Points

What does it mean to philosophize in Japanese? And what happens if one's thoughts come together through two languages?

The science of time needs to be prefaced by a science of infinities.

At least on Terry Pinkard's interpretation in Hegel: A Biography, Hegel's idea of society is not based on the collection of individuals. Rather, individuality as such emerges as a result of universal self-consciousness, i.e. reason. It is always through another that a 'self' reflectively comes into being, and only at a certain stage in such an interaction can a 'self' become self-conscious as an individual, i.e. a person whose borderline between itself and its other is clearly defined and definable. For instance, in order to secure the autonomy of my bodily movements, I need to first and foremost live in a society, founded on the "ethical substance" of modernity, which gives rise to a whole host of minute practices that prevent others from unnecessarily or 'irrationally' intervening with how I will move my own body. Likewise, freedom of thought and speech is something cultivated by first learning various methods of thought and rules of language and then told afterwards to reflect on these. It is only through such a 'negative' reflection that the standpoint of the 'self' becomes recognizable for the self. This act of self-reflection, however, is again only possible within a society which, through its own rationality, makes various practices manifest. These ways in which society 'gives rise' to individuals imply that 'society' in the Hegelian sense is neither a representation originally represented (either implicitly or explicitly) by a 'transcendental' self or subject, nor a material or spiritual collection of multiple 'individuals' which are ontologically prior to society.

Chronology

If the description of experience is called phenomenology, then the science of time will have to be called chronology, not matter how different the meaning of this word is from its ordinary usage. It will not merely be a list of different forms of time, and it will have to be written 'seven and seventy times over' beyond what can be given in a single treatise.

Kant's categories are far too impoverished to exhaust the self-reflective development of time. Heidegger's way of thinking, which Dreyfus has clearly called "formal indication," always thinks time by starting from a phenomenon other than time itself. Derrida here follows suit. Although their contributions to this subject ought not to be underestimated, a simple act of following their styles will not yield a logos of time, chronology.

Hegel's Logic is an extensive chronicle of time developing temporarily and temporally. This work deserves to be incorporated verbatum into the present project. Schelling is the one who will spark the first thoughts here. He will then be in the background without being explicitly referenced.

Parody or Homage to Deconstruction

Before weaving together a profound logical development in order to unify it under the legitimizing name of the transcendental, or before surrendering passively in front of one definite representation and talk in the name of impartiality, in the name of the empirical, before making such moves and amplifying them to the point where they come to become significant on their own, one ought to meditate upon this "before." Where does one, or do we, already stand with this "before"? Before, both in the sense of confronting someone or something and of rewinding or leaping behind it, whether or not one takes into account such an act of temporal acrobatics within and during this very act itself. In any case, and in both senses, the "before" seems only to suggest a "before of this 'before'." With this doubling, the problem is only raised to a higher power. Resisting once more the temptation to interpret this upward movement as the move-in to the realm of the transcendental, one ought to further question this conjunction: how is it that I am before the 'before'?

... and so on and so forth.

Notes on Japanese History

Fukushima is not (yet) an event.

We Japanese are either Evelines or Franks, at least in imagination. But without imagination it is impossible to live in this country.

Japanese speaks through the Japanese. How will the Japanese be able to speak through Japanese?

"Freedom" means roughly "the transgression of law" in Japanese.

The Schelling Memo (5)

How to interpret The Philosophy of Art? Before speculating further on the possible beginning of the positive philosophy, this interpretive task alone is quite challenging, and needs to be settled to a certain extent. In the System of Transcendental Idealism Schelling has already declared that art is the highest embodiment of truth, the absolute from which all other divisions spring forth, the "highest potency" which is simultaneously ground and result of all movements of consciousness. Art is what opens up the possibility of consciousness as such, and it is also the source of both sensuous and intellectual intuition. In this respect, for Schelling The Philosophy of Art is an account of the highest being. The stakes are high for him, and also for a reader - such as myself - who has temporarily taken Schelling's philosophy to heart.

Art has been designated as the real representation of the forms of things as they are in themselves, and hence of the forms of the archetypes. [And] if art is the representation of the forms of things as they are in themselves, then the universal material or content of art is found in the archetypes themselves, and our next object is therefore a construction of the universal material or content of art or of its eternal archetypes.

Philosophy is the ideal, art is the real, manifestation of the absolute. In philosophy, the objective element is subsumed under subjectivity, while in art the reverse process takes place. These are thus two channels for the transmission of being from nature, mind, and back into nature.

If the basic element of the human soul is to represent God, and if this representation is achieved through the severability of the understanding from yearning, or being from its ground, then there ought to be a transition from the latter to the former. If nature is identified as ground, then philosophy would be the circuit through which such a transmission is to be accomplished. In this way, nature becomes being, and understanding illuminates the forces or potencies within the ground. This, however, is only the case if the ground is considered as objective. The ground in its subjectivity will need another channel through which it enters into the light of the soul. This is art. More precisely, art is the intuition of the subjective ground, i.e. the incomprehensible stirring not within the external world but rather within the human soul.

On the other hand, however, art and nature are not in such a simple opposition. Art, as the "real representation of things as they are in themselves," already encompass the totality of nature, since nature itself is conditioned by the soul that represents it. It is thus that Schelling conceives art as nature raised to a higher power, as he makes clear in the following disclaimer.

For those already acquainted with my system of philosophy [including the philosophy of nature], the philosophy of art will be merely the repetition of that same philosophy in the highest potence.

