J.W. Lafferty
John Maier
Philosophy 4070: Existentialism
August 2009
Regarding Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialist Account of Freedom and Responsibility
“Man is not going to help himself by finding in the world some omen by which to
orient himself, because man will interpret the omen to suit himself… Man, with no
support and no aid, is condemned every moment to invent man,” (Sartre, 41). Jean-Paul
Sartre’s existentialist account of the human condition’s subjective starting point entails a
radical yet intuitive conception of freedom, and an associated responsibility of the human
agent for the totality of his consciousness, extending to a universal responsibility for all
men. This essay will explore elements of Sartre’s account from its fundamentals, to its
foundations in nothingness that develop its noteworthy conclusions on radical freedom,
and the striking sense in which the individual is deeply responsible for the entirety of
human reality. I’ll raise some troubling puzzles about the picture Sartre posits, offer
replies from the Sartrean position, and conclude with a defense of my own thesis inspired
by, but perhaps deviating from, the Sartrean position. I’ll provide a malleable
justification of an optimistic twist on Sartre’s broad conception of inescapable
responsibility, specifically how keen, clever, and important it is (perhaps pragmatically,
and perhaps truthfully, insofar as we are concerned with the truth of our condition) that
we are radically free, and equivalently responsible for situations that fall beyond the
scope of our control, but within the parameters of our experience. E.g. Sartre famously
1
holds the view that we are even responsible for situations like our own birth, and
choosing our parents.
At the foundation of existentialism there lies a central unifying claim, notably
elucidated in Sartre’s essay The Humanism of Existentialism, “Existence precedes
essence, or, if you prefer, subjectivity must be the starting point,” (Sartre, 34). In this
way Sartre explains how man is unlike a paper cutter. The essence of the paper cutter
must precede its existence because its essence is required in the mind of the paper cutter’s
creator for the creation of the paper cutter. The concept of the paper cutter must be
understood and conceived prior to the existence of the paper cutter. Man, according to
Sartre, is entirely unlike this inert object whose existence can be safely thought of as initself, or lacking the kinds of projects, plans, and freedom that qualify a being’s existence
to be described by Sartre as for-itself, like my own mode of being in the world. It is a
mistake for philosophers to equate the reality of the human condition with the attitude
that essence precedes existence, but this position is all too common amongst theists. God
is obtusely conceived of as a grander sort of artisan, not wholly unlike the creator of the
paper cutter, who is capable of envisioning the essence of man before bringing him into
being and igniting his existence. This sits at odds with Sartre’s existentialist account that
ultimately connects itself to a profoundly atheist conclusion,1 (although it might be
recognized that a theistic account could potentially be formulated with substantial
Without digressing into a lengthy tangential discussion of Sartre’s view here, it will
suffice to note that Sartre thinks man is a being who desires hopelessly to be god, where
god can be understood as a being both for itself, and in itself. This kind of existence is a
cripplingly incoherent contradiction that is completely unrealizable according to Sartre’s
view. For the entirety of this position, see Sartre’s essay The Desire to be God (Sartre,
69).
1
2
inspiration from Sartre’s existentialism, unfortunately such a project falls beyond the
somewhat limited scope of this essay and shall be left for another exploration).
The first principle of existentialism rests on subjectivity, man comes onto the
scene and only afterwards does he define himself, if he does so at all. In the beginning he
is nothing, and he will be nothing beyond what he makes of himself. Sartre’s compelling
intuition to base philosophy on the stout epistemic ground of subjective conscious
experience is apparent; the following view on responsibility naturally arises, “If existence
really does precede essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, existentialism’s first
move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his
existence rest on him. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not
only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for
all men.” (Sartre, 36). This latter claim is exactly as strong as it sounds and indubitably
worthy of further investigation, I’ll return to it after examining further the nature of
human freedom and its roots in nothingness.
The realization of this deep responsibility leads to Sartre’s explanation of man as
a being in a certain state of inescapable, but frequently masked, anguish. “Man is
anguish,” but to grasp anguish we must turn to negation and the origin of nothingness.
