Bad Faith in the Face of Death
Being and NothingnessThis thematic thread follows the temptation to treat death as either a chosen project or an external destiny that settles responsibility.
increasing
Bearing strength in each event
decreasing
Death as a Future

Death as a Future
The Temptation
Death appears to offer a final horizon that could define a life in advance. The person may try to treat it as the ultimate project.
Difficulty
A particular death can be imagined, but death in general cannot be lived as a determinate possibility belonging to the for-itself.
Preparing for an End

Preparing for an End
An Attitude
People can prepare for a threatened execution or illness. Such preparation concerns a concrete danger and a project of how to meet it.
General Death
No comparable preparation can make death itself a chosen future. Its arrival remains outside the agent's control.
Death and the Past

Death and the Past
Objectification
Death makes a person's life wholly past for others. It removes the possibility of revising one's actions from within.
External Meaning
The living may call that fixed life a destiny, but this destiny belongs to the world of others, not to the dead person's freedom.
The Living Cannot Know

The Living Cannot Know
No Final Account
A person's projects can be interrupted before their value is settled. Survivors may interpret the remaining life, but they cannot complete it for its subject.
Open History
Even posthumous meanings remain subject to later historical projects and reinterpretations.
Mortality Without Mastery

Mortality Without Mastery
Factual Limit
Death is an unavoidable contingent fact, not a possibility the for-itself can freely realize as its own end.
Ethical Consequence
Freedom remains responsible for its projects, but it cannot claim authorship of the time at which those projects are ended.
Part Four, Chapter Two, Section I
Part Four, Chapter Two, discussion of expectation
Part Four, Chapter Two, discussion of destiny
Part Four, Chapter Two, after the account of posthumous life
Part Four, Chapter Two, conclusion of death discussion