Postwar Beauvoir reconceived freedom as porous and constrained by situation.

Evidence

Henri’s “will,” the freedom that Beauvoir had previously called liberté, is not impervious to its situation. On the contrary, it is thoroughly porous. Th us, the actions of others do not touch only the “outside” (les dehors) of our freedom— rather, they may radically alter it. Th rough the person of Henri, Beauvoir “evokes” the realizations— emotional, intellectual, political— that she and Sartre made in the postwar period: freedom is not an “infi nite” liberté, but rather a matter of acting within multiple constraints and as who one has already become. Our judgments, it follows, are not uniquely our own. Likewise, our responsibility for what we decide is not absolutely ours alone. For we come to make our choices suff used by our situation, enmeshed within and weighted by la force des choses. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 499

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures the definitional shift in Beauvoir’s concept of liberté from infinite ontological freedom to situated, constrained agency.
• XREF: Connects to the broader continental debate over situated freedom (Heidegger’s Geworfenheit, Merleau-Ponty’s incarnation). — connects to: Freedom lost its philosophical urgency once the 1960s liberation movements won. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 96; Beauvoir’s memory of the contract scene encodes entrapment imagery contradicting its stated freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 381; Beauvoir’s Henri Perron exists as a freedom suffused by political situation. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 485 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #expands (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164
• Beauvoir’s philosophy centers on how constraint and freedom shape our becoming #expands (0.88) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1027
• Beauvoir’s situated account of freedom moved Sartre beyond his earlier absolutism #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 46
• Freedom depends on overcoming negativity and constraint #complicates (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 147
• Freedom requires a resisting, brute world rather than being limited by it #corroborates (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1153