At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

by Sarah Bakewell

But as a human being, I have no predefined nature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do.

You might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that, for Sartre, it is the human condition, from the moment of first consciousness to the moment when death wipes it out. I am my own freedom: no more, no less.

One must keep moving, creating what will be: acting in the world and making a difference to it.