Jordan asked:

How does Sartre justify his view on freedom as the only objective value? (He provides some
refutations of specific objective values in Existentialism as a Humanism,but I'm looking for an
argument...)

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Out of all philosophers I find Sartre to be the hardest to read, which translates into "I find Sartre to be
the easiest to misunderstand".

Saying that I don't think Sartre was stupid, so he was unlikely to have made the mistake of saying
that there are no objective values except mine. So I don't think we should read him as saying that
freedom is the only objective value.

Nor are we to read him as saying that it is only freedom that is itself intrinsically valuable and that's
why we place it at the centre of our philosophy.

Rather freedom for Sartre is inescapable and unavoidable, "We are condemned to be free". We just
are free ! We can choose to say that freedom is good or bad, something to be valued or not, but this
comes later, after the fact that we recognise to be a person is to be free, there is no getting away from
it.

Everything we do is a result of our freedom, our choosing . We should therefore understand freedom
not as the ultimate value , but as that which makes values possible.It is the condition (rather than the
'best of' values.

Sartre sees these values as being underwritten by a 'fundamental choice' which ultimately is Absurd
(Sartre's description not mine, but see my response to Mario, Answers 12 for an explanation of this
concept).

Brian Tee