The obstacles that limit freedom are constituted only by freedom’s own posited ends

Evidence

A particular crag, which manifests a profound resistance if I wish to displace it, will be on the contrary a valuable aid if I want to climb upon it in order to look over the countryside. In itself—if one can even imagine what the crag can be in itself—it is neutral; that is, it waits to be illuminated by an end in order to manifest itself as adverse or helpful. Again it can manifest itself in one or the other way only within an instrumental-complex which is already established. Without’ picks and piolets, paths already worn, and a technique of climbing, the crag would be neither easy nor difficult to climb; the question would not be posited, it would not support any relation of any kind with the technique of mountain climbing. Thus although brute things (what Heidegger calls “brute existents”) can from the start limit our freedom of action, it is our freedom itself which must first constitute the framework, the technique, and the ends in relation to which they will manifest themselves as limits. Even if the crag is revealed as “too difficult to climb,” and if we must give up the ascent, let us note that the crag is revealed as such only because it was originally grasped as “climbable”; it is therefore our freedom which constitutes the limits which it will subsequently encounter. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1152

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of the coefficient of adversity: adversity in things arises only via the preliminary positing of an end by the for-itself.
• XREF: This is the precise mechanism behind the ‘situation’ concept that Beauvoir inherits; also resonates with Heidegger’s tool-analysis / being-in-the-world. — connects to: The dead persist only through the survivor’s freedom that carries them — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 419; Freedom is the original upsurge that posits one’s ultimate ends.; Freedom constitutes its own obstacles by positing ends that render facticity restrictive. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176 (+16 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The radical move — that limits are constituted by the freedom which then encounters them, so freedom ‘constitutes the limits which it will subsequently encounter’ — is a dense, almost paradoxical circularity that repays long reflection.

Broader Connections

• The Other’s freedom becomes a limit only through one’s own free choice. #expands (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1240
• Freedom’s only limit is itself; we cannot choose not to be free #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
• Freedom chooses its being but cannot choose not to be #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1146
• Freedom is meaningful only as engaged by free choice of ends #qualifies (0.85)
• Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1176
• Obstacles are indispensable to freedom yet seem to condition it ontologically. #complicates (0.80)
• Freedom has concrete content only when engaged in the world #expands (0.78)
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177