The past is only meaningful through the end one currently chooses

Evidence

But while freedom is the choice of an end in terms of the past, conversely the past is what it is only in relation to the end chosen. There is an unchangeable element in the past, (e.g., I had whooping cough when I was five years old) and an element which is eminently variable (the meaning of the brute fact in relation to the totality of my being). But since, on the other hand, the meaning of the past fact penetrates it through and through (I can not “recall” my childhood whooping cough outside of a precise project which defines its meaning), it is finally impossible for me to distinguish the unchangeable brute existence from the variable meaning which it includes. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1183

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the backdrop Sartre is building for Beauvoir’s ethics: the for-itself’s project constituting meaning over raw facticity. — connects to: The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices.; The past constrains identity but is always narrativized, not literally recovered. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 256; Grady’s line embodies how the past speaks through the present as its own author — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 283
• DEFINE: Clarifies the core distinction between brute facticity (being-in-itself) and meaning-conferring project in the past.

Broader Connections

• The past informs the individual but can be re-captured through successive choices. #expands (0.75)
• The past constrains identity but is always narrativized, not literally recovered. #expands (0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 256