Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will critically examine Ōmori Shōzō's theory of the past and point out some essential difficulties it faces. Starting from this analysis, I will further seek to develop an alternative approach to the thematic of the past.

Paper long abstract:

Philosopher Ōmori Shōzō 大森荘蔵 (1921-1997) developed in his later years a "recollection theory of the past" (想起過去説), which has formed a background for contemporary Japanese discourse on history and narrative. In this paper, through a critical reading of this theory of Ōmori, I will point out some essential difficulties it faces and thereby suggest a new approach to the thematic of the past.

Rejecting the conventional view of recollection as a reproduction of past perception, Ōmori argues that recollection is a linguistic experience - mediated by the past tense of the verb - that entirely differs in nature from perception. On this basis, he sets forth the anti-realist thesis that the past does not exist independently of recollection, but resides precisely in the linguistic meaning of recollection, or, briefly put, that "to be past is to be recollected."

A close inspection shows, however, that Ōmori's argument not only focuses on the concept of the past as recollected, but also contains the notion that "the past has disappeared without trace" - a notion which is in discord with the former. Furthermore, in contrasting recollection and perception as two heterogeneous modes of experience, he unwittingly introduces past perception as something past and yet perceptual, thus not linguistically recollected. In this way, Ōmori's theory of the past becomes undermined from within by the very ideas designed to support its position.

This aporia of Ōmori's theory may be reconceived, however, as a starting point for developing an alternative view of the past. My analysis shows how the generality of linguistic recollection (e.g. a recollected pain) stands in a dynamic conflict with the singularity of the past event (e.g. that pain beyond recollection). That is, a recollection is surpassed by a singular past event, which in turn is reappropriated by a new recollection, and this alternation between the two poles may indefinitely repeat itself.