Sartrean Anguish (Angoisse)

Sartre distinguished anguish from fear with precision most readers miss. Fear is directed outward at a threat in the world — the soldier fears the bullet, the worker fears unemployment, the parent fears illness. These are practical emotions that admit practical responses: take cover, retrain, vaccinate. Anguish is directed inward. It is the experience of confronting one's own freedom in a situation where no external authority, no established rule, no prior experience can determine the correct choice. The soldier on the cliff does not only fear falling; he experiences anguish at recognizing that he could jump — that the freedom to destroy himself is as absolute as the freedom to preserve himself, with no barrier other than his own choice standing between the two possibilities. Anguish is not fear of the world. It is the vertigo of recognizing that one's choices are unconstrained by anything except one's own choosing.