Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being
Evidence
In our attempt to reach to the heart of freedom we may be helped by the few observations which we have made on the subject in the course of this work and which we must summarize here. In the first chapter we established the fact that if negation comes into the world through human-reality, the latter must be a being who can realize a nihilating rupture with the world and with himself; and we established that the permanent possibility of this rupture is the same as freedom. But on the other hand, we stated that this permanent possibility of nihilating what I am in the form of “having-been” implies for man a particular type of existence. We were able then to determine by means of analyses like that of bad faith that human reality is its own nothingness. For the for-itself, to be is to nihilate the in-itself which it is. Under these conditions freedom can be nothing other than this nihilation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explicitly ties freedom to nihilation as its defining operation, building on bad faith analysis.
- XREF: connects to: A single nihilation of Being suffices to constitute the entire world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 43; 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 (+26 more)
Broader Connections
- Freedom is synonymous with the for-itself’s lack of being
#expands(0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1328 - Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be
#qualifies(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146 - Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude.
#qualifies(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176