JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Responsibility203reflection will take up for its own account the initial project of freedom or not take itup, whether it will be a purifying reflection refusing to “go along with” this project. Itis obvious that we are here in the presence of a free choice among alternatives of thetype that classical psychology has habituated us to consider. “Mitmachen oder nichtmitmachen” [to take or not to take part]. Except the two terms here do not exist beforethe decision. And as they take their source from the nonthetic consciousness thatfreedom has of itself, it is clear that accessory reflection is just the prolongation of thebad faith found nonthetically within the primitive project, whereas pure reflection isa break with this projection and the constitution of a freedom that takes itself as itsend. This is why, although it would be much more advantageous to live on the plane offreedom that takes itself for its end, most people have a difficulty. . . .Notes1 I am shifting to the personal pronoun here since Sartre is describing the for-itselfin concrete personal terms rather than as a metaphysical entity. Strictly speaking,of course, this is his position throughout, and the French “il” is indifferently “he”or “it.” Tr.2 J. Romains: Les hommes de bonne volonté; “Prélude à Verdun.”3 Sartre left for his second trip to the United States on 12 December 1945 (TheWritings of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 13). He traveled across the Atlantic by Libertyship, a voyage that took eighteen days; hence this document, the second part ofwhich is dated 17 December, must have been written during that voyage.4 Jean Paulhan, Entretien sur des faits Divers (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), pp. 24–25.