Jean-Paul Sartre’s vision of man’s
condemnation to responsible freedom
Ryan Oliver D. Bautista, SDB, MA
Don Bosco College, Canlubang, Laguna
Amidst paradigm shifts in the physical sciences and the experiences of
world wars, Jean-Paul Sartre provided a vision of human freedom. He
began with a premise of an absence of external principles or rules or
the absence of God to justify one’s actions. With this absence, we have
no excuses to hide behind the choices we make. For this reason, Sartre
envisions that man is “condemned to be free.” According to Sartre,
our conviction on how human life ought to be is manifested by the
choices we make. By our choices, we proclaim what have worthwhile
human activities, and we become their living witnesses. This means
that freedom is the greatest responsibility of all. Sartre’s vision of
man’s condemnation to responsible freedom is deemed by some
philosophers as pessimistic. However, Sartre himself saw it as the most
optimistic philosophy possible because despite the burden of
responsibility as regards the impact of our actions upon others, we are
able to exercise sole control over how we define our world and
ourselves. The aim, therefore, of this paper is to draw from the
writings of Sartre the concept of man’s condemnation to responsible
freedom and its subsequent effects on the life of man in general and in
particular. This paper would try to lay down the foundations of
Sartrean freedom and its relationship with facticity and responsibility.
Keywords: Jean Paul-Sartre, freedom, facticity, responsibility
Introduction
Following the paradigm shifts in the physical sciences during the
20 century from Newtonian to quantum physics, the replacement of
substance by simple motion had been the reaction of most philosophers
against the long-standing doctrine of substance. For a long time, the
problem of ethics revolved around the concept of being and the attainment
of beatitude. But if the being of man is reabsorbed in the succession of his
acts, then ethics will no longer concern about elevating man to a higher
ontological status. In his 1943 magnum opus Being and Nothingness: An Essay
on Phenomenological Ontology (L'Être et le néant: Essai d'ontologie
phénoménologique), Sartre upended the conventional view of freedom and
framed the issue in a new existential framework. He shifted the discussion
th
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February 2015  Volume 1  page 20
JEAN PAUL SARTRE’S VISION OF MAN’S CONDEMNATION TO RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM
of freedom and responsibility from the realm of
ethics with its discourse about duty and
obligation into ontology, giving the description
of what is the case rather than what should be
the case. This was in congruence with David
Hume’s idea that a description of existing facts
never logically entails a moral judgement.
Ontology itself cannot formulate ethical
precepts.
Sartre’s vision of freedom emerged out of a
frustration with the traditional debate between
determinists and the proponents of free will1,
which is quite paradoxical. According to
determinists, free will is an illusion and that
everything which happens, including human
action, is causally or logically necessitated.
These arguments are refuted by those in favor
of free will. However, there seems to be a
weakness in the propositions of those defending
free will since they neglected to discuss how
freedom is possible and what it really involves.
The rejection of determinism is not equivalent
to the affirmation of freedom and
responsibility.2 Thus, freedom becomes a
mystery. Existential phenomenology attempted
to demystify free will by showing that it is an
intrinsic and necessary feature of human
condition: a feature that is directly implied by
the very nature of consciousness which is
animate, active, and capable of reflection.
Origin of Man’s Freedom
Freedom is existence, and in it, existence
precedes essence.
The discussion on the origins of human
freedom is essential to the understanding of
Sartre’s vision of it. It would necessarily lead us
back to the discussion of the two modes or
realms of being – the being-in-itself (l’etre en-
soi) and the being-for-itself (l’etre pour-soi).3
Consciousness is proper only for l’etre pour-soi.