There is an interesting puzzle inherent in the concept of negation. If brown-ness is a
property of an in-itself object in the world, the property of being brown seems to exist out
in the objects which exhibit this property in the world. But what are we to say of
negation? If a table is green, it makes no sense to claim that its “not-brown-ness” exists
out in the world as a property of the table. Rather Sartre explains that negation is a
property of thought, something that the for-itself, with its projects, goals, and freedom,
3
brings into the world. Man is, in this sense, the being who brings nothingness into the
world, and extrapolating one step further it becomes apparent that the for-itself seems to
be constantly capable of directing negation towards itself by entertaining thoughts like
“What if X was not the case,” and “what if I was not like X?” This nothingness, that I
bring to the world, is at the heart of my freedom. By merely conceiving of myself, or of
the world, as revisable, where there is a schism of nothingness separating the resolutions
of my past self from my present self, and the same nothingness cleaving the intentions of
my present self from my future self, I am free in the strongest possible sense of the word.
This freedom is at the foundation of the structure of human consciousness, and an
apprehension of this fact of my own radical freedom is exactly the attitude of anguish as
Sartre describes it. Anguish is a recognition within my consciousness of the inefficacy of
my future intentions and past resolutions, and my strict freedom to deviate from them
rather than accord with them because of the inherent revisability of my plans and projects
as a for-itself who brings negation into the world. Nothingness has penetrated the heart
of the relation between my present and future self, “I am the self which I will be in the
mode of not being it,” and with regards to my past self, “consciousness continually
experiences itself as the nihilation of its past being.” I am radically free, beyond the
constraints of any externally imposed normative values or binding morality, and to deny
my possibilities as live options, is simply to deny the structure of my conscious
experience, an inevitably failed endeavor.2
2
Although it is possible, and in fact exceedingly common to attempt to avoid anguish by
fleeing from it in what Sartre calls ‘bad faith,’ this is only to make oneself all the more
conscious of the anguished mode of being, since it would be impossible to flee from
anguish without first being in anguish.
4
“Man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his
shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being,”(Sartre, 63).
My interest in this claim is profound since it is a radical development of man’s universal
responsibility for humanity built up from and rooted in the subjective realm of private
experience. By simply being conscious, man is the author of his own consciousness, and
insofar as he is the author of his own world as he engages with it, he is responsible for it.
Even adversity or terrible disadvantages only succeed in achieving meaning through my
project. Because what happens to me, happens through me, “It is therefore senseless to
think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or
what we are,” (Sartre, 64). A situation, even if it is a truly terrible one, is my own
because it is “the image of my free choice of myself,” and my freedom leaves open to me
the option of deciding the component of adversity. Sartre makes the strong claim that I
deserve this image of the world since it has come into being through me; i.e. I have
chosen it through my mode of being. I can opt out of my situation by changing the nature
of the situation if the circumstances are within my control, or if they are not within the
scope of my control I can viably opt out of existence entirely by committing suicide,
where the latter is the only feasible means of escaping my deep responsibility for my
world.
Sartre sharpens this point with the example of a war. “If I am mobilized in a war,
this war is my war; it is in my image and I deserve it. I deserve it because I could always
get out of it by suicide or desertion,” (Sartre, 64). He goes on to agree with the notorious
claim of J. Romains that, “In war there are no innocent victims,” and if war should be
preferred to dishonor or death (by suicide) then I shall bore the entire burden of
5
responsibility for this war since it depends on my decision that it exists. “I make it mine
by making myself,” (Sartre, 66).
One quick and dirty objection to Sartre’s claim that the two radical options of
desertion, which might entail my entire family and country shunning me, and suicide,
which looks at least superficially unsavory for an innumerably apparent gamut of
reasons, simply cannot be considered live options when entering the war looks unpleasant
in such a milder sense. This might look like a good reason to think I’m just not as
radically free as Sartre claims I am; I’m not going to kill myself because there is a war
that I have been drafted into which I do not entirely agree with! Especially since it is
occurring in the world beyond the limitations of my explicitly apparent control. This
remains the case even if I grant Sartre’s point that this world is inherently a product of
my consciousness, and the war is an entity which I bring into being. But the weight of
Sartre’s point is not felt by this objection. Even though indeed you will not kill yourself,
you could, and insofar as that is possible, you are radically free as explained above, and a
broadly construed responsibility for this war, as my war, is altogether warranted.
