The Pure Past

We need the concept of a pure a priori past to understand how a former present can be embedded in a current one.  It is the medium that both presents are embedded in.  By definition this past can't be experienced in a normal present, because it would reduce this all embracing past to that present.  But we do have an image from Proust to describe this strange experience -- it's like dreaming that you're awake or feeling like you're living a fiction as real life. 

Since this hardly clears the matter up much, it's time to turn back to Deleuze's technical description of the pure past and see if we can use Proust's imagery to understand what he calls the three paradoxes that define it.  These all come from Bergson's Matter and Memory (which incidentally is a pretty interesting and readable book).  The three paradoxes are contemporaneity, coexistence, and pre-existence.

... each past is contemporaneous with the present it was, the whole 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. There is thus a substantial temporal element (the Past which was never present) playing the role of ground.

The first paradox can be seen as answering the question we wrestled with in the previous section: why does the present pass.  Previously, I said that this seemed to be because the present only came together as an entity on the basis of its being repeated.  Repetition seemed to serve as almost the definition of a present in the first synthesis, which seemed to build passing, and future reappearance, directly into the notion of the present.  I think this still turns out to be (sorta) correct, though its sense has to be modified in light of the second passive synthesis.  In fact, in a way, the direction of repetition has been reversed -- the present passes because it is already past, not because it will come again.  It is past at the same time as it is present.  The past and present are con-tempor-ary.  So it's less that the present will repeat, then that it already has repeated the past, it is the past.  There's really no "first" instance of a repetition; how could there be in a world of pure difference?

If a new present were required for the past to be constituted as past, then the former present would never pass and the new one would never arrive. No present would ever pass were it not past 'at the same time' as it is present; no past would ever be constituted unless it were first constituted 'at the same time' as it was present. This is the first paradox: the contemporaneity of the past with the present that it was. It gives us the reason for the passing of the present.

The second paradox extends the first by thinking about what it means for the collection of all the former presents to be available as past for the current present.  Since those former presents, as well as the current present, are all simultaneously past as well, this means that the whole past coexists with the current present.  The present is a repetition of the whole past in a certain aspect, as if it were some sort of focusing or telescoping all of time down to a point.  Again, if the first synthesis is a repetition waiting to happen, expecting to happen, the second is a repetition that has already happened.  It is the past repeating itself as present.  Perhaps we should think of paradox one as proving the reason why the present passes away -- each present is already past at the same time -- and paradox two as showing us why the present arises to begin with -- the whole past is already present in each moment?

A second paradox emerges: the paradox of coexistence. If each past is contemporaneous with the present that it was, then all of the past coexists with the new present in relation to which it is now past. The past is no more 'in' this second present than it is 'after' the first - whence the Bergsonian idea that each present present is only the entire past in its most contracted state.

Finally, the third paradox takes us from thinking about each past of each former present, through the collection of all the pasts that coexist with the current present, to the idea of pure past which can't be contained in any present.  This pure past then doesn't have any time marker at all, so it appears to be a pre-existent given at all times, as if it were the very space from which presents can be picked out.

In this sense it [the past] forms a pure, general, a priori element of all time. In effect, when we say that it is contemporaneous with the present that it was, we necessarily speak of a past which never was present, since it was not formed 'after'. Its manner of being contemporaneous with itself as present is that of being posed as already-there, presupposed by the passing present and causing it to pass. Its manner of coexisting with the new present is one of being posed in itself, conserving itself in itself and being presupposed by the new present which comes forth only by contracting this past. The paradox of pre-existence thus completes the other two:

Obviously, these are all called paradoxes for a reason.  They are all real noodle-bakers that destroy our usual image of time.  In some sense though, I don't see them as independent of one another.  They seem to all be restatements of the basic idea that the past is this substantial temporal element that provides for the arising and passing away of the present.  The pure past seems to be functioning as a synonym for time as a whole.  If in the first passive synthesis there was "nothing but present", in this second one there is "nothing but past".  The pure past is the substance of time, the ground on which is built the foundation of the present, which still has to be built through the first passive synthesis.

The first synthesis, that of habit, is truly the foundation of time; but we must distinguish the foundation from the ground. 

All of this suggests that the succession of presents is less like moving along a fixed external time line than it is traveling within time itself.  The past is all of time, including what we normally call the future, and each present is some contraction of this whole, some slice of it, the tip of the iceberg.

The past does not cause one present to pass without calling forth another, but itself neither passes nor comes forth. For this reason the past, far from being a dimension of time, is the synthesis of all time of which the present and the future are only dimensions. We cannot say that it was. It no longer exists, it does not exist, but it insists, it consists, it is.

The pure past is not the accumulation of presents that have disappeared.  It is closer to the pre-existing collection of all possible presents.  In fact, I believe that this section is the first point in the book at which Deleuze introduces one of his most famous terms: "the virtual".  The pure past is a virtual totality.  It is something that exists, that we have to say is real, despite the fact that it is never itself actualized, never present and active at any moment.  With a few technical caveats, the easiest way to think about it is as a space of possibilities.  It makes a lot of sense that the first virtuality is Time.  After all, what is Time if not the inexhaustible possibility of change?