Apparent justifications that deny freedom are empty countersense, leaving only unjustified preferences.

Evidence

Th us, Marcel’s failure to will freedom, and hence his failure to will the means to giving justifi cation, results in a peculiar illusion. Marcel may enumerate various reasons for his actions (God’s love for life) that give the appearance of justifi cation. However, his justifi cation is akin to what Husserl calls countersense. His words are syntactically correct, for example, “God demanded that I kill the abortion clinic doctor,” such that they give the appearance of off ering justifi cation; however, they are empty of all justifi catory content. Marcel does not offer poor justifi cation; his assertion is tacitly incoherent. Consequently, like the swerve of the Epicurean atom, his actions amount to nothing more than unjustifi ed preferences. As Beauvoir artfully explains, in such cases, “the spontaneity of the subject is merely a vain living palpitation” (EA, 25; MA, 36). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 199

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Husserl’s notion of countersense as applied by Beauvoir: syntactically correct but content-empty claims.
• XREF: The Epicurean swerve and the suicidal-counselor illustration connect to Beauvoir’s Pyrrhus and Cineas ethics. — connects to: Nothing justifies the values a free being adopts since freedom grounds all values — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 250; Proportionality-to-rights accounts of fairness are empirically empty because rights themselves are unconstrained. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 468; Appealing to transcendent values secretly denies one’s own freedom as the source of normativity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 198

Broader Connections

• Nothing justifies the values a free being adopts since freedom grounds all values #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 250
• Appealing to transcendent values secretly denies one’s own freedom as the source of normativity. #corroborates (0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 198
• Proportionality-to-rights accounts of fairness are empirically empty because rights themselves are unconstrained. #exemplifies (0.72) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 468