A slightly more nuanced objection to Sartre’s position does however arise at
approximately this juncture. What is to be made of a case of extreme adversity, say
perhaps a physically helpless girl, imprisoned and tortured for years on end. Her
suffering is imposed externally, from a brutish torturer who perhaps beats, rapes, and
confines her nonstop for the duration of her miserable lifetime. Thus far Sartre is safely
committed to the nearly troubling claim that the girl, insofar as she is the author of her
own conscious experience, is responsible for her situation and deserves the threats to her
project(s) as a for-itself, and for the adversity she is experiencing since what is happening
6
to her is happening through her. Remember, ‘responsibility’ must be construed broadly
in a much more careful sense than the excessively narrow, yet exceedingly common
juridical sense of the word. Perhaps queasy stomachs and moral traditions have already
lured readers off of the Sartreian platform, but the real punch of this objection has yet to
be disclosed.
The stipulation that looks to devastate Sartre’s position would be if the girl’s
freedom was to be so severely restricted externally3 (by her captor) so as not to allow the
girl even the option of suicide, and in doing so her captor deprives her of her only means
of ceasing the anguish of freedom, and her responsibility for the world that comes into
being through her. This seems wholly plausible, and it is in fact probable that in some
location somewhere on this planet such a scenario is even occurring at present. If this
individual loathes her own existence to the fullest extent conceivable, and in doing so
realizes her profound responsibility for her situation since it comes into being through her
own mode of being conscious in the world, as Sartre has explained to her, yet is unable to
opt out of this situation via free action (e.g. escape, or even suicide), what are we to make
of her desert?
3
I am not entirely sure that Sartre would concede that it is even possible to encroach
upon the freedom of a for-itself externally, but insofar as existentialism posits an
“optimistic doctrine of action” it seems entirely reasonable to postulate an existence
where very little freedom of action is allowed by a foreign entity to exist in the conscious
experience of a human agent. Sartre’s reply will be something along the lines of an
appeal to the fact that what appears ‘foreign’ in this instance is not so at all, my world is
mine because it happens to me through me. This may or may not compel Sartre’s
opponent who has cited the example of ultra-restrictive torture where suicide is not an
option for the agent, as it is explained above.
7
The prima facie intuition appears to be that her responsibility is nullified by her
lack of free options, and indeed these constraints at least appear to be imposed externally4
on the… dare I say it… innocent victim? It might look like Sartre’s opponent has
developed a paralyzing recipe for counter-examples to the Sartrean position. Just
stipulate away options until we actually are no longer responsible for these kinds of
situations which fall beyond our control. The salient fact of the matter is that without
options, even the option of acting to end one’s life, the entire notion of freedom, even
freedom born out of nothingness5, seems to sink; responsibility will be the captain riding
the ship to its final resting place at the bottom of the philosophical sea.
There is, however, a compelling particularist reply that Sartre might use to seek
refuge from the externalist’s barrage of option deprivation. There is indeed no abstract
formula or answer that Sartre can offer to every situation one might confront in the world
for which she is responsible, but she is responsible nonetheless because in every one of
those situations there will always be at least an option, or perhaps multiple options, that
an agent could possibly pursue, thus leaving radical freedom, and an agent’s
responsibility for her world in its totality, intact. Albeit the nature of these options will
not by necessity be singular, (i.e. the same option, perhaps the option of suicide, might
not be possible in every case, rather some option will be in every case), but the mere
From without, rather than from within the subjective framework of the girl’s
consciousness (the weight of this objection hangs on the coherence of this notion of
external constraints, one Sartre might likely reject entirely as falling within the scope of
subjective consciousness, at which point a stagnating impasse between debaters would be
immanent).
