The lover demands to be chosen absolutely, not as one among others
Evidence
But this choice must not be relative and contingent. The lover is irritated and feels himself cheapened when he thinks that the beloved has chosen him from among others. “Then if I had not come into a certain city, if I had not visited the home of so and so, you would never have known me, you wouldn’t have loved me?” This thought grieves the lover; his love becomes one love among others and is limited by the beloved’s facticity and by his own facticity as well as by the contingency of encounters. It becomes love in the world, an object which presupposes the world and which in turn can exist for others. … Actually what the lover demands is that the beloved should make of him an absolute choice. This means that the beloved’s being-in-the-world must be a being-as-loving. The upsurge of the beloved must be the beloved’s free choice of the lover. And since the Other is the foundation of my being-as-object, I demand of him that the free upsurge of his being should have his choice of me as his unique and absolute end; that is, that he should choose to be for the sake of founding my object-state and my facticity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 948
Categorization
- XREF: This is the systematic foundation Beauvoir builds on: the demand for absolute choice against facticity’s contingency. Directly relevant to the stated reading goal of situating Beauvoir against Sartre. — connects to: The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed; Willing to be loved alienates the lover’s freedom into the body-for-others.; Men demand unconditional love while refusing what that devotion reciprocally requires — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1885 (+2 more)
- DEFINE: Clarifies what an ‘absolute choice’ means in love: a choice that is not relative or contingent on encounters, so that the beloved’s being itself is chosen.
Broader Connections
- The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed
#expands(0.82) - Men demand unconditional love while refusing what that devotion reciprocally requires
#expands(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1885 - Woman’s love-religion seeks possession while paradoxically preserving the lover’s freedom.
#complicates(0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1882 - Willing to be loved alienates the lover’s freedom into the body-for-others.
#complicates(0.75)