 

Nature still has an element of contingency in it, and even an organism is not yet free, but rather is conditioned and determined by its receptivity. The human being, qua organism, is bound up in a similar fashion. Only the human being qua artist is able to experience freedom to the same extent as the necessity of his or her own life. Schelling will claim in chapter 4 that the essence of art is the removal of accidental aspects from natural things. It is through such an act of subtraction that the unity of the human soul is achieved. In order for such a unification to take place, it is not only necessary to produce art, but also at the same time to be receptive to the work in the appropriate way. Schelling writes:

All effects of art are merely effects of nature for the person who has not attained a perception of art that is free, that is, one that is both passive and active, both swept away and reflective. Such a person behaves merely as a creature of nature and has never really experienced and appreciated art as art.

It is not only for this universal reason that the philosophy of art is pressing. Schelling also gives an historical reason for studying this subject.

With few exceptions, one can learn very little about the essence of art from those who actually practice art in such an age, since as a rule they have no guide concerning the actual idea of art and of beauty. Precisely this dominant disagreement even among those who practice art is a compelling reason for seeking the true idea and principles of art itself by means of science.

Finally, the grand aim and ambition of The Philosophy of Art is the construction of the "entire universe" or the "All" in and through the medium of art. It is quite surprising that Schelling here seems to take the term "universal" quite literally. Art is universal, not merely because it is an activity common to all human souls, but also because it is the very shape of the entire universe, or at least potentially so.

As "potence," art is what Schelling calls the "indifference point." This means that art necessarily arises as a third in any dialectical series. For instance, painting arises as a third between light and darkness. As such, painting, while it is constructed out of light and darkness, is itself an embodiment of something which is neither light nor darkness. At the same time, however, Schelling also makes the enigmatic remark that the "real" or that which appears is a product of the imbalance of potencies. Here, while Schelling is being consistent with his critical apparatus in his First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, one still wonders how such a claim is compatible with the other claim that art is the indifference point of two polar opposites.

A few words on artistic beauty. For Schelling, beauty is present wherever the above mentioned "indifference" is achieved. It is a sign that an "archetype" or an idea is made simultaneously conceptual and intuitive, rational and sensuous. As such, beautiful things enjoy a peculiar kind of reality. Schelling claims in this context that "all figures and forms in art, and thus particularly the gods [for the proper content of art is mythology], are actual because they are possible." There is no distinction between possibility and actuality in beautiful things. As soon as it is present, beauty is intuitive, and its reality undeniable. Correspondingly, the gods of mythology are also free from such dichotomies. Therefore, "the gods are in themselves neither mortal nor immortal, but rather are freed from this relationship and are absolutely blessed."

The one content of art, i.e. God, is first and foremost mythological. This already suggests an intimate connection between the philosophy of art and that of mythology, a connection which I will most likely explore on another occasion. Meanwhile, Schelling moves forward by shifting his attention to the forms in which such mythological and divine content is rendered real. First, Schelling starts by claiming that there was a rupture between Greek and Christian mythology. Schelling devotes more than 20 pages to the demonstration of this rupture, which shows that this is an important premise for the subsequent development of his construction. For Greek mythology, art is the "informing of the infinite in the finite." In this way, the Greeks intuit the infinite by encountering its finite manifestation. For example, music, which will turn out to be the fundamental element of all other art-forms, gives us such a sense. When one listens to, say, Ryuichi Sakamoto's Hibari, one is tempted to assume that such a sonorous flow is a representation of something that is infinity present in the world. It continues to flow in our souls, and it moreover first appears to us as if it had always flowed too. The Christian mythology, on the other hand, is the "informing of the finite in the infinite." The movement here is the reverse. The ethical analogy to this is Kierkegaard's famous "leap of faith" whereby the "knight of faith," while remaining firmly rooted and self-conscious within his own finitude, is nonetheless resigning everything that he has in order to continually stare into the abyss of infinite possibilities, thereby living face-to-face with God, whom Kierkegaard defines as "that all things are possible." In Schelling's terminology, the reality that appears for such a knight of faith is a "miracle." Schelling defines a miracle thus: "a miracle is an absolute viewed from the empirical perspective, an absolute occurring within the finite realm without for that reason having any relationship to time."

For Schelling, "the element of the miraculous within historical relationships is the only mythological material in Christianity." Here lies the clue to the connection between art and the positive philosophy. If the content of art is mythology, and if Christian mythology gives us the "miraculous," then, if such "miracles" are the fragmentary "glimpses" of the ground intimated in the Investigations, then art is essentially the preparatory activity for the positive philosophy. Recall that philosophy is the idealization or the subjectivization of that which is real or objective. If the "indivisible remainder," that which "eternally remains in the ground," is momentarily brought forth as a miracle, and if such a moment is then fixed through Christian art, then the philosophy which reflects on the latter and idealizes it once more will necessarily be a positive one. In this sense, the study of Christian art is the pre-requisite for the positive philosophy. This makes The Philosophy of Art a set of prologomena to the positive philosophy.

With this general addition to Schelling's own way of framing the basic nature of art, we can now move on to Schelling's discussion of the particular forms of art. The details of the latter, in so far as art is the medium between the "indivisible remainder" and the positive philosophy, are to be interpreted with care, since these are, at least for me and up to now, the most promising clues for envisioning a way of thinking which breaks free of the closed confines of the negative philosophy.

The Schelling Memo (4)

Reading the First Outline for a System of the Philosophy of Nature, with an eye to the possibility of the positive philosophy intimated in the Berlin Lectures, comes with much disappointment. This is not to say that the Outline fails completely in giving any hint of where the positive philosophy might find its concrete subject matter and development.

To begin with, one ought to recognize just how much ahead of his time Schelling really was. Already in the Outline Schelling criticizes not only a facile "direct realist" account of nature (which only focuses on visible or tangible phenomena) but also all other forms of science which tries to ground itself empirically in observations. Schelling claims that the essential constituents of nature are not beings but rather actants. These are not "forces" in the sense of something which can be inferred out of a repeated perception of the "constant conjunction" of sensations. If we take the term "force" to express the as it were "horizontal" connection of appearances, then the term "actant" rather describes a vertical causality which immanently underlies all natural processes. Actants are necessary for the explanation of natural phenomena, since forces, while they do explain the conjunction of this object with that and the other, cannot account for why precisely these objects appeared in the first place. Instead of taking these objects as "given," Schelling aims to explain their very appearance as objects by means of these "actants."

