IB Philosophy 1.6.3 Existential Angst and Authenticity Notes

Freedom as the Source of Angst

Sartre and the Phenomenology of Existential Anguish

1. This final topic in Unit 1 brings together the themes of freedom (1.6.1 and 1.6.2) and the existentialist tradition that has appeared throughout the unit. While 1.6.1 examined whether free will is compatible with determinism, and 1.6.2 explored how social conditioning constrains freedom, this topic asks a different question: if we are genuinely free, what are the psychological and philosophical consequences of that freedom?
2. The IB syllabus asks: "Why did existentialists see freedom as the source of existential angst?" This question reverses the usual assumption that freedom is simply a good thing.
3. For existentialists, freedom is not only liberating but also terrifying, because it forces us to confront the fact that we alone are responsible for who we become.
4. Jean-Paul Sartre is the central philosopher for this topic. In Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre argued that human beings are "condemned to be free": we did not choose to exist, but having come into existence, we must constantly choose how to act.
5. There is no God, no human nature, and no predetermined purpose that tells us what to do. We are radically free, and this freedom is the source of anguish.
6. Sartre distinguished anguish from ordinary fear. Fear has a specific object: you fear the dog, the cliff, the exam.
7. Anguish, by contrast, is directed at oneself: it is the dizzying awareness that nothing prevents you from making any choice, including terrible ones. Standing at the edge of a cliff, you feel fear of falling, but anguish arises from the realisation that nothing stops you from jumping.
8. Freedom itself is what terrifies: this is the essence of existential anguish.

Kierkegaard and the Anxiety of Possibility

1. Sartre's famous formula, "existence precedes essence," explains why freedom produces angst. If human beings had a fixed essence (a nature, a purpose, a soul designed by God), then our choices would be guided by that essence.
2. But because existence comes first, we must create our own essence through our choices. There is no blueprint: there are only decisions and their consequences.
3. Sartre arrived at this conclusion by combining atheism with phenomenological analysis (a philosophical method that studies experience as it is lived, from the inside). Without God, there is no craftsman who designed humans with a purpose in mind.
4. Unlike a knife (which has an essence, to cut, that precedes any particular knife), there is no prior specification of what a human being is for. We simply find ourselves existing, and must decide what to become.
5. Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher often regarded as the father of existentialism, explored angst in The Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard described anxiety as the "dizziness of freedom": the vertigo we feel when confronting the infinite possibilities open to us.
6. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is not a mental illness but a necessary feature of human existence, arising from our awareness that we must choose without any guarantee that we are choosing correctly. The vertigo of freedom is not just about having many options.
7. It is specifically the anxiety of confronting qualitatively different life paths that cannot be combined. Choosing a committed, ethical life means leaving behind the aesthetic life of immediate pleasure, and that leap cannot be undone or rationally justified in advance.

Heidegger, Being-toward-Death, and Moral Responsibility

1. Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time, developed a related concept: Angst (anxiety) as distinct from fear. For Heidegger, Angst is not directed at any particular threat but at existence itself.
2. It reveals the "uncanniness" of human existence: the fact that we are thrown into a world we did not choose. Heidegger chose the word 'uncanny' (Unheimlich, literally 'not-at-home') to capture this: angst reveals that we are, in a deep sense, groundless, not truly 'at home' anywhere, thrown into a situation we did not choose and cannot escape.
3. The existentialist analysis of angst connects to the overarching Unit 1 question, "What does it mean to be human?" For existentialists, being human means living with the weight of freedom: the knowledge that every moment demands a choice, that no authority can make that choice for us, and that we are fully responsible for the consequences.
4. Heidegger also introduced the concept of being-toward-death: the awareness that death is the one possibility that is entirely and inescapably your own.
   1. It cannot be shared or delegated.
   2. Confronting mortality strips away the comfortable illusions of everyday life and forces us to ask what truly matters.
5. Angst, in this sense, is not merely unpleasant. It is revelatory, disclosing the fundamental structure of human existence.
6. Death is authentic precisely because it is the one thing that cannot be done by someone else on your behalf: it individualises you, separating you from the anonymous 'They.' Facing it honestly forces the question: if this life is the only one I have, am I living it as my own?
7. Understanding angst also connects to 1.4.3 (Moral Responsibility): if we are radically free, then we are radically responsible, and the weight of that responsibility is precisely what produces anguish.
8. The temptation to escape this burden leads to what Sartre called bad faith.

Bad Faith and the Flight from Freedom