Question

1.       Explain in detail why many existentialists such as Dostoyevsky and Sartre feel that human beings are outside determinism?

Answer 1

Sartre believed that human beings possess free will because they were capable of overcoming the anxiety emanating from their responsibility of determining their essence and the limits of their aspiration. Human beings were “condemned” to be free as their actions were not shaped by God but themselves, through choice, commitment and engagements. Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, shows through his characters that human beings possess the will to freedom, however painful it maybe for them. Left in the absence of God, his heroes such as Rodion Raskalnikov and Ivan Karamazov are left to define morality in their own terms, and therefore forge their own destiny ahead.