Freedom in Existential Philosophy

Final Paper: Freedom in Existential Philosophy

Write two essays, each around 3 pages double-spaced in length. (Do not go below 2.5 pages and do not exceed 4 pages for each essay.)

General theme: Freedom is a central theme running through existentialist thought, and it will be the subject of each essay. In your essays you will discuss the thought of Camus, Arendt, and one other philosopher treated in the course, as their thought addresses the problem of freedom.

I. Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt offer strikingly different thoughts on freedom, but the topic is central for each of them.

Camus writes: “The only [freedom] I know is freedom of thought and action. Now if the absurd cancels all my chances of eternal freedom, it restores and magnifies, on the other hand, my freedom of action. That privation of hope and future means an increase in man’s availability.” (The Myth of Sisyphus in Marino, Basic Writings of Existentialism, p. 481) Arendt writes: “Men are free…as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same” (Between Past and Future, p. 153); “The field where freedom has always been known…is the political realm” (ibid., p. 146). She stresses that the political is “a space where freedom as virtuosity can appear” (ibid., p. 154).

In your essay set up a confrontation between these two conceptions of freedom, noting how they may be related while having differences.

II. In this essay write on either Camus or Arendt and discuss one other
thinker from the course (Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, or Sartre) whose thought on freedom can, in your judgment, be
fruitfully associated with and compared to that of either Camus or Arendt.
Make specific references to passages in the writings of these thinkers.