Everything has been figured out, except how to live
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
What in Existentialism?
It is a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of one’s own will. While there are many different philosophers who address existentialism I’ll be focusing on Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher that was a key figure in the existentialism philosophical movement.
Jean Paul Sartre believed that human beings live in constant anguish, not because life is miserable, but because we are ‘condemned to be free’. While the circumstances of our birth and upbringing are beyond our control, he reasons that once we become self-aware, we have to make choices, choices that define our very ‘essence’. According to Sartre’s theory of existentialism “existence precedes essence”: only by existing and acting a certain way do we give meaning to our lives.
And what’s that “certain way” you may ask? Well that’s up to you.
According to him, there is no fixed design for how a human being should be and no God to give us a purpose. Therefore, the responsibility for defining ourselves, and by extension humanity, falls squarely on our shoulders. With nothing to restrict us, we have the choice to take actions to become who we want to be and lead the life we want to live. Each choice we make defines us while at the same time revealing to us what we think a human being should be. And this incredible burden of responsibility that the free person has to bear is what relegates him to constant anguish. Not everyone has the same idea of what a human being should be therefore the conflict that occurs between ideals also because more anguish.
Some might find this idea tiring, ridiculous even. That’s why our existence is considered to be absurd. Sartre also described that idea of living without pursuing freedom. You take what you have and just exist until your time comes to an end. You have a simple desk job, a stable income- why change that?
The phenomenon of people accepting that things have to be a certain way, and consequently refusing to acknowledge or pursue alternate options, was what he termed as “living in bad faith”. By living in bad faith we restrict our freedom. Simply because it’s easier, because it’s more simple than having to figure out what you want to do with your life.
Your decisions are responsible for who you become and your freedom however there is one factor that restrict a person’s freedom (and I’m sure it crossed your mind as you read this) and its money. The need of money, Sartre reasoned, is the excuse people give themselves when they shut down the idea of exploring unconventional life choices.
He compared capitalism to a machine that traps people in a cycle of working in jobs they don’t like so that they can buy things they don’t need. This necessity of material things, he argued, did not exist in reality but rather was a man-made construct that led people to deny their freedom and consider living in other ways as foolhardy.
There is a wide variety of philosophical, religious, and political ideologies that make up existentialism so there is no universal agreement in an true set of ideals and beliefs. However I decided to focus on this aspect because I find it very interesting and I hope you did too.
