Long-range projects must justify themselves without appeal to a mythical future

Evidence

When one fights for the emancipation of oppressed natives, or the socialist revolution, he is obviously aiming at a long range goal; and he is still aiming at it concretely, beyond his own death, through the movement, the league, the institutions, or the party that he has helped set up. What we maintain is that one must not expect that this goal be justified as a point of departure of a new future; insofar as we no longer have a hold on the time which will flow beyond its coming, we must not expect anything of that time for which we have worked; other men will have to live its joys and sorrows. As for us, the goal must be considered as an end; we have to justify it on the basis of our freedom which has projected it, by the ensemble of the movement which ends in its fulfillment. The tasks we have set up for ourselves and which, though exceeding the limits of our lives, are ours, must find their meaning in themselves and not in a mythical Historical end. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 121

Categorization

• XREF: This rejects the Marxist ‘mythical Historical end’ — connects to a lifelong debate with Sartre and the French existential-Marxist collision. — connects to: Objective questions about a project’s worth remain transcendent and cannot trigger genuine anguish; Reaching a projected future never delivers what was awaited, yielding structural disillusion — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 453; Fundamental projects must be freely and continuously re-chosen rather than settled once (+1 more)