Jean-Paul Sartre — Selected Thematic Extractions
Being and Nothingness Theme 4: Temporality, Mortality, and What They Demand of You
Core Mental Models
Model 1: You Are Your Future — The Direction You Are Moving Defines What You Currently Are
Sartre’s treatment of temporality is counterintuitive and operationally important.
In the conventional understanding, you are primarily your past — the accumulated history of what you have done, what has happened to you, and what you have become. The past is what is fixed. The future is uncertain.
Sartre inverts this. Consciousness is fundamentally oriented toward the future — it is the projection of possibilities not yet actualized that gives meaning and direction to the present. You are, in the most important sense, the project you are pursuing — the possibilities you are moving toward — rather than the history you are leaving behind. The past is facticity — the given. The future is transcendence — the direction of freedom.
This means that what you currently are is determined more by where you are going than by where you have been. The person moving toward genuine development is a developing person now — not potentially, not eventually, but currently, in the direction of their movement. The person moving toward stagnation is a stagnating person now, regardless of their past achievements.
The takeaway: You are your project. The direction you are currently moving — toward growth or stagnation, toward authenticity or bad faith, toward the development of your capacities or their decline — is what you currently are, more than your past is. The future shapes the present in a way the past cannot.
Model 2: Death Is Not Your Possibility — It Is the Permanent Possibility of the Impossibility of Your Possibilities
Sartre’s treatment of death is a deliberate and precise disagreement with Heidegger — and produces a different set of practical implications.
Heidegger argues that death is your ownmost possibility — the possibility that is most authentically yours, that cannot be transferred to anyone else, and that when genuinely confronted produces the authentic existence that everyday life conceals.
Sartre disagrees. Death is not your possibility. It is the permanent possibility of the elimination of all your possibilities — by circumstances, by others, by the absurd accident that can arrive at any moment. Death is not something you can authentically appropriate. It is something that happens to you from outside, without your participation, and cannot be integrated into your project as a possibility you are moving toward.
The practical implication is significant: the confrontation with death, in Sartre’s framework, does not produce authentic existence. What produces authentic existence is the confrontation with freedom — with the anxiety of genuine choice in the absence of predetermined nature or guaranteed outcome.
The takeaway: Death is not your project. It is the termination of your project from outside. The urgency that mortality produces is real — but it is not the urgency of a possibility to be appropriated. It is the urgency of a freedom that will eventually be terminated and that therefore demands to be exercised now, fully, without the deferral that bad faith permits.
Model 3: The Present Moment Is the Meeting Point of Past Facticity and Future Transcendence — And It Is Always Already Slipping Into the Past
Sartre’s temporal analysis produces one practical implication that the more abstract dimensions of the discussion can obscure: the present moment is the only location where choice is available — and it is always already becoming the past that will constitute the facticity of the next present.
Every choice you make in the present immediately becomes part of the factical ground from which the next choice is made. The present moment of genuine freedom is always surrounded by the past it is transcending and the future it is projecting toward — and it is always, even as it is being experienced, becoming the past.
This is not cause for despair. It is cause for presence — the specific quality of full engagement with the present moment as the only available location of choice, knowing that it will immediately become the facticity of the next moment and that the quality of the present choice determines the factical ground available to the next freedom.
The takeaway: The present moment is the only place where freedom is exercised — and it is passing continuously. The urgency this produces is not the urgency of mortality but the urgency of presence: each moment of genuine choice is becoming the facticity of the next moment even as it is being exercised.
Specific Quotes with Citations
1. “I am not what I am, and I am what I am not.” — Being and Nothingness , Part Two: Being-for-Itself
Citation note: High confidence on general placement in Part Two. Hazel Barnes’s translation. This is Sartre’s precise statement of the fundamental structure of consciousness — always exceeding what it currently is, never fully coinciding with itself. Verify exact wording against your edition.
This is the self-transcendence framework in its most precise form. Consciousness is never simply identical with itself — it is always already moving beyond what it currently is toward what it is not yet. In professional contexts this reframes every “I am not the kind of person who ___” as a factical claim that omits the transcendence: you are not yet the kind of person who — but that is a current position from which movement is available, not a fixed nature.
2. “Man is a being who makes himself.” — Being and Nothingness / Existentialism Is a Humanism , thematic synthesis
Citation note: This formulation synthesizes Sartre’s argument across both texts. It appears in various forms in Being and Nothingness ‘s treatment of the for-itself. Verify exact formulation in your edition.
This is the self-construction framework applied to temporality: you are making yourself through the ongoing series of choices that constitute your movement through time. In teaching contexts this is the most accessible entry point into the temporal dimension of the existentialist argument — the making is continuous, not completed.
