"Discourse and Truth" and "Parresia"
Reviewed by: Nikolaas Deketelaere (Balliol College, University of Oxford)
Kenosis and Transcendence
Below and Beyond the Appearing of God
Oliver O’Donovan deserves great credit for undertaking the painstaking work of translating Jean-Yves Lacoste’s La phénoménalité de Dieu: not only has relatively little of Lacoste’s work been translated into English compared to that of the other contemporary French authors working within the field of phenomenology of religion (e.g. Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, even Jean-Louis Chrétien); it also appears that the French edition is currently out of print, making this translation the only way most of us can access Lacoste’s nine essays on the way in which God can be brought within the scope of phenomenology. The project Lacoste sets out in these pages can perhaps most easily be understood as an attempt at correlating (paradoxically) God’s divinity with his phenomenality, or indeed his mode of being with his mode of appearing, and is in turn executed by correlating four pairs of related notions: (1) philosophy and theology; (2) transcendence and reduction; (3) experience and eschatology; and, finally, (4) love and knowledge.
Starting with the issue of philosophy and theology. Much ink has been spilled over whether the developments within French phenomenology at the end of the last century constitute an unwarranted theologisation of phenomenology, or rather its careful execution; indeed, the polemic is well-known and still ongoing. In this regard, however, it is worth noting that we are dealing here with a somewhat sui generis figure: at the time of his initial diagnosis of French phenomenology as having taken a ‘theological turn’, Dominique Janicaud explicitly excluded Lacoste from the group of authors who allowed phenomenology to swerve off the road of philosophy until it ended up in the ditch of theology.[1] Nevertheless, Lacoste is not coy about the fact that his reflections do at least attempt “to surmount the division between philosophy and theology” (xi), or “to remove the boundary that has classically divided faith and reason, since its existence was always highly arbitrary” (82). Indeed, upon closer examination—one that is carried out in a sustained dialogue with Kierkegaard throughout the book—, that frontier appears to be missing altogether. As a result, Lacoste seeks to expose “the fluid character of philosophical work” (16), which it has in virtue of the fact that it can ask questions about anything, including divine realities. The point here is not, as Janicaud might put it, that philosophy is colonised or superseded by theology, for Lacoste too is weary of the ditch we risk ending up in if we leave behind philosophy altogether: “Disciplined conceptualization or description from which the philosophical element was eliminated would be bound to run aground” (16), he warns us. However, when a philosophical text, such as Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, deals with divine realities, such as salvation and sin, “we are not,” or no longer at least, “dealing with a philosophy that is merely philosophy, but with a philosophy pushed to the limit of its range, making sense of an eclectic mix of descriptions, hypotheses, and games that make it impossible to say precisely what is going on” (17), whether it is philosophy or indeed theology. It is often in extreme situations, where we are pushed to our limits, that we gain an awareness of what exactly the limits are, and thus only as such do we fully come into our own. Such is equally the case for philosophy and theology, Lacoste suggests: “In the Fragments we find ourselves on the frontiers of philosophy, not only of theology. Precise labelling is simply not allowed at this point, and we had better make up our minds that it doesn’t matter very much. The fluidity of philosophy can be a theoretical advantage as well as a drawback. It is on the frontiers of philosophy, perhaps, that we can learn what is finally at issue in philosophy, and may we not say the same for the frontiers of theology, too?” (18).[2]
Despite Lacoste’s great emphasis on the question of the frontier demarcating philosophy from theology, he also declares that it ultimately does not matter. This is not as unintuitive as it may at first appear: precisely because the frontier is missing, the question of demarcation does not matter. We are simply free to proceed with thinking in all its fluidity, unencumbered by this methodological pseudo-question:
Here and there at the same time, or perhaps still here or already there, we can never be precise about our location. Dare we say that that is not a bad thing? (…) The present enquiries, pursued in ignorance of whether they are philosophical or theological, do not define themselves apart from the two methodological requirements of letting-appear and making-appear. (…) Whether philosophy or theology or both, our enquiry would not deserve the name of enquiry at all, if it did not make up its mind to ignore the frontiers and elicit appearances without prescribing them. To make frontiers is to break things up, and we do better not knowing where we are (x-xi).
This honesty is refreshing and certainly more dignified than, for example, Marion’s frantic but inevitably unsuccessful attempts at securing the exclusively philosophical status of his phenomenology. Essentially, the question of whether he is doing philosophy or theology is uninteresting to Lacoste; the point, rather, is that he is doing phenomenology: “From a phenomenological point of view there is no way of telling,” on what side of the frontier between philosophy and theology these studies fall, precisely because that frontier appears to be missing; yet, there is “probably no need to tell,” for, as phenomenologists, “all we want is a concept fit for the appearance” (ix). Whatever appears deserves to be described as such, without this being framed beforehand according to a frontier that itself does not. Hence, Lacoste concludes: “Phenomenology is frontier-free—it is one of its advantages” (xi).
So, the question for Lacoste then concerns the phenomenality of God, that is to say, the mode of his appearance. This brings us to our second pair of concepts in need of correlation: transcendence and reduction. Whenever one asks how God may be made the theme of phenomenology, someone is bound to pipe up and answer that he simply cannot be, precisely because the divine, as transcendent reality, falls under the reduction, and must thus be excluded from the phenomenologist’s field of view. The phenomenologist would be out of bounds, would have veered off the road and ended up in some kind of ditch, if he were to depend on anything that is not contained within the immanence of consciousness as delivered by phenomenological reduction. Lacoste tackles this challenge by starting from the observation that “a comprehensive experience of an object is possible only if an infinite experience is possible” (21), which of course means that a comprehensive experience is impossible since experience is precisely a function of finitude. It is the adumbrational character of sensory perception that Lacoste uses to argue that there is always already transcendence at the heart of every experience, namely the transcendence of what is not experienced in experience precisely in virtue of its character as experience: “Every perceptual experience,” he says, “invites us to recognize that it is fragmentary, and that what is presented here and now is transcended” (25). Indeed, this is not only true in exceptional cases, but forms a general “law of the logic of experience. Stated briefly, perceptual experience has to do with phenomena and non-phenomena at the same time. More economically still, perception has to do with the unperceived” (22-23). So, God’s transcendence need not, at least not a priori, exclude his phenomenality; for transcendence appears to be a characteristic of all appearing, which always transcends itself as appearance insofar as it appears. As such, “the appearing of God,” especially, “can only be understood in the light of his transcendence of appearing” (38). His mode of appearing involves a movement beyond appearing as such. As a result, Lacoste puts forward the concept of the irreducible, of which phenomenology “can offer no correct description (…) without recognizing its radical externality” (58), without knowing “that it cannot exclude the transcendent reality of what it describes” (60). In short, it forms “an experience that could not be described without acknowledging the irreducibility of everything to do with it: that is the sort of experience which the advent of God to consciousness would need to be” (63). God is such an experience, for he cannot be experienced without this experience being co-extensive with a belief in his existence, he cannot appear without this appearing being co-extensive with a love of God. As such, Lacoste tries to correlate divinity with phenomenality, God’s mode of being with his mode of appearing, and precisely this is a phenomenological question (indeed, strictly so). Hence, he concludes that “phenomenology cannot be faithful to its project without recognizing the irreducible” (58).
