Endres, T., Müller, R., & Schneider, D. - Kyoto in Davos. Intercultural Readings of The Cassirer-Heidegger Debate (2024)

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Kyoto in Davos
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Studien zur interkulturellen
Philosophie / Studies in
Intercultural Philosophy / É tudes
de philosophie interculturelle
Edited by
Henk Oosterling (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)

Hermann-Josef Scheidgen (Universität Bonn)
Advisory Board
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Gulf University for Science and Technology Kuwait)

Angela Roothaan (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Founded by
Heinz Kimmerle
Ram Adhar Mall
volume 26
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/siip
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Kyoto in Davos
Intercultural Readings of the
Cassirer-Heidegger Debate
Edited by
Tobias Endres
Ralf Müller
Domenico Schneider
leiden | boston
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Cover illustration: “Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger and Nishida Kitaro debating heatedly about
Anthropology at the end of the 1920s. Draw like Max Beckmann,” image generated by OpenAI’s dall·e 2,
May 24, 2023.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023051968
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface.
issn 0928-141X
isbn 978-90-04-68016-6 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-68017-3 (e-book)
doi 10.1163/9789004680173
Copyright 2024 by Tobias Endres, Ralf Mü ller and Domenico Schneider. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv,
Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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Dedicated to
Joris Theo 龍男 (*2013)
Kaspar Gilles Robert (*2020)
Edin Darius (*2023)
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Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to
the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s
sake I spit my last breath at thee.
Herman Melville, 1851, Moby Dick. The Chase.
…
Une chose en tout cas est certaine: c’est que l’homme n’est pas le
plus vieux problème ni le plus constant qui se soit posé au savoir
humain. En prenant une chronologie relativement courte et un
découpage géographique restreint – la culture européenne depuis
le xvie siècle – on peut être sûr que l’homme y est une invention
récente. […] [A]lors on peut bien parier que l’homme s’effacerait,
comme à la limite de la mer un visage de sable.
Michel Foucault, 1966, Les mots et les choses.
…
ところが今日では西洋的なヒュウマニズムが行詰り、非人格的、全体
的のものが中心とならねばならぬとなって、そこに東洋的なものが新
しいヒュウマニズムにとってひつの要素となると考えられる。
[Today, however, Western-style humanism is at an impasse. The

impersonal and holistic must take centre stage. It is here that the
Oriental can become an element of the new humanism.]
Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎, 1936, “The contemporary significance of
Humanism.”
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Contents
Preface xi
Notes on Contributors xii
Introduction 1
Ralf Müller
part 1
Recontextualizing the Davos Debate
1 Revisiting the Debate between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos:

Imagination, Finiteness, and Morals 37
Michel Dalissier
2 The Davos Debate, Pure Philosophy and Normativity: Thinking from the
Perspective of the History of Philosophy 71
Esther Oluffa Pedersen
3 Humans and Other Animals: The Forgotten Other Beyond Davos and
Kyoto 92
John C. Maraldo
4 Anthropology as an Intercultural Philosophy of Culture 127

Tobias Endres
5 Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism: Reflections on an Intercultural

Philosophy 163
Domenico Schneider
part 2
Nishida Joining the Davos Debate
6 Absolute Self-Contradictory Human Existence: Nishida in Davos 189

Francesca Greco
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viii contents
7 Cassirer and Nishida: Mathematical Crosscurrents in Their

Philosophical Paths 214
Rossella Lupacchini
8 Lask, Heidegger, and Nishida: From Meaning as Object to Horizon and

Place 242
John W.M. Krummel
9 From Kyoto and Hong Kong to Davos: Nishida Kitaro and Mou
Zongsan’s possible contributions to the Cassirer-Heidegger
Debate 265
Tak-Lap Yeung
10 From the Problem of Meaning via Basic Phenomena to the Question of

Philosophy after Metaphysics: Cassirer, Heidegger, and Nishida 280
Ingmar Meland
11 The Self-Aware Individual and the Kyoto School’s Quest for a

Philosophical Anthropology 314
Dennis Stromback
part 3
German-Japanese Ramifications of the Davos Debate
12 The Davos Debate and Japanese Philosophy: Welt-Schema and

Einbildungskraft in Tanabe and Miki 345
Tatsuya Higaki
13 From Despair to Authentic Existence: Kierkegaard’s Anthropology of

Despair in the Light of Nishitani’s Thought 363
Sebastian Hüsch
14 Cassirer, Heidegger, and Miki: The Logic of the Dual Transcendence of

the Imagination 384
Steve Lofts
15 Now, Ever or After: Contrasting the Pure Lands of D.T. Suzuki and
Tanabe Hajime 417
Rossa Ó Muireartaigh
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contents ix
16 On Homo Faber: Nishida and Miki 431

Takushi Odagiri
17 Anti-Cartesianism East and West: Watsuji and Heidegger on the

Possibility of Significant Dealing with Entities 459
Hans Peter Liederbach
18 Miki and the Myth of Humanism 481

Fernando Wirtz
19 Hineingehalten in das Nichts: Die Metaphysik und das Andere des

Seins 504
Emanuel Seitz
Index of Names 529

Index of Subjects 533
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Preface
Kyoto in Davos emerged from the conference of the same name in times of cri-
sis. It was held for the first time from 10 to 12 September 2020. When we started
planning a conference as a collaboration between the Stiftung Universität
Hildesheim and the Technische Universität Braunschweig in February 2020, we
did not know that on 11 March 2020 the spread of covid-19 would be declared
a pandemic. Henceforth, we found ourselves among the academics who had
to decide whether to cancel a medium-scale event or to conduct it online. It
was essentially Ralf’s concept and eagerness to experiment, Tobias’ consider-
ateness and thoroughness, Domenico’s pragmatic spirit and (non-)digitalism,
as well as possibly a general enthusiasm born of lockdowns, that helped us to
adapt the project to the circumstances. For the realization of the conference
we finally set up a platform where presentations could be uploaded as videos
and manuscripts and where discussions were to take place in advance. So the
conference started really on 27 August 2020 with the first uploads and quickly
gained momentum first online in written discussions. Then, on 10 September,
the meeting launched as a live event via a videoconference tool which had
become a surprising success during the last months and which had just pre-
viously implemented breakout rooms. Participants debated across four time
zones and four panels for three hours that day. The following day, participants
could choose thematic breakout rooms that were, just like the panels from day
one, moderated by the organizers with support of our staff and we discussed in
the same intensity. The event concluded with a three-hour panel discussion on
Saturday, 12 September 2020, and with that, the foundation of this anthology
was laid. On 4 June 2021, participants and organizers met again for a day via
videoconference to discuss the cross-references of the manuscripts that had
been created in the meantime. For this continued enthusiasm, the editors of
Kyoto in Davos are very grateful to their authors and we want to hereby thank
everybody involved. This goes out, alongside the participants, especially to Lara
Hofner, Xenia Wenzel, and Rodrigo Guerizoli. It was then up to the editors to
bring the somewhat anarchic growth from here on into the form in which the
document now exists, almost 95 years after the Davos Disputation, and this
even, in keeping with the times, with a little ai support for the cover image.
We would also like to seize the occasion to thank the editors of Studies in Inter-
cultural Philosophy, Henk Oosterling and Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, for the
inclusion of the book in this wonderful series. Last but not least, we would like
to thank Helena Schöb, Bart Nijsten and Erika Mandarino from our publisher
for their continuous support during the editing and production work.
Tobias, Ralf, and Domenico in July 2023

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Notes on Contributors
Michel Dalissier
is an associate professor of philosophy at Kanazawa University in Japan. He also
teaches at Ritsumeikan University in Kyôto, and is currently a visiting scholar
at the Academia Sinica in Tapei. He received his Ph.D. from the École Pratique
des Hautes Études (ephe) in Paris (2005), as well as an Accreditation to Super-
vise Research (hdr) from Clermont-Ferrand University (2014). His teaching
and research focus on central issues in modern and contemporary philosophy,
metaphysics, phenomenology and French philosophy, such as consciousness,
making ( faire), reality, and unification. He has coedited M. Merleau-Ponty,
Conférences en Europe et premiers cours à Lyon, inédits i (1946–1947) (Paris:
Mimesis, 2022), M. Merleau-Ponty, Conférences en Amérique, notes de lecture et
autre textes, inédits ii (1947–1949) (Paris: Mimesis, 2022). His other publications
include In Reality: Bergson Beyond Duration, translated by Yaron Wolf (Milano:
Mimesis International, 2022), Héritages et Innovations: Merleau-Ponty et la fonc-
tion conquérante du language (Genève, MētisPresses, 2017) and L’Hexagone et
l’archipel, Bergson lu par un philosophe japonais (Paris: Kimé, 2015).
Tobias Endres
is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Technische Universität Braun-
schweig in Germany. He holds a m.a. (Magister Artium) from Rheinische Frie-
drich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and received his Dr. phil. (Doctor Philoso-
phiae) from the Technische Universität Berlin with a dissertation on Ernst
Cassirer’s Phenomenology of Perception, published by Meiner (Hamburg) in
2020. He specializes in Kantian, post- and neo-Kantian philosophy and in 18th
to 20th century philosophy in particular. His research is situated beyond the
analytic continental-divide and understands philosophy as a global enterprise.
Currently, Tobias works on a habilitation thesis on Henri Bergson’s philoso-
phy of language in light of German-French cultural transfers and more recent
realist approaches in philosophy. As a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation from 2024 to 2026, he will carry out this research at the École nor-
male supérieure in Paris.
Francesca Greco
studied philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Catania in Sicily. Francesca
was first an exchange student and then a PhD student at the University of Hei-
delberg from 2014 to 2017, and is currently a research assistant in the dfg Kosel-
leck project “Histories of Philosophy in Global Perspective” (2019–2024) and a
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notes on contributors xiii
PhD student at the University of Hildesheim in the field of intercultural phi-

losophy with a thesis on “Forms of Negativity. Not, Nothingness, Relationality.”
Francesca graduated 2022 at Vienna with the course “Philosophical Practice”
and cooperates with the “Instituto di Pratiche Filosofiche” in Italy. Her main
research interests are negativity, intercultural and Japanese philosophy, and the
history of philosophy in global perspective.
Higaki Tatsuya
was born near Tokyo in 1964. He graduated from the University of Tokyo and
obtained his PhD (literature) from Osaka University. He is currently professor
of Senshu University at Tokyo and professor emeritus of Osaka University. He
specializes in contemporary French Philosophy and Japanese Philosophy. He
published The Philosophy of Bergson (Keiso Shobo 2000, Kodansha Gakujutsu
Bunko 2022), Kitaro Nishida’s Philosophy of Life (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho
2005, English Version from Mimesis international 2020), Philosophy of Baro-
ques (Iwanami, 2022) and other books. He is the translator of Deleuze’s Le
bergsonisme into Japanese.
Sebastian Hüsch
is full professor in History of Ideas at Aix-Marseille Université (France) and
member of the research unit Centre Gilles Gaston Granger umr 7304. His main
areas of research are European Philosophy from the late 18th to the 21st century
with a particular interest in the history of Modernity, philosophy of existence,
and philosophy of religion.
John W.M. Krummel

is Associate Professor at the Dept. of Religious Studies, Hobart and William
Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY. His interests include Japanese philosophy, Kyoto
School, Nishida, Miki, phenomenology and Continental philosophy, Heideg-
ger, Schürmann, imagination, and Buddhism among others. He has authored
Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place (Indi-
ana University Press, 2015), edited Contemporary Japanese Philosophy: A Reader
(Roman & Littlefield International, 2019), and translated a number of philo-
sophical works from both Japanese and German. He is also editor of Interna-
tional Journal of Social Imaginaries (Brill) and The Journal of Japanese Philoso-
phy (suny), and current president of the International Association for Japanese
Philosophy.
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xiv notes on contributors

received his Dr. phil. in philosophy from Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen,
Germany. He is a Professor of Philosophy and German at Kwansei Gakuin Uni-
versity in Nishinomiya, Japan. He has done research on the effective history of
Western philosophy in modern Japan (Watsuji, Kuki, Nishitani, Heidegger, and
Hegel). Currently he is interested in how the philosophical discourse of moder-
nity has been received by Japanese philosophers and how this reception shapes
our understanding of Japanese philosophy and philosophy in general. He is
the author of Martin Heidegger im Denken Watsuji Tetsurōs: Ein japanischer
Beitrag zur Philosophie der Lebenswelt. München: Iudicium, 2001, the co-author
of Haidegā “Tetsugaku e no kiyo” kaidoku. Tokyo: Heibonsha 2006, various arti-
cles, and translations. Recently, he edited Philosophie im gegenwärtigen Japan.
München: Iudicium, 2017.
Steve Lofts
is a Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College at Western University
and Co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Culture. He received his Ph.D.
from The Université catholique de Louvain, was a Humboldt Fellow in Heidel-
berg and Berlin, and a Japan Foundation Fellow in Kyoto. His current research
focuses on the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy. He has translated Cas-
sirer’s Logic of the Cultural Sciences, The Warburg Years, and the three volumes
of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
Rossella Lupacchini
is Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of
Naples, Federico ii (Italy). Her research focuses on the foundations of physics
and mathematics. Her interests encompass forms of scientific and artistic rep-
resentation, geometric structures, and the history of ideas from the Renais-
sance culture to modern physics. More recently, she has turned her attention
to the contrast between Eastern and Western ways of thinking about infinity
and nothingness, in particular as reflected in the mathematical view of some
philosophers of the Kyoto School.
John C. Maraldo
is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North
Florida. He earned a Dr. phil. from the University of Munich with a dissertation
published as Der hermeneutische Zirkel: Untersuchungen zu Schleiermacher,
Dilthey und Heidegger (1974), and then spent several years in Japan studying
Japanese philosophy and Buddhism. He has been guest professor at Kyoto Uni-
versity in Japan and the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, and in 2008–
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notes on contributors xv
2009 he held the Roche Chair in Interreligious Research at Nanzan University

in Nagoya, Japan. His books include Japanese Philosophy in the Making, 3 vols.
(2017, 2019, & 2023); The Saga of Zen History & the Power of Legend (2021); the
coedited Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (2011) and Rude Awakenings: Zen,
the Kyoto School and the Question of Nationalism (1994); and The Piety of Think-
ing, Essays by Martin Heidegger, co-translated with commentary (1976). In 2021
he received the Compass Award for lifetime achievement in comparative phi-
losophy from the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, and in 2023
he gave the 64th Annual Bishop Hurst Lecture at American University in Wash-
ington D.C.
Ingmar Meland
(b. 1966) is associate professor of philosophy at The Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (ntnu). He was educated at the University of Bergen,
Norway. He studied history, philosophy, and sociology at an undergraduate
level before specializing in philosophy. His ma in philosophy dealt with Husserl
and the reception of his phenomenology in France, and he did his PhD as an
interdisciplinary inquiry into the ongoing rehabilitation of Ernst Cassirer’s phi-
losophy of culture. Before he came to ntnu, he was associate professor at the
Oslo School of Architecture and Design (2013–2017), visiting professor at the
University of Gothenburg (2013–2014) and guest professor at Oslo Metropoli-
tan University (professor ii, 2018–2022). He is currently collaborating with his
friend Helge Petersen on a book about the concept of integration as conceived
in the Western tradition.
has a PhD in philosophy from the European Graduate School. He is the author
of The Zen Buddhist Philosophy of D.T. Suzuki: Strengths, Foibles, Intrigues, and
Precision and Begotten, not Made: Explorations in the Philosophy and Sociol-
ogy of Religious Translation. He is also active as a Japanese to English trans-
lator.
Ralf Müller
is currently a research fellow at University College Cork, Ireland. His research
interests involve philosophy of language and culture, particularly the inter-
cultural philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. His research also encompasses regional
philosophies including pre-modern Buddhist and modern Japanese philoso-
phy. After completing a doctoral dissertation, Dōgen’s language thinking: Sys-
tematic perspectives from history and the theory of symbols at Humboldt Uni-
versity (Berlin, Germany) and postdoctoral studies at Kyoto University (Japan),
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xvi notes on contributors
his most recent research project has been “Translating Philosophy in/to Japan”
(„Übersetzung von Philosophie nach Japan in kulturphilosophischer Perspek-
tive”). For further details, see http://www.ralfmueller.eu.
Takushi Odagiri
is Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy in the Institute of Liberal Arts
and Science and in the College of Transdisciplinary Sciences for Innovation
at Kanazawa University, Japan. He is an editor of Theorizing Colonial Cinema:
Reframing Production, Circulation, and Consumption of Film in Asia (awarded
Best Edited Collection 2023 by Society for Cinema and Media Studies) and his
other publications appear in positions: asia critique, Journal of Religion, Philos-
ophy East and West, Tetsugaku, boundary 2, among other venues.

dr.phil., ph.d., is associate professor of philosophy at the university of Roskilde,
Denmark. Her research interests include the history of European thought from
the Enlightenment to today, philosophy of trust, intellectual debate culture,
and philosophical aesthetics. Esther Oluffa Pedersen is managing editor of the
journal Sats. European Journal of Philosophy (published by De Gruyter), heads
the representative committee of the Danish Society of Philosophy, and writes
philosophical articles and books in English, German, and Danish. Her latest
book was on Danish debate culture in the 20. Century and her first book and
Ph.D.-thesis, Die Mythosphilosophie Ernst Cassirers (Königshausen und Neu-
mann, 2009) instigated her interest in Cassirer and Kant.
Domenico Schneider
studied mathematics and philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin
(hu Berlin). He holds both a master’s degree in philosophy and a diploma in
mathematics. After obtaining his Dr. phil. with a dissertation thesis on “Dynam-
ics of Understanding—A Phenomenological Investigation of the Dynamics of
Image Schematic Structures” (summa cum laude) in the field of philosophy
of language (hermeneutics) and philosophy of time, he has taken a post as
research assistant at the Department of Philosophy at the Technical Univer-
sity of Braunschweig since September 2018. Here he researches changes in the
processes and time experiences of the living environment in the course of dig-
itization and datafication and prepares a habilitation thesis on this topic. His
other areas of research in philosophy are philosophy of language, philosophy
of culture, embodiment, pragmatism and philosophy of technology. In addi-
tion, he teaches mathematics, statistics and computer science for engineer-
ing and economics as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences (htw
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notes on contributors xvii
Berlin), Berlin School of Economics and Law (hwr Berlin) and the Technical
University Wildau (th Wildau).
Emanuel Seitz
is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Education in Heidelberg. His last
monograph was List und Form. Über Klugheit (2019).
Dennis Stromback
received his PhD from the Department of Religion in 2019 at Temple Univer-
sity in Philadelphia. His past and current research interests include the Kyoto
School, Buddhist philosophy, and Critical Theory as well as a growing interest
in Latin American philosophy. Dennis has articles published in journals such
as Asian Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, International Journal of Asian
Studies, and the European Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and has a forthcom-
ing article in the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. He is one of the editors for
the Journal of Japanese Philosophy and one of the apa panel organizers for the
International Association of Japanese Philosophy. Dennis is currently a lecturer
at Temple University, Japan.
Fernando Wirtz
studied philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and received his PhD from
the University of Tübingen with a book on the philosophy of mythology in
Schelling (Mohr Siebeck, 2022). After several postdoctoral stays in Japan and
Germany he is currently assistant professor at Kyoto University. He is also a
board member of the Society for Intercultural Philosophy.
Yeung Tak-Lap
a Hong Kong native, obtained his PhD from the Free University of Berlin, with
a specialization in continental philosophy and transcultural philosophy. His
doctoral thesis delves into the interpretation of Kant’s philosophy by Heideg-
ger, elucidating the “power of imagination” as a fundamental concept that
underpins a theory of imagination with ontological-existential implications.
In recent years, Yeung has dedicated himself to cross-disciplinary and cross-
cultural comparative philosophy. He has published works in English, German,
and Chinese, covering a range of topics including the interpretation of Imma-
nuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Mou Zongsan, and Nishida Ki-
taro, among others.
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Introduction
Ralf Müller
Fragt man einen gebildeten Europäer, was er sich bei dem Worte
»Mensch« denke, so beginnen fast immer drei unter sich ganz un-
vereinbare Ideenkreise in seinem Kopfe miteinander in Spannung
zu treten. Es ist einmal der Gedankenkreis der jüdisch-christlichen
Tradition von Adam und Eva, von Schöpfung, Paradies und Fall.
Es ist zweitens der griechisch-antike Gedankenkreis, in dem sich
zum ersten Mal in der Welt das Selbstbewußtsein des Menschen zu
einem Begriff seiner Sonderstellung erhob in der These, der Men-
sch sei Mensch durch Besitz der »Vernunft«, logos, phronesis, ratio,
mens—logos bedeutet hier ebensowohl Rede wie Fähigkeit, das
»Was« aller Dinge zu erfassen—; eng verbindet sich mit dieser An-
schauung die Lehre, es liege eine übermenschliche Vernunft auch
dem ganzen All zu Grunde, an der der Mensch, und von allen Wesen
er allein, teilhabe. Der dritte Gedankenkreis ist der auch längst tradi-
tional gewordene Gedankenkreis der modernen Naturwissenschaft
und der genetischen Psychologie, es sei der Mensch ein sehr spätes
Endergebnis der Entwicklung des Erdplaneten, ein Wesen, das sich
von seinen Vorformen in der Tierwelt nur in dem Komplikations-
grade der Mischungen von Energien und Fähigkeiten unterscheide,
die an sich bereits in der untermenschlichen Natur vorkommen.
Diesen drei Ideenkreisen fehlt jede Einheit untereinander. So be-
sitzen wir denn eine naturwissenschaftliche, eine philosophische
und eine theologische Anthropologie, die sich nicht umeinander
kümmern—eine einheitliche Idee vom Menschen aber besitzen wir
nicht.
Max Scheler, 1928, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos.
…
What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with
itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in
nature? Not one power, but two?
Private Witt, 1942, The Thin Red Line (1998).
∵
© Ralf Müller, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_002 - 978-90-04-68017-3
2 müller
1 Why Davos Today?
The ‘Davos Disputation’ of 1929 starts from the Kantian question, “what is
man?” in times of crisis. The question remains present throughout the debate
even though neither of the two opponents, either Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) or
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), pursue philosophical anthropology in a strict
sense. In their works, in fact, both disputants acknowledge the significance of
Max Scheler (1874–1928), one of the founders of 20th-century anthropology, in
his attempt to revise and newly establish anthropology. However, while Cas-
sirer and Heidegger invoke opposing conceptions of man as finite beings, they
leap from the Kantian question to other issues in epistemology, metaphysics,
or meta-philosophy. Today, the “question of man” echoes back as the crisis of
man. And various debates in and critiques of philosophical anthropology pro-
vide the grounds for a new assessment of the Cassirer-Heidegger debate that
occurred almost a hundred years ago.
1.1 Questioning the Davos Debate

We need, in fact, to ask, “What questions arise for us today from the Davos
debate between Heidegger and Cassirer?” Does the encounter between the two
held long ago have more than historical importance? Have not all the essen-
tial points been clarified and discussed in the various works that appeared
in the past years on the subject? ChatGPT replies to these objections: “The
Davos disputations continue to be a source of debate and discussion among
philosophers today, and raise important questions about the nature of human
existence, the role of language and tradition in shaping our understanding of
the world, and the relationship between philosophy and culture.”1
This answer may seem slightly generic, so let us press on ChatGPT and
ask about the fact that the historical context and horizon of the encounter—
especially from a global perspective—do not meet today’s expectations: “Can
we criticise the Davos debate between Cassirer and Heidegger in 1929 for Euro-
centrism?” “Yes, it is possible to criticise the Davos debate between Cassirer and
Heidegger in 1929 for Eurocentrism. The debate focused primarily on European
philosophy and its relevance to modernity, with both Cassirer and Heideg-
ger drawing heavily from the European philosophical tradition. This focus on
European thought and culture could be seen as a reflection of the Eurocentric
worldview that was prevalent at the time.”
1 ChatGPT Vers. 4.0 on 14th March 2023. This and the following answers are obviously limited.
While some parts of the response are based on “facts,” other parts are made up. This, how-
ever, does not need to be a failure but rather the potential creativity necessary to produce
consistent answers.
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introduction 3
Then the question of significance arises again: “Is the Davos Debate between
Heidegger and Cassirer still significant today despite its Eurocentrism?” “The
Davos Debate between Heidegger and Cassirer has been criticised for its Euro-
centric perspective, which neglects the diversity of human cultures and experi-
ences outside of Europe. […] While the Davos Debate between Heidegger and
Cassirer may have its limitations, it still holds significance today because of […]
its emphasis on dialogue and diverse perspectives, and its ability to stimulate
critical reflection on the limitations of Eurocentric perspectives in philosophy
and other fields of study.”
Let us take this reply—for starters—to answer the question of Davos and
the intercultural perspective. Thereby, the discussion with ChatGPT suggests
the relevance of the core question of Davos: “What is man?” Indeed, the Chat-
GPT powered by a language model algorithm is an example of why we need
to talk of a crisis of human nature and anticipate a change of man’s place in
nature and culture. While, on the one hand, artificial intelligence could ulti-
mately open up material paths into the human’s infinity, humankind, on the
other hand, appears to many like the terminal cancer of the Earth’s biosphere.
How about, as a first step, when discussing Davos, to move beyond the limited
views of, as Scheler put it, “the educated European” (Scheler, 1928, p. 1) to take
a broader perspective?
1.2 From a Global Perspective

Scheler explicitly considers the vantage point of the European when discussing
the new foundations of anthropology. We must add that he does not rely on
but attempts to overcome such a limited vantage point. Nowadays, we can
indeed notice a growing awareness of other viewpoints external to Western per-
spectives and, thereby, the acknowledgement of the multiplicity of viewpoints
across the continents. Various global challenges like climate change cause and
give reason for such awareness and acknowledgement. Pushing the multiplic-
ity of viewpoints to the extreme becomes a serious issue as the American film
director and Heidegger translator, Terrence Malick, shows in his 1998 movie,
The Thin Red Line.
The movie tells the story of the United States Army Private Witt who—in
1942—deserts his unit to live among the carefree Melanesian natives in the
South Pacific. The film begins with his inner monologue:
What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself?
The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not
one power, but two?
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In his movie, Malick not only questions the dominant viewpoint of the U.S.
army in its siege and victory over the Japanese. Rather he questions humankind
as a whole and suggests a post-humanist age in cinematographically beautiful
pictures. Time and again, Malick deals with the theme of nature. And especially
in The Thin Red Line, he depicts the biosphere in many shots to cast a silent gaze
on man’s creation and, even more so, on man’s downfall. The axis of encounter
between the peacefully living “primitives” and the warring “civilised” is, one
could say, undermined by the difference of species. The indigenous people live
with nature, with its coming into being and passing away, and fit their lives into
the order of natural events. This contrasts with the conquest and defence of the
islands by the “civilised” invaders. These are not only preoccupied with them-
selves and do not actually see nature in itself, but in their destructive rage they
not only target the enemies, but also include nature in this process of destruc-
tion. The war here becomes an extreme situation that represents more than a
human conflict. The movie puts into question the nature of man, inviting an
interspecies viewpoint.
This kind of viewpoint is a very urgent matter. When at the beginning of
the 20th century, anthropology became a new academic field in philosophy,
this in itself marks a turning point at times of crisis. Just as man emerged as
the object of the (human) sciences, man is threatening to approach his own
end with increasing speed and presses questions like these: Is human nature
in continuity with the animal and plant world? Does it “merely” represent the
top of evolution? Or are there essential characteristics that set man apart from
nature? Do we as humans need to merge—again and more fully—with nature?
Are we meant to disappear? Does modern science cause the human being to
disappear? Does modern science align with ethnic worldviews? Do we need to
learn from ethnic groups like the Yanomamis? Should we learn about the way
in which they immerse in nature? Does their—as they say—“becoming jaguar”
free us of ourselves?
Beide Herren reden eine ganz verschiedene Sprache. Für uns handelt
es sich darum, in diesen zwei Sprachen etwas Gemeinsames herauszu-
holen. […] Die Übersetzungsmöglichkeit reicht so weit, bis etwas auf-
taucht, das sich nicht übersetzen läßt. Das sind die Termini, die das
Charakteristische einer jeden Sprache herausstellen […] in denen der
Geist der Cassirerschen und Heideggerschen Philosophie sich unterschei-
det.
Hendrik Pos, 1929, at Davos.
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introduction 5
Said world is one that shapes itself; it is a world that determines itself
expressively. We must think of human beings as an element of such a
world. It is here that we must discover a new meaning of being human.
(nkz 24, p. 132)
Nishida Kitarō, 1936, “The Contemporary Significance of Humanism.”2
2 Restaging the Davos Disputation Interculturally
What did the Davos Disputation originally look like? On the morning of 26th
March 1929, it was a bright spring day, and in the conference room of the lux-
urious Grandhotel Belvédère in the Swiss spa town of Davos, the two most
important minds from Germany met for a disputation, which was announced
in the program of the three-week “Davos University Courses” of that year with
genteel academic restraint as a “working group”: Martin Heidegger, 39, profes-
sor in Freiburg, whose reputation for overturning Western thought preceded
him, and Ernst Cassirer, 54, professor in Hamburg, at the height of his career
and representing to many Neo-Kantianism and thus the most important cur-
rent in German philosophy at the time.
While being rather a polite conversation between a very nice gentleman
and a somewhat less nice one, as one observer noted, at its core, the debate
was a relentless argument between two advocates of radically different view-
points, not a dialogue but a demarcation. As such, it is still considered an
epoch-making event in the history of modern thought. According to the Amer-
ican philosopher, Michael Friedman, of Stanford University, it represents the
crossroads for 20th-century philosophy. His Harvard colleague, the historian of
ideas, Peter Gordon, called it the continental divide.
The feeling of witnessing a historical upheaval, a decisive clash of old and
new thought, already intoxicated all the participants present at the time: over
200 professors, lecturers and students from 20 countries, most of them from
Germany and France. Heidegger’s student, Otto Friedrich Bollnow, as keeper
of the minutes, believed that he had “witnessed a historical hour, much like
Goethe had pronounced in the ‘Campaign in France’: ‘From here and today
a new epoch of world history is emanating’—in this case, of the history of
philosophy—and you can say you were there” (Bollnow, 1977, p. 28). The Davos
2 さう云ふ世界は自分自身を形成してゆく世界であり、自分自身を表現的に限定して
ゆく世界である。このやうな世界のエレメントとして人間を考えねばならぬ。新しい人
間性の意味はさう云ふところに発見されねばならない。
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Philosophers’ summit has become a myth, an allegory for the crisis of the Euro-
pean mind that led to the tragedies of the 20th century. The summit manifested
the civilisational rupture that shook the old world: classical humanism versus
romantic barbarism, enlightenment versus counter-enlightenment, reason ver-
sus irrationalism, freedom or destiny, liberalism and fascism.
However, just as much as these opposites can startle us and keep us captive,
we can also bracket them and state the limited scope of viewpoints, if not of the
Eurocentric setting. What does a way out of the deadlock of opposites look like?
Where do we get once we take a viewpoint external to the German-German
encounter? What can a non-Western thinker contribute? Which resources can
we draw on to redirect the path of thinking?
2.1 German-Japanese Confluences
I hope to learn those subjects within the realm of philosophy. The reli-
gious thought that is prohibited by our national law differs, I believe, from
those things advocated by Descartes, Locke, Hegel, and Kant, so I hope to
study them too. This work is probably difficult, but, in my opinion, there
are not a few points in the study of these subjects which will serve to
advance our civilization.
Nishi Amane, 1863, in a letter to Johann Josef Hoffmann.
Japanism, Philosopherism and Personalism were a search for a philoso-

phy of life, if not a basis for a national policy. More technical philosophy
was needed; this need was fulfilled, to a great extent, during the sec-
ond decade of this century by the so-called Southwestern and Marburg
schools of neo-Kantianism which had exponents not only in the Impe-
rial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, but also in Waseda and other private
institutions. A great majority of the philosophy students who went abroad
during this period went to Germany rather than to the United States.
Therefore, upon their return, they introduced the thought of their Ger-
man teachers.
Gino Piovesana, 1962, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought.
Reflecting on and overcoming the conditions of Davos from an external per-

spective, an intercultural dialogue opens up. While hotel registries show the
presence of guests from all over the world arriving in Davos for the debate, it
remains an area of investigation to receive and evaluate the meeting from an
‘outside’ perspective. In the present case, we will take up—counter-factually—
the view from Japan, for several reasons. As laid out in Piovesana, since the 1910s
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introduction 7
academic philosophy in Japan followed the lead of German-speaking philoso-

phers, especially because of the dominance of the Neo-Kantians. Moreover,
many nowadays known or even famous philosophers from Japan—including
Kyoto School philosophers—dwelled in Germany and other European regions
during or around the time of the Davos encounter.
While textual evidence of the reception of the Davos event awaits discovery,
the mere advancement of philosophy in Japan motivates the parallelisation,
too. Both at an institutional level and an individual level, this advancement can
be delineated. Indeed, we need to see the situation of Davos in the continuity of
and contrast to an earlier event in Japan. The two Germans geographically with-
drew from the common public and met for the summit in a refuge-like space
up in the mountains, roughly 60 years before the isolated and—seen from
Europe—Far Eastern country opened up to engage in political, economic, tech-
nological and cultural renewal and exchange with the rest of the world. Within
this short period, Japan established the necessary infrastructure to nurture a
philosophical spirit and come up to speed with current debates in Western aca-
demic institutions.
One might say that Japan underwent a process of philosophical maturation
in which it first adopted the West, then turned Eastward and then again West-
ward against an Eastern background. Hence, Davos could have been a platform
for Japanese thinkers to perform philosophically. Also, given their own work
and maturity, as we can glean from the author we will discuss here, it would
have been an encounter among equally knowledgeable and ingenious thinkers,
East and West. To be more precise, while tetsugaku 哲學, the Japanese term for
philosophy, was coined in 1862, it was only 25 years later that Japan outlined
an entire philosophical vocabulary and by 1911, the last year of the Meiji era,
they had a complete translation of Plato’s works as well as the maiden work
of the nowadays most famous philosopher from Japan, i.e. Nishida Kitarō, who
in the following 20 years came to establish his own system of thought and—
reluctantly—the so-called Kyoto School.
However, one important feature of the still current image of the German-
Japanese relation needs to be mended. After the decline of the Neo-Kantians,
Heidegger became the main author of interest in Japan. This is, also, because of
the early engagement of Tanabe Hajime, a student of Nishida’s, when he trav-
elled to Germany in the 1920s and published an article in 1924 about a turn
in phenomenology and before anywhere else the importance of Heidegger is
jotted down.3 In fact, Japanese is the first language into which Heidegger’s
3 Cf. thz 4, pp. 17–34; previously in Shisō October 1924; German translation in Buchner,
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8 müller
inaugural lecture on Was ist Metaphysik? was translated, as Keijijōgaku to ha

nanzoya 形而上學とは何ぞや, in 1930. Still in an early account of Japanese phi-
losophy in German, the relation between Heidegger’s thinking on death and
Buddhism is noted.4
However, once we look closer at what the role is of Nishida, the Japanese
thinker most hailed until today for his originality, the image of the German-
Japanese relation becomes at least one-sided. It is, in particular, Nishida who is
rather critical of Heidegger and he is far from identifying his own or Japanese
thought in general with that of Heidegger, as has been comprehensively laid
out by Rigsby (2010). Nevertheless, it is this relationship that is used to depict
the connection between German and Japanese philosophy, especially after the
Second World War. Therefore, in the following, the relation of Nishida and Cas-
sirer will be explored (based on Müller, 2018), and Heidegger left aside.
2.2 Against the “Japan and Heidegger” Bias
Nishida is Western.
Martin Heidegger, 1953, in reply to Suzuki Daisetsu’s question of what
Heidegger thinks about Nishida’s philosophy.
Heidegger is not worth your time.

