Existentialism Is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre
Published 1946 · 128 pages · 28,008 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Existentialism Is a Humanism to read?
Existentialism Is a Humanism scores 46 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Philosophical vocabulary kept deliberately accessible for a general lecture audience.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Abstract philosophical claims illustrated with concrete everyday examples.
- Information density: 68 out of 100
- Compressed but accessible; covers the essentials of a vast philosophy.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- Direct argumentative address throughout.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Examples function analytically rather than symbolically.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Sartre's characteristic polemical confidence, lightly ironic toward critics.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Ends with a clear affirmative position.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Single sustained lecture argument with a brief discussion appendix.
How Existentialism Is a Humanism is regarded
Existentialism Is a Humanism holds a literary regard score of 85 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.