Precisely because a comprehensive experience is not possible in virtue of the fact that transcendence characterises all experience, because God transcends his appearing precisely insofar as he comes to appearance, because “experience is tied to inexperience” at all times (118); “we should be satisfied with a radically non-eschatological presence,” or, put differently, “presence is not parousia” (36).[3] This, Lacoste suggests, means we need to correlate experience to eschatology: for it implies, first of all, that the eschaton is not a question of experience, since experience cannot be completely realised by definition (“no experience is comprehensive, no presence can be taken for a parousia, enjoyment must not suppose itself in total possession” (131)); and, secondly, that phenomenology cannot be limited to the present now, for we do have meaningful experiences even if they are only partial (“experience may be wholly truthful without being whole and entire” (150)). The first is a crucial insight, according to Lacoste, for it leads us to “a conclusion of the greatest importance, implying an equally important imperative,” namely, that “God is never ‘given’” (150). It is hard not to read this as a profound critique of Marion’s “realized eschatology” (37) of intuitive givenness and it is worth quoting him at length on this: “But can the infinite be given? The suggestion seems preposterous,” for “‘seeing’ the infinite can only refer to vision of an inchoate character. No act of intuition could focus on infinity entire. Whatever we see, we know that our sight is at the same time and inescapably non-sight. Whatever is given us, we perceive only partially. But the interplay between sight and non-sight implies the promise of one day seeing differently and better. Perception may become richer, nearer to completion, but on no terms can a ‘vision’ of the infinite be thought of as actually complete. (…) Whatever the sense in which we ‘see’ the divine essence, it remains infinitely beyond sight” (148-149). Moreover, Lacoste continues, this thus means the following:
God cannot be given this side of death. If we are minded to stay with the language of vision, we can say that God ‘appears’ in the world without our intuition. There is nothing to be ‘seen.’ Giving makes its gift to faith, and faith cannot have the status of conclusive experience. Within the range of intuition visible things such as Christ’s historical body and his Eucharistic body are known as God’s self-giving only as we distinguish sensory intuition from the acquired intuition of faith. Sensory intuition on its own is misleading. Even when we have trained it to the evidences proper to objects of faith (which are not evidences of a theophany) the gift we perceive has the form of a promise, not to be taken as a last word. The appearance of the risen Christ to his disciples is a gift to sight, but not put at their disposal; it keeps its distance in conjunction with the promise of a definitive return. In the Eucharist Christ is seen through the medium of bread and wine, a medium that leaves us inevitably dissatisfied, desiring eschatological satisfaction which has no place in the world. (…) The infinite can be seen only in finite guise. But finite intuition of the infinite is no mere disappointment, and if we hold our experience of the gracious gift together with our experience of promise, we shall see why (149-150).[4]
This is not a disappointment for there is always the promise of fulfilment, and with promise comes anticipation. Moving on to the second point to be made in relation to eschatology and experience, Lacoste explains that anticipation does not give the eschaton, nor does it bring it to experience; rather, it “merely announces or adumbrates it, giving us no more than a predonation or pre-experience of it” (128). For, even though “experience of the end is ruled out,” since such an experience transcends itself; it is nevertheless as that transcending that “pre-experiences of the end are not. Everyone will agree that God cannot be known in history as he will be known finally, since the eschaton suspends the logic of sacramental presence. But eschatological desire and expectation may take on ‘pre-eschatological’ forms within the limits of the world, which is simply to say that they point us beyond the limits of being-in-the-world while making no pretence to be more than pre-eschatological. The sacrament does not bring the eschaton about; it does serve as a predonation of it” (132). In this context, “anticipation appears without the pretence of a fulfilment, and puts no end within our grasp. Yet it appears as anticipation, as experience uncompleted and promise that draws us on to further experience. So all talk of anticipation must have in view the horizon of an end. The end may be given, the event take place as we anticipated, or it may not; the eschaton is distant” (133). Since “we cannot attribute an eschatological character to any of our present experiences” (168), Lacoste uses his notion of anticipation to develop a reworked phenomenology of time-consciousness. This framework he subsequently applies, in an impressive dialogue with analytic philosophy, to the problem of personal identity, correctly removing it from the metaphysical questioning of substance and placing it firmly within the context of a phenomenological enquiry concerning time.
How must we then deal with this “eschatological reserve” (150), inhibiting us from having an actual and clear experience of God, leaving us with the pre-experience delivered by anticipation? Here, Lacoste suggests, faith comes in; or, for it is coextensive with it, this is where love plays its role. This brings us to our final pair of concepts in need of correlation: knowledge and love, which in this case refers to the knowledge and love of God. In particular, Lacoste wants to expose what he calls “the logic of love,” or its “paradoxical priority over knowledge” (37), when it comes to divine realities. Phenomenology, Lacoste suggests, has traditionally had a bias in favour for what we might call ‘objects of knowledge’, which he describes as “compelling phenomena” (78). These are phenomena that give themselves, and thus impose themselves intuitively: “the object of sight, the intelligible proposition, the reality that cannot be ignored.” However, God is not given, he does not appear as such, and therefore also does not impose himself. Thus, Lacoste suggests, “if there is one thing the object of belief and the object of love have in common, it is the power to go unnoticed” (78). When it comes to divine realities, which are “intelligible only as open to love,” their “appearance takes the form of solicitation or invitation, not coercion. (…) Love would contradict its essence or intention if it used constraint in making its appearance” (75). The phenomenality of love makes an appeal to our freedom: it does not dictate its meaning through the violent imposition of intuition, but instead demands to be loved, inviting us to take a position for or against. What is at stake is “a reality that offers itself without imposing itself, an experience formed in the element of non-self-evidence,” precisely because it requires “a decision to see it” in order to be perceived at all (79). Lacoste illustrates this elegantly as follows: “Nothing is more common than perceiving or understanding without making up our mind. I perceive the ashtray on my desk without making up my mind, I see the conclusion of a logical argument without making up my mind, except that the logic is valid. But when the absolute intervenes, we have to make up our minds,” precisely because its intervention is not of the order of an ordinary appearance, which it always transcends in intervening. Indeed, Lacoste continues, “God does not appear like the Alps, huge and undeniable. He does not appear as the conclusion of an argument we are compelled to admit (…). God appears in such a way that we can make up our mind about him, for or against” (87).
God, that is to say his divinity, does not appear except in love and indeed as love: “He does not appear to be described, since there is nothing to describe, only a man like other men. He does not appear to be thought about, since the aim of his appearance is simply and solely to win man’s love. To make an appearance in order to win love, and for no other reason, the god must be present kenotically. He wills to be loved, not to dazzle. There is appearance, for there is presence, but this is not presence for thought, or even belief” (72). The phenomenality of God is a kenotic phenomenality, one that empties itself out of appearing as appearing. God’s phenomenality is not a question of appearing, but of the decision that sits below (kenosis) and thus its movement beyond (transcendence) appearing. Precisely in this way does Lacoste correlate God’s mode of being (transcendence) with his mode of appearing (inexperience): “God appears in presenting himself to be loved; God appears among the phenomena not subject to Husserl’s ‘eidetic reduction’” (ix).
