Jean-Paul Sartre vs John Locke on Freedom
Jean-Paul Sartre and John Locke on freedom, side by side — 16 passages against 5, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Jean-Paul Sartre and John Locke both have a great deal to say about freedom — 16 passages and 5 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.
Jean-Paul Sartre on freedom
French existentialist novelist and philosopher. Held that existence precedes essence — we are condemned to be free, and to bear the weight of our choices.
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”
“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”
“Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”
“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”
“I hate victims who respect their executioners.”
“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”
“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
“To eat is to appropriate by destruction.”
“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”
“Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.”
“Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.”
“Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.”
“Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.”
“I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.”
John Locke on freedom
English empiricist and political theorist. Argued the mind begins as a blank slate and that legitimate government rests on consent.
“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”
“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.”
“Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”
“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”
“The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.”
Where they part
France, 1905–1980 and England, 1632–1704 are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Jean-Paul Sartre treats freedom as something to be man is condemned to be free;… — a matter of practice. John Locke approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.