Man is fundamentally the desire to be, a lack of being

Evidence

Thus we can advance no further but have encountered the self-evident irreducible when we have reached the project of being; for obviously it is impossible to advance further than being, and there is no difference between the project of being, possibility, value, on the one hand, and being, on the other. Fundamentally man is the desire to be, and the existence of this desire is not to be established by an empirical induction; it is the result of an a priori description of the being of the for-itself, since desire is a lack and since the for-itself is the being which is to itself its own lack of being. The original project which is expressed in each of our empirically observable tendencies is then the project of being; or, if you prefer, each empirical tendency exists with the original project of being, in a relation of expression and symbolic satisfaction just as conscious drives, with Freud, exist in relation to the complex and to the original libido. Moreover the desire to be by no means exists first in order to cause itself to be expressed subsequently by desires a posteriori. There is nothing outside of the symbolic expression which it finds in concrete desires. There is not first a single desire of being, then a thousand particular feelings, but the desire to be exists and manifests itself only in and through jealousy, greed, love of art, cowardice, courage, and a thousand contingent, empirical expressions which always cause human reality to appear to us only as manifested by a particular man, by a specific person. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1329

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre’s definition of the project of being as the a priori essence of the for-itself, expressed only through concrete empirical desires.
• XREF: Direct foundation for Beauvoir’s account of the ambiguous subject as desire-to-be; also reverses Freud’s libidinal metaphor to a phenomenological register. — connects to: Desire proves human reality is constituted as a lack — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 354; Desire must be its own lack, not a merely physiological state — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 355; All human desires reduce to a desire to be or a desire to have. (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the being that makes itself a lack of being through desire #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1331
• Consciousness is defined as a lack or desire for Being #corroborates (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1460
• The desire to do ultimately reduces to a desire to be #expands (0.85)
• Man has no substance but is constituted as a disappearing subject of habit #expands (0.80)
• Selfness means man is always separated from himself by being #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 213