Martin Heidegger has a rather dramatic notion, which he calls 'thrownness.' And the image is that we each get thrown into the world. We don't choose the century that we're born. We don't choose our parents. We don't choose the language we first learn to speak. We don't choose our early friends. And, in fact, if you look at a good deal of your life, you realize it's not something you choose but something that you're thrown into. All this is going to be weighed against this notion of existence - the idea of passionate commitment, the idea of personal choice. And what we'll find in all the existentialists is a very delicate balance - or I think better you might say a dialectic, a kind of active tension - between on the one hand this sense of contingency and you are what you are because of things that you had no control over and on the other hand you are what you are or you become what you become because of your personal commitments and choices. And that theme is going to run all the way through.
Lecture 2: Albert Camus--The Stranger, Part I
from No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life (The Great Courses)
