FROM CRUCIBLES OF CHOICE TO MOMENTS OF ANAGNORISIS: SARTEAN CONFIGURATIONS OF RADICAL FREEDOM, BAD FAITH, AND ETHICAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN MACBETH AND OTHELLO

Abstract

This paper propounds a Sartean-inflected re-reading of Macbeth and Othello, advancing a critical framework rooted in the ontological triad of radical freedom, bad faith, and moral accountability. Departing from deterministic interpretations of Shakespearean tragedy, this paper foregrounds Sartre’s assertion that “there is no reality except in action… man is nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life” (35), positioning the protagonists’ tragic descent as paradigmatic expressions of volitional agency rather than external compulsion. The analysis reconfigures prophecy and manipulation—not as immutable dictates—but as existential provocations that disclose the protagonists’ interpretive freedom and the anguish it entails.

This paper contends that Macbeth’s resignation to “chance” and Othello’s fixation on “ocular proof” constitute paradigmatic acts of Sartrean bad faith, wherein the characters elude authentic subjectivity through staged misrecognition and an evasion of existential responsibility. In situating these responses within Sartre’s phenomenology of choice, the paper elucidates the mechanisms by which both characters navigate—and ultimately collapse under—the burden of freedom. The paper thus reframes Shakespeare’s tragic architecture as a profound philosophical inquiry into the ethics of self-authorship, exposing the psychological disintegration that ensues from the refusal to claim authentic agency. By orchestrating an intertextual convergence between Shakespearean tragedy and Sartrean existentialism, this paper elucidates the moral topographies of radical freedom, the phenomenological intricacies of volitional action, and the inexorable imperative of ethical accountability inscribed at the core of the human condition.