The early Sartre claimed that you're ultimately responsible for everything you do. Part of me wants to agree with him and part of me doesn't. Here's why.
An example against this point brought up during class was poverty. How can one choose to be poor? Well, my question is how can one become wealthy? You get an education, you apply for jobs, you rise up the occupational ladder. You can't pay for an education? You work whatever job you can get until you have enough money for an education. You can choose to make the best of the situation and work your way out of it.
However, you can't choose whether or not you are born into a life of poverty. At such a young age, you can't really choose to get out of poverty. This certainly proves that there were some missing ends to Sartre's claim.
He did change his theory as he got older, and I completely agree that freedom is confined by "'facticity,' the facts about oneself and one's situation that constrain the ways in which one can express one's freedom" (Stevenson 195), such as socioeconomic factors and our innate needs.
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