Straight to the point, as one of the people who are determined to do philosophy in Japan and live to achieve this goal, I recall my past work and find that at every critical moment, I have to ask another question, that is, "Is philosophy possible in Japan" or, more accurately, "Is philosophy possible in Japanese-style spiritual soil".
In a sense, while challenging this possibility, I also embarked on my own philosophical path. Therefore, if I want to announce here what I am trying to do to break through the "philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy", I must (even simply) involve my own path. Please understand my topic today like this.
Let me start with the question of why I chose philosophy. I decided to be a physicist until I was a sophomore. A good opportunity for me to embark on the road of philosophy was when Japan was defeated when I was just 20 years old.
Even so, it is not the fact that Japan's defeat itself became an opportunity, but that Japan changed from nationalism to democracy, from holism to liberalism overnight, and its social value was subverted to such an extent that it had a great impact on me. Not only ordinary citizens, but also intellectual leaders are forced to get into thinking because of such easy family changes.
I am determined to be a physicist. On the one hand, I have been very interested in physics since I was a child. On the other hand, I think only the truth of natural science, especially physics, is the most reliable. But after Japan's defeat, I witnessed the change of values, which made me pay attention to the value world from the factual world and the material world from the human world. So my professional volunteer changed from physics to philosophy.
Because my previous basic knowledge was almost all about science, I couldn't start reading professional philosophy books at first. Compared with these, I'm interested in people. For various reasons, as a philosophical guide, I chose the moralists Pascal and Descartes, who are easy to accept for people with scientific foundation. This choice naturally includes "modern criticism" and "modern" vision. Until looking back, I still think this choice is good.
In Japan just after World War II, on the whole, young people eager for free thinking in wartime pursued and studied philosophy like a flood that burst its banks, and many people were interested in philosophy. It is also because books are scarce now. When Yutaro Iwata's Good Research was released in Yanbo Bookstore, people queued up to buy books long ago, even the night before.
Whether in wartime or after the war, a large number of young people were attracted by Nishida's philosophy, but at that time, I felt that the language of Nishida's philosophy was meaningless and obscure, and I thought that this thought probably had nothing to do with me. This idea has been going on for 10 or 20 years. However, in the 1980s, about 30 years later, I realized that, at least, without Nishida Ikutaro, I could not talk about Japanese philosophy. Next, how to file a lawsuit with Nishida philosophy has become a major pillar of my work, and this situation has continued to this day.
This change in the understanding of Nishida's philosophy is deeply related to the philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy and the possibility of philosophy in Japan, which will be further discussed later. What about in modern times? After the Meiji Restoration, Hiroyuki Kato and Tetsujiro Inoue, professors of Imperial University in Tokyo, called themselves philosophers, but they only introduced western theories first and mastered knowledge by themselves. As we all know, philosophy is not immediately useful, but plays a "useless role". Therefore, people who lack philosophy are bound to lack foresight in everything.
So, why did you become such a national? Chomin Nakae believes that "all the roots are here", that is, the lack of philosophy. He said that compared with the nationals of other countries, we Japanese are extremely sensible, conform to the trend of the times and have no "stubbornness". It is also for this reason that China has never had a "tragic and stupid" religious struggle like western countries; Since the Meiji Restoration, China has changed the old habits into "westernization", which is why people still feel at ease. This is also the reason why the Japanese are frivolous, weak-willed and lack practical ability on some occasions. This is why Japan has no unique ideas, no clear political ideas, and the debate between political parties lacks continuity. A situation like Japan, even if it is considered smart and small, is not suitable for achieving great things. Japanese people do have a wealth of common sense, but they can't be expected to do things beyond common sense in the end. The above is Chomin Nakae's assertion.
Focusing on "we have no philosophy in Japan since ancient times", Chomin Nakae severely criticized Japanese culture. I have talked about this problem many times before, and every time I feel the profundity of this problem again, that is, its nature as a philosophical problem. With the passage of time, my thoughts have gradually changed, and I have a new view on some of them. List these questions first, then insert my thoughts into them and make a short comment.
1. Some people call traditional Japanese thoughts or oriental thoughts such as Chinese studies, Confucianism and Buddhism oriental philosophy. But in a positive sense, can these be called "philosophy"? Or strictly speaking, it is difficult to call these "philosophies" in essence?
Not only in Hiroyuki Kato and Inoue Tetsujiro, but also in Japan after Meiji, Western-style "philosophy" is almost only the object of study, even the object of translation and introduction. Why? Why has philosophy become something that can be called "philosophy"?