5
To solidify this subtle yet recurring point, nothingness is a precondition for action. I.e.
a being who is not capable of imagining/apprehending nothingness is not capable of
action on the Sartrean account. Action requires being able to conceive of the world as it
is not at present, thus ‘grocking’ nothingness is required for action, and any being which
is for-itself has the concept of nothingness.
4
8
presence of these possibilities prevents the Sartrean from being left with disconnected
nothingness, and a void where a plethora of possible actions normally supplies the
foundation for freedom.
In the case of the prisoner, freedom might be constituted by options like seeking
refuge from the adversity in thought, or in an escape into sleep and perhaps less
unpleasant dreams of the past or the future; it is in these kinds of ways that it seems
plausible for our agent to have freedom in any particular situation, and an anguished
apprehension of this freedom that makes her responsible not only for her pleasant escapes
from the torture, but indeed for the torture itself since it is brought into being through her.
Sartre should now feel safe biting the bullet that his opponent originally found counterintuitive, namely that it is senseless for this tortured individual to complain about her
adversity.
I would be remiss to ignore an important caveat to the particularist’s reply. This
agonized agent had better also be careful that none of these actions, despite being
essential for the freedom, constitute a departure from authenticity into bad faith. Both the
options of refuge from physical affliction in the escapes of one’s mental capacity for free
thought, and the departure from physical realities into dream risk transcendental excess.
By identifying herself with her transcendence and setting aside her body as a mere
appendage, she risks slipping into bad faith and away from the preferred state of
authentic being.6 Perhaps her project as the for-itself becomes something like a challenge
to explore the range of what can be endured by a human being while fully realizing her
6
However, establishing a compelling argument that bad faith in lieu of excruciating
torture is worse than a deviation from authenticity might be exactly as difficult as it
looks.
9
own facticity and transcendence, but without carelessly identifying herself completely
with either. Despite all this atrocious facticity, i.e. given-ness, about her life, she still
chooses it in this carefully nuanced sense of choice; she is still responsible in a broadly
conceived sense of responsibility.
Hopefully the qualifiers do not detract from the overall elegance of this position.
I really am responsible for the world which I bring into being, and it really is senseless
for me to complain about it, but I am simply not responsible in the strict juridical sense of
responsibility connected intricately with the notions of justice and of blameworthiness. It
would be unfair to hold Sartre to the outlandishly strong claim that the torture victim or
the reluctant war participant is to blame for their respective situations, but rather his point
is the subtler one that for lack of getting out of these situations, they have chosen them,
even if they are conditions of adversity. It is this choice that warrants an intuitively
proportionate degree of sweeping responsibility for the weight of the subjective world
that I alone carry. There is no room for remorse, regrets, or excuses that might try, but
can only fail to lighten my burdensome load of anguish. This uneasy mode of being is
precisely the reality of the human condition.
The facticity of my aloneness in this condition leaves me isolated to wield
complete accountability for the reality of my consciousness, “I am abandoned in the
world… in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a
world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear
myself away from this responsibility for an instant,” (Sartre, 67). My motives and
desires, as parts of the world that I cause to be, have a built in structure of nothingness
that makes them freely chosen and hence, “I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing
10
responsibilities,” (Sartre, 67). This overarching responsibility, within the framework of
an abandoned state of solitary helplessness in the world, resonates with many preexisting
conceptions one might have about the nature of the human condition. Perhaps this is the
locus of consecutive millenniums of failed and conflicting religious enterprises that seek
to accommodate, account for, and explain away this condition of aloneness inherent in
the nature of subjective human existence. Rather than a futile attempt to avoid this
inevitable condition of human reality, Sartre has succeeded in working around it and
attaching an enriching7 sense of responsibility, born out of freedom, to our subjective
starting point.
