of reasons from states of affairs depends on the interest or projection of self of the evaluator. Motives are the subjective counterparts of reasons constituted by projecting the self in a certain way. But these basic projections are not to be confused with will. “Will” amounts to choosing some action. This could not happen without prior projection of the self-guiding deliberate choice. Our choices, in turn, make the projected self become real. If reasons and motives are constituted in the projection of being toward its possibilities, a number of questions arise about the nature of rational character in Sartre's philosophy. What are these more basic projects? How do we discern them in ourselves? Can we find any sense of reason or the reasonable in these? The particular reasons, motives, and ends of individual actions, and such actions themselves, are all to be seen as part of a more inclusive structure. By contrasting different reactions to a long hike, Sartre delineates what is involved in these basic projects of self. Sartre imagines himself, after hours of hiking, finally giving into his mounting fatigue, throwing down his backpack, and giving up.
Answering a critic's reproach that he could have kept going, that he could have done otherwise, he says that he is too tired. This interchange represents the positions of free-will advocates and determinists. In the spirit of what we have said of reasons and motives above, Sartre challenges the premises about who is right. Acknowledging that he could have done otherwise, the problem should be set forth: “Could I have done otherwise without perceptibly modifying the organic totality of the projects which I am? In other words: I could have done otherwise. Agreed. But at what price?”31 It is not the fatigue per se that accounts for the decision to quit. His companions have walked just as far and they are in about the same physical shape. It is not a case of objectively reaching some threshold fatigue level, like watching the hand on a pressure gauge advance to the red shut-off zone. Instead, “I suffer my fatigue. That is, a reflective consciousness is directed upon my fatigue in order to live it and to confer on it a value and a practical relation to myself. It is only on this plane that the fatigue will appear to me as bearable or intolerable. It will never be anything in itself, but it is the reflective For-itself which rising up suffers the fatigue as intolerable.”32 This way of suffering fatigue is not a given. His companions respond differently; that difference throws into relief Sartre's way of regarding the suffering of fatigue as chosen. His companion is not overcome by fatigue; rather, the heat of the sun, the steepness of the slopes, and the effort of his legs are all felt as part of the enjoyable experience of a hike and of conquering the mountain. The “companion's fatigue,” Sartre says, “is lived in a vaster project of a trusting abandon to nature, of a passion consented to in order that it may exist at full strength, and at the same time the project of sweet mastery and appropriation.”33 But this mode of living his fatigue that the companion exhibits is still unoriginal. It is not sufficient, since behind it rests “a particular relation of my companion to his body, on the one hand, and to things, on the other.”34 The original project of existing one's body in a certain way is a “certain choice which the For-itself makes of itself…”35 In this choice, the body as given—and secondarily, the heat of the sun, our fatigue, and so forth—are “valorized” (given arbitrary value) in a certain way. Sartre depicts his own reaction to physical exhaustion as prompted by a much different way of “existing his body” compared with his companion's; he distrusts his body and doesn't like even having to take it into account. These examples show that the projects that give meaning to reasons and motives are basic choices that reflect who we are and that reveal the various ways we respond to the world. We witness the choices we have made about ourselves in the meanings we ascribe to the world. “The value of things, their instrumental role, their proximity and real distance…do nothing more than to outline my image—that is, my choice. My clothing…whether neglected or cared for, carefully chosen or ordinary, my furniture, the street on which I live, the city in which I reside, the books with which I surround myself, the recreation which I enjoy, everything which is mine…all this informs one of my choice—that is, my being.”36 So we return to Sartre's question of what's involved in opting to press on with the hike rather than stopping. Giving up was not an arbitrary or gratuitous act; it was part of “a certain view of the world in which difficulties can appear ‘not worth the trouble of being tolerated.’”37 To have done otherwise would involve a fundamental alteration of his choice of self. But, asserts Sartre, “this modification is always possible.” The feelings of anguish and responsibility mark our consciousness of our freedom to choose ourselves. We are (painfully) aware of our choices as “unjustifiable,” that is, simply as free assertions of our selves. He writes, “We are perpetually engaged in our choice and perpetually conscious of the fact that we ourselves can abruptly invert this choice and ‘reverse steam.’…By the sole fact that our choice is absolute, it is fragile.”38 Thus, the project, from which emerges a coordinate structure of reasons and motives, is a choice of self at a fundamental level. It is an absolute choice. Taking conditions as “givens” in the face of the contention that freedom is absolute, the question of the status of various “givens” in human experience arises. At first glance, the company where we work, our employment history, our occupation, all of these seem to be irreducible “givens.” Who can say we're free in relation to these objective conditions?
To clarify the question of limits to human freedom, and to show again Sartre's view of how reasons and motives emerge, I will review Sartre's discussion of some of these givens. Sartre's principle is stated clearly at the beginning of his section on “givens”; he writes, “The given…could never be a cause for an action if it were not appreciated. In addition, the appreciation, if it is not to be gratuitous, must be effected in the light of something. And this something which serves to appreciate the given can be only the end. Thus the intention by a single unitary upsurge posits the end, chooses itself, and appreciates the given in terms of the end.”39 This is not to say that givens are chosen to exist. I cannot make the chair over there pop in and out of existence by mere choice. Instead, “by the choice which it makes of its end, freedom causes the datum be revealed in this or that way, in this or that light in connection with the revelation of the world itself.”40 Situations are constituted by the relation in which we stand to brute existents. To a hiker standing at the foot of a cliff, the cliff takes on the qualities of climbable/not-climbable. To a passing rubbernecking motorist, the cliff registers as beautiful/ugly. Moreover, whether the cliff will be difficult or easy to scale (its coefficient of adversity) is not simply an objective property. What's hard for one is easy for another. The body itself gets revealed as poorly trained or as well trained by the choice of ventures. So the coefficient of adversity in situations reveals as much about a person as it does about brute givens.
The Project
In a similar way, the past as a determinant of action depends on our freely constituted project in the now. I cannot literally change the past. No physical force in the world is powerful enough to do that. Still, the meaning of the past hinges on my present commitments. In Sartre's words:
By projecting myself towards my ends, I preserve my ends, I preserve the past with me, and by action I decide its meaning. Who shall decide whether the period which I spent in prison after a theft was fruitful or deplorable? I—according to whether I give up stealing or become hardened. Who can decide the educational value of a trip, the sincerity of a profession of love, the purity of a past intention, etc.? It is I, always I, according to the ends by which I illuminate these past events.41
The common lament “if I had only” testifies to the relation of present to past. What, at the time, seemed “trivial” or “too difficult to be worth the effort,” becomes illuminated as “what I should have done at all costs.” Likewise, the urgency and weight of past engagements depends on present commitments. The gravity of a manger's professional and organizational commitments, the sanctity of her marriage, duties to her children, obligations to pay debts and carry the mortgage, and the like, may seem like unbreakable chains to the past. But, “suppose,” asks Sartre, “that…I radically modify my fundamental project…my earlier engagements will lose all their urgency.”42 Consider “Moonie” religious converts. Bonds to family and old friends dissolve as their indoctrination crystallizes. Thrown out of relation to present
