Cause, motive, and end are indissoluble terms of a single free projection.
Evidence
To be sure, the cause is objective; it is the state of contemporary things as it is revealed to a consciousness. It is objective that the Roman plebs and aristocracy were corrupted by the time of Constantine or that the Catholic Church is ready to favor a monarch who at the time of Clovis will help it triumph over Arianism. Nevertheless this state of affairs can be revealed only to a for-itself since in general the for-itself is the being by which “there is” a world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Since, on the contrary, it is consciousness which temporalizes itself, we must conceive of the original choice as unfolding time and being one with the unity of the three ekstases. … To choose ourselves is to nihilate ourselves; that is, to cause a future to come to make known to us what we are by conferring a meaning on our past. … Thus there is not a succession of instants separated by nothingnesses—as with Descartes—such that my choice at the instant t can not act on my choice of the instant t. … Thus freedom, choice, nihilation, temporalization are all one and the same thing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1122 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
I am an existent in the midst of other existents. But I can not “realize” this existence in the midst of others; I can not apprehend as objects the existents which surround me nor apprehend myself as a surrounded existence nor even give a meaning to this notion of “in the midst of” except by choosing myself—not in my being but in my manner of being. The choice of this end is the choice of what is not-yet-existing. My position in the midst of the world is defined by the relation between the instrumental utility or adversity in the realities which surround me and my own facticity; that is, the discovery of the dangers which I risk in the world, of the obstacles which I can encounter there, the aid which can be offered me, all in the light of a radical nihilation of myself and of a radical, internal negation of the in-itself and all effected from the point of view of a freely posited end. This is what we mean by the situation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1276 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1089; Situation arises from freely chosen ends colliding with surrounding facticity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1276; Freedom, choice, nihilation, and temporalization are one single act — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1122 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089 - Freedom, choice, nihilation, and temporalization are one single act
#corroborates(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1122 - Situation arises from freely chosen ends colliding with surrounding facticity.
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1276 - Motives are freely constituted rather than psychologically forced.
#exemplifies(0.75)