Nishida Kitarō, 1933, in reply to his student Takizawa Katsumi.
We shall see, in particular, how the relatively less familiar philosophical

position gradually articulated by Cassirer during this period can be seen
as an heroic attempt to bridge the ever widening gulf between the scien-
tifically oriented approach to philosophy championed by Carnap and the
decisive attempt to move philosophy in a quite contrary direction rep-
resented by Heidegger. Situating Cassirer’s attempt at integration against
the much more radically polarized positions of Carnap and Heidegger can
thus provide us with new possibilities and renewed motivation for mak-
ing a similarly heroic effort for ourselves.
And, if Cassirer cannot thus make good on the idea of an underly-
ing unity for the totality of symbolic forms, it appears that we are finally
1989, pp. 89–108. Cf. the beginning of the text: “Phenomenology occupies an important place
in modern German philosophy. In my opinion, this is because it has comparatively great
prospects of uniting the two poles of the so-called ‘philosophy of science’ and the ‘philos-
ophy of life’” (17).
4 Cf. Schinzinger, 1943 p. 17.
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introduction 9
left (in the present space of intellectual possibilities, of course) with the
fundamental philosophical dilemma presented by Carnap and Heideg-
ger after all. We can either, with Carnap, hold fast to formal logic as
the ideal of universal validity and confine ourselves, accordingly, to the
philosophy of the mathematical exact sciences, or we can, with Heideg-
ger, cut ourselves off from logic and “exact thinking” generally, with the
result that we ultimately renounce the ideal of truly universal validity
itself.
Michael Friedman, 2000, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heideg-
ger.
For two reasons, emphasis is put on the relation between Cassirer and Ni-
shida—rather than on the relation of Cassirer, Heidegger and Nishida, while
at an imaginary Davos meeting, they might have equally discussed and fought
each other in different ways. First of all, there is, as already indicated, a histor-
ical imbalance that should be settled here when it comes to the relationship
between Japanese and German philosophy: Japan und Heidegger (Buchner
1989) is an important research contribution that has, at the same time, sus-
tained a one-sided image as if Heidegger was ‘naturally’ the perfect match for
Nishida and the Kyoto School. This one-sided image is solidified not least by
the fact that Cassirer could only be effective as an exiled philosopher. All the
while, the debate about Cassirer and Heidegger in recent years has also revealed
convergences between the two thinkers that make a rigid opposition no longer
seem permissible.
More importantly, however, is the second reason, i.e. the role that Cassirer
played at Davos from the point of view of Friedman. According to him, Cas-
sirer tried to bridge the two extremes of Carnap’s scientism, on the one hand,
and Heidegger’s irrationalism, on the other hand. In regard to this role, there
is—to my understanding—a strong coalescence between Cassirer and Nishida.
So, then, if Cassirer’s attempt is worthwhile an investigation into the reasons
why he ultimately failed, concurrent investigations into the work of Nishida
could help us better understand Cassirer’s failure just as much as it might
open up a different route that could still help to advance a new path after
Kant.
In the present context, it is crucial to debunk the cultural uniformity of the
Western tradition by inviting a Japanese thinker to the debate. The ambigu-
ity thus involves the thinker as representative of tradition. So, then, what does
it mean to read Davos interculturally? How does Nishida fit into the picture?
How does he relate to Cassirer and Heidegger? And, finally, how does he dis-
cuss the topics of “anthropology,” “Kant” and “philosophy”? To answer these
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questions, we will first show some unknown relations between Cassirer and
Nishida, then investigate how close Nishida and Cassirer in fact are, and finally
discuss Nishida’s imaginary contribution to Davos.
2.2.1 Meeting Points between Ernst Cassirer and Nishida Kitarō

As already indicated, Tanabe notices as early as 1924 “The New Turn in Phe-
nomenology. Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Life.” At the same time he must
have noted some common ground between Heidegger’s preoccupation with
death, on the one hand, and Buddhist thought in the East, on the other.5
This perception was also from early on reflected and shared by the German
side in a short account of Japanese philosophy by Robert Schinzinger (1898–
1988).6 Schinzinger, however, is one of two authors, thinkers and cultural medi-
ators who help to put this at least one-sided image of an intrinsic connection
between Heidegger and Japan into perspective, the second being Yura Tetsuji
(1897–1979), a Japanese thinker directly in touch with Cassirer.
Schinzinger was a student of Cassirer and left Germany for Japan in 1923,7
where he found work in Ōsaka.8 In the coming years, he became acquainted
with Nishida. In 1929, Nishida wrote a preface to Schinzinger’s book, Die Stel-
lung der Philosophie im deutschen Geistesleben der Gegenwart (The Status of
Philosophy in the Contemporary German Life of the Spirit). In 1933, Schinzinger
endowed his book, Sinn und Sein (Meaning and Being) to Nishida with a short
hand-written dedication to him. This book can still be found at Kyoto Univer-
sity in the stack of books that belonged to Nishida. It shows the long-lasting
impact that Cassirer had on Schinzinger and through Schinzinger it also rep-
resents an important source of information for Nishida regarding philosophy
in Germany and authors such as Eduard von Hartmann, Heidegger, and also
Cassirer.
The second mediator and connector between Nishida and Cassirer is Yura, a
student of Nishida’s who went to Germany in 1928 to study in Hamburg under
Cassirer.9 Yura translated Cassirer’s Inaugural Lecture at Hamburg University
5 Cf. thz 4, p. 34.

6 Cf. Schinzinger, 1943, p. 17.
7 He undertook his PhD at Hamburg University in 1922 (on the so-called Arnauld-Malebranche-
controversy).
8 The intellectual world at the time was not too big for Karl Jaspers to take note of Schinzinger
going to Japan because of the difficulties of finding a job in the German-speaking world.
9 He received his PhD in 1931 with a study on Geisteswissenschaft und Willensgesetz: kritische
Untersuchung der Methodenlehre der Geisteswissenschaft in der Badischen, Marburger und
Dilthey-Schule (Sciences of Mind and the Law of the Will: A Critical Examination of the Method-
ology of the Sciences of Mind in the Schools of Baden, Marburg and Dilthey).
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introduction 11
into Japanese when Cassirer became one10 of the first German-Jewish profes-
sors to lead a university in Germany.11 More importantly for the present con-
text is that Yura also translated for Nishida. He started to translate Nishida’s
now famous essay, The Intelligible World (Eichiteki sekai 叡智的世界, 1928)
around the year 1930. Nishida’s reaction was highly ambiguous. While he ini-
tially agreed to this essay being translated, in a letter to Yura on 19th December,
1930, he explicitly forbade him to publish his translation.12 Nishida was afraid of
being ridiculed by his German colleagues, and in particular he mentions Cas-
sirer in this context.13
In his books, there are almost no explicit statements by Nishida about his
colleague from Hamburg—except for very few and negligible references to Cas-
sirer, such as to Cassirer’s book on Leibniz in a short essay about Bertrand
Russell (cf. nkz 11, p. 133). At least in his public lectures on philosophy, he
appraised Cassirer as an outstanding thinker in his own right, e.g. in The phi-
losophy of Idealism today in autumn 1916 (cf. nkz 12, p. 52) and in The Phi-
losophy of Cohen in 1925. In the latter, he presented Cassirer in such a way
that after the deaths of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) and Paul Natorp (1854–
1924) he would be acknowledged as the last remaining representative of the
Marburg-School, although—as Nishida also concedes—as “professor at the
newly founded University of Hamburg […] he wouldn’t belong to the Marburg-
School at all” (nkz 12, p. 132).14
10 For more details, see Endres, 2021, p. 289.

11 Despite his close relation to Cassirer or his connection to Edmund Husserl, Yura also sup-
ported nationalistic and anti-semitic ideas imported from Germany.
12 Nishida’s letters to Yura were first published in Shimada, 1996, pp. 141–145.
13 Nishida hesitates to have anything published in German but in particular he wants an
essay translated that would represent his own thinking in the most comprehensive and
complete way possible even if he scolds himself for being a writer who does not perfect
his essays. So he addresses Yura in saying (Shimada 1996, pp. 142–143): “It would be per-
fect if you could do that much for my paper, but what on earth would people like Professor
Cassirer, for example, think of my ideas? Wouldn’t they just laugh at me? Wouldn’t they
simply think of how Orientals have a strangely yellow complexion? Or that our clogs and
umbrellas are strange?” 「論文のことは、それだけ手を尽して下されは申し分ない
が、一体カッシーラー教授など、私の考えなどどう考えられるか。一笑に付しは
せないか。東洋人の顔色は変に黄色ぐらいに考えないか。下駄や傘が妙だぐら
いのところではないか。」 And a little bit later (Shimada, 1996, p. 143): “If my ideas are
introduced to German academia in the future, I hope that they will be presented in a more
comprehensive and descriptive manner.” 「もし将来、小生の考えがドイツの学界に紹
介せられるなら、もっと全体を総括し叙述の如きものが、紹介せらるることを希望い
たします。」In a comment on Nishida’s letters, the editor mentions that Yura presented his
Nishida translation to Husserl who is said to have taken serious interest in Nishida’s ideas
based on the essay The Intelligible World (Shimada, 1996, p. 145).
14 Cf. the passage more fully reads: 「しからば現在マールブルヒ学派は誰が担ってゐる
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2.2.2 Systematic Convergences between Nishida Kitarō and Ernst

Cassirer
Before we approach the year 1929 and Friedman’s account of Davos to make a
more detailed comparison, let us take a different starting point to locate the
convergences between Cassirer and Nishida. For this we can draw on a taxon-
omy by Oswald Schwemmer (1997). Following Schwemmer, we can sum up the
work of Cassirer as the intermediate position between school philosophy and
philosophy of life as follows: Cassirer’s work has a great proximity to experience
(i), it has brought the historical-cultural reality of the spirit to the fore (ii) and
brought human everydayness into focus (iii).
It is precisely these three moments that are also suitable, so the assumption
goes, for characterising Nishida’s work in its basic motifs. Starting from these
motifs, we can then proceed with the two concepts of life and form, which I
would like to call the poles of a field of tension in which these threefold charac-
teristics emerge. In fact, already Nishida’s early work, Thinking and Experience
(Shisaku to taiken 『思索と体験』) of 1915 is of significance in this regard.
It helps explain the philosophical atmosphere surrounding Nishida when
he first went to Kyoto University. At that time, Neo-Kantianism and Bergsonism
were the dominant trends and Japanese academic philosophers discussed Rick-
ert’s “pure logic” and Bergson’s “pure duration” widely, as Nishida recalls in the
1914 preface to Thinking and Experience (cf. nkz 1, p. 166). Piovesana undergirds
this account by saying that “Nishida’s book clearly reflects this trend. Rickert,
Cohen, Bergson, Lotze, Poincare and many other thinkers are considered, with
such problems as the difference between natural and historical science being
paramount” (Piovesana, 1997, p. 98; referring to nkz 1, pp. 163–167). In other
words, Nishida felt challenged to revise his early position of A Study of Good
(Zen no kenkyū 『善の研究』) and to go beyond the concept of “pure experi-
ence.” He, therefore, also had to overcome neo-Kantian categories, as well as
Bergson’s “pure duration,” and “this not only through epistemology, but with
the help of a new and deeper philosophy or a new metaphysics” (Piovesana,
1997, p. 98).
2.2.2.1 Locating Nishida Kitarō in Relation to His German Speaking

Colleagues
Schwemmer (1997, pp. 22–23) refers to four German-speaking authors, namely
Cassirer, Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and locates
them in opposition to the school philosophy of neo-Kantianism and histori-
かといふに、こんど新設されたハンブルグ大学の教授をやってゐるカッシーラー
Cassirer といふ人で、全然このマールブルヒ学派には属しないまでもこの学派の流
れを汲んでゐる人と認められてゐる。」
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introduction 13
cism. There are three topics that help to delineate the differences and conver-
gences between these thinkers:
i) Of the four, it is Husserl, Cassirer and Heidegger who attempt to transcend
the self-evident conceptual systems of both rationalist “philosophies of
reason” and “systems philosophies” and empiricist theories of knowledge
in the direction of a greater proximity to experience. In such constella-
tions, feelings, moods and aspirations take a leading role. Incidentally,
this also applies to Nishida, who already in his early works fought for
the inclusion of emotions and will and, although he was influenced by
both rationalists and empiricists from the beginning, criticised them all
as being still too remote from experience.
ii) Only the early Wittgenstein and Cassirer attempted to expose the histor-
ical-cultural reality of the spirit. They did this by focusing on the linguis-
tic and—more generally—symbolic realisation of conceptual and logical
relations, in other words, by relativising the theoretical framework of the
aforementioned rationalist and empiricist traditions. This is also evident
in Nishida’s philosophy, in that he sets out his own logical conception on
the one hand and includes the breath of the objectivity of spirit on the
other, including art, morality and religion.
iii) Husserl, Cassirer, Heidegger and the late Wittgenstein took the whole of
human existence and everyday life as such into view, rather than narrow-
ing the gaze of (rationalist or empiricist) philosophy oriented towards
scientific conceptualisation and theorising. This is another feature that
is prevalent in Nishida’s philosophy, because it extends the gaze beyond
science to include not only art, morality, and religion but also everyday
life as the common ground and source of human engagement with life
and logic.
Based on these three topics, we can see that philosophers in Germany and
Japan share great thematic areas as the common ground to philosophise. The
commonalities between Cassirer and Nishida are also important in the next
step when we look at how Friedman perceived the role of Cassirer in Davos:
As quoted above there are two options, “with Carnap, hold fast to formal logic”
or, “with Heidegger, cut ourselves off from logic and ‘exact thinking’ generally”
(Friedman, 2000, p. 156). However, the third option is Cassirer’s: “Situating Cas-
sirer’s attempt at integration against the much more radically polarised posi-
tions of Carnap and Heidegger can thus provide us with new possibilities and
renewed motivation for making a similarly heroic effort for ourselves” (Fried-
man, 2000, p. xii).
As suggested by the aforementioned convergences, Nishida fits into the role
that Cassirer has in Davos and, at the same time, being educated in both East-
ern and Western traditions, he can bridge into new directions.
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14 müller
2.2.2.2 Key Confluences: Wilhelm von Goethe and the Concept of Form
Generally speaking, in the 1920s and 1930s both philosophers attempt to re-
think the notion of form, even if in seemingly opposing ways: as the formless
form in the case of Nishida and as the becoming of form in the case of Cassirer.
Both react to and try to navigate between Neo-Kantianism, on the one hand,
and philosophy of life, on the other.
Starting a decade earlier, Nishida published his maiden work, A Study of
Good (Zen no kenkyū 善の研究) in 1911. Cassirer presented his first original
work, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, in 1910. Already at that time, the
attempt in both works was to overcome a static conception of metaphysics,
the former by way of a dynamic theory of experience, and the latter by way
of relational conceptions instead of concepts of substance. Later, in the 1920s,
both thinkers expand that attempt and develop their original approaches as
“the philosophy of symbolic forms” (Cassirer) and the “logic of place” (Nishida).
Challenging the post-Kantian epistemological framework in the 1920s, they
reach a new understanding and move beyond this framework at the turn of
1930.
In the case of Cassirer, the importance of the concept of form is not imme-
diately evident, unless one shifts the emphasis in his main oeuvre of the time:
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is explicitly about founding a philosophy of
culture, but one is left to believe that his enterprise is primarily concerned with
the symbolic. However, it always entails the reconceptualisation of form as the
becoming of form. As already indicated, Cassirer moves away from a static, pla-
tonic concept and evolves a dynamic conception inspired by the thought and
artistic engagement of Wilhelm von Goethe.
In the case of Nishida, this challenge is more evident. As mentioned above,
he developed his original approach as a theory of place or field (j. bashoron
場所論) around the same time as Cassirer’s main work. He developed this con-
cept by going back to the Eastern traditions and put forth the idea of a formless
form. He explicitly states that the idea of place can be related to Plato’s con-
cept of chora even if he hesitates and underlines the difference between the
two.
In short, despite individual and fundamental differences in how to work out
the respective systematic thinking, in the first step of comparison, it is essen-
tial to see the commonalities between the two, in particular in respect to the
concept of form and the attempt to overcome a specific epistemological set-
ting.
Advancing a critical ideal of form requires more than the elaboration of an
abstract concept. When we ask what this concept of form is about, the answer
is straightforward and can be contextualised within the intellectual horizon of
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introduction 15
their time: it is the form of life, or the living form. Building upon a new concep-
tion of form, Nishida’s and Cassirer’s writings span a vast horizon of themes,
whereby aesthetics becomes a kind of paradigm. Hence, the artist that cre-
ates and shapes the world is the model to reconceptualise “form.” Both Nishida
and Cassirer, each in their respective way, tried to think of an organic totality
without subsuming it to the idea of the one. To be more precise they tried to
rethink life as such a totality that cannot be subsumed to one principle and in
particular to the principle of rationality alone. Thereby, both took up the core
theme of Lebensphilosophie without subscribing to any specific version of this
thinking, each of which tends to elevate the immediacy of life to a philosophic
truth.
2.2.2.3 Culture and Philosophy

Revisiting Davos in an intercultural setting, invites a review of what culture is to
mean in the present context. On the one hand, while Cassirer is known for his
philosophy of culture, he did not engage in comparative studies in philosophy
and, thereby, his works are strictly limited to the Western canon of philosophy.
On the other hand, Nishida stands out as an original thinker who crossed from
East to West and back again, taking on a morphology of cultures to explain dif-
ferences of thoughts and mindsets related to various traditions. Thus, at first
sight, it seems that “culture” is the best term to show the incompatibility of
Nishida’s and Cassirer’s philosophies. However, a closer look—at present lim-
ited to Nishida’s writings—allows for a different conclusion.
In the first step, we need to recall the framework from within which Cas-
sirer delineated and rethought the concept of culture and how his thinking
branches out as a philosophy of culture. Cassirer’s work is deeply idealistic tak-
ing its grounding in the Hegelian concept of objective spirit, a concept which
Wilhelm von Dilthey used to pave the way for the Geisteswissenschaften and
later the so-called Kulturwissenschaften. Laying out the various forms of man
to objectify its spirit in matter and conceptualizing the whole of the material
world created and/or shaped by man as what we nowadays still call culture,
asks for an analysis of how to differentiate and, then again, relate the various
forms within culture. In other words, Cassirer laid out a concept of culture as
a singulare tantum asking for its internal layers and structuring, i.e. of history,
art, religion, and science, or philosophy.
As early as 1920, when Cassirer was working on the systematic core of his
philosophy, Nishida stated, in his collection of essays titled “Art and morality,”
the following about culture (j. bunka 文化): “The phenomena of philosophy,
art, morality, and religion belong to [the] horizon of culture” (Nishida, 1973,
p. 12; nkz 3, p. 13). While the Japanese grammar leaves it open to interpreta-
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tion whether or not the concept is meant in the singular or plural, the context
and phrasing suggest that this early usage is almost exclusively also a singulare
tantum. As such, it represents well the idea of Diltheyan objective spirit and
precedes Nishida’s pluralistic idea of world cultures by roughly more than ten
years.
Moreover, whereas Nishida rarely explicitly states what philosophy is and
leaves it open to interpretation on the basis of how he philosophised, here he
places philosophy—next to art, morality and religion (and, also science, as indi-
cated elsewhere)—within the horizon of culture. Philosophy is, indeed, on an
equal level with the other topics included. That does not mean that he presents
a philosophy of culture in the same way as there is the philosophy of art, of
morality or of religion. Nevertheless, philosophy—just as all the other fields—
partakes in what can be called the objective spirit, i.e. culture similar to what
Cassirer inherited from Hegel and Dilthey. Here, culture is meant that which
both stands in opposition to nature, while also encompassing it. It is not the
radical other as long as it is seen as part of the self and hence is looked at on an
existential level. As Nishida writes:
By culture is meant not the taking of nature as the means of the self, but
the seeing of nature within the self. Indeed, culture is the discovery of
the self in the very depths of nature. The phenomena of philosophy, art,
morality, and religion belong to this horizon of culture (Nishida, 1973, p. 12;
nkz 3, p. 13).
2.3 »Kyōto in Davos«
An anthropology that has philosophical meaning must be a historical

anthropology. If we deepen the meaning that we ourselves exist in some-
thing, what is thought of as nature must also be understood as something
that is within us humans. All of this, [in turn,] can be thought of as exist-
ing in history.
Nishida Kitarō, 1930, “Anthropology.”15
It has been my intention to clarify the origin of knowledge from the per-
spective of consistent criticism; to assign the different kinds of knowledge
15 『人間学』 nkz 7, p. 225: 「哲学的意義を有する人間学は歴史的人間学でなければ

ならない。我々が我々自身に於てあるといふ意味を深くすれば、自然と考えられる
ものも我々人間に於て見られる自然と考えなければならない。すべてが歴史に於
てあると考えることもできるであら。」
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introduction 17
their specific positions and authorities, and to clear up their relations and
their order of rank.
Nishida Kitarō, 1928, “The Intelligible World.”16
There is nothing that has been called philosophy from time immemo-
rial that does not in some sense arise from the desire for a profound life.
Where would there be anything to be called philosophy without the ‘ques-
tion of human life’? In this sense I have great sympathy for what is called
philosophy of life.
Nishida Kitarō, 1932, “On the Philosophy of Life.”17
Now we can discuss more closely the role of Nishida in Davos.18 Key to his
self-conception is the non-substantialist approach based on the concept of
nothingness, relational thinking, and a critique of subject-object dichotomies.
While Nishida shared—as shown above—a wide thematic range with Cassirer,
his engagement of the Eastern traditions sets him apart from Cassirer and other
German philosophers. His practice of Zen is widely known, while he avoided
short-cutting Zen and philosophy, and used the designation “Buddhist philos-
ophy” or “Eastern philosophy” rarely in his writings, but more freely, however,
in interviews or talks.
2.3.1 The Question of Man and the Search for a New Humanism
“What is Man?” turns out to be the official theme of the Davos University
Courses and the central question of the Davos debate: the conditio humana.
Even though both Cassirer and Heidegger took a critical distance from philo-
sophical anthropology, both were taken by the contemporary authors and
hence held in reserve their stance towards anthropology. We might even say
that contrary to their philosophical approach, at the centre of their debate in
Davos (and, as it turns out, at the centre of all their philosophical thought) was,
as Gordon puts it, “a fundamental contest between two normative images of
16 Nishida, 1958, p. 141: 『叡智的世界』 nkz 4, pp. 148–149: 「私は徹底的批評主義の立

場から、知識成立の根底を明にし、種々なる知識に各自の立場と権利とを与へる
と共に、相互の関係と秩序とを明にしようと思ふものである。」
17 nkz 5, p. 335: 「古来、哲学と称せられるものは、何等かの意味に於て深い生命の要
求に基かざるものはない。人間問題といふものなくして何処に哲学といふべきもの
があるであらう。かう意味に於て、私は生の哲学と云はれるものに対して多大の同
情を有つものである。」『生の哲学について』
18 The following outline of the Davos Disputation owes primarily to Friedman (2000),
Gordon (2010), and Truwant (2022).
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18 müller
humanity” (Gordon, 2010, p. 6) a dispute “between thrownness and spontane-

ity” (Gordon, 2010, p. 7).
While Cassirer saw man as gifted with the capacity for “spontaneous self-
expression” and thus endowed with “complete freedom” to create worlds of
meaning, Heidegger saw him as determined by his “finitude” and thus liv-
ing in the midst of conditions which he did not create and hopefully cannot
control. The juxtaposition of freedom and finitude can serve as a framework.
German philosophy at this time saw itself in crisis, reflecting the political
and intellectual uncertainties of the time. Neo-Kantianism had dominated the
German philosophical scene for more than two generations, but deep divi-
sions in this school of thought became apparent in the 1920s. Existentialist
modes of thought, going back to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, were making
themselves increasingly felt; anthropology was pointing philosophy in a new
direction.
Cassirer’s lectures focused on a critique of philosophical anthropology and
in particular Max Scheler’s version of this new current. In his lectures, Cassirer
subtly sought to connect Heidegger with the anthropological tradition. Heideg-
ger, in turn, criticised the neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant that reduced the
first critique to an epistemology for the natural sciences, when in fact it should
be read as laying the foundations for a metaphysics—a somewhat controver-
sial claim that Heidegger would elaborate on in his book, Kant and the Problem
of Metaphysics, published in late 1929.
Cassirer put into question whether Heidegger, with his belief in human fini-
tude, could have any place for non-relative truth and objective knowledge. Hei-
degger agreed that, “In this question of the going-beyond of finitude, we find a
wholly central problem” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 197). But he emphasised, “What is
redeemable here as objective knowledge has, according to the respective, fac-
tual, individual existence, a truth-content which, as content, says something
about the being” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 198). Although Cassirer conceded that
“man cannot make the leap from his own finitude into a realistic infinity,” he
also held the view along with the poet Schiller that “[f]rom out of the chal-
ice of this spiritual realm, infinity flows to him” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 201). All in
all, it is clear that the debate left both men untouched in their initial convic-
tions.
How should Nishida be placed in this context based on texts of the mid-
1920s to mid-1930s? Already in the context of the question “what is man?,”
Nishida shows familiarity with current debates on and issues in anthropology.
He delineated his understanding of nothingness vis-à-vis the West and related
to debates about humanism. In an interview of 1936, the question of what it
means to be human came up as the quest for a new sort of humanism. In reply
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introduction 19
to Miki Kiyoshi19 stating that “generally speaking, the Eastern thinking is poor
of the element of humanism,” Nishida confirmed and said that “if we compare
East and West, then there is humanism at the centre of the Western culture”
(nkz 24, p. 134). But he also saw a dead-end in the West and way out of this
dead-end through the East:
Today, however, Western-style humanism is at an impasse. The imper-

sonal and holistic must take centre stage. It is here that the Oriental can
become an element of the new humanism. (nkz 24, p. 134)
Apparently, Nishida was aware of both the fascist and communist ideologies
withdrawing freedom from the individual to leave nothing but a totalitar-
ian point of view. Drawing on the Eastern tradition is not straightforward, as
Nishida explains that “we won’t discover the new human by simply returning
to the olden days” (nkz 24, p. 134). He argues for the mediation of old and new
and to integrate East and West with a moving ahead towards the future. The key
is that “in the East, ‘nothingness’ has become the principle but nothingness is
not simply negative, it must be considered as creative. Nothingness isn’t just
nothing, reality is nothingness” (nkz 24, p. 135). What does it mean to refer to
nothingness in this context? Nishida expounds further:
To see without the nothingness [無にして見るといふ事なくしては] would

make it impossible to see reality as such. To put it in another way, it means
the determination without the determining, pointing to the existing form.
We can use different viewpoints to explain this. So if we say that what
we call reality is the utmost limit of “existing things,” or what exists on
the opposite side, it is no longer reality as such. Consequently, we must
unavoidably use a word that is close to an expression like “nothingness”.
(nkz 24, pp. 50–51)
Indeed, in 1933, Nishida could relate his idea of nothingness to his contempo-
raries: Scheler and Heidegger. He acknowledged their awareness for the phe-
nomenon of nothingness while, at the same time, pointing out elemental dif-
ferences, too. In the end, neither Scheler nor Heidegger was able to penetrate
the true meaning of nothingness. Nishida starts with Scheler:
19 Cf. Miki proposes a “new humanism” that would connect humanity with sociality in his
“Literature and the Problem of Neo-Humanism” (1933).
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There are those such as Scheler who speak of it [nothingness] as impo-

