Imagine, if you will, that a warrior named Firion is seeking vengeance for losses suffered
at the hands of an evil Emperor. But his friend Leon comes from a much wealthier family, can
afford nicer weapons, and can hire out a large army to support his mission.
Firion might be tempted to tell Leon, ‘Dude, check your privilege.’
But, Leon didn’t choose to be born into wealth, why then should he apologize for it?
According to existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, we’re thrown into the world
as part of a particular culture, religion, language, and socio-economic status
without any say in the matter. These are the features of what Sartre calls our facticity—the
individual parts of ourselves that we’re born with.
And although we have no control over our facticity—we are always free to choose our relation to
the world that we live in. This freedom is just part of the human condition. We define
our existence by determining our purpose in life—we make our life our own particular
project—things have value only in the frame of the project that we freely create.
In his colossal work Being and Nothingness Sartre uses several examples to illustrate
humanity’s radical freedom.
To Sartre, even a prisoner is radically free. He can choose to attempt an escape, he can
choose to restructure his purpose in life given his incarceration, or he can choose
to end his life—the fact that he’s locked up isn’t what restricts his freedom, rather
it’s his choice to believe, given his situation, that he is un-free.
Because the prisoner's own created goal in life resides outside the prison
It's not the physical bars that cause him anguish. It's in his unwillingness to conform his goal in life to his current situation
You see, freedom is only ever experienced by each particular person in the context of
their own project, their own ends, and their own understanding of the world.
Firion could compare his ragged armor and motley crew to Leon’s disciplined battalion
and shining plate mail but it has nothing to do with Firion’s goal for himself. Each
person is their own free project with their own situation—their own personal quest.
Because Leon has more at his disposal than Firion doesn’t mean that Leon is freer—both
are free to construct their own ends. As such there is no superior life situation because
there is no metric to decide who has the best way to make meaning in their lives. There
isn’t a way to determine who has the best life plan.
For Sartre, it means that facticity, or a person’s material situation doesn’t constitute
privilege—we are all radically free to create meaning. And that is what matters.
But then again, should we really look to a rich white man to be an authority on privilege?