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Philosophical Haiku

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

by Terence Green

Condemned to freedom
Mere being and nothingness
I emerge from choice

At the heart of Sartre’s existentialism is the seemingly paradoxical belief that humanity’s freedom is a burden.

When we make something – a clock, an engine, a butter knife – we begin with an idea of what that thing will do, so that the purpose of that thing is, as it were, built into it. In other words, we start out with the idea of its purpose before we even begin to make it. But human beings are not like that.

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