Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of freedom

INTRODUCTION
The 19th century saw dominant philosophical views which were heavily sated with speculations on universals at the expense of particulars. It is very obvious that the emphasis on universals threatens individuality, as in the case of individuals being able to make free choices. Choice can be considered as a manifestation of freedom which also serves as the basis of responsibility.
The themes of human freedom and moral responsibility are the central principles of liberty, which are common to all parts of the civilized world. Freedom nonetheless will not amount to any worth if ii is not properly examined; unless critically controlled, the liberty implicit in our nature becomes tyranny. Freedom points at that which makes it possible for us to exercise our rights with responsibility in view of the right of others. In terms of moral responsibility, persons are normally judged morally responsible for their actions.
Sartre affirms that for any man to live an authentic life, he must first realize that he is a free being condemned to freedom. And that this problem leads to a realization of the inevitable burden laid on man’s existential situation of constantly making choices and accepting the responsibility, which in itself leads one to anguish.[1]  Without this realization, one cannot claim to be living or to have lived an authentic life.
The controversy of freedom and determinism is a perennial problem in the history of philosophy. Looking at the trends of philosophical cum epistemic voyage in the past histories and in our modern society that is decked massive research to understand, one issue stands perdurable and continues to endure and raises a perplexing question, namely; is man capable of making a free choice? On the one hand, our common sense or intuition tells us that we constantly face choices or that we make choices. On the other hand, there are obvious things that inhibit our free choice-making. Let us consider the existential examples; we are not free to choose our parents at birth, family, nation or heredity. Thins has been a perennial classical problem which many philosophers and bright minds of various epochs have given their quota from their own perspectives and background. Some have argued that man is not free, that all our actions are determined by antecedent conditions. Those who advocate for freedom argued that man is free and capable of making free choices. Nonetheless, no position has been deemed the better since each one has its own laws and errors.
The principle aim of this essay is to expose Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of freedom. Sartre, one of the most convinced advocates of freedom, is popularly known for one of his quotes that man is condemned to be free; man is free. In other words, there are no limits to man’s freedom. This expands the notion of the human condition as free being who cannot escape from freedom and whose life is replete with absurdity and his predicament (death) imminent.
Being aware that among all the existential thinkers, Sartre is one of the most convinced and influential advocates of freedom, his existentialism will also preoccupy us in the course of this essay. In addition, since Sartre’s notion of freedom is embedded in his existentialism, we would attempt a survey of some important aspect of Sartre’s existentialism as the framework of his doctrine of absolute freedom.
1.0 THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Man shares the same similarity of life with other living beings. Yet through his reason, he is able to distinguish himself from other animals and inferior beings also by the virtue of his will with which he freely chooses that which enables him to strive towards the realization of his own being. Man is considered a free being. Human freedom is indeed a proper frame for looking into the mystery of man, with a goal of acquiring more correct, complete and adequate knowledge of man. Thus, it is pertinent to presently examine the concept of human freedom as an essential condition for moral action.
Freedom in a loose nut general conception means absence of constriction. The term ‘constriction’ can be in various forms to determine various forms of freedom.  There is physical freedom, moral freedom, psychological freedom, political freedom and social freedom. Physical freedom, as the name suggests, is the immunity from physical constriction. Moral freedom is the absence of constriction from the oppressive forces of the moral order which may be, punishments, laws, and threats. [2]  Psychological freedom is all about the absence of pressure on the part of other human activities, of the will to perform these acts in a determined way as it involves the intellect or the passion. More precisely, man is said to be psychologically free when he has the ability to choose to do or not to do a thing which when all conditions for actions are there. [3]  Political freedom consists in the absence of political imbroglio, while social freedom is the absence of social determinism. [4]
