The past’s honorary existence fails because it explains no causal connection to the present

Evidence

The past is what I have to be, and yet its nature is different from that of my possibles. The possible, which also I have to be, remains as my concrete possible, that whose opposite is equally possible—although to a less degree. The past, on the contrary, is that which is without possibility of any sort; it is that which has consumed its possibilities. I have to be that which no longer depends on my being-able-to-be, that which is already in itself all which it can be. The past which I am, I have to be with no possibility of not being it. I assume the total responsibility for it as if I could change it, and yet I can not be anything other than it. We shall see later that we continually preserve the possibility of changing the meaning of the past in so far as this is an ex-present which has had a future. But from the content of the past as such I can remove nothing, and I can add nothing to it. In other words the past which I was is what it is; it is an in-itself like the things in the world. The relation of being which I have to sustain with the past is a relation of the type of the in-itself—that is, an identification with itself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 427 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 427; The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 411; The past yields no imperative, being only indicative fact (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The inactive past cannot reach the present except through an ekstatic being #expands (0.90)
• The past yields no imperative, being only indicative fact #corroborates (0.85)
• The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 427
• The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 411