Language’s laws arise only through the free synthetic project of the speaker

Evidence

If on the other hand, it is by speaking that we cause words to exist, we do not thereby suppress the necessary technical connections or the connections in fact which are articulated inside the sentence. Better yet, we found this necessity. But in order for it to appear, in order for words to enter into relations with one another, in order for them to latch on to one another or repulse one another, it is necessary that they be united in a synthesis which does not come from them. Suppress this synthetic unity and the block which is called “speech” disintegrates; each word returns to its solitude and at the same time loses its unity, being parcelled out among various incommunicable meanings. Thus it is within the free project of the sentence that the laws of speech are organized; it is by speaking that I make grammar. Freedom is the only possible foundation of the laws of language. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1218

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the ontological relation between freedom and grammar: speech laws are founded on, not prior to, the free project.
• XREF: Connects to later Sartre on bad faith as freedom’s flight; grammar-as-free-project parallels the for-itself’s founding structures. — connects to: Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals; Speech’s apparent impersonal life is borrowed from the personal freedom of speakers. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1217

Broader Connections

• Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals #corroborates (0.85)