Perhaps now, with the foundation and justification for Sartre’s view behind us, it
is safe to revisit that curious claim: I am responsible for my own birth. The bizarre
implications of this claim are readily apparent, and it is safe to assume that they prevent
most philosophers from endorsing such an ostensibly outlandish remark. The thought
here is something like, “the conditions of my birth predate the existence of my ‘choosing’
faculties, and thus it would be impossible for me to choose to bring myself into existence
before I exist.” But Sartre is not arguing in defense of some antithesis to that claim. I am
not able to choose my birth before birth, rather I choose my birth in the loose sense that
when I affirm my life I acknowledge the facticity of my being born. Insofar as “I am
ashamed of being born, or I rejoice over it, or in attempting to get rid of my life, I affirm
that I live…Thus in a certain sense I choose being born,” (Sartre, 67). The facticity of
my aloneness prevents me from ever encountering anything but my own deep
responsibility for the world which I bring into being through my consciousness, “That is
7
Or rather ‘condemning’ as Sartre himself has it
11
why I cannot ask ‘Why was I born?’ or curse the day of my birth or declare that I did not
ask to be born, for these various attitudes toward my birth—i.e., toward the fact that I
realize a presence in the world—are absolutely nothing else but ways of assuming this
birth in full responsibility and of making it mine,” (Sartre, 67). This position should no
longer feel confusing or out of reach. Instead it sits well with our intuitions as a salient
account of my own profound responsibility for the inescapable facticity of my life, traced
all the way back to its inception through the reconstruction of my projects as a for-itself,
over the temporal span of my lifetime.
In his project of developing the freedom inherent in the structure of our being and
linking this freedom to a broadened scope of responsibility, Sartre has successfully
universalized responsibility. He has synthesized a responsibility for oneself alone, with a
responsibility for the vast world of the for-itself, including other people, e.g. one’s
parents. Man, alone in the world, is thus responsible for humanity since humanity comes
into being through his mode of being; and since man is radically free, with opportunities
at every event in the world8, he will define humanity (if it is to be defined). Now we
have given content to the gripping proposition that we began with: “Man, with no support
and no aid, is condemned every moment to invent man.” Responsibility extends to the
for-itself’s entire world, as a peopled-world. “The for-itself apprehends itself in anguish;
that is as a being which is neither the foundation of its own being nor of the other’s being
of the in-itselfs which form the world, but a being which is compelled to decide the
meaning of being—within it and everywhere outside of it.” By realizing this anguished
condition of abandonment in the boiling hot water of responsibility, I no longer have
“Every event in the world can be revealed to me only as an opportunity (an opportunity
made use of, lacked, neglected, etc.)” (Sartre, 68).
8
12
access to excuses, nor can I be justified in remorse or regrets. I cease to be anything
beyond an instance of freedom, and my being resides in my awareness of this fact. 9
In my view, Sartre’s existentialism has virtually gotten it right. He has accounted
for a great deal with a sound foundation in subjective consciousness. I really do seem to
be radically free in the sense that Sartre is interested in. The nothingness separating my
past, present, and future selves reasonably gives birth to my freedom. I recognize this
freedom as it is manifested in my creativity across every medium that presents itself to
me, e.g. expressive acts of creative radical freedom like writing, thinking, art, love, war,
sport, adventure, etc. These constitute a compelling bulk of my freedom, which seems to
comprise the bulk of my conscious experience. The solitary nature of my existence is
apparent and Sartre’s account is compelling. No one is with me in my thoughts; there are
no built in signs to guide my existence; there is no one here inside of me, beyond myself,
capable of experiencing the biology of my physical body; no one but me was there as I
entered this world of consciousness; I travel through my world around others but exactly
alone; and likewise no one will be there to accompany me through my departure from
this world in death, even if they squeeze my hand and hug me as I go. Sartre has nailed
down the picture with precision and his account is a compelling success on many levels,
but unfortunately he has allowed the seed of a mistaken interpretation of our existence to
grow in the very subtle underbrush of the existentialist’s garden.