3. “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” — Attributed to Sartre
Citation note: This formulation is widely attributed to Sartre but does not appear verbatim in Being and Nothingness in major translations. It accurately represents the facticity-transcendence argument across the text. Do not attribute to a specific section. Attribute to Sartre generally and note that the exact source is uncertain. The concept is verifiable across the text.
This is the freedom-within-facticity framework in its most compressed form. What has been done to you is your facticity — the given that you did not choose. Freedom is what you do with it — the transcendence that is available within and beyond the given. In professional contexts this is the most operationally useful formulation of the entire facticity-transcendence analysis.
4. “To be is to be there.” — Being and Nothingness , Part One / thematic synthesis
Citation note: Moderate confidence on exact placement. This formulation represents Sartre’s argument about the situated character of existence — that existence is always existence in a specific situation, never abstract or free-floating. Verify against your edition.
This is the situatedness framework — the argument that existence is always concretely situated in a specific factical condition. In professional contexts this reframes every aspiration toward abstract freedom as a misunderstanding: freedom is always freedom in a situation, not freedom from situation. The question is not how to escape your situation but how to exercise your freedom within it.
5. “The present is not; it is always too late or too soon.” — Being and Nothingness , Part Two: Temporality
Citation note: Moderate confidence on exact placement within Part Two’s temporality section. Hazel Barnes’s translation renders the argument about the elusiveness of the present consistently. Verify exact wording against your edition.
This is the temporal urgency framework — the argument that the present moment is always already slipping. In professional contexts this reframes every “I will do this later” as a claim about a present that will arrive already surrounded by the facticity of what was done in the meantime. The present is elusive. The choice is immediate or it is already past.
Implementation Checklist
Habit 1: The Future-Orientation Practice
The Action Once per week — instead of reviewing the past week — orient forward: examine the future toward which your current choices are moving.
Write two sentences:
- “The direction in which my choices this week have been moving me is ___. The kind of being I am currently becoming through these choices is ___.”
- “The future I am projecting toward — if the direction of this week’s choices continues — is ___. This is / is not the future I am choosing.”
If the answer to the second sentence is “this is not the future I am choosing” — write one specific change in direction for next week.
When Sunday evening. 10 minutes maximum.
The Problem It Solves
- ❌ The past-orientation of most self-reflection — reviewing what happened rather than examining the direction being created
- ❌ The future arriving as the accumulated result of unexamined present choices
- ✅ The future-orientation installs Sartre’s temporal framework as a weekly practice: you are your project, and your project is what you are currently moving toward
- ✅ The direction correction produces a specific change rather than a general intention to do better
Habit 2: The Present Choice Awareness
The Action Once per day — at the moment of any significant decision — pause for 30 seconds and write one sentence:
“This choice is becoming the facticity of my next moment even as I make it.”
Then make the choice with full awareness that it is immediately becoming the given from which the next choice will be made.
This is not a deliberation practice. It is a presence practice — the installation of full temporal awareness at the moment of choice.
When At the moment of any significant daily choice. 30 seconds. The brevity is the point — temporal awareness does not require extended deliberation. It requires presence.
The Problem It Solves
- ❌ Choices made without awareness of their immediate conversion into facticity
- ❌ The present moment passing without the full engagement that its temporal structure demands
- ✅ The 30-second practice installs temporal awareness without disrupting the decision — the awareness changes the quality of the choice without extending its duration
- ✅ The written sentence makes the temporal structure explicit rather than leaving it as abstract knowledge
Habit 3: The Mortality Urgency Practice
The Action Once per month — not as a mortality contemplation in the Stoic sense, but as a Sartrean freedom urgency practice — spend 10 minutes with one question:
“Given that my freedom will eventually be terminated from outside — by death, by circumstance, by the absurd — what is the one choice I am currently deferring that this termination will make permanently unavailable?”
Write the answer specifically.
Then write one sentence: “The minimum viable exercise of this freedom this month is ___.”
Execute it before the end of the month.
When First day of each month. 10 minutes maximum.
The Problem It Solves
- ❌ Freedom deferred because its termination feels distant
- ❌ The urgency that mortality produces remaining abstract rather than converting into specific present choices
- ✅ The Sartrean framing — death as termination of freedom from outside rather than as possibility to be appropriated — produces a different urgency than the Stoic mortality contemplation: not “how should I live given that I will die” but “what freedom am I currently failing to exercise that death will eventually make impossible”
- ✅ The minimum viable execution prevents the practice from producing paralysis rather than action