Conception of Free Will and the Concept of a Person

A second concept of existentialism is Bad Faith. French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre believed that Bad Faith is the fundamental issue that prevents individuals from living an authentic life. He focused on the concept of radical freedom, in which the individual always has a choice. Since life itself and the universe is absurd, humans are completely responsible for creating their own destiny. Every action performed by the individual ultimately stems from the innate freedom they possess. Sartre looks at the darker aspects of freedom, and notes how “Man is condemned to be free” (Löwith 123). He is suggesting that individuals are thrown into a meaningless world, where he or she is forced to decide for him or herself. As rational beings, humans seek answers and guidelines for how to live, because they do not want to decide for themselves. Because, deciding for oneself means holding oneself responsible for every action performed. The thought of complete and utter responsibility frightens people and influences their decisions to commit acts of bad faith.

Humans do not have an essence, our existence precedes our essence. The fact that we have no essence gives us our free will. Sartre wrote in his work Being and Nothingness that “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” For Sartre, every man is defined by what he does. Mozart was not born a genius composer, it is Mozart’s symphonies and concertos that are his genius, we create ourselves through what we do. Sartre also put forward his theory of a delusion he called ‘mauvaise foi’ or ‘bad faith’. Mauvaise foi is believing and pretending to be determined and have an essence, when in reality you are absolutely free. Sartre’s own examples of bad faith are put forward in his short story, Intimacy, from the series, The Wall. A woman is on a first date and decides to ignore the obvious sexual implications of her suitor’s compliments to her appearance, but instead just accepts them as words. When the man goes for her hand she lets her hand rest indifferently on his, she delays the decision of whether to succumb or reject his advances, instead telling herself that her hand is only a thing in the world, a physical part of her body separate from her thoughts. Sartre describes this woman as acting in bad faith- denying her freedom in order to avoid any blame for making a decision that is potentially wrong. For Sartre, the very act of denying our freedom shows our free will through our

There is no pre-programmed destiny, no inherent meaning in our lives. Instead, meaning arises from the individual's impetus to will freely, to do what we choose in any given moment, and to then reflect upon those choices and the ways in which they alter reality and the lives of others. Being and Nothingness defines every individual as just that: a lone individual. The nature of our being is truly isolated from the nature of other beings and the world around us – while our actions and essence contain an implicit interconnectedness with the world, while meaning can only come from the existence of external phenomena, our true self is like an island surrounded by impenetrable nothingness – pregnant with the potential for possibility, but always empty in-itself.

Jean Paul Sartre was a existentialist philosopher who like other such philosophers, attempted to characterise man by his will, choices and decisions he makes

Sartre proposes an interesting view on free will when he says, "either man is wholly determined or else man is wholly free." This quote shows us that Sartre believes that man is free to do what he wants. For Sartre, freedom is the most basic value, which renders possible all other values the way our fundamental plan precedes and grounds our small choices. In that sense freedom is the source of all values. It is not logically possible to make sense of human responsibility and notions of justice without a conception of free will. This is because it is free will that allows us as humans to choose and make the right decisions in life.

Sartre refers to the responsibility our choices carry. Individuals in their aims of being free also make decisions that make them responsible of the consequences. For one to make a choice, he or she must bear the responsibility, and this is the heavy burden we carry to define our existence. Being free does not stand alone as it requires us to be responsible of each decision taken in life, because no one is going to look back for us. As a result, the fact that we are condemned to be free is affected by facticity in the sense that individuals make free choices regardless of right or wrong. For instance, what may be right for me, may be wrong for others and vice versa, and this is what make us authentic because we are our own judges upon every

Jean-Paul Sartre provides explanation for the world in his definition of consciousness as existing as a being that is no thing: by inserting nothingness into the world, consciousness allows for being; (it "worlds the world"). He elaborates further, stating consciousness is not just free, it is freedom, since consciousness can never be the object it intends. According to Sartre, consciousness is the constant present: it serves as a nihilation of the past; by annihilating the past, what has been appears to us, giving us a sense of time. Since my consciousness can reflect on