A popular introduction to quantum physics already suggests that "particles" posited at the sub-atomic or quantum level are exactly what Schelling calls "actants." These sub-atomic particles have an essentially unobservable side which are only posited due to their explanatory value. Kenneth Ford's The Quantum World, among many other such introductory textbooks on quantum physics, provide us with many such examples. Ford emphasizes again and again that certain ionic processes are only postulated without every being directly observed. Yet, due to their explanatory value and mathematical elegance, these processes are assumed to be real. These processes are precisely what Schelling envisioned in his outline of a "speculative physics" which deals with "actants." And Schelling's still all-too-sketchy claim that all natural beings presuppose an "original duality" seems to find confirmation with the postulate of quantum physics that all "particles" have their negative counterpart, an "anti-particle."

Not only on the level of physics, but also on the level of biology Schelling is farsighted. Again, Schelling stresses an "original duality" in an organism which drives the organic process. Unlike inorganic matter, the way in which an organism acts is determined by the mode in which the organism is receptive towards its external environment. For Schelling, the act of receiving stimuli is the essential activity of life. That is to say, it is not what organisms spontaneously do at random that constitutes the autonomy of life, but rather the stable structure which allows the organism to distinguish the relevant stimuli from the irrelevant that really gives it life. This duality between activity and receptivity is unified under the concept of "sensibility," and this is what Schelling takes to be the fundamental determination of all organic beings.

Each organism is an expression of a particular stage of development in the original actants of nature. Stages are distinguished by virtue of the complexity, diversity, and ultimately the plasticity with which these organisms become receptive to actants. The lower organisms thus are constituted by their receptivity to a very limited range of actants and forces, while the higher organisms, such as mammals, are able to sense a considerably larger range of stimuli, forces, and actants. Humans are the "highest" - although this is also a highly biased claim conditioned by the prejudices of Schelling's time - in that only the human - according to Schelling - is able to relate to (by receiving) all actants in nature. Anthropocentric though this may seem, it is also consistent with Schelling's later claim that the human soul is born with the purpose of revealing the ground (i.e. nature) of God for God.

The limit of each organism is given by the moment of reproduction or sex. The telos of organic being as such is its sexuality, and sexuality is moreover the highest expression of the aforementioned fundamental duality inherent in all natural beings. Again, lower organic beings quickly move from birth to sex, and thus they perish relatively quickly. Schelling claims that since every natural being is the product of a duality which has not yet resolved itself into a unity, natural beings who do achieve this resolution in unity cease to exist in nature. Thus, natural beings "fulfill" their purpose with the sexual act, and thus henceforth terminate their growth and soon after perish. Again, and although the following is not exactly how Schelling puts it, since human beings are able to engage in non-reproductive sex, they alone are capable of growing without limit, since they alone are able to bypass and overcome the destiny (i.e. natural telos) of all other organic beings.

Moreover, Schelling claims that the higher organisms already have the actants of the lower organisms inscribed into their very being. This speculative claim, again, marks the fact that Schelling's Outline really is ahead of its time. It is only after the establishment of techniques for analyzing DNA that scientists were able to confirm that so-called "higher" creatures have many DNA sequences for traits which they do not make use of at all in their course of life. The human being, for example, possesses many DNA sequences, perhaps even more than half of the entire human DNA, which are of absolute uselessness in the development and preservation of the human body. Neil Shubin's popular book Your Inner Fish is one of the many accessible accounts of why this is the case. Organic beings thus really do preserve the traces of their ancestors.

Despite these insights, which are moreover expressed in a powerfully abstract and formal language, why is it "disappointing" to read Schelling's Outline? One source of disappointment is that the Outline is too coherent. What Schelling called the "ground" in his Investigations, which is also the object of the positive philosophy envisioned in his Berlin Lectures, seems to be something which eludes any easy systematization according to categories such as finitude, infinity, causality, etc. If the ground can be understood as "actants," then this already seems to  go contrary to the spirit of the Investigations which places such concepts and thoughts on the side of the "light" of the understanding. The difference between the "being" constituted by the imbalance of actants and the "absolute prius" of the positive philosophy is clarified by Schelling in the following passage:

The prius will be known from its consequences, but not in a way such that the consequences had preceded it. The preposition ‘a’ in ‘a posteriori’ does not in this instance signify the terminus a quo; in this context ‘a posteriori’ means ‘per posterius’: through its consequence the prius is known. To be known a priori means just this: to be known from and out of the prius; what is known a priori is, thus, that which a prius possesses and from which it is known. The absolute prius, however, is what has no prius from which it can be known. To be the absolute prius means, therefore, not to be known a priori (SUNY edition, p.193)

Whereas the natural beings in the Outline are seen as products of actants posultaed a priori, the being of the positive philosophy must itself be the source of the "absolute prius" which, since it is originally derived from an actual, already existent being, and since it cannot thus be a consequence of an a priori process of synthesis or deduction, is in an absolute sense "original" and thus free. While such an account resonates deeply with Schelling's claim that all organic activity is really the receptivity of the organism, the Outline does not develop this insight further in a direction that would make the positive philosophy truly take shape.

In this sense, the anachronism of trying to find the germ of the positive philosophy in the Outline becomes evident, its limitations revealed. The Outline is clearly premature in this regard. Nonetheless, its account of organic nature highlights several insights pertaining to organic development, sexuality, and receptivity / activity which all seem to hint at a possible natural philosophy fit for the demands placed by the positive philosophy. However, before pursuing this direction any further, I would like to once again shift my focus onto another domain, that of art, and thus consider next Schelling's Philosophy of Art.

