"Man is born free but everywhere, he is in chains" [1]. This statement notwithstanding, philosophers down the ages have engaged in hair-splitting discourses on freedom. These have resulted in presenting different significance of freedom- freedom from and freedom to. With this twist, the issue of freedom and responsibility tasks philosophers. Despite this, deep down man's heart, he experiences an air of freedom; freedom to make decisions, deliberate on what to do at certain situations and to come up with his own conclusions at what to do and what to believe.  Hegel expresses this when he says that "man feels a sense of self- contained existence, however, this is freedom exactly" [2], existence that is free and unrestrained, a freedom that condemns one to be free. 

Nevertheless, Sartre came to salvage man from the pit of determinism which has almost enslaved human freedom. This he did by positing the idea of the absoluteness, limitlessness and unbounded nature of human freedom. Of course, this revives the fallen hope of humanity, which has been enslaved by the social forces and technological development of his time. This position however, raises some existential problems namely: To what extent can one talk of absolute freedom amidst all other obvious facticities and human limitations in the world? Considering the selfish nature of man, is man able to make objective choices and take responsibility for whatever comes out of it? In the face of political crisis and moral decadence, how can man use his freedom to overcome the hardships while still maintaining the required moral standards?         

Freedom as a Means of Self-Determination

The theory of self-determination tries to defend causation and at the same time to deny determinism. Causation is based on the principle of determinism in the sense that man’s action does not occur by chance or coincidence. Man, as a rational and conscious agent, is the cause of his action. This means that he determines his actions. He chooses what actions to perform in other to arrive at the desired goal. If a person’s action for instance is totally uncaused, then it is not within the control of the agent; thus, it cannot be ascribed to him. At the same time, if determinism, in the sense of the presence and the future being already fixed by the past, is true, every action is rendered ultimately unavoidable. The theory of self-determination holds that men are the sources or causes of their own actions. The human person is therefore responsible for his/her actions. Human act – is the product of a free agent. Other bodily motions such as seeing, hearing, breathing, sneezing are caused by something other than the agents themselves. As such, they are not human acts of man. The agent is responsible for his action because, they are free acts. Man’s freedom in the realization of authentic existence is primarily absolute and unconditional. In fact, life is worthless without freedom. It is actually and totally, in freedom that man claims   his authentic     existence.    Sartre maintains that, “without facticity, freedom would not exist, and without freedom, facticity would not be discovered and would have no meaning” [3]. Freedom is absolutely of man and is the only conditio sine qua non for authentic human existence. 

Lawhead further states that “our freedom becomes very clear in the ways we respond to our facticities” [4]. That I was born a Nigerian, do I see it as a nationalistic humiliation? Or do I feel guilty over my county’s backwardness economically when compared to the rest of the world. Should I renounce my citizenship or even become a traitor, or should I become a flag-waving patriot? These are choice I have to make but it is amidst this overwhelming freedom that I assert and determine my authentic existence in the world. So, Sartre says, “there is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom” [3].

Thus, you exist when you manifest the potentials of being assimilated in the beingness of your being by choosing and making your decisions independently of the external factors that surround you.

Responsibility within the Society

Responsibility in this discourse implies the consciousness of man, that is, man being the author of his actions. Responsibility can also be said to mean accountability. It manifests a person’s moral accountability for one’s actions. This means that he should hold himself accountable and be ever ready to accept the blame or praise of his actions. Since man as being-for-itself is the author and master of his actions, he is therefore responsible for those actions which he is the author and master of. Ekwutosi buttressing this point asserts thus:

Responsibility is a necessary consequence of human freedom and immutability based on it. The moral person as the decisive cause of his/her conscience before the moral judgment of others etc. this is to say that one must accept the inevitable consequences of one’s actions. The dignity of the human person is clearly revealed in one’s personal responsibility [5].

In accordance with the above statement, Jean Paul Sartre sees responsibility as “consciousness of being, the incontestable author of an event or of an object" [3]. Consequently, the mere fact that man is free implies his consciousness. This consciousness therefore makes him absolutely responsible for whatever he does. This can also be seen in the words of Sartre when he says that: “Man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being" [3]. It is on this note that man begins to see freedom as a burden. He is free yet he is not free not to be free. He is responsible both for his actions and others’ actions. This is because his actions might be a springboard to the actions of others. 

Invariably, Sartre tries to point out that since freedom is a being that is inherent in us, we cannot deny or escape from its consequences. This can be succinctly deduced from the assertions below.

What happens to me happens through me, and I can neither affect myself with it nor revolt against it nor resign myself to it. Moreover, everything which happens to me is mine. By this, we must understand first of all that I am always equal to what happens to me qua man, for what happens to a man through other men and through himself can be of only human [3].  

He also projected a case study using the experience of war. If one goes into a community war, he can always decline from such an activity through suicide or dissertation. But due to the fact that he has freely chosen to go for the war, he is obliged to bear the consequences since he deserves it. “If I am mobilized in a war, this war is my war; it is in my image and I deserve it. I deserve it first because I could always get out of it by suicide or by dissertation; for lack of getting out of it, I have chosen it"[3].

Additionally, Sartre also stressed on our responsibility for others’ actions. He seems to borrow the idea of Kant’s categorical imperative when he advised us to act in a way that all will wish to imitate. This shows the impact of our actions on the choices of others. It implicitly entails that we are also responsible for the choices of others if we don’t make well reflected and conscious choices. Thus, we are not only accountable for our actions but also for the actions of others.

