The absurdity of choice lives in a felt unjustifiability that freedom itself generates
Evidence
But precisely because here we are dealing with a choice, this choice as it is made indicates in general other choices as possibles. The possibility of these other choices is neither made explicit nor posited, but it is lived in the feeling of unjustifiability; and it is this which is expressed by the fact of the absurdity of my choice and consequently of my being. Thus my freedom eats away my freedom. Since I am free, I project my total possible, but I thereby posit that I am free and that I can always nihilate this first project and make it past. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1147
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: “My freedom eats away my freedom” — the paradox that freedom’s own awareness of alternatives undermines any justification for the choice made is a density of thought well beyond a summary.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does ‘the feeling of unjustifiability’ differ from anguish? Is this the same phenomenon under a different name, given the alleged neglect of anguish in this fundamental-project chapter?
- XREF: This ‘freedom eats away my freedom’ paradox is the direct philosophical backdrop to Beauvoir’s melancholic freedom and her notion that action must be perpetually re-founded in The Ethics of Ambiguity. — connects to: Absolute freedom makes one’s every choice perpetually fragile and invertible; Anguish reveals that one’s original choice is unjustifiable and contingent — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1120; Absurdity means the choice grounds all reasons and reasons-for-being (+1 more)