Situation-limits are given meaning only by the freedom they nevertheless bound

Evidence

The fact that there is a beyond for life, a beyond which derives its meaning only through and in my life and which yet remains for me an unrealizable, and the fact that there is a freedom beyond my freedom, a situation beyond my situation and one for which what I live as a situation is given as an objective form in the midst of the world: here are two types of situation-limit which have the paradoxical character of limiting my freedom on every side and yet not having any other meaning than that which my freedom confers on them. For class, for race, for the body, for the Other, for function, etc., there is a “being-free-for——.” By it the For-itself projects itself towards one of its possibles which is always its ultimate possible, for the envisaged possibility is a possibility of seeing itself; that is, of being another than itself in order to see itself from outside. In one case as in the other there is a projection of self towards an “ultimate” which thereby interiorized becomes a thematic out-of-reach meaning of hierarchized possibles. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1241

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘situation-limits’ and the ‘being-free-for——’ structure: external limits interiorized as unrealizables.
• XREF: Directly foreshadows Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, which builds on precisely this notion of finite freedom confronting its situation-limits. — connects to: A place’s meaning is fixed only by the future ends toward which freedom projects.; Empirical freedom is a negative concept defined by absence of constraint within a situation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1158; Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1164 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164
• The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1152
• Objective possibility constitutes freedom but requires knowing and wanting #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1285
• Freedom is meaningful only as engaged by free choice of ends #expands (0.80)
• Freedom has concrete content only when engaged in the world #expands (0.75)
• Specific meaning arises only from an arbitrary contingent break #expands (0.75)