Even self-directed sincerity converts freedom into a thing to escape it.

Evidence

But who can not see that objective sincerity is constituted in the same way? Who can not see that the sincere man constitutes himself as a thing in order to escape the condition of a thing by the same act of sincerity? The man who confesses that he is evil has exchanged his disturbing “freedom-for-evil” for an inanimate character of evil; he is evil, he clings to himself, he is what he is. But by the same stroke, he escapes from that thing, since it is he who contemplates it, since it depends on him to maintain it under his glance or to let it collapse in an infinity of particular acts. He derives a merit from his sincerity, and the deserving man is not the evil man as he is evil but as he is beyond his evilness. At the same time the evil is disarmed since it is nothing, save on the plane of determinism, and since in confessing it, I posit my freedom in respect to it; my future is virgin; everything is allowed to me. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 310

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘future is virgin; everything is allowed’ motif echoes the freedom / facticity structure and anticipates the radical freedom of existentialist ethics, connecting to Beauvoir’s notion that confession buys a fresh future. — connects to: Any attempt at sincere self-knowledge covertly turns oneself into a thing — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 306; Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176; Bad faith flees anguish by relocating freedom into a fixed essence of the self — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 257 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176
• Freedom grows by ceding outward conformity while guarding an inner core #contradicts (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 736
• Freedom makes itself into affliction, so liberating freedom from suffering betrays freedom #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1007
• Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Bad faith flees anguish by relocating freedom into a fixed essence of the self #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 257
• Genuine freedom requires accepting permanent tension rather than seeking rest #corroborates (0.80)
• Individual salvation attempts mystify freedom while only social action authenticates it #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1916