Before ending this review, a word needs to be said about O’Donovan’s English language rendering of Lacoste’s book, for some of the choices he has made in translating it seem at least worth questioning. I wonder, in particular, whether the phenomenological force of Lacoste’s argument is not somewhat blunted by this translation. To be fair to him, O’Donovan admits at the outset that “every translation must have its priorities, and I had better admit that tenderness towards the conventions of the phenomenological school has not been high among mine” (vii). As a result, he does not, for example, reprise the distinct adjectives which English translators of Heidegger have rendered as existential and existentiell, the French equivalents of which Lacoste uses, for he considers it “an inaudible distinction I take to be no more than a mark on paper, not language” (vii). As inelegant as these renderings may be, these concepts nevertheless circulate and are in use as such (as Jean-Luc Nancy might say, they make sense). O’Donovan’s refusal to stick to this convention for the sake of not letting phenomenological terminology get into the way of argumentative clarity then seems to fall over itself at times, for example in the following passage: “Since theology is an ontic science, the relation of man to God will be ontic/idiomorphic (existentiel), not ontological/existential” (98). Does the clarity of Lacoste’s summary of Heidegger’s position benefit from the choice for idiomorphic rather than the more commonplace existentiell? I highly doubt it. It could, perhaps, only do so to a reader who is entirely unfamiliar with Heidegger and thus with this conceptual (not merely semantic) distinction. However, that this book would have many such readers seems unlikely. Especially in this case, where the passage at issue comes from an essay on Heidegger, the Heideggerian terminology is not incidental to the argument, and thus abstracting from that terminology does not serve that argument. The same goes for the general phenomenological terminology found throughout the book: as I explained, Lacoste himself suggests that he is not concerned with classifying these essays as either philosophy or theology; the point, for him, is that they are works of phenomenology. As such, neither is the phenomenological vocabulary incidental to argument, for the argument is a distinctly and explicitly phenomenological one. O’Donovan’s choice not to prioritise this vocabulary in his translation therefore seems odd, not to say entirely unjustified. Perhaps the most significant example of what is lost when we pay insufficient attention to phenomenological terminology is the title: the phrase the appearing of God is by no means the most obvious translation of la phénoménalité de Dieu. The English language has a word for phénoménalité, it is phenomenality. This is, indeed, a piece of phenomenological jargon, but like all subject-specific terminology, it carries a very precise meaning: in this case, phenomenality denotes not so much appearing, but rather the mode of appearing; not the fact or the content, but the how of appearing. Or, as Lacoste puts it himself in the preliminary to the nine essays: “Our problem is simply to describe and distinguish their different ways of appearing” (ix, original emphasis). As such, the choice to present this book as a work on the appearing of God out of a noble desire to avoid overly technical language, does not allow the argument to shine with its true brilliance; rather, it obscures it.[5] In any case, this book is not so much about the appearing of God, for God cannot be said to appear but in a highly qualified sense; rather, it is about the way or the mode of his appearing, namely, kenotically, in and as love.
[1] Dominique Janicaud, ‘The Theological Turn in French Phenomenology’, trans. by B.G. Prusak in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 1-103.
[2] The influence of Lacoste’s emphasis on the fluidity of thought when it comes to the missing frontier between philosophy and theology on Emmanuel Falque’s dictum that ‘the more we theologise, the better we philosophise’ seems unmistakable here. On this, see Falque’s Passer le Rubicon—Philosophie et théologie: Essai sur les frontiers (Bruxelles: Lessius, 2013); as well as his ‘Phénoménologie et théologie: Nouvelles frontières’ in Études, 404.2 (2006), 201-210.
[3] See also Jean-Yves Lacoste, Présence et parousie (Paris: Ad Solem, 2006).
[4] It is worth noting here that a similar critique of Marion is articulated by Falque and John Caputo. On this, see: Emmanuel Falque, ‘Phénoménologie de l’extraordinaire (J.-L. Marion)’ in Le Combat amoureux (Paris: Hermann, 2014), 137-193; John D. Caputo, ‘The Hyperbolization of Phenomenology: Two Possibilities for Religion in Recent Continental Philosophy’ in Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 67-93. For a commentary on these critiques, see my ‘Givenness and Existence: On the Possibility of a Phenomenological Philosophy of Religion’ in Palgrave Communications 4, Article number 127 (2018), 1-13.
[5] It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the choice for appearing rather than phenomenality was motivated by concerns of the publisher, rather than the translator. One can indeed imagine that this version would sell better and be of interest to a wider audience (particularly in Britain, where phenomenology, insofar as it is practiced here at all today, bears little resemblance to contemporary styles, interests and debates in France). However, if this is indeed the case, one would expect the translator to make the reader aware of the crucial importance of this distinction in his foreword. However, O’Donovan does not do this and indeed seems to simply wash his hands of the entire issue by declaring phenomenological precision not to be a priority in this case.
Karl Jaspers: Arzt, Psychologe, Philosoph, politischer Denker
The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics
Reviewed by: Leen Verheyen (University of Antwerp)
In their introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics, editors Michael N. Forster and Kristin Gjesdal immediately make clear that the volume differs in approach from other, similar guides to hermeneutics. Whereas there are a number of volumes available that offer histories of hermeneutics or treatments of individual hermeneutical theorists, this book focuses on the question of how hermeneutical issues relate to different fields of study, such as theology, literature, history and psychoanalysis. In this way, the authors aim to demonstrate how hermeneutical thinking thrives and develops through concrete interdisciplinary reflection.
The book opens with an article on “Hermeneutics and Theology,” written by Christoph Bultman. In this essay, Bultman offers a historical overview of different approaches to the interpretation of religious texts and focuses in particular on the various approaches that were developed and debated during the German Enlightenment. Although Bultman offers a clear overview of different approaches within biblical hermeneutics, to a certain extent his precise aim and argument remain unclear, with the central questions behind his overview not made explicit.
In an interesting contribution in the second chapter, Dalia Nassar focuses on the way in which the study of nature in the eighteenth century involved hermeneutical methods and insights that transformed the way in which we approach and represent the natural world. In her essay, “Hermeneutics and Nature,” Nassar directs attention to the ideas of Buffon, Diderot and, especially, Herder. Nassar starts her investigation by highlighting the fact that the emergence of a hermeneutics of nature that can be found in their works must be understood in light of the liberalization of science in the mid-eighteenth century. This liberalization meant that science was no longer understood as founded on mathematics, which led to the introduction of new modes of knowledge in scientific research. According to Nassar, one of the important ideas within the development of a hermeneutics of nature in the eighteenth century was Herder’s concept of a “circle” or a “world.” If we want to understand the structure of a bird or a bee, we should focus on their relationship to the environment or world. Instead of being devoted to classifying animals or other forms of life into different categories, Herder thus directs his attention to grasping the particular “world” a certain creature inhabits and to the way this world is reflected in the structure of its inhabitants. Interpreting nature thus implies seeing the parts in their relation to the whole and, in turn, seeing how the whole is manifest in the parts.
In the following chapter, “Hermeneutics and Romanticism,” Fred Rush focuses on the form that hermeneutics took in German Romanticism, and in particular in the works of Schlegel, Schleiermacher and Humboldt. It is in their works that hermeneutics becomes concerned explicitly with methodological questions. Rush sketches the historical and philosophical circumstances in which this turn comes about.