According to Sartre, consciousness is nothing;
only that which in itself is nothing can produce
nothing. Consciousness is nothingness, and
human life is nothingness because of our
freedom.4
Freedom originated in the very being of the
l’etre pour-soi. This is so because the l’etre pour-soi
exists as a “lack.” This indicates the presence of a
rupture in the very being of the l’etre pour-soi, in
contrast to the being of l’etre en-soi which is full
positivity and compactness. The “deficiency” or
the “lack” of the l’etre pour-soi enables itself to
discover the freedom that is in itself and
liberates the l’etre pour-soi from l’etre en-soi. This
nothingness is necessary because man needs to
fill that void in itself, and to fill that void man
needs to be free—free to choose his destiny and
to project one’s self freely in the future, and
most of all, to be faithful to the call to be
authentically existing. The actual experience of
freedom is described by Sartre in The Reprieve (Le
Sursis), the second part in the trilogy The Roads to
Freedom. In the vision of Sartre, as noted by
Gabriel Marcel, to exist is to be in suspense, to
have the power to change, to shape the future,
to be free.5 And this is how Mathieu, standing in
the middle of the Pont Neuf in the eve of
Munich, visualises freedom:
Outside everything is outside: the tree on the
embankment, the houses turning the night pink,
the frozen canter of Henri IV above my head;
everything that has weight. Within me there is
nothing. I am nothing. I am free, he said with
parched lips. 6
Nothingness is related to freedom. It is the
driving force of freedom. It is the idea. By virtue
of being a human person, one has the power to
withdraw, to break with this factitious world;
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R. A. BAUTISTA
but in doing so, one becomes this break itself.
The human person is nothing but this beyond,
this “transcendence.”
Freedom also plays a key role in the
determination of consciousness. For Sartre,
freedom is the being of humans and is
inexorably linked to the l’etre pour-soi. Although
it sounds uncomfortable, if not unnerving, he
maintains that human beings are necessarily
free, always, and it is impossible for a human to
fail to be free. To fail to be free, in his view, is
the same as to cease to be. So, the result Sartre
ends up with—redefining the role of freedom as
the mode of being of the l’etre pour-soi —while
unexpected, provides for a new way of looking
at our lives. Sartre successfully sheds light on
our understanding of ourselves and our choices
in the world. Sartre expressed this identification
between being human and being free. In The
Reprieve, he narrated the great discovery of
Mathieu.
In the middle of the Pont Neuf, he stopped and
began to laugh. This freedom, in what distant
places have I not looked for it; and so it was so
near that I could not see it; it is so near that I
could not touch it; it was nothing but myself. I
am my freedom. He had hoped that there would
come a day when he would be transfixed by joy,
as lightning. No there was no lightning, no joy,
only this dispossession, this void, this vertigo
before his own emptiness, this anxiety lest his own
transparency should forever hide him from
himself.
This was the great Eureka moment. But
unlike Archimedes’ Eureka, the new insight did
not bring joy to the discoverer but sadness and
emptiness. Further, we shall find one of the
statements that made Sartre an enigmatic
philosopher of his time. No longer did Sartre
see freedom as a gift, a superior faculty of the
human person, nor did he regard it as a
participation in the image and likeness of God.
Of course, one may also realize that for Sartre,
there is no God. He saw freedom as a curse of
nothingness.
I am nothing, I have nothing. I am as
inseparable from the world as light, and I am as
exiled as light, gliding over the surface of the
stones or of the water, never gripped nor held.
Outside, outside the world; outside the past,
outside myself: freedom is exile and I am
condemned to be free.
Human freedom is not just a part of human
existence; it even precedes man’s existence and
makes it possible.7 Man 8 is not a finished and
determined product but a free and dynamic
process. He creates and fashions himself, not in
the sense of the creatio which is neither a
productio rei secundum totam suam substantiam9 nor
a productio rei ex nihilo sui et subjecti,10 but in the
sense that what becomes of him depends on his
own choices, which is the exercise of his
freedom. The human person owes his being to
freedom. Freedom coincides at its roots with
the nothingness that is at the heart of man. For
man, to be is to choose himself. Nothing comes
to him either from without or from within the
self that he can receive or accept. This is the
perennial condition of man’s freedom according
to Sartre.
Man cannot be at times free and at other times a
slave; either he is always and entirely free or he
is not free at all. 11
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JEAN PAUL SARTRE’S VISION OF MAN’S CONDEMNATION TO RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM
Freedom, Facticity, and Values
The relationship between freedom
and facticity is another important aspect of
Sartre’s vision of man’s condemnation to
responsible freedom. It marks the relationship
between freedom and concrete existence.
