The psyche becomes a real situation that conditions free choices

Evidence

You might think you are guided by moral laws, he was saying to them, or that you act in certain ways because of your psychological make-up or past experiences, or because of what is happening around you. These factors can play a role, but the whole mixture merely adds up to the ‘situation’ out of which you must act. Even if the situation is unbearable — perhaps you are facing execution, or sitting in a Gestapo prison, or about to fall off a cliff — you are still free to decide what to make of it in mind and deed. Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 36 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

I am a psychological and historical structure. Along with existence, I received a way of existing, or a style. All of my actions and thoughts are related to this structure, and even a philosopher’s thought is merely a way of making explicit his hold upon the world, which is all he is. And yet, I am free, not in spite of or beneath these motivations, but rather by their means. For that meaningful life, that particular signification of nature and history that I am, does not restrict my access to the world; it is rather my means of communication with it. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 724 (#expands, via linked claim)

Thus we begin to catch a glimpse of the paradox of freedom: there is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom. Human-reality everywhere encounters resistance and obstacles which it has not created, but these resistances and obstacles have meaning only in and through the free choice which human-reality is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Judgment-relevant psychology and past experience only constitute a situation from which free choice proceeds — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 36; Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1164; Freedom operates through, not against, the psychological structure that constitutes us — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 724 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Judgment-relevant psychology and past experience only constitute a situation from which free choice proceeds #corroborates (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 36
• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164
• Freedom operates through, not against, the psychological structure that constitutes us #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 724