The future is a lack the For-itself must be, not a not-yet now

Evidence

We must not understand by the future a “now” which is not yet. If we did so, we should fall back into the in-itself, and even worse we should have to envisage time as a given and static container. The future is what I have to be in so far as I can not be it. Let us recall that the For-itself makes itself present before being as not being this being and as having been its own being in the past. This presence is flight. We are not dealing here with a belated presence at rest near being but with an escape outside of being towards ——. And this flight is two-fold, for in fleeing the being which it is not, Presence flees the being which it was. Toward what is it fleeing? We must not forget that in so far as it makes itself present to being in order to flee it the For-itself is a lack. The possible is that which the For-itself lacks in order to be itself or, if you prefer, the appearance of what I am—at a distance. Thus we grasp the meaning of the flight which is Presence; it is a flight toward its being; that is, toward the self which it will be by coincidence with what it lacks. The Future is the lack which wrenches it as lack away from the in-itself of Presence. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 450

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise redefinition of the future as the lack that the For-itself has to be, negating the common ‘not-yet’ reading.
• DEEPTHINKING: The identification of future as lack-that-permits-presence is dense and paradigm-shifting for understanding temporal ontology.
• XREF: connects to: The future is what the For-itself has yet to become, its determining possible being.; The Future is the self awaited as the completion of what it lacks; A distant future that is not awaited ossifies into a thing-like given possibility. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 493 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The future is what the For-itself has yet to become, its determining possible being. #expands (0.90)
• The Future is the self awaited as the completion of what it lacks #expands (0.85)
• The For-itself can only found itself by projecting toward a future it never reaches #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 453
• The For-itself is a lack temporally outstripping and lagging itself #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 482
• A distant future that is not awaited ossifies into a thing-like given possibility. #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 493
• The For-itself constitutes its Future by perpetually apprehending itself as unachieved #expands (0.80)
• The future is a prejudicative self-relation, not representation or actual potency #contradicts (0.75)
• Only a being whose being is in question for itself can have a Future #corroborates (0.75)