『EV. Cafe』と直感的意識、そして昔と今との不快なつながりを考え抜けないこと

『村上龍と坂本龍一―21世紀のEV. Cafe』という対談集を立ち読みした。全ての対談を精読したわけではない。読んでいる途中で、ある違和感があったから。「昔を懐かしむわけではないけれど…」と言いつつ、対談に出ている人たちは皆、昔について肯定的に語り、今について否定的に語る姿勢を捨てていない。昔についてはビートルズやフランス思想等についてのお決まりの褒め言葉を述べる一方、今については「硬いものを食べないから若者の顎が細い」と浅田彰が述べる等、ほとんど悪口に近い。

読んでいて思うのだが、批判と教育とがうまく「啓蒙」という形でブレンドできていないから、いつになっても同じことの繰り返しなのだ。『思想地図』の「アーキテクチャ」という副題のついた号で、浅田彰が「昔と今とはそんなに問題意識の違いがない」ということを言ったが、それがなぜなのかについてはその対談に出ている人たちも、今回の村上龍・坂本龍一の対談での話者も建設的なことを言えずにいる。でも、これが一番真剣に向き合うべき問題なのではないの？

現代がもつ悪い側面を批判するのは確かに大切だし、1970年代以降の文化を改めて紹介してくれるのはその時代を生きたことのない私のような若者にとっては大変ありがたい。その点だけでも、『EV. Cafe』 シリーズは読む価値があると思う。しかし、一度当時の時代背景や、快楽原則を理解した後、現代の持つ「停滞感」や「脱力感」をどう乗り越えるかについては、ほとんどヒントとなることが書かれていない。

オタク文化がそのような突破口になりえないことは納得できるし、街を眺めれば見渡す限り同じような機能的な景色が広がっているこの光景に嫌気が差すのもわかる。だが、これが今の物質的な現実なのだから、安易に「昔は良かった」などとはいえない。すると、村上龍や坂本龍一がやっているようなことをやる羽目になるのである。かれらは、「昔に戻りたい」という思いを抑制するあまり、昔から今へと受け継がれても良いことを次々と「ダサい」「もうそんなことはいえない」と否定するのだ。例えば、坂本龍一は「昔は東京から何かを発信することが良いと思えたけど、今はそうやって「東京」「ロンドン」「ニューヨーク」という場所にこだわってものを発信すること自体がダサい」という趣旨のことを述べている。たしかに、「今ニューヨークではこれが流行っている」と言われて「え、ニューヨークで？　すごい、知りたい！」と飛びつくのは変だと思う。しかし、だからといってもう場所にはこだわらなくて良いという結論には至らないはず。NYにはNYの、東京には東京の特徴があり、独特の雰囲気があるのだから、それを伸ばすか変えるか、そこに実際に住む人たちが考えてその場所を作るのはおおいに結構なのではないか。そして、そうして構築された都市が、外部者から特別な眼でみられるのは良いことだと思う。例えば、ニューオーリンズから出てきた新しい歌手がいる、なんていう噂を聞けば、私ならば「ニューオーリンズ」という地名が原因でその噂をさらに掘り下げてみたくなるだろう。

もちろん、このような批判は、この対談の文脈や趣旨にはそぐわない。そもそも、『EV. Cafe』シリーズは何かを批判的に検討する場所としては機能しないと思う。上記の例でも、「そういう側面があるということはわかっているし、それを否定するつもりはない」と言えばそれで済む程度のことだ。そうやって、とにかく考えを広げていくのがこのシリーズの目的なのだ。

ある考えや感覚をそのまま肯定しようとする意識は、コリングウッドが「直感的意識」 （aesthetic consciousness）と呼んで鋭くその特徴を描写している。直感的意識は、なんとなく快楽を与えてくれるような考えや感覚を基に、徹底的に遊ぶ意識だ。それはオタク文化の土台でもあるし、社会や科学等の領域を横断して交わされる対談の土台にもなりえる。話されている内容が違うだけで、会話の約束事は同じなのだ。なぜ『EV. Cafe』は直感的意識を土台としているのか？　それは、自分たちが描写している現実を、対談者が積極的に変えようとしていないから。むしろ、安易に今を批判しつつ、代案を出さないことで、かれらは「今は駄目だ、だけど私たちはそれをなんとかする義務もなければ、私たちのせいでこうなったわけでもない、だからあとは誰かがなんとかしてくれるしかない」と暗に言っているのだ。自分たちのホームグラウンドのような文化や現実を批判するのは不快な作業だ。快くないことはやりたくない、というのが村上龍と坂本龍一の持つ共通点かもしれない。別にそれが悪いと言っているわけではない。だけど、このような意識には限界もあるのだ。『EV. Cafe』シリーズは、その限界を考えるためのヒントを与えてくれない。

やや偏った読み方を基にしたアンフェアな批判かもしれないが、しかしそのように読まれてしまっても仕方がないような対談であることも事実だと思う。特に、今を否定的に描写していること、そして昔の時代が持っていた「良い点」が今の時代の「悪い点」と持っているかもしれないつながりを追究できていないこと、さらに、今は「具体的なヴィジョンがない」と言いつつもではヴィジョンが必要なのか、必要じゃないのか、必要ならばどんなヴィジョンなのか、というような踏み込んだところには入っていかずにさっさと話題を変えてしまうこと、等等は問題だと思う。すでにある程度安定を得ていて、あとは快楽を得ればよい、という状況に生きている幸福な読者にとっては純粋に良い本だと思えるだろうが、私はどうもこれを読んで違和感を覚えずにはいられなかった。