It is considered as an advantage that the Japanese don't stick to the past and have strong adaptability to reality. Correspondingly, people often criticize the Japanese for being unprincipled and thoughtless. So, is this purely unprincipled? Or is there a principle and an idea in it?
Of course, this does not mean that it is meaningless to study philosophy historically or in literature. It should even be said that there must be a certain degree of research, and only by doing research can we start our own philosophical thinking. The problem here is that we should discuss and think about what is the focus between the two and how to allocate this focus. If we pay too much attention to the study of history and literature and become "one-sided", philosophy will inevitably become "philosophy" At present, the worst thing is that philosophy has been replaced by "philosophy" and unconsciously developed into a compensatory behavior.
At the seminar of "Japanese Philosophy Society" last year, people reflected on the loss of charm of philosophy education in universities and the threat to philosophy and its survival. The content of reflection is that in the past, there were too many studies on "about someone" or "about so-and-so philosophy" in Japanese philosophical circles, which made philosophy lose its charm. In my opinion, although this kind of reflection came too late, it is always not a bad thing to start to notice it.
On the other hand, when translating, explaining and introducing the latest western philosophical theories, the more serious and professional the author's thinking, the more dangerous traps there will be. Because his works are the product of careful consideration, readers will have to look at and think about real things from the point of view of the book. The characteristics of not sticking to the past and adapting to reality are very suitable for accepting all kinds of foreign new ideas. In modern Japan and after World War II, Japan made great progress in science, technology and industry, and also benefited greatly from this feature. In particular, the eclectic way of thinking and doing things has enabled the Japanese to create many "heterogeneous mixed" methods and means in applying principles and technological transformation, and have made great achievements.
On the other hand, if you don't stick to the past and conform to reality too much, it will really make people fall into unprincipled "convenience", which always makes people feel that such people have no thoughts. But can this situation be said to be simple or completely thoughtless? Not only can't, I think we should consider that people may be unconscious, but they do have a certain formed way of thinking or mode of thinking, which is reflected in a state of not sticking to the past and having strong adaptability to reality.
As a Japanese philosopher, we must also ask this question for the sake of Japanese self-cognition. If philosophy is not powerless to this problem, then turning the unconscious thinking mode or way existing in Japanese culture into conscious things and grasping it will become a major topic of philosophy.
On the one hand, it is the problem of moralists Pascal and Descartes, on the other hand, it is the following situation: the wave of "post-war democracy" in the 1950s, on the one hand, put too much faith in many rationalist institutional reforms, on the other hand, it was associated with them, and when using words such as rationalism, rationality and science, it was also associated with people who did not believe. Because irrational things will not disappear with an order.
My instinct has been thoroughly studied, and because of this, I feel the deep-rooted theory of "three desires".
Among these three desires, the "feeling desire" is deeply explored by Freud, and the "ruling desire" is concerned by Freud's disciple Adler, while the "knowledge desire" is usually not raised as a problem. Out of my interest in this kind of problem, I had a new perspective in the early 1960s, that is, I regarded Freud's theory of desire as "the product of pursuing the problem of winning Ransen in a Descartes way". Not only that, because I know the concept of "knowledge desire", in the 1970s, when I saw Foucault's Theory of Knowledge Rights, I didn't take it as a brand-new concept, but took it for granted.
Among the problems of emotionalism, there is still a big problem for me, which is related to my interest in drama.
That is, what is "dramatic action", such a question. "Dramatic action" is the action taken by the characters with strong emotions, so it is "passive (emotional) initiative" in form. However, just saying this is not a thorough grasp of the state of "dramatic action". Sartre defined imagination as "passive and dynamic" in his On Drama. But he didn't think further about the relationship between initiative and passivity.
When passive and active are regarded as "dramatic actions", it gives me an important hint that Spinoza regards mental activity as "the concept of body deformation" in terms of "ethics", which is one of the developments of Descartes' emotional theory. In other words, think that the body is passive, and thinking includes its initiative or action. However, I didn't really understand this until I entered the 1980s. What I want to talk about below is that I can think about the situation after the knowledge form of "passionate knowledge".
After the theory of emotion, the new theme of my philosophical exploration is system theory. The reason why I regard the system as a philosophical problem is that when I think about the emotional problems in social situations, the "system" stands out from the things that are opposite to emotions and give them forms and ways, and becomes a huge existence. It is also because I realized that in modern Japan, in many cases, institutional change precedes ideological understanding.
Nevertheless, in Japanese philosophy and thought, on the one hand, the structure of the system is very similar to Nishida's position based on "sadness", on the other hand, it has something in common with what I call "passionate knowledge".
