Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it.

Evidence

WE have a past. Of course we have been able to establish that this past does not determine our acts as a prior phenomenon determines a consequent phenomenon; we have shown that the past is without force to constitute the present and to sketch out the future. Nevertheless the fact remains that the freedom which escapes toward the future can not give itself any past it likes according to its fancy; there are even more compelling reasons for the fact that it can not produce itself without a past. It has to be its own past, and this past is irremediable. … If the past does not determine our actions, at least it is such that we can not take a new decision except in terms of it. … Thus the importance of the past can not be exaggerated since for me “Wesen ist was gewesen ist,” essence is what has been. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets out the paradox that freedom is not determined by the past yet cannot be itself without having-been-such-and-such.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s treatment of how the for-itself must take up its situation, not transcend it arbitrarily. — connects to: The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 454; Freedom’s responsibility falls on the self alone despite one’s un-chosen birth.; Freedom can objectify its own past, rupturing temporal continuity with the instant (+16 more)
• QUESTION: The claim ‘essence is what has been’ inverts the usual existentialist priority of existence over essence — worth chasing what precisely Sartre concedes and rescinds here.

Broader Connections

• Freedom requires temporal continuity, not isolated instants of choice. #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 24
• Freedom cannot choose itself and thus creates things and situation. #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1205