Jean Paul Sartre: "Man is Sentenced to be Free."
Man is sentenced to be free.
As a normal person one would agree with the Renaissance humanists and ask: "Why 'sentenced'? That's not a punishment to be free!" A philosopher might say: "Being free is what makes us human". To address the second point first, Sartre agrees that our freedom makes us human, or maybe our being human makes us free. Yet being free makes a lot of things a lot more difficult, too. We have to make decisions. We are responsible for our actions.
Let's first have a look at how Sartre got this idea that we are sentenced to be free, and then how this "solves" the question for the sense of life. Afterwards we will have a look at a religious counter-question, and finally at a scientific counter-question.
Existentialism
Sartre was an existentialist. He considered existentialism to be humanism. His humanism sees the situation of mankind in a much more gloomy light than the humanism we know from the Renaissance.
Existence is not the same as simply "being there". Also inanimate objects, plants, and animals are there or exist in the common meaning of the word, but they are spared the question of what it means to be. Humans are aware that they are, that they exist. They are the only conscious beings. (This consciousness can, however, cause fear and despair, as well as a feeling of absurdity, as Sartre points out.)
That we are comes before what we are. In Sartre's opinion Man creates himself, i.e. creates his own way of being or his own nature. He can not draw from an eternal, previously existing "human nature". There is no such "human nature". So we also cannot blame it for our faults. (That is what Sartre thinks. More about this in the scientific counter-question.) We are responsible for ourselves.
We did not create ourselves (in the sense of being the reason for our existence; when Sartre says Man creates himself he means Man has to create his own nature). We did not ask to be created as free beings. So we are "sentenced" to be free.
More about the negative aspects about having choices are listed in the paragraph about the religious counter-question.
What is the sense of life?
For Sartre the question for the sense of life does not make sense. At least not in such a general way. However, he was not a nihilist.
We know already that he thinks that we create ourselves, because there is not an in-born nature in Man. Neither is there an in-born sense in life. We have to create the sense for ourselves. We have to give sense to our lives.
Sartre strongly believes in individualism and denies Hegel's historism (world spirit). Sartre says that not only every new generation, but even every new individual has to answer the question for the sense of life by himself for himself.
The counter-questions
As I said, there are two counter-questions, or actually one which is looked upon under different aspects. This question is not if it is good or bad to be free, the question is:
Are we free?
The first aspect is the religious one. If there is an almighty creature, then we probably would not be free. If he has planned and decided on every one of our actions, then we are not responsible for them, because we cannot choose or decide on our own. This has advantages and disadvantages. As probably no one will deny the advantages of being free, I will only point out the advantages of not having to make any decisions in greater detail:
1. We would not be responsible. We could not be blamed. If we did something wrong, it was not our fault.
2. We would not have to go through all the trouble of decision-making. A benevolent supreme being could lead us the right way, so we would not make any mistakes. A malevolent supreme being could be blamed for anything negative in our lives.
3. In the case of a benevolent supreme being, all other people and any natural catastrophies would be controlled by it, too, therefore the supreme being could protect us.
The points about the benevolent supreme being (like e.g. the Christian God) already show contradictions: obviously we do make mistakes, and obviously there are evil people and bad events. So the idea of the benevolent supreme being does not seem to work out.
In any case of a supreme being, we would not be individuals anymore, in my opinion.
Also, not having any choices would make us not live our own lives. We would not live. We would maybe even not exist, in the sense existentialists like Sartre use the word (consciousness).
Most religions also contradict themselves on this point. There are rules in almost any one of them, e.g. the ten commandments. What would be the sense of commandments if Man does not have a free will anyway? God, or whatever supreme or almighty or devine being, could just make Man do what is good. Someone might raise the question: What is 'good'? However, that does not matter. Let's assume a supreme being would know what is good. The point is: it would not need commandments if it is almighty.
Some religions claim that God lets us have a free will. However, this still does not explain completely why he allows bad things to happen. Most religions also found answers to the question about Evil, but none of them sound convincing to me. I do not want to make this a religious argument, so I will just close here.
All these contradictions make me believe that there is not a supreme being. I do not know how Sartre backed this up, but he was an atheist, too.
So then let's have a look at a scientific counterquestion. This one also is:
Are we free?
The principle of cause and effect is widely accepted today as an explanation for any phenomenon in nature, as long as regarded from a scientific view point. There is no doubt that if we have two identical situations (setups, causes) we will get two identical results. This had to be modified for real life (e.g. scientific research) to "similar causes will have similar results", because we can never get exactly the same setups. There simply are too many factors. Usually it does not make much of a difference, but Chaos Theory has shown that similar setups might cause completely different results. A small change somewhere on earth - or in the universe - could have a big impact somewhere else (the play of thoughts with a butterfly in South America causing a hurrican in North America is a famous example).
But let's get back to the beginning: if we could get the same setups, we would have the same results, right? (That, in reality, we are not able to achieve the same setup again or to calculate the results, because we are missing too much data, does not matter.) This means from a given status (a state at a point of time with all facts of the universe considered) there is only one possible result. And from that new state there is again only one possible result. That means that everything is determined!
Hold on, one will say here. We still have our free will!
Do we really? What are our decisions, feelings, desires, thoughts, and actions based on?
On our previous experiences, which are stored in our brain, and also at least partially on our genes. All of this has previously been determined in the universal game. So also we are determined.
So are we not responsible for our actions? Can we blame human nature, our genes, our environment, society, or the universe for what we do? Criminals will certainly try to make us think that frequently, and sometimes the judge agrees to lower the sentence because the criminal was drunk or had a bad childhood experience, or because of other circumstances. Sometimes they are even acquitted. But should all criminals be acquitted, because it was really the universe's fault, because there life experience and also the crime were determined? This is the logical result. However, it is not agreeable with our current way of dealing with the problem of criminality, or with what we feel should be done with criminals. After thinking about this for many months I came to the conclusion that maybe it is also determined that we will feel angry about crimes, ignore the fact that the crimes were determined, and punish the criminals anyway.
This scientific determinism leads to almost the same questions, doubts, and awkward feelings as the religious idea of a supreme being. If we are determined, we are not leading autonomous lives. Our mind, consciousness, and free will are negated.
I would prefer to be able to say we are free. It is also more congruent with our empiric experience. However, I have not found a solution for this dilemma.