Future free acts retroactively determine what our present conduct means.

Evidence

An example may make this point clearer. The past of a retired soldier under the Restoration is to have been a hero of the retreat from Russia. And what we have explained just now enables us to understand that this past itself is a free choice of the future. It is by choosing not to join in with the government of Louis XVIII and the new customs, by choosing until the end to hope for the triumphal return of the Emperor, by choosing even to conspire to hasten this return and to prefer to be a retired soldier rather than an active solider that the old soldier of Napoleon chooses for himself a past as a hero of Beresina. Another soldier who had formed the project of going over to the new government would certainly not have chosen the same past. But conversely, if we are considering only one retired solider, if he lives in almost indecent poverty, if he is embittered, and if he longs for the Emperor’s return, this is because he was a hero of the retreat from Russia. We must be sure to understand this: the past does not act before any constituting recovery, and it does not in any way act deterministically; but once the past “soldier of the Empire” has been chosen, then the conduct of the for-itself realizes this past. There is even no difference between the soldier’s choosing this past and his realizing it by his behavior. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Since freedom is choice, it is change. It is defined by the end which it projects; that is, by the future which it has to be. But precisely because the future is the not-yet-existing-state of what is, it can be conceived only within a narrow connection with what is. It is not possible that what is should illuminate what is not yet, for what is is a lack and consequently can be known as such only in terms of that which it lacks. The end illuminates what is. But to go looking for the end to-come in order by means of it to make known that-which-is, requires being already beyond what-is in a nihilating withdrawal which makes what-is appear clearly in the state of an isolated-system. What-is, therefore, takes on its meaning only when it is surpassed toward the future. Therefore what-is is the past. We see how the past as “that which is to be changed” is indispensable to the choice of the future and how consequently no free surpassing can be effected except in terms of a past, but we can see too how the very nature of the past comes to the past from the original choice of a future. In particular the irremediable quality of the past comes from my actual choice of the future; if the past is that in terms of which I conceive and project a new state of things in the future, then the past itself is that which is left in place, that which consequently is itself outside all perspective of change. Thus in order for the future to be realizable, it is necessary that the past be irremediable. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1178 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Freedom as choice retroactively constitutes the past as irremediable. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1178; The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 454; The past is a free choice made from the present project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1192 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Past in suspense, present expecting, and future free project are one reality. #expands (0.90)
• The past is a free choice made from the present project #contradicts (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192
• Freedom as choice retroactively constitutes the past as irremediable. #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1178
• The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom #contradicts (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454