Nothing justifies the values a free being adopts since freedom grounds all values

Evidence

Value derives its being from its exigency and not its exigency from its being. It does not deliver itself to a contemplative intuition which would apprehend it as being value and thereby would remove from it its right over my freedom. On the contrary, it can be revealed only to an active freedom which makes it exist as value by the sole fact of recognizing it as such. It follows that my freedom is the unique foundation of values and that nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies me in adopting this or that particular value, this or that particular scale of values. As a being by whom values exist, I am unjustifiable. My freedom is anguished at being the foundation of values while itself without foundation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 250

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core existentialist relation of freedom to values: exigency, not being, grounds value, making the valuing self forever unjustifiable.
• XREF: Essential backdrop to Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity on the unjustifiability of freedom. — connects to: The given never conditions freedom because freedom is its internal negation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1160; Freedom is the foundational condition of all action — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1069; Freedom has no essence and therefore cannot be described like other things — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1073 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the foundational condition of all action #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1069
• The given never conditions freedom because freedom is its internal negation #corroborates (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1160
• Freedom has no essence and therefore cannot be described like other things #corroborates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1073