The aim of this paper is to examine the theory of the past by Ōmori Shōzō (大森荘蔵, 1921-1997) through examining the meaning of “all is vanity (色即是空)” in Time and Being (1994) in order to consider the relationship between the past and historiography (the narrative of the past). In particular, this paper attempts to consistently interpret the theory of the past in Ōmori’s philosophy and his pragmatic realism(実用的実在論) by reinterpreting the argument about “all is vanity” which Ōmori advocated in his later years.
This paper is structured as follows. The first section of this paper examines the feature of Ōmori’s philosophy in the later period. In this section, the characteristics of monism of “Tachiaraware (立ち現われ)” in Ōmori’s philosophy are clarified. The second section presents the fundamental problem in the monism of Tachiaraware. In this section, it becomes clear that he makes a seemingly incongruous claim that the past is described negatively in terms of “all is vanity”, while describing the present positively in terms of pragmatic realism. The third section reinterprets the argument about “all is vanity” in Ōmori’s philosophy by confirming that he regards “kūbaku (空漠)” and infinite as the matrix of meaningful world. In this section, it is shown that he developed the argument about “all is vanity” as an argument compatible with his pragmatic realism. The fourth section highlights the features of the theory of the past in Ōmori’s philosophy through examining the argument of the past in Paul Ricœur’s work, Time and Narrative (1983-85) and Memory, History, Forgetting (2000). In the last section, the ontological status of the past in Ōmori’s philosophy is clarified by comparing Ricœur’s theory of the past.