Radical freedom makes each person wholly responsible for their epoch

Evidence

Finally, as we pointed out earlier, each person is an absolute choice of self from the standpoint of a world of knowledges and of techniques which this choice both assumes and illumines; each person is an absolute upsurge at an absolute date and is perfectly unthinkable at another date. It is therefore a waste of time to ask what I should have been if this war had not broken out, for I have chosen myself as one of the possible meanings of the epoch which imperceptibly led to war. I am not distinct from this same epoch; I could not be transported to another epoch without contradiction. Thus I am this war which restricts and limits and makes comprehensible the period which preceded it. In this sense we may define more precisely the responsibility of the for-itself if to the earlier quoted statement, “There are no innocent victims,” we add the words, “We have the war we deserve.” … I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without anything or any person being able to lighten it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1291

Categorization

• XREF: Directly foreshadows Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity — total responsibility paired with no excuses. This is the foundational backdrop the reader explicitly wants. — connects to: Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1075; The for-itself’s responsibility extends to the whole peopled world — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1293; Freedom is the original upsurge that posits one’s ultimate ends.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the for-itself ‘is’ its war — that retrospection makes the epoch comprehensible through what it led to, and that one cannot be transported to another date without contradiction — is a genuinely dense, paradigm-shifting consequence of radical freedom.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the ethics of responsibility and self-committal themes in ‘On Sacrifice’ — total responsibility without excuse as a form of accepting one’s acts.

Broader Connections

• The for-itself’s responsibility extends to the whole peopled world #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1293
• Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being #corroborates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
• Freedom is the original upsurge that posits one’s ultimate ends. #expands (0.75)