Man and his Actions

Under these conditions since every event in the world can be revealed to me as an opportunity (an opportunity made use of, lacked, neglected, etc..), or better yet  since everything which happens to us can be considered as a chance (i.e., can appear to us only as a way of realizing this being which is in question in our being) and since others as transcendences-transcended are themselves only opportunities and chances, the responsibility of the for-itself extends to the entire world as a people-world.  It is precisely thus that the for-itself apprehends itself in anguish; that is, as a being which is neither the foundation of its own being nor of the other’s being nor of the in-itself which form the world, but a being within it and everywhere outside of it.  The one who realizes in anguish his condition as being thrown into a responsibility which extends to his very abandonment has no longer either remorse or regret or excuse; he is no longer anything but a freedom which perfectly reveals itself and whose being resides in this very revelation. 

Sartre states, “each person is an absolute choice of self from the standpoint of a world of knowledge and of techniques which this choice both assumes and illumines; each person is an absolute upsurge at an absolute date and is perfectly unthinkable at another date.  It is therefore a waste of time to ask what I should have been if this war had not broken out, for I have chosen myself as one of the possible meanings of the epoch which imperceptibly led to war.  I am not distinct from this same epoch; I could not be transported to another epoch without contradiction.  Thus I am this war, which restricts and limits and makes comprehensible the period, which preceded it.  In this sense we may define more precisely the responsibility of the for-itself if to the earlier quoted statement, “there are no innocent victims,” we add the words, “we have the war we deserve.”

“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 I can no longer distinguish at present the choice which I make of myself from the choice which I make of the war.  To live this war is to choose myself throughout it and to choose I through my choice of myself.  There can be no question of considering it as “four years of vacation” or as a “reprieve,” as a “recess,” the essential part of my responsibilities being elsewhere in my married, family, or professional life.  In this war which I have chosen I choose myself from day to day, and I make it mine by making myself.  If it is going to be four empty years, then it is I who bear the responsibility”.  The word “war” is being used as a metaphor.  It represents slavery, anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination, sexism, terrorism, prejudice, child-abuse, etc…In one word if one does not do anything to prevent or to cease the war; you are as guilty as the creator of that war.

Thus there are no accidents in life; a community event, which suddenly bursts forth and involves me in it does not come from the outside.   If am mobilized in a war, this war is mine; it is in my image and I deserve it.  I deserve it first because I could always get out of it by suicide or by desertion or fight against it; these ultimate possibilities are those, which must always be present for us when there is a question of envisaging a situation.  For lack of getting out it, I have chosen it.  This can be due to inertia, to cowardice in the face of public opinion, or because I prefer certain other values to the value of the refusal to join in the war (the good opinion of my relatives, the honor of my family, etc…). Anyway you look at it, it is a matter of choice.  This choice will be repeated later on again and again without a break until the end of the war.  Therefore we must agree with the statement by J. Romains, “In War There Are No Innocent Victims.”  If therefore I have preferred war to death or to dishonor, 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 this notion of complicity has only a juridical sense, and does not hold here.  For it depended on me that for me and by me this war should not exist, and I have decided that it does not exist.

Our absolute responsibility as men is not resignation it is simply the logical requirement of the consequences of our freedom.  It means simply that the ultimate meaning of the acts of men and women is the quest for freedom as such.  “Freedom for everyone without limits” that’s my call.  Albert Camus in The Plague states “no one will be truly free until all are free”.  Sometimes between 1942-44 Camus reached a new level of development.  In his four Letters to a German friend, he proclaims; “I continue to believe that this world has no superior meaning.  But I know that something in it has meaning: it is Man, because man is the sole being to insist upon having a meaning”.  Camus’ vision now expands to include the suffering and unhappiness of all mankind. 

Men should be free and should be fighting for the freedom of every man.  Every men should be fighting against racism, discrimination, prejudice slavery, anti-Semitism, sexism, terrorism, child-abuse etc.  We are taking the word “responsibility “ in its ordinary sense as “consciousness” of being the incontestable author of events, such as racism, sexism, prejudice, slavery, anti-Semitism, terrorism, child-abuse, or objects.  In this sense the responsibility of the for-itself is overwhelming since he is the one by whom it happens that there is a world; since he is also the one who makes himself be, then whatever may be the situation in which he finds himself, the for-itself must wholly assume this situation wit