We speak of freedom as if it were a single, luminous thing—a capacity for choice that belongs equally to every human being. The philosopher declares we are condemned to be free, and in some abstract sense, this remains true. But stand in a room with someone who hasn't eaten in three days, and try explaining that their freedom is identical to yours.

Simone de Beauvoir understood this tension better than most existentialists. While Sartre emphasized our radical freedom to choose, de Beauvoir asked the harder question: what does freedom actually mean when your choices are between starvation and exploitation? Between silence and violence? Between survival and dignity?

This isn't about denying human agency. It's about understanding that freedom lives in the world, not just in the mind. Our capacity for self-determination doesn't float above our circumstances—it moves through them, shaped by hunger and exhaustion, by opportunity and oppression. Abstract liberty tells us we can choose. Concrete freedom asks: choose from what?

There's a peculiar cruelty in telling someone they're free while they remain trapped by circumstances beyond their control. The unemployed worker can theoretically start a business. The person fleeing violence can theoretically stay and fight. The theory is correct and entirely useless.

De Beauvoir recognized that human beings are not pure consciousnesses floating through existence. We are embodied, situated, hungry. Our freedom doesn't exist in some Platonic realm—it exists in tired bodies, in empty pockets, in neighborhoods without schools or hospitals. When we ignore these material conditions, we transform philosophy into ideology.

Consider what genuine choice requires. Not just the absence of someone holding a gun to your head, but access to real alternatives. Education that opens possibilities. Health that permits action. Time that isn't consumed by mere survival. Without these foundations, freedom becomes a taunt rather than a gift.

This doesn't mean that people in desperate circumstances lack all agency—de Beauvoir was too honest to deny the reality of human choice. But she insisted we recognize the difference between the freedom to choose one's attitude and the freedom to actually shape one's life. Both matter. Only one is sufficient for human flourishing.

Takeaway

Freedom without conditions is like a map without roads—it shows you destinations you cannot reach.

The existentialist insight about radical freedom isn't wrong—it's incomplete. Yes, we always retain some capacity for choice, even in the most constrained circumstances. But authentic existence requires us to hold two truths simultaneously: we are free, and our freedom is always situated.

This situation isn't merely a backdrop to our choices. It constitutes what de Beauvoir called our facticity—the given elements of our existence that we didn't choose but must work with. Being born into poverty or privilege, into a particular body, into a specific historical moment. These aren't obstacles to freedom; they're the material from which any real freedom must be built.

The danger lies in two opposite errors. The first denies our freedom entirely, claiming we're determined by our circumstances—this is bad faith, a refusal to acknowledge our genuine capacity for choice. The second ignores our situation completely, pretending we can simply will ourselves into any life we desire—this is abstraction, a flight from the world into pure theory.

Authentic liberation requires both acknowledgment and action. We must see our situation clearly, without excuse or illusion, and then work to transform it. This means understanding that changing ourselves often requires changing our world. The path to individual freedom frequently runs through collective struggle.

Takeaway

Authentic freedom isn't choosing despite your situation—it's choosing to transform it.

Here is de Beauvoir's most radical insight: your freedom genuinely depends on the freedom of others. Not as a nice sentiment or moral obligation, but as an existential fact. The freedom of an isolated individual is a philosophical fiction.

Think about what freedom actually requires. Language to think with—given by others. Possibilities to choose from—created by others. A world that responds to your projects—maintained by others. Even the most solitary act of self-determination happens within a web of relationships that make it meaningful.

But the connection runs deeper than mere dependence. When others are reduced to objects—whether through slavery, poverty, or systematic oppression—the world itself becomes impoverished. Every diminished freedom diminishes the field of all possible freedom. The enslaver is also unfree, trapped in a world of tools rather than persons.

This is why authentic existence cannot remain purely individual. De Beauvoir argued that genuinely willing your own freedom means willing a world in which freedom is possible—for everyone. Not because altruism is morally praiseworthy, but because freedom that doesn't extend beyond yourself isn't freedom at all. It's merely privilege wearing freedom's clothes.

Takeaway

A world that denies freedom to some cannot truly grant it to any.

Abstract freedom reassures us that we're always, in some ultimate sense, the authors of our own lives. Concrete freedom asks what kind of authorship is possible when the pages are already half-filled by others, when the ink runs short, when the light is failing.

De Beauvoir's gift was refusing this false choice. She held onto existentialism's core insight—that human beings create themselves through their choices—while insisting we cannot ignore the material and social conditions that make meaningful choice possible.

The task, then, is neither despair nor denial. It's the difficult work of acknowledging our situation honestly while refusing to let it have the final word. Freedom isn't given; it's made. And it's made together, or not at all.