Freedom: Condemned to be free – the storm between choice and responsibility

Source: Sartre and the sentence to be free

"Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself; and free, because from the moment he was thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. There is no determinism – man is freedom."

(Jean-Paul Sartre, *Existentialism Is a Humanism*, 1946).

Explanation: No excuses: You are the sum of your actions

Sartre dismantles the illusion that someone else will decide for us. If there is no God or predetermined fate, then our every action is an absolute choice. This freedom is a "punishment" because it sentences us to solitude in making decisions. There are no excuses: not "my upbringing," not "the economic situation," and not "genetics." You are the sum total of your actions.

Perspective: The escape from freedom and the fear of responsibility

We run from freedom because we fear responsibility. It is easier to be a cog in the machine, to obey dry rules, or to follow "guidelines," than to admit that we are the authors of our own failure. When Hannah Arendt spoke about Eichmann, she described a man who surrendered his freedom in order to be an efficient bureaucrat. Arendt’s ethics demand that we "think," and thinking is the freest, most dangerous act there is, because it shatters the certainty and ease of obedience.

Going Deeper: The Hasidic storm: Freedom of breaking and freedom of obedience

This is the Hasidic concept of "free will" in its radical sense. The Kotzker Rebbe used to say that even a Hasid who does nothing but obey his master is not truly free. Freedom demands a "storm"—breaking conventions to reach an inner truth. It is worth remembering that someone who has attained such a level of freedom through a storm must also practice the freedom of obedience, or else the storm itself becomes a prison.

Culture: The Statue of Liberty in ruins: When freedom becomes a self-made prison

In the final moments of the film Planet of the Apes (1968), after wandering the galaxy and battling on a planet inhabited by apes, comes the moment when the protagonist discovers the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. It is the moment he realizes that human freedom was not destroyed by apes, but by the destructive choices of human beings themselves.