The facticity of place only becomes an obstacle through freedom’s original project

Evidence

It is only in the act by which freedom has revealed facticity and apprehended it as place that this place thus defined is manifested as an impediment to my desires, an obstacle, etc. Otherwise how could it possibly be an obstacle? An obstacle to what? A compulsion to do what? The story is told of an emigrant who was going to leave France for Argentina after the failure of his political party: When someone remarked to him that Argentina was “very far away,” he asked, “Far from what?” And it is very certain that if Argentina appears “far away” to those who live in France, it is so in relation to an implicit national project which valorizes their place as French. For the internationalist revolutionary, Argentina is a center of the world as is any other country. But if we have by a primary project first constituted French territory as our absolute place, and if some catastrophe forces us to go into exile, it is in relation to this initial project that Argentina will appear to us as “very far away,” as a “land of exile”; it is in relation to this project that we shall feel ourselves expatriated. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1175

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, where facticity and freedom are in tension; also to Heidegger’s thrownness (Geworfenheit) which Sartre is reworking. — connects to: A place’s meaning is fixed only by the future ends toward which freedom projects.; The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1152; Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1177 (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates how Sartre defines ‘place’ as a category of facticity that derives its meaning only from a free project.

Broader Connections

• Freedom constitutes its own obstacles by positing ends that render facticity restrictive. #expands (0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176
• The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1152
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177
• Freedom and situation are mutually constituting rather than opposites #corroborates (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1164