Why does sartre regard freedom as nothingness

What is it that transcends? It is consciousness. But consciousness is not a thing, it is a Nothing. By so breaking with Being, Nothingness emerges. Nothingness is at the heart of Being, there is an interplay between the two — hence the book title. Nothingness can arise in the world in many ways. It can arise from disappointment, from failure, from negations, from emotions and so on.

We do experience Nothingness, it is a lived experience and phenomena. It is, as mentioned above, an existential structure of human being in the world. With respect to ourselves, the existence of Nothingness in relation to consciousness guarantees Freedom. In so reflecting upon or transcending myself, objects etc, I am not identical with them. If not identical with them, I am distinct and free from them.

Existentialism is the philosophy of Human Freedom. Here, the existence of Freedom, of Transcendence is denied or ignored. This, according to Sartre, is to ignore or wilfully deceive oneself to the phenomenological structures of human being — that there is Being and Nothingness.

View all posts by martinljenkins. Someone is walking along the side of a dangerous cliff, on a narrow path, without a guard-rail. He is anxious. It is not a straightforward fear that the path will give way it looks firm enough or that a gust of wind knock him over the air is calm : it is a fear that he might willingly throw himself off and jump to his death.

Many people have had an experience of vertigo akin to this. On the one hand, looking into the abyss, we want to live; on the other hand, we become aware of our total freedom. The more we reflect on it, the more we realise that we are not bound by it, and we become dizzy with the possibilities that open up before us.

We could be reckless and jump, for no reason at all — and this is what really terrifies us. This is a very particular example, but it illustrates how our confidence in our identity can suddenly be undermined. Human identity is unstable. The experience of vertigo is one form of anguish: we realise that we cannot guarantee the perpetuation of the motives which have influenced us up to this point: identity is not a straightjacket, it does not predetermine the future.

At this moment, halfway along the dangerous path, we may feel confident; but in a few steps, who knows what we might do? The decisive conduct will emanate from a me which I am not yet. But Sartre wants us to realise that the decision to walk carefully is not determined by our identity. Instead, it is the decision itself which determines our identity and ensures we continue to be people who want to live. This is a subtle distinction, the importance of which will become apparent. The second example of anguish is the reformed gambler.

This person has sincerely decided never to gamble again. He has taken a firm resolution to quit. He considers himself to be a reformed gambler, and he relies on this identity to get him through the temptations that come. Yet as he nears the gaming table, his resolution melts away:. It is there, doubtless, but fixed, ineffectual, surpassed by the very fact that I am conscious of it. The resolution is still me to the extent that I realize constantly my identity with myself across the temporal flux, but it is no longer me — due to the fact that it has become an object for my consciousness.

I am not subject to it, it fails in the mission which I have given to it. The identity the gambler has established for himself as reformed is fragile.

He wishes it constrained him and guaranteed his new way of life, but this very wish betrays his knowledge that both gambling and not gambling are equally possible for him. His present identity as resolved and reformed is illusory — it is really a memory of a previous identity who he was at the time of his resolution : it is already surpassed, and the resolution will not be effective unless it is remade once more.

For both characters their very consciousness of an identity comes with a corresponding detachment as they realise that they are not bound by it. By searching for reasons, they objectify them and make these reasons ineffective. Matthieu wants to justify his actions and base them on good reasons, or at least on some overwhelming desire; but by interrogating his motives, by trying to establish whether they are compelling, he distances himself from them. The process of examining his motives shows they have no binding power over his future: the search for obligations leads him to freedom because it uncovers the fact that alternative courses of action are also viable.

However costly it seems, the price of being conscious of an identity is a corresponding liberation from that identity, with an ever-present responsibility for continuing or denying that identity. We experience this responsibility through anguish.

This is not just a point about the fact that our identities change, since anguish does not come about when a past identity is forgotten and a new one adopted. We can review the present and not just the past, and we have a continual responsibility to recreate our identities through our choices. For this reason Sartre writes:. Sartre summarises this idea later in BN , concluding with one of his most misunderstood phrases:.

