A for-itself can never constitute itself as evil on its own

Evidence

To apprehend myself as evil, for example, could not be to refer myself to what I am for myself, for I am not and can not be evil for myself for two reasons. In the first place, I am not evil any more than I am a civil servant or a physician. In fact I am in the mode of not being what I am and of being what I am not. The qualification “evil,” on the contrary, characterizes me as an in-itself. In the second place, if I were to be evil for myself, I should of necessity be so in the mode of having to be so and would have to apprehend myself and will myself as evil. But this would mean that I must discover myself as willing what appears to myself as the opposite of my Good and precisely because it is the Evil or the opposite of my Good. It is therefore expressly necessary that I will the contrary of what I desire at one and the same moment and in the same relation; that is, I would have to hate myself precisely as I am myself. If on the level of the for-itself I am to realize fully this essence of evil, it would be necessary for me to assume myself as evil; that is, I would have to approve myself by the same act which makes me blame myself. We can see that this notion of evil can in no way derive its origin from me in so far as I am Me. It would be in vain for me to push the ekstasis to its extreme limits or to effect a detachment from self which would constitute me for myself; I shall never succeed in conferring evil on myself or even in conceiving it for myself if I am thrown on my own resources. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 755

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how the in-itself/for-itself distinction applies to moral self-apprehension: evil is only apprehended as a quality of the in-itself, never of the for-itself.
• XREF: Connects to Heidegger’s notion of the self not being able to ground its own moral essence, and sets up Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity where freedom rather than evil occupies the center. — connects to: One is never identical with any of one’s own attitudes or actions — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 300; Masochism fails on principle because one can never apprehend one’s own objectivity — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 963; Free will that succumbs to evil influence is self-contradictory (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that moral self-constitution is impossible for the for-itself — that one can never assemble evil for oneself but only receive it as a conferred, object-like quality — is a dense ontological argument about the structure of self-blame and moral agency.

Broader Connections

• Masochism fails on principle because one can never apprehend one’s own objectivity #corroborates (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 963
• Free will that succumbs to evil influence is self-contradictory #corroborates (0.78)
• Organizations can drift into evil without any member intending it #contradicts (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3984
• Every person can perform evil under sufficient situational pressure #contradicts (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4034