  The metaphysical and ethical dimensions of human freedom are intimately related. This is the most significant difference between the existentialists and Husserlian phenomenology: the existentialists link the power to disclose the world to the necessity of human beings to decide who they should be, in terms of the fundamental values directing a person’s life. The concept of “existence” designates precisely this ethical dimension of human life. The existentialists argue that, of all the beings existing in the world, the human being is the only one that can decide what it should be; indeed, it is forced to do so since it has no fixed nature. As the existentialist motto goes, “man is condemned to be free.” Here, freedom is not just independence in the sense of independence from, but in the sense of being able to decide who and what one should be. This ethical dimension of freedom as the power of self-determination (which also entails the duty to use it) explains the central place of the notion of “ engagement (commitment).” Before it designates any necessity to choose in particular situations, “engagement” refers to the fundamental position of the human individual, whose very being consists in having to make use of its freedom. On the existentialists’ outlook, the only positive feature of “human reality,” strictly speaking, is responsibility towards others and towards oneself (and, for the Christian existentialists, towards God). Many human beings refuse this burden and flee from their ontological responsibility by accepting pre-given roles. This is what Sartre’s “bad faith” and Marcel’s “functional man” designate.