In vain shall I seek to catch hold of them; I escape them by my very existence. It deed, just as free as their masters. However, might be suggested that the Alabama slave in Sartre is unequivocal that ontological freedom was absolutely free, and as free as his mas- does not relate to mere intentions or attitudes but, ter, to fantasize about becoming a mountain- rather, has to do also with actions: climber or president of the United States.

I am condemned henceforth to see ject his escape and learn the value of his project by the world modified at the whim of the changes of undertaking some action. Our description of free- my consciousness; I can not practice. If the object appears distinction between the intention and the act. Once the distinc- tion between the simple wish, the representation Since projects, too, have to do with situated ac- which I could choose, and the choice is abolished, tions, then, a person who is not in prison cannot freedom disappears too.

His response to clash with reality even if we take them as refer- this is that even when a project is thus affected, ring only to our ontological freedom to choose there is always a more primordial project in the projects, to choose ourselves, and to assign background that remains unaffected: meanings to the situations in which we find our- selves. The distinction between this type of free- If the changes which occur in my environment can involve modifications of my projects, they.

True, Sartre claims that there is always freedom but also to ontological freedom. It is not a more fundamental project that is not restricted clear that Sartre is correct in claiming that free- even when a less fundamental one is.

But it is not dom is inherently restricted. However, he is absolutely there is nothing whatsoever that He cannot do or free to choose between those options.

The mas- that He even has any difficulty doing. Yet the notion itself E,. Z , is also limited, but he, too, is absolutely seems completely coherent.

Sartre might reply free to choose from among his available options. However, this too does not show that Since, as argued above, the extent of freedom the notion of an agent who is absolutely free is not incoherent in itself, and it is thus incorrect depends on the extensiveness of the range of that freedom is by nature inevitably limited. But flicts with his claim that all people enjoy absolute it is untrue that people are absolutely and equally freedom.

Consider two types of freedom fails also to rebuff the criti- the case of a person who suffers from acute ago- cism that his theory of freedom is inconsistent.

This response tour guide is an option for her. Likewise, it staying in her village and visiting a neighboring would be odd to suggest that the poor are as free one, then Philip is freer than Jill in that measure. We hold prisoners incorrect that all enjoy absolute freedom to select to have less freedom than people who are not in any option included within that range. The agoraphobic freedom. Limitations on our set of alternatives, is not only less free to become a tour guide, but then, constitute limitations on freedom.

Perhaps also less free to undertake this as a project. She it is true that people can always choose between can choose this project, but the intense fear and some alternatives, and thus they are always anxiety that this profession generates for her somewhat free. But this in itself does not entail would make it a difficult choice: it would thus be that they are absolutely or equally free.

Generally, people tend to refrain from se- our range of available options. True, a slave lecting projects they have failed at repeatedly in whose very limited range of options consists of, the past and believe they are likely to fail at in the say, only alternatives A and B, is free to choose future.

Thus, above, both types of freedom are somewhat situ- even if a certain project is included within our ated, even if to differing degrees. For as shown above, there states of mind. For example, a prisoner could, af- are some obstacles even in the absolute sense, ter years of meditation or religious practice, and not all obstacles are the product of freedom.

It is feels happy, serene, and liberated. A person who tain that when Sartre discusses absolute freedom, has no legs cannot select the project of becoming he is not referring to the range of options we have a marathon runner because he has no chance of or to our freedom to opt for one or other of those succeeding at this project, and the slave in options.

When there is no chance whatso- find ourselves limit our freedom to choose in a ever of successfully achieving a particular end, variety of ways. However, to the extent that free- the project related to that end is in fact a dream, dom transcends or surpasses the situation in fantasy, or mere intention. In this sense, it could options, but repeated past and anticipated future be argued, all people are always totally free, and, failures create tension and fear that diminish hence, the master and slave are equally free.

Thus, an interpretation of total freedom, however, is success is relevant both to freedom to obtain and rather empty. It suggests that insofar as what lim- freedom to choose, even if to differing degrees. Essence is re- hardly free at all in almost all aspects of our life. It would context.