Self-negation is an active choice, not a passive outcome

Evidence

As will-to-be, human beings deny their freedom in order to make of themselves objects. Th us, this attitude is closely related to the naïve realistic attitude that says that being and truth are always pre-given; this implies that we are obliged to turn ourselves into purely objective beings. Th e subjectivity that inserts itself inside a scheme of pure objective truth creates a world of men-objects. To this philosophy, the will-to-be is nothing more than the will-to-be-as-onealready-is. Does not a will that satisfi es itself with taking upon itself being as it is prove its own uselessness? It certainly does not add anything to being, which already acts in a world full of richness. Rather, by causing subjectivity’s adherence to this belief, it creates the conditions for subjectivity’s self-negation, for its selfdevalorization (here, we must be careful to emphasize that self-negation is an activity, and not the result of passivity: self-negation is always the negation of the self by the self ). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 435

Categorization

• XREF: The insistence that self-negation is activity, not passivity, resonates with Sartre’s bad faith as an act in Being and Nothingness — a possible influence-direction data point. — connects to: Intentions constitute themselves as empty through self-conscious negation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 230; The self flees each negation toward a complementary negation whose fusion reveals the in-itself; Desire is a distinctive mode of self-choice, not a mere directed longing (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The For-itself’s being consists in internal negation rather than self-coincidence #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 445
• The separate bounded self is a fallacy we choose whether to recognize #expands (0.78)
• Nothingness grounds negation by being itself a negation, not an empty void #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 215
• Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it #exemplifies (0.75) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 569
• Moral principle activation only shapes behavior when linked to the active self-concept #corroborates (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2143