Sartre used facticity to refer to the concrete
situation of the l’etre pour-soi, which is a class
of factors “believed” to be the limitations on
human freedom. It is not so much an observed
state of affairs but the inward, existential
awareness of one’s own being as “fact” that is
to be accepted; a given fact no one has chosen
to be. Man simply binds himself in existence
and discovers himself as a free existent in the
world of things. Man “happens to be,” and
with respect to him as with respect to a house,
a tree or a cup of coffee.
The facticity of man is the totality of
limits, which the l’etre pour-soi faced in its
relation to the world. Facticity includes
position in space and time, past, environment,
others, and death. Although the objective
world of brute things may, from the start,
limit our freedom of action, it is man’s
freedom that must previously constitute the
framework, the technique, and the ends in
regard to which they will manifest themselves
as limits.12
Sartre argues that it is man’s choices that
set up limitations. There are no limitations as
such – we choose our own limitations. He also
differentiates between freedom of choice and
freedom of action. To be free does not mean
to obtain what one wishes but rather to
determine oneself to wish in the broad sense
of choosing. Freedom, for him, is only the
autonomy of choice.
As a l’etre pour-soi, man recognizes that all
he can ever have are ‘situations.’ A situation is
defined by Sartre as a confrontation between a
person’s consciousness and external ‘facts.’
This confrontation between man’s wish to be
and the external constraints of his
environment, which prevent him from being
all that he can be, requires that he make
choices in a situation. Freedom and facticity is
intertwined paradoxically.
By making one choice instead of another,
man gives meaning and value to the choice he
makes. According to Sartre: “There is
freedom only in a situation, and there is a
situation only through freedom. Human
reality everywhere encounters resistance and
obstacles which it has not created, but these
resistances and obstacles have meaning only in
and through the free choice which human
reality is.”13 This choice-making ability of the
l’etre pour-soi is what Sartre refers to as
transcendence: man transcends his ‘facticity,’
precisely because he can make choices in a
situation, and these choices determine, though
only in part, the next situation. Thus, man is
always responsible for his situation as well as
the consequences of his actions within a
situation. Since man is ultimately responsible
for the choices he makes in a situation, “the
l’etre pour-soi cannot appear without being
haunted by value and projected towards its
own possibilities.”14 Sartre notes that, “the
upsurge of freedom is the crystallization of an
end across a given and the revelation of a given
in the light of an end; these two structures are
simultaneous and inseparable… the universal
values of the chosen ends are disengaged only
by analysis; every choice is the choice of a
concrete change to be bestowed on a concrete
given.” 15
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Man makes himself and defines his way of
life by projecting himself toward the future and
by constantly going beyond the given situation
in which he finds himself.16 The multifarious
actions, beliefs, and experiences comprising
one’s life must, in Sartre’s word, “derive their
meaning from an original projection”17 that man
makes himself.
One can’t take a point of view of one’s life
without one’s living it.18
Condemnation to Responsible Freedom
Man is condemned to be free. The
condemnation stems from the fact that man is
thrown into the world yet free because as soon
as consciousness emerges, responsibility
necessarily follows. Man is responsible for all
his actions. What began as Sartre’s amoral
subjectivism ended up to be an ethics of strict
accountability based upon individual
responsibility.19 Like the Greek titan Atlas, man
carries the weight of the world on his shoulders
because of the responsibility he bears for the
world, for others, and for his own self. It is
through human action that there is the world,
that there is a meaningful whole to experience.
We are the authors of this adversity.
The l’etre pour-soi can never surrender its
freedom. It can never render itself an object
causally determined by the physical world, for
the very project of surrender, the very attempt
to render itself causally determined, must be a
free choice of the l’etre pour-soi. As Sartre puts
it, “Not to choose is, in fact, to choose not to
choose.”20 Man always exercises responsible
freedom.
