Anguish arises because the self’s future identity is never guaranteed
Evidence
In a word, I am my Future in the constant perspective of the possibility of not being it. Hence that anguish which we have described above which springs from the fact that I am not sufficiently that Future which I have to be and which gives its meaning to my present: it is because I am a being whose meaning is always problematic. … In short the For-itself is free, and its Freedom is to itself its own limit. To be free is to be condemned to be free. Thus the Future qua Future does not have to be. It is not in itself, and neither is it in the mode of being of the For-itself since it is the meaning of the For-itself. The Future is not, it is possibilized. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains that the Future lacks full being — it is ‘possibilized’ rather than existent.
- DEEPTHINKING: ‘To be free is to be condemned to be free’ and ‘the Future is not, it is possibilized’ are paradigm-shifting condensations of Sartre’s ontology of freedom as lack.
- XREF: connects to: Anguish can arise alone where success or worth is at stake rather than survival; Anguish is consciousness of being one’s own future in the mode of not-being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 239; Roles are enacted, never inhabited, because identity would collapse into inert being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 343 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- The self I am depends on a future self it cannot determine
#corroborates(0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 239 - Identity is perpetually in formation, never a completed essence.
#corroborates(0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 203 - The For-itself can only found itself by projecting toward a future it never reaches
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 453 - Anguish reveals that one’s original choice is unjustifiable and contingent
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1120