If death’s moment is not self-chosen, our acts’ meaning escapes us

Evidence

But there is an error here analogous to that which we pointed out earlier in connection with Leibniz although it is put at the other end of existence. For Leibniz we are free since our acts derive from our essence. Yet the single fact that our essence has not been chosen by us shows that all this freedom in particulars actually covers over a total slavery. God chose Adam’s essence. Conversely if it is the closing of the account which gives our life its meaning and its value, then it is of little importance that all the acts of which the web of our life is made have been free; the very meaning of them escapes us if we do not ourselves choose the moment at which the account will be closed. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1255

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors Rousseau’s claim in the Social Contract that we are ‘forced to be free’ — here Sartre inverts it: freedom of acts without chosen end is slavery. Connects to the reading goal of setting up Beauvoir’s account of mortality and freedom. — connects to: The meaning of a person’s past stays in suspense until death; Death converts the for-itself into an in-itself that only others can interpret — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1259