The Other Person’s Freedom

For Beauvoir, your freedom is never yours alone, because other people are free too. A project that needs them only as scenery, audience, or a type has turned a person into a prop. Your own freedom is incomplete where theirs never comes up.

This is the same flight as bad faith, aimed outward. Hiding inside a role denies your freedom. Assigning someone else a role in advance denies theirs. “People like her don’t want the hard work” writes her part before she speaks.

Asking is still allowed. A task named, and a real chance to refuse, leaves their freedom in the room. What fails is the evening, the job, or the story in which their only part was to complete yours.

The guest’s part

A host plans an evening in which the guest’s only part is to admire the host. The guest’s own plans are never asked. The evening is kind, and the part was written anyway.

Beauvoir would say the guest was scenery. A freedom that needs other people only as background is still trying to be alone.

Try this today Before you decide what someone “wouldn’t want,” ask them.