tence (Ohnmacht) [無力]. He tried to gesture towards it by using this
unique word. However, while he has much to say about the negating “im-
” [無, i.e. “non-”] of impotence, he has neglected to speak much about
“potency” (力, i.e. “power”). However, nothingness possesses the element
of power, and so we must dedicate more attention to discussing its living
potency. Therefore, the nothingness I speak of is, of course, not noth-
ing at all. Rather, we need to conceive of it as working within history,
as something that is pulsating within the field [場所] of our experience.
Heidegger similarly speaks of “nothingness” in his What is Metaphysics?.
He descends from the world of being, alights on the field [場所] of anxi-
ety and, again, proceeds down towards nothingness. From there, he takes
a route back up to the surface again. Yet true “nothingness” must be
grasped at once in the field [場所] of true existence. We must always
seek to behold it within this field [場所] where it truly exists. (nkz 24,
p. 51)
We can bridge from what Nishida says about the concept of nothingness into
the “question of man,” when we read a few lines from the discussion that
Nishida had with Miki Kiyoshi about “The Contemporary Significance of Hu-
manism Today” (nkz 24, p. 130). As already quoted above, Nishida laid out what
humanism was meant to be in the future in reply to Miki. His main aim was
the natural sciences as he denied a concept of world grounded entirely and
exclusively on the natural sciences: “If one thinks in the manner of the natural
sciences, one cannot imagine man emerging from such a world with individ-
ual freedom” (nkz 24, p. 132). In contrast to this, we need to take the individual
freedom as the base of the concept of man and hence: “We must conceive of
the world as something creative. We human beings are the creative elements of
this creative world” (nkz 24, p. 132). Against the backdrop of idealism, Nishida
states the following:
There, we must discover a new meaning of humanity. When we say this,

there may be people who question it as a kind of idealism, but on the con-
trary, the true world of history must be as we have just described. Instead
of thinking of the world in human terms, we think of humans as the cre-
ative element of the world. Until now, humanism has conceived of man
in an immanent way. It was based on an anthropology of the immanent,
conscious human. From now on humanism must be rooted in an anthro-
pology of the historical human. Man is born into this world, is active in
it and dies in it. That is, the world forms itself dialectically and expresses
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introduction 21
itself. To express means to give shape. We can imagine the human in terms
of such a historical world. (nkz 24, pp. 132–133)
2.3.2 The Kantian Dualism between the Sensual and the Ideational
World
As a point of departure not only for the Davos resumption, but in the local dis-
cussion, there was something that could be seen as a school dispute, but was
precisely not: how can we connect to Kant if we want to continue with Kant
because of or in spite of a dualism between the sensual and the ideational
world? Does it remain with the mere opposition? Or is there another approach
in the body of thought to mediate the opposites and perhaps even make it clear
that the opposition itself is mediated?
Friedman’s book contains a deep, substantial and thoroughly illuminating
account of the philosophical issues involved. It shows how Cassirer, Heidegger,
and Carnap with similar neo-Kantian backgrounds shared, or at least under-
stood, enough common philosophical problems in 1929 to be able to discuss
them amicably. Friedman underlines the philosophical similarities and com-
mon concerns of Cassirer and Carnap by pointing to their fundamental reliance
on science and logic, their search for a philosophy with a “universally accept-
able” non-metaphysical basis, and their “failed” attempts to effectively combine
Kantian dualities as constitutive of their rejection of Heidegger. In contrast,
Heidegger’s insistence on temporality, his analysis of finitude and his rejection
of the philosophical primacy of logic, mathematics and mathematical physics
helped to create a serious philosophical alternative to Carnap’s “scientism” and
Cassirer’s confidence in the completeness and transcendental value of “sym-
bolic forms.”
It also produced an interpretation of Kant that facilitated the destruction
of the neo-Kantian problematic and the continental transition to a “human-
ist” existentialist phenomenology that came to ignore problems of logic and to
treat the duality of the intellectual and the sensual as a lesser, if not already
solved, problem. Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant and his political engage-
ment helped to give birth to “continental philosophy,” a politically engaged
philosophy of a “subject rebelling against reason,” which is clearly different
from the analytical domain of the émigrés Carnap and Cassirer, a less politi-
cal and at the same time more scientific, objectivist philosophy.
Heidegger and Cassirer agree that Kant was ultimately unsuccessful because
he lacked a truly phenomenological method. Nevertheless, Cassirer and Hei-
degger diverge radically as soon as they assess why this (failed) attempt is so
important: while Heidegger sees the transcendental imagination as the reason
for the finitude of human reason, Cassirer concludes from the primacy of this
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faculty to the fundamentally spontaneous character of reason. These different

understandings of phenomenology coincide with Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s
disagreements about the epistemological or ontological intent of Kant’s first
critique. Cassirer’s emphasis on the spontaneity of human cognition supports
his conviction that transcendental philosophy aims to establish—or justify—
the objective validity of mental or cultural forms. Heidegger’s insistence on the
finitude of human reason fits with his view that transcendental philosophy
seeks the ground of objectivity in the ontological constitution of the human
subject.
These motivational reasons clearly go beyond the issue of the actual mean-
ing of Kant’s thought and lead us to a disagreement about the human condition
in general. However, how can we situate Nishida in regard to options after the
Kantian dualism left unresolved? At least around the time of the Davos Dis-
putation, we can read Nishida’s understanding of Kant as radicalizing Kant’s
criticism and furthering the transcendental approach. In fact, he resorts to Kant
after having tackled Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre trying to think back to what
cognition and knowledge necessarily presuppose. Challenging the epistemol-
ogy of Kant and the Neo-Kantians, Nishida writes:
Modern epistemology begins with the opposition between that which

knows and that which is known. This is admittedly a feasible epistemolog-
ical approach. It could even be said that this epistemology, in discussing
the constitution of the epistemological object, was able to elucidate the
objectivity of knowledge. Yet elucidating the constitution of the episte-
mological object does not amount to directly elucidating what it means
to know. The question of knowing qua consciousness has not yet been
deeply reflected upon. (nkz 7, pp. 216–217)
We can see that, according to Nishida, the question of consciousness as such

remains to be addressed whereas previous epistemologies discussed the ques-
tion of consciousness only insofar as it is objectified. The essay “Basho” 「場
所」(literally “place” or “field”) of 1926 in which Nishida finally reaches the point
at which he comes to grips with the foundation of his own philosophical sys-
tem, is meant to take up this remaining problem of the “conscious conscious-
ness.” In other words, we fail to conceptualise experience ‘from the inside’ as
long as we start from acts of judgement. Such acts presuppose an opposition
between subject and object and prevent us from elucidating experience at the
greatest possible proximity. While starting from acts of judgement is a feasible
approach to epistemology, it restricts any theory to only a consciousness that
has been objectified. In short, Nishida strived to return to consciousness before
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introduction 23
it became conceived of within the subject-object dichotomy. Thus, we need to

return to “knowing as consciousness”—and to start thinking from there.
To quote from the famous essay, “Basho”:
Epistemology these days distinguishes three things, i.e. object, content,

and act, and treats their interrelations. I think however that at the bot-
tom of this distinction what is being considered is simply an opposition
between the cognitive act, continually changing [utsuriyuku] in time and
the object transcending it. But in order for objects to relate to one another,
constitute a single system, and maintain themselves, we ought to consider
not only what maintains that system but also what establishes the system
within itself and wherein the system is implaced. That which is must be
implaced in something. (Nishida, 2015, pp. 82–83; nkz 3, p. 415)
Moving a couple years ahead to the year 1928 and his essay “The Intelligible
World,” we get more closely to Nishida’s Kant understanding. In his philosoph-
ical approach, Nishida aims at clarifying the way in which lived experience
must serve as the foundation of all our knowledge. Nishida is not looking to
articulate some sort of transcendent reality in the sense of Kant’s thing-in-itself
and evades the “mires” of metaphysics. In fact, he emphasises that “[t]o enter
the intelligible world, by transcending Kant’s standpoint noematically, would
already mean going beyond the standpoint of critical philosophy, and a tres-
passing into the field of metaphysics would be inevitable” (Nishida, 1958, p. 123;
nkz 4, p. 137). He then underscores his agreement with Kant: “In this sense, I
am not a metaphysician. I want to maintain the standpoint of reflection on con-
ceptual knowledge itself. In this regard, I believe I am rather following the path
of Kant’s critical philosophy” (nkz 4, pp. 7–8). Nishida argues that by withdraw-
ing from the subject-object-dichotomy we can arrive at the level of experience
that precedes and opens the space for this epistemological relation.
Lived or living-lived experience is, as Nishida says, a kind of religious aware-
ness. However this does not mean that Nishida’s philosophy is in itself religious.
Or that religious experience is presupposed as a base of his philosophy (cf.
Nishida, 1958, p. 139; nkz 4, p. 147). And this is true for two reasons: On the one
hand, the designation of “religious” or otherwise goes hand in hand with some
sort of categorization. We can also illustrate his idea by saying that this kind of
experience only foregrounds once we let go of all efforts to actively experience
something. Metaphorically speaking it is like the movement of the body that
we become aware of once we halt all our voluntary movements. Or the con-
tinuous noise around and within us once all sound is dying. Experience here
is meant in the broadest possible sense as something that is not limited to a
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specific kind of activity, field of knowledge or engagement with the world but
grounding our daily existence and life in its entirety. Hence, instead of calling
it religious it seems more appropriate to take it as existential, or—pointing to
the emotional side of life—as spiritual.
The awareness of such experience appears like a contradiction since there is
no self that becomes reflexively aware of something. Hence, Nishida speaks of
it as seeing by becoming nothing and of nothingness as the ultimate ground
of knowledge. And it is his conceptual endeavour that supports the convic-
tion that Nishida does not seek the foundation of his philosophy in religious
experience, since this experience transcends conceptual knowledge. Rather, it
is on the level of conceptual analysis and expression of this experience as “noth-
ingness” that he pursues philosophy and seeks to ground the various kinds of
(objectified) knowledge. In other words, we ought to distinguish the ultimate
experience from the philosophical logic that explicates the basic structure and
the formation of such experience.
Accordingly, Nishida claims:
From this standpoint of knowledge which has transcended all knowledge,

pure philosophy tries to clarify the different standpoints of knowledge
and their specific structures. From the standpoint of the Universal of
absolute Nothingness, philosophy tries to clarify the specific “determi-
nation” of each enveloped Universal. Self-determination of the Universal
may be called “reason” in the widest sense of the word. Then, philosophy
is self-reflection of reason. A peculiar case of such self-reflection is Kant’s
critical philosophy. (Nishida, 1958, pp. 138–139; nkz 4, p. 147)
To show his adherence to Kant even more clearly, Nishida adds to the previous
at the very end of his essay the following statement, speaking of his approach
as ‘radical critical philosophy,’ i.e. “consistent criticism” (j. tetteiteki hihyō shugi
徹底的批評主義) à la Kant:
It has been my intention to clarify the origin of knowledge from the per-
spective of consistent criticism; to assign the different kinds of knowledge
their specific positions and authorities, and to clear up their relations and
their order of rank. (Nishida, 1958, p. 141, modified; nkz 4, p. 148)
2.3.3 Philosophy and Philosophising

As Truwant has brightly laid out, “the breaking point between Cassirer and
Heidegger” is “their respective Enlightened and ‘therapeutic’ conceptions of
the task of philosophy” (Truwant, 2022, p. 14). For Cassirer, philosophy is the
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introduction 25
guardian of our self-liberation through culture, whereas, for Heidegger, it

should help us to reconcile ourselves with our deeply-rooted imperfections—
the latter conception is therapeutic in the psychoanalytic sense.20 We can
conclude that both see the task of philosophy as enabling and promoting self-
understanding, and that they conceive of this understanding as a comprehen-
sive way of orienting oneself in and towards the world. The message that they
convey, however, is very different.
For Cassirer, critical self-knowledge enables the overcoming of the limited-
ness of human existence. Accordingly, the task of philosophy is to promote
progressive self-realisation through participation in the shaping of culture. For
Heidegger, on the other hand, this self-knowledge means an acceptance of our
finitude: not only can death as the possibility of impossibility never be finally
overcome, but it must be given its own positive place in the ontological under-
standing of our existence. Although based on incompatible ontological and
methodological assumptions, the conversation between the two can neverthe-
less stimulate each other positively. For they share a common philosophical
concern: to understand and promote man’s ability to orientate himself in and
to the world. In other words, the Davos debate was an elaborate dispute about
a common interest that is of great importance for human life, or to put it dif-
ferently, “a true philosophical debate” (Truwant, 2022, p. 14).
For Nishida, too, philosophy was never an idle game similar to a Glasperlen-
spiel, but has deeply existential motives. It is, indeed, the “question of man” that
runs through all of his work leading up to the point where he explicitly resorts
to the philosophy of life and its meaning for contemporary thinking. He writes
in 1932:
There is nothing that has been called philosophy from time immemo-
rial that does not in some sense arise from the desire for a profound life.
Where would there be anything to be called philosophy without the ‘ques-
tion of human life’? In this sense I have great sympathy for what is called
philosophy of life. (nkz 5: 335)
20 Taking up an idea by Ernst Tugendhat on how to read Being and Time: “Hermeneutics
in Heidegger’s sense is thus a sort of philosophical psychoanalysis” (Tugendhat, 1992,
p. 427). The reason for this assessment lies in the fact that Heidegger in Being and Time
starts from what first appears, and that is the normal everyday lapse into the Man as an
escape from the frightening truth about one’s own being in the commonly shared com-
mon sense. The uncovering of the hidden truth behind the coverings of the Man, similar
to psychoanalysis, only leads after a long dwelling on the ‘surface’ to the moods and again
later to that ‘excellent’ mood of fear, which alone makes the ontological truth of one’s own
being tangible in its naked facticity.
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26 müller
However, in the same text, he explicitly challenges the limits of the philosophy
of life as giving in to the irrational and losing ground in science. Nishida contin-
ued to strive for a logical foundation or conceptualisation of philosophy until
his very last writings which remain a legacy.21 Only by spanning “Logic and Life”
(“Ronri to Seimei” 「論理と生命」), the title of a later essay of 1938, there is a way
to overcome nihilism by balancing the concreteness of lived and living experi-
ence, on the one hand, and its rationale, on the other (cf. nkz 24: 116). While
this polarity and its challenge has been noted by various of his readers, there is
another important, mostly mystified aspect to his thought: the way in which he
related his thoughts back to the East and enlivened his philosophical thinking
by allusions to the Buddhist tradition22 to overcome contemporary nihilism.
In other words, to philosophise after Nishida means to confront references
to non-discursive forms of religious or artistic life within the philosophical dis-
course. This is a practical and experiential way to promote man’s ability to
orientate himself in and to the world.23
If we can say that M. Friedman has established that ‘Davos 1929’ was an
event in the historiography of contemporary philosophy, do you think
that […] this ‘Kyoto in Davos’-conference might be an event in a future
historiography of philosophy? ;-)
Ingmar Meland, 2020, Online Messaging.
3 Davos in the 21st Century
What questions and potentials remain unconsidered? I think this is already

recognisable here in rudiments, but can only be assessed further. It becomes
clearest in the—fictitious—encounter between Nishida and his Western inter-
21 A few days before his death, on Wednesday 30th May 1945, Nishida wrote in his diary: “Fair
to cloudy, 17–21° C […] The Yokosuka Line does not run. Started ‘On Logic’ 論理につい
て.” His text 「私の論理について」remains a fragment, first published in Philosophical
Studies 哲學研究 of Kyōto Imperial University in April 1946: “From the standpoint of
abstract logic, the concrete cannot even be considered. My logic, however, has not been
understood by the academic world—indeed, I may say that it has not yet been given the
slightest serious consideration. Not that there hasn’t been criticism. But the kind of crit-
icism it has received has distorted my meaning—merely criticizing by objectifying my
standpoint from its own. It has not been a criticism from within my own standpoint”
(Nishida, 1987, p. 125; nkz 10, p. 431).
22 Cf. Müller, 2023.
23 Cf. Müller, 2014, pp. 239–240.
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introduction 27
locutors. It is not least the constellation between Cassirer and Nishida that
comes into its own here without having to be played off against Heidegger.
In order to present the perspectives, we have divided the anthology into three
parts.
3.1 Part 1 “Recontextualizing the Davos Debate”

Elaborating the event of Davos and its lasting significance, Part 1 starts “Recon-
textualizing Davos.” In doing so, both the initial question of what it means to
be human and systematic aspects come into play. What is relevant here is that
Davos cannot be read as a historically closed fact that is limited to the concrete
encounter between Heidegger and Cassirer in 1929. Even if it has sometimes
been mythologised, it already had a supra-temporal character at that time
because, standing face to face, personalities met that represented specific types
of thinking. Moreover, the event is equally its afterlife in reception. Systematic
questions are raised and strands of discussion opened up that are not closed
in this way. It is important to see that the respective contributions from this
broader horizon are interconnected. In many cases, they take up the question
of the human being and expand it in the horizon of an interculturally consti-
tuted philosophy.
This first part begins with michel dalissier’s article “Revisiting the De-
bate Between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: Imagination, Finiteness, and
Morals” (Chapter 1). To appreciate the genuine philosophical quality of the
debate, Dallisier strives to uncover the primary points of contention between
Heidegger and Cassirer. He, thereby, attempts to set up more efficiently the con-
ceptual and dialogical stage upon which new actors, from East and West, might
later take their place. In “The Davos Debate, Pure Philosophy and Normativ-
ity: Thinking from the Perspective of the History of Philosophy” (Chapter 2),
esther oluffa pedersen argues for an intercultural dialogue based on her
critique of how the disputation has often been perceived: as one of losing and
winning the argumentation. In support of free thinking and a world concept of
philosophy, Pedersen contends that a serious account of the Davos Disputation
has to both situate the event historically and also bracket the event to examine
its systematic motifs and arguments. Pedersen’s line of thought is also a prereq-
uisite to overcome the Eurocentric situatedness of Davos—within the horizon
of the world concept of philosophy. The third contribution by john maraldo,
“Humans and Other Animals: The Forgotten Other Beyond Davos and Kyoto”
(Chapter 3), moves far beyond the issue of Eurocentrism: Maraldo makes a case
for the homocentrism of the Davos philosophers and then examines the views
of selected indigenous peoples, both in their own voices and as critical anthro-
pologists represent them. The next article by tobias endres, “Anthropology
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28 müller
as an Intercultural Philosophy of Culture” (Chapter 4), elucidates “the question

of man” as an intercultural endeavor. In a critique of (analytic) mainstream
views of philosophical naturalism, Endres argues for a philosophy of culture
that takes the problem of naturalism seriously and at the same time takes into
account the intercultural turn in philosophy. The last paper of Part 1, written by
domenico schneider, takes up another central theme of the Davos debate:
“Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism: Reflections on an Intercultural Phi-
losophy” (Chapter 5). While Schneider examines how each of them interprets
Kantian schematism, he aims at developing schematism in a methodological
sense for a practice of intercultural philosophy based on text samples from the
Kyoto School.
3.2 Part 2 “Nishida Joining the Davos Debate”

The next Part 2 “Nishida Joining the Davos Debate,” explicitly rearranges the
respective perspectives, East and West, juxtaposes them and puts them up for
discussion. The main voices here are Nishida on the one hand and Cassirer and
Heidegger on the other. Unlike Cassirer, Heidegger’s exchange with Japan has
been more prominent for a long time, which is, however—as outlined above—
a one-sided image, since Cassirer also had students from Japan, and Nishida
was directly or indirectly acquainted with Cassirer’s works. Leaving behind
historical pathways, it is all the more important to now differentiate, follow sys-
tematic affinities and overcome one-sided viewpoints. We need to investigate
the respective works more precisely here as they relate to the understanding of
philosophy, the task of imagination, the question of man and the possibilities
of non-dualistic conceptions that held Kantian approaches captive.
francesca greco opens up the second part in her article: “Absolute Self-
Contradictory Human Existence: Nishida in Davos” (Chapter 6). She explic-
itly takes up the counterfactual setting of Nishida in Davos to overcome a
monological stalemate between two opposing thinkers, i.e. Cassirer and Hei-
degger. Her analysis considers the attitude and approach of the two disputants
in their meeting and then discusses the respective viewpoints of the fini-
tude and infinity of human knowledge. Finally, she introduces central con-
cepts of Nishida’s—such as “absolute self-contradictory human existence”—to
bring in a third vantage point and to show how the form of this discussion
affects both the topics and the presentation of the discussion itself. The sub-
sequent article by rossella lupacchini, “Cassirer and Nishida: Mathemat-
ical Crosscurrents in Their Philosophical Paths” (Chapter 7), aims at shedding
light on some ‘Wahlverwandtschaften’ between Cassirer’s catholic approach
to the “problem of knowledge” and Nishida’s original attempt to work out a
self-mirroring model of “the individual and the cosmos” through a genuine
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introduction 29
confrontation with European philosophy. Lupacchini argues that those affini-

ties find common ground in a shared mathematical sensibility. “Lask, Hei-
degger, and Nishida: From Meaning as Object to Horizon and Place” (Chap-
ter 8) by john krummel examines Heidegger and Nishida in light of Emil
Lask as a common source of their creative thought, moving beyond Kan-
tian dualism. While the main task of the paper is to show that Lask provides
the bridge from Kant to phenomenology but also from Kant to Kyoto School
philosophy, in the conclusion he also addresses related issues surrounding
their relationship to Neo-Kantianism and transcendental philosophy in gen-
eral. tak-lap yeung enlarges the view beyond Kyoto and Davos and adds
Hong Kong: “From Kyoto and Hong Kong to Davos: Nishida Kitaro and Mou
Zongsan’s possible contributions to the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate” (Chap-
ter 9). He shows that in comparing Nishida and Mou’s interpretations of Kant,
Nishida’s ideas are more closely aligned with Heidegger, whereas Mou’s ideas
align more closely with Cassirer. Although Nishida and Mou’s contributions
may not directly resolve the conflict in Davos, their viewpoints expand the
debate to include an even more pronounced discord concerning the interpre-
tation of Kant in either a monistic or dualistic manner. “From the Problem
of Meaning via Basic Phenomena to the Question of Philosophy after Meta-
physics: Cassirer, Heidegger, and Nishida” (Chapter 10) by ingmar meland
elucidates the significance of the Davos dispute between Cassirer and Heideg-
ger for contemporary philosophy. In support of the project of intercultural phi-
losophy, Meland endeavours to argue for a comparison of Heidegger, Cassirer,
and Nishida based on a phenomenology as outlined according to Cassirer’s
“basis phenomena.” dennis stromback’s article, “The Self-Aware Individual
and the Kyoto School’s Quest for a Philosophical Anthropology” (Chapter 11)
enlarges the scope of Japanese authors and explores philosophical tensions
of the early Kyoto School thinkers as a series of discussions and discourses
that were devised in response to each other and to Western conceptions of
subjectivity with the aim to overcome Western modernity. He thereby helps
understand what and how Kyoto School thinkers contribute to a philosophical
anthropology.
3.3 Part 3 “German-Japanese Ramifications of the Davos Debate”

Finally, the anthology moves beyond the more narrow event as it is reimag-
ined in the encounter of Nishida with Cassirer and Heidegger. Part 3 “German-
Japanese Ramifications of Davos” opens up the breadth of perspectives and
makes visible how the Kantian question of “what is man?” is more than the
contingent motive of the Davos Disputation. It would be far too narrow to
reduce the perspective to Cassirer and Nishida. Partly in response to Davos,
- 978-90-04-68017-3
30 müller
partly driven by other reasons, the question of man shapes discussions in Japan
or between Germany and Japan. Voices that deserve attention include Miki
Kiyoshi, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji.
In “The Davos Debate and Japanese Philosophy: Welt-Schema and Einbil-
dungskraft in Tanabe and Miki” (Chapter 12), higaki tatsuya reminds us
that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant was immediately communicated to
Japan by Kuki Shūzō. Stimulated by this, Tanabe Hajime developed a “logic of
species,” a theory of Welt-Schema going beyond Heidegger’s Zeit-Schema; and
Miki Kiyoshi, in his incomplete book, The Logic of the Einbildungskraft, like-
wise assimilated Heidegger’s philosophy and linked it to his own theory of the
Einbildungskraft. In the next chapter, “From Despair to Authentic Existence:
Kierkegaard’s Anthropology of Despair in the Light of Nishitani’s Thought”
(Chapter 13), sebastian hüsch remarks that the discussion in Davos re-
mained remarkably abstract and distanced from the existential importance
of the question, “what is man?,” could imply. Discussing Kierkegaard’s anthro-
pology of despair in the light of Nishitani’s work, Hüsch discusses pathways
beyond Heidegger’s “empty decisionism” based on the concept of a “transfor-
mative experience”. steve lofts’ “Cassirer, Heidegger, and Miki: The Logic of
the Dual Transcendence of the Imagination” (Chapter 14) takes up a reading
of Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) in the context of the Davos debate and argues that
Miki provides us with the beginnings of a way beyond the current impasse. In
other words, the article returns to the decisive historical moment that defines
our times from the perspective of Miki’s theory of radical creative politics.
The subsequent chapter, “Now, Ever or After: Contrasting the Pure Lands of
D.T. Suzuki and Tanabe Hajime” (Chapter 15) by rossa ó muireartaigh takes
up—in parallel to Cassirer and Heidegger—Suzuki and Tanabe. And he argues,
Suzuki is the philosopher of thrownness, the vision of self in the world and the
world in the self, whereas Tanabe is the philosopher of spontaneity, a vision of
the self freely carving its own history as it submits to that other that remains
other. Revisiting their religious contexts helps to undergird both identity and
difference of that parallelisation. “On Homo Faber: Nishida and Miki” (Chap-
ter 16) by takushi odagiri examines philosophical dialogues between Miki
Kiyoshi (1897–1945) and his teacher, Nishida, through close readings of their
writings, with a focus on their technological view of human beings. He shows
that their anthropology is based on their techno-ontology, which views human
beings as eidetic and self-contradictory productivity. The last but two article,
“Anti-Cartesianism East and West: Watsuji and Heidegger on the Possibility of
Significant Dealing with Entities” (Chapter 17) by hans peter liederbach
aims to add the voice of Watsuji Tetsurō to the Davos Disputation by bringing
him into a dialogue with Martin Heidegger on the structure of human exis-
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introduction 31
tence. For this purpose, he suggests reframing the original disputation in terms
of anti-Cartesianism. In the next chapter, “Miki and the Myth of Humanism”
(Chapter 18), fernando wirtz explores Miki Kiyoshi’s concept of human-
ism. For Miki, his time was marked by the necessity for establishing a new
humanism. It was necessary, for him, to engage with the question of human-
ism and what humanity is. Nevertheless, the formulation of this question was,
for him, already a kind of humanist praxis, since he interpreted humanity as
being something open, and never as a closed, clearly limited essence. The last
contribution “Hineingehalten in das Nichts: Die Metaphysik und das Andere
des Seins” (Chapter 19) by emanuel seitz argues that nothingness is a touch-
stone for genuine philosophy: only a thinking that can deal with nothingness
integrates the finiteness of existence into its own philosophy and does not try to
reflect itself out of the world with the idea of supertemporal laws and entities.
Seitz discusses these issues using Heidegger, Cassirer, Nishida, and Aristotle as
examples, to show that nothingness overcomes the basic ontotheological struc-
ture of Western metaphysics.
Ultimately, it must be asked what systematic approaches such as Tanabe’s
Kant critique have not yet been systematically pursued and how this can hap-
pen within the horizon of Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s philosophy.24 These ques-
tions light up anew if one really takes the starting point of this anthology
seriously. And then the question arises: What are, in fact, the alternatives that
Nishida and other Japanese philosophers provide?
Abbreviations
nkz Nishida Kitarō zenshū shinpan 西田幾多郎全集新版 (The New Edition of

the Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō). 24 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
2002–2009.
thz Tanabe Hajime zenshū 田邊元 (The Complete Works of Tanabe Hajime).
15 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1963–1964.
Bibliography
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ger, Pfullingen 1977, pp. 25–29.
24 Cf. Sakai, 1997, Fn. 11, pp. 202–203; Ōhashi, 1984, pp. 226–240, in particular pp. 238–240;
Higaki in this volume.
- 978-90-04-68017-3
32 müller
Buchner, H. (ed.) (1989) Japan und Heidegger: Gedenkschrift der Stadt Meßkirch zum
hundertsten Geburtstag Martin Heideggers, Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.
Endres, T. (2021) ‘Genealogische Kulturanthropologie—Erinnerungen an Ernst Cas-
sirer (1874–1945).’ Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie, 8, pp. 289–315.
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Gordon, P.E. (2010) Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos, Harvard Univer-
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Heidegger, M. (1997) Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, transl. by Richard Taft,
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Müller, R. (2014) ‘‘Dōgen spricht auch von …’ Zitate des Zen-Patriarchen in Nishidas
Philosophie.’ In R. Elberfeld and Y. Arisaka (eds.), Kitaro Nishida in der Philosophie
des 20. Jahrhunderts, Freiburg: Alber-Verlag.
Müller, R. (2018) ‘Formwerdung und Formlosigkeit der Form. Die Beiträge von Ernst
Cassirer und Nishida Kitarō zur Lebensphilosophie.’ In Thiemo Breyer and Stefan
Niklas (eds.) Ernst Cassirer in systematischen Beziehungen. Zur kritisch-kommunika-
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derband 40, pp. 195–215.
Müller, R. (2023) ‘Dōgen’s Texts Expounded by the Kyoto School—Religious Com-
mentary or Philosophical Interpretation?’ In R. Müller and G. Wrisley (eds.) Dōgen’s
texts: Manifesting Religion and/as Philosophy? (Forthcoming) Springer.
Nishida, K. (1958) ‘The intelligible world.’ In: Nishida K. Intelligibility and the Philoso-
phy of Nothingness, transl. by R. Schinzinger, Honolulu: East-West Center Press.
Nishida, K. (1973) Art and Morality, transl. by D.A. Dilworth and V.H. Viglielmo, Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press.
Nishida, K. (1987) Last writings, transl. by D.A. Dilworth, Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii
Press.
Nishida, K. (2012) Place and dialectic: two essays, transl. by J. Krummel and Shigeno-
ri N., Oxford University Press.
Ōhashi, R. (1984) Zeitlichkeitsanalyse der Hegelschen Logik, Freiburg: Alber Verlag.
Piovesana, G.K. (1997) Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 1862–1996: A Survey,
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Rigsby, C.A. (2010) ‘Nishida on Heidegger,’ Continental Philosophy Review, 42, pp. 511–
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Sakai, N. (1997) Translation and subjectivity: on “Japan” and cultural nationalism, Uni-
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[In memoriam Dr. Yura Tetsuji], Kashihara: Yura yamato kodai bunka kenkyū kyōkai
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introduction 33
Schinzinger, R. (1943) ‘Einleitung.’ In K. Nishida Die intelligible Welt: Drei philoso-

phische Abhandlungen, transl. by R. Schinzinger, Berlin: de Gruyter.
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part 1
Recontextualizing the Davos Debate
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- 978-90-04-68017-3
1
Revisiting the Debate between Cassirer and
Heidegger in Davos: Imagination, Finiteness, and
Morals
Michel Dalissier
Abstract
In this paper, I would like to revisit the epoch-making debate between Cassirer and
Heidegger that took place in Davos. My approach will not be to unpack an unsus-
pected aspect of the dispute, nor to put forward a new interpretation of this heated and
well-studied exchange. Instead, I will endeavor to reframe their discussion through a
number of suggestive conceptual reference points that will help to uncover the primary
points of contention: Imagination, Finiteness, and Morals. I will demonstrate that the
Davoser Disputation constitutes a significant debate to the extent that one must debate
it afresh today. My intention is by no means to presumptuously submit the discussion
to the arbitration of a third party. I will rather strive to appreciate the genuine philo-
sophical meaning of a debate as such, as distinct from a conference, an article, or a
book. My reconstruction thus represents an attempt to set up more efficiently the con-
ceptual and dialogical stage upon which new actors, from East and West, might later
take their place.
Keywords
Cassirer – Heidegger – Kant – Dasein – Symbolic forms – Imagination – Time – Finite-

ness – Categorical imperative – Moral law
1 Introduction
In this paper, I would like to revisit the epoch-making debate that opposed
two dissident epigons of the Neo-Kantian and phenomenological traditions,
namely Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and
which took place in Davos (17 March to April 4, 1929)—the so-called Davoser
Disputation. In their vibrant exchanges, Cassirer constructively played the
© Michel Dalissier, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_003 - 978-90-04-68017-3