In speaking about human freedom, we refer to that faculty of man to make unconstraint actions and decision. It makes man master over his own actions. Man’s ability to take responsible for his action lies at the very core of human action. It is a sublime but dangerous power; in the hand of man, it is a power of dual stature. Kit can be harnessed for good or for evil.  Because of the nature of man which is rational and inherently free, we can suffice it to say that freedom is proper to man.[5] Hence free human acts are acts that are done deliberately and consciously and they include judgment and election. The three moments of human acts are considered deliberate because it entails exploring, researching and inquiry into actions to be taken. Judgment is a phase where one evaluates and through election, one takes decision.[6] 
But looking at the tremendous and fantastic progress in science and technology in our today’s world, the problem of freedom seems to take on a social dimension. Where can still be free in present day society where political systems, the means of communication and feats achieved through technoscientific inventions have all become instrument of oppression. Therefore, freedom today is no longer compromised by extra-worldly or infra-human forces, but by human, social forces created by man himself which today are turning against him. The freedom is to find the way to reconciling the progress in science with freedom.[7]
Looking at the various activities that man engages himself on daily basis, it goes further to suggest to us that the human person is not static but full of dynamism. Human activities are not as such determined factors external to the individual. We cannot simply explain the human activities by referring or relating it to the automatism of plants and animals. One’s experience of one’s own behaviours includes an awareness of one’s freedom, one’s own ability to decide for oneself, to deliberate about what to do in any circumstance and to come to one’s own conclusion about what to believe and what to do.
This is very well reflected in our manner of judgment, especially of other people. In judging people we consciously or unconsciously assume that, in some sense, they have freedom of choice hence they chose freely the action they took. Even in our daily works and activities, we cannot deny the vivid evidence of different choices we are presented to make; we often have a choice between alternatives courses of actions. We punish, condemn or blame individuals for making certain choices and decisions and insist that they ought to have done otherwise, and if they had, they would deserve rewards and praises. In other words, man’s action is a consequence of his voluntary decisions since it is only to voluntary actions that praise and blame are assigned. Man is, by nature, free. He moves because he wants, eats because he wants. Freedom is, among other things, ability to choose without which it would be unjust to hold one accountable for one’s actions. It is that power to act or not to act, that is, the power of activity and passivity; and so to perform deliberate action on one’s own responsibility and in view of one’s fulfilment as a human being. Freedom, of course, could be negative or positive, this is seen in Two Concepts of Liberty of Isaiah Berlin. 
2.0 THE NOTION OF NEGATIVE FREEDOM
In this sense of freedom comes the question “what is the area within which the subject, a person or a group of persons, should be left to do or be what he is able to be, without interference by other persons?.”[8]  Political liberty refers in this sense to that boundary within which one may act unobstructed by others. If one is prevented from doing what one can do by others, one is termed unfree and “if this boundary is contracted by other men beyond a minimum, one can be described as being coerced or enslaved.”[9]  Isaiah goes further to clarify the term ‘coercion’ and this he says is the deliberate interference of other human beings. So for him, negative freedom “presupposes an absence of constraint, one is free from certain constraints which could be imposed.”[10]  In this sense of freedom, one is free only when one is not being interfered with by others, the wider the area of non-interference from others, the wider the freedom.
