Existentialism: our judgements shape our personal feelings Essay

In Existentialism in humanism, Jean Paul Sartre believes that we experience anguish by facing how our judgments shapes our personal feelings and opinions. When we choose the path we decide for the whole mankind (2,4). We have a subjective choice, free choice. I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad (3,2). Since we choose our actions, if good or bad we are free. When you make a decision you are saying, this is how anyone should be behaving given a circumstance, because we are responsible for what we have done. Sartre believes that we are responsible for everything that we are. Obviously we cannot choose who our parents were, our place of birth, when we will die, and so on but Sartre does go so far as to say that we are responsible for how we feel, that we choose our emotions, and that to deny this is bad faith. Sartre goes past even this, In addition to the fact that we are in charge of everything that we are. We are responsible for everything that we are, when choosing any particular action I commit myself to. But choosing as  a legislator deciding for the whole mankind (3,2). An example would be if I choose to be married and to have children I am committed not only myself but also the humankind to be monogamy. So if something is right for one person, it must be right for everyone else. He labels this kind of responsibility as anguish. Like the feeling of responsibility experienced by a military leader whose decisions have penalties for the soldiers under his command. Or like Abraham whom God initiated to sacrifice his son, we are in a state of anguish performing actions, the conclusion of which we cannot discover, with a great weight of responsibility Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly (3,2).

In Free Will, Galen Strawson presents his Basic argument. The first one is that We are responsible for what we do only if we are responsible for what we are. Meaning that we are not responsible for our emotions because we are brought up that way. Second, We are responsible for what we are only if we did something in the past which made ourselves that way. Strawson refers to being responsible if we did something our selves that changed us. Third, We are only responsible for those actions if we were responsible for how we were when we made those actions. Finally the fourth,  First through third leads to a regress. Therefore, we are not responsible for what we do(5,6). Picture a really motivated person who thinks of winning a gold medal in the Olympic for iceskating. She never trained in her life or even thought about being an ice skater before this moment.