From project to achievement

notes on freedom in Jean-Paul Sartre and Byung-Chul Han

Abstract

: In the mid-twentieth century, Sartre’s existentialist thought defined the human being as free and without a predefined essence. The ways in which each Being for-itself project themselves into the world place them in a cycle between transcending their historically inherited situation and becoming alienated within new circumstances. In the twenty-first century, freedom has become a neoliberal ideological tool that sustains self-development and produces figures such as the achievement-subject, whose endless self-optimization drives productivity and consumption. This article examines the scope and limits of these understandings of freedom in processes of subjectivation and individual emancipation. While both philosophers describe the psychological suffering endured in the name of this principle, they also indicate ethical pathways for resisting its violence.