Furthermore, Isaiah states that the classical English political philosophers disagreed on how wide a person’s area of freedom should be. The area could not be boundless or unlimited because if it were to be unlimited, all men could limitlessly interfere with all other men and this would lead to social chaos, men’s minimum needs would not be satisfied or the liberations of the weak would be suppressed by the strong. Thus, there must be a limitation to the area of men’s freedom. However, there should be an area of one’s personal freedom which is not to be interfered with or violated because if it is violated, one will find it impossible to develop those faculties which make it possible for one to pursue those ends which one holds sacred. So there must be a demarcation between private life and public authority, but where this line is to be drawn poses a problem because “no man’s activity is completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way.”[11]
More so, according to Isaiah, the trouble of the Western Liberals is that the minority who possess the freedom have achieved it by exploiting the majority who do not have the freedom. The Western liberals believe in the equality of liberty for if individual liberty is the ultimate end for human beings, then nobody should be deprived of it. However, Isaiah argues that liberty is not the only goal of man and so one could reject liberty in order to share in the sufferings of those whom liberty have been deprived. Freedom is sacrificed for the sake of justice and equality. The loss of freedom Isaiah says may be compensated for by a gain in justice or in happiness but the loss of freedom is still a loss.
More so, Isaiah argues that philosophers who have an optimistic view of the human nature believed that “social harmony and progress were compatible with preserving a large area of private life over which neither the state nor any other authority can be allowed to trespass.”[12]  Thomas Hobbes, according to Isaiah, also believed that a centralized control greater than that of the individual would create the perfect society. A common between him and the optimistic philosophers is that they agree that “some portion of human existence must remain independent of the sphere of social control.”[13]  Thus, different liberty concepts share that common feature; that a minimum area of personal liberty must be reserved. However Isaiah presents the problem of knowing what this minimum must be and this he says is a matter of infinite debate.
3.0 THE NOTION OF POSTIVE FREEDOM
Isaiah’s notion of positive freedom means the “wish of an individual to be his own master.”[14]  The wish of an individual to rule one’s life without the influence of external forces. “I wish to be an instrument of my own, not of other men’s, act of will; to be a subject moved by reasons, by conscious purposes which are my own, and not by causes which affect me from outside.”[15]  According to Isaiah, this at least shows that one is rational, distinct from other animals. These two concepts of freedom – positive and negative – historically developed into divergent directions until they both came into direct conflict with each other. Isaiah explains this with the momentum the metaphor of self-mastery acquired. Men, he says, have experienced liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, trying to acquire freedom and in the course of acquiring this freedom, they become conscious of a dominating self, a self-identified with reason; the feature of a higher nature, a real self. This real self is now contrasted with the irrational impulse, uncontrolled desires, a lower nature, a nature needing the discipline to be able to reach the full height of its real nature. Isaiah further argues that these two selves can presently be represented by a larger difference, the real self may refer to something larger than the individual and this would involve a tribe or a race or a state. This larger self is now seen as the true self and by imposing what Isaiah calls ‘its collective or organic single’ on its members; it achieves its own higher freedom and the higher freedom of its members.
More so, Isaiah points out that this can be used in justifying coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a higher level of freedom. He argues that it is sometimes justifiable to coerce men towards the same goal which they would want to attain but cannot because they are either ignorant or corrupt. Thus, this could be seen as coercing others for their own sake or interest and one could claim that he knows the need of the other better than they know it themselves.
4.0 SATRE CONCEPT OF HUMAN FREEDOM