『現代中国女工哀史』を再読するための出発点

あくまで出発点として、いくつか心に留めておきたい疑問や考えがある。

まず、社会的な役割と、プライベートな考えとのギャップについて。この本は、女工たちの両側面をくまなく記録している。問題は、この関係をどう見るか。「労働条件だけを見れば酷いものだが、彼女らの日記を読むと、単に労働条件が酷いから工場を辞めさせろとは言い切れない」という立場は嘘だと思う。労働条件が酷いことは、女工たち自身もよく分かっている。そして、その中に居て、恋愛や家族や将来の夢、あるいはもっと物質的な目標に向かって、内面的に自分を鼓舞してもいる。事実、著者のレスリー・チャン自身も、TED　TALKSに出演したときに、女工たちを彼女らの労働条件の悪さや物質的な貧しさのみで評価するのは失礼だという趣旨のことを述べている。

しかし、もしこのような悪条件を甘受するための戦略として、女工たちが家族や友人、恋人や夢などに固執しているとしたら？　または、いまここでの状況では満足が得られず、将来の展望もないという事実から目を逸らすために、あえて労働ではない別の場所に自分の聖域を捏造しているとしたら？　チャン自身がこのような見方を否定しているので、外部者であり一読者にすぎない私がこのような問いを立てることは滑稽にもみえるかもしれない。しかし、自分の書いて推敲したテキストであるからこそ、また自分が親密になった取材相手であるからこそ、冷静にそれを分析できていない可能性も大いにある。

女工たちの「内面」を真に受けるあまり、彼女らの現在の労働条件を「仕方のないもの」として放置するような意識は問題だ。それを誘発する可能性が、チャンのような立場にはあると思う。本当に女工たちは、自分たちが語るような夢、あるいは人間関係を自分の一部として認識しているのだろうか？　彼女らの実際の行動を見る限り、私には逆が真実であるように思えてしまう。彼女らは収入と名誉を求めてあらゆる努力をしている。そして、人に会うときも、まずはその人の収入を気にする。さらに、たとえ他人を「人間的に」みる場合でも、往々にして「成功の秘訣」を語るようなマニュアル本がそうしろと教えているからそうするだけなのである。こうしてみると、彼女らの人生の指針を決定している要素は、決して実現することのない幻想としての「夢」や「人間関係」と、これを目標とすることで甘受できるような過酷で自己増殖的な労働環境である。

二つ目の問題は、果たしてこの本に登場しない女工たちはどのような地獄をみているのか、という点だ。チャン自身も、本の最後の方で度々読者に注意を促し、「ここでは取り上げていないさらに深い闇の世界が中国のドングアン（東北）にはある」と述べている。女工の義務に耐えられなくなり、昇進することもできず、かといって田舎の実家に帰る気持ちにもなれない十代の女性が、売春婦になったり路頭に迷ったりすることは珍しくないという。もしこのような道が単なる偶然や個人の責任から生じるものではなく、女工という社会的な役割を担った結果起きるものだとしたら、女工を必要とするような中国の工場に対する見方や解釈もそれだけ批判的になるはずだ。

最後に、このような闇の現実を、今自分のいる立場とどうつなげるかという問題だ。これは何も「これを読んであなたは具体的にどう行動するのか」などという問いではない。そのようにすぐに「行動」を求める思考回路は私も一時期持っていたものだが、これは今現在自分が無知で、本当に効果のある社会的な運動がうまく想像できないという現実をうやむやにするための手段でしかない。例えば、中国産の製品をボイコットする、などという「行動」は、私一人がそのようなことを一時的にしたところで何のインパクトもない。気休めにしかならないのである。

だったら、中国に現在住んでいる友人や、中国から海外に留学し、海外に就職した友人とのつながりを保ちつつ、情報を交換し、機をみて政治的・経済的に何かをできるように、少しずつ態勢を整えていく方がよっぽど具体的だ。僕が相手に提供できる情報がどれだけ女工の問題、あるいは中国の現在の悲惨な産業の現実に干渉できるかはわからない。ただ、そうして現に直接中国のそのような文化と関わりを持っている人を後押しするほうが、取るに足らない「行動」に走ることで自分の無力さや無知を見失うよりもよっぽど良い。もちろん、だからといって個人レベルで慎重にならなくてよいというわけではない。特に電子機器の購入や消費については、中国だけではなくコンゴでの問題にも直接関わりがあるだけに、注意深くならざるを得ない。結局、気休めなのだが、それでも、例えばパソコンを買うときに安易に値段とブランド、そして性能だけに注目するのは難しい。原料の金属がどこからどのように採集され、どのような工場で加工されてきたのかに神経質になる。（例えばココをみると、日本の企業が、国内でのロビー活動がまだ活発でないせいか、欧米の企業に比べ明らかに意識が低いことがわかる。）

私の持っている社会的に役立つ能力は語学力であり、専門知識と呼べるほどのものを持っている分野は哲学なので、これらの領域でできる仕事をするのみだ。どんなに個人としてあれこれ考え、細かい行動をとろうとも、結局このような社会的に通用する能力を生かして何かできなければ具体的に行動を起こしたことにはならない。ボランティアなども、広義の「気休め」である。ただ、仮に中国の女工たちが工場へと自ら赴く根本的な動機が経済的な成長などではなく「夢」や「人間関係」、あるいはさらに漠然とした「可能性」への期待なのだとすれば、そのような幻想に変わる具体的な精神的満足を提示してみせうるという点で、哲学ができることも多いだろう。しかし、そのような著作の執筆・翻訳・流通までの仕事を成し遂げるには、まだまだ私は勉強する必要があるようだ。　

The Schelling Memo (3)

The "ground" which has been clearly discerned in the Investigations is the proper object of the positive philosophy envisioned in the Berlin Lectures. How is this philosophy to proceed? Hints for possible directions can be discerned in Schelling's works.

