Freedom constitutes its own obstacles by positing ends that render facticity restrictive.
Evidence
Thus our freedom itself creates the obstacles from which we suffer. It is freedom itself which by positing its end and by choosing this end as inaccessible or accessible with difficulty, causes our placing to appear to our projects as an insurmountable resistance or a resistance to be surmounted with difficulty. It is freedom again which establishes the spatial connections between objects as the first type of a relation of instrumentality, which decides on techniques permitting distances to be measured and cleared, and thus constitutes its own restriction. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the fundamental meaning of freedom as constituting rather than passively receiving its restrictions.
- XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity, where freedom is always situated and in situation. — connects to: The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1152; Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1177; Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1205 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends
#corroborates(0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1152 - Freedom and facticity are mutually condition each other’s existence.
#corroborates(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176 - Obstacles are indispensable to freedom yet seem to condition it ontologically.
#corroborates(0.82) - Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it.
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177 - Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation.
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1205