Condemned to be free

How much of our lives and the things that happen to us are we responsible for? The common-sense answer would be that we are responsible only for those actions which we cause and intend to cause, but that we are not responsible for the things that happen to us, good or bad, that just happen to us. That is to say, where the causes was something other than us. For example, things caused by society, luck, accident, other people, or physics. And this common-sense answer is often taken as relinquishing us from responsibility for things like being drafted in a war, or being born into poverty, or indeed being born into wealth.  

But in Being and Nothingness, Sartre takes these ideas and arrives at a completely different and much more extreme conclusion. We are wholly responsible for ourselves, he argues, including even if we are drafted into a war. 

To make this argument, Sartre first has to argue that consciousness doesn't pick it's intended actions just based on what the facts cause it to pick, e.g. Bill is caused to get a drink because of the fact that he is thirsty.

Sartre argues that there could be no fact in the world that could motivate our conscious actions by itself. We would always need in addition goals, values and interpretations in order to have the intentions that lead to our deliberate actions. Put another way, for a cause (some fact in the world) to motivate an action it must be experienced as a cause. So for example, for Bill to be motivated to perform the action of getting a drink because of the cause 'thirst', he must first experience thirst as as a cause. He must have ideas about what one should do if they are thirsty. If he did not have the idea that when thirsty he should get a drink, on the other hand then thirstiness would cease to be a cause for him doing so.

So similarly, according to Sartre's thinking, even if Bill is stranded on a dessert island and is thirsty and can't get a drink, it's his responsibility, because it's he, not his thirst, that has motivated him to want a drink.

Sartre himself gives the example of war.

"If I am mobilized in a war, this war is my war... I deserve it first because I could always get out of it by suicide or by desertion; these ultimate possibles are those which must always be present for us when there is a question of envisaging a situation. For lack of getting out of it, I have chosen it. ... If therefore I have preferred war to death or to dishonour, everything takes place as if I bore the entire responsibility for this war. of course others have declared it, and one might be tempted perhaps to consider me as a simple accomplice. But...it depended on me that for me and by me this war should not exist, and I have decided that it does exist... But in addition the war is mine because by the sole fact that it arises in a situation which I cause to be, and that I can discover it there only by engaging myself for or against it"

To be caused and to be motivated

There is an argument against free-will that goes like this: all actions are caused, and if it's caused it's determined and not a free choice. But, even if an action was not caused, it still wouldn't be a free choice, because if an action isn't caused by anything then it's random.

But there is a difference between a cause and a motive that is relevant for discussion of free-will.

People can be *caused* to experience something out of their control. For instance, if Ted is pushed out of a window, he is caused to hit the ground and be injured. Here we can say that it was determined that Ted got injured (it was determined by the fall).

But if one is 'motivated', instead, then the implication is that one is only encouraged towards an action, but might not take it up. With motivation, the future is open. For instance, if Bill is thirsty, he is motivated to go get a drink, or ask someone to bring him a drink. But his motivation alone does not guarantee that he'll do either of those things, he might pick staying thirsty.

So it's simply not the case that a free-will advocate is limited to only the options that actions are caused or random, there is a third category.

The determinist can only argue that the third category doesn't really exist--that motivation as so defined is a myth. For instance, they can say that Bill thinks he chooses to stay put rather than go get a drink to sate his thirst, but really circumstances mean that Bill would always make that 'choice' and not another.