The Presence of the Past. Ch.3.2 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:

summary by Corry Shores

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The Presence of the Past

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 3: The second synthesis of time

Part 2: The deduction of the pure past


What does the transcendental deduction of the pure past got to do with you?

You carry your past around with you in your memories. But how did those past moments, back when they were happening, pass into the past? It might be because present moments begin already with the character of the past. We might be living in the past right now. Each present moment might from the beginning take the form of a memory. Do we not often feel like certain intense present moments are 'memorable', even before enough time has passed for us to recall them?

Brief Summary

In the second synthesis of time, what enables the present to pass is the past in general, which is not to be understood as all past moments taken together. The pure past is like an a priori for the present's passage. Deleuze explains the pure past by means of Bergson's Matter and Memory. He identifies three paradoxes of the second synthesis, building from Bergson's analyses: "the past must be contemporaneous with the present that it was; all the past must coexist with the new present in relation to which it is past; and the pure element of the past pre-exists the passing present." (63c) Each synthesis is its own unique time and process, and the others are dimensions of it. The present is a dimension of the pure past, and the past forms its present-dimension as having the character of something that passes. Deleuze's description varies from Bergson's in that it "constructs a speculative transcendental frame with abstract terms such as the pure past" (68b)

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Deleuze's explicates his second synthesis by means of "a speculative transcendental frame." (68a)

Summary

The pure past of the second synthesis is general, because it is the condition for the possibility of the present to pass. Active recollection however is the particular selection of moments in memory: "the aiming present as active memory is now particular, since it approaches the past in a particular way and for a particular aim, whereas the past as condition for any possible past present that could then be aimed at is general." (59d) Yet, Williams wonders why this past must be general and not instead a collection of particular memories. (59a)

Active memory as associative only selects artificial signs.

"As shown in the previous chapter on the first synthesis of time, these signs are not about the synthesis of the past in the living present, but instead depend on a distinction drawn between past and present such that something in the present is taken to represent something in the past." (60bc)

When we select past presents, we place them in relation to the aim of our present search, and in that way, "When a past present is actually represented, this representation also includes a representation of that actual representation to itself." (61bc) [So there is past moment that satisfies the search, but there is also the moment in the former present when we initiated that search.] But the actual passing present of the search is different from the represented past selected moment.

"The passing actual present that set out to recollect has a different status to the ones it set to search within: ‘The actual present is not treated like the future object of a memory, but as that which is reflected at the same time | as it forms the remembrance of the former present’ (DRf, 109–10)." (Williams 61-62)

There are "two processes are at work in the active synthesis of memory: reproduction and reflection." (62a) And, there are "two distinct ways in which the presents are represented." (62a)

"When it is a particular former present represented as the aim of a search, we have recollection and memory. When the present that embarked on the search is represented we have reflection, because it is represented to itself with the added element of the memory." (62a)

These reflected moments index deeper layers which index deeper ones, and in this way contain one another. The condition for this containment is the past in general. (62bc)

In order to recall past events, the past cannot be a collection of former presents but must instead be a past in general allowing for any reproduction. "It must therefore not be a past dependent on a particular experience of presents, a subset of occurrences, and must hence be a priori (prior to any given experience)." (62d) Also, the past in general is pure in the sense of it not being characterized or limited by any particular set of past presents. (62d)

Deleuze explicates the pure past through Bergson's Matter and Memory. However, Deleuze's portrayal of the general past is not exactly the same but rather a development on it. Williams then notes how

"Deleuze identifies three paradoxes relevant to the pure past in Matter and Memory. These are: the past must be contemporaneous with the present that it was; all the past must coexist with the new present in relation to which it is past; and the pure element of the past pre-exists the passing present. Rephrased in more simple terms, the first three paradoxes are: since the past adds nothing to the present that passes into it, it must be contemporaneous with that present; since the past must be contemporaneous with each passing present, all the past is contemporaneous with each passing present; and since all the past is contemporaneous with each passing present, the past is contemporary with all of time and pre-exists any passing present." (63c.d, emphases mine)

These paradoxes have both critical and productive functions.
1) Critically. They are critical of the notion of the past as a collection of particular moments, and they are critical of the notion of an active memory as the power to recall the past presents. (63d)
They "support the transcendental deduction of another version of the past, the pure past, not resembling such a collection." (63d) [This might be productive instead of critical.]

