Individual acts express and are unchangeable apart from one’s original project

Evidence

At present we are in a position to answer this. Our analysis, in fact, has just shown us that this act was not gratuitous. To be sure, it was not explained by a motive or a cause conceived as the content of a prior state of consciousness, but it had to be interpreted in terms of an original project of which it formed an integral part. Hence it becomes evident that we can not suppose that the act could have been modified without at the same time supposing a fundamental modification of my original choice of myself. This way of yielding to fatigue and of letting myself fall down at the side of the road expresses a certain initial stiffening against my body and the inanimate in-itself. It is placed within the compass of a certain view of the world in which difficulties can appear “not worth the trouble of being tolerated”; or, to be exact, since the motive is a pure non-thetic consciousness and consequently an initial project of itself toward an absolute end (a certain aspect of the in-itself-for-itself), it is an apprehension of the world (warmth, distance from the city, uselessness of effort, etc.) as the cause of my ceasing to walk. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1119

Categorization

• XREF: This is the systematic groundwork for Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity on how every choice commits one’s whole being. — connects to: Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1089; Original projects of the for-itself are logically irreducible to any pre-existing motive.; Understanding an act relates parts to total project, not deduction (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The possible becomes real only through a person’s project, not as pre-existing logical possibility #expands (0.85)
• The permanence of things is constituted by one’s own ongoing project. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1284
• Understanding an act relates parts to total project, not deduction #expands (0.82)
• Some secondary possibles vary freely without altering fundamental project #qualifies (0.80)
• One’s fundamental project determines the meaning of one’s past #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1184
• Fundamental projects must be freely and continuously re-chosen rather than settled once #complicates (0.78)
• The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 427