People used to always tell me, “life is what you make of it.” Until you grow up and take on the full weight of responsibility of an adult, you don’t truly know what this means. I agree with Sartre wholeheartedly that our existence precedes our essence. I think that we are fully responsible for who we become, and the value and significance that we bring into our lives. The choices that I am making currently are all directed towards the goals that I want to achieve in the future and the person that I ultimately want to become. No one has the power to determine what kind of life that you live—only you

Sartre, an existentialist philosopher from the twentieth century, claims that humans create their own meaning in life by means of their free choices. He supports this claim with the assumption that a God does not exist. John Stuart Mill, an earlier philosopher, was a proponent of the idea of utilitarianism; the idea that human beings should work to maximize overall happiness and wellbeing. In this paper, I will discuss these two theories and how their combination can potentially create a satisfactory moral theory.

Who are you? What defines who you are? Why makes you who you are? What is your personal identity? Have you ever sat around pondering the meaning of life, or maybe just your life? Have you asked yourself any of these questions? What were your answers? These are questions that people have been trying to answer since the beginning of time, before me and you were ever born or thought of. People live their whole lives trying to figure out exactly who they are and what their purpose is in life. In the field of philosophy, many philosophers have had theories on personal identity and a person’s “self.” These people have gone down in history books for their theories on a person’s identity: John Locke and Rene’ Descartes. These are two of the most

A designer has a plan for a paper cutter in his/her mind and sets about creating it with the preconceived notion of its function. This preconceived notion is the essence of the object and thus for the object (a paper cutter) essence precedes existence. That is to say the paper cutters being is predetermined. It would follow that for essence to precede the existence in a person, there must be an individual to conceive of the beings essence and thus bring about its existence. However, Sartre declares that there is no God and

Sartre attested that the human being is a useless passion due to our insatiable desires. Markedly, human beings desire to retain the infinite and that need is simply impossible. For the search for the unlimited is tiresome and unappeasable.

Sartre’s atheist existentialism presented in his lecture mainly states that there is no human nature in which man can place his trust; therefore, man is free to choose and is the definer of himself through his own choices and actions. Sartre begins by listing some prevalent oppositions against existentialism. For example, the Communists blame it for inducing “quietism and despair,” because the idea that there is no code of ethics to tell man what he ought to do and become generates fear that might discourage people from committing themselves to action. Christians reproach existentialism for

As a continuation of the course assignment, in the following paper, I shall examine Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism and give a framework of concepts and reasons as to why it is existentialist in nature. Whereas the last paper chronologically organized Sartre’s life and experiences, this will focus more specifically on his work, thought process and an impression and interpretation of his logic. Presented and chronicled after the liberation of Paris from German occupation, Existentialism is a/and Humanism, flew directly out of that optimistic period where questions about morality and societal integrity were at the forefront of the minds of French (any many other) people. Of the pivotal texts in all existentialism, few are more well-known than Sartre’s. In the course of Jean-Paul Sartre’s work on existentialism, he is believed to be the basis for the coining of the term Existentialism, which in 1943 was first said by Gabriel Marcel, in reference to Sartre himself. After rejecting and then assimilating the phrase unto his own purposes, he set out to clarify and exemplify just what existentialism was, in the face of many of its Communist, Marxist, Catholic, and Christian detractors.

There are many objections to Sartre’s ideas that we are completely free. The question of if our environment, our bodies, and what we are capable of is already determined then how are we completely free? What is freedom is there are already determined? Even though these things in our lives may already be determined, we are more than these things because we create who we are based off of what we make of ourselves. We find ourselves and who we are by experiences, which make us our own individual. Even though some things are already determined for us, we can do with them, as we like. We are free to make of ourselves whatever we would like, they