The above understanding implies that man carries the whole lot of the world's weight on his shoulders. Thus:

He is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being … since he is also the one who makes himself be, then whatever may be the situation in which he finds himself, the for-itself must wholly assume this situation with its peculiar coefficient of adversity, even though it be insupportable for the very worst disadvantages or the worst threats which can endanger my person have meaning only in and through my project …. It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are [3].

Meanwhile, man is not only responsible to himself. This responsibility extends to others, so that in the end, it becomes universal responsibility. Understanding Sartre well, there is a graduation process; from individual responsibility to universal responsibility [6]. It is good to note, however, that my universal responsibility does not imply that I am responsible for what one idiot does out there. It simply means that in my actions I involve humanity in one way or the other. 

Let us say one or two more words about universal responsibility. By joining a football team, I represent the image of the entire humanity in doing so, while recommending joining football team to everybody. Hence, in whatever I do, I am both responsible to myself and to others, because we are saying that others in my situation should do the same thing. This view is also what Kant postulates in his principle of universalizability. The principle of universalizability would ask such question as, “How will the world be if the maxim of your action becomes a universal rule such that everybody in your shoes performs the same act?” Understood as such, “our responsibility is thus greater than we had supposed”. Let us note carefully that this absolute responsibility we are talking about is not mere resignation. “It is simply the logical requirement of the consequences of our freedom… moreover everything which happens to me is mine" [3].

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION 

While journeying with Sartre, one will Invariably become conscious of the fact that there are certain things one cannot change and so should not blame oneself for. Those things he calls facticity. Sartre made us understand that even though there are facticities in the life of man, yet man still has the ability to change his/ her attitude towards these facticities rather than slothfully blaming them. 

His emphasis on the choices of man cannot be neglected. Man as a conscious being is always bound by his freedom to make choices or decisions. Man being condemned to freedom invariably implies that he cannot escape making choices. This is beneficial to us in the sense that it makes us understand the importance of authentic living. This also goes hand in hand with taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Accordingly, authenticity implies that not only that man makes choices; he should also take responsibility for his act. Failure to do so leads him into the situation Sartre refers to as bad faith. Bad faith in this context can take many forms namely: belief in determinism, belief in human nature, passive conformity to social molds, and postponement of decision or avoidance of decision.

Sartre’s argument is convincing and beneficial in aspects like self-determination of man. This means that man determines his actions. He chooses what actions to perform in order to arrive at the desired goal. This also gives room for self-actualization. Man realizes his innate potentialities and capabilities as he makes effort to choose what actions to perform.  It is also valuable in the sense that it gives room for self-transcendence. Man for him is always a being in potentiality, a being in becoming and not a finished product. Man’s freedom elevates him above the past, the environment, the rules of language and the dialectics of history. Hence, this makes man to transcend all these and always aim for the possibilities of the future. 

It is noteworthy of the fact that Sartre recognizes the existence of other beings as seen in his being-for-others. His conception of being-for-others entails that man’s action does not only affect him but also affect the actions of other beings.  He seems to borrow the idea of Kant’s categorical imperative when he advised us to act in a way that all will wish to imitate. This shows the impact of our actions on the choices of others. It implicitly entails that we are also responsible for the choices of others if we don’t make well reflected and conscious choices. This is beneficial to us in the sense that as we make conscious effort to choose for others, we realize our innate potentialities.

From a critical standpoint, Sartre made it clear that man has a limitless freedom. He asserts that man is condemned to be free. In other words, that freedom should not be seen as one of the qualities or characteristics of man but should rather be seen as a being in itself. He is invariably trying to point out that freedom is inherent in man and that man cannot escape freedom. It is in this sense that we can say that the nature of man is to be free. However, from a logical point of view, Sartre’s argument disproves itself. This is because the mere fact that man is condemned to be free implies that he is determined. That is, that man cannot decide not to make choice because he is always compelled by his freedom to make choices. Man is therefore not free from a logical sense if he is compelled by his nature of freedom to continue making choices.

However, it seems Sartre failed to recognize that the very fact of man being in the world presupposes factors (laws) that are unavoidably necessary to keep him in the world. In other words, there are certain prohibitions, by way of laws for human coexistence which man has to align himself with in order to fully realize himself, otherwise he would be heading straight to doom’s land. What this simply implies is that man is not completely free to create himself as Sartre would claim. Hence, “one’s freedom is protected by the law and should be used only within the rule of law; otherwise, it can present a real danger both to the individuals, the society and to the values that society is supposed to protect" [5]. Of course, freedom as the highest value is also protected by the society.

1. Rousseau, J.J. "Treatise on social contract." Great Books of the Western World, edited by R. Hutchins and M.J. Adler, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1952.

2. Hegel, G.W.F. The philosophy of history, translated by J. Sibree, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 46, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1982.

3. Sartre, J.P. Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology, translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Metheum & Co. Ltd., 1989.

4. Lawhead, W.F. The voyage of discovery: A historical introduction to philosophy, 2nd ed., Wadsworth Thomas Learning Group, 2002.

5. Ekwutosi, C.M. Basic issues in ethics. Rex Charles & Patrick Ltd., 2006.

6. Zunjic, B. "Jean Paul Sartre: The humanism of existentialism II (1946)." Lecture on Humanism, 2020, http://www.uri.edu/personal/szunjic/philos/human2.html. Accessed 11 Apr. 2020.