The passionate man’s project depopulates the world and leaves him unfulfilled

Evidence

The passionate man seeks possession; he seeks to attain being. The failure and the hell which he creates for himself have been described often enough. He causes certain rare treasures to appear in the world, but he also depopulates it. Nothing exists outside of his stubborn project; therefore nothing can induce him to modify his choices. And having involved his whole life with an external object which can continually escape him, he tragically feels his dependence. Even if it does not definitely disappear, the object never gives itself. The passionate man makes himself a lack of being not that there might be being, but in order to be. And he remains at a distance; he is never fulfilled. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 66

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The phrase ‘he makes himself a lack of being not that there might be being, but in order to be’ is the core Pascalian/Heideggerian mechanism at work — connects to how others’ freedom is instrumentally denied.

Related

• The passionate man, though admired from afar, cannot commune and readily turns violent (similarity 0.81)
• The passionate man fails where subjectivity, not content, cannot fulfill itself (similarity 0.79)
• Maniacal passion denies others’ freedom and slides into fanaticism and oppression (similarity 0.78)
• The sub-man resists the projects of free men rather than enlarging the human realm. (similarity 0.78)