The future project, not chronology, organizes the layers of one’s past.

Evidence

Thus the order of my choices of the future is going to determine an order of my past, and this order will contain nothing of the chronological. There will be first the always living past which is always confirmed: my promise of love, certain business contracts, a certain picture of myself to which I am faithful. Then there is the ambiguous past which has ceased to please me and to which I still hold indirectly: for example, this suit which I am wearing, and which I bought at a certain period when I had the desire to be fashionable, displeases me extremely at present; hence the past in which I “chose” the suit is truly dead. But on the other hand, my actual project of economy is such that I must continue to wear this suit rather than get another. Hence it belongs to a past which is both dead and living like those social institutions which having been created for a determined end, have now outlived the regime which established them and have been made to serve altogether different ends, sometimes even opposed ends. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1187

Categorization

• XREF: This retroactive organization of the past by future projects connects to Beauvoir’s account of how women’s projects reinterpret their histories; also parallels the Kierkegaardian ‘life is lived forward but understood backward.’ — connects to: The past is not an accretion but a necessary structural feature of the For-itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 476; Having a past requires actively choosing it through the future-project. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1182; Past in suspense, present expecting, and future free project are one reality. (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the two-layer distinction of a ‘living past’ retained by current projects versus a ‘dead past’ abandoned by them.

Broader Connections

• One’s fundamental project determines the meaning of one’s past #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1184
• The past is a free choice made from the present project #corroborates (0.92) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192
• The past’s force and meaning depend entirely on present projects #corroborates (0.90)
• Present experience re-encounters a past that was once a projected future. #expands (0.88) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1068
• The permanence of things is constituted by one’s own ongoing project. #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1284
• An individual justifies himself only through a future-oriented project, never through present facticity #corroborates (0.80)
• The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. #qualifies (0.75)