Each resolution must be freely re-created rather than persist as a force
Evidence
In order for it to come to my aid once more, I must remake it ex nihilo and freely. The not-gambling is only one of my possibilities, as the fact of gambling is another of them, neither more nor less. I must rediscover the fear of financial ruin or of disappointing my family, etc., I must re-create it as experienced fear. It stands behind me like a boneless phantom. It depends on me alone to lend it flesh. I am alone and naked before temptation as I was the day before. After having patiently built up barriers and walls, after enclosing myself in the magic circle of a resolution, I perceive with anguish that nothing prevents me from gambling. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 240
Categorization
- DEFINE: The gambler case clarifies that freedom means perpetual self-remaking, that nothing external prevents choice — a load-bearing premise for Sartre’s whole ontology.
- XREF: Sets up Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity: the individual is always already obligated to recreate commitments, never merely inherit them. — connects to: Fundamental projects must be freely and continuously re-chosen rather than settled once