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“My freedom therefore requires that I can ask myself what I *should* do with my time. Even when I am utterly absorbed in what I do, what I say, and what I love, the possibility of this question must be alive in me. Being engaged in my activities, I must run the risk of being bored--otherwise my engagement would be a matter of compulsive necessity. Being devoted to what I love, I must run the risk of losing it or giving it up--otherwise there would be nothing at stake in maintaining and actively relating to what I love. Most fundamentally, I must live in relation to my irrevocable death--otherwise I would believe that my time is infinite and there would be no urgency in dedicating my life to anything.

The condition of our freedom, then, is that we understand ourselves as finite. Only in light of the apprehension that we will die--that our lifetime is indefinite but finite--can we ask ourselves what we ought to do with our lives and put ourselves at stake in our activities. This is why all religious visions of eternity, as we shall see, ultimately are visions of *unfreedom.*”