Intentions cannot derive from a given, only from a non-existent end

Evidence

Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be obtained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent. When the psychologists, for example, view the drive as a factual state, they do not see that they are removing from it all its character as an appetite (ad-peritio). In fact, if the sexual drive can be differentiated from the desire to sleep, for example, this can be only by means of its end, and this end does not exist. Pyschologists ought to have asked what could be the ontological structure of a phenomenon such that it makes known to itself what it is by means of something which does not yet exist. The intention, which is the fundamental structure of human-reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given. But if one wishes to interpret the intention by its end, care must be taken not to confer on this end an existence as a given. In fact if we could admit that the end is given prior to the result to be attained, it would then be necessary to concede to this end a sort of being-in-itself at the heart of its nothingness and an attractive virtue of a truly magical type. Moreover we should not succeed any better in understanding the connection between a given human reality and a given end than in understanding the connection between consciousness-substance and reality-substance in the realists’ arguments. If the drive or the act is to be interpreted by its end, this is because the intention has for its structure positing its end outside itself. Thus the intention makes itself be by choosing the end which makes it known. … Since the intention is a choice of the end and since the world reveals itself across our conduct, it is the intentional choice of the end which reveals the world, and the world is revealed as this or that (in this or that order) according to the end chosen. The end, illuminating the world, is a state of the world to be obtained and not yet existing. The intention is a thetic consciousness of the end. But it can be so only by making itself a non-thetic consciousness of its own possibility. Thus my end can be a good meal if I am hungry. But this meal which beyond the dusty road on which I am traveling is projected as the meaning of this road (it goes toward a hotel where the table is set, where the dishes are prepared, where I am expected, etc.) can be apprehended only correlatively with my non-thetic project toward my own possibility of eating this meal. Thus by a double but unitary upsurge the intention illuminates the world in terms of an end not yet existing and is itself defined by the choice of its possible. My end is a certain objective state of the world, my possible is a certain structure of my subjectivity; the one is revealed to the thetic consciousness, the other flows back over the non-thetic consciousness in order to characterize it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1142

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines intention as the fundamental structure of human-reality — a surpassing of the given toward a non-existent end, sharply distinguished from any factual drive.
• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity and to Heidegger’s being-toward-death / project; also parallels the existentialist account of bad faith as flight toward a ‘not-yet’. — connects to: A will cannot act on a fully determined psychic process; Causes do not determine actions; causes emerge only through an already-constituted project toward ends. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1090; The possible becomes real only through a person’s project, not as pre-existing logical possibility (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Intentions constitute themselves as empty through self-conscious negation #contradicts (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 230
• The possible becomes real only through a person’s project, not as pre-existing logical possibility #expands (0.82)
• Possibility exists only as an option on being that separates one from oneself #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 381