Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation.

Evidence

It is because freedom is condemned to be free—i.e., can not choose itself as freedom—that there are things; that is, a plenitude of contingency at the heart of which it is itself contingency. It is by the assumption of this contingency and by its surpassing that there can be at once a choice and an organization of things in situation; and it is the contingency of freedom and the contingency of the in-itself which are expressed in situation by the unpredictability and the adversity of the environment. Thus I am absolutely free and absolutely responsible for my situation. But I am never free except in situation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1205

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core of the freedom/facticity dialectic that Beauvoir directly builds upon in The Ethics of Ambiguity, where absolute freedom meets situatedness. — connects to: The ineffectiveness of motives itself constitutes the condition of freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 242; Freedom has no essence and therefore cannot be described like other things — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1073; Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1146 (+9 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that freedom founds contingency yet is itself contingency, and that absolute responsibility coincides with being-in-situation, is a dense knot central to the whole system.

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the capacity to begin, which logic cannot compel. #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1072
• Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself. #expands (0.80)
• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #exemplifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164
• Giving birth cannot confer existential meaning because freedom must found itself. #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1450