Life’s structure of waiting follows from the temporal nature of the for-itself

Evidence

Thus our further freedom, inasmuch as it is not our actual possibility but the foundation of possibilities which we are not yet, constitutes as a sort of opacity in full translucency something like what Barrès called “the mystery in broad daylight.” Hence this necessity for us to wait for ourselves. Our life is only a long waiting: first a waiting for the realization of our ends (to be engaged in an undertaking is to wait for its outcome) and especially a waiting for ourselves (even if this undertaking is realized, even if I am able to make myself loved, to obtain this distinction, this favor, it remains for me to determine the place, the meaning, and the value of this very enterprise in my life). This does not stem from a contingent lack in human “nature,” from a nervousness which would prevent us from limiting ourselves to the present and which could be corrected by practice, but rather from the very nature of the for-itself which “is” to the extent that it temporalizes itself. Thus it is necessary to consider our life as being made up not only of waitings but of waitings which themselves wait for waitings. There we have the very structure of selfness: to be oneself is to come to oneself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1254

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the structure of selfness — ‘to be oneself is to come to oneself’ — as rooted in temporalization rather than psychological contingency.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s conception of becoming and the existentialist view of self as never complete; also echoes Heidegger’s temporal analysis of Dasein. — connects to: Life’s self-transcendence makes time real, unlike analytical separation of tenses — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 809; Time is constituted by the For-itself’s nothingness rather than inhering in objects — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1524; Life alone realizes time by transcending the present in both directions — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 808 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Life’s self-transcendence makes time real, unlike analytical separation of tenses #expands (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 809
• Time is constituted by the For-itself’s nothingness rather than inhering in objects #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1524
• Life alone realizes time by transcending the present in both directions #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 808
• Temporality is an internal structure of the For-itself, not external to it #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 485
• Temporality is the necessary horizon for the for-itself’s transcendence #corroborates (0.80)
• Reflection reveals temporality as the historicity of the for-itself #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 521