38 dalissier
game of conceptual distinction, fostered ecumenical translation of concepts,

and promoted methodological reconciliation, whereas Heidegger conspicu-
ously epitomized a quest for the fundamental that tolerates no concessions.
One might be tempted to ask: Is it not a dialogue of the deaf? Is it still a gen-
uine debate?
My approach will not be to stress an intercultural dimension in relation to
this debate, nor to unpack an unsuspected aspect of the dispute between Hei-
degger and Cassirer, nor to put forward a new interpretation of this heated
and well-studied exchange.1 Instead, I will endeavor to originally reframe their
discussion through three main problematic axis: imagination, finiteness and
morals. Doing so, I will discuss a number of fundamental concepts: configura-
tion, formation, time, mediation, categorical imperative, moral law, and being,
which act as pivotal reference to uncover the primary points of contention
between these two major German philosophers.
I will demonstrate that the Davoser Disputation constitutes a significant
debate to the extent that one must debate it afresh today. My intention is
by no means to presumptuously submit the discussion to the arbitration of
a third party. I will rather strive to appreciate the specific philosophical for-
mat and meaning of a debate considered in itself, as such, by contradistinction
to a conference, an article, or a book. My reconstruction thus represents an
attempt to set up more efficiently the conceptual and dialogical stage upon
which new actors, from East and West, might later take their place. Exemplar-
ily, I believe that my revisiting of this debate will open the field for a com-
ing comparative approach of the question of man that I address in conclu-
sion.
2 Ein-Bildungs-Kraft and Form of Time
The actual status of the imagination offers a privileged key to enter the debate
between the two German philosophers. As Tatsuya Higaki remarked during the
Kyōto in Davos international conference (10–12 September 2020) one might
suspect a strong similarity between the approaches of Cassirer and Heidegger,
inasmuch as both foregrounded the concept of imagination. Nevertheless, if
1 In this paper, I will often modify the translations used. Lynch (1990) analyses the persistence
of a categorial discourse in Cassirer. Aubenque et al. (1992) discuss historical and political
implications of the debate. Hackenesch (2001, pp. 111–115), focuses on freedom and on the
self. Gordon (2010) offers a comprehensive exegesis, emphasizing the meaning of man as
the main point of discord. It is out of the limited scope of the present paper to discuss it.
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revisiting the debate between cassirer and heidegger in davos 39
they both return to a kind of productive imagination (Aubenque, 1992, p. 295),

each one pays tribute to imagination in very different terms.
In 1931, Cassirer reviewed Heidegger’s Kantbuch, published in 1929: Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics (Heidegger 1998c; 1997b), a book that he had
unlikely read extensively at the time of the Davoser Disputation (Hamburg,
1964, p. 211). In his review, Cassirer emphasizes the book’s inaugural thesis:
“transcendental imagination” is not “something simply and additionally linking
and mediating” the faculties of sensibility and understanding. It is rather “the
genuine producing middle (eigentliche bildende Mitte) of the whole Critique
of Pure Reason” (2004, 229).2 In brief, Heidegger’s approach aims at return-
ing to the source of what Kant depicts as the human faculties of knowledge,
namely sensibility, understanding and reason, in an obvious contrast to the
interpretation of Kant proposed by the Marburg School.3 More generally, Hei-
degger’s emblematic gesture notoriously amounts to returning to the funda-
mental (grundsätzliche).4
Now it is worth noting that even at this early stage of his review of the Kant-
buch, where he merely describes Heidegger’s stance, Cassirer abruptly inter-
prets imagination as bildende, i.e., both shaping and producing forms. Indeed,
Cassirer never conceives of imagination as transcendentally rooted in the being
of humans (Dasein),5 and eventually within being itself as original time, such as
in Heidegger’s reconstruction of Kant. Rather, the Ein-bildungs-kraft represents
for Cassirer a building medium that happens to be essential for the produc-
tion of his so-called “symbolic forms”—a concept that has been stigmatized
as problematic (see for example Gadamer, 2004, p. 405; Merleau-Ponty, 2003b,
p. 82). For Cassirer, such a producing power is neither attached to the Dasein
itself nor emerges in the frame of animals’ own symbolic communication.6 It
2 Cassirer (1995, 219–226) left notes on Sein und Zeit for a fourth volume of The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms.
3 See Heidegger (1998c, 301: 1997b, 210): “Marburg: Intuition and Thinking, even the third!”
On Cassirer and the Marburg School, see Heidegger (1998c, 304–311; 1997b, 213–217). On
this common root of sensibility and thought, compare with Cassirer (2001, 38; 1953, 104).
Cassirer is not a “pure Neo-Kantian” but rather an “Aufklärer” (Aubenque, 1992, 292–293).
4 See in Heidegger’s review of Cassirer (1998a, 264; 186): “The fundamental question (grund-
sätzliche Frage) concerning the constitutive function of myth in human Dasein.” See also
note 32, infra.
5 In this paper, I will keep Heidegger’s untranslatable Dasein, translate Sein by “being” and
Seiende by “beings.”
6 During the Kyōto in Davos conference J. Maraldo pinpoints that Heidegger ignores sym-
bolic communication among animals. It might be because of his emphasis on human
Sprache, whose destination is not poorly symbolic (both using symbols and vain, without
value) but aims at being the “House of the truth of Being” (1976b; 2014c).
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40 dalissier
essentially belongs to the spirit (Geist) of humans, of what he will baptize as

“animal symbolicum” in his late Essay on Man.7 One might also speak here of
homo bildend, reminiscent of Bergson (2008a, p. 140; 2008b, p. 139) and Sartre’s
(2008, p. 304; 1949, p. 236) conceptions of homo faber. In Language (1923),
the first volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer markedly stip-
ulated that: “The system of the manifold manifestations of the spirit can only
be grasped by following the different directions taken by its original imagina-
tive power (Bildkraft). In this [power] we see through reflection the essential
nature (Wesenheit) of the spirit—for this [essence] can only exhibit itself (sich
darstellen) to us through its activity of shaping (Gestaltung) the sensible mate-
rial” (2001, p. 19; 1953, p. 88).
Now in the Davoser Disputation, Cassirer recalls to his auditors how such a
dynamic and plastic conception of imagination is connected to the question of
symbolism:
For me as well the productive power of imagination [produktive Einbil-

dungskraft] appears in fact to have a central meaning for Kant. From there
I was led through my work on the symbolic. One cannot unravel this [the
symbolic] without referring it to the faculty of the productive power of
imagination. […] What counts for Kant is not however the synthesis abso-
lutely, but in first line the synthesis that uses the species. But this problem
of the species leads into the core of the concept of image, of the concept
of symbol. (1998, pp. 275–276; 1997, p. 194)
In brief, imagination furnishes the productive and imaging spiritual power that
appears at the source of the symbolic design of the world of culture. As Christa
Hackenesch (2001, p. 122) puts it, quoting Cassirer, there is: “The faculty of
symbolic ideation as the one of imagination, ‘original forming’ [ursprünglicher
Formung].” Now it is precisely on these producing (power), plastic (forming)
and symbolic grounds that Heidegger enters the fray.
In his 1928 review of Mythical Thought (1925), the second volume of Cas-
sirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (2002; 1955),8 Heidegger himself em-
7 “The great thinkers who have defined man as an animal rationale were not empiricists, nor
did they ever intend to give an empirical account of human nature. By this definition they
were expressing rather a fundamental moral imperative. Reason is a very inadequate term
with which to comprehend the forms of man’s cultural life in all their richness and variety.
But all these forms are symbolic forms. Hence, instead of defining man as an animal rationale,
we should define him as animal symbolicum” (Cassirer, 1974, 25–26).
8 The only reference to Cassirer in Sein und Zeit concerns this second volume (2006, 51, 1987,
490).
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phasizes such a productive dimension within myths. Nevertheless, he promptly

bemoans the absence of “a foundation [Begründung]” of what he condemns
as Cassirer’s “guiding predetermination of myth as a forming power [bildender
Kraft] of the spirit [‘symbolic form’]” (1998a, p. 265; p. 187). More dramatically,
in his 1929 talk in Davos, held prior to the debate, Heidegger extols in Kant’s
insight regarding the primacy of the imagination a “destruction of the for-
mer foundation [Grundlagen] of Western metaphysics [spirit, logos, reason]”
(1998c, p. 273; 1997b, p. 192. See Aubenque, 1992, p. 294). It is crystal-clear that
such destruction of the spiritual foundation will affect Cassirer’s view, which is
grounded in the concept of spirit.
Summing up, the concept of a spiritual and cultural configuration (Gestal-
tung) of the world appears as inessential for Heidegger as it is essential for
Cassirer.
It is true that in the Kantbuch, Heidegger depicts Kant’s “productive imagi-
nation” as doubly “forming”: “As a faculty of intuiting, it is formative (bildend]
in the sense of providing the image [or look] [Bild-[Anblick-]Beschaffens]. As a
faculty which does not hinge on the presence of the intuitable, it fulfills itself,
i.e., it creates and forms the image [schafft und bildet sie das Bild].” (1998c, p. 129;
1997b, p. 91) Nevertheless, in this perspective, if imagination provides, creates,
and forms images, it does not do so with beings themselves not being itself.
It is no less true that in his 1929–1930 lectures on The Fundamental Concepts
of Metaphysics, Heidegger will notoriously define man as “shaper of world”
(weltbildend). Man stands as irreducible to the thing, which is “without world”
(weltlos), while constituting and filling the world. And humans diverge from
animals, which are poor or “meager in world” (weltarm) (2004, p. 263; 1995,
p. 177),9 still designing territories and using tools.10 As Hackenesch summarizes:
9 Compare to Cassirer’s conception (Hackenesch, 2001, p. 119): “In such a ‘will to signify’
is justified for Cassirer the genuine difference between animals and man—in the place of
a ‘reason’ making his essence.”
10 To follow up the discussion with J. Maraldo, the question is: To what extent the behavior
of animals can be conceived of as a reduced way of being in the world, or might be related
to the Zuhandenheit? Heidegger will not include animals in the Geviert, but at the end
of his conference “Das Ding” (2000a, 183–184), animals epitomize things in general. The
thing (Ding) makes up things (chosification, not reification) that is, gathers (dingen), i.e.,
let the Geviert of the Sky, Earth, Divines and Mortals combine or cross into a specific oper-
ation or behavior. Heidegger’s example is the jug that pull water in libations to the gods
(Divines), a water that is issued from rocks (Earth) and rain (Sky), and that also waters
women and men (Mortals). Now this thing can be artificial (jug, bench, footbridge, and
plough), natural (tree, pond, stream, mountain), animal (heron, deer, horse, and bull,—
these are Heidegger’s own examples —), or even cultural (mirror, bracelet, book, board,
crown, and, last but not least, cross). In this perspective, the thing “deer” is not included in
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It is indifferent for him [Heidegger] to determinate man as animal ratio-

nale, laborans or roughly animal symbolicum. The concept of ‘animal’ is
always the point of departure, and then man will always be determined
as a ‘particular animal’, instead of seeing the absolute difference, the one
of freedom, which solely does not let men just be ‘open to the world’, but
rather determines its essence so that he has to be shaper of world and
transcend his naturalness. (p. 71)11
In the last (ontical) analysis, human beings might be said to be more generally
shapers of what exists, of what there is, to wit, of all beings (Seiende). This is the
case in Cassirer’s ontology, which does not underline the distinction between
Seiende and Sein,12 at least not in Heidegger’s sense. However, to Heidegger’s
eyes, if man might be described as a shaper of beings, he cannot be thought as a
shaper of being itself (Sein). For him, the ontological function of man (Dasein)’s
relation toward being itself is neither creation, nor configuration, but a typical
behavior (Verhalten) (Dalissier, 2008), emphasizing the well-known phenom-
ena of resolution (Entschlossenheit) and letting be (Seinlassen).
Unsurprisingly then, in the Davoser Disputation, Heidegger condemns as
inadequate any attempt to construe the Daseinanalysis displayed in Being and
Time as an “investigation about man,” and to ask “how, on the grounds of this
understanding of man, understanding a configuration of culture” is possible
(1998b, p. 284; 1997c, p. 191). In a striking contrast, Cassirer claims what follows:
the Geviert, but gathers it in a certain, animal way. Yet the last sentence of the conference
is ambiguous and seems to ascribe to man a privileged function in this process (“Erst die
Menschen als die Sterblichen erlangen wohnend die Welt als Welt. Nur was aus Welt gering,
wird einmal Ding”). On this topic, see also Dalissier (2023).
11 Compare Heidegger’s Weltbilden with Cassirer’s Gestaltung der Welt (Hackenesch, 2001,
p. 116).
12 Cassirer (2001, 22; 1953, 91): “It is the proper not only of science, but also of language,
myth, art, and religion that it provides the building stones from which the world of ‘reality’
is constructed for us, as well as that of the spirit, the world of the I. They also are not sim-
ple structures [Gebilde] which we can install into a given world, but we must understand
them as functions, by virtue of which [kraft deren] a specific shaping of being [Gestaltung
des Seins] takes place along with a particular division and dissociation of it [being].” See
2001, 41; 1953, 107: “Myth and art, language and science are in this sense workings [stamp-
ings, moldings] of being [Prägungen zum Sein]: They are not simple copies of an existing
reality, but rather present [stellen dar] the main directions of the spiritual movement.”
See also the procession of being from meaning (to compare to Heidegger’s approach of
the sense of Being): “The symbolic signs which we encounter in language, myth and art,
‘are’ not first, in order to reach a certain meaning, beyond this being, but with them all
being arise from meaning” (2001, 40; 1953, 106).
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It is the function of form that, man changing his existence into form [sein
Dasein in Form verwandelt], i.e., having to transpose everything which is
lived experience in him into some objective shape [Gestalt], into which he
objectifies himself in such a way that he does not with it [form] become
radically free from the finiteness of the point of departure [for this [form]
is still connected to his own finiteness], nevertheless while it [form] arises
from finiteness, it leads finiteness into something new. And that is imma-
nent infinitude. (1998, p. 286; 1997, p. 201)13
Let me precisely sketch the contrast. For Heidegger there is an ontological

function of existence itself: The Dasein must transform its way of existing. For
Cassirer, there is a function of form in general (Form): Man (and woman) has
to transform his existence into an objective form (Gestalt), that is, to form, to
configure (gestalten), or to produce a panel of symbolic forms (Gestalten) in
culture. Accordingly, for Cassirer, culture manifests itself through “the creation
of specific spiritual imaginary worlds” (Bildwelten) (2001, p. 49; 1953, p. 113),
i.e., “the different products of spiritual culture, language, scientific knowledge,
myth, art, religion” (2001, p. 10; 1953, p. 80). And he will consider later the ques-
tion of technique (Orth, pp. 278–300). To wrap up the above analysis: from Form
to gestalten, from Bild to bilden, Cassirer’s philosophical work can be construed
of as an enduring activation of the expressive (verbal) power of form. To bor-
row the distinction that he will draw in his All Souls College lectures in Oxford
(1934), in a certain sense, such a forming attempt leaves behind the rough con-
trast between form and content. Instead, it radicalizes the power inherent in
Kant’s forms of pure intuition and understanding (forms that form their con-
tents), and ultimately in the form of the will (2016, pp. 64–66).
Therefore, the primacy of the concept of form separates the stances adopted
by Cassirer and Heidegger not only regarding man’s behavior, but also the orig-
inal phenomenon of temporality itself. In his Phenomenology of Knowledge
(1929), the third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer makes
that point clear:
The fundamental problem of the ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’ lies

precisely in that territory, which the first volume of Heidegger’s work
expressly and intentionally has excluded from the enquiry. It does not
deal with that mode of ‘temporality’ which Heidegger underlines as the
13 The syntax of this passage is unorthodox. All the trouble lies in the translation of the sev-
eral indem.
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‘original sense of being of the Dasein.’ […] Its question only begins be-
yond, at precisely the point where a transition takes place from this ‘exis-
tential’ temporality towards the form of time. It aspires to show the con-
ditions of possibility of this form, as the condition for the postulation of
a ‘being’ that goes beyond the existentiality of the Dasein. (2010, p. 184;
1957, p. 163)14
Cassirer envisions here the question of time within the compass of the second
volume of Sein und Zeit, which was never published and announced as includ-
ing the notorious part on Zeit und Sein (Heidegger, 2000c). Cassirer’s approach
shifts here from the “existential temporality” of the Dasein to the “form of time,”
whose transcendental conditions would give the very ontological condition of
being, beyond Dasein itself. In short, such a shift no longer amounts to return-
ing existentially from Sein to Zeit, but formally to proceeding from Zeit to Sein.
Arguably, such a “form of time” might sound phenomenologically naïve.15 From
Husserl’s perspective, it does not describe crucial phenomena such as reten-
tion and remembering. To Heidegger’s eyes, a similar form appears secondary
because of its representative and serial aspects. These aspects conspicuously
emerge since the very threshold of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, where
Cassirer states:
The form of time itself can be ‘given’ for us only when the temporal
sequence is represented in the element of time as [running] forward and
backward. If we think a particular cross section of consciousness, we can
apprehend it as such, not by dwelling exclusively in this section, but only
by going beyond [developing] it into the various directions of relation,
by virtue of definite spatial, temporal, or qualitative ordering functions.
Only because in this way we can have the power to hold a non-being in
the actual being of consciousness, in what is given something that is not
given—does there exist for us that unity, which on the one hand we des-
ignate as the subjective unity of consciousness, and on the other hand as
the objective unity of the object. (2001, pp. 31–32; 1953, p. 99)
Despite its phenomenological awkwardness, Cassirer’s analysis considers that

such “form of time” is symbolically efficient, as the formation of time. Strictly
14 The preface of the book dates from June 1929. On the concept of time, see Orth (129–147).
15 Even if such alleged naïveté cannot be generalized to phenomenology itself. See Orth
(162–175).
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reading, the form of time is not given when the temporal sequence is “repre-
sented” (as R. Manheim translates), but rather “presents itself” (sich darstellt)
through the element of time and extends toward the past and the future, as a
kind of self-formation. Incidentally, the notion of self (sich) transpires here as
the seal of a subjectivity, which might dominate both perspectives and stem
from a common Hegelian background (Hackenesch, 2001, pp. 111–123) In Cas-
sirer’s perspective, the self represents the source of the groundless design of
symbolic forms in the world. In Heidegger’s own approach, the self relates to a
groundless absolute freedom.
Let me then remodel Cassirer’s argument as follows: The form of time means
that time forms itself. Just as the spatial image represents an invitation to build
a network of relations, as if the synthesis were proceeding from the Bild to the
Bildung of space,16 likewise the form of time itself might be grasped as an invita-
tion to build temporal relations. In a word, the essence of time lies in producing
time. Consequently, as Rudolph aptly points out (1992, pp. 303–304), far from
promoting a pure atemporal philosophy or a radicalized “idealization of the
temporalization of the Dasein,” Cassirer formulates an apprehension of time
inspired by a Heraclitus kind of becoming that is cognate to a processual con-
ception of being, and that conceptually fits the endless production of symbolic
forms.
3 Finiteness or Mediation
As the above quotation concerning the “function of form” already suggests,

another point of dissent between Cassirer and Heidegger concerns the status
of Endlichkeit, a word that should be translated by “finiteness” rather than “fini-
tude.” According to Cassirer, the production of symbolic forms within the world
of culture appears as infinite as man is finite. In a certain sense, it represents a
process of liberation from raw finiteness. In brief, liberation is conceptualized
through symbolization and cultivation.
Now in Heidegger’s eyes, such liberation (Befreiung) occurs as purely sym-
bolic (in the sense of being ineffective). In the Davoser Disputation, he counters
in this vein: “The authentic sense of this liberation does not dwell in the act of
16 Cassirer (2001, p. 34; 1953, pp. 100–101): “The spatial ‘picture’ that we possess of a par-
ticular empirical object, a house for example, takes form only when we enlarge in this
sense a particular, relatively limited perspective view; only when we employ the partial
perspective as a starting point and stimulus, in view of constructing from it a highly com-
plex totality of spatial relations.”
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becoming free, so to speak, for the configuring images [gestaltenden Bilder] of

consciousness and for the realm of form [Form], but rather in becoming free
for the finiteness of the Dasein” (1998b, p. 289; 1997c, p. 203). From the van-
tage point of Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, Cassirer’s liberation suffers
from mediation and misses the existential “meditation upon finiteness.” Cas-
sirer’s plastic liberation through formal production is revealed as uneigentlich,
that is, by no means fundamentally and ontologically genuine, and eventually
impossible.17 However, as Cassirer also affirms in reviewing the Kantbuch, the
very meditation on finiteness is “inevitable and necessary as a maxim of philo-
sophical work” (2004, p. 249). Hence both Heidegger and Cassirer meditate
on finiteness, but certainly not in the same manner: the professor in Freiburg
intends to learn and interpret from it, while the professor in Hamburg aims to
work it out and surpass it.
Let me venture three remarks on finiteness. First, finiteness of existence is
not originally a question of Kant. As Emanuel Seitz pointed out during the
Kyōto in Davos conference, the acuity of Heidegger’s criticism of Kant (and
thereby also of Cassirer) precisely lies in this question. By not asking it, Kant
and Cassirer witness their specific entanglement in the onto-theological struc-
ture of ancient metaphysics, which must be overcome, to resort to Heidegger’s
later formulation (2006b; 1969). As is known, Gadamer’s alternative issue con-
cerning human existential finitude, that is “hermeneutical continuity,” will not
suffer from such entanglement (Gadamer, 2004, pp. 83, 128). My point is that
it is precisely such entanglement that enables Kant and Cassirer to speak of
17 Responding to a caveat of Emmanuel Seitz, I think that from Heidegger’s perspective,

such liberation appears both uneigentlich and impossible. It is uneigentlich, because the
very desire for liberation testifies that the meditation upon finiteness is insufficient or
unsuccessful. That said, such liberation might be possible at an ontical level. Heidegger
himself acknowledges Cassirer’s legacy to the exegesis of myths (1998a, 270; 290). See also
his sole reference to Cassirer in Sein und Zeit (2006, 51, 1987, 490). Now such liberation is
ontologically impossible, because it is the very finiteness that prompts the desire for lib-
eration. Indeed, the act of being able to ask stems from finiteness itself. Even Cassirer’s
question of liberation from (within) finiteness is possible because finiteness is here (Da-
Sein). Now here is my point: Heidegger concludes from that that finiteness will be always
there, as an ontological fact: “We are finite beings.” Nevertheless, is it not possible to envi-
sion a drastically finite being that might be able to free himself from finiteness in a way
or another? I see several options: a) Is a being “finite” given that it is blindly finite in itself,
and will never be able to do anything about that? Is it then utterly impossible to escape
from finiteness? B) Is a being finite because precisely it is able to put this finiteness into
question and assume it through Entschlossenheit? That would be Heidegger’s approach.
C) Is a being “finite” precisely because he contests such a finiteness as something relevant,
even for his existence, and must find a constructive way to escape from it, while staying
confined in it? That would be Cassirer’s claim.
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something such as liberation from (a non-ontological) finiteness. Kant raises

the question of the transcendental finiteness of rational entities and Cassirer
recognizes the empirical finiteness of man. Both try, mutatis mutandis, to trans-
form finiteness through the access to in-finity that perfectly moral action and
endlessly symbolist construction provide.
My second remark refers to the plurality of meanings concerning finiteness.
Notwithstanding the fact that Kant still not tackles head on the finiteness of
existence, I surmise that the debate between Heidegger and Cassirer appar-
ently shrugs off two core distinctions that Kant draws in the first place: 1)
between finiteness based on sensibility and practical finiteness (Ferry, 1992,
pp. 299–300); 2) between theoretical and practical finiteness at the level of
what Dupont (2000) calls “the speaking reason of the theoretical subject,” and
the “operating reason of the practical subject.” Eminently, Cassirer’s liberation
from epistemic finiteness that leads to an infinite creation of forms implies the
recognition of practical finiteness. Comparatively, Heidegger suspects the non-
rationality of rationality and thus transcends rational finiteness from within
(Aubenque, 1992, p. 294). Still, this last transcendence always happens within
ontological finiteness. In any cases, the plurivocity of finiteness is pivotal in this
debate.
The purpose of my third remark is to avoid a misunderstanding. Liberation
is not pure freeing, it is rather a liberation from finiteness through finiteness,
because finiteness maintains the necessary contact to the world that is to be
designed. This aspect is salient at the end of the quotation above concern-
ing the “function of form” (1998, p. 286; 1997, p. 201). “Immanent infinitude”
represents an infinitude that is realized within finitude, not a radical nega-
tion of finitude. Liberation from (within) finitude does not imply an escape
into the universal nor into the absolute. As Cassirer affirms in The Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms, there is a “fundamental principle of knowledge in general,”
i.e., “that the universal let itself be perceived only into the particular, and the
particular let itself be thought only in the perspective of the universal” (2001,
p. 16; 1953, p. 86). To reframe it in a different way, universalization must not be
construed of as the promotion of an abstract universal but experienced as a
comprehensive perception through particularization. And particularization is
not the bare reduction to a single particular but an intellectual grasp of differ-
ent particulars through universalization.18
Working from here, let me address the related query concerning the effi-
ciency of mediation. For Cassirer, the concept stands as pivotal for the phi-
18 I am indebted to Rossella Lupacchini for helping to clear out this distinction.
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48 dalissier
losophy of symbolic forms (2001, pp. 4–5, 14, 24; 1953, pp. 76, 84–85, 93). But
mediation might also reach for him a critical point where the grounding idea of
reciprocal determination between two poles eventually yields to that of their
dissolution (ineinander ausgehen) and merging (verschmelzen) (2001, pp. 24,
31–39, 44; 1953, pp. 93, 99–105, 110). Exemplarily, any dialogue testifies to the
existence of mediation. In the Davoser Disputation, Cassirer accordingly “ques-
tions toward the possibility of the matter-of-fact language [Faktums Sprache].
How does it come about, how is it conceivable that from Dasein to Dasein we
can understand ourselves in this medium?” (1998, p. 295; 1997, p. 206). He goes
as far as undermining Heidegger’s guiding argument in the Kantbuch (imag-
ination as the common root of sensibility and understanding), precisely by
pointing at mediation. In his review of this book, Cassirer suggests that in good
Kantian orthodoxy imagination should be conceived of as “something simply
and additionally linking and mediating” (Vermittelndes) sensibility and under-
standing (2004, p. 229).
Contrariwise, in the Davoser Disputation, Heidegger fiercely refuses the
notion of mediation, arguing: “Mere mediation will never productively get
[one] further [nie produktiv weiterbringen]” (1998b, p. 295; 1997c, p. 207). In
a previous talk in March 1927, he accepts for example “a possible community
between theology and philosophy as sciences,” if their communication is free
from a “weak attempt of mediation” such as a “Christian philosophy,” a com-
pound that amounts for him to a “square circle” (1976a, p. 66; 2014a, p. 53).
And beyond mediation, which also stigmatizes for him the possibly “reduced”
status of animal,19 Heidegger eschews any primacy of the idea of “dialectics.”
As he taught in 1923, the heavy “price” of dialectics is the assumption of a
“possible ordering” of beings (1982a, p. 41; 1999a, p. 33). In addition, dialectic’s
indirect process through negation hinders a “direct grasp and having” (direktes
Erfassen und Haben) (1982a, p. 107; 1999a, p. 84) that eventually aims at Being
itself.
From that point, I would like to discuss the debate. In order to do that I will
envision things through the prism of the two functions of imagination granted
by Kant, i.e., productive and reproductive (1969a, p. 120; 2007, p. 165).
19 For Heidegger, animal being is best approached in terms of mediation. Concerning being
in the world, the beast is meager in world (weltarm) in between the stone without a world
(weltlos) and man that configures it (weltbildend). And concerning being a thing, the deer
is also making a mediation when it gathers Sky, Earth, Men and Gods (see note 10). J. Mar-
aldo speaks of a “fluidity of borders” concerning animals. The question is: Does this inter-
mediary status of animals belong to their essence? In other words: is mediation essential
for animality?
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On the one hand, Cassirer’s conception of productive formation strikes me

as based on an objectifying process. As stated above, he holds that man has
to “transpose everything which is lived experience in him into some objective
shape [objektive Gestalt], into which he objectifies himself [objektiviert]” (1998,
p. 286; 1997, p. 201). Granted, such an approach sounds ontologically naïve
from Heidegger’s point of view. In Phenomenology and Theology, he defines the
phenomenon as follows: “to objectify” (objektivieren) means: “to make some-
thing [into] an/one object, to set it forth as an object and represent it only as
such.”20 Specifically, “objectification” (Vergegenständlichung) amounts to mak-
ing something “an object represented in a thematic way”.21 Now such an objec-
tifying process implies for Heidegger a triple ontological sin.
1) First, it implies a wrong focus on representation. In the Kantbuch, Hei-
degger gleans in transcendental imagination a way to transcend raw rep-
resentation (Vorstellung) into presentation (Darstellung) (1998c, pp. 22,
130; 1997b, pp. 16, 91). Cassirer conversely contends that Repräsentation,
as “presentation of a content in and through another one, must be rec-
ognized as an essential premise for the building of consciousness itself”
(2001, p. 39; 1953, p. 105).
2) Second, this process implies a distractive focus on the object. Yet, as is
known, Heidegger will enduringly question being itself, beyond beings,
Objekt, Gegenstand, and even Dingen of everyday experience, which he
will however reconsider later (2000a, pp. 183–184).
3) Third, this process implies an undue focus on the making (“to make
into”). Yet Heidegger will steadily charge the ontical concept of “making”
(Machen), and promote a fundamentally ontological “letting” (Lassen)
(Heidegger 1999b; Dalissier 2017, pp. 66, 896).
However, and on the other hand, it happens that Heidegger is at a loss to flesh
out a careful apprehension of the idea of formation, to provide a comprehen-
sive account of such creation and design of forms in symbolism that Cassirer
labels “philosophical work.” For Heidegger, such formal production would just
be left to mechanical reproduction of what is (Seiende), a tendency that prefig-
ures his later meditations upon making (Machen, Machsamkeit, Machenschaft)
(1999b, pp. 6–7, 11, 15–16) and upon enframing (Gestell) (2000b; 1977). In the
Davoser Disputation, he clearly discards the ontical concept of an infinite pro-
cess of creation and design of forms (what Cassirer precisely spots as “imma-
nent infinity”), by stating: “Man as a finite being has a certain infinity within
20 “Etwas zu einem Objekt machen, es als Objekt setzen und nur so vorstellen” (1976a, 72; 2014a,
57).
21 “Zu einem Gegenstand, d.h. zu etwas thematisch Vorgestelltem” (1976a, 73; 2014a, 57).
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the ontological. But man is never infinite and absolute in the creating of what is
itself [Schaffen des Seienden selbst], he is instead infinite in the sense of under-
standing of being” (1998b, p. 280; 1997c, p. 197).22
Heidegger’s stance appears seriously paradoxical, owing to the fact that it
crosses the border line of the applicability of the concepts of infinite and finite.
For him, man becomes absolute and so to speak “infinite”23 given that he real-
izes the finiteness of his being, rather that endlessly produces what he is, as
well as the world where he is. To put it differently, infinity appears “in-finite”
to the extent that it floods out from finite being and eventually brings back
to finiteness. In particular, it means that we do not imagine infinitely, as pure
beings. We rather fancy something, we imagine things, here and now. Heideg-
ger concludes in the Davoser Disputation: “This infinity, which breaks out into
the power of imagination, is precisely the sharpest argument for finiteness. For
ontology is an index of finiteness. God does not have it” (1998b, p. 280; 1997c,
p. 197). But one might ask if it is still a genuine kind of infinity.
A paradigmatic case is when Heidegger, in his review, relates “mythical
thought” to myth, as “a specific and spiritual ‘creating principle of world config-
uration’.”24 I catch him imperceptibly shifting from “das mythische Denken” to
“das mythische Dasein” (1998a, p. 257; p. 181), and significantly tackling “the fun-
damental question directed toward the constitutive function of myth in human
Dasein” (1998a, p. 264; p. 186). In his perspective, what is ontologically crucial
is by no means that humans are able to endlessly design a plethora of sym-
bolic forms (magical or social, for example) as weltbildende. What is climactic
is that in doing so, their questioning being appears inappropriately questioned
and unexplored. Heidegger puts it this way: “Everything remains in one uni-
form being-plane of what is immediately present, in which mythical Dasein is
dizzily taken [captivated] [benommen ist]” (1998a, p. 256; p. 181). For a funda-
mentally ontological approach, what counts is not that the human self finds
22 “Infinite knowledge” while within the hermeneutical frame of finiteness, as Heidegger

