Erich Fromm

Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character, when the way to act is no longer fixed by heredtiarily given mechanisms. In other works, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable.

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1941), Chapter Two: “The Emergence of the Individual and the Ambiguity of Freedom.”