Freedom’s own possibilities rest on the ground of further possibilities

Evidence

Th us, every man has to do with other men. Th e world in which he engages himself is a human world in which each object is penetrated with human meanings. It is a speaking world from which solicitations and appeals rise up. Th is means that, through this world, each individual can give his freedom a concrete content. He must disclose the world with the purpose of further disclosure and by the same movement try to free men, by means of whom the world takes on meaning. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 453 (#expands, via linked claim)

Freedom, understood as an ethical and political category, concerns the Other. Th ough it is through the dynamics of freedom that I as an individual reveal the meaning of the world, the meaning I reveal is grounded on the meanings others have bequeathed to me. Moreover, it is only by engaging the Other that I can express the desires and powers of freedom in ethically and politically legitimate ways. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 75 (#expands, via linked claim)

WE have a past. Of course we have been able to establish that this past does not determine our acts as a prior phenomenon determines a consequent phenomenon; we have shown that the past is without force to constitute the present and to sketch out the future. Nevertheless the fact remains that the freedom which escapes toward the future can not give itself any past it likes according to its fancy; there are even more compelling reasons for the fact that it can not produce itself without a past. It has to be its own past, and this past is irremediable. … If the past does not determine our actions, at least it is such that we can not take a new decision except in terms of it. … Thus the importance of the past can not be exaggerated since for me “Wesen ist was gewesen ist,” essence is what has been. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A place’s meaning is fixed only by the future ends toward which freedom projects.; Freedom founds all connections and laws, then becomes bound by them — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1282; Individual freedom is grounded in meanings others have already established. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 75 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Others constitute the situation that gives individual freedom its concrete content #expands (0.82) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 453
• Individual freedom is grounded in meanings others have already established. #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 75
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177
• Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146
• Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation. #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1205