JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Politics309nature of his work, and it is his wages. But this truth defines him just insofar as heconstantly goes beyond it in his practical activity. (In a popular democracy this maybe, for example, by working a double shift or by becoming an “activist” or by secretlyresisting the raising of work quotas. In a capitalist society it may be by joining a union,by voting to go on strike, etc.) Now this surpassing is conceivable only as a relation ofthe existent to its possibles. Furthermore, to say what man “is” is also to say what hecan be—and vice versa. The material conditions of his existence circumscribe the fieldof his possibilities (his work is too hard, he is too tired to show any interest in unionor political activity). Thus the field of possibles is the goal toward which the agentsurpasses his objective situation. And this field in turn depends strictly on the social,historical reality. For example, in a society where everything is bought, the possibilitiesof culture are practically eliminated for the workers if food absorbs 50 per cent ormore of their budget. The freedom of the bourgeois, on the contrary, consists in thepossibility of his allotting an always increasing part of his income to a great variety ofexpenditures. Yet the field of possibles, however reduced it may be, always exists, andwe must not think of it as a zone of indetermination, but rather as a strongly structuredregion which depends upon all of History and which includes its own contradictions.It is by transcending the given toward the field of possibles and by realizing onepossibility from among all the others that the individual objectifies himself andcontributes to making History. The project then takes on a reality which the agenthimself may not know, one which, through the conflicts it manifests and engenders,influences the course of events.Therefore we must conceive of the possibility as doubly determined. On the oneside, it is at the very heart of the particular action, the presence of the future as thatwhich is lacking and that which, by its very absence, reveals reality. On the otherhand, it is the real and permanent future which the collectivity forever maintains andtransforms. When common needs bring about the creation of new offices (for example,the multiplication of physicians in a society which is becoming industrialized), theseoffices, not yet filled—or vacant as the result of retirement or death—constitute forcertain people a real, concrete, and possible future. These persons can go into medicine.This career is not closed to them; at this moment their life lies open before them untildeath. All things being equal, the professions of army doctor, country doctor, colonialdoctor, etc., are characterized by certain advantages and certain obligations which theywill quickly know. This future, to be sure, is only partly true; it presupposes a statusquo and a minimum of order (barring accidents) which is contradicted precisely by thefact that our societies are in constant process of making history. But neither is it false,since it is this—in other words, the interests of the profession, of class, etc., the ever-