develops in his notes (1998c, 297–298; 1997b, 209): “Thinking is the index of finiteness
[Index der Endlichkeit].”
23 Ontological “infinity” is no longer in-finite as opposed to finite. Such vocabulary relates
to the Latin etymology that Heidegger will criticize later, analyzing the infinitive form
of the verb being (in-finitivus): “The original Greek [ἀ-παρεμφατίκος], with its reference
to the act of coming into sight and coming to appear, of what stands in itself or inclines,
has vanished” (Das ursprünglich Griechische, das auf Anblick und Zum-Vorschein-kommen
dessen Bezug nimmt, was in sich steht oder sich neigt, ist verschwunden) (1998d, 5; 1959a,
67).
24 “Eigenes geistiges ‘Schaffendes Prinzip der Weltgestaltung’” (1998a, 256; 180), quoting Cas-
sirer (2002, 19; 1955, 14).
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itself possibly dazed—while no longer behaving in its environment (Umge-

bung) as “essentially captivated,” such as the animal that is meager in world25—
but no less energetically and mythically configuring the world. For the author
of Sein und Zeit what counts is the urgency to interpret such a drowsiness in the
ontical condition of mythical Dasein (Benommenheit) as a mode of the thrown-
ness into the world (Geworfenheit) that belongs to the Dasein, in the following
terms: “Being-in-the-world becomes overwhelmed by that to which it is deliv-
ered over.”26
In brief, Heidegger’s ontological reduction to the Dasein liberates humans
beings from their blindness (Verblendung) towards being, but it correlatively
acts as a remarkable dissimulation of the effectivity of human symbolical mak-
ing. For Heidegger, prior to the question of being, there seems to be no funda-
mental value in shaping the world, either in creating what is, or in managing
what there is. Everything goes as if the tracing of the epoch-making “ontological
25 See the analysis of captivation (Benommenheit) in Heidegger (2004, 344 ff.; 1995, 238 ff.):
“The specific way in which the animal remains within itself—which has nothing to do with
the selfhood of the human being comporting him- or herself as a person. The animal
can only behave insofar as it is essentially captivated […] Captivation is the condition
of possibility for the fact that, in accordance with its essence, the animal behaves within
an environment but never within a world.” See also Dalissier (2008, 298). In comple-
ment, I would like to emphasize that Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2003a) tried to consider
animal behavior and being from a totally different perspective than Heidegger and Cas-
sirer, in his lectures at the Collège de France entitled “Animality, Human Body, Passage to
Culture” (1958). See my comparison of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty lectures about ani-
mal existence (Dalissier 2017, 585ff.). Interestingly enough, Merleau-Ponty speaks of
interanimalité in the summary of this lectures (1968a, 134), in The Visible and the Invisible
(1964, 226; 1968c, 172), as well as in unpublished texts. There are few studies on that topic
(Mazis 2000) and such “interanimality” might count as a new tool to address animals on
mediation. Concerning Merleau-Ponty and Cassirer, see also Watson (2020).
26 “Ein solches In-der-Welt-sein von dem, woran es ausgeliefert ist, überwältigt wird” (1998a,
267; 188). As J. Maraldo suggests, Heidegger implies that any correction to his ontical
descriptions of mythical Dasein would not alter his Fundamentalontologie, but only con-
firm another human way to be thrown into the world. I surmise that Heidegger reckons
the descriptions of animal behavior (2004; 1995) and of mythical Dasein (1998a) as case
studies in view of verifying the effectiveness of the Daseinanalysis. He plausibly has no
interest in describing animal and mythical Dasein as such, just as those spheres of Seien-
des that sciences study, and that he discards to focus on the Dasein (Sein und Zeit, § 2). If
finiteness implies thrownness (Geworfenheit), the Dasein’s urgent task is to accept such a
situation and question the original being of the world, itself, and Being in itself. Now, from
Cassirer’s viewpoint, the Dasein’s world inherent spatiality (Weltinnenraum) (In-der-Welt-
Sein) might appear itself too narrow to nurture a full description of the very “relationality
between man and the world” that weaves the cultural and symbolical space (Rudolph,
1992, pp. 303–304).
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difference” (1997a, pp. 452ff.; 1982b, pp. 318ff.), at the level of the Da-Sein, were
acting as an ontological discrimination against the philosophical potentialities
of the human treatment of Seiende. As is well-known, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,
Levinas, and a few others will see the flaw, and opportunely cultivate these onti-
cal fields.
4 The Crux Interpretationis of Morals: Categorical Imperative, Moral

Law, and Being
As is known, the Davoser Disputation is before all a confrontation between an

unorthodox phenomenologist (Heidegger) and a belated Neo-Kantian (Cas-
sirer). Therefore, the dispute unsurprisingly turns out to be a decisive crossroad
for an interpretation of Kant’s morals. It primarily concerns the status of the
intricate relation between two fundamental conceptions: the moral law and
the categorical imperative.
Let us begin with Cassirer who insists on a kind of transcendence of the
moral law that so to speak in-forms the imperative as follows:
The categorical imperative must be such that the law that is posited is not
valid only for men but rather for all rational entities in general. […] The
restrictedness to one determined sphere suddenly falls away. The ethical
as such [das Sittliches als solches] leads beyond [über] the world of the
phenomena. (1998, p. 276; 1997, p. 194)
I will stress here the expression: “Must be such that” (muβ so beschaffen sein,
daβ). It means two things. First, the categorical imperative “must be such” as
it is, or “designed” (beschaffen) as it is. This suchness and this design must also
include the fact that the imperative is directed toward finite and imperatively
ordered beings. Second, being so designed, the imperative must be such that
the moral law itself rules all the process through the act of elevating all ratio-
nal entities, including us.
The existence of such an express design of the imperative in itself (Beschaf-
fenheit) is capital. Is it really true that Cassirer would misunderstood here that:
“If the moral law is valid for all reasonable beings in general, the categorical
imperative is the specific form that the moral law necessarily takes [becom-
ing thus a law of constraint] for a reasonable and finite being” (Aubenque,
1972, p. 30; Cf. 1992, p. 293, and Ferry, 1992, p. 299)? On the contrary, I suspect
that Cassirer perceives such a “specific form” when he refers to the specifically
formal design of the imperative. Reviewing the Kantbuch, he will further con-
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tend that: “The moral law itself actually has the form of the imperative” (2004,
p. 236). Additionally, Cassirer might pinpoint a parallel difference between the
law and the imperative, when he later refers (in English and in Oxford) to “an
ethical law, [to] an absolute imperative imposed on men by the pure idea of
duty” (2016, p. 91). So apart from the imposition of the imperative, the law
itself functions as a fulcrum of moral improvement through what he calls in
Davos a “progressive liberation” (1998, p. 287; 1997, p. 201) from (within) finite-
ness.
To be sure, at All Souls College, Cassirer will emphasize the universality of
the very formula of the Kantian imperative. Still, he maintains a difference of
level between the law and the imperative:
Universality as the law in itself must be, the legislator, the lawgiver, cannot
be thought otherwise than in the form of a personal will. By this consider-
ation we have come to the true conception of the relation of universality
and individuality involved in the categorical imperative. By universality
this formula claims to mean the absence of all objective limitations. The
supreme law does not refer to any special circumstances and it does not
restrict itself by considerateness for special empirical facts and empirical
conditions. But in all these abstractions it does not abstract from person-
ality. (2016, pp. 103–104)
In this excerpt, Cassirer holds that the “law in itself” expresses personal univer-
sality, and that such an essential link between individuality and universality
is formally “involved” into the imperative, while not tantamount to it. Conse-
quently, the universality (absence of objective limitation) meant or conveyed
in the formula of the imperative is the one of the moral law itself, whereas it is
not strictly speaking the one of the imperative itself.
So much for Cassirer’s approach. Now, as I already underlined, Heidegger
rejects such kind of apparent liberation from the phenomenal realm, and
insists instead on the immanence of the imperative directed toward an essen-
tially limited being. In the Davoser Disputation, he declares:
In the categorical imperative, something dwells that goes beyond [hin-

ausgeht] the finite entity [Wesen]. However, the concept of imperative
as such directly shows the inner reference to a finite entity. The very
act of going beyond toward something higher [i.e., than man] is always
just going beyond up to a finite entity, up to something created [angel].
This transcendence also still remains within the state of what is created
[Geschöpflichkeit] and finiteness. (1998b, p. 279; 1997c, p. 196)
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Accordingly, Heidegger approaches the phenomenon of transcendence as op-

erating from within the limits of ontological finiteness, where are located cre-
ated beings, whether they are humans or not (but not the Christ himself).27
He thus does not conceive of transcendence as liberating from finiteness from
within the general culture of human finiteness, as it is the case in Cassirer’s
perspective.
A pitfall with Heidegger’s approach lies in the fact that the moral law in
itself (besides the imperative) is not conceived by Kant as transcendent under
the form of something created (such as man or angel). In his notes, Heidegger
admits that the law is “essentially represented” (1998c, p. 302; 1997b, p. 212). Yet
in Cassirer’s words, this representation precisely signifies that the imperative
must be made as it is (i.e., designed to impose the law on finite being), in such
a way that the eternal law is valid for all rational entities. Tu put it differently,
the moral law must be imperatively represented, a little as the intelligible world
is taught (in Oxford) to be “not a transcendent but an immanent reality” (2016,
p. 134).
A major consequence is that, according to Cassirer, an approach that would
concentrate on the imperative form as such would restrict the perspective to
the empirical form of the law. This approach would unduly dramatize the oppo-
sition between an objective law and those who are subjected to it. In his review
of the Kantbuch, he concedes:
The moral law itself [selbst] actually [zwar] has the form of the impera-
tive and stands by itself in front of and opposed to us—however this kind
of ‘standing in opposition to’ is not the same as the one occurring with
the theoretical ‘object’. Then pure dependence, heteronomy, dominates
no longer here—but the only valid law is the one that free personality
gives to itself. (2004, p. 236)
In brief, for Cassirer, the law does not theoretically oppose the categorizing sub-
ject as an ob-ject (Gegen-stand). The law practically opposes us under a chal-
lenging imperative form that poses to us the moral question to which we must
answer. In other words, the law imperatively presents to us the autonomous
movement of free personalization that we have to become. And the impera-
tive utterance formally expresses such a moral law.
Assuredly, Cassirer admits that there is for Kant a “feeling of respect” (Gefühl
der Achtung) before the law (2004, p. 237), upon which his adversary grounds
27 See Heidegger (1980, 210; 2014b, 192), whose position differs from Hölderlin’s (Layet
2020, 194, 297).
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his focus on finiteness (Heidegger 1998c, pp. 156ff.; 1997b, p. 110). Yet Cassirer
draws here a crucial distinction:
However, one must sharply distinguish here between the sphere of what is
specifically moral and the one of the psychological problem. The substan-
tial content [Gehalt] of the moral law does not ground itself in the feeling
of respect; Its meaning does not constitute itself through it. But this feel-
ing merely describes how a law, which is unconditioned in itself, is repre-
sented [repräsentiert] in empirical-finite consciousness. (2004, p. 237)
For Cassirer, what is morally groundbreaking with the law is not its bare recep-
tion within the frame of a finite being. It is the way it invites rational subjects to
transcend their finiteness, while paradoxically remaining attached to it. As he
suggests in Davos, the very act of resting in finiteness would amount to prefer-
ring to the absolute elevating power of the law a moral relativity within which,
he claims, “we are not allowed to remain.” Such laziness (Kant’s Trägheit) would
very inappropriately “put the empirical man in the center” (1998, p. 292; 1997,
p. 205). Contrariwise, Cassirer strongly emphasizes the act of self-transcending,
as confirms the very end of his later English lessons on Kant’s Moral Theory,
where he will gloss at length Kant’s celebrated comparison between the moral
law and the starry heavens, in the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Rea-
son. Cassirer suggests that the “admiration and awe” that fills the mind with
the reflection on “the moral law within” are neither a motive of immobility nor
despair, but of moral improvement (2016, p. 134ff.).
Another important upshot of Cassirer’s discussion with Heidegger is to
reveal the former’s vital need to explore guiding differentiations (Differen-
zierungen), within the ungrounded free genesis of symbolic forms (Hacke-
nesch, 2001, p. 117).28 As already cited, Cassirer avers that: “The manifold mani-
festations of the spirit can only be grasped by following the different directions
taken by its original imaginative power,” through the multiple “products of spir-
itual culture” (Cassirer, 2001, pp. 10, 19; 1953, pp. 80, 88). Now Cassirer pays a
strong tribute not only to the differentiating act of but also to the cognate act of
drawing distinction. In the above excerpt, he urges us to “sharply distinguish”
between psychology and ethics, transcendental and empirical. In his review
28 Cf. Hackenesch (2001, p. 119): “That thing that man calls to bring forth [hervorzubringen]
meaning and forms of meaning, means for Cassirer a beginning that cannot be circum-
vented [unhintergehbaren Anfang], which he nevertheless does not ontologize, nor abso-
lutize, unlike Heidegger, but rather the one, as beginning, which first shows its effective
reality in the forms that it enables to generate from itself.”
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of the Kantbuch, he further reminds us that Kant’s approach is valid “not only
for men, but ‘for all rational entities in general’,” and comments that such an
approach “will by principle divide the tasks of moral and anthropology.” It is
then not surprising if he vindicates a radical dualism in Kant in these terms:
This line of demarcation is given to him through the opposition of ‘phe-

nomenon’ and ‘thing in itself’, time and freedom. There lies also the true
and essential objection I have to raise against Heidegger. […] [For him]
[t]he distinction between ‘phenomenon’ and ‘noumenon’ fades and is lev-
elled, for all being belongs henceforth to the dimension of time, and by
that to finiteness […] Kant holds nowhere such a ‘monism’ of imagina-
tion, he rather insists on a resolute and radical dualism, the dualism of
the sensible and the intelligible world. For his problem is not the problem
of ‘being’ and ‘time’, but the problem of ‘being’ and ‘ought to be’, ‘experi-
ence’ and ‘idea.’ (2004, pp. 238–239)
Doubtless, such an analysis raises a battery of objections.

Firstly, one can speculate about the exact status of a mundus intelligibilis,
and the significance of its being. At All Souls College, Cassirer will even main-
tain such a point of view: Members “of the intelligible world can never be
conceived and explained as mere things. They are to be regarded and to be
acknowledged as personal beings, as beings endowed not only with that sort
of reality which we concede to empirical fact or empirical object but with
true subjectivity, with the capability of knowing themselves and of determin-
ing themselves” (2016, p. 124).29 Nevertheless, by leaving open such a “radical
dualism,” Cassirer appears no less able to manage sufficient conceptual space
to oppose to Heidegger’s alleged monism a genuine pluralism. There is a “plu-
ralism of the imagination, which distributes itself according to its operations
within the three Critiques” and which “constitutes culture, where Heidegger
destroys tradition.” (Rudolph, 1992, p. 305) In this sense, Cassirer’s dualism is
not to be conceived of as the abstract opposite of ontological and temporal
monism but to be envisioned as the premise to cultural pluralism.
Secondly, one might also suspect the accuracy of Cassirer’s review of Hei-
degger’s Kantbuch, in the perspective of this latter’s fundamental ontology. In
the quote above, Cassirer curiously restates Kant’s morals in terms of Sein and
Sollen30 (in lieu of Sein and Zeit). Everything goes as if he still wanted to con-
29 See also p. 134, the reality of an intelligible world is “not a transcendent but an immanent
reality.”
30 Heidegger brings that aspect to the fore in his notes (1998c, 302; 1997b, 302): “The merely
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sider things through the lens of a notion of “being” (Sein) that he ontically
discriminates from “ought to be” (Sollen), but does not ontologically differenti-
ates from Seiende. However, it is true that Cassirer primordially meditates here
a “constitutive tension between being and ought” that grounds a rich, integral
and ideal portrayal of humans, which ambitions to be both theoretical, ethical
and aesthetic (Rudolph, 1992, p. 302).
Thirdly, one might harbor doubts about the efficiency of Cassirer’s ontologi-
cal reading of Kant himself, who specifically defines being as position, as I will
discuss later. It remains true that Cassirer’s abovementioned Demarkationslinie
between phenomenon and thing in itself, time and freedom, surges as a core
problem that Kant himself tries to cope with in the third Critique and holds a
seminal exegetic value for Cassirer, from his first studies on Kant (1975, 289 ff.)31
to his lectures at All Souls College (2016, 148–149).
Once again, having sketched this moral and ontological setting, my main
purpose is now to discuss the debate. To begin with, Cassirer seems entitled to
claim that one should not overstate finiteness and diminish the creative powers
of men, for at least two reasons.
1) First, there is a risk of ontologically reducing the whole Kantian perspec-
tive to the existential analytic of Dasein conducted in Sein und Zeit (Rudolph,
1992, p. 311). Indeed, Heidegger dismantles the organic tie that Cassirer high-
lights between the law and the imperative. On the one hand, he ponders “the
imperative as such” (als solcher) in its relation to finite being. On the other
hand, he probes “The internal function of the law itself [selbst] for the Dasein.”
Everything goes as if the difference between the law and the imperative were
driven back to the analytic of “the Dasein itself.” Even if Heidegger counte-
nances that there is something transcendent in the law, he ultimately construes
the law in the direction (and the jurisdiction) of the imperative and of the
Dasein. In the Davoser Disputation, the existentially analytical reduction is irre-
sistible when Heidegger asserts that one must frankly “pose the question: What
is called law here and how is the lawfulness [being] of the law [Gesetzlichkeit]
itself constitutive for the Dasein and the personality? It is not to be denied that
something lies in the law which goes beyond sensibility. But the question is:
How is the inner structure of the Dasein itself: Is it finite or infinite?” (1998b,
pp. 279–280; 1997c, pp. 196–197). But the trouble is: are all those Heideggerian-
inspired existential questions still Kant’s own questions?
anthropological and the law of significant content [Sinngehalt Gesetz], phenomenon and
thing in itself. Instead of Being and Time, Being and ought-to [Sollen]. […] Being in the
modality of Ought-to-Be[Sollseins].”
31 See Orth (176–189).
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2) A second troublesome upshot with the act of overstating finiteness is that

it might congenitally restrict Heidegger’s own interpretation that nonetheless
pretends to aim at what is unrestricted, at the fundamental. Cassirer brilliantly
raises this issue in the following manner:
Measured to the whole extension of Kant’s world of thought, what Hei-

degger grasps and unfolds before us remains nevertheless and in the end
a partial aspect [Teilaspekt]. There is one thing in which I think not to
contradict Heidegger: Namely that such kind of limitation and finiteness
is maybe the fate of philosophical thought and interpretation of all kinds
within the history of philosophy, and that no one of us will dare to exempt
himself from this fate. The ‘always renewed meditation upon finiteness’
is maybe not, as he contends it is, the true kernel of metaphysics: But it is
in any case inevitable and necessary as maxim of philosophical work and
research. (2004, p. 249)32
In brief, for Cassirer, the ontological finiteness that one has to recognize in
the being of man becomes by the same token the epistemic or hermeneuti-
cal finiteness of all human capacity to interpret being, including Heidegger’s
one in the first place. This claim is in fact coherent with Heidegger’s own
constant reframing of the question of being, even “beyond” Being itself that
he notoriously erases in a highly symbolical and deeply philosophical gesture
(1959b). Besides, Heidegger’s hermeneutical finiteness regarding Being also
slightly diverges here from Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach, stressing the
endless continuity of interpretation through language, but I cannot develop
this point in detail in this paper.
Let me rather stick to Cassirer’s argument in the text above. He suggests that
Heidegger’s radical emphasis on the dimension of finiteness in Kant is typical
32 Heidegger counters such a critique in his notes (1998c, 301; 1997b, 211): “Agreed: Not to
cover the entire scope of the [Kant’s] problematic [Cf. Cassirer (2004, 25)]. Also the
intention was never this: To interpret just a part, but instead [starting] from one part, yes
[starting] from the fundamental problem, [the intention was] to make visible in Kant the
‘problem of metaphysics’. […] In this part, the perspective must be pursued in the direction
of the problem of metaphysics that even Kant fundamentally transformed.” Indubitably,
Heidegger’s interpretation is made from one aspect, but this aspect might happen to be
actually (objectively and not only for him) the most fundamental, because it starts from
the most fundamental problem with Kant. Heidegger (1998c, 301; 1997b, 211) contin-
ues: “Cassirer completely misunderstands that what is at stake in the interpretation is the
working-out of a problem, and indeed that this problem must first be made visible and
[this comes about through] recollection of Kant. In this way [dadurch] an interpretation
is required. It determinates historical objectivity.”
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of an interpretation germane to the very finiteness of the Dasein itself. Such

an approach might be existentially coherent, as well as fundamental from an
ontological point of view. Still, for Cassirer, it paradoxically reveals its own lim-
itation and relativity, and thus roughly takes place among others in the field
(cultura) of philosophical works. Cassirer remarkably crystalizes Heidegger’s
hermeneutics as one kind of philosophical work, that is as one kind of sym-
bolical doing or making, all notions that sounds as pivotal for the former (see
infra) as they are criticized by the latter. In consequence, Heidegger’s reading
of Kant, i.e. his very work on Kant is incontestably an impressive one, yet one
among others. Alternative readings (historical, phenomenological, analytical)
might be required to draw more comprehensively and ornately the picture of
Kant’s own world of thought. And further symbolic constructions are possible
to design the philosophical world after Kant. In a nutshell: Heidegger is right
about Kant precisely because he falls short of being utterly right about Kant. In
this perspective, Heidegger’s inspired “representation of an ‘anguished’ Kant,
who shrank from the last consequences of his own thought” (2004, pp. 246–
247) might be superseded by Cassirer’s portrait of a much more serene Kant,
who stimulates other philosophers (and non-philosophers) in the basis of sym-
bolic constructions.
Therefore, Cassirer is cogent when he mitigates or lightens finiteness. But
Heidegger is no less pervasive in endlessly reminding us of the danger of forget-
ting it. As Cassirer confesses in the quote above, the “always renewed medita-
tion upon finiteness” has become since Heidegger the “inevitable and necessary
as maxim of philosophical work.” As a matter of fact, such an imperative medi-
tation does not only nourish Heideggerian studies but also underpins Cassirer’s
philosophy. For the meditation upon finiteness opens to the Dasein and the
question of being. In brief, it yields an awareness of the ontological meaning
and status of symbolic forms themselves, without which any production would
suffer the risk of becoming vain or even to turn into a bare reproduction of
forms.
5 The Question of Man (Left Behind?)
From that point, and to follow up a remark by Tak-lap Yeung during the Kyōto
in Davos conference, let me clarify that the points of disagreement between
Heidegger and Cassirer are essentially multiple. They do not concern a single
aspect of their debate, but actually all of the issues expounded above. Notwith-
standing this fact, it is true that one of the greatest philosophical stakes is
probably the question of man (or woman).
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As already stated, Cassirer soars above the empirical man in view of cel-
ebrating with Kant the very moral improvement of alle Vernunftwesen über-
haupt. He avers that the ethical law “must be valid not only for men, but ‘for all
rational entities in general’” (Cassirer 2004, p. 238, quoting Kant 1969b, p. 408;
2006, 20).33 However, as J. Maraldo observed during the Kyōto in Davos confer-
ence, we have to ask ourselves: Who beside humans count as “rational” beings?
For Cassirer seemingly does not field that question and restricts himself to
the validity of the law (posited by the imperative) “for all rational entities in
general” (1998, p. 276; 1997, p. 194). In brief, he does not intend to question
here the very essence, existence and ontological status of those Vernunftwe-
sen. Whether they exist or not and whatever they might be (humans, robots,
A.I, Martians, angels, gods, God, and so forth), the law is valid for those enti-
ties.
In addition, we need to ask: what about this very “being” itself that belongs to
those rational beings? In a Heideggerian vein, one might counter that, strictly
speaking, the “question of being” (Seinsfrage) sounds forgotten when Cas-
sirer factors in “all rational entities [Wesen] in general,” whatever their essence
(Wesen) might be. Certainly, Cassirer highlights moral being. Reviewing the
Kantbuch, he holds that Kant “leaves the place for a being [Sein] of [totally]
other significance[von anderer Bedeutung], for noumenal being [noumenale
Sein], not of things, but of ‘intelligences’, for a realm of freely acting, abso-
lutely autonomous personalities” (2004, p. 241). All rational entities in general,
whether they exist or not and whatever they may be, manifest such noume-
nal being in free self-determination. There are undoubtedly Cassirer’s onto-
logical discrimination between two significations of being, and his promo-
tion of being from phenomenal to noumenal. Lecturing at All Souls College
in 1934, he will significantly maintain these morally tinted ontological analy-
ses.34
However, such discrimination is not ontologically fundamental according
to Heidegger’s perspective. More succinctly, for Cassirer, as a thing in itself,
“We stand in the center of our being as personality [Seins als Persönlichkeit],
as pure rational entity [reines Vernunftwesen], but we no longer consider our-
selves under the conditions of our phenomenal, empirical-temporal existence
[Dasein]” (2004, p. 237). Now it is clear that Cassirer approaches a being that
is neither the Dasein, nor the Sein of any Seiende, nor Sein itself (to follow Hei-
degger’s path). It is instead Sein, to the extent that it is reductively construed
33 Cf. Heidegger (1998b, 279; 1997c, 196).

