Freedom is synonymous with the for-itself’s lack of being

Evidence

The project of being or desire of being or drive toward being does not originate in a physiological differentiation or in an empirical contingency; in fact it is not distinguished from the being of the for-itself. The for-itself is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in the form of a project of being. To the for-itself being means to make known to oneself what one is by means of a possibility appearing as a value. Possibility and value belong to the being of the for-itself. The for-itself is defined ontologically as a lack of being, and possibility belongs to the for-itself as that which it lacks, in the same way that value haunts the for-itself as the totality of being which is lacking. What we have expressed in Part Two in terms of lack can be just as well expressed in terms of freedom. The for-itself chooses because it is lack; freedom is really synonymous with lack. Freedom is the concrete mode of being of the lack of being. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1328

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core ontological equivalence: freedom = lack = the for-itself’s project of being; possibility and value defined as what the lacking being lacks and what haunts it.
• XREF: This is the systematic backdrop the reader explicitly wants to set up for Beauvoir; the lack/freedom equivalence grounds her account of ambiguous action. — connects to: Freedom is the human capacity to put beings out of circuit behind a nothingness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 225; Freedom precedes essence and is indistinguishable from being human — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 226; The ineffectiveness of motives itself constitutes the condition of freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 242 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the small capacity to not fully reproduce one’s conditioning. #expands (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 635
• In Being and Nothingness situation was backdrop rather than constituent of freedom #exemplifies (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 456