a study of choice by Jean-Paul Sartre

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What is responsibility ?
o consciousness (of) being the incontestable author of an event or of an object
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We make the world with our choices.

• for-itself - a person; an individual who behaves according to choices which result in making them who they are; i.e., YOU.
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Bad faith - refusing to make a decision instead of consciously acting on one to choose the course of one's life.
• facticity - fact over which we have no control; e.g. being born.

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You deserve the war in which you have been mobilized.
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2 choices: o join the war o avoid the war through suicide or desertion
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You have chosen the war even if you are against it; by remaining you endorse what is happening.
Great question of existentialism: to be or not to be?

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Sartre: "I am not distinct from the epoch in which I find myself."
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You would not make the same choice regarding this war if you lived in a different time in which you did not have to make such a terrible choice.
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"It is a waste of time to ask what I should have been..."

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Freedom is based on choice
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Every situation is an opportunity that is made use of or neglected.
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Hence, such situations force us to make a choice.
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We are free in that we are constantly making decisions for the paths our lives will take.
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We are anguished because we can never shift that responsibility onto someone else.

According to Sartre, freedom means always being forced to make a choice.
So are we really free?
"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear-
I will choose Free Will."
-Rush, 1981

Thanks for Listening!