The inactive past cannot reach the present except through an ekstatic being

Evidence

Similarly Bergson with his duration, which is a melodic organization and multiplicity of interpenetration, does not appear to see that an organization of multiplicity presupposes an organizing act. He is right in contrast to Descartes when he suppresses the instant; but Kant was right rather than Bergson in claiming that there is no given synthesis. This Past of Bergson’s, which clings to the present and even penetrates it, is scarcely more than a rhetorical figure. It shows well the difficulties which Bergson encountered in his theory of memory. For if the Past, as he maintains, is inactive, it can only remain behind and will never come to penetrate the present in the form of memory unless a present being has undertaken to exist as well ekstatically in the Past. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 470

Categorization

• XREF: The ekstatic temporal structure here connects to Heideggerian temporality that Sartre is systematically building on, and to the for-itself’s relation to the past that frames Beauvoir’s later ethics. — connects to: A nihilating being cannot be the cause of further phenomena; The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 411; The past’s honorary existence fails because it explains no causal connection to the present (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A nihilating being cannot be the cause of further phenomena; The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 411; The past’s honorary existence fails because it explains no causal connection to the present (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The for-itself is its past yet cannot posit or thematize it #expands (0.82)