Sartre’s Ontology and its implications on Education in Kenya: Critical Reflections on Bhadra’s Phenomenology and Existentialism

Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, was a prolific author of over 50 literary works. Some of his Philosophical essays include; The Transcendence of the Ego (1936), Imagination: A Psychological Critique (1936), Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939), The Imaginary (1940), Being and Nothingness (1943), Existentialism and Humanism (1946), Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957), Search for a Method (1957), Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960, 1985), Notebooks for Ethics (1983) and Truth and Existence (1989). Sartre is considered to be the first Philosopher to use the term existentialism as a philosophical system. Existentialism in education is a teaching and learning philosophy that focuses on the student’s freedom and agency to choose their future (Ginny, 2012). Sartre first used it to describe his life and that of the postwar literary and philosophical output of his associates. Sartre argued for the different themes across his literary works, yet the bottom line of his thought was not only based on his ‘lived-experiences’ but also his view of reality, better considered as Sartre’s ontology. This paper therefore discussed Sartre’s ontology and its implication to educational practices and policies in Kenya.