Temporal unity cannot be rebuilt from atemporal substances

Evidence

But if the relation to the past is not given in some manner, these operations can not create it. In a word, if we begin by isolating man on the instantaneous island of his present, and if all his modes of being as soon as they appear are destined by nature to a perpetual present, we have radically removed all methods of understanding his original relation to the past. We shall not succeed in constituting the dimension “past” out of elements borrowed exclusively from the present any more than “geneticists” have succeeded in constituting extension from unextended elements. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 411 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

If time is ‘the being which, in being, is not and in non-being, is’, then this also means, rigorously put: ‘Time itself is not what it is.’ Time is not always (simultaneously, successively, and permanently) the same as itself. The concept of time has its own moments: it differentiates itself and thus temporalizes itself. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 254 (#expands, via linked claim)

Thus the reflective consciousness is constituted as consciousness of duration, and hence psychic duration appears to consciousness. This psychic temporality as a projection into the in-itself of original temporality is a virtual being whose phantom flow does not cease to accompany the ekstatic temporalization of the for-itself in so far as this is apprehended by reflection. But psychic temporality disappears completely if the for-itself remains on the un-reflective level or if impure reflection purifies itself. Psychic temporality is similar in this respect to original temporality—in that it appears as a mode of being of concrete objects and not as a limit or a pre-established rule. Psychic time is only the connected bringing together of temporal objects. But its essential difference from original temporality is that it is while original temporality temporalizes itself. As such psychic time can be constituted only with the past, and the future can be only as a past which will come after the present past; that is, the empty form before-after is hypostasized, and it orders the relations between objects equally past. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 549 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Temporality cannot be derived from atemporal being or imposed upon it; The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 411; Psychic temporality is constituted by reflection, not original temporality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 549 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 411
• Psychic temporality is constituted by reflection, not original temporality #contradicts (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 549
• Time is not identical to itself but differentiates and temporalizes itself #expands (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 254
• Leibniz and Bergson treated temporality as mere immanent continuity #corroborates (0.72)
• Temporal passage is one global modification, not two separate events #expands (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 491
• Time does not genuinely heal past errors #exemplifies (0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 585