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Existence without essence

A knife has a function because a craftsman made it to cut. But who made the human being, and for what?

Objects to Eudaimonism

Sartre · Existentialism Is a Humanism · 1946

1. The argument draws the human good from a 'proper function', as one draws the good of a knife from the use for which it is made.
2. But a tool has a function because a craftsman designed it for an end; an organ, because it serves the life of the organism. Does the human being, as such, have in the same way a task assigned to it in advance?
3. If the human has no nature fixed before existing, if it begins by being nothing and makes itself, then there is no 'work of man' from which to deduce its good: it falls to each to invent what, for them, makes a fulfilled life.

Therefore So the argument assumes what it should prove, that the human has a proper function: remove that premise, and flourishing ceases to be a given measure and becomes a work to invent.