The instant arises only when a project’s end coincides with its successor’s beginning.
Evidence
But in the very development of our temporalization, we can produce instants if certain processes arise on the collapse of prior processes. The instant will be then both a beginning and an end. In short, if the end of one project coincides with the beginning of another project, an ambiguous, temporal reality will arise which will be limited by a prior nothingness in that it is a beginning and limited by a posterior nothingness in that it is an end. But this temporal structure will be concrete only if the beginning is itself given as the end of the process which it is making-past. A beginning which is given as the end of a prior project—such must be the instant. It will exist therefore only if we are a beginning and an end to ourselves within the unity of a single act. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1123
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the Sartrean instant as a double-nothingness structure — a beginning that is also an end, produced when one project collapses into another.
- XREF: connects to: Deliberation occurs only after the decisive project is already chosen.; The instant marks the possible rupture point where one life-project ends and another begins.
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Deliberation occurs only after the decisive project is already chosen.; The instant marks the possible rupture point where one life-project ends and another begins.