2) Productively. In the first paradox, the past is set within the passing present that is contemporaneous with the pure past but not identical to it. (64b)

"the creative move is to replace the idea that the past is the same as the present that was, with the idea that the past is a different kind of condition for the passing of the present occurring with the present or contemporaneously: ‘A present would never pass, if it was not past “at the same time” as it was present; a present would never be constituted, if it was not first constituted “at the same time” that it was present’ (DRf, 111). Deleuze has therefore replaced a notion of simultaneity where two things of the same kind are simultaneous, with a relation of contemporaneity between an actual present that can be represented (as present or past) and a different element, the pure past, accompanying every present and making it pass." (64bc)

Recall that the second paradox is "about the coexistence of all of the past with any present." (64d)

"the pure past is the whole of the past and cannot change in relation to each new present in the way a collection of copies of presents might: ‘That’s why, far from being a dimension of time, the past is the synthesis of the whole of time and the present and future are only its dimensions’ (DRf, 111)." (65ab)

So we see that in each synthesis there is only one time, and the others are dimensions to it. And also, each time has its own unique processes. (65bc)

"In the second synthesis, the present is the most contracted state of the passive synthesis of all of the past. It is no longer a synthesis of a particular pattern from the past in the present, but rather a dimension of an ongoing synthesis of all of the past in the past. We therefore have two sides of any present (as we shall see, there will be another with the third synthesis of time). There is the present as contracted synthesis, a particular stretch in the present, and there is the present as the most contracted state of the all of the past, of the pure past. Neither of these times can be reduced to one another and Deleuze’s philosophy of time is therefore one where time is only complete when taken from different sides or perspectives: a time of the living present and a time of passing present in relation to the pure past." (65c.d)

In the second synthesis, the past precedes the present "because the present is only a dimension of the pure past that must therefore pre-exist it." (66a)

Williams examines the vocabulary in this Deleuze quote:

"The paradox of pre-existence therefore completes the other two: each past is contemporary to the present that it was, the whole of the past coexists with the present in relation to which it is past, but the pure element of the past in general pre-exists the passing present. (DRf, 111)" (66a)

Williams seems to read "each past is contemporary to the present that it was" to mean that a past moment is contemporaneous not with a present moment but rather with a moment that has passed. And it is not that the whole of the past is contemporaneous with the present, but rather that it 'coexists' with a present in relation to which the whole of the past is considered past. But the past in general, as the condition for present moments to pass into the past, preexists the present's passing. (66b)

In the first synthesis, the present makes the past as a dimension of the present. But in the second synthesis, the past creates the present as one of its own dimensions in that the past creates the present's "essential properties, the main one of which is that every present must pass and is accompanied by the pure past." (66d)

Deleuze's reading of Bergson in this case varies slightly.

"‘condition’ has a different meaning to Deleuze’s. Bergson is not deducing a general transcendental condition for a formal process (such as the passing away of the present). Instead, like Deleuze, he is offering an alternative to the concept of cause, but unlike Deleuze, he is doing so in order to give an account of how each individual consciousness relates to its past as shown in the true operation of memory. This is where we can raise the question of the legitimacy of Deleuze’s work when compared with Bergson’s. What is the validity of an account of the past that does not base itself on a scientific account of causality (or some other contemporary candidate for explaining relations between states of affairs scientifically) but equally does not observe the operations of memory in detail or offer a full theory of memory in relation to consciousness, but instead constructs a speculative transcendental frame with abstract terms such as the pure past?" (68a.b)

Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.