Individual salvation attempts mystify freedom while only social action authenticates it

Evidence

Mystical fervor, like love and even narcissism, can be integrated into active and independent lives. But in themselves these attempts at individual salvation can only result in failures; either the woman establishes a relation with an unreal: her double or God; or she creates an unreal relation with a real being; in any case, she has no grasp on the world; she does not escape her subjectivity; her freedom remains mystified; there is only one way of accomplishing it authentically: it is to project it by a positive action into human society. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1916

Categorization

• DEFINE: The chapter’s thesis: authentic freedom requires projecting subjectivity into human society, not mystical or narcissistic escape.
• XREF: Direct echo of Beauvoir’s/Existentialism’s ‘situation’ and authentic engagement — the same move as Sartre’s pour-soi needing action in the world. — connects to: Even self-directed sincerity converts freedom into a thing to escape it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 310; Individual freedom is achieved only through the freedom of others — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 144; Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature #corroborates (0.95)
• Willing one’s own freedom and willing others’ freedom are the same act #corroborates (0.95) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 88
• Individual freedom is achieved only through the freedom of others #corroborates (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 144
• Individual moral agency resists being dissolved into larger social movements #contradicts (0.80)
• Individual and social liberation must be waged together but not assumed interdependent #complicates (0.75)
• Others constitute the situation that gives individual freedom its concrete content #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 453
• Individual freedom is grounded in meanings others have already established. #qualifies (0.70) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 75
• Proving one’s alienation requires freely recognizing the Other’s freedom #corroborates (0.70)