Freedom from contingency requires a deliberate common project of becoming.
Evidence
The coming together of Damiel and Marion is clearly meant as the climactic point of the film. The two circle each other in the same night-club she had been in before, watched tiredly by Damiel’s earlier angel companion, before coming together in the bar close by. There they meet in an almost ritualistic way, she ready and deter mined to make her history, to supersede being with becoming, he determined to learn the meaning of the flow of human experience in space and time. In the lengthy monologue that follows, she insists on the seriousness of their common project even though the times themselves may not be serious. She insists on doing away with coincidence and contingency. The temporary contracts are over. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2019
Categorization
- DEFINE: Contrasts ‘being’ (static postmodern condition) with ‘becoming’ (active modernist project) — a key conceptual distinction in Harvey’s argument.
- XREF: connects to: The situation fuses freedom’s projects with brute contingency indistinguishably — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1162; Gaining freedom paradoxically requires relinquishing some autonomy to rules.; The term ‘project’ links freedom and contingency in historical determination. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 104 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- The term ‘project’ links freedom and contingency in historical determination.
#expands(0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 104 - Gaining freedom paradoxically requires relinquishing some autonomy to rules.
#complicates(0.75) - The essence of necessity is contingency, grounded in an event
#complicates(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 128 - Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it.
#qualifies(0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177 - Contingency emerges from necessity’s own violence and becomes its power
#qualifies(0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1109