Facticity makes the for-itself both wholly responsible and wholly unjustifiable.

Evidence

This twofold contingency which embraces a necessity we have called the facticity of the for-itself. We have described it in Part Two. We showed there that the nihilated in-itself, engulfed in the absolute event which is the appearance of the foundation or the upsurge of the for-itself, remains at the heart of the for-itself as its original contingency. Thus the for-itself is supported by a perpetual contingency for which it becomes responsible and which it assimilates without ever being able to suppress it. Nowhere can the for-itself find this contingency anywhere within itself; nor can the for-itself anywhere apprehend and know it—not even by the reflective cogito. The for-itself forever surpasses this contingency toward its own possibilities, and it encounters in itself only the nothingness which it has to be. Yet facticity does not cease to haunt the for-itself, and it is facticity which causes me to apprehend myself simultaneously as totally responsible for my being and as totally unjustifiable. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 837

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise definition of facticity as a twofold contingency (that I be at all, that I be in this particular situation) embracing a necessity. Core Sartrean term.
• XREF: The body-as-justification theme connects to Beauvoir’s account of ambiguity as the simultaneous responsibility and unjustifiability of existence. — connects to: The for-itself is fully responsible for its being yet cannot justify or choose it — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 343; Freedom and facticity are mutually condition each other’s existence. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176; The brute facticity underlying freedom is ungraspable yet indispensable to it.

Broader Connections

• The for-itself is fully responsible for its being yet cannot justify or choose it #corroborates (1.00) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 343
• The brute facticity underlying freedom is ungraspable yet indispensable to it. #expands (0.90)
• Freedom and facticity are mutually condition each other’s existence. #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176