In his chapter on “Hermeneutics and German Idealism,” Paul Redding also focuses on the emergence of a philosophical hermeneutics in the wake of an era of post-Kantian philosophy. In particular, he explores the different stances taken by hermeneutical philosophers such as Hamann and Herder, and idealist philosophers such as Fichte and Hegel, towards the relation between thought and language. Particularly interesting is his reading of the later Hegel, in which he emphasizes that Hegel can be read not as the abstract metaphysician he is often seen to be but as a philosopher engaged with hermeneutical issues.
In the following chapter, “Hermeneutics and History,” John H. Zammito explores the disciplinary self-constitution of history and the role of hermeneutics in that disciplinary constitution. Through this exploration, Zammito aims to show a way out of contemporary debates on the scientific status of disciplinary history. By investigating the views of Herder, Schleiermacher, Boeckh, Humboldt, Droysen and Dilthey, Zammito argues that the hermeneutical historicist’s attempt to give an account of the past is a cognitive undertaking and not a mystical one. The historian thus does not aim to relivethe past but to understand it. As Zammito’s exploration makes clear, such a view acknowledges the importance of the imagination in this practice, but at the same time ensures that this imagination is harnessed to interpretation, not unleashed fantasy.
Frederick C. Beiser also connects a contemporary debate to the period in which disciplinary history emerged. He starts his chapter on “Hermeneutics and Positivism” with the statement that the distinction between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy has a harmful effect on many areas of philosophy and that one of worst affected areas is the philosophy of history. Beiser notes that, starting in the 1950s, there was a sharp rise in interest in the philosophy of history among analytic philosophers in the Anglophone world, but that these analytic discourses almost completely ignored the German historicist and hermeneutical tradition. The main cost of this, Beiser argues, has been the sterility and futility of much recent philosophical debate, and in particular the long dispute about historical explanation. The dispute has been between positivists, who defend the thesis that covering laws are the sole form of explanation, and their idealist opponents, who hold that there is another form of explanation in history. One of the reasons this debate has now ended in a stand-off can be found in the neglect of alternative perspectives, and in particular that of the historicist and hermeneutical tradition. Beiser argues that if these perspectives had been taken into account by analytic philosophers, they would have recognized that there are goals and methods of enquiry other than determining the covering laws. Had they done so, their focus of attention may have shifted in the more fruitful direction of investigating the methods of criticism and interpretation that are actually used by historians. Beiser therefore concludes that the philosophy of history in the Anglophone world would be greatly stimulated and enriched if it took into account these issues and the legacy of the historicist and hermeneutical tradition.
In the subsequent chapter, “Hermeneutics: Nietzschean Approaches,” Paul Katsafanas explores several key points of contact between Nietzsche and the hermeneutical tradition. As Katsafanas notes, Nietzsche is deeply concerned with the way in which human beings interpret phenomena, but also draws attention to the ways in which seemingly given experiences have already been interpreted. By highlighting these two aspects, Katsafanas argues that it is not wrong to characterize Nietzsche as offering a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” as Paul Ricoeur suggested, but that this statement can easily be misinterpreted. As Katsafanas notes, the hermeneutics of suspicion is often understood as a stance which discounts the agent’s conscious understanding of a phenomenon and instead uncovers the real and conflicting cause of that phenomenon. Nietzsche is clearly doing more than this. According to Nietzsche, the fact that a conscious interpretation is distorting, superficial or falsifying does not mean that it can be ignored. On the contrary, these interpretations are of immense importance, because they often influence the nature of the interpreted object.
The following chapter, “Hermeneutics and Psychoanalysis,” also deals with one of the thinkers who Paul Ricoeur identified as developing a hermeneutics of suspicion, namely Sigmund Freud. In this chapter, Sebastian Gardner argues that there is an uneasy relationship between hermeneutics and Freud’s own form of interpretation. As Gardner shows, Freud may be regarded as returning to an early point in the history of hermeneutics, in which the unity of the hermeneutical project with the philosophy of nature was asserted. In line with this thought, which was abandoned by later hermeneutical thinkers, Freud can be seen as defending the idea that in order to make sense of human beings we must offer an interpretation of nature as a whole.
In “Hermeneutics and Phenomenology,” Benjamin Crowe explicates some of the fundamental insights and arguments behind the phenomenological hermeneutics developed by Heidegger and brought to maturity by Gadamer. Crowe shows how Heidegger opened up a radically new dimension of hermeneutical inquiry, because his conception of hermeneutics as a phenomenological enterprise intended to be a primordial science of human experience in its totality, and in this way took hermeneutics far beyond its traditional purview. By building on Heidegger’s approach, Gadamer developed this thought further, thinking through the distinctive role and value of humanistic inquiry in an age that prized exactitude and results above all else.
In “Hermeneutics and Critical Theory,” Georgia Warnke focuses on the critique of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics by Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, two thinkers from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Warnke starts her investigation by returning to Horkheimer’s description of critical theory and shows how these ideas form the basis of Habermas and Honneth’s philosophical framework. Taking Horkheimer’s framework as his starting point, Habermas seems to see many virtues in Gadamer’s philosophical ideas. Gadamer’s theory, for instance, begins with the social and historical situation, and in this way provides an alternative to the self-understanding of those forms of social science that assume they can extract themselves from the context. Habermas and Honneth nevertheless see Gadamer’s attitude to reflection as a problem, because his emphasis on the prejudiced character of understanding seems to give precedence to the authority of tradition and immediate experience instead of emphasizing the importance of reason and reflection. As Warnke shows, Gadamer’s response to this critique consists of showing that the dichotomies between reason and authority and between reflection and experience are not as stark as Habermas and Honneth suppose. We can, for instance, only question the authority of aspects of our tradition on the basis of other aspects, such as inherited ideals and principles that we do not question, just as we can only reflect on our experiences if we do not begin by distancing ourselves from them. Full transparency is therefore not possible.
In “Hermeneutics: Francophone Approaches,” Michael N. Forster focuses on the French contributions to hermeneutics during the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. In the first part of the chapter, Foster argues that the roots of German hermeneutics were largely French. German hermeneutics, for example, arose partly as a response to certain assumptions of the Enlightenment, one of which was the Enlightenment’s universalism concerning beliefs, concepts, values and sensations, etc. According to Forster, this anti-universalism of German hermeneutics was largely a French achievement and was exported from France to Germany. In particular, Montaigne and the early Montesquieu and Voltaire had developed an anti-universalist position, which emphasized, for example, profound differences in mindset between different cultures and periods.
In the second part of the chapter, Forster focuses on some key figures within twentieth-century French philosophy who contributed to the development of hermeneutics, despite not describing themselves as hermeneutical thinkers. One of them is Jean-Paul Sartre, who gave a central role to interpretation in his early existentialism developed in Being and Nothingness, where he included what Forster calls a hermeneutical theory of radical freedom: although we do not create the world itself, we do create the meanings or interpretations through which we become acquainted with it.
Paul Ricoeur is the only French thinker Forster discusses who not only contributed to hermeneutics but also regarded himself as a hermeneutical thinker. Forster, however, does not seem to regard Ricoeur’s philosophy as very attractive. According to Forster, Ricoeur’s most important contribution to hermeneutics lies in his development of the concept of a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” in this way drawing attention to the fact that three major philosophical developments in the nineteenth century, namely Marx’s theory of ideology, Nietzsche’s method of genealogy and Freud’s theory of the unconscious, can be classified as forms of hermeneutics. It is, however, somewhat strange that Forster does not give much attention to the way in which Paul Ricoeur, as the only philosopher he discusses who also regarded himself as working in the hermeneutical tradition, described his own philosophical project as a hermeneutical one. In particular, Ricoeur’s idea that understanding and explanationshould not be regarded as opposites but rather as being dialectically connected, perhaps deserved more attention.
