The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom

Evidence

The Past is, to be sure, the being which I am outside of myself, but it is the being which I am without the possibility of not being it. This is what we have defined as being its past behind itself. The being of the Future which I have to be, on the contrary, is such that I can only be it; for my freedom gnaws at its being from below. This means that the Future constitutes the meaning of my present For-itself, as the project of its possibility, but that it in no way predetermines my For-itself which is to-come, since the For-itself is always abandoned to the nihilating obligation of being the foundation of its nothingness. … The future is what I would be if I were not free and what I can have to be only because I am free. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ontological asymmetry between past and future relative to freedom.
• XREF: This is the direct systematic prelude to Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity distinction between past and future in freedom. — connects to: Freedom can objectify its own past, rupturing temporal continuity with the instant; Freedom as choice retroactively constitutes the past as irremediable. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1178; Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1177 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Freedom as choice retroactively constitutes the past as irremediable. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1178
• The past is an in-itself whose content can neither be changed nor added to #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 427
• Freedom cannot choose its own past but must exist through it. #complicates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1177
• The past is kept in suspense by the perpetual expectation that freedom generates. #complicates (0.78)
• Freedom can objectify its own past, rupturing temporal continuity with the instant #qualifies (0.75)
• Freedom requires temporal continuity, not isolated instants of choice. #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 24
• The present realizes what was essential in the past #contradicts (0.74)