The most promising texts here seems to be his Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature and First Outline for a System in the Philosophy of Nature, for Schelling has repeatedly emphasized in both his Investigations and his Berlin Lectures how it is necessary to "ground" freedom with the "appropriate" philosophy of nature, or a natural philosophy. However, these are not the only places to look for a possible positive philosophy. While texts such as Clara and Bruno offer only a very fragmentary and round-about account of the connection between the "ground" (or nature) and "spirit," other works are more suggestive and direct.

One such direct work is the Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology. This work is a posthumously published lecture series which were originally prepared after the publication of the Investigations. Schelling negotiates his way towards a possible positive philosophy by reflecting on mythology. At first sight, this might appear to be a desperate strategy of a thinker who wants to somehow go beyond the confines of the negative philosophy (chiefly of Kant and Hegel) by fleeing into a novel and marginal domain. And if this philosophical desperation does not seem too much of a concern, then, as the translator notes, the Philosophy of Mythology may seem "seriously outdated" in light of the rapid developments in the empirical study of mythology and archaeology. Both positions however miss the mark in that they do not take into account Schelling's aims.

In the Philosophy of Mythology, Schelling's aim is to arrive at an understanding of mythology which is not based on something other than mythology itself. This is neither an account which boasts its novelty in order to conceal its lack of substance, nor is it a reaction to empirical and patient analyses of excavated archaeological objects.

Nowadays, the idea of a "foundation myth" of civilization is a familiar one. Schelling takes a radical approach to mythology based on this line of thought. He asks: how is it the case that every civilization has its own mythology? Schelling rejects the facile answers provided by psychology, sociology, and aesthetics. According to psychology, mythologies are metaphorical ways of expressing the natural forces which humans have felt as threatening. For a sociologist, mythologies are constructions which serve political purposes in order to maintain cohesion of a social body. And finally for an aesthetician, mythologies are created by poets for the sake of pleasure, beauty, and edification. All of these explanations try to account for the cause or function of mythology by grounding mythology in some other aspect of the human mind. Schelling criticizes all of these approaches by pointing out that they all fail to explain what mythology as such is all about. Causes and functions are things which precede or result from mythology. Thus, they do not describe the content of mythology, of why mythology has to contain gods, and why these particular gods, etc. Moreover, these approaches do not tell us how to interpret mythology on its own terms. What does it mean for Aphrodite to descend upon Paris and Helen? Psychology, sociology, and aesthetics all efface the essential texture of mythology, namely the fact that supernatural forces and divinities play a key role in the formation of mythology's intelligibility, and thereby has to ignore the existence of Aphrodite, Paris, and Helen.

What does it mean, then, to read mythology on its own terms? Schelling suggests that mythology is concerned with something which has actually happened. This, however, does not mean that Athena or Gilgamesh literally walked on the earth as embodied characters. Schelling's critique here is not that such things are physically impossible, but rather that such interpretations are not mythological enough. To posit a body in the name of the divinities is already to impose a secondary interpretation on the original experience of mythology.

With the rejection of psychology, sociology, aesthetics, and materialism in general, Schelling is already suggesting that his account of mythology is concerned not with the luminous world of the understanding, but rather with that darkness, the impenetrable ground of existence. Schelling writes: "the meaning of mythology can only be the meaning of the process by which it emerges into being." And he further argues that such a process is universal for all human consciousnesses. This claim builds on the claims established in the Investigations, namely, that the human soul was created for the purpose of the self-revelation of God. As such, to adopt Schelling's terminology, the human soul is first and foremost a "God-positing" being.

The act of positing God, and thus at the same time giving birth to consciousness, is, Schelling speculates, a traumatic process. This original trauma is the "founding myth" of consciousness and of civilization. Mythology is a stable image of the dynamic movement which took place at the dark hour of consciousness's birth. Consciousness thus comes on the scene already with mythology in mind. When mythology is thus repeated in the light of day, despite its incomprehensibility and lack of sensible intuition corresponding to it, it thus mechanically reproduces the very trauma which still lurks as the inner founding force of consciousness.

The subjective experience of positing God is not simply one act of intuiting one concept. God is immanently "there," in every mythology. However, in order for God to reveal himself, he has to create a human soul, and let the soul little by little transport the ground into itself and thus illuminate God himself. This movement has already been described and justified in the Investigations. In the Philosophy of Mythology, Schelling takes this insight one step further and suggests that the manifestation of such a progressive illumination of the ground is found in the various systems of polytheism. Each polytheism can be read either as so many symbolizations of the one God, or as a development of the different parts or moment of the one God. The latter is what Schelling calls "relative" or "successive" polytheism, and this alone is consistent with the claim that there is only one God. (I will not go into the details of this last claim.)

Each stage of successive polytheism is expressed in each mythology. Civilization is first founded in the shared traumatic experience of the formation of consciousness, i.e. the fact that a new piece of the ground has been raised into the light of the human soul. Mythological expression gives light to this new emergence. When mythology and its counterpart, the founding trauma, becomes identical, this moment allows humanity to move onto the next part of the ground, and the same process is repeated, until finally the ground is fully revealed, and civilization completely fulfills its role as the revealer of God.

This line of speculation, absurd and eccentric though it may appear, is actually quite a sober one. Schelling calmly distinguishes historical time from mythological time. If human consciousness is founded on an inexplicable dark traumatic process, and if mythology is the mechanical yet true expression of this process itself, and if, moreover, mythology serves as the basis of civilization, then it does seem to follow that every historical era is conditioned in some way by mythology. And actual mythology shows that the difference in the specifics of this or that mythology accounts also for the difference in civilization.

