The past yields no imperative, being only indicative fact

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)

But precisely for this reason the past which resembles value is not value. In value the for-itself becomes itself by surpassing and by founding its being; there is a recovery of the in-itself by the self. As a result, the contingency of being gives way to necessity. The past on the contrary is at the start in-itself. The for-itself is sustained in being by the in-itself; its raison d’être is no longer being for-itself. It has become in-itself, and as a result it appears to us in its pure contingency. There is no reason for our past to be this or that; it appears in the totality of its series as the pure fact for which we must account qua fact, as the gratuitous. In short, it is value reversed—the for-itself recovered by the in-itself and fixed by it, penetrated and blinded by the full density of the in-itself, thickened by the in-itself to the point of no longer being able to exist as a reflection for the reflecting nor as the reflecting for the reflection, but simply as an in-itself indication of the dyad reflecting-reflection. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 436 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The past’s honorary existence fails because it explains no causal connection to the present; The past is value reversed, being fixed in-itself as pure gratuitous fact — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 436; 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 (+2 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 past is value reversed, being fixed in-itself as pure gratuitous fact #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 436
• Being past turns subjective states into thing-like objective facts #expands (0.80)