Sartre’s philosophy prioritized the future over inheritance from the past.

Evidence

The Past is, to be sure, the being which I am outside of myself, but it is the being which I am without the possibility of not being it. This is what we have defined as being its past behind itself. The being of the Future which I have to be, on the contrary, is such that I can only be it; for my freedom gnaws at its being from below. This means that the Future constitutes the meaning of my present For-itself, as the project of its possibility, but that it in no way predetermines my For-itself which is to-come, since the For-itself is always abandoned to the nihilating obligation of being the foundation of its nothingness. … The future is what I would be if I were not free and what I can have to be only because I am free. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454 (#expands, via linked claim)

We have seen, indeed, that a Past which was only Past would collapse in an honorary existence in which it would have lost all connection with the present. In order for us to “have” a past, it is necessary that we maintain it in existence by our very project towards the future; we do not receive our past, but the necessity of our contingency implies that we are not able not to choose it. This is what it means “to have to be one’s own past.” We see that this necessity, considered here from a purely temporal point of view, is not basically distinct from the primary structure of freedom, which must be the nihilation of the being which it is and which, by this very nihilation, brings it about that there is a being which it is. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1182 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices.; The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 454; Having a past requires actively choosing it through the future-project. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1182 (+2 more)

Related

• Having a past requires actively choosing it through the future-project. (similarity 0.90)
• The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom (similarity 0.89)
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. (similarity 0.88)
• Being one’s past is the foundation of being able not to be it (similarity 0.85)
• Freedom as choice retroactively constitutes the past as irremediable. (similarity 0.85)
• The future project, not chronology, organizes the layers of one’s past. (similarity 0.85)
• The past is a free choice made from the present project (similarity 0.85)
• The compulsion power of one’s past derives from free choice, not its content (similarity 0.84)
• The past’s force and meaning depend entirely on present projects (similarity 0.84)
• The past is only meaningful through the end one currently chooses (similarity 0.84)
• The past is not an accretion but a necessary structural feature of the For-itself. (similarity 0.84)
• The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to (similarity 0.84)
• Freedom unifies past, present, and future into a single project. (similarity 0.84)
• Freedom can objectify its own past, rupturing temporal continuity with the instant (similarity 0.84)
• Past in suspense, present expecting, and future free project are one reality. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454
• The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. #corroborates (0.85)
• Having a past requires actively choosing it through the future-project. #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1182