Nishida Kitaro and Chinese Philosophy : Debt and Distance1

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Nichibunken Open Access Nishida Kitaro and Chinese Philosophy : Debt and Distance1 著者 DALISSIER Michel journal or Nichibunken Japan review : Journal of the publication title International Research Center for Japanese Studies volume 22 page range 137-170 year 2010-01-01 その他の言語のタイ西田幾多郎と中国哲学 : 影響と相違トル URL http://doi.org/10.15055/00000207 Japan Review, 2010, 22: 137–170 Nishida Kitarō and Chinese Philosophy: Debt and Distance1 Michel Dalissier Dōshisha University, Kyoto, Japan Th is paper is the second part of a general study on the relationship between Nishida and Chinese philosophy. In the fi rst, I explored the extent to which Nishida’s philosophy was infl uenced, directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly, historically and conceptually, by materials coming from the intellectual horizon of Chinese thought. I concentrate here on Nishida’s own position toward what he understood by “Chinese philosophy.” Is this philosophy, so suggestive for Nishida, promoted to a central place in his work or not, and if so, in what sense might we take this idea of “centrality” as specifi cally Chinese? In setting forth several archetypes of Chinese thought present in Nishida’s philosophy, the focus of this article falls on the methodological, logical and metaphysical contrasts we can identify between the Japanese philosopher and Chinese philosophy as his underground intellectual sources. Keywords: Nishida Kitarō, Japanese philosophy, Chinese philosophy, nothingness, ontology, logic of place, unification 有無相生 Th ere is and there is not are born from one another Laozi, II Introduction Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) used to say: “We have to refi ne in a new way the ore of Eastern culture that includes such precious metals.2 I am a miner forever. I do not even have time to refi ne the mine stones.”3 Cheung Ching-yuen 張政遠 comments that “mining and refi ning are two diff erent processes. Nishida’s philosophy may have its Eastern or Japanese origin, but it can be refi ned in a way to realize its full potential.”4 In fact, these two processes of mining and refi ning seem to follow the intimate phenomenality of Nishida’s own “logic of place.” “To refi ne” can be understood as the act of giving shape to a pure, though “still not refi ned metal, dug out as such from a mountain;” or in topological terms, it might 137 138 Michel Dalissier be understood as extracting the essence of that which already exists condensed in place, and ontologizing the emptying suchness. By contrast, “to mine” would be to prospect infi nitely in the emptying depth of reality. Th is being so, what is to be refi ned or mined here? How can we understand Nishida’s position regarding “Eastern culture”? And indeed what did “Eastern culture” mean for him? From the arguments given in the major essay he devoted to the question (Nishida, 1933), we can answer that a signifi cant part of what he understood by “Eastern culture” was “Chinese culture.” So, the question arises: What is Nishida’s own position on “Chinese culture”? What kind of “ore” should be refi ned here, and why? In the fi rst part of this essay, I explore the extent to which Nishida’s philosophy has been infl uenced, directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly, historically and conceptually, by materials coming from the intellectual horizon of Chinese thought. In the conclusion to the fi rst part, I demonstrate that a kind of dialectical relation concerning non being and being divided the positions of major Chinese thinkers, in relation to the theories of the Japanese philosopher. It appeared to Nishida possible then to go a step further and show that this relation possesses a wider philosophical range, if described through the categories of ontology (theory of being), “meontology” (theory of non being) and “neontology” (theory of absolute nothingness). However, our inquiry reaches here a turning point. For we are now no longer simply analyzing infl uences in turn, we are interpreting one philosophy within the conceptual frame of another. For this reason, the study of Nishida’s own position toward “Chinese philosophy” acquires an urgency. So our problem is this: Is this “philosophy”—so suggestive for Nishida —promoted to a “central” place in Nishida’s work or not, and if it is, in what sense might we take this idea of “centrality” as specifi cally “Chinese”? In setting forth several archetypes of Chinese thought present in Nishida, I focus here on a growing contrast between the Japanese philosopher and Chinese philosophy as one of his underground intellectual sources. I. Ontology or Meontology? On a strictly linguistic level, we can note that the primitive meaning of wu 無 in Chinese is not “nothingness” but rather “ (there) is not,” “negation,” and it refers to an opposition to “being” or rather “(what) there is” (you 有).5 Might we go further and claim that Chinese philosophy takes this opposition as its own vital operation? 