Realizing one’s radical freedom produces anxiety, not liberation

Evidence

Not surprisingly, this radical freedom makes people nervous. It is difficult enough to think of oneself as free at all, but Sartre goes further by saying that I am literally nothing beyond what I decide to be. To realise the extent of my freedom is to be plunged into what both Heidegger and Kierkegaard called ‘anxiety’ — Angst or, in French, angoisse. This is not a fear of anything in particular, but a pervasive unease about oneself and one’s existence. Sartre borrows Kierkegaard’s image of dizziness: if I look over a cliff and feel vertigo, it tends to take the form of the sickening sensation that I might, compulsively and inexplicably, throw myself off the edge. The more freedom of movement I have, the worse this anxiety becomes. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 501

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines existential anxiety (Angst/angoisse) as unease about one’s own freedom, with Kierkegaard’s vertigo image.
• SEED: There’s an essay angle in the paradox that greater freedom produces greater anxiety, a counterintuitive inversion of the commonsense view of freedom as unalloyed good.
• XREF: connects to: Anguish is freedom’s self-apprehension, opposed to the serious man’s faith in external values — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 253; Existentialist anxiety is the vertigo of realizing one’s own freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 61; Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things #corroborates (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Liberated middle classes found freedom anxiety-producing and sought to escape it #exemplifies (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2138
• The supposed intuition of freedom is a constructed evasion of anguish #corroborates (0.85)
• Wartime disorientation can dissolve into a feeling of self-sufficient freedom rather than fear #contradicts (0.80) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 423
• Fear of freedom leads people to prefer security over liberty #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77
• Fear of freedom masks itself as defense of the status quo #expands (0.78) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 78
• Freedom depends on overcoming negativity and constraint #contradicts (0.78) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 147
• Genuine freedom requires accepting permanent tension rather than seeking rest #expands (0.75)
• Freedom makes itself into affliction, so liberating freedom from suffering betrays freedom #corroborates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1007
• Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be #qualifies (0.74) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146
• Moral anxiety is intrinsic to existence, not imposed from outside #corroborates (0.72)