The Karma of Existential Choice: Sartre, Authenticity, and the Responsibility of Freedom

"Man is condemned to be free" — Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this in 1943, in occupied Paris, when all of France lived under a regime that seemed to turn people into objects of history rather than its subjects. In that context, he insisted: even in the most constrained circumstances, humans cannot avoid choosing. Non-choice is a choice. Compliance is a choice. Silence is a choice. Freedom isn't a privilege — it's a sentence.

Sartre's Radical Freedom: Existence Precedes Essence

The central thesis of Sartre's existentialism: existence precedes essence. This is the opposite of the traditional religious and Platonic metaphysics that claimed every thing has a pre-given essence — what it's supposed to be. For Sartre, humans have no predetermined nature. We don't arrive with an essence — we create one through our actions.

This means: there is no nature that forces you to do what you do. No instincts, childhood traumas, social pressures that determine your choices. They create the conditions of choice — but the choice remains yours. When you say you "can't" quit smoking, Sartre would say: you're choosing not to quit, and the reasons for this choice you're labelling "impossibility."

This sounds harsh — intentionally so. Sartre wanted to eliminate all alibis. If humans are radically free, they're also radically responsible. For every action. For every inaction. For what kind of person they've become. This is the karma of existential choice: you create yourself through your actions — and cannot defer to something external.

Bad Faith: Self-Deception About Freedom

If freedom is a sentence, it's unsurprising that most people run from it. Sartre calls this flight mauvaise foi — "bad faith." This isn't merely lying to others — it's lying to yourself about the nature of your freedom.

Bad faith takes two forms:

Denying freedom: "I had no choice," "Circumstances made it happen," "I was just following orders," "That's just my nature." The person presents themselves as a thing — an object controlled by external forces. Sartre's classic example is the waiter who plays the role of waiter with such total dedication that waitering seems to be his essence rather than his job. He pretends there's no alternative to being a waiter.

Denying facticity: the opposite form — behaving as though circumstances have no significance at all, as though one is completely free from one's past, body, and situation. This is also bad faith — denying that freedom is always situated.

Authentic existence lies between these extremes: acknowledging both facticity (I am in specific circumstances) and freedom (I choose how to respond to them).

Camus and the Absurd: Freedom in a Universe Without Meaning

Albert Camus — Sartre's contemporary and intellectual opponent — sharpened the question: if life has no pre-given meaning, and humans relentlessly seek one, the collision between this search and the silence of the world creates the absurd. How do you live in the face of the absurd?

Camus rejects resignation (capitulation before the absurd) and suicide (another refusal of struggle). His answer is revolt: to live despite the absurd, creating meaning through action while knowing it isn't pre-given. Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain knows it will roll back down — and pushes anyway. Camus invites us to imagine Sisyphus happy.

This isn't naive optimism — it's existential realism: the freedom to choose your relationship to your conditions exists even when you can't change the conditions themselves. This is the freedom Frankl wrote about from the concentration camp.

Heidegger's Authenticity: Owning Your Existence vs. das Man

Martin Heidegger contributed a concept that became central to the discussion of authentic existence: das Man — "the They," the impersonal social mass. Most people, most of the time, live in das Man mode: doing what "one does," thinking what "one thinks," valuing what "one is supposed to value" — without personally appropriating these choices.

Authenticity for Heidegger isn't independence from social context (impossible) but appropriating your own existence. To live authentically means accepting that this is my life, that I am choosing — even when I choose what everyone around me chooses. The difference isn't in the content of the choice but in its mode: conscious or automatic.

Heidegger's central existential — being-toward-death — confronting mortality as a way to "wake up" from das Man. Only in accepting that you will die — and that nobody will die in your place — do you begin to live as subject rather than object.

The Karma of Bad Faith in Relationships

Bad faith isn't merely a personal problem. It creates specific karma in relationships. A person living in «I had no choice» mode is incapable of genuine accountability: they can always point to circumstances, upbringing, situational pressure.

But there's a less obvious form: offering someone else bad faith as a gift. When you make decisions for another person «for their own good,» when you say «you're better off this way» or create conditions in which someone «has no other option» — you're participating in robbing them of their subjecthood. This too is bad faith, directed outward.

Authentic relationships, for Sartre, require recognising the other's freedom — not as a threat but as the condition for genuine encounter. Meeting between two objects is impossible. Meeting between two subjects is what we actually seek in intimacy.

If you want to explore how much your values reflect genuine choice versus following das Man, the karma test on karm.top presents situations that illuminate exactly this question.

Five Questions for Catching Bad Faith in Your Own Reasoning

• "I had no choice" — was that actually true? In most situations the choice existed; it was the cost that seemed unacceptable. Recognising this is already honesty
• Who was actually making the decision? "That's what you do," "everyone does it," "I was just following the rules" — this is das Man, not you
• What part of yourself are you sacrificing for the role? If you "must" behave a certain way — who established that and why did you accept it?
• If nobody were watching, would you act the same? The gap between answers «with an observer» and «without one» is a bad faith indicator
• What do you call "impossible" when you really mean "too costly"? Honesty about this distinction is the first step toward authenticity

Read also about what authenticity looks like in practice: authenticity: how to be yourself, and about how the moral compass helps distinguish genuine from imposed values in the moral compass.

Questions for reflection:

• Is there a decision you're postponing by calling it "impossible" — when actually you're afraid of its consequences?
• What roles in your life did you accept without consciously choosing — and how much do they match who you want to be?
• When did you last acknowledge: "I could have done otherwise, and I chose this" — without justification?
• Is there someone in your life whom you're "helping" by making decisions for them? What does this say about your respect for their freedom?