34 Cassirer (2016, 124). See p. 134: An intelligible world is “not a transcendent but an imma-
nent reality.”
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of als reines Wesen. Once again, Heidegger’s Seinsfrage yields to the authority
of Cassirer’s Wesen, which nonetheless appears ironically unquestioned in its
own being.
In this paper, I will not extend the confrontation of Cassirer and Heidegger’s
conceptions of being beyond the limited frame of the Davoser Disputation. But
a broader investigation would have to ask at least two main questions: First,
might the proto-ontology sketched in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (2001,
pp. 1ff., 293ff.; 1953, pp. 73ff., 313ff.) compete with the Fundamentalontologie
disclosed in Sein und Zeit as well as in the Kantbuch? Second, are the symboli-
cal promises offered by Cassirer’s preference for a concept of a being culturally
well-constructed and not external nor ready to be duplicated (2001, pp. 22, 41;
1953, pp. 91, 107), able to counterbalance Heidegger’s ontological achievements
obtained by tracing the difference between Seiende and Sein?
Be as it may, the next point to emphasize is that Cassirer’s previous discrim-
ination between phenomenal and noumenal being is no less problematic in
Kant’s perspective than from Heidegger’s. For Kant, Sein is notoriously under-
stood as “position [Position] of a thing, or of certain determinations in them-
selves.” As is known, existence does not extend the concept of an object but
provides an “additional possible perception” to “our thought” (1969a, pp. 401–
402; 2007, pp. 504–506). Now the critical question that one must ask becomes
the following: Given that Kant’s “thesis about being” (Heidegger, 1976c; 2014c)
focuses on positional being, is it really possible to apply such a thesis to what
Cassirer refers to in Kant as “noumenal being” and “being as personality”?
Of course, at the light of the preceding analysis, there might be a possible
answer. I mooted that Cassirer distinguishes the theoretical opposition of the
object to the cognitive subject, from the practical opposition of the moral law
to the free (i.e. auto-nomous, self-determining) subject. Accordingly, it might
be opportune to draw a borderline between, on the one hand, the empirical
being defined as “position of a thing,” and on the other hand, the noumenal
being construed of as the auto-position of a thing in itself, just as the law is
posited (aufgestellt wird), that is, posits itself into the imperative. Such possible
answer would evidently require additional elaboration.35 At any rate the inter-
esting thing about such an ontical discrimination between empirical position
and ontological self-position might be that it offers an alternative to Heideg-
ger’s description in Kants These über das Sein, which is strictly based on the
ontological difference, and that amounts to saying that Kant offered glimpses
of the nature of Being as “pure position.”
35 Once more, I am indebted to R. Lupacchini for asking to work out such a distinction.
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Whatever it might be, it is indisputable that Cassirer does not ostensibly

comprehend positional being in Kant’s sense. In The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms, he preferably alludes to a slightly contrasted positional conception con-
cerning phenomenal being, although within a non-Kantian context. Cassirer
seeks indeed to “explain the original mode of position [Setzung], which dwells
in [the fact] that a phenomenon refers to an objective being, gives itself as a
moment of an intuitive determination” (2010, p. 142; 1957, p. 127). So the critical
question sketched above remains plainly open.
Such a necessarily ontological scrutiny has patently diverted us from the
question of man. Still: Cassirer’s main concern is neither being itself, nor hav-
ing, but humans’ ways of doing or making (tun).36 As commentators under-
score, it is even possible to rebuild advantageously his theory under the title of
a “making of symbolizing” (das Tun des Symbolisieren):
Man acquires a consciousness of the definiteness of his world and of him-

self not first in thought, in the theoretical attitude of ‘vision’, of distant
consideration, but in making [im Tun], in a ‘spiritual act’ [Handeln], a
spontaneity, which stands before the one of thought. It is the one of ‘sym-
bolizing’, of man’s gifted ability to redesign [umgestalten] each impres-
sion that he receives into an expression of meaning, from within this very
reception. In the simplest grasp of effective reality [Wirklichkeit] already
lies an act of indicating, which is a forming—in the place of a reproduc-
tion of an external, independent existing being [bestenhenden]. (Hacke-
nesch, 2001, p. 116. See also p. 122).
Summarizing, in Cassirer’s perspective, the crux of the matter lies in what an

unparalleled noumenal being enables man to do, namely to free himself from
(within) finiteness, to be autonomous, and to endlessly produce forms. In this
sense, it can be said that the noumenal dimension of being as free personal-
ity nurtures spiritual cultivation of being though symbolization. Now symbol-
ism solely exists in symbolizing, that is, is implemented within human acts
of making and using symbols, while neither in humanity nor human nature
as such, nor in its being, nor in being itself. At this point, Cassirer’s inter-
est lies in what man (or woman) can do rather than in man itself or what is
man.
36 See for example 2001, 20; 1953, 89: “To this incessant change of qualitative contents, con-
sciousness opposes its own unity and the unity of its forms. Its identity truly discloses
itself not in what it is or has, but in what it does [Seine Identität beweist sich nicht in dem,
was es ist oder hat, sondern in dem, was er tut, erst wahrhaft].”
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Cassirer’s focus is thus rather practical than ontological. Nevertheless, he

energetically strives to disentangle Kant’s integral “doctrine of man,” as dis-
played in his three Critiques, from Heidegger’s reductive and reconstructive
attempts based on the first Critique. Cassirer consequently refuses the “reduc-
tion of the competences of the transcendental subject to the imagination” and
the “reconstruction of the humanitas on the ‘they’ [das ‘Man’]” (Rudolph, 1992,
pp. 302, 304) Cassirer will later revisit this topic, concluding his Essay on Man
in this comprehensive vein: “Human culture taken as a whole may be described
as the process of man’s progressive self-liberation” (2006, p. 244). Incidentally,
such self-liberation also calls back to mind an aspect already underlined above,
namely that the concept of the self appears as pivotal for Cassirer as the one of
man (Hackenesch 2001).
Regarding the question of man, comparatively, in the Davoser Disputation,
Heidegger straightforwardly re-apprehends Kant’s question: Was ist der Men-
sch? (1998b, pp. 288, 291; 1997c, pp. 202, 204).37 Unsurprisingly, he struggles
to ferret out the meaning of the ist rather than the one of the was, and shifts
from that to “the question: Τί τὸ ὄν; or: What means being in general?” (1998b,
p. 288; 1997c, p. 202). In consequence, Heidegger reduces the question of man
in Kant to the one of its finite being, before pondering later on being itself and
crossed Being (1959b). Conversely, it is only from the perspective of fundamen-
tal ontology (questioning Sein), that philosophical anthropology (inquiring
into man’s Wesen) is understandable, “neither in the sense that one investigates
man empirically as a given object, nor as if I was projecting an anthropology of
men.” Heidegger continues:
The question toward the essence of man finds its significance and its
right only insofar as it derives its motivation from the central problem-
atic of philosophy itself, which has to lead man back, above and out of
itself, in the totality of beings [Seiende], in order to make manifest to him
there, with all its freedom, the negativity of its Dasein. (1998b, p. 291; 1997c,
p. 204)
Correspondingly, I find Heidegger bracketing the empirical man in order to

question its being and offering in return an understanding of its essence
(Wesen). Yet his emphasis is conspicuous: Fundamental ontology deals with
“Dasein in man” and is by no means a “philosophical anthropology” (1998b,
p. 283; 1997c, p. 199).
37 See Kant, Logik, introduction, iii, and Heidegger (1998c, 207; 1997b, 145).
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The flaw is that Heidegger still describes Dasein in anthropological terms,

manifestly those of power (Macht), force (Kraft) and body. Reviewing Cassirer’s
Mythical Thought, he scrutinizes the practice of sacrifice, where “the free power
of Dasein reveals itself” against the “excluding power of the magical forces”
(1998a, p. 263; p. 185). He further describes that: “The ‘first force’ [power], in
which mythical Dasein manifests to itself its own being, is according to Cassirer
the force of desire” (1998a, p. 268; p. 189). Now, in what sense can the Dasein
(mythical or not) be said to possess power, force, and desire? It might be by
saying that it is embodied, but the status of this body remains unclear in Hei-
degger’s thought. To keep myself to the Davoser Disputation, I only find one
passage where he mentions the body, within the frame of an analysis of the
Dasein in general, and not only described in mythical terms.
What I call Dasein is neither essentially co-determined just through what

people qualify as spirit nor call life, but what matters is the original unity
and immanent structure of the being-in-relation [Bezogenheit] of a man,
which is in a certain way enchained [fettered] into a body and which,
through the enchainment within the body, stands in a particular condi-
tion of being bound up [in proper ties] with beings [in der Gefesseltheit
in den Leib in einer eigenen Gebundenheit mit dem Seienden steht], in the
midst of which he finds itself, not in the sense of a spirit that looks down
on it, but in the sense that the Dasein, thrown into the midst of beings, as
free, performs a breach into beings, which is always historical and in the
last sense contingent. (1998b, p. 290; 1997c, p. 203)
There is substantial literature concerning the aporia of sexual difference, body

and flesh germinated by Heidegger’s Dasein. In this intriguing excerpt, I will
solely highlight the ambiguous and intermediate status of the Leib that enables
the intimate articulation between Dasein and beings. In Sein und Zeit, Hei-
degger harshly criticized the mind-body link: “Dasein’s spatiality should not
be interpreted as an imperfection which adheres to existence by reason of
the fatal ‘linkage [Verknüpfung] of the spirit to a body’ ” (2006, p. 368; 1987,
p. 419). In Davos, he cautiously reconsiders that linkage: Man is “in a certain
way enchained into a body” (gewissermaβen in einem Leib gefesselt), relating
to beings. In other words, without a body there would be no relation to beings,
nor behavior (Verhalten), nor relationships of power, force and desire.
But what is the ontical and ontological status of the Leib? How might it tie
man to beings, alive or not? And according to what kind of power might the
Dasein be said to perform or make “a breach into beings”? These are all ques-
tions to add to the dossier opened by the stimulating Davoser Disputation.
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6 Conclusion: Leib, Dasein, and Mensch
In closing, I hope to have originally contributed to revisit the genuine philo-

sophical significance of the Davoser Disputation between Cassirer and Heideg-
ger, and to have done justice to both parties, not by arbitrating a sparring match
from a bird’s eye view, but by stressing some insightful points of contention in
their embodied and face-to-face encounter.
In this conclusion, I would like to prolong the debate by replying to two
queries concerning the aforementioned ambiguous status of the Leib in Hei-
degger’s thought. The first query deals with the ontological significance and
linking ability of the body that Heidegger describes in the text above. As Tak-lap
Yeung asked during the Kyōto in Davos conference, might we go as far as con-
ceiving of the body as a necessary medium that would provide the Dasein with
the understanding of Being? I think that Heidegger barely describes the body
here as a carnal interface that relates man to beings. Hence the body differs
from the Dasein itself that expressly concerns “the original unity and immanent
structure of being-in-relation,” i.e., unification and structuration in relation to
being. In brief, to the extent that the body enables the relation to beings, and
because questioning such a relation might eventually issue in questioning the
very being of those beings, then the body might appear as a necessary though
not sufficient condition to understand Dasein and being. Albeit in their very
different ways, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas will all probe that aspect.
But if Heidegger makes so little mention of the body in Davos or even in
Sein und Zeit, it is due to the fact that once one has recognized that the Dasein
appears as embodied and relating to beings, everything remains to be done
regarding the fundamental ontological analysis. To this regard, what counts is
by no means to question the embodiment of existence (body, flesh, spatializa-
tion,38 but also sexuality, animality, thingness), but to ground existence existen-
tially and ontologically. From this perspective also, even if Heidegger criticizes
the psychosomatic structure of man (body and soul), he remains beholden to
that structure in a certain sense. In short, it appears enough for him to conceive
of the body as constructively “enchained” with beings, the urgent thing being
to construe such an enchainment in the perspective of the relation to beings.
The second query concerns the ontical significance and differentiating vir-
tue of the body. As J. Maraldo asks during the Kyōto in Davos conferences, does
Heidegger intend to differentiate Dasein from Mensch through this notion of
38 Heidegger speaks in Sein und Zeit of the “Spatialization of the Dasein in its bodily exis-
tence [Leiblichkeit],” which “hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not
treat it here” (2006, 108; 1987, 143).
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the body? I believe that Heidegger arguably ventures such a conception of Leib
as intermediate between man and beings in view of pointing out the insuffi-
ciency of the duality of body and soul present in Greek and Christian thought,
while not in mythical thought (Hackenesch, 2001, p. 118). This point might be
suggested by the quote above, where he writes that man’s soul is “in a certain
way enchained into a body.” But precisely in what way? In a way such that the
enchainment provides a proper relation to beings. Everything goes as if there
were three terms in presence here: man, his body and beings. The problem is
precisely the ontico-ontological status of this distinction and triadic relation.
If my analysis is correct, the body does not differentiate Mensch from Dasein,
but provides the Dasein with an access to beings. The Dasein in itself explicitly
concerns “the original unity and immanent structure of the being-in-relation”
of man to beings through the body; but by itself, the Dasein is neither man, nor
body, nor beings.
In the end, these questions raise the problems of individualization and neu-
trality. As a body is always individual, the Dasein is individualized by it. But
das Dasein is in itself neutral (ne-utrum), neither individual nor plural, neither
feminine nor masculine (Geschlechtlosigkeit, Heidegger 1978, p. 172; 1984, p. 36).
And indeed, such neutrality might perhaps be fruitfully compared to the kind of
mediation that exists in animals.39 Yet this neutrality of being that is no longer
the polarized one of human beings, man or women, deserve further investiga-
tion.
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2
The Davos Debate, Pure Philosophy and
Normativity: Thinking from the Perspective of the
History of Philosophy
Abstract
The reception history of the Davos Debate may help us gain insight about how to
approach the history of philosophy. Firstly, any serious account of a historical debate
must be grounded in a sound conception of the intellectual environment in which it
took place and as such we cultivate intellectual history. Furthermore, interpretations
of historical debates also imply a mirroring of the historical themes in contemporary
philosophical discussions, and finally that we can bracket the historical situation in
order to focus systematically on the motifs and forms of argumentation in a histori-
cal debate. I criticize what I argue is a fourth and popular interpretation strategy of
the Davos Debate aiming to declare a winner of the debate. Such an interpretation
approach can be aligned with a scholastic fallacy which views philosophy as a means
to confirm social group identity rather than free thinking. While scholastic fallacies are
common in the history of European philosophy and its reception, I argue that aspi-
rations to think philosophy in its world concept and thus to aspire to understand the
laws of human reason imply that we must take intercultural dialogue seriously in our
philosophical endeavors.
Keywords
Davos debate – Scholastic fallacy – Critique of pure philosophy – Strategies of inter-

pretation in the history of philosophy – World concept of philosophy vs. the school
concept of philosophy – Finitude and infinity in human thinking – Ernst Cassirer –
Martin Heidegger – Hannah Arendt – Immanuel Kant
© Esther Oluffa Pedersen, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_004 - 978-90-04-68017-3

72 pedersen
1 Introduction
Today more than ninety years after Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger met
at the Davoser Hochschulwochen in late March and early April 1929, the Davos
Debate keeps attracting attention. The reception history analysing the debate
is overwhelming. In this article—yet another one to the collection—I reflect
on what we gain in the endeavour of philosophy by returning to philosophical
figures of the past and I discuss the intricate relationship between philosoph-
ical thought, its time and the implicit as well as explicit normative assump-
tions. Though I do not include intercultural philosophical perspectives in my
discussion of the Davos Debate, the aim is to read the debate as providing a
meta-philosophical argument for the productivity of intercultural philosoph-
ical discussions. I unfold a meta-philosophical exploration divided into three
parts. The first short part gives an overview of different interpretational strate-
gies employed in the analysis of the Davos Debate. In the second part, I high-
light the ambiguity of the normative and metaphysical assumptions inherent
in the debate between Cassirer and Heidegger. Revisiting Hannah Arendt’s
uneasiness with the title “philosopher” I criticize the ideal of pure philoso-
phy exempted from all and any social and cultural influence from contem-
porary social life. I furthermore argue that though Arendt’s comment is not
in itself an example of intercultural philosophy, it showcases the importance
of intercultural philosophy. The employed interpretation strategy, of course,
leaves many themes untouched. However, by highlighting the ambiguity of
the debate, I approach the meta-philosophical discussion. In the concluding
third part, the interpretational strategies from the preceding parts make up
the material to discuss what our continual readings of episodes from the his-
tory of philosophy say about our philosophical practice and tradition. Here,
I emphasise the differentiation between the school concept and the world
concept of philosophy to argue that the dialogue between diverse perspec-
tives and approaches to philosophy is a sine qua non condition for free think-
ing. The ideal of free thinking is contraposed to what I call the scholastic
fallacy of philosophy, a fallacy which renders philosophical argumentation a
mere confirmation of one’s affiliation to a popular group of thinkers. The over-
all aim thus is to accentuate the importance of plurality and critique in the
activity of philosophical reflection. As such, I believe, the value of the recur-
ring confrontations with the Davos Debate is to confront us with a paradig-
matic example of how different philosophical perspectives clash in the his-
tory of philosophy, all the while the debate itself is and will remain inconclu-
sive.
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the davos debate, pure philosophy and normativity 73
2 Interpretation Strategies
The Davos Debate as a meeting between two philosophers of dissimilar philo-

sophical temperaments as well as distinct philosophical projects lends itself to
be read as a battle between combatants. This rhetorical framework was also ini-
tiated as a way of drawing attention to the meeting in local newspapers already
when the debate was taking place. A journalist from Neue Züricher Zeitung
introduced his readers to the university weeks by comparing the Hochschule
discussions to Thomas Mann’s famous novel Der Zauberberg (1924), in which
Settimbrini and Naphta embodying enlightenment and religion engage in a
debate (Gordon, 2010, p. 90). The symbolic staging of Cassirer and Heidegger
as carriers of worldviews was put to the fore in the popular depiction. Indis-
putably, the narration of protagonists crossing swords has been decisive for
the interest generated in the discussion between Cassirer and Heidegger. The
fact that the meeting took place in 1929 at the brink of the historical events of
the National Socialist ascent to power in 1933 and the serious consequences it
had for world history, German philosophy and the actual life situations of Cas-
sirer and Heidegger have further garnished the reception history with food for
thought.
Four general tropes can be discerned within the vast reception of the Davos
Debate. Firstly, and exemplarily represented in the book Continental Divide.
Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos by Peter E. Gordon from 2010, the Davos Debate has
spurred the interest of intellectual history (Gründer, 1989). It is read as an exem-
plary episode of the eruptive and creative philosophical and political 1920s.
As a prism, it throws light on the intellectual developments leading up to and
ensuing the meeting, including Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s philosophical trea-
tises that can be directly traced back to their encounter in Davos—for Cassirer
his essay Geist und Leben (1930) and for Heidegger the exposition of Kant which
he presented in Davos and laid out in book-length in Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik (1929). Gordon (2010, p. 359) notes “precisely because their conver-
sation remains undecided” the Davos debate “seems still to offer an instruc-
tive allegory for a series of philosophical questions that themselves remain
unanswered and, perhaps, unanswerable.” Criticising Gordon’s framing of the
intellectual landscape, Hans-Peter Krüger points out that as Gordon focuses
on Cassirer and Heidegger, he misses the scope and breadth of the intellectual
landscape of German philosophy in the late 1920s. Even though Cassirer and
Heidegger actually discuss philosophical anthropology and the overall theme
of the Hochschule is the question: “What is the human being?” and obvious
references to prominent philosophical anthropologists such as Helmuth Pless-
ner, Georg Misch and Max Scheler are to be found in Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s
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contributions, the influence of these philosophers are left out in Gordon’s intel-
lectual history (Krüger, 2016, p. 646). Krüger’s admonition reflects a recurrent
difficulty with intellectual history, namely the open questions of how exhaus-
tive a study it is possible to carry out and which interpretative values will decide
the focus.
A second recurring approach to the discussions of the Davos Debate reads
the debate as a symbolic meeting to explain the subsequent developments
within philosophy. This is most famously done by Michael Friedman in his A
Parting of the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer, Heidegger from 2000. Friedman, noticing
that the young Rudolph Carnap was among the audience, interprets the Davos
Debate as a symbolic event that took place before the divide between analytic
and continental philosophy with Carnap representing analytic and Heideg-
ger a representative of continental philosophy. Cassirer stands as the middle
ground, and the debate itself is interpreted as evidence that this divide would
have developed differently had not so-called analytic philosophers emigrated
from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, by introducing Carnap, Friedman
shows the diversity in the scope of receptions of Kant’s philosophy in early
twentieth century European philosophy as well as the common root of conti-
nental and analytic philosophy urging renewed philosophical encounters and
discussions for those “interested in finally beginning a reconciliation of the
analytic and continental traditions” (Friedman, 2000, p. 159). While Friedman’s
aim to re-instigate the discussions between analytic and continental philoso-
phy is laudable, the focus on Davos in 1929 is a good narrative grip rather than
a historically precise investigation into the many roots of the similarities and
differences between these traditions. Taken in isolation, Friedman’s analysis
simplifies the philosophical and historical reasons for the divide and thus also
the contemporary possibilities of overcoming it.
In other reception pieces, the debate between Cassirer and Heidegger has
been distilled to signify “basic themes of our intellectual traditions” (Schwem-
mer, 2011, p. 60; see also Lynch, 1990, Schalow, 1996). This reading strategy aims
to sift out the philosophical motifs and leave the contextual setting behind. The
focus on recurring philosophical paths of thinking insists on viewing philoso-
phy as an autopoietic activity which opens possibilities of thinking regardless
of the personalities—here Cassirer and Heidegger—and their situations and
temperaments. Such reading strategy can lead to a new synthesis, as exem-
plified in Schwemmer (2011, p. 67) who argues that “Heidegger can be read as
the philosopher of the event, Cassirer can be understood as the philosopher of
form.” From here Schwemmer (2011, p. 71) develops “a way of thinking event and
form in connection with each other […] it is indeed the forming—the forming
of one’s own actions, […] expressions, […] productions and […] life—which
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depicts the event in which the relations of form can gain their reality.” How-
ever, it is difficult, on the one hand, to synthesise and, on the other, to allow
for genuine independence and force of the individual motif. The objection to
Schwemmer’s reading follows almost as a matter of course, namely whether
this reading strategy is anything but an incompletely concealed merger of one
philosophical project under the ensign of the other, here the subordination of
Heidegger’s project under Cassirer’s. As such it points in the direction of the
final reading strategy.
The assumption that a philosophical debate has a winner is the most com-
mon approach to the Davos Debate. In different readings, either Heidegger
(Bollnow, 1977; Blumenberg, 2000; Motzkin 2002) or Cassirer (Recki, 2002; Ger-
hardt, 2002; Krois 2004) is more or less explicitly pronounced the winner. A
continuous undercurrent of these interpretations is the political context of the
late 1920s pointing forward to the Second World War. The uneasiness with the
“fatal politics” (Haverkamp, 2016, p. 741) of Germany, Heidegger’s involvement
and Cassirer’s emigration led to what Meland (2013, p. 47) calls “double account
keeping” in which critics side with Cassirer’s ethical-political position while
pointing to Heidegger’s contribution as the one that is philosophically inter-
esting. In an overt manner, Edward Skidelsky assumes such a narrative as he
points out how
our contemporary situation is […] a torn one. We are inheritors of two

histories—one political, in which liberalism triumphed over its fascist
and communist rivals, the other philosophical, in which it lost out to
the Existenzphilosophie of Heidegger and the technicism of the analytic
tradition. Cassirer’s liberalism was all of a piece; it was at once politi-
cal, cultural, and philosophical. Such unity of vision is impossible for us.
Our political principles find no support in our cultural tastes, religious
beliefs, or metaphysical insights. We pay tribute to Cassirer, but Heideg-
ger remains the secret master of our thoughts. (Skidelsky, 2008, p. 219)
Skidelsky’s conclusion is only warranted if you feel yourself included in his “we”
experiencing a normative ambivalence towards Heidegger and judging Cassirer
to be an aloof thinker from yesterday’s world of harmony and unity.
The categorisation of the reception history palpably displays how no con-
clusive interpretation will emerge. Each trope has its advantages and short-
comings, turning them into what we—with a Cassirerian concept—might call
different Blickrichtungen or perspectives throwing light on some aspects with
the effect that others are forced into the shadows. These reoccurring interpre-
tations say something about the activity of philosophy itself.
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3 Philosophy and the Social World
3.1 Rebellion Against Pure Philosophy

In a famous interview with German television from 1964, Hannah Arendt who
was introduced as a philosopher interrupts interlocutor Gaus protesting: “I do
not belong to the circle of philosophers. My vocation—if one can speak of such
at all—is political theory” (Arendt, 1998, p. 44).1 Looking back on the years since
she left Germany in 1933, Arendt pointedly emphasises how she bid philosophy
farewell in 1933, first in order to help Jewish refugees flee and later to engage
in political theory. One motive evolving from the interview for this image of
herself in the 1960s is Arendt’s insistence on obtaining distinctness in political
matters. She points out how there is a tension between “philosophy and pol-
itics […] that is between the person [dem Menschen] philosophising and the
person acting in the world. […] The philosopher is not neutral on the subject
of politics. Not since Plato!” (Arendt, 1998, p. 45). But the philosopher pretends
to think about the social world as though there was no tension. In political the-
ory, the normative starting point is pushed to the forefront. A lucid exposure of
political assumptions has become urgent for Arendt: “The disinterest [of phi-
losophy in political questions] was not possible anymore in 1933. Even before,
it had ceased to be possible” (Arendt, 1998, p. 47). Arendt underlines that for
German Jews the situation regarding the Nazis was clear: “That the Nazis are
our enemies—my god, please, we did not need to wait for Hitler’s seizure of
power to know that!” (Arendt, 1998, p. 56).
However, after 1933, the political adversary and general understanding of
who were political enemies turned into “a personal destiny” which not only
pertained to general politics but pervaded all personal relationships as “one’s
friends gleichschalteten themselves” and bowed down to the totalitarian rule.
For Arendt, this was especially painful as she could observe how her intellectual
philosopher friends “really believed in it! For a short while, some for a very short
while. But that nevertheless means that ideas about Hitler occurred to them.
And in part enormously interesting ideas! Really fantastically interesting and
complicated! And ideas hovering high over the ordinary level! I thought it was
grotesque. They fell into the trap of their own ideas, I would say today. That
was what happened” (Arendt, 1998, p. 57). Not much imagination is needed
to guess that Heidegger was one of Arendt’s “purely academic” philosopher
friends trapped in his own ideas, as he performed philosophical synchronisa-
tion with the new regime.
1 All translations are mine—eop.
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Arendt’s insistence on turning away from philosophy hinges on this expe-

rience of personal betrayal from her philosophical environment. The story
exposes a deep ambivalence within philosophy as long as it is envisioned as
the pure activity of thinking itself. The political commands that made the shift
within German philosophy in 1933 placed clear emphasis on the subterranean
currents connecting pure philosophy with the politics of the social world. How-
ever, the important lesson to be learnt from Arendt’s account is that the blur of
philosophical thought and normative views is not exclusively an occurrence
during virulently politicalised times. The ambivalence is always present. It not
only poses a pressing critical question to any endeavour which claims to be
pure philosophy, it also contains a demand to engage in dialogue with other
philosophical positions and traditions of thought.
3.2 Concealed Normative Assumptions

In the Davos Debate, the question whether philosophy is an activity of pure
thinking is raised as Hendrik Pos intervenes asking Cassirer and Heidegger to
extract
something common from these two languages. An attempt at translation

was already made by Cassirer in his ‘Space for Action’ [Aktionsraum]. We
must hear the acknowledgement of this translation from Heidegger. The
translational possibility extends to the point at which something emerges
which does not allow translation. Those are the terms which demarcate
what is characteristic of one of a group of languages. […] Should it be
found that there is no translation […] then these would be the terms with
which to differentiate the spirit of Cassirer’s philosophy from Heidegger’s.
(Davos Disputation, 1929, pp. German 201–202/ English 287–288)
Heidegger, who was first to answer Pos’ request, points out how Cassirer in
the preceding lectures had employed the differentiation between the termi-
nus a quo and the terminus ad quem. This terminology could serve as common
ground to display the difference. But before looking at his answer, we need to
recap on Cassirer’s position as he developed it in his preceding lectures. Cas-
sirer pointed out that Heidegger’s starting point in the space of action was
conspicuous but “it is not sufficient as terminus ad quem” (Cassirer, 2014, p. 14).
According to Cassirer, the starting point only makes up a preliminary bound-
ary which further development breaks through or surmounts as new ways of
getting to grips with the initial problem are advanced.2 With reference to Hei-
2 In The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer conceptually describes this overcoming of the
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78 pedersen
degger’s analyses in Sein und Zeit, he claimed in his lectures “that the anthropo-
logical space, the space in which the human being lives, is conquered inasmuch
as this starting point is abandoned and overcome” (Cassirer, 2014, p. 15).
In response to Cassirer’s claim that human development overcomes the orig-
inal terminus a quo, Heidegger insisted that the question of a “metaphysics of
Dasein” is the starting point as well as the end goal and the talk of a terminus
ad quem cannot be
to bring honour to the power of imagination. Rather, it should be clear

that the inner problematic of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e. the question
concerning the possibility of Ontology, is relegated to a radical bursting-
open of the concept in the traditional Metaphysics, which was the out-
come [Ausgang] for Kant. In the attempt to lay the foundation, Kant was
pressed in a way that makes the proper ground into an abyss [Abgrund].
[…] I attempted to show that it is not at all self-evident to start from a
concept of logos, but instead that the question of the possibility of meta-
physics demands a metaphysics of Dasein itself as a possibility of the
fundament of a question of metaphysics. In this way, the question of what
the human being is should not so much be answered in the sense of an
anthropological system, but instead it must first be properly clarified with
regard to the perspective from within which it wants to be posed. (Davos
Disputation, 1929, p. 288/202—translation modified)
Heidegger was apparently defending his position against Cassirer’s accusation

against him of too narrowly focusing on the beginning of human thought and
in doing so, Heidegger insisted that this beginning must be fundamental in
answering the question: what is the human being? Thereby, in answering Pos’
request, Heidegger insisted that his approach be made the basis of all question-
ing. He emphasised that his approach was fundamental ontology in the sense
that other philosophical projects must assume it as their starting point and as
such, fundamental ontology is the starting point and end goal in one. Heidegger
proposed a new beginning of philosophical thought and a breaking away from
epistemology, logos and anthropology as only superficial phenomena conceal-
ing the fundamental metaphysical questions. He followed up on his reproach
of logos as he claimed priority to the project of a metaphysics of Dasein within
Cassirer’s philosophical endeavour:
point of departure with the argumentative trope of a metabasis eis ello genos—see (Cas-
sirer, 1923, p. 11; Cassirer, 1929, pp. 24, 184, 476).
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The question concerning the type of Being of what is set into his [Cas-
sirer’s] Philosophy of Symbolic Form […] is what the Metaphysics of
Dasein determines—and it does not determine it with the intention of
a previously given systematic of the cultural jurisdiction and of the philo-
sophical disciplines. In the entirety of my philosophical efforts, I left com-
pletely undecided the traditional shape and division of the philosophical
disciplines, because I believe that the orientation to these is the great-
est misfortune in the sense that we no longer come back to the inner
problematic of philosophy. To an equal degree, neither Plato nor Aristotle
could have known of such a division of philosophy. (Davos Disputation,
1929, p. 290/203)
In this passage, Heidegger underlines that his philosophical achievement con-

sists, partly, in cleansing modern metaphysics from the “slag” of the history of
philosophy and its inventions of artificial divisions and distinctions. One could
say that these were part of “the various forms of the shaping” (Davos Dispu-
tation, 1929, p. 288/202) which Heidegger attributed to Cassirer and opposed
himself, as he insisted that freedom has nothing to do with
becoming free to a certain extent for the forming images of conscious-

ness and for the realm of form. Rather, it is to be found in becoming free
for the finitude of Dasein. Just to come into the thrownness of Dasein is to
come into the conflict which lies within the essence of freedom. […] not
I myself in the sense of an indifferent ground for explanation, but rather:
Dasein is the authentic basic occurrence in which the existing of man,
and with it every problematic existence itself, becomes essential. (Davos
Disputation, 1929, p. 289/203)
Note here the discrepancy between the “I myself” and Dasein, as it indicates
that Heidegger’s conception of freedom is not a person’s individual freedom to
act but rather the occurrence of freedom taking place in Dasein and happening
to the existing man not as result of his actions. The reproach of logos as super-
ficial and the alternative definition of freedom as an occurrence within the
thrownness of Dasein is rhetorically served as a more profound philosophical
approach. However, it also represents a practical philosophical stance towards
human autonomy with the consequence that the purely metaphysical founda-
tion has implications for the interpretation of the social world.
Heidegger argued that his philosophical terminus a quo, his formulation
of the task of philosophy is authentic, more original and must be taken into
account if we are ever to reach a true and authentic terminus ad quem. The
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aspiration to clear an opening for renewed asking of the metaphysical question

of being bears witness to the aim of freeing philosophy from what Heideg-
ger believed to be its artificial history produced by logos and its forms. It is
also fuelled by the idea of a pure philosophy coming before and being present
apart from everyday life with its normative assumptions. Heidegger expressed
poignantly this conception of the philosophical detachment from the social
world in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, as he emphasised that the
existential analytic of everydayness does not want to describe how we use

a knife and fork. It should show that and how all association with being,
even where it appears as if there were just beings, already presupposes
the transcendence of Dasein—namely, Being-in-the-world. With it, the
projection of the Being in general, although concealed and for the most
part indeterminate, takes place [geschieht] so that indeed the Being if this
being first of all and for the most time is undivided and yet is manifested
understandably [verständlich] in the totality. Nevertheless, the difference
between Being and beings as such remains concealed. The man himself
emerges as a being among other beings. (Heidegger, 1929, p. German 235/
English 165)
In the insistence that fundamental ontology was the terminus a quo and ad
quem of metaphysics all the while that it was not an interpretation of every-
dayness or social thought, actions and possibilities, Heidegger coined an under-
standing of philosophy as pure thought thereby positing the normativity of the
analysis outside the social world.3 In effect, this also implies that Heidegger’s
normative approach to, for example, freedom is presented as a deeper level of
philosophical analysis than practical philosophical discussions of, say, auton-
omy. Wrapping up his answer to Pos, Heidegger emphasised that he had “inten-
tionally singled out these differences. It is not suitable for the accurate task
[sachliche Arbeit] if we end up levelling” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 291/204—
translation moderated).
Cassirer answered by affirming that he too was against levelling. Levelling—
Heidegger and Cassirer appeared to agree—would be the consequence of
merging their different philosophical positions into a joint position. Heideg-
ger had emphasised that “it is only in and through the rigour of what has
been brought forth that the problem gains clarity” (Davos Disputation, 1929,
3 The tradition of pragmatic and sociological readings of Heidegger ranging from Alfred Schütz
to Hubert Dreyfus are—regardless of their reasonableness—readings against the current of
Heidegger’s ambitions.
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p. 291/204). Coming rhetorically to common ground with Heidegger, Cassirer

explained that he believed their shared ambition was “for everyone by remain-
ing with his own position, not only to see himself but at the same time the other
as well. That this must be possible appears to me to lie in the idea of philo-
sophical knowledge in general, an idea which Heidegger too will acknowledge”
(Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 292/204—translation moderated).
Cassirer’s answer seemingly establishes common ground between the inter-
locutors. However, with his description of philosophical knowledge, Cassirer—
just as Heidegger had tried to capture Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms
within a metaphysics of Dasein—actually made an attempt to incorporate
Heidegger’s approach to metaphysics into his own understanding of philos-
ophy as a development of thought throughout history and throughout our
confrontations with opposite positions. Cassirer’s short description of philo-
sophical knowledge alludes to Kant’s conception of sensus communis with its
three rules of thought: “(1) to think for oneself; (2) to think from the standpoint
of everyone else; and (3) to think always consistently” (KdU, aa 5, p. 294). In his
Critique of Judgment, Kant explained that as a shared sense, the sensus commu-
nis entails
a power to judge that in reflecting takes account (a priori), in our thought,

of everyone else’s way of presenting [something], in order as it were
to compare our own judgment with human reason in general and thus
escape the illusion that arises from the ease of mistaking subjective and
private conditions for objective ones. (KdU, aa 5, p. 293)
Given that Cassirer, with his outline of philosophical knowledge, had this con-
ception from Kant in mind, he pushed Heidegger on the methodological ques-
tion of the status not only of logos but also his own philosophy of symbolic
form and imagination, the central theme of Kant’s third critique. While Heideg-
ger renounced logos (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 288/202) as well as “Cultural
Philosophy” (Davos Disputation, 1929, pp. 285, 288/200, 202) and denied want-
ing “to bring honour to the power of imagination” (Davos Disputation, 1929,
p. 288/202), Cassirer insisted that philosophical thought hinges on exactly the
cultural formations developed through logos and reflected upon with the aid
of imagination as a sensus communis. Once we have positioned ourselves as
philosophising creatures—Cassirer seemed to argue—within the realm of the
sensus communis, the thoughts of others are never just distortions of Being or
concealment of authentic Dasein. Rather, they are the fabric of our understand-
ing of ourselves and our world—natural and social. Thus, according to Cassirer,
philosophy cannot be pure in the sense of being removed from the aspirations
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82 pedersen
of living human beings. Philosophy is firmly situated in the social world and
as such philosophy ought to enable us to view the normative structure of the
human world by taking the perspective of our interlocutors.
3.3 Empirical and Transcendental