An optimistic progression from Sartre’s existential account might not be
considered better, instead equal, but indeed necessary if we are interested in coherence of
the theory and successful explanation of our intuitions about human reality. The fact of
9
Assuming I do not attempt to flee my anguish in bad faith, as we normally do according
to Sartre
13
what is the case about the nature of our existence seems to rest on our take, i.e. our
attitude about our mode of being. This is the realization/apprehension that constitutes the
attitude of anguish in the reality of the for-itself’s mode of being. Accusations that
“existentialists focus on the darker side of existence” are not entirely unwarranted as
Sartre himself might toil to claim. The picture he posits as he cashes out the
quintessential terms of existentialism like ‘anguish,’ ‘abandoned,’ and ‘condemned’ is
dead on, but the inescapable and popular connotation is a misguided one.
If I come into being out of nothingness, and life has no a priori meaning (as Sartre
claims at page 60 of The Humanism of Existentialism), and I come to realize my
existence as an anguished one, condemned to abandonment and responsibility, there is a
sense in which I have failed. Our existence began at precisely nothing; glorious
possibility, and radical freedom to select and pursue opportunities as they arise from
events in the world, are born with our consciousness, and indeed this position will bear
immense, inescapable responsibility, but mustn’t we take this mode of being a to be a
delightful one if it is to make sense at all? Freedom, responsibility, apprehension of the
nature of our possibilities and our conscious experience are all brilliant examples of
something better than neutral. In fact, to succeed in achieving an authentic mode of
being, one must also note a critical demand, perhaps an ‘exigency,’ for fathoming some
fact loosely interpreted as follows: happiness supersedes suffering10 and our mode of
being must cope with adversity as it arises in the world of consciousness which it brings
into being. In this sense the ‘innocent victim’ of war continues to lack innocence as
innocence is commonly conceived, but only because the world this individual is engaged
10
Where these terms specifically are non-essential, but suited nicely for the sake of
colloquial discussion
14
in is their own, and not only are they responsible for it, they are responsible for a world
where the for-itself recognizes projects that strive for excellence11 in some sense. My
motivation for this claim is not only pragmatic, (although the pragmatic benefits of a
positive attitude towards the nature of one’s own reality is indeed heavy evidence when
weighing accounts), but an optimistic brand of existentialism is additionally grounded in
the truth of what must be the case regarding human reality, and even consistent with
Sartre.
‘Anguish’ has a sweetened outlook, perhaps something mirroring what we
commonly conceive privilege to be. Is this not indeed a privileged attitude: to apprehend
one’s radical freedom and our extraordinarily important responsibility for our own world
of consciousness? Being ‘condemned’ to freedom and responsibility is really more like
being enriched by these entities, although they are indeed inescapable and often
construed as superficially overwhelming to our consciousness. Lastly our admitted
‘abandonment’ in this subjective world, which I alone bring into being, takes on more of
a feel of enlightened independence, of the sort that individuals covet.
The Sartrean might object that my view is some kind of an attempt to fuse a priori
meaning into the world through some blasphemous backdoor. She might posit that my
advance deviates entirely from the existentialist position, and is no longer free to bask in
the noted success of Sartre’s project. But this is not the case. My existence is born out of
nothingness and indeed my view takes it to precede essence, but insofar as man is free to
“invent man” as we have put it, he is free to do so well. A state of torment in the world of
This position will hang on an account of ‘excellence’ which will not be provided here,
but might be taken merely to imply something like a colloquial understanding of the
term.
11
15
one’s consciousness is not only without excuse since it is through the agent herself that
this tormented mode of being comes into being, it is a failure in the same way bad faith
might be considered a failure at authenticity, because it falls short of apprehending this
positive aspect of authenticity that I would like to tack onto Sartre’s account. My view
does not aim at a radical deviation from Sartre’s Essays on Existentialism, it should be
merely understood as an often-unrecognized perk consistent with the Sartrean position.
When our freedom and responsibility are disappointingly viewed as a burden, we have
failed to recognize the true nature of their beneficial presence in our genuinely
resplendent mode of being.
5086 words
Bibliography
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Essays in Existentialism. New York, NY: Kensington, 1965.
16