The For-itself can only found itself by projecting toward a future it never reaches

Evidence

The project of the For-itself toward the future which it is is a project toward the In-itself. In this sense the For-itself has to be its future because it can be the foundation of what it is only before itself and beyond being. It is the very nature of the For-itself that it must be “an always future hollow.” For this reason it will never have become, in the Present, what it had to be, in the Future. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 453

Categorization

• DEFINE: The image ‘an always future hollow’ captures the structural tension between the For-itself’s foundation-seeking project and its being as lack.
• XREF: This causal structure of futural projection that can never be fulfilled is precisely the machinery Beauvoir inherits for her account of freedom and its risks. — connects to: The self I am depends on a future self it cannot determine — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 239; The for-itself is necessarily haunted by value and its own possibilities; The possible is a real lack the For-itself projects beyond itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 387 (+22 more)

Broader Connections

• The future is what the For-itself has yet to become, its determining possible being. #expands (0.85)
• Only human reality brings the future into the world, not being-in-itself #complicates (0.80)
• The for-itself’s relation to its future is a project toward its own suppression #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 615
• The for-itself becomes itself only by assuming its alienated being-for-others #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 777