More importantly, however, mythology also offers a place to start for a speculation on what exactly took place in the ground prior to and up to the emergence of the understanding. Recall that this was the precise aim of the positive philosophy. Thus, an interpretation of mythology becomes here an urgent philosophical task. Through such an interpretation, Schelling invites other thinkers to reflect on a new way of thinking the transcendental unity of the apperception which has been given a purely negative representation by Kant. There are as many such unities as there are mythologies. Yet, such unities cannot be simply called "worlds" in the Heideggerian sense. It goes one step further, since, unlike a "world," which is after all a variable unity of the apperception, mythology is at the same time an actual event, that is, something which is just as much ontic as it is ontological. If the task of the positive philosophy is to give an ontic interpretation of mythology, then Heideggerianism also needs to be suspended for the moment.

The "ground," which has been presented as a mysterious and obscure something in the Investigations, here finds a definitely more concrete form. The Philosophy of Mythology also provides a way to access mythology which is a possible, and not merely intimated, way of starting a positive philosophy.

The Schelling Memo (2)

In his Philosophical Investigations Into the Essence of Human Freedom Schelling's aim is not the general one of "setting out to explicate a new concept of human freedom." Rather, his aim is much more precise: Schelling aims to ground such a concept with a natural philosophy adequate and appropriate to this concept. Incidentally, and as a sidenote, it is inappropriate to designate Schelling's thought here with the word "concept" - the word "movement" or "being" might be more to-the-point. However, the Investigations is ambiguous even on this basic point. Schelling starts out by considering freedom and its "ground" - an important term in the entire essay - as beings or as movements, but then, in the middle of the essay, turns to a different kind of investigation. The latter is transcendental, and it is also negative in the Schellingian sense. Schelling writes:

In so far as the soul is now the living identity of both principles [of good and evil], it is spirit; and spirit is in God. Were now the identity of both principles in the spirit of man exactly as indissoluble as in God, then there would be no distinction, that is, God as spirit would not be revealed. The same unity that is inseverable in God must therefore be severable in man - and this is the possibility of good and evil.
     We say expressly: the possibility of evil. And we are seeking at the moment to make intelligible only the severability of the principles (loc. 729, emphasis added).

This is the transition point. Since the present Memo is concerned primarily with the relationship between the positive and negative philosophies, and since the step here taken is to understand what Schelling meant by "being" and "remainder" in the Berlin Lectures, it seems reasonable to focus on the first part of the Investigations, the part prior to the point quoted above.

Schelling opens his essay with an extensive development of different versions of pantheism. This seems surprising and abrupt, even arbitrary, at first sight. This beginning, however, is necessary and suitable for the topic of the essay, human freedom. In line with the classical philosophical method, Schelling takes for granted the minimal dilemma which freedom as such presents, namely, the conflict between determination and freedom. Freedom is, moreover, what Schelling calls the prius, or the primal movement which comes out of itself, self-movement or self-origination (but not necessarily a self-creation; this distinction becomes important once we move to a detailed consideration of the relationship between "God" and "ground.") As such, freedom is essentially will. Now in current philosophy, the antagonist of the will is determination. This intuition sustains a well-known debate, that of determinism. Schelling, by contrast, focuses on pantheism and its various fatalisms. Which, then, is the right framing of the issue?

Properly speaking, determinism cannot be the antagonist of freedom. The forces which determine everything in determinism are essentially mechanical, and yet mechanical forces are totally irrelavant when we come to consider the being or concept of freedom. Another way of putting this point is this: mechanism and mechanical forces appear when we observe everything from an external, figurative, and spatio-temporal (that is, the flow of time strictly confined within the boundaries of space) perspective, which leads to the feeling that everything is following a necessary course. On the other hand, freedom is an inner concept, something antecedent to the external manifestation of things. Thus, mechanical forces leave freedom untouched on this dichotomy, and vice versa. It is this rigid separation between the two force fields that makes this way of framing the issue problematic. There is no genuine conflict here, and thus there is no genuine solution, since there is no problem in the first place. Against determinism, therefore, the proper solution is to dissolve the very problem which determinists seek to pose.

Pantheism and fatalism, on the other hand, seeks to explain the movement of the world by positing a will, more precisely a primal will or the will of God. This "will" is properly an inner force behind the appearance of things which nonetheless is also part of appearance. The particular wills of creatures are only species of or differentiations from this primal will. As such, if the primal will has the power to move the world on its own, then the particular wills must obey its command, and thus the result is fatalism. This is a much more threatening idea to freedom: if the inner principles which governs the appearance of things in the world are subject to the decision made by a fundamental willing being, then the particular will which motivates a particular action or any other outer appearance might also be merely a part of something higher than itself. The truth of a particular will is that it is subordinate to and controlled by a higher power, and so freedom only belongs to this higher being and nothing else.

According to pantheism, freedom still has a place in the world, but it is no longer human freedom. It is precisely for this reason that Schelling's main target in the Investigations is not determinism but rather pantheism. Moreover, this is why Schelling expresses the need to develop a new realism or a natural philosophy which will support human freedom. Without such a new foundation, any particular conception of human freedom will ultimately be nullified by being included into the great movement of pantheism.

The first step out of pantheistic fatalism is to recognize that the particular wills or particular beings which become distinguished from God are not simply contained within God. This will make God and these beings indistinguishable from one another, which means that the talk of a being being determined by another being becomes completely unintelligible. With this insight, Schelling already is able to formulate a positive position contra fatalism: in order for the particular will to claim its own portion of the world, as it were, it must have already distinguished itself from the world; thus, the particular will, as a container of its own portion of the world, is something outside God. Yet, at the same time, the content of this particular will is something taken from God's will. In this sense, the particular will is also inside God, within the divine order.

