Accidentally Responsible?

[ethos]

From Dialectic Spiritualism:

 

Syamasundara dasa: Regardless of the form of government, Sartre believes that man is basically free.

Srila Prabhupada: As soon as you speak of freedom, you refer to some living being. Matter itself has no freedom. It is the active principle that is free.

Syamasundara dasa: Sartre maintains that man is condemned to be free, that this is a fate from which man cannot escape.

Srila Prabhupada: If man is condemned, who has condemned him?

Syamasundara dasa: Man is condemned by accident, thrown into the world.

Srila Prabhupada: Is it simply by accident that one person is condemned and another blessed? Is it an accident that one man is in jail and another is not? What kind of philosophy is this? Such so-called philosophy simply misleads people. Nothing is accidental. We agree that the living entity is condemned to this maerial world, but when we speak of condemnation, we also speak of blessedness. So what is that blessedness?

Syamasundara dasa: Sartre argues that man is condemned in the sense that he cannot escape this freedom. Since man is free, his is responsible for his activities.

Srila Prabhupada: If you are responsible, then your freedom is not accidental. How is it you are accidentally responsible? If there is responsibility, there must be someone you are responsible to. There must be someone who is condemening you or blessing you. These things cannot happen accidentally. His philosophy is contradictory.