Just as Heidegger and Cassirer superficially agreed that they were against lev-
elling—but in fact meant very different things—they seemingly agreed that
philosophical analysis is opposed to and different from empirical descriptions.
Heidegger underlined that
because man is the creature who is transcendent, i.e., who is open to

beings in totality and to himself, that through this eccentric character
man at the same time also stands within the totality of beings in gener-
al—and that only in this way do the question and the idea of a Philosoph-
ical Anthropology make sense. The question concerning the essence of
human beings is not to be understood in the sense that we study human
beings empirically as given objects. (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 291/204)4
Responding to Heidegger, Cassirer confirmed that the common core of their

disagreement “cannot be in the empirical” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 292/
205). However, Cassirer also clearly demonstrated that he envisioned differ-
ently the role of empirical knowledge within philosophy, as he pointed to
the “common, objective human world” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 292/205).
Access to this shared world, Cassirer emphasised, does not imply that “the dif-
ferences between individuals” are “superseded” but it implies “that here and
now the bridge from individual to individual has been built” (Davos Dispu-
tation, 1929, p. 292/205—translation modified). Language builds such bridge:
“there is something like the language. And hence there is something like a unity
above the infinity of the various ways of speaking. Therein lies what is for me
the decisive point. And it is for that reason that I start from the objectivity of the
symbolic form” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 293/205—translation modified).
While confirming that Cassirer just like Heidegger regarded philosophical
analysis to be different from empirical descriptions, Cassirer emphasised how
his philosophical work takes the empirical fact of language as its terminus a
4 Note here Heidegger’s term ‘eccentric character’ as it is a direct reference to Plessner’s concep-
tion of the specific human place within the differentiations of life. According to Plessner,
the human being is characterised by eccentric positionality in opposition to the open form
of all organisms and the centric positionality of highly intelligent animals. See Die Stufen des
Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie from 1928.
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quo. This is not only a different approach to the empirical realm but reveals a
disagreement with Heidegger about their approach to Kant. At the beginning of
the debate, Heidegger had underlined that “Kant did not want to give any sort
of theory of natural science, but rather wanted to point out the problematic
of metaphysics, … of ontology” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 275/194). Cassirer,
on the other hand, had argued in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms that the
transcendental project should not be contented with offering a critique of the
natural sciences but expand the endeavour and turn “the critique of reason”
into a “critique of culture” (Cassirer, 1923, p. 9). Thereby he meant that “the dif-
ferent products of spiritual culture, language, scientific knowledge, myth, art,
religion become, all their differences included, parts of one united context of
problems” (Cassirer, 1923, p. 10). At the closure of the debate in Davos, Cassirer
emphasised how he saw the “common, objective world” in natural language,
that is in one of the main symbolic forms examined in the Philosophy of Sym-
bolic Forms. To view language as such underlined that philosophical reflection,
on the one hand, hinges on the actual empirical language. On the other hand,
the philosophical analysis of empirical language aims to expose the forming
spirit of language which makes it more than simple and univocal signs.
Philosophy, according to Cassirer, is called to take upon itself the task of
explaining the internal formation of each area of the spiritual culture in itself as
well as the interplay between these in culture as a whole. Therefore, the ques-
tion to ask is Kant’s question of quid juris (KrV, A 84) that is, the question of
validity of different empirical realms of meaning formation. Kant asked how
the factual validity of logic, mathematics and the natural sciences could be
explained and answered with the rethinking of the human abilities to sense,
experience, cognise and think in the transcendental aesthetics, analytics and
dialectics. This was concurrently an answer as to why metaphysics seems to be
caught in a dialectical battlefield (see KrV, B ix–xiv). In accordance with his
reading of Kant, Cassirer argued that we must reintroduce the empirical fact of
different cultural realms as the philosophical starting point. Taking the factual
givenness of mythical thinking, art and religion as our starting point and posing
the question of quid juris to these cultural realms imply to ask what validity as
meaning formatting fields these have. Cassirer thereby places the philosoph-
ical analysis amidst the humanly created world and takes the empirical facts
of various realms of meaning formation as his starting point. The goal of the
philosophical analysis is to argue how the different realms pose various claims
to secure the validity of meaning.
This Cassirerian reading is obviously diametrically opposed to Heidegger’s
interpretation of Kant’s first critique as a re-instigation of the metaphysical
question of Being. The transcendental analysis which Cassirer purports to
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inherit from Kant concerns the lawfulness of our cultural world, while Heideg-
ger’s points to the Existentials of Dasein that are prior to any cultural formation.
Seen from this perspective, it is possible to argue that Heidegger’s fundamental
ontology aims to establish a universal though finite metaphysics, while Cas-
sirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms traces the infinite developments of partic-
ular cultural spheres. Such description gives meaning to the different emphasis
on terminus a quo and ad quem. It can also shed light on Heidegger’s and Cas-
sirer’s different takes on the task of philosophy in relation to existential self-
orientation.
3.4 Existential Themes

Heidegger’s notorious claim that “philosophy has the task of throwing man
back, so to speak, into the hardness of his fate from the shallow aspect of a man
who merely uses the work of the spirit [Werke des Geistes]” (Davos Disputa-
tion, 1929, p. 291/204) is in sharp opposition to Cassirer’s personal “confession”
to Heidegger’s question about his opinion on philosophy and anxiety. Cassirer
underlined that
philosophy ought to enable man to become as free as possible. In so far

as it does so, I believe, in a certain radical sense, it frees man from anxiety
as a mere disposition. I believe, also after Heidegger’s expositions earlier
today, that freedom can only be found properly along the path of progres-
sive freeing, which is indeed also an infinite process for him [Heidegger].
I believe that he can agree with this conception. Granted, I see here the
most difficult problem. I would like that the meaning, that the goal in fact
is the freeing taken in this sense: ‘Discard the earthly anxiety from you!’
That is the position of idealism to which I have always subscribed. (Davos
Disputation, 1929, p. 287/201—translation modified)
Cassirer reaffirms himself as the heir to idealism with its ideal of human auton-
omy. Thereby, he also positions himself within a normative conception of phi-
losophy accepting the historical trajectory of this philosophical approach. The
task of the transcendental explications of empirically given cultural forms is
ultimately, according to Cassirer, to enable the progression of freedom. Again,
Cassirer strives to include Heidegger within this ideal of freeing humanity even
though he acknowledged in his preceding lectures that Heidegger’s view was
radically different from his own. With reference to the problem of death within
philosophy, Cassirer had aligned Heidegger’s “Being-towards-death” with the
religious tradition, noting that “here very deep religious and especially protes-
tant, that is Lutheran, motives resonate” (Cassirer, 1929, p. 55). Against this
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tradition, Cassirer highlights “the antique consciousness of death […] in its

philosophical expression” (Cassirer, 1929, p. 63) aiming to prepare man to dis-
card any fear of death. The crux of the matter for Cassirer is that “the opposition
of these spiritual motives as such remains” (Cassirer, 1929, p. 63) and despite
being historically intertwined, they represent two theoretically distinct and
independent ways of relating to death. Cassirer—in accordance with the ambi-
tions of his all-encompassing philosophy of culture—does not give preference
to one over the other. However, he quite obviously preferred what he called the
philosophical expression.
4 Return to Thinking With and Through the History of Philosophy
4.1 Philosophy’s Claim to Universality

The above exposition of the discussion between Cassirer and Heidegger high-
lights how both protagonists strive to comprise the other’s philosophical proj-
ect within the scope of their own philosophy. Cassirer points out how the use
of language is, concurrently, to take part in the “common, objective, human
world” and as such, the activity of philosophy—regardless of the philosophical
positions argued—is staged within the “objective world of spirit” (Davos Dis-
putation, 1929, p. 292/205). There are no unmediated expressions of meaning
and as a consequence, all philosophical projects share a common ground in
language and our mutual understanding of language. Cassirer’s claim that he
and Heidegger adhere to an understanding of philosophical knowledge, which
implies an understanding of the standpoint of the other, draws in Heidegger’s
philosophy within the basis of language as a symbolic form.
Heidegger does not include Cassirer’s philosophical project within the con-
fines of his questioning of the metaphysics of Being. Rather, he contends that
Cassirer’s philosophical project requires the metaphysics of Being as its start-
ing point, if it is to avoid being merely “a form of consciousness which shapes
itself” (Davos Disputation, 1929, p. 290/204). Heidegger proposes to have re-
addressed the most fundamental metaphysical question and aims to have this
fundamental ontology as the foundation of any philosophical endeavour.
Cassirer and Heidegger thereby both claim universality as well as primacy
to their own projects. Where does that leave us? Do we have any means to
decide between these projects? Recalling the four interpretation strategies, we
are reminded that all serious interaction with debates from the history of phi-
losophy implies a more or less explicit grasp of the intellectual history (first
reading strategy). One way of arguing that this specific part of intellectual his-
tory merits scrutiny is by showcasing how it is a symbol of some development
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within contemporary philosophical discussions which we think is important

(second reading strategy). Furthermore, any philosophical interpretation relies
on scrutiny of the philosophical motifs and forms of argumentation (third
reading strategy). These three strategies taken together with diverse empha-
sis on one or the other aspect are indispensable in the interpretational effort.
They can be vindicated with reference to the accuracy of their rendering of
the original debate as well as the purpose for revisiting a historic debate. Thus,
three equally important constraints are imposed—historical, argumentative
and motivational precision.
However, the fourth strategy, the interpretational effort to determine which
of the philosophical projects came out best, misses the point. There is no win-
ning a philosophical debate in the sense of refuting the elementary philosophi-
cal assumptions of other positions. The debate between Cassirer and Heidegger
and the numerous discussions hereof provide strong evidence of its inconclu-
siveness. So, what could be the reason to argue in this manner? One possible
explanation takes in the uneasiness with the imagined purity of philosophy
disclosed by Arendt. If we cling to an understanding of philosophy as a prac-
tice of non-normative explorations of the conditions of human thought, meta-
physics, ontology and so on, we are forced into an argumentative strain that
compels us to declare the one philosophical project which aligns with our basic
assumptions, not only the true starting point of all others but also the value-
free foundation for any further normative evaluations. Arendt’s way out of this
dilemma was to cut her ties to philosophy by placing herself within political
theory which from the outset takes normative assumptions and evaluations of
society into consideration. Political theory develops in a landscape of various
ideas of the good society and researchers openly situate themselves within this
landscape.
It would perhaps amount to a more honest terminus a quo if philosophy
would start by affirming the various philosophical schools of idealism, realism,
rationalism, irrationalism, etc. but I do not think such a solution would break
off the interpretational efforts of determining winners and losers of philosoph-
ical debates. If philosophers situate themselves comfortably within different
schools of philosophy, it seems we would concede that the only appropriate
conception of philosophy is the one which Kant called its school concept (KrV,
B 866). Such a school concept of philosophy helps us flesh out the internal
coherence with its restrictions and conclusions that make up the full concept
of any philosophical school. However, by means of theoretical fortifications,
it also avoids the world concept of philosophy. The world concept entails an
understanding of philosophy as “the science of the relation of all cognition to
the essential ends of human reason” (KrV, B 867). As such the world concept of
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philosophy cannot be restricted to only encompass elect traditions of think-

ing but must—in order to be true to its ideal—include all thinking and it is
therefore an intercultural ideal of philosophy. Philosophising from the world
concept, the philosopher is the “lawgiver of human reason” and Kant drily notes
that it would be “very boastful to pretend to have equalled the archetype, which
lies only in the idea” (KrV, B867). With this differentiation, Kant points to the
excess inherent in the ideal of philosophy—it aims at more than just categoris-
ing and ordering our previous collected knowledge. But as an excess, it is also
ephemeral and beyond the grasp of human conception.
Nevertheless, the endeavour to philosophise from the world concept is an
approach towards the archetype that—its pretentious character notwith-
standing—can advance our thinking beyond its current limits. From one per-
spective, Heidegger’s project of laying the ground of metaphysics anew in his
fundamental ontology can be viewed as an attempt at taking the world concept
of philosophy as his starting point. Cassirer’s pointed caution that also Heideg-
ger philosophises within the common language may be viewed as a reminder of
the cutting edge between the ideal of an intellectus archetypus or divine vantage
point and the human efforts within the intellectus ectypus or human finite dis-
cursive point of view (Kant, 1790, p. 408). Thus, I would argue that the interplay
between the exposition of the two philosophies displays deeply rooted forces
in philosophy itself, namely the urge to approach the world concept of philos-
ophy and the attention to the finitude of human reason. In this sense, Cassirer
is attentive to finitude and Heidegger to infinity. Either position, as well as the
ensuing discussion between them, however, would be incomplete without the
other. By this, I do not argue that the Davos debate comprehensively encircles
our philosophical practice. It is only one instantiation of the recurring strive to
formulate the laws of human reason. Such formulations will always be incom-
plete as the endeavour itself exceeds the capacity of finite human reason and to
even amount to a serious attempt it must have an intercultural ambition which
mostly is lacking in the European history of philosophy.
4.2 The Scholastic Fallacy

The interpretive strategy which calls a winner of a philosophical debate de-
pends on the school concept of philosophy as its main attraction is to fortify
a school of philosophy. If we return to Kant’s three rules of thinking of the
sensus communis, we are advised “(1) to think for oneself; (2) to think from
the standpoint of everyone else; and (3) to think always consistently” (Kant,
1790, p. 294). These rules are, I believe, in opposition to a school concept of
philosophy as their formalistic delineation may include any substantial philo-
sophical viewpoints all the while they require that we not only think from our
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88 pedersen
own personal perspective but also include the perspectives of others. This fur-
thermore implies that as we return to a discussion of the Davos Debate, it is
relevant to view it within a larger context of human thinking. Asking ourselves
what implicit assumptions are taken for granted in European philosophy and
whether or how these assumptions would be challenged by other philosophi-
cal traditions in a global perspective implies thinking in accordance with the
aspirations of the sensus communis, even though Kant did not envision such an
opening towards alternative traditions of thought.
According to Kant in the Critique of Judgement, the most difficult part is
to think consistently. But in What is Enlightenment, Kant highlighted the dif-
ficulty of thinking for oneself as he stressed how comfortable it is to let others
think in one’s place (Kant, 1784, p. 34). According to Kant, striving continuously
to achieve further enlightenment does not culminate in a perfect enlightened
age but will remain an endeavour which every member of society has to take
upon herself by partaking in the public use of one’s own reason. This endeav-
our is sure to fail if only undertaken as an individual task while an audience
giving voice to various positions and discussing their consequences stands a
chance of much greater success (Kant, 1784, p. 35). Thus, thinking for oneself
should not be aligned with any home-grown ideas. Rather, it involves trying out
the strength and persuasive power of one’s arguments in confrontation with
other viewpoints. Thinking for oneself is facilitated by thinking and speaking
up against others. Voicing one’s own view and testing its merits and shortcom-
ings in a debate of plural positions allows every participant to consider the
merits and pitfalls of their own arguments in comparison to a range of com-
peting arguments. It is the free public use of reason which nourishes thinking
for oneself. Thinking within the secure bounds of a community and along with
authorities, however social this way of thinking may be, does not qualify as
thinking for oneself.
A common trait of the receptions of the history of philosophy as well as
many thematic philosophical discussions is reference to other philosophers.
Such reference can appear to be an adherence to well-established authorities.
My own use of Kant above is a telling example. Does this automatically imply
that invoking the viewpoints of other philosophers indicates that one is not
thinking for oneself? Of course not, but it does require us to ask ourselves
whether the reference widens or improves our argument. If the only reason
to refer to a specific philosopher is the influence of a master thinker shedding
authority, the reference is an example of following an authoritarian voice. It is
a scholastic fallacy. Staying within the confines of a particular school of philos-
ophy, advocating its claims and defending it from criticism amounts to freely
committing oneself to minority (Unmündigkeit) (Kant, 1784, p. 35). Neverthe-
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less, the reception history of philosophy is full of scholastic thinking in which

the viewpoints of master thinkers are being fostered. It is a manner of institu-
tionalising philosophical thought and ensuring that as long as one corroborates
one’s arguments with the master thinker it will be accepted and might even
lend an air of sophistication.
The Davos debate between Cassirer and Heidegger is a prime example of
how the activity of reception history in philosophy can fall into the scholastic
fallacy. If we fail to think with both philosophers and if we fail to see that both
positions are independently consistent, we end up in a decisionist leap into one
or the other. The reason for this leap may be a normative stance, a perception of
one or the other as the greater thinker or as Leo Strauss claimed Kurt “Riezler
took the side of Heidegger without any hesitation. There was no alternative.
Mere sensitivity to greatness would have dictated Riezler’s choice. […] Cassirer
represented the established academic position. He was a distinguished profes-
sor of philosophy but he was no philosopher” (cited in Gordon, 2012, p. 97).
This type of comment with its apparent rhetorical power amounts to bowing
down to the authority of the school. It carries no philosophical weight. Thus,
the scholastic fallacy reiterates the sense of belonging to the group as its main
feat.
4.3 Reoccurring Readings of Philosophical Texts

My ambition has been to highlight the vacillation of philosophical practice to
return to foundational debates within the history of philosophy. It may serve
to allow us to think amidst others as we strive to understand why and what
philosophers of the past argued. But it can also be a crutch to lean on as a
member of a group of thinkers headed by one master thinker. It opens up
for possible contests as to who is the greater philosopher just as the mere
number of titles dedicated to a philosopher could seem an argument for great-
ness.
Even so, the repetitive return to the history of philosophy is also a pri-
mary nerve of the activity of philosophy as such. It is by way of thinking with
and through philosophical arguments in various historical and social contexts,
weighing the pros and cons of every position that we learn to think from the
standpoint of everyone else and hopefully in that process commence to think
for ourselves. Thus, reconsidering the Davos debate not only in its historical
context but also in dialogue with other traditions, such as Japanese philos-
ophy and contemporary concerns about global climate change and possible
re-evaluations of the status of the human being is part of the enlarged think-
ing which we require of philosophy and can practise, if we not only think for
ourselves but also from the standpoint of everyone else. Given that we are able
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to balance these requirements, we may be able to think consistently and thus

offer new philosophical perspectives to the body of philosophy, just as we may
venture to conceptualise new aspects of a world concept of philosophical think-
ing.
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3
Humans and Other Animals: The Forgotten Other
Beyond Davos and Kyoto
John C. Maraldo
Abstract
Historians often summarize the Davos debate between Cassirer and Heidegger as a
conflict of philosophical approaches as well as convictions, yet one thematic ques-
tion is implicitly shared by both philosophers: “what is it to be a human being?” Both
of these philosophers, and Japanese thinkers like Nishida as well, followed the con-
tours of mainstream academic philosophy by obscuring a hidden contrast at work in
defining human be-ing—the contrast between human and animal be-ing. The ensuing
question of the relation between humans and (other) animals invites an inquiry that
goes beyond well-explored conceptions of the body, of human “animality,” and of our
ethical obligations to animals, for it requires an often ignored resource for philosophi-
cal investigation: the languages and stories of indigenous peoples who draw divisions
differently. Thus the forgotten dimension of human be-ing—its relation to (other)
animals—also reflects a forgotten Other—indigenous peoples—as a philosophical
source. This article first makes a case for the homocentrism of the Davos philosophers
and then examines the views of selected indigenous peoples, both in their own voices
and as critical anthropologists represent them. We learn that humans are not simply
animals, but animals are not simply lesser humans, either. Humans are animal enough
to experience kinship with or respect for other animals in ways that indigenous peo-
ples remember and industrialized people forget. What we have to gain is not only an
expanded ontology of human be-ing but also some lessons in caring for our earthly
abode.
Keywords
Animals – Homocentrism – Human be-ing – Human and nonhuman – Indigenous peo-

ples – Language – Mythical Thought – Nishida – The Other – Respect
© John C. Maraldo, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_005 - 978-90-04-68017-3

humans and other animals 93
1 Framing the Theme
Nearly a century has passed since Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger met in
Davos and argued about what it means to do philosophy and what is it to be
a human being. To imagine now Nishida Kitarō joining them at the discussion
table is to invite a third whose contrasting thought might place Cassirer and
Heidegger together as a dyad rather than as opponents. It is to view their debate
in light of the intercultural philosophy that highlights common assumptions
by presenting uncommon alternatives. But intercultural philosophy does not
limit itself to presenting comparisons and contrasts between ‘East and West’
or, more copiously, between thinkers of Greco-European philosophical vintage
and thinkers from other cultures. Its momentum invites views from elsewhere,
too, and opens us to new sources and untapped resources for philosophical
investigation into the very bounds of ‘culture’ and ‘thought.’ This article ven-
tures to present an alternative theme that lies latent in the explicit topics of
the Davos discussions, yet is central to understanding what it is to be a human
being. We may evoke this theme by asking: a human being in difference to
what? I submit that in the Davos debates there is ‘an elephant in the room’—an
unacknowledged but crucial issue we today may be ignoring at our peril. Let us
draw it out first by sketching the relevant themes that are evident in the Davos
debate.
Historians who write about the debate often parse it as a conflict, with Cas-
sirer advocating infinite spirit and reason, and Heidegger insisting on human
finitude. That is an oversimplification, of course, but it points to a central con-
cern of their discussions: the nature of human be-ing. As perennial as that con-
cern has been in philosophical traditions, it has also historically been framed
in significantly different contexts, and these contexts have assumed a decisive
but often unspoken contrast between the human and what is other to humans.
At times a popular foil to the conception of the human was a being (or mode of
being) more elevated than the human, more exemplary of the capacity deemed
most noble or most magnificent—the immortal rationality of an angel or a god.
Even then, the recognition of death and human fallibility cast a shadow on this
conception and placed (part of) the human with something beneath it, the
mere animal.1 The human with its godlike reason and its animal body was, then,
a being-in-between. The rational animal is one expression of conceptions that
1 Shakespeare’s Hamlet says, “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite
in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel! In
apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to
me, what is this quintessence of dust?” Quoted in Nirenberg, 2011.
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94 maraldo
placed human be-ing midway on a scale. Even the analyses of Cassirer and Hei-
degger, as nuanced and elaborately articulated as they are, reflect moments of
‘man’s’ placement in this assumed hierarchical scheme. Cassirer’s animal sym-
bolicum seems to place the human within the animal world but at its apex, for
humans function as higher spirit (Geist) capable of symbolic thought and life.
The constituent feature of human be-ing that the early Heidegger considered
most relevant for symbolic thought and life is ‘concern’ (Sorge), the mode of be-
ing that, according to one telling story, together with spirit and body uniquely
determines the origin and destiny of the human.2
In the century since the Davos discussions, the contexts for determining
the nature of human be-ing have shifted significantly not only in philosophy
but in empirical sciences that similarly challenge inherited hierarchies and
unnoticed predispositions toward them. One context is provided by expanding
evidence of evolutionary biology that places humans in a continuum of living
beings that does not necessarily grant them privilege. Another related context
is the prevailing naturalism among philosophers that recognizes only mate-
rial being to the exclusion of spirit, even in face of reductionist naturalism’s
evident inability to explain scientific reasoning and recognizing, or the nature
of matter itself. Yet another context, apparent especially in the twenty-first
century, displays a turn to relational, non-reductionist and non-hierarchical
conceptions of human be-ing. Spurred on by the reality of climate change and
the prospect of a sixth mass extinction of life forms (Kolbert, 2014), compar-
ative investigations are relating human beings to (other) animals and living
beings in ways that expose an anthropocentrism at the heart of the current
crisis.
To what degree Cassirer and Heidegger were invested in this anthropocen-
trism is a question that lies in the background of the present inquiry. In one
sense, it seems only natural that the philosophers should be anthropocen-
tric, insofar as the issue at stake is specifically the nature of human be-ing. A
2 “Human be-ing” here paraphrases the more precise term Dasein, as clarified in note 11 below.
Heidegger’s introduction of the theme of Sorge justifies this paraphrase. He introduces Sorge,
the unity of Dasein’s existential structures, by recounting an old Roman fable that concludes:
“Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you should receive that spirit at death; and since you,
Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since ‘concern’ [cura] first shaped
this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is a dispute among
you as to its name, let it be called ‘homo,’ for it is made out of humus [earth]” (Heidegger,
1996, p. 198; page numbers refer to the German edition). The English human derives from the
Latin humanus and thus from homo. I have re-translated Sorge as concern, rather than care;
concern covers Heidegger’s sense of both interest and worry, in distinction from a sense of
benevolence, as in the ‘ethics of care.’
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focus on this issue necessarily involves defocusing matters considered less rele-
vant.3 To what degree the appeal to ‘non-Western’ philosophies such as Nishida
Kitarō’s can displace or decenter that anthropocentrism is equally problematic.
In any case, any anthropocentrism on their part would be relevant only to the
degree that it has biased the ways they divide the nonhuman from the human.
As we shall see, each of the three philosophers employs his own distinctive cri-
teria that modify traditional dividing lines.
In the decades since Nishida, Cassirer, and Heidegger wrote, empirical data
have increasingly challenged and shifted traditional dividing lines by refin-
ing the criteria of division—broad criteria that go by the names of culture,
language, technology, and nature. The notion that culture is something that
humans possess but animals totally lack is no longer tenable, given evidence of
animal tool-making, communication, and transmitted know-how. And yet the
extension of ‘culture’ as a criterion is far from settled.4 The notion that language
is solely a human possession or power has given way to recognition of ‘animal
languages’ or communication systems, and the dividing line has shifted to more
specific categories of language, such as the generative syntax that defines solely
human languages. Yet some researchers seek more continuities than divisions.5
The conceit that only humans make tools has long gone by the wayside, and the
dividing line has shifted to the creation of machines. There the controversy has
shifted to the question whether modern technology is the primary cause of an
ecological crisis or is its solution. Related to this shift is the notion that mod-
ern technology has ushered in a new era of natural history, ‘the Anthropocene,’
3 Rossella Lupacchini’s article ‘Cassirer and Nishida: Mathematical Crosscurrents in their Phil-
osophical Paths,’ p. 238 in this volume points out the positive function of anthropocentrism
with regard to Nishida’s idea of the “knower as the form of forms.”
4 Theorists like Bruno Latour, Philippe Descola, and Donna Haraway argue that the old nature-
versus-culture distinction is obsolete, but they still struggle to come up with an alternative;
they write ‘natureculture’ as one word, or place a slash between the words, or speak of going
beyond them. Carl Safina (2020, p. 33) is more straightforward: “isn’t it obvious that other
animals don’t have human culture? Whales have whale culture. Elephants have elephant cul-
ture.” The question then is “What are the cultures of various species […] Who are we here
with?” The underlying philosophical problem that remains is to explain “how and to what
extent nature becomes culture” (Endres, p. 145 in this volume) or how human beings have
come to give themselves a second nature.
5 Linguists such as K. Zuberbühler argue that animals are incapable of the rule-driven, gen-
erative, hierarchically structured syntax that characterizes human languages. No researcher
denies significant differences between human language and forms of animal communication,
yet research often links as well as divides. Zuberbühler (2019) theorizes about the “evolu-
tionary transition from animal to human syntax.” Fujita and Fujita (2022) stress even more
“the evolutionary continuity [of human language] with other species’ cognitive capacities.”
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in which there is no longer a nature that exists apart from human beings (as if
there ever were in human history).6 This notion places a dividing line between
a modern, human-created nature and a premodern ‘natural’ nature, with non-
human animals left in a fragile twilight zone.
Where we encounter other, non-dominant traditions, we find alternative
ways of connecting and dividing human and nonhuman animals—ways that
do not function to determine an ‘X’ that we humans exhibit in contradis-
tinction to the ‘Y’ of animals. Along with shifting dividing lines in dominant
thought, those nondominant ways raise the question of the historicity and
cultural biases of traditional criteria. To what extent the criteria of Cassirer,
Heidegger, and Nishida are subject to similar conditioning is not a straightfor-
ward question, for their philosophies have—each in its own way—thematized
the very conditions for the possibility of establishing relevant criteria. I will
leave an adequate examination of criteria and their conditions to another occa-
sion. Here my summary of Cassirer’s, Heidegger’s and Nishida’s placement of
‘the animal’ serves to present a contrast with a more immediate source for my
inquiry. This other, extra-philosophical source has the potential to expose a for-
gotten dimension of the question of what it means to be a human being. This
Other—the animal as the nonhuman, to put it provisionally—not only appears
at the edges of human be-ing to form a useful contrast to it. It also appears
in nondominant cultures as an equivalent to humans that makes of dominant
anthropocentrism something alien to nature.
And yet I do not wish prematurely to dismiss ‘the anthropological difference,’
the difference that humans posit between themselves and all other beings.
After all, what other creatures could posit such a generic difference? Judged by
the refined criteria we have mentioned, who could deny threshold differences
between humans and other animals? The distinctly human power to discover
and represent truth is evident; and if there are other-than-human modes of
intelligence, it seems that it is only humans who know that there are. Indeed, an
inquiry into alternative ways to understand the relationship between humans
and other animals takes the dominant anthropological difference as its starting
point. For all that, our inquiry will discover that this difference, as measured by
dominant criteria, is not posited by all human groups (all cultures), or even by
all anthropologists and researchers of nonhuman animals. We shall see how a
distinctive shift in stance has opened researchers to the kind of equivalence
that many indigenous peoples experience.
6 Purdy (2015) conceptualizes the new era in this way. For a critique, see my essay “Nature
Without Us or Within Us?” in Maraldo 2017, pp. 429–462.
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2 What the Frame of Heidegger and Cassirer’s Disputation Neglected
In contrast to spokespersons for many nondominant cultures, the great

