Particular projects remain free choices rather than being determined by the global project

Evidence

It amounts to saying that by means of the will, we can construct ourselves entirely, but that the will which presides over this construction finds its meaning in the original project which it can appear to deny, that consequently this construction has a function wholly different from that which it advertises, and that finally it can reach only details of structures and will never modify the original project from which it has issued any more than the consequences of a theorem can turn back against it and change it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1138 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

An example may make this point clearer. The past of a retired soldier under the Restoration is to have been a hero of the retreat from Russia. And what we have explained just now enables us to understand that this past itself is a free choice of the future. It is by choosing not to join in with the government of Louis XVIII and the new customs, by choosing until the end to hope for the triumphal return of the Emperor, by choosing even to conspire to hasten this return and to prefer to be a retired soldier rather than an active solider that the old soldier of Napoleon chooses for himself a past as a hero of Beresina. Another soldier who had formed the project of going over to the new government would certainly not have chosen the same past. But conversely, if we are considering only one retired solider, if he lives in almost indecent poverty, if he is embittered, and if he longs for the Emperor’s return, this is because he was a hero of the retreat from Russia. We must be sure to understand this: the past does not act before any constituting recovery, and it does not in any way act deterministically; but once the past “soldier of the Empire” has been chosen, then the conduct of the for-itself realizes this past. There is even no difference between the soldier’s choosing this past and his realizing it by his behavior. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fundamental projects must be freely and continuously re-chosen rather than settled once; The past is a free choice made from the present project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1192; The environment is revealed only through and within one’s free project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1196 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The past is a free choice made from the present project #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192
• Some secondary possibles vary freely without altering fundamental project #corroborates (0.85)
• The will can reshape details but never its originating fundamental project #contradicts (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1138
• The environment is revealed only through and within one’s free project #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1196
• The for-itself’s project is a concrete individual choice, not an abstract universal #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1384