On Being-for-itself In Sartre’s Philosophy Of Freedom

The concept that the human being is destined to be free is the basicprinciple and starting point of Sartre’s philosophy of freedom. Obviously,Sartre connects freedom with human being closely in terms ofexistentialism. So being should not be ignored when discussing Sartre’sphilosophyoffreedom.To someextent, the being ofahuman is thesameas the freedom of a human. Therefore, in this article I shall try to elaborateon the nature of freedom in Sartre s philosophy, starting with beingwhich is the source of freedom. The first chapter points out the traits ofbeing-in-itself and being-for-itself, based on the relationship between them.Sartre argues that there is a close connection between being-in-itself andbeing-for-itself (they are two forms of being free), leading to the possibilityof conversion to each other. For human beings, being-in-itself has thepotential to convert to being-for-itself while being-for-itself has to considerbeing-in-itself as the premise. People who remain in the stage ofbeing-in-itself are just alienated, thus the human being has to convert toanother stage, namely being-for-itself so that it can be avoid beingalienated. The second chapter mainly focuses on the significance ofconsciousness which plays a crucial role in the transformation betweenbeing-in-itself and being-for-itself because of its full creativity andfreedom. Sartre develops a new concept of consciousness based on therational consciousness of Descartes and the phenomenological consciousness of Husserl. The third chapter talks about the relationshipbetween being-for-itself and freedom. The process of becomingbeing-for-itself actually is the freedom, while it is not a kind of fullfreedom but freedom with responsibility because human beings live inconditions that are not only restrained by situation but also affect situation.The last part of the article is about the significance of responsibility in thesense of ontology and ethic.