Absolute freedom makes one’s every choice perpetually fragile and invertible

Evidence

I choose myself perpetually and can never be merely by virtue of having-been-chosen; otherwise I should fall into the pure and simple existence of the in-itself. The necessity of perpetually choosing myself is one with the pursued-pursuit which I am. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1147 (#expands, via linked claim)

In our attempt to reach to the heart of freedom we may be helped by the few observations which we have made on the subject in the course of this work and which we must summarize here. In the first chapter we established the fact that if negation comes into the world through human-reality, the latter must be a being who can realize a nihilating rupture with the world and with himself; and we established that the permanent possibility of this rupture is the same as freedom. But on the other hand, we stated that this permanent possibility of nihilating what I am in the form of “having-been” implies for man a particular type of existence. We were able then to determine by means of analyses like that of bad faith that human reality is its own nothingness. For the for-itself, to be is to nihilate the in-itself which it is. Under these conditions freedom can be nothing other than this nihilation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075 (#expands, via linked claim)

But precisely because here we are dealing with a choice, this choice as it is made indicates in general other choices as possibles. The possibility of these other choices is neither made explicit nor posited, but it is lived in the feeling of unjustifiability; and it is this which is expressed by the fact of the absurdity of my choice and consequently of my being. Thus my freedom eats away my freedom. Since I am free, I project my total possible, but I thereby posit that I am free and that I can always nihilate this first project and make it past. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1147 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The for-itself’s freedom renders all possibles as nothings, forever hollowed from within — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 612; Freedom requires a perpetual renewal of self-choice without any support — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1147; Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1075 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom requires a perpetual renewal of self-choice without any support #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1147
• Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
• The absurdity of choice lives in a felt unjustifiability that freedom itself generates #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1147
• The inescapable residue of failure is the very condition of living freedom #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 145
• Freedom’s only limit is itself; we cannot choose not to be free #qualifies (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075