In “Hermeneutics: Non-Western Approaches,” the topic of which is rich and broad enough to be the subject of a companion of its own, Kai Marchal explores the question of whether modern hermeneutics is necessarily a Western phenomenon. As Marchal points out, philosophers in Western academia only rarely examine reflections on interpretation from non-Western traditions. Marchal therefore offers a very short overview of some of the most important scholars and texts on interpretation from non-Western cultures, while at the same time pointing toward the problem that arises from the use of the word “non-Western,” insofar it refers to a multitude of cultures and worldviews which do not have much in common. Instead of presenting an overview of the different hermeneutical theories and practices around the globe, Marchal therefore focuses on one particular example: the history of Confucian interpretive traditions in China.
After this first part, Marchal changes the scope of his investigation and focuses on the possibility of a dialogue between Western and non-Western hermeneutics. As Marchal shows, Western hermeneutical thinkers from the eighteenth century, such as Herder and von Humboldt, engaged with non-Western thought and languages, while most representatives of twentieth-century hermeneutics highlighted the Greek roots of European culture and emphasized the idea that we are tied to this heritage. Many non-Western philosophers, however, have engaged with ideas that were formulated by Heidegger and Gadamer. Nevertheless, such non-Western philosophers often unfold their understanding of European philosophical problems in their own terms. Furthermore, they are encouraged to do so by Gadamer’s claim that understanding is necessarily determined by the past. Marchal concludes his short introduction to non-Western approaches to hermeneutics by emphasizing the value of engaging with hermeneutical thinkers from other traditions. This engagement may result in an awareness of the Other’s understanding of ourselves against the backdrop of their traditions, and even in becoming open to the possibility of a radically different outlook on things.
In a chapter on “Hermeneutics and Literature,” Jonathan Culler aims to answer the question of why the tradition of modern hermeneutics has not figured significantly in the study of literature. Culler starts his investigation by noting that in literary studies there is a distinction between hermeneutics and poetics: while hermeneutics asks what a given text means, poetics asks about the rules and conventions that enable the text to have the meanings and effects it does for readers. Poetics and hermeneutics therefore work in different directions: hermeneutics moves from the text toward a meaning, while poetics moves from effects or meanings to the conditions of possibility of such meanings. In his historical overview of literary criticism, Culler highlights two important evolutions that enable us to explain the absence of modern hermeneutics within contemporary literary studies. The first is the revolution in the concept of literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this period, the concept of literature as mimesis shifted to a concept of literature as the expression of an author. Although this means literary criticism no longer assesses works in terms of the norms of genres, of verisimilitude and appropriate expression, most discussion of literature nevertheless remains evaluative rather than interpretive. The change in the conception of literature, however, also inspired German thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher to propose a general hermeneutics, as opposed to the special hermeneutics that had focused on biblical or Classical texts. Once the mimetic model of literature is displaced by an expressive model, Culler writes, the question of what a work expresses also arises.
The arguments about what kind of meaning a work might be taken to embody or express seldom draws on this hermeneutical tradition. One of the reasons for this is the second evolution that Cullers highlights, which occurred in the twentieth century when hermeneutics itself changed. Modern hermeneutical thinkers such as Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer shifted their focus to the understanding of understanding. In this way, their hermeneutical theories offer little guidance on interpretation or in distinguishing valid interpretations from invalid ones.
In “Hermeneutics and Law” Ralf Poscher starts from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s claim that hermeneutics in general could learn from legal hermeneutics. Poscher, however, disagrees with Gadamer about what exactly can be learned. As Poscher summarizes, Gadamer thought that what could be learned from the law is that an element of application must be integrated into the concept of interpretation. Poscher, however, disagrees with Gadamer’s idea that hermeneutics is a monistic practice consisting of interpretation, and he argues that what can be learned from law is that hermeneutics is a set of distinct practices that are of variable relevance to different hermeneutical situations. Poscher develops this thought by exploring the different hermeneutical activities in which a lawyer must engage when applying the law to a given case, such as legal interpretation, rule-following, legal construction and the exercise of discretion, and he highlights the important distinctions between these different means for the application of the law to a specific case. To prove the point that hermeneutics is not a monistic practice but rather a complex whole of different practices applicable to hermeneutics in general, Poscher draws some minor parallels between the different hermeneutics applied in law and in art. These parallels are often very clear, although the fact that they are often reduced to brief remarks means that Poscher does not really engage with debates on the interpretation of art. Nevertheless, these remarks do indicate that such a profound comparison between legal hermeneutics and the hermeneutics of art could be an interesting subject for further investigation.
In the final chapter, “Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences,” Kristin Gjesdal explores the question of how best to conceive of the relationship between philosophy and other sciences through the lens of hermeneutical theory and practice. Gjesdal reveals that different responses can be given to the question of what hermeneutics is, and she explores the various answers. First, she outlines the Heideggerian-Gadamerian conception of hermeneutics, in which philosophy is identified with hermeneutics and hermeneutics is identified with ontology. According to Gjesdal, this tendency is concerning because it takes no interest in the different challenges emerging from within the different areas of the human sciences, nor does it acknowledge different subfields of philosophy or textual interpretation. When looking for an answer to the question of how the relationship between hermeneutics and the human sciences might be understood, an investigation of hermeneutics in its early, Enlightenment form, seems to be more fruitful, Gjesdal argues. Through such an investigation, Gjesdal shows that hermeneutical thinkers such as Herder, Schleiermacher and Dilthey combined an interest in hermeneutical theory with hermeneutical practice and in this way can be seen as an inspiration to explore our understanding of the relationship between philosophy and the other sciences. Philosophy would then no longer be seen as the king among the sciences, and our thinking about the relationship between philosophy and the human sciences would start with a more modest attitude and a willingness not simply to teach but also to learn from neighboring disciplines.
It is clear that for a large share of the contributions to this companion, the history of hermeneutics itself and the way in which this history has been constructed by later hermeneutical thinkers is under investigation, leading to new insights into contemporary debates. In this way, this companion as a whole can be seen as engaging with the question of what hermeneutics is, with the various approaches leading to the formulation of different answers to this question. Furthermore, the different readings of the history of hermeneutics also means that a number of contributions go beyond the traditional understanding of hermeneutics, drawing attention to thinkers who are not commonly associated with the field. In this way, the approach to hermeneutics does not remain limited to an investigation of the works and ideas of those thinkers who are generally understood as belonging to the hermeneutical tradition, which also makes the relevance of hermeneutical thinking to diverse contemporary disciplines and debates more apparent. Although the diverse contributions to this companion engage with the fundamental question of what hermeneutics is in different ways, this book as a whole will probably not serve as a good introduction for someone who is not already familiar with philosophical hermeneutics and its history to some extent. Some of the contributions are successful in offering the reader a clear introduction to the subject and discipline they discuss, but this is not always the case, with some authors presupposing a lot of prior knowledge on the subject. Nevertheless, for those already familiar with the subjects discussed, several contributions to this companion will offer the reader fruitful insights and perhaps provoke thought that invites further research.
