The past’s force and meaning depend entirely on present projects

Evidence

An example may make this point clearer. The past of a retired soldier under the Restoration is to have been a hero of the retreat from Russia. And what we have explained just now enables us to understand that this past itself is a free choice of the future. It is by choosing not to join in with the government of Louis XVIII and the new customs, by choosing until the end to hope for the triumphal return of the Emperor, by choosing even to conspire to hasten this return and to prefer to be a retired soldier rather than an active solider that the old soldier of Napoleon chooses for himself a past as a hero of Beresina. Another soldier who had formed the project of going over to the new government would certainly not have chosen the same past. But conversely, if we are considering only one retired solider, if he lives in almost indecent poverty, if he is embittered, and if he longs for the Emperor’s return, this is because he was a hero of the retreat from Russia. We must be sure to understand this: the past does not act before any constituting recovery, and it does not in any way act deterministically; but once the past “soldier of the Empire” has been chosen, then the conduct of the for-itself realizes this past. There is even no difference between the soldier’s choosing this past and his realizing it by his behavior. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192 (#expands, via linked claim)

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 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Objective states of affairs become causes only through a for-itself’s project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1089; Individual passions are surface expressions of one total fundamental project — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1147; The meaning of one’s place depends entirely on the project one chooses. (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• The past is a free choice made from the present project #expands (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1192
• The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone #contradicts (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 411
• The present realizes what was essential in the past #corroborates (0.85)
• History frames current understanding rather than predetermining it #corroborates (0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 203