Problematica libertății la Jean-Paul Sartre
Problematics of Liberty in Jean-Paul Sartre

Summary/Abstract: Continuing the tradition of classical French philosophy (Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal), Jean-Paul Sartre links the concept of freedom to the essence of the human being. Freedom precedes essence, while also having the ability to generate its own nothingness. Thrown into the opacity and loneliness of the world, man is ”sentenced to freedom”, acquiring his authenticity only through the choices he makes. God does not exist, so the whole weight of the world hangs on his shoulders, and behind him there is nothing but nothingness. By choosing himself, man in fact chooses the entire human condition. Suspended in the void, without any support from anywhere, man is condemned every moment to reinvent himself and all of humanity. Oreste, in Sartre’s ”The Flies”, knows that freedom is a ”human business” and that when freedom has ”exploded” in a man's soul, the gods can do nothing. Man is free to constantly invent and reinvent himself, according to his own will, according to his own destiny. Man can never be anything other than what he himself has decided to become. Consequently, to be means, in fact, to choose, to opt for one situation or another, for one existential paradigm, or another. Every situation is unique and open to freedom, since man is the one who chooses it, the one who gives it one meaning or another. In the configuration of our freedom, it is our subjective nature and not external reality that plays the essential role.

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