Beauvoir argues even solitary creative work requires other free beings to carry it forward.

Evidence

Pushing back the boundaries of music, achieving progress in science or medicine, or inventing and enacting a solution to a social problem require acting with— or against— other free beings, and we therefore need the existence of other freedoms in developing and positioning our own transcendent work. Even the scholar or the artist who works primarily in private requires the free transcendence of others, for their work takes its departure from what others are doing and calls out to others to serve as a basis for new work. “Th e writer does not want simply to be read; he wants to have infl uence; he wants to be imitated and pondered. Th e inventor asks that the tool he invented be used” (PC, 132). Indeed, if our projects fail to play a role in the work of others but are ultimately taken nowhere, our projects “fall back upon themselves” rather than serving as a mode of transcendence and become like inert and useless objects (e.g., PC, 135). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 621

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Beauvoir’s third argument for needing other freedoms: projects that no one takes up cease to be transcendent and collapse into inert objects.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir holds that individual freedom is realized only through being directed at other existences — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 659; Sartre’s freedom model subordinates others while Beauvoir’s requires affirming their freedom — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 633; Beauvoir’s early ethics treats freedom as necessarily directed toward others — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 76 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s early ethics treats freedom as necessarily directed toward others #corroborates (0.88) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 76
• Beauvoir holds that individual freedom is realized only through being directed at other existences #corroborates (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 659
• Beauvoir relocates meaning-creation from solitary consciousness to shared human practices #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 618
• Sartre’s freedom model subordinates others while Beauvoir’s requires affirming their freedom #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 633
• Freedom from contingency requires a deliberate common project of becoming. #expands (0.72) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2019