The past cannot be constructed from present elements alone

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

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s core distinction between being-in-itself and for-itself as a backdrop to Beauvoir’s ethics of temporality. — 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 inactive past cannot reach the present except through an ekstatic being; The for-itself is its past yet cannot posit or thematize it (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 427
• The inactive past cannot reach the present except through an ekstatic being #expands (0.80)
• Representing a pre-colonial past is impossible within the metaphysic of representation #exemplifies (0.80) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 44
• The for-itself is its past yet cannot posit or thematize it #corroborates (0.75)
• The past is not an accretion but a necessary structural feature of the For-itself. #corroborates (0.70) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 476