Obstacles are indispensable to freedom yet seem to condition it ontologically.

Evidence

Thus we begin to catch a glimpse of the paradox of freedom: there is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom. Human-reality everywhere encounters resistance and obstacles which it has not created, but these resistances and obstacles have meaning only in and through the free choice which human-reality is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164 (#expands, via linked claim)

But this residue is far from being originally a limit for freedom; in fact, it is thanks to this residue—that is, to the brute in-itself as such—that freedom arises as freedom. Indeed common sense will agree with us that the being who is said to be free is the one who can realize his projects. But in order for the act to be able to allow a realization, the simple projection of a possible end must be distinguished a priori from the realization of this end. If conceiving is enough for realizing, then I am plunged in a world like that of a dream in which the possible is no longer in any way distinguished from the real. I am condemned hence-forth to see the world modified at the whim of the changes of my consciousness; I can not practice in relation to my conception the “putting into brackets” and the suspension of judgment which will distinguish a simple fiction from a real choice. If the object appears as soon as it is simply conceived, it will no longer be chosen or merely wished for. Once the distinction between the simple wish, the representation which I could choose, and the choice is abolished, freedom disappears too. … Consequently the resistance which freedom reveals in the existent, far from being a danger to freedom, results only in enabling it to arise as freedom. There can be a free for-itself only as engaged in a resisting world. Outside of this engagement the notions of freedom, of determinism, of necessity lose all meaning. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1153 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Freedom constitutes its own obstacles by positing ends that render facticity restrictive. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176; The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1152; The brute facticity underlying freedom is ungraspable yet indispensable to it. (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #expands (0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164
• Freedom requires a resisting, brute world rather than being limited by it #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1153
• Freedom arises when necessity manifests its inner identity, not by its removal #corroborates (0.82)