The Determinism, Freedom, and the Essence of Values from Prescriptive Neoexistentialism

Abstract

This article, from the perspective of Prescriptive Neoexistentialism, presents an unreflective freedom as the correlate of a reflective intentional determinism, insofar as it involves the positing of an extreme situation. The freedom of the for–itself, of contingency, of being thrown into being–in–the–world or existence, and of choosing among possibilities in each situation, will be the same freedom that constitutes the essence of values as pre–existing in in–itself norms or naturalized entities within the context of an extreme historical fact. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as a community of free Existences deliberating in a parliament, will solidify a determinism grounded in that freedom—one that limits the anguish of daily value choice. Analyzed in the context of the Nazi occupation of Paris, this article posits as its hypothesis a conception of freedom as the unreflective correlate of an extreme situation, and of that unreflective intentionality directed toward the intentional correlate of reflective apprehension, which results in a form of determinism.