There are two different Japanese translations of the phrase “time as perpetual perishing”: incessant perishing and eternal perishing. The perished past is never ascribed to sheer nothingness but rather remains as causally efficacious upon the superseding actualities. Arising is incessantly mediated by perishing, and thus time is continuously created by actual entities in supersession through the mediation of discontinuity of perishing. This is because to perish is to arise due to the efficient causality of the perished past qua objective immortality to produce a new present actuality in unity with the final causation of the subjective aim successively. Therefore, Whitehead identifies “perpetual perishing” as supersession, in that perishing, presupposed by the antecedent arising, entails succeeding arising in transition with the asymmetrical irreversibility of time towards the future. Hence, Hammerschmidt remarks that occasions are perpetually perishing, perpetually arising. Perpetual perishing implies perpetual arising as well. This meaning of perpetual perishing is examined with reference to the usages of the words in question through the various literature concerned.

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