Constantine’s establishment of Constantinople

Constantine’s establishment of Constantinople serves Jean-Paul Sartre as a compact example of intentional action: Constantine acted by realizing a project to establish a new imperial residence in the East, although he did not foresee the cultural and political consequences that would follow. The example distinguishes an act from its eventual effects and shows how a desired, not-yet-realized possibility can guide action by making a lack in the present world apparent.

The Project and Its Intended Result

Constantine established himself at Byzantium with the project of creating a new residence for emperors in the East. For Sartre, that intention is sufficient to identify the deed as an action: the result that matters in defining it is the one Constantine meant to bring about, not every later consequence attributable to the founding. The conception of a new city precedes the act, or at least organizes the successive steps through which it is carried out.

That conception is more than a neutral image of something possible. The new city is apprehended as desirable and still unrealized. Its absence gives the project direction: the contemplated residence becomes an end toward which action can be arranged, rather than simply one more existing thing within the world.

The Lack That Makes Action Possible

Sartre connects the project to a perceived lack. Constantine’s intention to provide a rival for Rome presupposes that Rome lacks a counterweight; the project also figures the missing city as a Christian counterpart to a profoundly pagan capital. The new residence is thus conceived against a value-laden account of what the existing arrangement fails to provide.

This account illustrates Sartre’s broader claim that action depends on recognizing a desideratum—an objective lack, or negation. Existing conditions cannot, by themselves, supply the reason for changing them. They become grounds for action only when viewed against an end that is not yet realized. The project of the new city makes a deficiency legible and turns it into a practical direction.

Consequences Beyond the Intention

Constantine did not foresee that the new center would become a center of Greek culture and language, that its emergence would ultimately provoke a schism in the Christian Church, or that it would contribute to the weakening of the Roman Empire. These consequences belong to the historical reach of the undertaking, but they were not the intention by which Sartre identifies it as an act.

The example therefore separates intentional authorship from complete foresight. An agent need not anticipate every link in the chain of effects for an action to occur: Constantine acted insofar as he realized the project of a new imperial residence. The distinction allows Sartre to acknowledge consequences that exceed a project without confusing them with the objective that first organized it.