Looking very closely to Sartre’s view of freedom, one will not doubt that the glaring and obvious evidence that it flows from his ontology.[16] He maintains his position of absolute freedom on the causal independence of consciousness. Consciousness is free from all forms of determinism because it is nothing. Sartre identifies consciousness with freedom, thus, for his, freedom is the being of consciousness.[17] Sartre devotes particular concern to emotion as a spontaneous activity of consciousness projected onto reality.[18] Consciousness is for-itself or for man. Sartre sees nothingness as the foundation of freedom. Man is his own nothing, a being through whom nothingness enters the world. Nothing comes into the world by the for-itself. Consciousness as nothing is man and if man and if consciousness is independent of causal laws, the for-itself is free from all determinations. The for-itself is free in the sense that it is the being of freedom. Freedom is coterminous with man or human reality. The very fact that man is conscious justifies his freedom.[19]
Sartre does not subscribe to the notion of applying freedom to any faculty of the soul. Freedom as the requisite condition for the annihilation of nothingness is not a property which belongs among others to the essence of the human being. Sartre somewhat prefers to assume the precedence of human freedom to the essence of man and in fact, it is this freedom that, makes man’s essence possible.[20]  What we call freedom is impossible to be distinguished from the being of human reality. 
In all his attempts to explain his notion of freedom, he unambiguously maintained that man as consciousness is free. Freedom is not a being; it is the being of man. It is impossible for man to separate his being from his freedom.[21]  He sees existence and freedom as a simultaneous occurrence in the being of man. Man does not exist and then start to be free. It is in the very nature of man to be free. It is in this sense that Sartre affirms that man is condemned to be free.[22]  It is not given to the being of man not to be free, that is to say, man is not free not to be free. He has chained to freedom. His very being, the ontological structure of for-itself is freedom. Freedom is identical with the human being.
 I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. This means that no limit to freedom can be found except freedom itself or if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free.[23]
There is a sense of freedom Sartre has that makes it somewhat difficult to understand his position. One finds it difficult to evaluate whether he sees freedom as something worth having or not. He goes further to say that man is free because it is nothing, that is, it is empty. Human reality is a lack. Human reality is free because it is perpetually wrenched away from itself and because it has been separated by a nothingness from what it is and from what it will be. To be precise, Sartre goes further to state that freedom is the nothingness which is made-to-be at the heart of man and which forces human reality to make itself instead of to be. For human reality, to be is to choose oneself.[24]
Furthermore, Sartre brings in another aspect of freedom, he identifies freedom with negation and nihilation. Freedom is conceived only as the nihilation of the given, and to that extent, it is as internal negation. It is the perpetual escape from contingent; it is the interiorization, the nihilation and the subjectification of contingency. If negation comes into the world through human reality, the latter must be a being who can realize a nihilating rupture with the world and with himself; and we establish that the possibility of this rupture is the same as freedom. Freedom can be nothing other than this nihilation.
We cannot talk about freedom without choice, they are intricately related. Freedom has to do with the ability to exercise one’s free will at choosing. But Sartre opines that this freedom is not the freedom of not choosing. Not to choose is, in fact, to choose not to be. In other words, freedom is man’s perpetual companion, not because he chose it but because there is not alternative. It will seem perturbing to wonder what man did to merit such existential condemnation; whatever answer he turns up will result only from free-thinking process about freely defined choices.[25] 
Sartre does not agree with the idea that motives are the cause of actions. Bv the mere fact that man is aware of the motives which solicit his/her action, these motives are already transcendent objects for his/her consciousness, they are outside. Hence, man tries not to cling to them. Man escapes from them by his/her very existence. Like motives and ends, wills and passions are not given states of mind but are constituted like the pour-soi (for-itself) itself by separation from what is and projection towards what does not yet exist.[26]  Sartre refutes any attribution of essence to freedom, for him, freedom is not subject to any logical necessity for in it existence precedes essence. It is in the very nature of freedom to present or rather make itself an act and we ordinarily attain it across the act which it organizes with the causes, motives, and ends which the act implies.[27] 
