Man is the being whose project is to be God

“Man is the being whose project is to be God” condenses the book’s account of human desire: the for-itself seeks to become a being that is both conscious and fully grounded in itself. The formula names a fundamental direction, not a destiny imposed by human nature. That desire becomes real only in individual choices, through which a person pursues particular ways of being and having.

The desired synthesis

The argument begins from the for-itself as a lack of being. It arises by nihilation of the in-itself, and in that relation it is neither the solid being it negates nor a completed alternative to it. Its desire therefore reaches toward the in-itself, but not toward a simple return to what was already there. It projects a synthesis: being that would be in itself while also being its own foundation. The for-itself wants the in-itself’s density and self-identity without surrendering consciousness or its capacity to surpass what is given.

The book calls this ideal the in-itself-for-itself and identifies it with God. The expression “to be God” thus has a precise ontological sense: to be the foundation of one’s own being while possessing the fullness of being-in-itself. Human reality reaches toward this impossible conjunction as its ultimate value. It is not a claim that people consciously pursue a religious doctrine; the project is prior to particular myths and rites, and gives them a way to understand the ultimate end toward which human existence is directed.

A fundamental project, freely lived

Although the desire to be God gives human striving its broadest meaning, it does not prescribe a fixed course. The book explicitly distinguishes the meaning of desire from the particular ends through which desire is realized. People pursue those ends in empirical situations, and their pursuit helps constitute those situations as meaningful for them. Desire for being is always lived as desire for a particular mode of being; that mode, in turn, gives significance to the many concrete desires woven through conscious life.

The resulting structure has several levels. A particular empirical desire symbolizes a person’s more fundamental, concrete choice of what being is to mean in that life. That individual project, situated in the world, also expresses the more abstract desire for being that human beings share. Yet the shared structure does not replace the individual: completion and concrete existence belong to the free, singular person. The fundamental project can be discerned only through particular desires, just as space is encountered through the bodies that shape it, and an object appears through its perspectives without being exhausted by any one of them.

This account is meant to clarify freedom, not to limit it. The abstract desire to be cannot serve as a human essence that determines what anyone must choose. Freedom is the concrete nihilation through which a person makes a lack of being of their own being; desire, likewise, is identified with lack. The general project describes the human meaning of freedom, but freedom exists only in the particular person’s choice. Existence remains prior to essence: the project’s structure does not dictate its individual realization.

Acts, possession, and existential psychoanalysis

The expression also reaches into ordinary action. Every act, whether slight or weighty, expresses a free choice of being. That choice may aim directly at being, or pursue it by appropriating the world; in lived experience the two routes are inseparable. A desire to be is accompanied by a desire to have, and a desire to have seeks through the world the same value that the desire to be seeks more directly. Possession is therefore not merely a separate, lesser motive: it is one way the person inserts the world between the self and the being it seeks.

The objects chosen are significant not simply as isolated things but through the ways their qualities reveal being. The book’s examples include water’s fluidity, stone’s density, the yellow and red of things, the taste of a tomato, and the wrinkled softness of split peas. Such qualities are not treated as irreducible givens or as self-explanatory preferences. They can symbolically disclose a chosen way in which being presents itself and can be possessed. Existential psychoanalysis accordingly seeks the ontological meaning of qualities and of recurring preferences, rather than explaining them solely through sexuality or reducing them to material characteristics.

The task of existential psychoanalysis is to move from such concrete projects toward the original way each person has chosen their being. Empirical desires are clues: none can be fully understood in isolation, because each derives meaning from a wider personal project. The method therefore interprets patterns of conduct and desire as expressions of a free, individual choice, rather than treating a person as a collection of disconnected appetites. The fundamental project is not directly displayed apart from its particular manifestations, but those manifestations can reveal its structure.

Ethical implications and the refusal of seriousness

This account has an ethical consequence, though ontology itself does not issue moral commands. The book describes existential psychoanalysis as a moral inquiry because it brings out the ethical meaning of human projects. Its analysis challenges explanations that reduce conduct to interest or utility: human attitudes carry an ideal meaning that exceeds the familiar opposition between egoism and altruism, and also exceeds conduct simply described as disinterested. Self-interest is one freely chosen way of realizing the underlying passion, not a sufficient account of that passion as a whole.

The project also supports a critique of the spirit of seriousness. Seriousness treats values as independent givens and transfers desirability from the meaning of things to their material constitution. Bread, on this account, is deemed desirable because it nourishes and is necessary for life, as though its value were already written into an external order. The serious attitude lets the object’s empirical properties absorb its symbolic value, then treats the object as desirable in itself. In concealing the free project through which value is pursued, this attitude hides the pursuit from the person who undertakes it and makes objects seem like mute demands to which the person merely obeys.

The expression therefore holds together aspiration and failure without turning aspiration into a guaranteed outcome. Humanity seeks a self-grounding fullness it cannot possess as a settled nature; each person realizes that pursuit through choices made in a particular world. To say that the human project is to be God is to describe the ultimate meaning those choices reach toward—and, at the same time, to insist that their concrete form remains a matter of freedom.