De Beauvoir returns to the definition of genuine freedom that she elaborated in the first part of her book, but now in relation to the forms of moral unfreedom she has explained in Part Two. Her complex statement that people must “desire that there
be being,” without willing themselves to be, means that, in order to assume ambiguity, people must seriously engage serious values: they must have concrete pictures of what they want themselves and the world to become (hence, must “desire that there
be being”). At the same time, however, because it is impossible for any individual to completely reshape the world in their image, they must also recognize that their desire for perfect fulfillment (being) is impossible to realize and, therefore, refuse to hold themselves to this standard (which is not willing themselves
to be). The limit of any individual will, as de Beauvoir explains it here, is closely connected to the individual’s interdependence on others. Even though existentialism starts with the human individual as the critical moral agent, it also insists that it is impossible to change the world alone, and indeed to even survive as a human being without relationships to other humans and their own freely chosen values and life projects.