The past is a free choice made from the present project

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

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to the stated reading purpose: the systematic ontology of freedom and facticity that grounds Beauvoir. Also connects to Nietzsche’s idea that we retroactively build our ancestry/fate. — connects to: Freedom unifies past, present, and future into a single project.; A radical conversion reinterprets the old project as a past it must supersede. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1124; Particular projects remain free choices rather than being determined by the global project (+14 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Sartre’s non-deterministic account of the past: the past is chosen by the for-itself, not given.

Broader Connections

• The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom #contradicts (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454
• Present experience re-encounters a past that was once a projected future. #expands (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1068
• The environment is revealed only through and within one’s free project #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1196
• The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. #qualifies (0.80)
• The term ‘project’ links freedom and contingency in historical determination. #expands (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 104
• The present realizes what was essential in the past #corroborates (0.75)
• Judgment-relevant psychology and past experience only constitute a situation from which free choice proceeds #qualifies (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 36