karelova_l_b_klyuchevye_mirovozzrencheskie_problemy_v_yapons

reshape them in a particular way. The problem of harmonizing the opposite phenomena constantly emerged before the Japanese not only at the level of interpretation of the concrete reality, but also at the macro-cultural level as a problem of reconciling opposing attitudes.

One of the distinctive characteristic features of Japanese philosophical and anthropological concepts identified in the monograph is that the thinkers of the Country of the Rising Sun did not limit themselves by the investigation of the human nature as such, but displayed a vivid interest in explaining its modifications in the West and in Japan as well. Japanese scholars of the twentieth century analyzed the subject not as an abstract independent and permanent element, but as a reality that was in a constant process of self-restructuring and self-determination, as well as an existential creature, which was among the various Others who reshaped it. Japanese thinkers created original models of a contextual self and an ecological self, which made an incontestable contribution to the formation of a new ecological thinking, necessary to meet the persistent challenges of modernity.

The study by L.B. Karelova identified such a characteristic feature of the Japanese thought of the twentieth century, as a marked sensitivity towards the spatial component while considering the problem of temporality, towards the formation of spatial schemas of being, despite the claim of equivalence, unity, and interrelatedness of temporality and spatiality.

By and large, Japanese philosophers of the twentieth century followed the lead of the West, though, at the same time, in the framework of a critical dialogue with the West, inspired by the need to overcome implications of the modernist paradigm of thinking. All at once, they were successful in using of the profound potential of their own religious and intellectual tradition. In the pre-WW2 period, the Japanese philosophy has already surpassed the stage of adaptation to the ideological resource of Western schools and of its interpretations for the sake of Japanese intellectual community, having progressed tothe stageof constructive,mutuallyrewardingdialogue. Japanese philosophical and anthropological studies have become a large-scale site of testing leading directions of the modern Western philosophy, such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, and post-structuralism. At the same time, they provide an in-depth criticism of inadvertent atavisms of modernist approach of Western scholars in the mentioned areas of thought.

Oneshouldnotlosefromsighttheimpactofnationalintellectualtradition, which manifested itself, firstly, in the form of a certain selectivity with respect to ideas and concepts of Western philosophers and, secondly, as a practice of preservation of the core philosophical meanings.

161

TheJapanesespiritualtraditionstickstoapeculiarprincipleofequalityof the opposites (sosoku) that has a Buddhist origin. In Japanese Buddhist texts, originally counterposed phenomena (such as the self and things, the real and the absolute, the immanent and the transcendent, etc.) were interconnected by terms soku (equal), funi (not two), and ichinyo (“unity”).

Thisparadigmisclearlynoticeableintheteachingsofthetwentiethcentury philosophers. Thus, in the teaching of Nishida Kitaro, it manifests itself in the concepts of logic of place and absolutely contradictory identity. The concept of equivalent meaning and mutual identity of phenomena – for instance, of the private and the public – was a fundamental common denominator also in the theory of betweenness (aidagara) by Watsuji Tetsuro developed further by Kimura Bin and other prominent thinkers.

A specific topic, analyzed in separate chapters of the book and dealing with the concepts of corporeality of Yuasa Yasuo and Ichikawa Hiroshi, is the perception of the unity of the spiritual and the corporal, which mounts to the Buddhist concepts of unity of body and mind.

The author describes all these approaches as being targeted at the harmonization of the opposites, not by subduing one of them to the other, or “removing” them both, but at the recognizing both of them as two intertwined poles of one single reality.

In the teachings of the twentieth century thinkers that are dedicated to the problem of the subject, we can trace the outlines of a concept illustrating the dual nature of the human “self.” Such an approach is characteristic of Buddhist and Neo-Confucian theories. While putting forward such ideas in the dispute with Western philosophers, these thinkers offer to replace the concepts of the being and the substance by their own versions to denote things – such as the void, the place, the oblivion, the non-being, the existence, the life, bringing to the forefront relationships and context. Thus, they switch the emphasis from the substantial aspects towards the processual aspects of the reality.

The Japanese thought of the twentieth century has generally preserved reductionist approach that contributed to the widespread acceptance of phenomenology in that country. If the Western, let us say, Hegel dialectics emphasizes the development and synthesis of the opposites by constructing a new abstraction, Japanese thinkers demonstrated their interest in primarily the cause, or the source, of the opposites. Thus, the body–mind problem lies not in the plane of the search of what connects them, but in the plane of finding how they were actually divided. Consequently, just as the Japanese Buddhist thinkers came to the concepts of the nothingness (mu), the emptiness (ku) or the suchness (nyoze, jinen), modern philosophers have generated the ideas of the pure experience, the absolute nothingness, etc.

162