Having a past is not an external possession relation

Evidence

There are then beings which “have” pasts. Just now we referred indifferently to an instrument, a society, a man. Was this right? Can we at the outset attribute a past to all finite existents or only to certain categories among them? This can be more easily determined if we examine more closely this very particular notion—“to have” a past. One cannot “have” a past as one “has” an automobile or a racing stable. That is, the past can not be possessed by a present being which remains strictly external to it as I remain, for example, external to my fountain pen. In short, in the sense that possession ordinarily expresses an external relation of the possessor to the possessed, the expression of possession is inadequate. External relations would hide an impassable abyss between a past and a present which would then be two factual givens without real communication. Even the absolute interpenetration of the present by the past, as Bergson conceives it, does not resolve the difficulty because this interpenetration, which is the organization of the past with the present, comes ultimately from the past itself and is only a relation of habitation. The past can indeed be conceived as being in the present, but by making it such we have removed all ways of presenting this immanence other than like that of a stone at the bottom of the river. The past indeed can haunt the present but it can not be the present; it is the present which is its past. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 420

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ontological sense of ‘having’ a past as non-external, critiquing both ordinary possession and Bergson’s interpenetration model.
• XREF: The critique of Bergson’s interpenetration and the claim ‘it is the present which is its past’ is the systematic backdrop to Beauvoir’s temporal freedom. — connects to: Being one’s past is the foundation of being able not to be it; The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 427; Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1366 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive inversion ‘the past is the present’ — the for-itself projects its past rather than inheriting it — is a dense, paradigm-shifting ontological move.

Broader Connections

• Possession is an internal bond of being, not an external relation #corroborates (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1366
• Possession is a lived, non-thetic relation rather than a known one. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1379