An order counts as an imperative only by combining free assumption with preserved exteriority

Evidence

At the same time since it is given in the capacity of an unrealizable, it is manifested as beyond all the attempts which I can make to realize it. The unrealizable is an a priori which requires my engagement in order to be, while depending only on this engagement and while placing itself at the start beyond any attempt to realize it. What then is this if not precisely an imperative? It is indeed to be interiorized (that is, it comes from the outside as does every fact) but the order, whatever it may be, is defined always as an exteriority recovered in interiority. If an order is to be order—and not a flatus vocis or a pure factual given which one merely seeks to change—it is necessary that I reassume it with my freedom, that I make of it a structure of my free projects. But if the order is to be order and not a free movement toward my own ends, it must necessarily preserve at the very heart of my free choice its character as exteriority. It is the exteriority which remains exteriority even in and through the attempt on the part of the For-itself to interiorize it. This is precisely the definition of the unrealizable to be realized; that is why it is given as an imperative. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1239

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the precise mechanism by which exterior givens become binding imperatives rather than mere factual givens.
• XREF: Provides the ontological scaffolding for Beauvoir’s ethics of the other’s freedom imposing a limit on my projects. — connects to: Freeing from particularity requires dwelling with the concrete instead of abstract negation — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1558; The love of neighbor commandment functions to preserve the self-other distinction; Positive object precedence requires a freely differentiating subject that yields to the object — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2549 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Freeing from particularity requires dwelling with the concrete instead of abstract negation #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1558
• The love of neighbor commandment functions to preserve the self-other distinction #complicates (0.75)