existence precedes essence. That the essence of man... According to creation by design, God has the essence of man in His mind, and He creates man just as a paper cutter creates some kind of a figure. Sartre doesn't believe this. He says, "Atheistic existentialism which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence. A being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and that this being is man; or human reality." So that for Sartre a human reality is all-in-all.
Prabhupāda: So wherefrom the human reality comes? There are other realities also, so why he is stressing on human realities?
Hayagrīva: There again, he would emphasize accident. He uses the word that, "Man is thrown into the world", or cast into the world.
Prabhupāda: Thrown by whom? "Thrown into the world," as soon you say like that, then the next question will be, "Thrown by whom?" Karandhara: They don't like that question.