In the philosophy of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, there is a big and important intersection between freedom and creativity. This time, I want to talk about this intersection and what it might mean for our own personal projects of self-creation.
The first thing to note is that, according to Sartre, we are radically free.
We are so free that when we believe that we are not free, we are choosing to believe that we are not free. Since we are choosing, that means that we are exercising our freedom. And Sartre says that, unfortunately, this is how most people use their freedom - by trying to renounce it. However, choosing to pretend that we are not free doesn’t get us out of our condition of radical freedom.
From understanding how radical our freedom is according to Sartre, so much so that it is fitting to say that we are "condemned to be free," you get the idea that our freedom is directionless. Anything that we would regard as a kind of direction that our life is taking, we have to choose to regard as a direction. If we have any sense that there is some kind of guidance leading us in making our choices, we have to choose to regard it as guidance.
If this is the case, it is no wonder that for most people this idea of freedom invokes fear, or better yet, in Sartre’s words, nausea.
If we are so radically free, how are you supposed to make any kind of choice? How are you supposed to make meaningful choices if there is no direction or guidance in your life, unless those that you choose to see as such?
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