The Radical Contingency of Being Born

In this chapter I argue that there is a radical contingency to one’s being born into one’s particular life as it unfolds from one’s birth onwards. For each of us, it is an ultimate fact that admits of no further explanation that I am born the particular individual I am and no one else. Using Sartre’s work, the chapter examines this radical contingency along with the connected phenomena of facticity and groundlessness. However, the chapter criticizes Sartre’s conception of radical freedom and puts forward in its place an idea of sedimented sense-making. On this basis, situatedness is re-interpreted to say that we are situated in that we continually make sense of our circumstances in sedimented ways. Autonomous choice and reflection are just one subset of ways in which we can make sense of the succession of circumstances that come down to us from birth.