1. A Paradox between Subordination and/or Opposition A fi rst intellectual confl ict in China had already taken place in a kind of alternative space between meontology and ontology. Confucius stressed the originality of “nothingness” as sociality and “ritual reciprocity,” while Mozi claimed the primacy of what can be called “human beings,” that is, private individuals, who only secondarily take part in society, insofar as the analogy of the “social contract” can be used.6 We now face in the Laozi 老子 the unfamiliar idea that we have to “prefer the weak to the strong, non acting to acting, the underside to the top, ignorance to knowledge, etc.”7 “Preference” here does not mean “exclusion” but rather a choice within an already complementary couple. In a philosophy of action, the notion of preference refers to an existential act of individual adhesion, whose apparent contingency eventually turns into a testimony of liberty. Th e preference in question here leads in the end to the following “paradox”: that “fullness” (“there is”) opposes “void” (“there is not”), and that “nothing has more value than something, that void [has more value] than fullness, and that “there is not” (wu) surpasses the “there is” (you).”8 Th is paradox encompasses, on the one hand, the Nishida Kitarō and Chinese Philosophy 139 ideological and socio-political position of Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (195–115 bc), who argued the “subordination of earth to sky, of yin to yang,”9 and, on the other hand, the cosmological position of Yang Xiong 揚雄 (53–18 bc), who argued for a non hierarchical, synchronized interchange between yin and yang (sky/earth, void/full, father/son). As Cheng would have it: Cosmology in Yang Xiong integrates, as it must do, the four seasons (representing for time what the four orients are for space) as well as the Five Phases and, as in many Han exegetes of the Book of Changes, numbers are perceived as a principle of synchronicity that settles the correspondences between men and the cosmos. Th is schematic representation of natural processes, contrary to the teleological vision of Dong Zhongshu, does not include any judgment of value. Yin and yang, for example, are not related as superior and inferior, but according to an interchange in equal proportion.10 Th is paradox returns later: Th e inaugural statement [Laozi 28]: “Without ultimate, but (and/or) supreme ultimate!” (wuji er taiji 無極而太極) will become the object of a famous controversy in the twelfth century between Zhu Xi and his contemporary Lu Xiangshan, mainly centered on the particle er 而. Should we understand that the topless precedes the supreme ultimate (wuji, then taiji) according to the conception of the Laozi 40: “A thousand beings under the sky are born from the there-is (you), the there-is is born from the there-is-not (wu)”? Or is the topless rather simply appended to the supreme ultimate (wuji and taiji), as if it were all about the same thing under two diff erent names?11 However, the paradox itself in the Laozi seems polarized on the priority of the wu, logically, according to the idea of a “preference,” and practically, according to the idea of an effi cacy of nothingness: Th irty spokes converge at the hub. But it is precisely where there is nothing that the utility of the chariot lies. One kneads clay to make a vessel. But it is where there is nothing that the utility of the container lies. We open doors and windows to make a room. But it is where nothing is that the utility of the room lies. Th us the there-is shows some commodities, and the there-is-not transform these commodities into utilities.12 As A. Cheng comments, “Th e paradox reaches here its highest point: absence would have more presence than what is here; void would have an effi ciency that fullness has not.”13 2. A Contradiction to Escape the Paradox? It goes without saying that such a conception of the effi ciency of void is crucial to an understanding of the depth of the speculations Nishida devoted to nothingness, which be identifi ed fi rstly with a “snapping in” (Einschnappen), and then with “absolute nothingness” (zettaimu 絶対無); it is no less crucial to an appreciation of the scope of his “poiesistic” (poieshisuteki ポイエシス的) philosophy of “intuition in action” [or “intuition in the making”] (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直観).14 Nevertheless, we ought to note that “fullness” and “void” appear as opposites within the frame of the above paradox, notwithstanding either the matter of primacy, or the essential dynamics of the yin yang couple in Chinese cosmological thinking.15 In other words, primacy exists only to emphasize the complementary nature of the opposites: “To set forth something is at the same time to set forth its contrary” in order to 140 Michel Dalissier discard “distinctions and oppositions we make following habit or convention.”16 Th e paradox is thus not a contradiction, but rather appears within the compass of a positive and circular principle: When everyone takes beauty as beauty, then comes the ugly.

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