Existentialism is a philosophy which emphasizes people's freedom and therefore claims

that people are free to pursue their own meaning in life.

4. Existentialist thinkers emphasize the freedom of man.

Kierkegaard – freedom is that which enables man to pass form aesthetic state
to the ethical, and ultimately, to make the leap of faith, the highest act of man’s liberty.

*note:

Aesthetics, or esthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the

nature of art, beauty and taste, with the creation or appreciation of beauty,
with theories and conceptions of beauty or art, and with tastes for and
approaches to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight.

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves

systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong
conduct. The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of
value

if you take a leap of faith , you do something even though you are
not sure it is right

Heidegger – equates freedom with self-transcendence in time, being-ahead-of-

itself of dasein(being there) while having-been and making-present entities in his world.

*note

Heidegger termed this mode of self-awareness—awareness of the ultimate

nothingness of my practical identity—“freedom,”

Sartre- Sartrean freedom – it proceeds from his dictum that existence

precedes essence. Remains the most popular notion of freedom among existentialists.

*note

In philosophy, essence is the property or set of properties that make an entity or

substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it
loses its identity.

Man first exists and then gradually creates his own essence.
 Nothing determines human freedom from creating it owns essence except
freedom itself.

Merleau-Ponty – critizes the notion of Satre

- Freedom as situated freedom due to man’s body.

*note

While Sartre properly emphasized the subject's freedom, he

distorted the scope of this freedom by rendering it absolute.
The subject, argued Merleau-Ponty, always faced a
previously established situation, an environment and world
not of its own making. Its life, as intersubjectively open,
acquired a social atmosphere which it did not itself
constitute. Social roles pressed upon the individual as
plausible courses for his life to take.

Certain modes of behavior became habitual. Probably , this

world, these habits, a familiar comportment: probably these
would not change overnight. It was unlikely that an
individual would suddenly choose to be something radically
other than what he had already become.

Marcel – freedom is man’s ability to say “yes” to Being, to pass from the realm
of having to that of being, the realm of participation. One becomes free only if he
transcends himself and goes to others in love, participating in something greater than
himself.

*notes:

In other terms, one must live his life for it to be called freedom.
 5. Existentialist philosophers propagate authentic existence versus inauthentic
existence.

Inauthentic existence – is living under the impersonal (Heidegger), the crowd

mentality (Kierkegaard), bad faith (Sartre). He is indifferent, tranquilized, unable to
make personal decision of his own.

*note

He is a common people who cannot assert himself to do what he wants in life and
cannot exclude himself to other people in terms of his realizations in life.

Authentic existence – personal and the authentic man is one who freely
commits himself to the realization of a project, an idea, a truth and a value. He is one
who does not hide himself in the anonymity of the crowd but signs himself to what he
manifests.

*note

He/she does not include himself as one of the crowd. He is doing something that
can make a difference, either to himself or his surroundings.