Derrida-Levinas: An Alliance Awaiting the Political
De l'Éclat du Monde: La « valeur » chez Marx et Nancy
The Philosophy of the Kyoto School
Reviewed by: Philip Højme (Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Graduate School for Social Research)
The Philosophy of the Kyoto School (2018) is translated into English by Robert Chapeskie and revised by John W. M. Krummel. It introduces the reader to the works of (some of) the members of the Kyoto School. The general structure of the book means that each member is represented by a primary text, which is supplemented by an introductory essay. The general purpose of the latter is to outline the research, life and works of each scholar and to provide the background knowledge necessary to understand how each member relates to the conception of the Kyoto School. In the preface, Fujita Masakatsu, the editor of this book, suggests that readers “read the [introductory] essay first before turning to the original text it discusses” (The Philosophy of the Kyoto School, Ed. Fujita Masakatsu, 2018, vii). In addition to this suggestion, which I strongly recommend that any reader with no prior knowledge of the Kyoto School adhere to, I would recommend reading the two supplementary essays (The Kyoto School and the Issue of “Overcoming Modernity”, and The Identity of the Kyoto School: A Critical Analysis) before tackling any of the chapters, since they answer some of the questions readers with little previous knowledge of the Kyoto School might overlook while reading this book; these questions, nonetheless, do seem important to bear in mind while reading this book. They can be summarised as: Which thinkers do we include in the Kyoto School? and How do we define the Kyoto School?
The answer to the first question is far too complex for a thorough examination in this review, but the Kyoto School is generally considered to have been founded by Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945), a professor at Kyoto University, together with Hajime Tanabe (1885-1965). In relation to this, it seems relevant to answer questions regarding the nature of the Kyoto School. First, it is important to know that it was not a school in the sense of the Frankfurt School. Instead, and as an answer to the second question raised earlier, the Kyoto School is a loose term used to describe philosophers with a direct, or indirect, relationship to Nishida and Tanabe. In practice, this invariably also means to have a relationship with Kyoto University, its Faculty of Letters and/or the Chair of Philosophy at this faculty. The chair which Tanabe held after Nishida. Due to this strong connection with these two philosophers, a thorough outline of their philosophies and disputes seems to be in order, even if the book is structured so that each individual philosopher is given an equal amount of attention.
Nishida graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and later became first an assistant professor (in 1910) and shortly after a full professor (in 1913), both positions held at the Kyoto University Faculty of Letters, where Nishida held the Chair of Philosophy. While Nishida’s philosophical style is described as unsystematic by Masakatsu in the introductory essay, the concept of place is suggested as an important fixture in Nishidian Philosophy. The text included in this volume by Nishida is called Place. Place for Nishida is a concept which is developed in order to describe that which must “[envelope the] opposition between the ‘I’ and the ‘non-I’ and that establishes the so-called phenomena of consciousness” (Ibid. 3). This might be paraphrased as meaning that for Nishida place is a mediator of the I and the non-I, or put differently, of the subject and the object, as we know the discussion from the Western philosophical tradition (see i.e. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger). However, place is not platonic, a point which Nishida spells out, writing: “what I refer to as ‘place’ is not the same as what Plato refers to as ‘space’ or ‘receptacle’ [vώqa]” (Ibid. 3). Opposed to Plato’s understanding of space/receptacle, Nishida’s place is “that which permits the relationship between physical space and physical space cannot itself be physical space. What is required is a place wherein physical space is situated” (Ibid. 5, my italics). This means that for Nishida place comes to be the solution to the question of how to understand the relation between I and non-I, subject and object. Critiquing the Kantian notion of the transcendental subject, Nishida posits that consciousness includes meaning and that because of this “we can speak of consciousness as the self-determination of something universal” (Ibid. 6). This led Nishida to the realisation that this cannot be in the case of form and matter; instead, these – to establish knowledge – must be mediated by a different sort of place, concerning which Nishida writes:
“The place that establishes the opposition between form and matter must be different from the place that establishes the opposition between truth and falsity. At the place that establishes knowledge, not only must form and content be distinguishable, but their separation and combination must be free” (Ibid. 6).
This leads to the conclusion that there must be a “place of experience” (Ibid. 6-7). Thus, knowledge and experience are established in the same place, because both knowledge and experience are “phenomena of consciousness” (Ibid. 7). This outline of Western metaphysics, of the subject/object distinction, led Nishida to consider “the idea of self-awareness that reflects the self within itself” (Ibid. 8). Following this revelation, Nishida comes to posit knowing as an act which envelops the opposition between form and matter, or between subject and object. Answering the question of where a self-awareness, which reflects itself within itself, is situated (i.e. placed), Nishida posits the category of true nothing as this place. True nothing is a nothing which has transcended the opposition between being and nothing, between the I and non-I. It has transcended these in such a way that it envelops both – “To speak of subject-object unity, or the disappearance of subject and object, is simply to say that place becomes truly nothing” (Ibid. 9).
This is what Nishida calls the logic of nothing, a logic which takes on a new form in the work of Nishida’s successor, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962). After graduating from the Faculty of Letters at Tokyo Imperial University, he eventually gained a position at Kyoto University in 1919, and later took over the Chair of Philosophy after Nishida’s retirement. The text included in this volume by Tanabe is called Clarifying the Meaning of the Logic of Species. Heavily inspired by historical materialism, Hajime “brought the practical dynamism he had learned from it to the logic of nothing” (Ibid. 43), founding the philosophical notion of the logic of species, a term which is as much a critique of the logic of nothing as it is a development of it. Regarding the internal critique between the members of the Kyoto School, Masakatsu writes:
“We may take this kind of relationship that permits mutual criticism, or of taking critique as a springboard or the criticism received as energy for developing one’s own thought, to be one characteristic feature of the Kyoto School” (Ibid. vii).
This can be assumed to be a direct reference to the fact that Nishida not only accepted Tanabe’s critique, but also used it to further develop the logic of nothing. Leaving this development aside, the following is an outline of Tanabe’s conception of the logic of species. Tanabe states that there are two reasons for writing this essay: “the practical and the logical” (ibid. 25). The practical reason for Tanabe seems to be a wish to understand the rise of ethno-homogenous state ideology in South-East Asia. Tanabe refutes the idea that states are made up of individuals who enter into a contract, as exemplified in the theories of Hobbes’ Leviathan, or Rousseau’s Social Contract. Opposed to such theories as describing at least the Japanese state, Tanabe instead argues that:
“society is not a relationship that simply proceeds from individuals … Rather, unless it possessed a substratum [基体] unbounded by the generational replacement of individuals and to this extent exist as something preceding them, it would be unable to coercively unify them. And since the social substratum is something species-tribal [種族的], wherein individuals are born and included, I thought it should be called a [species]” (ibid. 25)
Tanabe calls this kind of society “communal” (Ibid. 27), which stands in opposition to the “contractual society” (Ibid. 27). Following on from this, Tanabe devotes the remainder of the essay to explaining how an individual comes to accept state coercion, and it is here that the logic of nothing is redeveloped by Tanabe, who argues that: “The true individual becomes individual within the whole only through the mediation of the universal … the affirmation of the subject in absolute negation, is the mutual unification [相即] of the state and the individual as a subjective whole” (Ibid. 27-28). Hence, the mediation between individuality and state is, for Tanabe, that which brings about the true individual (in the same way as the mediation of universal and particular in Nishidian philosophy came to bring about true nothingness). Thus, Tanabe breaks with Nishida in claiming that state coercion is necessary to mediate and, in this way, achieve a subjective whole. With regard to this, in the introductory essay, Nakaoka writes that “To negate the self as an individual is to establish its communal character. Tanabe thus came to believe that ‘the true self is restored by losing itself’ ” (Ibid. 47). The true self for Tanabe is something which envelops both the individual and the species (the universal), but where Nishida claimed an absolutely nothing, Tanabe postulated a true self which needs to lose itself to be found. Thus, Tanabe’s conceptual development of the logic of nothing into the logic of species makes Tanabe’s contribution a much more social/material logic than Nishida’s. Nishida and Tanabe constitute two of the grounding pillars on which the Kyoto School stands, and in their works, we see concepts and topics which are to be taken up, expanded upon or criticised by their direct or indirect heirs.
Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945) was a direct heir, who entered Kyoto University in 1917 and subsequently studied philosophy under both Nishida and Tanabe. In 1922, Miki went to Germany to attend lectures given by Rickert and Heidegger and in 1924 Miki moved to Paris, “where he spent one year devoting himself to reading [Pascal] while studying French” (Ibid. 66). Miki’s text included here is called The Logic of Imagination, and it represents Miki’s attempt to unify pathos and logos, which eventually led Miki to the logic of imagination conceived of as a “philosophy of action” (Ibid. 59). While paying tribute to Nishidian philosophy, Miki would state clearly that the logic of imagination was to be “considered separately” (Ibid. 59). Miki conceived of action different from the philosophical tradition which conceives it as having an origin in the will, meaning in subjectivism. Opposed to such an understanding, Miki posited that the term should be understood as
“the event of creating things … All acts in the broad sense … have the meaning of production … To act is to make new forms by working upon things and altering their forms (transforming them). Forms, as things that are made, are historical and change through history” (Ibid. 59).
Here one clearly sees the influence which historical materialism had on the philosophy of Miki, and this is a definite break with Nishidian philosophy. The acts of creation which Miki attributes to the logic of imagination links this philosophy closely with technology and the arts, both of which Miki conceives of as creative, in the sense that they both create something new. Another figure closely linked to Miki is Jun Tosaka (1900-1945). The connection with Miki is not only in the forming of what has been termed the left-wing of the Kyoto School, but also in the tragic fate they shared, both dying in prison (in Japan) in 1945. Tosaka, another graduate from Kyoto University, was concerned with the notion of the technological spirit, and the text included is What Is the Technological Spirit? Tosaka describes this as “the fundamental spirit of modern culture” (Ibid. 81). Tosaka then goes on to locate this spirit not only in the modern world but also traces it back to ancient philosophy, in effect tracing it back to Plato and Aristotle. Tosaka also postulates a scientific spirit, which is then examined in relation to the technological spirit, concluding that these spirits are like opposite sides of the same coin. The scientific spirit, Tosaka claims, has three characteristics. It is “firstly a positivist spirit … secondly … a rational spirit … [And] I also consider the scientific spirit to the historical spirit … The scientific spirit … must be a spirit of our everyday life and action” (Ibid. 85). Tosaka does not dwell on the question concerning whether the scientific spirit is the technological spirit or the other way around. Instead, the technological spirit is conceived as “another face of the scientific spirit” (Ibid.). This leads Tosaka to argue that even at the level of the laboratory (positivist science) there is a social aspect, thus it is not a “true [absolute] historical understanding” (Ibid. 86). This is a direct critique of Tanabe and the idea that the progress of science will be rolled out deterministically based on the logic of species. Opposed to such an understanding, Tosaka came to claim that even positive science is historically situated and not an absolute.
Differing from Miki and Tosaka’s materialistic concerns, Motomori Kimura’s (1895-1946) philosophy engages with the question of body and spirit and the essay included here is Body and Spirit [Mind]. Kimura graduated from Kyoto University in 1923 and returned in 1933 as an assistant professor. What is of interest regarding Kimura is that from 1939 onwards Kimura oversaw teaching, not in philosophy but in pedagogy and teaching methods. Thus, Ōnishi, in the introductory essay, examines Kimura as “as a scholar (philosopher) of education … Kimura philosophized from the principial depths of praxis = poiesis underlying both the undertaking of the practice called ‘education’ and the act of creating a work of art” (Ibid. 124). For Kimura the body is not the opposite of the spirit. Instead, the body is described as “a principle of expression [表現]. Expression, however, is the manifestation of the inside on the outside” (Ibid. 110). This means for Kimura that the inside is “at the same time outside and vice versa” (Ibid). In this sense, the body becomes a mediator which manifests the inside, or the spirit on the outside (what Kimura calls nature). Hence, in Kimura there is no dualism between body and spirit. Instead, there is a mediation between the spirit and nature through the body. The body comes to act as a point which allows mind and matter to interact with one another. Leaving this point aside, what is important for Kimura in this regard is the concept of expression. Expression, outlined succinctly, is the inside expressed on the outside, as an act of creation, situated on the outside. It is not conceived of as in opposition to the outside (nature) but, instead, as being situated outside of the inside. The conclusion of this line of thought is that:
“[The body]is the self-negation of spirit, and at the same time it is the self-negation of matter. Because the body is thus the self-identity of contradictories [矛盾の自己同] it possesses the capacity of formation, and expressive life is able to express itself in self-awareness through the mediation of the body” (Ibid. 120).
Another thinker who continues this line of examination into the spirit is Shinichi Hisamatsu (1889-1980), who became a professor at Kyoto University in 1946. The text included is called The Metaphysical Element of the East. In this text Hisamatsu elaborates pivotal concept in Hamamatsu’s philosophy of the Eastern nothing. Hamamatsu’s life and works are perhaps those which dwell mostly on the topic of religion, and Nishida once had to write a letter reprimanding Hisamatsu for “[trying] to drop out of university just before graduation in order to practice Zen” (Ibid. 150). Hence, the practice of Zen is an important factor in the development of Hisamatsu’s thoughts, a practice which can be said to have been inspired by a direct suggestion from Nishida, who was also a Zen practitioner. The Eastern nothing is an integral part of Hisamatsu’s religion of awakening. The latter is a metaphysical thought or system which Hisamatsu claims cannot be found in the West, while the former is described as a concept different to, but not in opposition to, Western thought. Hisamatsu stipulates that Western thought, since the Greeks, has revolved around the concept of Being, positing that in the East a different line of thought concerning this developed. Hisamatsu explains that:
“This ‘Eastern nothing’ is something that cannot be fit into the category of what exists in actuality. Without being something metaphysical from the standpoint of all beings or “being”, it is something metaphysical that negates and transcends being itself” (Ibid. 143).
This is thus a concept which draws heavily on the concept of absolute nothingness in Nishidian philosophy, and for this reason Hisamatsu’s philosophy falls within the frame of the Kyoto School, as it directly deals with one of the pivotal concepts of the Kyoto School.
