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Cont Philos Rev (2011) 44:6579
DOI 10.1007/s11007-011-9168-7
Somogy Varga
Published online: 8 February 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract On the one hand, it is commonly agreed that we make choices in which we are guided by a core of personal commitments, wishes, feelings, etc. that we take to express who we are. On the other, it is commonly agreed that some of these existential choices constitute who we are. When confronting these two matters, the question of agency inevitably arises: Whether and in what sense can we choose ourselves? The paper will argue for a new perspective on existential choice.
Keywords Existential choice Reasons Resoluteness Jean-Paul Sartre
Martin Heidegger Merleau-Ponty
1 Introduction
In a sense, human beings are condemned to choice. One might attempt to consciously freeze and stubbornly refuse to make choices, but even this strategy would count as something that one has chosen to undertake. There is no easy way out. While some might view this condition as a constraint laid on us humans, many would agree that our freedom as human agents is intrinsically connected to this circumstance. What is more, we think of human agent not only as the sort of being that chooses, but also the sort of being that constitutes itself through choice. We take human beings to constitute an important part of who they are through the choices they undertake. In other words, we take ourselves to be self-constituting agents, authors of our lives. For some, this condition is simply the consequence of the lack of any pre-established human nature. Sartre notes that each man makes his essence
S. Varga (&)
Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, Albrechstr. 28, 49069 Osnabrueck, Germanye-mail: [email protected]
Existential choices: to what degree is who we are a matter of choice?
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as he lives, and necessarily so, since our existence precedes our essence.1 Sartre thus lays emphasis on self-constituting agency: Who we are, is to a large extent dened by our fundamental project, which at the end relies on a radical, existential choice that shapes our lives as a whole. In Existentialism is Humanism, he uses the example of the young man who stands before the decision between caring for his ailing mother and joining...