Sartre and Merleau-Ponty's Argument on Freedom

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Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s Argument on Freedom
Many philosophers have addressed the concept of freedom. Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty shared the defining project for the existential phenomenology and sought to define and interpret humanity CITATION Put82 \l 1033 (Putnam). Freedom determines every single human experience and influences how religious and political institutions are run. Two philosophers whose early work have an influence on freedom and existence in their early works. Jean-Paul Sartre's views asserted an absolute freedom for the conscious human being which Merleau-Ponty rejected. They both derived different outlooks on human beings in their early works. Merleau-Ponty's work in existentialism featured embodiment and ontology. In addition, he was a prominent critic of Sartre's works on ontology and played a part in the dissemination of ontology. The analysis below takes a look at their early works on freedom and existentialism.
Freedom is one of the most common themes examined by philosophers. Sartre was influenced by Hegel's works and wrote little on ethics and politics before 1945 (Heter, n.p). The concept of freedom and existence had been addressed by many philosophers and from different angles. Sartre's early works were based on existentialism when he was exploring the meaning of freedom. The works of Hegel and Marx in part influenced his ideas. Sartre claims that freedom is a fundamental value that makes all other values possible and is the source of all values. For Sartre, human beings are free because they always have a choice to choose. As a human, man is only free when he acknowledges that something is missing. He continues to say that the circumstances of being born are beyond the control of people. Where and to which family they are born into is beyond their control. However, when one becomes aware, they have the ability to make choices and are therefore free.
Therefore, every action of man becomes a commitment, and he, therefore, assert his freedom. People are responsible for all the elements of themselves. Every man's action becomes a commitment, and thus man is asserting his freedom. In his discussions In Being and Nothingness, Sartre introduces consciousness as being conscious of something. He views human consciousness as synonymous with freedom. Its non-coincidence marks consciousness as being for itself with itself as it always targets an object other than itself. His view is that a person's freedom entails the ability to free. That freedom is the ability to escape the present ontologically. In his arguments, he answers that human beings are fundamentally free as they are conscious CITATION Wil10 \l 1033 (Wilkerson). This idea implies that human beings are free in all situations.
There is no god to give humans a purpose, so the definition of self and humanity lies on the humans, and therefore, the society's hands. Sartre, in his early work, fully implied that the French were free at all times and that prisoners are free because they are conscious (Stanford University, n.p). He describes that a prisoner, though locked up, has a series of choices of how he will react to his situation and therefore free because he has control of his reaction to his imprisonment. Similarly, a barrier is only a barrier if it prevents an individual from getting to the other side. When people are making decisions, they are not just creating themselves, and they are deciding what a human being should be. Since humans cannot know the outcome of their choices or understand a world beyond their capacity but must make a decision. Freedom is limitless, and people are born into a situation. They are limited to the limitations the world has imposed on an individual by their worldly situation they are born in.
Humans are being for themselves, aren't things, they are conscious, they exist only in the present and are free to become what they want. Humans are responsible for their choices and how they exercise their freedom. They make choices and encourage those around them to make similar decisions. There is no self that exists through time. The other alienates human beings, and the us is objectified by an Other and hence has the status of being in itself. An individual is free because he has escaped from the being.
There is the now, and there is only awareness. Sartre describes two types of being, of being and being in itself. The being to describe those that can be defined but not conscious of themselves. The being in itself to describe by those that are defined by their consciousness of their own existence and would not exist without that consciousness. Sartre writes that an individual becomes aware of his existence only when confronted by others who possess similar consciousness, and we identify a form of ourselves in relation to the others. He viewed human beings as having a longing for a clear-sighted witness to their true selves and for justice, where faith is one way human avoid freedom and responsibility (Kirkpatrick n.p). His theory of the other plays a role in his writings in colonialism, racism, and sexism, of systems that allow the other to be seen as an object and not a being for itself. The itself cannot be filled up with any being, and being is the only activity for itself. Being is what it is as a rejection that the world was created for a purpose. The anguish of freedom stems from the lack of a predefined purpose giving humans the sense of an absurd existence as described by Sartre.
People do not have restrictions but unlimited choices and can take actions to be what they want to be. Each decision a human being makes defines who they are and, at the same time, reveals humanity, giving humans the burden of freedom (Kirkpatrick n.p). Existentialism gives people tools for understanding their essences and how to live a meaningful life. Sartre asserts that man is condemned to be free, and therefore, it was not up to him to be free and not cease to be free. An omnipotent being will not have any reasons to act in any way, thus creating any other form of life. This being will not have any desires or wants. It would be okay with its very existence. The universe currently exists, making the omnipotent god nonexistence. The being of god is a creation of humans as such an entity would have no needs, desires, and needs, which are terms that are associated with human beings. Conscious to Sartre is a consciousness of something, which is also a conscious of freedom.
For most of his career, Merleau-Ponty focused on the problems of perception as the starting point for clarifying the relationship between the mind and the body. His writings in the phenomenology of perceptions, where he disagrees with Sartre's take of freedom. He sought to integrate the philosophies of Gestalt and Marxism. ("Maurice Merleau-Ponty," p2). Merleau-Ponty argues that all actions are free, and thus none can be otherwise. People believe that some of their decisions are habitual. In his arguments, he says that freedom is everywhere and yet, nowhere, and Sartre cannot explain doing. According to Merleau-Ponty, since each decision is an expression of freedom and is free from the previous one, each decision becomes undone unless sustained. That we are our bodies and our experiences denies the detachment of the mind from the body. The body cannot be viewed as purely an entity of the world.
The bodily experiences are intentional and are full of meaning and expressive of us in relation to the environment. The body is the center of perceptions and the medium of consciousness (phenomenology of perceptions, p 105). Through the co-existence of the body and the world, does the meaning of existence come from. He opposes the dualism as proposed by Sartre. According to him, people who find themselves in a culture already created and abstract will think of it as purely natural. The world is already filled with others and is perceived as public as they are apparent to others as well. Merleau-Ponty rejects the purely scientific thinking for the explanation of human experiences. Scientists and philosophers often ignore the condition that humans are part of the world and coexistence with it. In the book (phenomenology of perceptions, p 105), he asserts that the body is always there, and the absence is inconceivable. Therefore, the body cannot be treated as something that can or cannot be part of the world based on what we think because it is not something that we can do without.
Without the body, there i...