Vadim's "weak thinking" is very similar to Nishida Ikutaro's position based on "sadness", because he seeks the truth of existence in tradition and destiny, so "compassion and impermanence" has become the central state of human existence. It is also because it is not a "strong idea" based on "deductive compulsion" of concepts and logic, but based on language-based hermeneutics. But this kind of "weak thinking", as one commentator casually said, "is not passive but active", and some places are still subject to the initiative in the usual sense.
I say this because I think that a new positive grasp of passivity and an emphasis on relevant "places" can be a way to break through the "philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy" and find the "possibility of philosophy in Japan".
Ikutaro Nishida attaches importance to place from the perspective of philosophy and ontology, and advocates "place logic" in a brand-new way. As mentioned above, for me, how to evaluate Nishida's philosophy, especially his "place logic", is a practical problem related to "the philosophical problem of Japanese philosophy" and "the possibility of philosophy in Japan".
Of course, there are two major problems in Nishida's philosophy and mine. However, the problem of Nishida's "place logic" has not been completely solved. For me, the big problem that has not been solved until the end is the development of difficult words such as "absolute contradictory self-identity" and "general dialectics" into "place logic" Kobayashi Hideo, a literary critic, strongly criticized Nishida's philosophy including these words as a "strange system".
In the article "Scholars and Bureaucrats", Kobayashi Hideo commented on Nishida's thought and its expression: "To what extent are scholars who have their own ideas and want to express them blindly in the world of thought forced because of the lack of listeners and readers?" For example, Nishida Ikutaro and others are typical. I'm afraid he is trying to "how to weave a western-style system with Japanese tradition or oriental concept".
However, Kobayashi went on to say that Nishida's misfortune is that there are no such difficult readers in Japan as Descartes' Ordinary People with Conscience and Nietzsche's laity called German nationals. Therefore, Nishida can only rely on his own sincerity and blindly ask himself and answer. Nishida's loneliness of not feeling the resistance of others has created his strange system-his is not written in Japanese, and of course it is not written in a foreign language.
What I sympathize most with Kobayashi Hideo's criticism of Nishida's philosophy is that Nishida's misfortune is that there is no "incomprehensible reader", and because he can't feel the "resistance of the other", he has produced a "strange system" that is neither written in Japanese nor written in a foreign language in a strict sense. Although Kobayashi did not directly talk about such words as "absolute contradictory self-identity" and "general dialectics", it is obvious that Kobayashi's criticism is related to my question.
Because in Kobayashi's expression, this difficult vocabulary will only be revealed when the "traditional concepts" of Japan and the East are barely woven into a "western system". In this sense, I think it is necessary to give birth to this difficult lexical phenomenon, which typically embodies a "philosophical problem of Japanese philosophy"
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The theme of this paper is "the philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy" and "the possibility of philosophy in Japan", but the content of this paper deeply discusses the problems of Nishida's philosophy, especially his "place logic". I also expected this impression to some extent, but through the above investigation, I still feel that I didn't expect Nishida's philosophy, especially the "logic of place" to have such great significance.
From another point of view, Nishida's philosophy, especially its "place logic", has the main conditions of "anti-philosophy" in structuralism to gain extensive civil rights and "anti-philosophy" contrary to the common sense of philosophy in the past. This point has been mentioned briefly above, and it is deeply related to the question of "the philosophical problem of Japanese philosophy", so I will elaborate it here at last. The main viewpoints and conclusions that constitute "anti-philosophy" are as follows:
1. The traditional "philosophy" claims to be a universal form of knowledge, but it is actually only a limited form of knowledge. Therefore, philosophy may exist outside Greece and even Western Europe.
Different from the traditional "philosophy", the correctness of truth and concept is not regarded as the existence without preconditions, but also a desire to admit the will to truth. Therefore, not only initiative is meaningful, but emotion, that is, passivity, is also significant.
3. Different from ontology as a traditional philosophy, existence and self are not fixed and materialized, but are grasped as a collection of functions and relationships. Therefore, existence and existence naturally lose the inevitability of their existence.
These problems are closely related to "the philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy", and Nishida's philosophy, especially his "place logic", is unexpectedly based on them and is thinking in the direction of clarifying most of them. Therefore, it is of special significance for Nishida to think about the philosophical problems of Japanese philosophy and the possibility of philosophy in Japan.
But I am not satisfied with Nishida's philosophy and his "place logic". It can even be said that "the possibility of philosophy in Japan" is explored on the basis of transcending these. This problem can also be understood from the title of my recently published paper "Another Predicate World and System of Place Logic" (published in Thought No.65438+No.65438 of 0994+10). In this paper, I emphasize the direction beyond "place logic" by expounding the root of rhythm and new ideas about system.
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