NOTION OF FREEDOM IN JEAN PAUL SARTRE

NOTION OF FREEDOM IN JEAN PAUL SARTRE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The topic of this study is Sartre’s notion of freedom. The notion of freedom has raised a lot of dust in different philosophical epochs yet it remained problematic. Man’s experience of his own behaviour seems to reveal to him that he is free, that he has ability to decide for himself, to deliberate on what to do in various situations and to come to his own conclusions about what to do or believe what he does. Also everyday experience leads man to believe that he often has a choice between alternative courses of action. We punish, condemn, or blame individuals for making certain choices and decisions and insist that they ought to have done something else, and if they had had, they would then be deserving of rewards praise.

 

However, at a time, what we believe to be a free decision seems to have been influenced in way or another by various psychological and social factors, so that it may look as if we did not actually decide what we do “freely”. So the notion of freedom makes one to ask some basic questions like; what is freedom? Is man actually? To what extent can we decide what to do? Does he really decide what to do, or does he simple do what he has been programmed to do by certain antecedent conditions? These and many other questions preoccupy and puzzle our minds while discussing the notion of freedom. So it is an attempt to answer these questions and a whole lot of others that this thesis is devoted.

 

Sartre in his philosophy advocates for freedom. He holds that man is absolutely and necessarily free. Man is the creator of himself and man is condemned to be free, condemned because he finds himself thrown into the world yet free because as soon as he is conscious of himself, he is responsible for everything he does. We will equally notice the influence of Sartre’s predecessors in Sartre’s philosophical thought great philosophers like Nietzsche, kierkegaard, Heidegger, Husserl etc. really had a remarkable influence on Sartre.

 

Sartre’s atheism could be compared to Nietzsche’s idea of God. Nietzsche asserts that God is dead hence man has to create meaning in his life. Sartre was highly confinable with this idea since for him (Sartre) appearance is the only reality, man is condemned to be free and as there is no God, anything is permissible. He was of the view that existence precedes essence. This is the core of his philosophy.

This work is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, we shall concentrate on the existentialists idea of being. We shall then treat Sartre’s meaning of being which is divided into two, namely being-in-itself and being-for-itself. We shall also put into consideration the third mode of being which is concerned with the relationship between a being-for-itself and another being-for-itself.

In chapter two, we shall try to expose the general meaning of freedom which will lead us to x–ray some of the philosophers’ views on concept of freedom and try to differentiate between different kinds of freedom. Also in this chapter, we shall treat the problem of freedom and determinism since some people are of the view that human actions and decisions are influenced by various psychological and social factors.

Having established the general idea of freedom, we shall then dwell in chapter three on Sartre’s idea of freedom which is the central theme of this work. But according to Sartre, this freedom cannot exist without absolute responsibility hence freedom and responsibility are prerequisite for human existence. He sees authentic existence as a resultant fact of life lived in freedom and responsibility. The second part of this chapter will try to expose Sartre’s idea of inanthentic existence which he called bad faith.

In order to defend his philosophical thoughts, Sartre denied the existence of God which we shall elaborate clearly in last part of this chapter. Finally in chapter four, we shall critically evaluate Sartre’s philosophical thoughts and then arrive at a conclusion.

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