Meaning

This line argues that human beings have no choice but to exercise freedom. Unlike objects or animals governed purely by instinct or function, people must constantly decide how to act, who to be, and what to value. There is no escape into a fixed nature or a predetermined script for life. The word "condemned" captures the weight of this: freedom is not presented as a simple gift but as an inescapable burden that comes with full responsibility for one's choices.

Context

Sartre introduced this idea as a central principle of his existentialist philosophy. The lecture that became the book Existentialism Is a Humanism was delivered in Paris in 1945, shortly after the end of World War Two, a period when questions about human responsibility and moral choice carried enormous urgency. Sartre was arguing against the idea that human nature is fixed by God, biology, or society. Because there is no pre-given essence to human life, people are radically responsible for what they make of themselves, whether they embrace that responsibility or try to avoid it.

About the author

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, novelist, and playwright, born in 1905 and one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the twentieth century. He is closely associated with existentialism and also engaged deeply with political philosophy throughout his life. His major philosophical work Being and Nothingness laid out much of the framework he later made more accessible in public lectures and shorter essays. He declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. He died in Paris in 1980.