Philosophical Libertarianism

Philosophical Libertarianism was advocated for by Jean-Paul Satre.

He said 'There is not determinism-man is free, man is freedom'.

He said that the reasons for our freedom were 2 things; no God and our self-consciousness.

As there is no God, we are not told what to do. We are not predestined. He said 'There is not God, so man must rely upon his own fallible will and moral insight. He cannot escape choosing'.

He said that the only moment where we are not free is because we were not given the chance to choose to be free. This is what he meant when he said 'man is not free to be free'.

Going back to the idea of self-consciousness, he said humanity is pour soi. This means being for itself unlike animals who are just en-soi or being in itself.

En soi beings are not conscious. They do not think but rather act on instinct. They are not aware of themselves whereas pour soi beings are.

Our self conscious allows us to think and consider possible results from our actions. He said that because we can look at possible futures, we have freewill.

He said that there is a gap between the person's self conscious and the physical world which is how we have freewill.

He used reverse psychology to prove why we have freedom. He said that the very fact that we try to deny our own freedom is proof of it.

He said that true freedom can bring emotional pain for a person so we try to avoid this. We deceive ourselves and ignore our freedom. Satre said that this was 'bad faith'.

Bad faith is when we try to pretend that we are not free to escape the potential pain we could experience from freedom. We try to justify why we are not using our freewill.

An example of bad faith was a cafe waiter. The waiter was behaving like he was trying to be a waiter. He is 'too waiter-esque'. His voice 'oozes with an eagerness to please, he carries food rigidly and ostentatiously.. etc'.

Satre said that he was just pretending to be a waiter. He could in fact escape this at any time.

He could give up being a waiter and leave. Satre said that the waiter was aware of this but just choose to ignore it, thus showing bad faith. He said that bad faith was paradoxical because when we deny our freewill, we are using our freewill to come to that conclusion. We can in fact choose everything about who we are and how we act.

Satre also said that freewill is a gift and a curse. It is a gift because we have the freedom to make of our lives what we like, but that means that we are held accountable for our actions. Therefore it is also a curse.