Condemned to Be Free

Abstract

For the existentialist, engaging one’s possibilities for authentic selfhood is crucially tied to one’s complete freedom (albeit amid powerful constraints) to choose a certain line of action above another, with all the responsibility this entails. Such freedom is a pervasive theme in Conrad, finding its most radical presentation in Heart of Darkness.¹ Marlow emphasises how in ‘utter solitude without a policemanchrw…, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinionchrw … you must fall back upon your own innate strength’ (2:116). As we have seen, Kurtz had no societal restraints, no guide other than himself. His was a particularly naked freedom with, as Sartre would say, ‘no limitschrw … except freedom itself’; he was ‘condemned to be free’ (Nothingness, 439). He had full reign, as Berdyaev would point out, to create the monstrous as well as the good (see Christian Existentialism, 145). And in his ‘hollowness’ Kurtz chose to enact ‘unspeakable rites’ (2:118), devoid of any sense of wider responsibility.