However, freedom should not be taken as something capricious or arbitrary since Sartre’s position about freedom being the being of man and limitless seems to suggest that. For according to Sartre, freedom is not a pure, capricious, unlawful gratuitous and incomprehensible contingency. He asserts thus; To be sure, each one of my acts, even the most trivial, is entirely free in the sense which we have just defined, but this does not mean that my act can be anything whatsoever or even that it is unforeseeable.  To be free does not mean to obtain what one has wished, but rather to determine oneself to wish.[28]
5.0 CRITICISMS OF SARTRE’S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Sartre saw freedom as that which constitute the very structure of the for-itself. And he goes on to posit that this freedom is absolute, consisting of no qualification whatsoever – “I am condemned to be free”. This simply means that no freedom to my freedom is to found except freedom itself, or to put it in another way, that we are not free to cease being free. Man cannot be free at one time and another slave, he is either wholly free or he is not free at all.[29]
Although he allowed that each human being exists and acts in a definite human situation and that the exercise of freedom could be influenced by environmental, physiological and psychological factors among others he still averred that limitation on human freedom are such only because the individual, in his/her freedom, confers on them this significance.
One crucial question we can pose is this – if I am condemned to be free, am I then free at all? Am I truly free if it is the case that I cannot but to be free? Again, if I am not free no to be free, if I am not free to cease being free, can I still be said to be absolute, wholly, infinitely free? Does this not establish that there is, at least, one project at which my freedom fails miserably? Furthermore, given the fact that man is a finite being,[30] does it not suggest a contradiction to posit and affirm that he possess an attribute infinitely? One indubitable fact is that we don’t just possess frailties and weaknesses in us, there are limits to what we can become. One’s hereditary, culture, family background, culture, the opportunities available to him constitute real limits to his growth.
Marcel calls Sartre’s exaltation of man and his freedom in the face of a meaningless universe, a technique of vilification, a technique which results in the systematic vilification of man. . to explicate further on this apparent paradox, he shows how the Fascist dictatorship similarly exalted the masses, offering them a ceaseless and cheap adulation. “Yet what contempt did not this adulation conceal, and to what abject depth did they not reduce their citizens.”[31]
In Marcel’s understanding, to vilify a thing is to take away its value, its price. This can be done to a merchandise by flooding the market with it. This is what he considers Sartre to be doing to human freedom. He debases it by putting it on every stores and kiosk. If we are really condemned to be free, then freedom must be easy. And if this freedom were easy, everything would surely come to grief at once. But if Sartre should protest against the suggestion that, in his philosophy, freedom is easy, then he must have to recant the statement “we are condemned to be free for that is what we can understand from the statement.
Mounier admits the idea that freedom is the life and source of personal being, and that an action is less than human unless it transfigures the most obstinate data by the magic of its spontaneity, he also averred that “human freedom is the person, moreover of this person, thus and thus constituted, situated in the world and in the presence of definite values.”[32]  Following his argument, this simply means that freedom is conditioned and delimited by the common laws of our concrete situation. To be free, then, is to accept this fact and to base oneself upon it. Not everything is possible and even if it seems so, not at any time. He sees a lot of grave consequences in Sartre’s position. A freedom that gushes out as absolute reality that is presented as a necessity is a blind force of nature, a naked power.
Another philosopher that critiques Sartre’s notion of absolute freedom is Merleau-Ponty. His critique surges from the fact that Sartre ignores the effect of situation on freedom. According to him, “the idea of situation rules out absolute freedom at the source of our commitments, and equal indeed, at their terminus.”[33]  Freedom is something that has to do with the meeting of the inner and outer of consciousness and the world. An absolute freedom cannot be embodied in any form of existence. At best, we can only entertain it at the mental state.