Toratarō Shimomura (1902-1995) is described by Takeda in the introductory essay as the man who brought the Kyoto School to a close, and while the book does, in fact, contain an additional philosopher, this is not an overestimation on Takeda’s part, considering that Shimomura was the last of the philosophers included in this book to pass away. Shimomura’s work included in this volume is The Position of Mathematics in Intellectual History. In this text Shimomura tries to discern the difference between Eastern and Western culture, specifically regarding scientific/academic inquiry (science, for Shimomura, becomes academic inquiry as natural sciences stem from the mathematics of the ancient Greek philosophers). Shimomura asserts that academic inquiry is a Western term which originates from the West and points out that:
“ ‘academic inquiry’ [gakumon 学問] in our mother tongue, if we follow its classical usage, meant something close to that which takes ‘statecraft’ [治国平天下] or ‘moral conduct for living’ [修身処生]—ultimately things of a religious or political-moral, generally practical nature—or ‘practical inquiry’ [実学] as its subject matter” (Ibid. 164).
This means that the subject matter of these inquiries differs in one very important sense; namely, one is theoretical, and the other is practical. Following this insight, Shimomura argues that each culture, or what Shimomura and the Kyoto School call ethnic spirit, has its own kind of “Religion, academic inquiry, and art, too …[which] thereby form a system of culture, and, through the mediation of the ethnic spirit, express the world; the world thus realizes itself in them” (Ibid. 165). Therefore, it is through an inquiry into European academic inquiry (understood as a moment) that Shimomura comes to regard history, and academic inquiry itself, as being mediated through the spirit and experienced by that spirit in its historical moment.
Closing this volume, but not the Kyoto School, is Keiji Nishitani (1900-1990), whose included work is Nihility and Emptiness. This was the only work known to me prior to reading this book, though my knowledge is superficial. In this work by Nishitani, we again see the notions of nothingness (nihility) and emptiness coming into play as pivotal concepts for the Kyoto School. Keta, in the introductory essay on Nishitani, writes that Nishitani’s relationship to Zen is important if one is to understand the philosophy of Nishitani. Like Hisamatsu, Zen Buddhism became a practice for Nishitani which would resolve the crisis of not feeling that any of the philosophers studied up until that point (primarily Western philosophers, as this was Nishitani’s speciality) had been able to fill a growing internal void. Keta writes that: “at the age of thirty-three he began practicing Zen at the Meditation Hall of Shōkoku Temple in Kyoto. He would later state that through this practice he somehow managed to extricate himself from this crisis” (Ibid. 219-220). The basic premise of Nishitani’s philosophy is that science (the scientific method) overlooks both religious and philosophical questions, by mechanizing or rationalising humans, society and nature. This, Nishitani argues, leads to the fact that “contemporary nihilism arises … from an awakening to the meaninglessness at the root of this world and of human beings” (Ibid. 207). This meaninglessness, nihility, is for Nishitani overcome by the concept of Buddhist emptiness [空], which Nishitani equates with Eckhart’s notion of detachment: “What Eckhart called ‘detachment’ [離脱], … a transcendence that is a freeing not only from the self and the world but even from God …This point emerges with greater clarity in the standpoint of what is referred to in Buddhism as ‘emptiness’ [空]” (Ibid. 209). The concept of emptiness is described as “the completion of an orientation toward negation. As a standpoint that has negated nihility as the negation of being” (Ibid. 2014). Such a standpoint seems in alignment with the development of Nishidian philosophy as outlined in this book, and while Nishitani’s concept of emptiness differs from Nishida’s absolute nothingness, it still follows in a line of critiques, redevelopments and new articulations that seem to be the hallmark of the Kyoto School.
Succeeding in drawing a red line through the main topics, interests and fields which comprise the works of the members of the Kyoto School, this book is an important contribution to scholars in the West with an interest in the appropriation of Western metaphysics in the East (Japan/Zen Buddhism), to scholars of the Kyoto School in particular, or to those interested in the specific topics dealt with by individual members of the Kyoto School. The primary texts, with their introductory essays, elicit a development of the thought(s) of the Kyoto School which would be hard to elicit for an individual scholar with limited knowledge of Japanese philosophical tradition, Zen Buddhism, or the history of the Japan (ca. 1850-2000), and without access to the translated works. For such scholars, this book is of vital importance as an introduction to this school of philosophy, and the introductory texts and supplementary essays help the reader obtain an outline of each member’s philosophy, their project and the historically important events surrounding their lives, even if it is accomplished from a bird’s eye view. Therefore, I recommend readers with no knowledge of the history of either the Kyoto School or Japan to read the supplementary essays at the end of the book before engaging with the primary texts or their introductory essays. In particular, I found The Kyoto School and the Issue of “Overcoming Modernity” by Kunitsugu Kosaka to be an essay which is very informative for the novice scholar. In this essay Kosaka elaborates not only on the development of the general project of the Kyoto School as an attempt to overcome modernity, but also on the claim that some of the members of the Kyoto School “beginning with Nishida Kitarō, have been stamped with the label of having been collaborators in Japan’s activities during World War II” (Ibid. 233). This is not unlike similar claims levelled against the philosophy of Heidegger or even Nietzsche, both of whom are philosophers who can be said to have had an influence, directly or indirectly, on the members of the Kyoto School. While the book is an introduction to the Kyoto School, it does, however, assume knowledge of philosophical concepts, particularly of metaphysical and ontological concepts. This is not a criticism of the book but a note for any potential reader. Moreover, while it might seem daunting for some readers to immerse themselves in the depths of philosophical inquiry, the task of reading these texts is not insurmountable for anyone willing to spend some time brushing up on key concepts.
A key aspect, or method, of the Kyoto School seems to be that of mutual criticism, and while this does not make the general project of the Kyoto School compatible with the Frankfurt School (e.g. with Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of modernity/enlightenment), I would point out that this is an aspect where that these two schools converge. In addition to this, both schools also seem to have been engaged with the question of the relationship between Being and Nothing, subject and object, though they differ enormously in their conclusions. Leaving this point aside, as the book does not dwell too much on this question, it seems important to mention finally that while the book introduces the Kyoto School as endeavouring to present an Eastern philosophy which differs from Western philosophy, these two terms are ambiguous for several reasons. Firstly, because the Kyoto School is firmly anchored in Japanese Zen Buddhism or a critique of it, as opposed to an Eastern philosophy that spans other Buddhist ways of thinking, or even other countries. Secondly, because of their engagement with a certain kind of Western philosophy, mainly Heidegger and Nietzsche. In addition to these two points, some members also engage with historical materialism (i.e. Miki and Tosaka). All in all, this is a serious book worth attention from any scholar interested in metaphysical or ontological questions answered from a position different from the normative Western perspective. Though different from the western perspective, Nishida’s general claim is that Japanese culture is well-versed in both the Eastern and Western perspectives, and thus exceptionally suited to provide a bridge between them.
“The original characters of Eastern culture and Western culture are such that they ought to be mutually complementary, not such that one is superior to the other or one must be integrated into the other. What is important is instead to uncover the broader and deeper roots that run through both Eastern culture and Western culture, and from there to shine a new light on both cultures. Nishida argued that this is precisely the world-historical role Japan (being well versed in both cultures) bears today” (Ibid. 240).
In paraphrasing this rather lengthy quote, one might say that the goal of Nishidian philosophy was to bridge the gap between two cultures, or metaphysical systems and that the subsequent members of the Kyoto School should be thought of as engaging with this project either affirmatively, critically or descriptively. Thus, what makes up the Kyoto School, and what merits its name, is a sense of dealing with common themes centred around the idea of shining a light on these two cultures by uncovering their common roots.
