Проблема дуалізму та його виклики

CONTENT

Introduction

1.  Generative structure, а its formation

2. The problem of dualism and its challenges

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Historically speaking, phenomenology was introduced in Japan in the mid-1900s by Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945). While he had a strong background in the Western history of philosophy and often used problems from the West as his point of departure, his thinking was executed in a way and with a tension that allowed him to remain «Eastern». This is rooted not only in his Buddhist background and practice, but also in his original and profound insights into reality as the self-identity of absolute contradictories.

Aside from Nishida's attentiveness to Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen and his Ideen in the 1910s, the introduction of phenomenology to Japan was continued in the 1920s and 1930s by Japanese thinkers who studied with Husserl, Heidegger, Fink, and Becker, philosophers like Hajime Tanabe, Satomi Takahashi, Tetsuro Watsuji, Goichi Miyake as well as phenomeno-logical sociologists like Tomoo Otaka, Kazuta Kurauchi, and Jisho Usui.

Presently the «Phenomenological Association of Japan» (NIHON GEN-SHOUGAKUKAI) which was founded in 1979, counts approximately 400 members, and is one of the largest philosophical associations next to the more general «Philosophical Association of Japan (NIHON TETSUGAKUKAI) ». The Phenomenological Association is joined by «The Association of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (GENSHOUGAKU KAISHAKUGAKU KENKYUUKAI) » and «The Association of Phenomenology and Social Sciences (NIHON GENSHOUGAKU SHAKAIKAGAKUKAI) », each of which has about 100 members. This growing interest in phenomenology is reflected in recent special and regular conferences that feature phenomenological styles of inquiry.

1. Generative structure, а its formation

Max Scheler has accounted for the possibility of incommensurate world-views by what he calls the «functionalization of essence». By functionalization of essence, Scheler means a process by which the very being of things guides our take on things, ultimately, the way in which essential structures guide our apprehension of reality. This process, viewed historically and intersubjective, stylizes and typifies the very way of «seeing» and the very reality seen. Eventually, it would be possible to speak of cultures and groups of peoples that, on the one hand, share basic presuppositions of reality, and on the other, have different paths of access from the realm of facts to the essential structures of reality, even those that are radically incommensurate: for example, those that have cultivated the insight into generativity, and those that have cultivated the insight into emptiness. Not only would it be essentially impossible to mask these differences or to substitute one path of access for another, as if the different worlds and world-views would be reversible, but according to Scheler, if a particular «path of access» were lost, e.g., by a people being annihilated, culturally assimilated, etc., these insights might not ever be gained again, not just factually, but in principle, due to the loss of the generative density of that unique and irreducible way of seeing and living. Scheler's point is not that we cannot and do not share cultural invariants, but that given this dynamic, generative structure, we might be unable to see what other peoples and other ages have seen. These points not only to the necessity for collaborative inquiry where epistemology is concerned, but for the love of others in solidarity where the religious and moral life is concerned. Not the incommensurability, but the loss of a way of seeing would constitute a diminution in the spiritual growth of humanity.

In his later years, Husserl – the so-called founder of phenomenology – had a way of getting at this sense of intercultural phenomena through the description of socially, geohistorically, and normatively significant lifeworld’s, or what he called within a «generative» framework, the interrelations of «home worlds» and «alien worlds». The home is not one place among others, but a normatively special geo-historical place that is constituted with a certain asymmetrical privilege, and it can range from the smallest generative unit, «mother or parents and child», to a virtual cultural world. The home gets this asymmetrical privilege through modes of appropriation and misappropriation of sense that extend historically over the generations. Along the lines of Scheler, these modes of appropriation and misappropriation express particular styles of access to reality, the ways of being guided by essential structures, and the ways in which connections are made, etc. For both Scheler and Husserl, these are selective/exclusive, a process that Husserl calls «optimization». The modes of accessibility and inaccessibility are constituted and transmitted through such things as ritual, narrative, language, shared habits and customs, styles of movement and thinking, and so forth, that bring the essential structures to bear in this way rather than that. Accordingly, what is constituted as «home» is not only a «ground-horizon» as a basis for living, but also the very lifeworld to which we return. The home becomes normatively significant to us as experience is shaped concordantly and optimally and over time typically, and with familiarity. In this way, Husserl understands the home to be constituted for the «home companions», generally speaking, in the mode of «accessibility».

2.  The problem of dualism and its challenges

In my remarks, I have tried to explain by phenomenological means how we might be able to account for the project of an issue like «Phenomenology in Japan», and how the issues raised by the contributors to this special collection, issues such as Western dualism, could occupy the place it does in their writings and be troubling even for themselves. I also wanted to suggest a style of thinking capable of addressing the problems faced with «dualism», a style of thinking that seems peculiarly attractive to contemporary Japanese thinkers, namely, phenomenology.

Having already stated above that one problem consistently evoked in the essays that follow is the problem of dualism, I want to emphasize that while not all of the papers here make the problem of dualism their main theme, the issue does run through them like a guiding thread of thought, and at least allows them to be read through this particular focus, if not others. In what follows, therefore, I would like to summarize each of the authors' works, and by highlighting their main themes, evoke the problems of dualism and phenomenological clues to it. This will show at least one-way in which phenomenology even if read against itself is presently being appropriated in Japan.