Sartre's second century

Autobiography, Ontology and Responsibility 19
central claim: "There can be a free for-itself only as engaged in a resisting
world. Outside of this engagement, the notions of freedom, of
determinism, of necessity lose all meaning." 2 The world within which the
for-itself exercises its freedom is a world of affordances and resistances,
both of which are measured in terms of the projects the for-itself has
adopted. The rock in front of me is an obstacle if I wish to reach the other
side, but it is an affordance if I intend to climb it. However, my projects do
not entirely create the situation that provides the opportunity for my
choice. The resisting world contains an irreducible "particular datum" 3
which freedom does not choose, for the freedom of the for-itself is not a
freedom to choose its existence, but is constrained to exercise its free
projects within the context of a given situation:
But what is this relationship to the given? Are we to understand by this that
the given (the in-itself) conditions freedom? Let us look more closely. The
given does not cause freedom (since it can only produce the given). Nor is
it the reason of freedom (since all "reason" comes into the world through
freedom). Neither is it the necessary condition of freedom since we are on
the level of pure contingency. Neither is it an indispensable matter upon
which freedom must exercise itself, for this would be to suppose that
freedom exists ready-made as an Aristotelian form or as a Stoic Pneuma
and that it looks for a matter to work in. The given in no way enters into
the constitution of freedom since freedom is interiorized as the internal
negation of the given. It is simply the pure contingency which freedom
exerts by denying the given while making itself a choice. 4
Sartre identifies the implications of this view of situated freedom for
human temporality. He notes that "the past (is) the essence which the foritself
was." 5 He adds that as a "nihilating withdrawal", the for-itself is a
nihilation of the given present and the past "essence". More significantly,
both nihilations form a "single reality". 6 However, the precise nature of
this "single reality" is unclear. Perhaps these nihilations are "single"
because they are nihilations resulting from one and the same spontaneous
act of the for-itself. In this case, their unity appears to be simply an
external one, consisting solely in the unconditioned spontaneity of the for-
2
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 483.
3
Ibid., 487.
4
Ibid.,486f.
5
Ibid., 487.
6
Ibid. We shall see below that the Sartre of the War Diaries offers a dissenting
analysis of this "single reality" of the negation of the present and the negation of
the past.