Descriptively, responsibility simply
expresses a cause-effect relationship between an
agent and an action without referring to the
ethical character of the act. Prescriptively, it
indicates a moral and legal obligation binding
one to do what is good and to avoid evil.
Ascriptively, it attributes credit or blame to an
agent as one who acts with or without
conformity to moral norms. But for Sartre,
responsibility simply means “a consciousness of
being the incontestable author of an event or of
an object.”21
Responsibility presupposes freedom.
Freedom is the condition of being responsible.
The responsibility of the l’etre pour-soi is
overwhelming since there is no God to cling
into whenever situation becomes worse. Man,
alone, is responsible for his actions. Man is the
focal point of everything that happens to his
own self. In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre
assumes that God does not exist: “…if God
does not exist, we find no values or commands
to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in
the bright realm of values, we, have no excuse
behind us, nor justification before us. We are
alone, with no excuses.” 22
Sartre would not limit responsibility to one
man but would extend it to all men since his
exercise of choice necessarily affects others,
which is part of one’s facticity. A single choice
is a choice for all. Nothing is better for man
unless it is better for all. To choose between
this or that is, at the same time, to affirm the
value of that which is chosen; for we are unable
ever to choose the worse. What we choose is
always the better; and nothing can be better for
us unless it is better for all.23
Sartre appears to believe he has derived this
insight from first principles; he makes no
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JEAN PAUL SARTRE’S VISION OF MAN’S CONDEMNATION TO RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM
reference to Kant's Categorical Imperative 24,
although he must have been aware of it. Sartre
did not seem to think this imperative had any
prescriptive value. To the extent that Sartre
developed an ethics, he based his ethics on the
value of freedom. However, it is recast in the
prescriptive form: when choosing a course of
action, assume all mankind will take you as a
model and will make the identical choice in the
same situation. Sartre's imperative appears to
have wider application than that of the Golden
Rule.25
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. For
Sartre, “it is impossible for man to transcend
human subjectivity.” It is not a question of
preference but rather a statement of fact. Even
the belief of God, of an absolute, of an objective
reality is a subjective choice.
Our responsibility is a blessing and a curse.
It leads us to feel things like anguish,
forlornness, and despair. In the face of our
subjectivity, we experience anguish. Many
people do not feel anguish, but this happens
because they are “fleeing from it.” If you do not
feel a sense of anxiety when you make
decisions, it is because you are forgetting about
your “total and deep responsibility” toward
yourself and all of humanity. Forlornness is the
idea that “God does not exist and that we have
to face all the consequences of this.”26 There is
no morality a priori. There is no absolute right
or wrong. There is no ultimate judge. This is a
very distressing idea. Without God, we have
nothing to cling to. “There is no determinism,
man is free, man is freedom. [...] We have no
values or commands to turn to which
legitimizes our conduct.” The only way to
determine our values is to make a decision.
Ideals are not what matter; what matters are
actions. Despair arises because man only has the
power to change things that are within one’s
power to change—and there is a lot one cannot
change. Reality is impartial and is out of man’s
control, except for its small aspects. Man
despairs because he can never have full control
of the future. 27
Postscript: Invictus
The end of this study leads us back to its
very title: Jean Paul Sartre’s vision of man’s
condemnation to responsible freedom. Sartre’s vision
was never perfect bio-physiologically and
philosophically. Physically, Sartre suffered from
a condition known as amblyopia, or more
commonly known as a lazy eye. It is a disorder
of one’s visual perspective in which the brain
partially or wholly ignores input from one eye
and is frequently caused by strabismus.
Strabismus, popularly known as squint-eye and
crossed-eye, is a condition in which the eyes are
not properly aligned with each other. This is
characterized by a lack of coordination between
the extraocular muscles, which prevents
bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point
in space. It, thus, prevents proper binocular
vision and may adversely affect depth
perception. If we will admit the biological
principle that “form dictates function,” and that
“morphology determines physiology,” then we
may conclude that Sartre never had a clear
vision of reality physically and philosophically
speaking. On the other hand, we may also say
that Sartre had a vision of reality we normally
do not see.
