"Man is condemned to be free"

How do I comprehend the meaning of "condemned" here? As far as I searched on the Internet, I found that to condemn something means to disapprove of that thing, so does this line mean that man doesn't have freedom?


Your quote can be attributed to the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The full quote gives the necessary context:

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Freedom is condemnation insomuch that freedom implies culpability for one's actions. There are surely deeper interpretations of this quote, though those are more on-topic at philosophy.SE.


As always, the Greeks had a word for it: paraprodokian (παραπροσδοκιαν)

a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.

It was (and still is) most commonly found in comedy and jokes. And in the original quotation there is a difference from the above explanation. What gets reframed is the readers understanding of the word freedom. The unexpected clash is there to make the reader stop and think: a kind of literary shock tactic.