An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1927
Thrownness (Geworfenheit)
We did not choose to be born, in this body, into this language, this century.
Heidegger's image: we are thrown into existence. We find ourselves already in a situation we did not author — a body, a family, a language, a historical moment. Freedom is not the absence of these conditions; it is what we do from within them. Sartre will radicalize this into "condemned to be free."