Abstract

A constant theme in human self-reflection has been our ability to escape the control of nature. As Sophocles remarks in his Antigone, “Many are the wonders, none is more wonderful than what is man. He has a way against everything.”[1] A list follows of the ways in which man overcomes the limits imposed by the seas, the land, and the seasons. We do this by creating new environments for ourselves. These environments condition us. Thus, we do not just escape nature by building cities. We, in turn, become city dwellers. The fact that we determine ourselves by determining our world has led thinkers like Hannah Arendt to describe us as conditioned beings. In her words, “Men are conditioned beings because everything they come into contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence.” This includes “the things that owe their existence exclusively to men.” They too “constantly condition their human makers.” [2] Since Hegel’s time, such self-conditioning has been understood to include our very nature. Our ability to determine our environments, i.e., escape being determined by nature, has been taken to mean that our nature is our own creation. There are, in other words, no external limits to the freedom we have to determine who and what we are. This freedom, to put it paradoxically, is ground-less. There is nothing prior to it that determines it. “Freedom,” here, does not signify some nature or essence, but rather the lack of such. As Heidegger writes, “Freedom is the abyss (Ab-grund) of human existence (Dasein).” It is our character as ground-less beings.