Any self-pronouncement is already false in the moment it is made

Evidence

No man can save himself alone. Doubtless, in the very heat of an action the adventurer can know a joy which is sufficient unto itself, but once the undertaking is over and has congealed behind him into a thing, it must, in order to remain alive, be animated anew by a human intention which must transcend it toward the future into recognition or admiration. When he dies, the adventurer will be surrendering his whole life into the hands of men; the only meaning it will have will be the one they confer upon it. … Forgotten and detested, the adventurer loses the taste for his own existence. Perhaps without his knowing it, it seems so precious to him because of others. It willed itself to be an affirmation, an example to all mankind. Once it falls back upon itself, it becomes futile and unjustified. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 63 (#expands, via linked claim)

How can we in conversation, in confession, in introspection, even attempt sincerity since the effort will by its very nature be doomed to failure and since at the very time when we announce it we have a prejudicative comprehension of its futility? In introspection I try to determine exactly what I am, to make up my mind to be my true self without delay—even though it means consequently to set about searching for ways to change myself. But what does this mean if not that I am constituting myself as a thing? Shall I determine the ensemble of purposes and motivations which have pushed me to do this or that action? But this is already to postulate a causal determinism which constitutes the flow of my states of consciousness as a succession of physical states. Shall I uncover in myself “drives,” even though it be to affirm them in shame? But is this not deliberately to forget that these drives are realized with my consent, that they are not forces of nature but that I lend them their efficacy by a perpetually renewed decision concerning their value. Shall I pass judgment on my character, on my nature? Is this not to veil from myself at that moment what I know only too well, that I thus judge a past to which by definition my present is not subject? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even self-assertion requires others to confer lasting meaning on it — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 63; Any attempt at sincere self-knowledge covertly turns oneself into a thing — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 306

Broader Connections

• Even self-assertion requires others to confer lasting meaning on it #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 63
• Any attempt at sincere self-knowledge covertly turns oneself into a thing #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306