The short Victorian poem Invictus28 by
William Ernest Henley preempted and
embodied the Sartrean concept of man’s
condemnation to responsible freedom. It is
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R. A. BAUTISTA
surprising to note that Henley, just like Sartre,
also suffered from a physical disability. He
suffered from tuberculosis of the bone. One of
his legs was amputated in order to save his life.
While recovering from this surgery in the
infirmary, he was moved to write the words of
Invictus. This period of his life, coupled with
the reality of an impoverished childhood,
played a major role in the meaning behind the
poem; it was also the prime reason for this
poem’s existence. The poem concludes with
the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my
fate; I am the captain of my soul.” It engages
themes of inner strength and perseverance, of
freedom, facticity, and responsibility.
Square Press, Inc., 1993), 436. Henceforth,
this would be referred to as BN.
Wesley Morriston, “Freedom, Determinism, and
Chance in the Early Philosophy of Sartre,” The
Personalist 58 (1977): 236.
2
From this point onwards, the author opted to
use the original French words used by Sartre to
denote the two modes of being.
3
See Nathan L. Oaklander, Existentialist
Philosophy: An Introduction, (New Jersey:
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1992).
4
See Gabriel Marcel, The Philosophy of
Existentialism, (New York: Carol, 1995).
5
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Jean Paul-Sartre, The Reprieve,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), 285.
Henceforth, this would be referred to as TR.
6
7
The term “man” here is used to indicate
individuality and the totality of the human
person, male or female.
8
Translated as the production of a thing in regard
of its whole substance
9
Translated as the production of a thing from a
previous nonexistence alike of itself and of any subject
-matter
10
11
Endnotes
Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans.
Hazel E, Barnes, (New York: Washington
1
BN, 60.
BN, 441.
Maurice Natanson, A Critique of Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Ontology, (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1951), 50.
12
February 2015  Volume 1  page 26
JEAN PAUL SARTRE’S VISION OF MAN’S CONDEMNATION TO RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM
13
BN, 489.
14
BN, 96.
15
BN, 508.
David A. Jopling, Sartre’s Moral Psychology in
The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, ed. Christina
Howells, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 111.
16
17
BN, 39.
David A. Jopling quoting Jean Paul Sartre,
Sartre’s Moral Psychology in The Cambridge
Companion to Sartre, ed. Christina Howells,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 111.
18
Stumpf, Samuel Enoch and Fieser, James.
Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of
Philosophy 8th Ed., (Boston: McGraw-Hill,
2007), 434.
The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a
maxim, ethical code or morality that essentially
states either of the following: (Positive form of
Golden Rule): One should treat others as one
would like others to treat oneself. (Negative
form of Golden Rule): One should not treat
others in ways that one would not like to be
treated.
25
Jean Paul Sartre, Essays in Existentialism, ed.
Wade Baski, (New York: Citadel Press, 1965),
40.
26
Alex Vermeer, ““Existentialism is a
Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre” The
Alexvermeer.com Blog, posted undated,
h t t p : / / a l e x v e r m e e r . c o m /% E 2 % 8 0 %
9Cexistentialism-is-a-humanism%E2%80%9Dby-jean-paul-sartre/ (accessed March 3, 2013).
27
19
20
21
BN, 481.
Translated into English as “unconquered”; the
title was added by the editor Arthur QuillerCouch when the poem was included in The
Oxford Book of English Verse.
28
About the Author
BN, 633.
Paul Moser, Contemporary Approaches to
Philosophy, reprints from Existentialism and
Human Emotions, trans. Bernard Frechtman,
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 330.
Ryan Oliver D. Bautista
22
See Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a
Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press).
23
Act only according to that maxim whereby
you can, at the same time, will that it should
become a universal law.
24
He is a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco
and currently assigned to the Seminaryo ng
Don Bosco, studying first year theology at the
Don Bosco Center of Studies in Parañaque
City. He is a philosophy, research and science
instructor at Don Bosco College-Canlubang, a
graduate of BS Biology (Summa Cum Laude)
from the University of the Philippines-Manila
and MA Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude) from
the University of Santo Tomas.
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