A love’s arrested future is what makes it love rather than caprice

Evidence

It is infinitely heavier, more opaque, more solid than that absolute transparency. That is why the evidence with which the psychic gives itself to the intuition of impure reflection is not apodictic. There is a cleavage between the future of the For-itself reflected-on, which is constantly eaten away and lightened by my freedom, and the dense and menacing future of my love, a cleavage which gives to it precisely its meaning as love. If I did not apprehend in the psychic object a love with its future arrested, would it still be love? Would it not rather fall under the heading of caprice? And does not even the caprice engage the future to the extent that it is given as going to remain caprice and never to be changed into love? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 538

Categorization

• QUESTION: The criterion distinguishing love from caprice — a future given as arrested vs. given as stable — is subtle and worth tracing when Sartre later treats emotions and mauvaise foi.
• XREF: connects to: Romantic love’s redemptive promise now conflicts with our embrace of uncertainty — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 232
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Romantic love’s redemptive promise now conflicts with our embrace of uncertainty — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 232