An Analysis On Statre's Concept Of "Freedom" In His Literary Works

Jean Paul Satre (1905-1980), a famous French contemporary philosopher, artist, critic and social activist. As one of the greatest French thinker of the 20th century Jean-Paul-Satre is famous for his existentialism and his literary works. Not only made him earn reputation, Satre's literary works also made way for his philosophy's dissemination.His existential philosophy is well known in the west because of the person's freedom is a core of Statre's philosophy . Although his theory about freedom, in his later stage of academic development, has been rectified for some times, his philosophical doctrine is always based on the freedom of human being. The essence of Satre's is the person's freedom, which is a reason why his theory is popular and has effected a whole generation .Satre's freedom can be divided into two stages if the second world war as the boundary.In his early stage, Jean Paul Sartre's philosophy of freedom is based on two basic concepts:Being-in-itself and being-for-itself. He deems that"Being ahead of essence"and"Man is free"; liberty is Man's being and Man is absolutely free choosing owner essence. Seen from his literary work Nausea, the freedom, in this stage, is expressed as the lonely man's freedom. When facing with the absurd and casual world, the lonely man has the feeling of nausea, and then awake before acquiring freedom. In his opinion, freedom only works when choosing and the human beings are absolute free if they are choosing the nature of themselves. On this occasion, such kind of choosing, which has no relationship with success, is unconditional, inconvenient and slow. This kind of choosing freedom only exists in the consciousness.The outbreak of the Second World War pushes Sartre to walk out of the group of lonely mans. He begins to consider the relationship between the freedom and reality. Consciously, he realizes that the freedom in the consciousness is not real, and it needs to be intervened, chose, and implemented if it wants to be fulfilled in certain condition, especially when the others set limit to the freedom. At the same time, the enjoyment of this freedom is not arbitrary but to accept the"moral"terms——Bound by the responsibility.Although freedom is limited by the condition, the others as well as responsibility, the human being can still intervene, choose, and jump over these limites so as to maximize the freedom. In this way, the "lonely man" could take part in community and society, and finally walk up the road of freedom during the intervention and action.The core of Sartre's free philosophy is action, selection and responsibility, and the complete theoretical system between them. This system is reasonable, advanced and active, but it has its limits.