In order to clearly sketch this paradox and its movement, Schelling introduces the distinction between "God proper" and "ground." God is the prius, the absolute origin of all differences. However, in order for God to be such a stable and unified being, he must at the same time have a ground which sustains such a unity. This ground, however, cannot be external to God, for God is all things. Therefore, the absolute origin, qua God, already contains the difference between God proper (the unity of clearly distinguished forces and wills) and his ground (the undifferentiated yet non-simplistic soup of stirring.) The boundary of things (from spatio-temporal objects to the differences of particular wills) are not originally in God. God is simultaneously the actuality of such a boundary (God proper) and the possibility of this (which is his ground.) The latter, since it lack all boundary and clear differences, is given the metaphorical name "darkness" by Schelling. Moreover, the movement within the ground = darkness is, in "human terms" (i.e. in human metaphor), what Schelling calls "yearning." In comparison, the act of differentiating the forces within the ground and thus at the same time making their unity clear, this act is the "understanding," and its realm is called "light."

Schelling here makes a curious move: he claims that the ground of and within God is nature. This implies that natural philosophy, or the positive philosophy, must be the philosophy of the ground, speculations concerning what is going on in the ground.

At this point, again, the reader might be surprised by Schelling's identification of being with God. When the topic is nature and human freedom, why speculate on God? The answer seems to be this: nature and freedom are both already invested with certain laws. These laws are regulated by the categories of the understanding (in the Kantian sense.) Kant has already thus given an account of how these domains are to be understood. God, however, is something which Kant failed to grasp positively; while he postulated God through a practical necessity, the being of God is that of an idea, not of being. God is transcendent, and so he cannot be subjected to the stable laws which the categories make possible. But the question for Schelling is precisely how and from what these categories arise. How can the world be, such that something like the categories and the understanding and consequently human cognition can be made actual? This question aims at an object which is beyond the categories, and thus beyond both nature and freedom. The object which satisfies the demands of this question is God, and hence the necessity of focusing on him rather than on freedom as such. To put it in Schelling's own terms, the challenge is to give an account of the creation of the human soul.

Schelling argues that the creation of the human soul was necessary for God to achieve self-revelation. This claim, again, has a very precise meaning within the context laid out thus far. God is both ground and God proper. God proper, however, as light and its founding understanding, is something which has come to light, captured as unified and distinguished. The ground must have preceded it. Yet at the same time God cannot distinguish himself from his own ground, since both are within God himself. The only way for God to reveal himself to himself is thus to create a being who is capable of severing himself from his own ground. This is a human being, or more precisely the human soul. The human soul, Schelling concludes, is thus necessary for God's self-revelation from the point of view of God himself.

However, Schelling also notes that the mere existence of humans by itself does not entail the existence of the human soul. The soul, as the instrument for the self-revelation of God, is something distinct from God himself, and is thus not really part of nature. A human body as such is, on the other hand, a natural object, which may or may not be imbued with a soul. How does the soul arise?

Here, once again, Schelling describes a movement which is outside the province of the Kantian categories. Nature is initially yearning; but as yearning, it has a "glimpse" of its desired object, i.e. its own unity. This "glimpse" is already the understanding. The understanding thus isolates, fixes, and extracts a particular force or will out of the pool of the ground which is in yearning. The same will is thus both ground and God, yearning and the understanding. With each "glimpse," the understanding progressively accumulates the parts out of the ground. This does not mean that yearning is reduced in proportion to the development of the understanding, since one will grounds both ways of being. Now the understanding properly reveals the ground to God when the totality of forces or wills within the ground are made manifest in light, in what Schelling calls "luminous thoughts." Luminous thoughts do not occur for creatures who are still immersed in the darkness of the ground which has not yet become understood for these creatures. A complete self-consciousness of forces or wills is achieved in the human soul. This does not mean that Schelling first assumes or posits something called a "soul" and then attributes to its the property of having complete self-consciousness. The argument here goes the other way round: since the soul requires complete self-consciousness of the understanding in relation to yearning, only in such a state of self-consciousness can a soul exist in the first place. But since the soul is necessary for God's being-for-himself (to use a Hegelian term) the above complete self-consciousness is also necessary; thus, the human soul is a necessary being, and necessarily so.

After the eternal act of self-revelation, everything in the world is, as we see it now, rule, order and form; but anarchy still lies in the ground, as if it could break through once again, and nowhere does it appear as if order and form were what is original but rather as if initial anarchy had been brought to order. This is the incomprehensible base of reality in things, the indivisible remainder, that which with the greatest exertion cannot be resolved in understanding but rather remains eternally in the ground. The understanding is born in the genuine sense from that which is without understanding. Without this preceding darkness creatures have no reality; darkness is their necessary inheritance (loc. 673, emphasis added)

With this account of the necessary creation of the human soul, Schelling has illuminated a being who is capable of acting outside God as God's own representer and representative. God feels himself in the human soul. But this feeling requires the severance of ground from its existence, which is impossible in God himself. This severance is, according to Schelling, the origin of the distinction between good and evil. The movements of the understanding and of yearning make such a distinction immanent within human beings. It is, moreover, this distinction which is the essence of human freedom as opposed to freedom in general or the self-formation of natural beings in general.

At this point, the first part of the Investigations comes to an end, and the transition to the transcendental development of the concepts of good and evil is announced.

The consequences of Schelling's discussions here for the positive philosophy are many, but one in particular seems to stand out, namely, that the ground is the proper object of the positive philosophy. Moreover, it is the becoming of things not in the understanding (which, by implication, ought to also include dialectics, since the latter is also a way of grasping the movement of thought through thought's own division and unification) alone but rather in the interplay between the understanding and yearning that is the object of investigation. This is to be accomplished by natural philosophy. It is not a naturalistic philosophy, nor is it an occult physics. Exactly what this new discipline might be is very difficult to imagine out of the blue. One place to start is perhaps Schelling's own Naturphilosophie. This will be the focus of the next Memo.