Freedom’s real question is the price of acting otherwise, not whether one could

Evidence

Common opinion does not hold that to be free means only to choose oneself. A choice is said to be free if it is such that it could have been other than what it is. I start out on a hike with friends. At the end of several hours of walking my fatigue increases and finally becomes very painful. At first I resist and then suddenly I let myself go, I give up, I throw my knapsack down on the side of the road and let myself fall down beside it. Someone will reproach me for my act and will mean thereby that I was free—that is, not only was my act not determined by any thing or person, but also I could have succeeded in resisting my fatigue longer, I could have done as my companions did and reached the resting place before relaxing. I shall defend myself by saying that I was too tired. Who is right? Or rather is the debate not based on incorrect premises? There is no doubt that I could have done otherwise, but that is not the problem. It ought to be formulated rather like this: could I have done otherwise without perceptibly modifying the organic totality of the projects which I am; or is the fact of resisting my fatigue such that instead of remaining a purely local and accidental modification of my behavior, it could be effected only by means of a radical transformation of my being-in-the-world—a transformation, moreover, which is possible? In other words: I could have done otherwise. Agreed. But at what price? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1101

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes ordinary ‘freedom as could-have-done-otherwise’ into Sartre’s deeper question: what total transformation of one’s projects would acting otherwise require.
• XREF: The ‘at what price’ reformulation of freedom reaches forward to Beauvoir’s idea that every choice costs and forecloses other possibilities. — connects to: Freedom is the small capacity to not fully reproduce one’s conditioning. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 635

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the small capacity to not fully reproduce one’s conditioning. #qualifies (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 635