The big idea: The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre pushed freedom to its limit: there's no fixed human nature handed to you in advance. A knife is made for cutting, but no one made you for anything. So you must choose who to be — and Sartre says we are 'condemned to be free.'
Why 'condemned'?: Freedom sounds like a gift — so why 'condemned'? Because you can never escape it. Every excuse ('society made me', 'it's just my nature') is bad faith. There's no one to blame and nowhere to hide: the choice, and the responsibility, are always yours.
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Sartre says total freedom comes with a distinctive feeling.
Angst: Angst is the dizzy dread you feel standing at a cliff edge — not fear of falling, but the terrifying realisation that nothing stops you jumping except your own choice. Applied to life, angst is the weight of knowing that who you become is on you, with no rulebook to lean on. It's uncomfortable — but for Sartre it's also honest: it's freedom felt directly.
Checkpoint — Sartre: Sartre's chain: no fixed nature → you must choose who to be → 'condemned to be free' → that brings angst (dread) and total responsibility, with excuses ruled out as bad faith.
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An ancient thinker offers a very different picture of freedom — and a calming one.
The Stoic Epictetus: Epictetus — who lived much of his life enslaved — taught that real freedom is inner: you can't control outer events (illness, loss, what others do), but you can always master your own responses to them. Freedom isn't rearranging the world to your liking; it's ruling your own reactions. On this view even a prisoner can be free, and a rich, unruled person can be a slave to their own moods.
Go further — higher-level insight: Sartre and Epictetus agree on a deep point — freedom lives in your response, not your circumstances — but split on its feel. For Sartre that response-freedom is a burden (angst); for Epictetus it's a relief (serenity). Weighing 'is inescapable freedom a curse or a comfort?' is a top-band move for any essay on freedom.
How Section A works: An unseen stimulus (text or image) [25]. Task: with explicit reference to the stimulus and your own knowledge, explore a philosophical issue related to what it is to be human. Freedom is one of the strongest issues to reach for — this whole topic feeds it.
Stimulus — After losing her job, a woman writes: "I keep telling everyone I had no choice, the company decided for me. But at 3am I know the truth — I choose how I face tomorrow, and that terrifies me more than any boss ever did." With explicit reference to the stimulus and your own knowledge, explore a philosophical issue related to what it is to be human.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Common mistakes: 1. Describing views instead of arguing. 2. Ignoring the stimulus — quote it. 3. Only one view — top bands need tension. 4. No conclusion — decide, with a reason. 5. Name-dropping — a name earns nothing without its argument.