Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be
Evidence
Such a choice made without base of support and dictating its own causes to itself, can very well appear absurd, and in fact it is absurd. This is because freedom is a choice of its being but not the foundation of its being. We shall return to this relation between freedom and facticity in the course of this chapter. For the moment it will suffice us to say that human-reality can choose itself as it intends but is not able not to choose itself. It can not even refuse to be; suicide, in fact, is a choice and affirmation—of being. By this being which is given to it, human reality participates in the universal contingency of being and thereby in what we may call absurdity. This choice is absurd, not because it is without reason but because there has never been any possibility of not choosing oneself. Whatever the choice may be, it is founded and reapprehended by being, for it is choice which is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the precise sense in which freedom is ‘absurd’ in Sartre’s system: not irrational, but beyond all reasons, since it grounds all foundations.
- XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, which takes this absurd freedom as its starting point — the reader’s stated purpose. — connects to: Freedom precedes essence and is indistinguishable from being human — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 226; Nihilation is the permanent self-determination not to be the in-itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 350; Situation is the fused double determination of freedom and facticity — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 725 (+28 more)
Broader Connections
- Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation.
#qualifies(0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1205 - Willing one’s freedom and willing that being exist are one choice
#expands(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 72 - Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it.
#qualifies(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177 - Freedom means choosing oneself within one’s world, not choosing the world itself.
#expands(0.72)