6.0 CONCLUSION
The struggle and intellectual excursions to understand and to decipher the code for human freedom are one that has posed untenable and perplexing to man. Sartre is one of the intellectuals who were very well influenced by their immediate environmental situations. He lived and experienced the two most devastating wars in human history- the World War I & II. He did not just wake up and start writing from nowhere, he was actually writing in the context of his time. And as an existentialist, he felt he was entrusted with the responsibility to express and emancipate humanity from the fetters of self-pity and mediocrity. There is nothing that will stop us from being free and it is not just being temporarily free but an infinite freedom. This suggests that extent of his crave for freedom which makes him see freedom as a sort of condemnation of man.
This essay has tried to explicate in a subtle manner the very notion of Sartre’s idea of freedom. But before that, we make a conceptual clarification of what freedom actually and basing our research on some authority we dissected the two notions of freedom- negative freedom and positive freedom. This thus led us naturally to Sartre’ notion of freedom and as a consequence, we delved into some criticisms levelled against his notion of absolute freedom. We do not, therefore, assume or suggest in any way that this essay is exhausted rather it is meant to spur further research to enrich and facilitate research. 





Bibliography

Anderson, Thomas C. Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity. Chicago: Open Court, 1993.

Berlin, Isaiah. “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton. London: Routledge Publishers, 2003.

Berman, Art. From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: The Reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Illinois: Illini Books Edition, 1988.

Hudson, Deal Wyatt & Mancini, Matthew eds. Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend. Macon: Merger University Press, 1987.

Irele, Dipo. Introduction to Political Philosophy. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1998.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (lecture given in 1946). Online (URL) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm. Accessed: 30-05-2016. 

McMahon, Joseph H. Human Being in The World of Jean-Paul Sartre. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, Transl. C. Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.

Mondin, Battista. Philosophical Anthropology: Man: an Impossible Project? India: Theological Publications, 1985.

Mournier E. Personalism, transl. P. Mairet. London : Routledge & Regan Paul, 1952.
Over, Raymond Van. The Psychology of Freedom. California: Fawcett Publications, 1974.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness, Hazel Estella Barnes, transl. New York: Washington Square Press, 1984.

Sze, Jennifer Ang Mei. Sartre and the Moral Limits of War and Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa Ed., Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretation-in-Existence; The I and the Other in their Creative Spacing of the Societal Circuits of Life: Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition, Book 3. Netherlands: Springer, 1998.

Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A Text with Readings 13th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014.

Zuidema, Sytse Ulbe. Sartre: International library of philosophy and theology
Modern Thinkers series. Michigan: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1978.




[1] Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (lecture given in 1946). Online (URL) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm. Accessed: 30-05-2016.  

[2] Cf. Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology: Man: an Impossible Project? (India: Theological Publications, 1985), p. 102.

[3] Cf. Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings 13th ed. (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014), p. 206.


[4] Cf. Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology (Bangalore: Theological Publication, 1991), pp. 102-103.
[5] Cf. Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology, p. 166.
[6] Cf. Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology, p. 114.
[7] Cf. Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology, p. 114.
[8] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 181.
[9] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts Of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, p. 181.
[10] Dipo Irele, Introduction to Political Philosophy (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1998), p. 120.
[11] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 182
[12] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts Of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 184
[13] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 184
[14] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 187
[15] Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” In Philosophy: Basic Reading, edited by Nigel Warburton (London: Routledge Publishers, 2003), p. 187
[16] The study of the structures of being of the existent taken as a totality.
[17] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness Hazel Estella Barnes, transl. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984) p, 78
[18] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothuingness, Transl. by Hazel E. Barnes, p. 21
[19] Cf. Deal Wyatt Hudson & Matthew Mancini eds. Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend (Macon: Merger University Press, 1987), p. 302.
[20] Cf. Art Berman, From the New Criticism to Deconstruction: The Reception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (Illinois: Illini Books Edition, 1988), p. 71
[21] Cf. Sytse Ulbe Zuidema, Sartre: International library of philosophy and theology
Modern thinkers series (Michigan: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1978), p. 10

[22] Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, Stephen Priest ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 32.
[23] Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, Stephen Priest ed., p. 184.

[24] Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka Ed., Ontopoietic Expansion in Human Self-Interpretation-in-Existence; The I and the Other in their Creative Spacing of the Societal Circuits of Life: Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition, Book 3 (Netherlands: Springer, 1998), p. 134
[25] [25] Cf. Joseph H. McMahon, Human Being in The World of Jean-Paul Sartre (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 109.
[26] Cf. Joseph H. McMahon, Human Being in The World of Jean-Paul Sartre (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. pp. 128-129.
[27] Cf. Raymond Van Over The Psychology of Freedom (California: Fawcett Publications, 1974), p. 318.
[28] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothuingness, Transl. by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 584.
[30] Sartre himself asserts that finitude is the ontological structure of the for-itself
[31] G. Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism, p. 86.

[32] E. Mournier, Personalism, transl. P. Mairet (London : Routledge & Regan Paul, 1952), p. 58
[33] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Transl. C. Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 454.

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