Crushing Freedom

It's easy to write existentialism off as a very pessimistic, depressed, and unwelcoming idea, and there is a good reason for that.  Some of it's fundamental ideas are incredibly radical and tend to tear down the very fabric of our society, such as the existence of a God.  In existentialism, there is no God, only man, and this is a key point in the philosophy that both sets it apart as radical, interesting, and also liberating.

In existentialism, the consequences of an absence of a God are what in the end define us as human.  Because there was no creator, that means that humans were not formed with a preconceived idea.  One day there weren't people, the next day there were.  No one sat down and said, "I'm going to make people so that there is a creature that can think and write about things" or anything along those lines.  We just popped up, because that's what happened.  We had to assign our own meaning to our lives, so that, in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, our existence precedes essence.

I bring up Sartre because he is my favorite existential philosopher, and I have always found it hard to disagree with his ideas.  One of my favorite beliefs of his was that of radical freedom, or that humans are inherently and inescapably free, and therefore have huge amounts of responsibility.  That means that whatever we do, we are choosing to do it, no matter what.  While it is true that there are sometimes outside factors that encourage one choice over another, called facticity, only the individual is responsible for his or her actions.  And because of this, each individual is setting an example for humanity.  According to Sartre, because we choose to do what we do, we do what we believe is the right choice that should be made, and thus what we would believe to be the best choice for all of humanity.  It's kind of a confusing concept to grasp at first, but it's hard to dispute.  For every choice, a person weighs what they value and choose whichever they believe holds more value.  For example, you could argue that when a person is being mugged at gunpoint and they hand over their money that they don't have free will.  I mean, they're under the threat of death, right?  But at the same time, instead of handing over the money, they could also try to fight back, or run away.  However, by giving the mugger the money, the person chose out of their own inherent free will to value their potential safety and health over that dollar amount.  By doing that, they are saying that the choice they made was the best one available, and if anyone else was in that situation, that choice would still be the best one to make.

So essentially, everything in existentialism boils down to human freedom, and that's why I both love and hate the philosophy.  I love it because it seems to get at what I've believed personally for a long time--that it's up to people to make meaning in their own lives, and that everything is a product of choice, but I hate it for the same reasons most others hate it--choice isn't always fun, good, or easy.  It would be nice if we could brush responsibility off of ourselves every once in a while, but that is simply not the case.  And the fact that there is facticity, these uncontrollable external forces that limit us, is incredibly frustrating because while we have freedom, it seems like freedom lite because there are still so many things we can't do.  So while existentialism is a liberating philosophy, it is still not an easy one to accept.