Sartre and Merleau-Ponty's Argument on Freedom

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Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s Argument on Freedom
Many philosophers have addressed the concept of freedom. Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty shared the defining project for the existential phenomenology and sought to define and interpret humanity CITATION Put82 \l 1033 (Putnam). Freedom determines every single human experience and influences how religious and political institutions are run. Two philosophers whose early work have an influence on freedom and existence in their early works. Jean-Paul Sartre's views asserted an absolute freedom for the conscious human being which Merleau-Ponty rejected. They both derived different outlooks on human beings in their early works. Merleau-Ponty's work in existentialism featured embodiment and ontology. In addition, he was a prominent critic of Sartre's works on ontology and played a part in the dissemination of ontology. The analysis below takes a look at their early works on freedom and existentialism.
Freedom is one of the most common themes examined by philosophers. Sartre was influenced by Hegel's works and wrote little on ethics and politics before 1945 (Heter, n.p). The concept of freedom and existence had been addressed by many philosophers and from different angles. Sartre's early works were based on existentialism when he was exploring the meaning of freedom. The works of Hegel and Marx in part influenced his ideas. Sartre claims that freedom is a fundamental value that makes all other values possible and is the source of all values. For Sartre, human beings are free because they always have a choice to choose. As a human, man is only free when he acknowledges that something is missing. He continues to say that the circumstances of being born are beyond the control of people. Where and to which family they are born into is beyond their control. However, when one becomes aware, they have the ability to make choices and are therefore free.
Therefore, every action of man becomes a commitment, and he, therefore, assert his freedom. People are responsible for all the elements of themselves. Every man's action becomes a commitment, and thus man is asserting his freedom. In his discussions In Being and Nothingness, Sartre introduces consciousness as being conscious of something. He views human consciousness as synonymous with freedom. Its non-coincidence marks consciousness as being for itself with itself as it always targets an object other than itself. His view is that a person's freedom entails the ability to free. That freedom is the ability to escape the present ontologically. In his arguments, he answers that human beings are fundamentally free as they are conscious CITATION Wil10 \l 1033 (Wilkerson). This idea implies that human beings are free in all situations.
There is no god to give humans a purpose, so the definition of self and humanity lies on the humans, and therefore, the society's hands. Sartre, in his early work, fully implied that the French were free at all times and that prisoners are free because they are conscious (Stanford University, n.p). He describes that a prisoner, though locked up, has a series of choices of how he will react to his situation and therefore free because he has control of...