Beauvoir distinguishes inborn ontological freedom from willed freedom that facticity can eviscerate

Evidence

Although Beauvoir, like Sartre, views the ontological freedom of the foritself as something absolute that cannot be given to one or taken away from one by another, she makes a crucial distinction between this basic ontological freedom, which human beings are born with, and what she calls willed, or genuine freedom, which one must actively choose to possess. Moreover, and most importantly for this discussion, she claims that this willed freedom is not equally possible for all human beings because, unlike ontological freedom, it can be directly aff ected and even eviscerated by one’s actual experiences, that is, the facticity of one’s life. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 643

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise conceptual distinction between ontological and willed freedom, central to the Beauvoir-Sartre dispute over whether the material can constrain freedom.
• XREF: Directly relevant to my reading purpose tracking how Beauvoir revises Sartre’s absolute Cartesian freedom against facticity. — connects to: Freedom is not self-founded but thrown, creating its own facticity — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1156; Intentionality grounds existentialist freedom by dissolving any fixed inner nature — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 157; Innate qualities constrain but do not abolish freedom within a situation — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 717 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s ontological freedom position may not depart significantly from Sartre’s #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212