Concept
Past
Overview
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection. In addition, humans have recorded the past since the advent of written language.
In English, the word past was one of the many variant forms and spellings of passed, the past participle of the Middle English verb passen (whence Modern English pass), among ypassed, ypassyd, i-passed, passyd, passid, pass'd, paste, etc. It developed into an adjective and preposition in the 14th century, and a noun (as in the past or a past, through ellipsis with the adjective past) in the 15th century.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Past is discussed.
The present, in short, generates the problems which lead us to search the past for suggestion, and which supplies meaning to what we find when we search. The past is the past precisely because it does not include what is characteristic in the present. The moving present includes the past on condition that it uses the past to direct its own movement. The past is a great resource for the imagination; it adds a new…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Particular scenes of the past are known correctly, just like the particular present; but there are gaps in their recollection which they fill up with fictions, and these are either always the same, in which case they become fixed ideas, and the madness that results is called monomania or melancholy; or they are always different, momentary fancies, and then it is called folly, _fatuitas_. This is why it is so…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
_Pupil._ Well, of course, knowledge of the past is very mysterious, but how is the pragmatist any better off? _Teacher._ The reply to that may be inferred from what has already been said. The past event has left effects, consequences, that are present and that will continue in the future. Our belief about it, if genuine, must also modify action in _some_ way and so have objective effects. If these two sets of…
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
We shall see that we have a constant feeling _sui generis_ of pastness, to which every one of our experiences in turn falls a prey. To think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the direction of the objects which at the present moment appear affected by this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon which memory and history build their systems. And in this chapter we shall…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Between memory-image and sensation there is an intermediate experience concerning the immediate past. For example, a sound that we have just heard is present to us in a way which differs both from the sensation while we are hearing the sound and from the memory-image of something heard days or weeks ago.
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Past
Related ideas
- History
- Geology
- Grammar
- Future
- Life
- Archaeology
- Ontology
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Spacetime
- Time
- Memory
- Noun
- Astronomy
- Physical cosmology
- Charles Dickens
- Etymology
- A Christmas Carol
Place in the tradition
Part of Anti-realism.