Understanding an act relates parts to total project, not deduction

Evidence

At present we are in a position to answer this. Our analysis, in fact, has just shown us that this act was not gratuitous. To be sure, it was not explained by a motive or a cause conceived as the content of a prior state of consciousness, but it had to be interpreted in terms of an original project of which it formed an integral part. Hence it becomes evident that we can not suppose that the act could have been modified without at the same time supposing a fundamental modification of my original choice of myself. This way of yielding to fatigue and of letting myself fall down at the side of the road expresses a certain initial stiffening against my body and the inanimate in-itself. It is placed within the compass of a certain view of the world in which difficulties can appear “not worth the trouble of being tolerated”; or, to be exact, since the motive is a pure non-thetic consciousness and consequently an initial project of itself toward an absolute end (a certain aspect of the in-itself-for-itself), it is an apprehension of the world (warmth, distance from the city, uselessness of effort, etc.) as the cause of my ceasing to walk. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1119 (#expands, via linked claim)

To be sure, the cause is objective; it is the state of contemporary things as it is revealed to a consciousness. It is objective that the Roman plebs and aristocracy were corrupted by the time of Constantine or that the Catholic Church is ready to favor a monarch who at the time of Clovis will help it triumph over Arianism. Nevertheless this state of affairs can be revealed only to a for-itself since in general the for-itself is the being by which “there is” a world. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Individual acts express and are unchangeable apart from one’s original project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1119; Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1089; Concrete understanding requires adding determinations, not invoking inert background

Broader Connections

• Individual acts express and are unchangeable apart from one’s original project #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1119
• Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1089
• Concrete understanding requires adding determinations, not invoking inert background #complicates (0.72)