thinkers of Davos and Kyoto have ostensibly marginalized our animality if not
entirely forgotten it, and as a consequence they have alienated us from other
animals and formulated their philosophies out of such alienation. The exis-
tence of animals gets sidelined, as does the earth as a place of cohabitation.
The finitude that Heidegger did emphasize at Davos is a particularly human
finitude and does not refer to the fact that we have a body as do all animals.
Two decades later Heidegger could still proclaim that animals are separated
from human be-ing by an abyss.7 In early Heidegger, animals live in their envi-
ronment (Umwelt) but are lacking in world.8 To say that ‘the animal’ is weltarm
is first to gather together a vast variety of sentient beings under one name, ‘the
animal,’ and then to understand it as relatively deficient in its ability (Seins-
können) to project a world of significations. Later, Heidegger (dis)places ani-
mals (and plants) within the interplay between earth—or nature (phusis) as
emerging force—and world as a network of signification. These (other) liv-
ing forms are sidelined in the fourfold (das Geviert) that sets earth along with
sky, humans or mortals along with divinities.9 Cassirer for his part does not
7 “Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures,
because on the one hand they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and on the other
are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss” (Heidegger, 1977,
p. 230).
8 To be sure, this lack is a matter of deprivation, not a total absence of world as is the case
with a stone: “the animal is deficient or poor in world [weltarm]” (Heidegger 1995, pp. 192–
195). I understand the relevant sense of world as the horizon of experience, more technically,
the referential totality [Verweisungsganzheit] of our be-ing that is explicated in Sein und Zeit.
Theoretically, there would be no reason to suppose that animals do not experience and live
within such a horizon, even if it is a “closer” or more confined horizon in the case of non-
human animals. Instead, however, Heidegger explicitly relates the animal’s “poverty [Armut]
in world” to its poverty or “deficiency in mood” [Ar-mut; Armütigkeit], namely, the “mood” or
attunement that expresses a uniquely human way of bearing oneself and behaving (p. 194). To
my mind, such deprivation in comparison to human be-ing implies a clear ontological hier-
archy, despite Heidegger’s denial of a hierarchical assessment (p. 192). Ironically, both native
lore and ethological studies present many nonhuman animals as more keenly attuned to their
sensory environment, their Umwelt, than are human beings. Later Heidegger removes Dasein
as the primary agent that bestows meaning and lets Be-ing, das Sein itself, take that place (see
Maraldo, 2017, p. 429). This seems to displace anthropocentrism, but does it compensate
for the abiding displacement of animals?
9 “The Origin of the Work of Art”—in a move reminiscent of mythical thinking—presents ani-
mals (“eagle and bull, snake and cricket,” along with “tree and grass”) as emerging out of
the confines of the stone temple, which in contrast stands steadfast and lets these things
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bypass the sensible symbolic forms through which we live and communicate,
including the form of mythic thought that at times has effaced the borderline
between the human and the animal—a distinction that itself is the product of
symbolic representation.10 Cassirer bridges the human and the animal more
closely and more scientifically than does Heidegger. As regards ‘the animal,’
Cassirer recognizes that certain animals are capable of symbolic life, more
precisely, of expressing meaning if not of representing truth versus falsity. As
regards humans, he recognizes that our knowledge of the earthly realm comes
through our senses, but he avers that only humans are capable of objectifying
expressions and constructing a cultural world. And at Davos, contra Heidegger,
Cassirer is committed to a Kantian world that “has true infinity,” that “reveals a
life independent of all animality and even of the whole world of sense” (Niren-
berg 2011).
The sense in which these philosophers understated, or forgot to investigate,
the human in relation to (other) animals invites more than a demonstration
of a lack, however. More pressing is a demonstration of an alternative way
to envision the human relation to (other) animals and thereby to locate new
sources of philosophical investigation. Renewed inquiries into the thought of
Cassirer and Nishida have not sufficiently examined their privileged centrality
of the human, and Heidegger would certainly not have questioned that central-
ity.11 The lack (or displacement) of the animal in Heidegger’s thought, on the
“take their pronounced forms and thus come to appear as what they are”—as emergences
of “nature” (phusis). The temple presences the gods; it opens world while setting it back
down on earth, yet (we should not forget) precisely in and through a human-made build-
ing (Heidegger 1960, 42). Heidegger’s lecture “Das Ding” clusters animals (das Getier)
together with other nonliving but natural things as belonging to the earth: “Die Erde is die
bauend Tragende, die nährend Fruchtende, hegend Gewässer und Gestein, Gewächs und
Getier.” The prominent place belongs to humans as the mortals, one of the four dimen-
sions of manifesting Be-ing (earth and sky, divinities and mortals). The later Heidegger is
consistent with the early Heidegger in refusing to recognize animals as mortals; animals
do not die (sterben), they can only come to an end (verenden): “Erst die Menschen als die
Sterblichen erlangen wohnend die Welt as Welt” (Heidegger 1954a, pp. 50, 55).
10 I am grateful to Steve Lofts and Tobias Endres for insights into Cassirer’s nuanced stand-
point and for corrections of my analysis. As I understand it, Cassirer’s Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms is an explication of forms that includes both forms that make such an
explication (transcendentally) possible and forms that (empirically) precede some of its
differentiations; among the latter are mythic forms that recognize no qualitative differ-
ence between human and animal. If, however, mythic thought according to Cassirer is a
deficient mode of knowing truth from falsity via representation—e.g., of knowing that
humans are qualitatively different from other animals—then this assessment devalues
the lack of difference that is evidenced in the thought of many indigenous peoples.
11 Early Heidegger’s primary concern is, as we know, not ‘the human’ (der Mensch) as such,
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other hand, has been the focus of trenchant philosophical critiques in the past
two decades, Derrida’s and Agamben’s among them.12 These and other philoso-
phers have written concretely about human ‘animality,’ and more abstractly
about ‘the animal.’ In the following, however, I deliberately bypass the recent
philosophers for what they have largely ignored: the self-understanding of
marginalized peoples that challenges the hegemony of reigning conceptions
of human be-ing. To display that self-understanding, I will turn to stories and
statements about relations between (what we call) humans and animals, but
with a focus on stories and statements as they are offered by native peo-
ples (and anthropologists who translate them) that may obscure the division
between ‘humans’ and ‘animals.’
A tentative statement may anticipate the direction and conclusion of this
inquiry: Humans are not simply animals, but (other) animals are not simply
lesser humans, either. Humans are animal enough to experience a form of
equivalence with other animals in ways that indigenous peoples remember and
industrialized people forget.13 We—philosophers and citizens of industrialized
societies—have much to learn from indigenous peoples about ourselves and
about living on earth. If we are endangering the earth as a biosystem and as our
home, if we are endangering the existence of other animals, then what we can
learn from forgotten ways of relating to other animals, and from animals them-
but rather Dasein, the presencing of Be-ing that human be-ing is. A comment in the
transcript of the Davos discussion (which was not verbatim the words of Heidegger or Cas-
sirer) makes the connection clear: “What I call Dasein is essentially codetermined—not
just through what we describe as spirit, and not just through what we call living. Rather,
what it depends on is the original unity and the immanent structure of the relatedness of a
human being [Mensch], which to a certain extent has been fettered in a body and which,
in the fetteredness in the body stands in a particular condition of being bound up with
beings. In the midst of this it finds itself—not in the sense of a spirit which looks down
on it, but rather in the sense that Dasein, thrown into the midst of beings [Seienden], as
free, carries out an incursion into the being [Sein] which is always spiritual and, in the
ultimate sense, contingent.” (Bollnow and Ritter, 1928, p. 203; translation adjusted).
One wonders whether the English human being would have served Heidegger’s purposes
much better than the German der Mensch.
12 Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefor I Am was first presented in lectures in French
in 1997, and Giorgio Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal first appeared in Italian in
2002.
13 The word equivalence, better rendered by the German word Gleichwertigkeit, pertains here
to perceived ontological worth or value. While it does not preclude recognized differences
in rank, status, or power, it must be strictly distinguished from economic equivalence or
exchange value whereby objects are convertible or substitutable according to a general
scale such as money. The anthropologist Rita Segato (2021) of the University of Brazilia
presents evidence that the practices of Amerindian peoples refute economic equivalence.
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selves, is crucial to the well-being of all. That said, this way of stating the task is
still provisional and must remain open to the revision of other voices—voices
that may question the bifurcation into a ‘we’ and ‘they,’ which expresses the pos-
sibility from one side and not the other. Even when this ‘we’ and ‘the natives’ do
consciously distinguish themselves from the other, they not only intermingle
but interact and in so doing not only acculturate but transform the others—
more often than not, in non-reciprocal ways and power plays where one side
seeks to maintain dominance. As we shall see, the reciprocal equivalence man-
ifested by many ‘native’ peoples would undermine not only this bifurcation but
also the position of dominance.
3 Cassirer and Heidegger on Mythical Thought
What is usually referred to as the Davos debate is only part of a disputation that
began a year earlier with Heidegger’s extensive review of Cassirer’s Mythical
Thought, the second volume of his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Because myth
names the category often used to frame indigenous stories and statements of
human-animal relations, Heidegger’s review offers a convenient entry to the
theme of my inquiry. Heidegger’s comments are appreciative as well as criti-
cal of Cassirer’s work. He does not dispute Cassirer’s ethnological descriptions
of “mythic phenomena” based on Cassirer’s reading of materials in Hamburg’s
Warburg Library; indeed, Heidegger praises Cassirer’s “unique gift for a lucid
and adroit presentation” of the phenomena he interprets (Heidegger, 1976,
p. 40).14 Heidegger notes especially Cassirer’s well-founded critiques of ‘ani-
mism’ and of empirical-psychological explanations of myths. He appreciates
the attempt to show that myths have their own objectivity, discernible when
we properly understand the subjectivity that creates them—the consciousness
that presents objects in ways quite distinct from the empirical objectifications
of mathematical physics, for example. Myth comprises its own form of thought
within its form of intuition and ultimately its form of life. Cassirer is expanding,
Heidegger says, the Neo-Kantian project to grasp the unity of nature by showing
how the unity of culture also exhibits the regulative structures [Gesetzlichkeit]
of spirit.
Both Heidegger and Cassirer, we may note, question in their own ways the
prevailing distinction between physical nature and human culture that anthro-
14 It is noteworthy that, shortly after the Davos disputations, in lectures on “the fundamen-
tal problems of metaphysics” Heidegger uncharacteristically turns to a “positive” science,
namely experimental biology, to support his analysis, just as Cassirer turned to ethnology
to support his analyses of symbolic forms.
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pologists today also challenge. And both philosophers also recognize the lack of
clear distinctions within mythic thought that current anthropology finds char-
acteristic of some indigenous thinking—“the absence of a clear delineation
between dreaming and waking experiences, between the imagined and the per-
ceived, between the original and the copy, between word (signification) and
thing, between wished-for and actual possession, between living and dead”
(Heidegger, 1976, p. 33). Heidegger does not mention Cassirer’s explanation
of these conflations; his own distinctions will occupy us momentarily. Rather,
Heidegger chooses to emphasize the role of mana in Cassirer’s account—the
cultivated spiritual life force and healing power that permeates the universe.
This mode of ‘magical power’ experienced in the pre-reflective life world of
Polynesian and Melanesian cultures serves as an originating example of what
gets articulated and conceptualized as the individual soul.
Heidegger also mentions the account of the ‘magical’ and ‘reflexive’ rela-
tionship between humans and animals (and plants) that “makes possible the
explicit realization of the pertinent sphere of human life as such.” The point for
Heidegger, then, is not the being of animals “as such” but rather the “elementary
relationships of the human to his world” that originate the social structures of
“mythic Dasein.” Myth for Cassirer—and Heidegger agrees—is a “unified for-
mative force with its own laws […] the mythic process is realized in Dasein
without reflection” (Heidegger, 1976, pp. 38–39).
At this point Heidegger launches his critique of Cassirer’s Mythical Thought.
He finds that the Neo-Kantian orientation to the structures of consciousness
diverts us from the real problem, which is a missing elucidation of the “origin of
the forms of thoughts and intuition out of the ‘form of life.’ ” Only a fundamen-
tal ontology of Dasein can provide an adequate basis for “mythical thought.”
Heidegger proposes that, given the concern [Sorge] that constitutes the be-
ing of Dasein (or ceteris paribus, of humans), “it becomes clear that mythic
Dasein is primarily determined by thrownness [Geworfenheit] […] in throw-
ness, mythic Dasein, in its manner of being-in-the-world, is delivered up to
the world in such a way that is overwhelmed by that to which it is delivered
up […] which is overwhelming” (Heidegger, 1976, p. 43). Being overwhelmed is
the mode of be-ing at the root of experiencing the world as infused with mana.
In Mythical Thought, Cassirer’s explanation of the basic orientation of myth-
dwellers to the world not only uses different terminology but also points in
a different direction. Unlike Heidegger’s orientation to our Being(always al-
ready)-in-the-World, Cassirer invokes the more traditional dialectic of a sub-
jectivity’s orientation to a world of objects. Except for the possible category
mistake of placing animals and other living beings along with all other spatial-
temporal objects in some ‘mythic consciousness,’ Cassirer’s framework actually
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accords with current science that invokes animal and even plant ‘subjectivity’
and ‘consciousness.’ But more relevant to current anthropological research, I
think, is Cassirer’s explanation of mythic thought in terms of the three modes of
consciousness (and forms of life) that he calls expressive, representational, and
significative (see Cassirer, 2020, vol. 2, pp. 27–28).15 The expressive names a pre-
articulated life-form that fuses image or spoken word with thing. The expressive
dimension takes narrative shape in stories where the representational mode
mixes in, initiating but ambiguating the difference between words and things.
The pure level of signification is reached with mathematical language. In fact,
the three dimensions (to use my term) are never found unadulterated. But the
preponderance of the felt, pre-articulate, expressive mode in mythic life is, I
take it, at the heart of the ‘conflations’ or lack of clear delineations we some-
times witness in native stories about humans and other animals.
For all that, Cassirer invoked the ‘primitive’ to characterize the mythical
thinking that does not differentiate personal will from natural forces, in con-
trast to empirical scientific thought. He was influenced by anthropologists like
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl who created the myth of primitive man; unfortunately, he
was not familiar with the work of Franz Boas who had debunked it already in
1911 (see King, 2019, pp. 99–104). Heidegger, too, referred to “primitive peoples”
and “their behavior toward death in magic and cult” (Heidegger, 1996, p. 51).16
15 As Steve G. Lofts, translator of the new English edition of Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
explains (personal communication, March 2021), myth is characterized by a fusion of the
image/word and the thing; e.g., the image is the god, the word is the god; they do not rep-
resent them but are them. The mythical image/word is world-forming in the radical sense:
image and/or word do not represent anything, but function like the temple in Heidegger’s
“Origin of the Work of Art.” However, true myth is lived in the flesh; it resides in the effec-
tive action (wirken)—so woven with it as to be indistinguishable from it. True myth opens
up the ‘place’ of the sacred that is the ‘site’ of the world and is the lived identity of the indi-
vidual, tribe and life tout court. The narrative is a discourse about such action; it is myth
set into language and thus recognized as an object and as historical.
16 “Primitive Dasein often speaks out of a more primordial absorption in ‘phenomena’ (in
a pre-phenomenological sense)”; “the interpretations of death in primitive peoples, of
their behavior toward death in magic and cult, throw light primarily on the understand-
ing of Da-sein, but the interpretation of this understanding already requires an existential
analytic and a corresponding concept of death” (Heidegger, 1996, p. 247). Heidegger
(p. 51) cautions that “ethnology itself already presupposes an adequate analytic of Da-sein
as its guideline. But since the positivistic sciences neither ‘can’ nor should wait for the
ontological work of philosophy, the continuation of research will not be accomplished
as ‘progress’; but rather, as the repetition and the ontologically more transparent purifi-
cation of what has been ontically discovered.” I suggest that new ethnological research
is discovering tacit ontologies that challenge Heidegger’s own universalist assumptions
about human be-ing.
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In the case of the philosophers, then, the lack I wish to expose pertains to an
absence of native voices whose words they might have heard or read, as well as
a dearth of knowledge about how animals experience. Just as we can no longer
depict indigenous peoples as ‘primitive,’ we cannot assume that their voices
represent ‘mythical thought’ without some considerable differentiation on our
part.
The Davos disputation itself makes no reference to mythic thought or the
modes of consciousness (or of Dasein) that underlie it. Rather, the pivotal point
is the human being, particularly its freedom and “Being-in-the-truth,” for Hei-
degger, and for Cassirer, language [die Sprache] as the medium that ensures a
common human world (Bollnow and Ritter, 1929, p. 205).
4 No Conclusive Intervention by Nishida
Could Nishida’s thought intervene here to displace the centrality of the human
in the world and offer an alternative? Not without significant modification, I
think. An attempt to appropriate Nishida’s philosophy of a self-aware world
lies beyond the scope of this article.17 But we may at least recall that Nishida’s
favored term of relevance is not the generic ‘human’ or ‘human being,’ but
rather ‘the self.’ Even where Nishida does thematize the human in relation to
animal life, he does so in different contexts meant to centralize the distinctly
human power of enacting the world.
One such context is Nishida’s corrective to the Marxist historical materialism
that does not account for human creativity. An essay of 1938 titled “Human Be-
ing” [人間的存在] re-interprets Marxist production (制作) in terms of the free
creation of the historical world proper to humans. Nishida does find a limited
place for a form of production proper to animals as well—their “instinctive life
activity” that both relates them to and divides them from the human. “Animal
life is animal life by having human life as its antipode; human life is human
life by having animal life as its antipode [對極]” (Nishida, 1938A, p. 31).18 This
17 Maraldo, 2017, pp. 422–428 and Maraldo, 2019a, pp. 454–462 present interpretations
of Nishida’s “self-aware world” and its relevance for ecology. Nishida’s idea is that the world
becomes aware in and through the “focal points” that he designates as the self (in plural
form). My attempt inquires in what sense all sentient beings might enact and create the
world, with each counting as a self.
18 William Haver’s translation has “Animal life is animal life because it possesses human
life as one of its limits; human life is human life because it possesses animal life as one
of its limits” (Nishida, 1938b, p. 159). It is noteworthy that Nishida implicitly includes
the “instinctive life activity of the animal” as a lower limit of the “world of historical life”
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remarkable (and unrepeated) statement suggests that Nishida was marginally

aware of our ‘elephant in the room’ that made it necessary to include the animal
Other when defining human being.
Another such context is the role of enactive intuition [行為的直観] in the
empirical sciences. In his essay of 1939 on the empirical or experiential sci-
ences, Nishida continues to find ‘animal’ activity as formative but, governed
by instinct as it is, not yet skilled and truly creative. “For an animal there is
nothing called a [self-formative] world.”19 And in his final completed essay of
1945, a third context—of the religious dimension of human life—continues to
contrast human historical activity, in which we “know our own ends,” with the
purposive, instinctive activity of beings immersed in the world of biological
life [生命の世界], which is implaced within the human, historical world (See
Nishida, 1945, pp. 375–376).20 Indeed, for Nishida the animal and the human,
the instinctual and the freely creative, seem to form two sides of a divide that
itself might illustrate his signature notion of “discontinuous continuity.”
5 From the Philosophers to New Anthropologies and Old Native

Stories
To place the human in a continuum with other animals in a way that does jus-
tice to contemporary research and native views—a way that that is relevant
to the problems of our age—I now turn to some sources outside the disci-
pline of philosophy proper. Although a few professional philosophers have
also proposed relational, non-reductionist and non-hierarchical conceptions of
human be-ing, I find other sources more instructive. The stories and statements
to which I turn fold two sources into one: new anthropologies that translate
indigenous peoples and indigenous peoples who translate for the rest of the
world. I stress at the outset that ‘indigenous’ does not equate with ‘mythic’ in
(Nishida, 1938a, p. 27) bordering on enactive intuition [行為的直観]. He seems expan-

sive in including animal activity in the “historical world” and not merely the biological
world of life, even if his reduction of animal productive activity to “instinct” would be
challenged by current ethological research.
19 I have added the qualification in brackets to the translation of Nishida, 1939, p. 244, by
Brink, 2021, p. 51. Brink (p. 159) notes the influence of Bergson, who postulated a “spec-
trum of instinct and intelligence.” In a companion essay, “Humans and Other Animals:
A Nishidan Proposal for How ‘Nature Thinks’” (forthcoming), I argue that Nishida might
allow for the view that nonhuman animals are actors who participate in creating the his-
torical world, as Nishida understood that term.
20 For further explanation of these concepts, see Maraldo 2019b.
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Cassirer’s sense, which is a form of thinking that all cultures today continue to
exhibit. The point, rather, is to contrast non-dominant views of the place of ani-
mals with commonplace views that take for granted the exceptional status of
humans. That contrast is evident in the work of several contemporary anthro-
pologists and in translations of their sources. In a few cases the anthropologist
is a native writing for outsiders; in every case the anthropologists I invoke are
philosophically informed and interdisciplinary enough to question the bounds
of ethnography and ‘philosophical anthropology’ alike. That questioning char-
acterized the work of Nishida, Cassirer, and Heidegger as well, and Cassirer
directly drew from the ethnologies of his time and anticipated a new era of
comparative and intercultural philosophy.21 But four features distinguish the
new anthropology both from this trilogy and from philosophical anthropology.
(1) Anthropology in the twenty-first century challenges the restriction of cul-
ture to human beings and recognizes culture among animals, so that its range
overlaps with ethology. Like traditional anthropology but unlike philosophical
research, (2) the new anthropology is based on fieldwork, that is, living among
the people under study, but (3) it shifts the traditional stance of the anthropol-
ogist from outside observer to consociate, and (4) the anthropologist is more
than ever acutely aware of the process of trans-lation entailed by the research.
Anthropology’s overlap with ethology and animal studies, and their potential
for intercultural philosophy, are topics I take up in a companion essay. Here,
let us consider this process of trans-lation and the concomitant shift of stance,
each in turn.
5.1 Trans-lation as a Methodology for Inclusion

Trans-lation means that the life world of indigenous peoples becomes evident
only through a process of transformation. On one level, an obvious transfor-
mation occurs in rendering stories and statements in a people’s own language
into a language intelligible to a reading public. There can be no pretense here
of our gaining some advantage by ‘tapping into’ the native’s stories directly,
or of presenting these ‘others’ in their own terms. For that there are far too
many diverse source languages. Natives and researchers alike are cognizant of
ineluctable trans-lation. My own access is solely through the transformative
translations they provide. On a less obvious level, a transformation also occurs
within native life in the very activity of story-telling or articulating experience
into symbolic speech. Cassirer’s Mythical Thought might provide terms that
explain the kind of trans-lation entailed in the relevant storytelling: the shift
21 On the meaning and potential of intercultural philosophy, see Maraldo 2019a, pp. 2–13.
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from expressive consciousness to articulated representational consciousness.

Heidegger’s Being and Time could provide terms that ground such trans-lation:
the foundational understanding [Verstehen] that orients us to beings in the
world and that undergirds all interpretation. In lieu of imposing on stories and
statements a foreign philosophical framework or terminology, however, I will
let the natives and their interpreters speak through their own translations. At
the same time, I caution that my talk of ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’ peoples is itself
problematic. There is an obvious overlap today between ‘native’ and industri-
alized societies.
Not only that, but terms like ‘native’ and ‘indigenous’ connote the stance of
outsiders and colonizers. Many peoples today apply these terms to themselves,
but they are not ideal. Nor should the characterization of indigenous stories
as ‘myths’ escape scrutiny. If ‘myth’ is still a viable category at all, it is appro-
priate insofar as myths precede a clear articulation between mental ideas and
their references in the world, as Cassirer taught, or insofar as they function to
express a world unto itself, as Heidegger intimated (see Cassirer 2020, pp. 27–
28, 49, 227–228; and Heidegger 1954b, pp. 6–7).22
5.2 A Shift in Stance: Anthropologists and Natives, Native Peoples and

Other Animals
Another overlap is evident in a recent shift in the stance of anthroplogists that
places them on a plane of relative equality with their ‘subjects.’ Anthropologists
continue to recognize the difference between researcher and researched and
they harbor no illusions of ‘going native.’ But beyond discarding the concept
of the primitive, the anthropologists I invoke no longer assume the superior
position of a scientist who can see through magical powers or mythical causes
and explain what really is happening. They practice instead a kind of epoché
or suspension of judgment about the ‘reality’ of native references. Eduardo
Viveiros de Castro (2015, pp. 6–8) parodies the attitude of anthropologists who
think that, although they themselves may sometimes be ‘erroneous,’ the natives
22 To be sure, native Amazonians, for example, can be acutely aware of a difference between
appearance and reality, e.g., the appearance of some persons whose physical form con-
ceals a real, perhaps malevolent spirit. “Appearances deceive because one can never be
sure whose or which is the dominant point of view […] which world is in force when one
interacts with the Other” (Viveiros de Castro 2015, p. 182; see also p. 176). But the per-
ception of that difference does not render anything like a theory of truth as conformity
between ideas and things. In Viveiros’s examples, the affective aspect (e.g., fear) and the
representational aspect are inseparable. I am grateful to Lucas dos Reis Martins for bring-
ing my attention to the work of Viveiros and for many other critical interventions, many
of which I can only allude to in this article.
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‘delude themselves.’ He describes what I will call a stance of reciprocal equiv-

alence as “an active or de jure equality between [the] respective discourses”
of the anthropologist and the native, and a way of equalizing their “concep-
tual orders.” This stance of equivalence is based on a practiced perception of
equivalent worth, not on an equation of power on the part of the two sides. As
we shall see, this stance recognizes disparities in power as well as differences
in competence and orientation. Indeed, it is such differences that necessitate
trans-lation. But there is no pretense that one side is more or less deserving of
respect than the other.
Anthropologists who study native peoples living within industrialized soci-
eties similarly advocate a shift in stance from presumed objective (enlight-
ened) observer to consociate participant. Barbara Tedlock points out that the
pretense of ‘participant observation’—in which one tries to move back and
forth between being an engaged participant and a dispassionate observer—
is so fraught with moral and methodological compromise that it is actually
an oxymoron. In her study of the Zuni people of the American Southwest,
she practiced instead an observant participation of “simultaneously experienc-
ing and observing [her] own and other’s interactions within various settings”
(Tedlock, 1992, p. xiii.). And she reports how, unsurprisingly, the Zunis in turn
were observing her and were aware of changing or trans-lating their behavior
because of her presence. Her relationship reflects a stance of reciprocal equiv-
alence. It is remarkable that the new anthropological stance of equivalence
between one group of humans and another parallels the stance intimated in
stories and statements of various native peoples across the globe. Their stance
orients them as humans toward (other) animals and places both on an equal
footing—on a par with regard to worth, if not power. In some cultures that
stance of equivalent worth is, in effect, recognized as reciprocal, as we shall
see.
Our perusal here of how and where the stance of equivalence is evident
takes the form of what is often pejoratively called anecdotal evidence. A philo-
sophical foundation for the epistemic value and evidential validity of stories
remains a task beyond the present inquiry.23 Here I simply appeal to the turn,
mentioned earlier, which, in a pivotal time of environmental crisis, calls for a
restoration of native voices that face extinction or absorption into mainstream
culture. These voices come to us forcefully in story form. They speak from a van-
tage point that would regard the belief in human exceptionalism as a ‘myth’ all
23 In a companion essay (see note 19 above), I clarify the epistemic value of stories and their
place not only in native communication about animals but among ethologists and animal
behaviorists as well.
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its own. The native voices I appeal to, in their own trans-lations and in those of
anthropologists, intimate a stance of equivalence in three overlapping modes
that we can now sketch.
6 Animal Stories
6.1 Speaking with Other Animals

Speaking with animals is not the same as teaching chimpanzees the meaning of
human signs, or training dogs and birds to respond to human words. For Native
Americans or First Nation peoples, speaking with other animals means directly
communicating with them as if they shared a language that empirical science
can only relegate to mythic invention. If, however, we suspend judgment about
the plausibility or verifiable ‘reality’ of such communication, something else
comes into view: the way in which the relevant stories and statements disclose
a stance of equivalence. Several sources provide examples.
A repertoire of stories and statements attests to the experience of language
shared with animal cohabitants. About a hundred and twenty years ago, thirty
years before the Davos debate, on the high plains of lower North America, Chief
Luther Standing Bear of the Lakota people is recorded as saying:
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active
principle. For the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feel-
ing that kept the Lakota safe among them and so close did some of the
Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brother-
hood they spoke a common tongue. (Standing Bear 1911, p. 163; cited in
McLuhan 1972, p. 6)
This resonance is echoed more recently by the veterinarian and anthropologist

Elizabeth Lawrence, who wrote
Plains tribes generally embrace a mode of thought in which all forms of

life on earth exist on a dynamic circular plane. One form of life is not con-
sidered to be above another, in a linear hierarchy with man at the top, as
in the Judeo-Christian scheme […] all of nature, both animals and people,
“are seen to be brothers or relatives, all are offspring of the Great Mystery,
children of our mother, and necessary parts of an ordered, balanced, and
living whole.” Such an ideology makes no separation between nature and
mankind [.] (Lawrence, 1985, p. 286)
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The book, American Indian Myths and Legends, a collection coedited by

Richard Erdoes and the Puebloan anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz, relates stories
that “arise out of the earth—the plants, herbs, and animals which are integral
parts of the human realm.” The first page of their Introduction quotes a passage
from Cassirer’s Essay on Man about the mythical world, which is “at a much
more fluid and fluctuating stage than our theoretical world.”24 Later they write:
In the Indian imagination there is no division between the animal and

human spheres; each takes the other’s clothing, shifting appearances at
will. Animals of different species speak freely not only to one another,
but to humans as well. Some of today’s medicine men still claim to under-
stand the language of certain animals. (Erdoes and Ortiz, 1984, p. 380)
Most likely, it is out of range for us followers of philosophy to hear the voices of
nonhuman animals, perhaps even to hear comprehendingly what these Native
Americans and their statements are saying. From our anthropocentric stance,
we think their stories are anthropomorphic. What then can we reasonably take
from them? For one thing, the Native Americans we cited experience a fluidity
of borders between animals, human and nonhuman, that Cassirer and Heideg-
ger could acknowledge but only on the level of primitive, mythical thought or
mythic Dasein.25 Then again, the native ‘worldview’ in question works symbol-
ically on two levels. On one level, the Native Americans express their vision of
their co-habitation with the nonhuman animal world in terms that escape the
parameters of empirical science. That is to say, a philosophy of symbolic forms
is already compelled to divide the way that symbols communicate among
native myth-dwellers and the way that symbols and concepts refer in empir-
ical science. But then, on another level, these same ‘myth-dwellers’ experience
nonhuman animals as communicating symbolically and intentionally in a way
akin to the human way. For Cassirer, mythic consciousness may in effect blur
distinctions between the human and the nonhuman, but the philosopher must
recognize the specific differences between human and animal consciousness.
Cassirer thinks that both can operate expressively, but animal consciousness
24 “The world of myth is a dramatical world—a word of actions, of forces, of conflicting

powers. In every phenomenon of nature it sees the collision of these powers. Mythical
perception is always impregnated with these emotional qualities” (Cassirer 1962, n.p.,
quoted in Erdoes and Ortiz, 1984, xi).
25 “The original relation between the human and the animal in primitive thinking is nei-
ther an exclusively practical one nor empirical-causal one; it is a purely magical relation”
(Cassirer 2020, vol. 2, p. 222).
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cannot represent things to itself, and what it does express is expressed merely
passively—a sense of threat or enjoyment, for example.26 A philosophy of cul-
ture as only humans can realize it, or respectively, an analytic of a Dasein exclu-
sively restricted to human be-ing, must by their very terms presume from the
start a barely bridgeable gulf between human and animal. In native lore, this
framing would count as anthropocentric, as closing humans off from the non-
human. The point is that alternative perceptions of animal communication can
open all of us to respond to the world differently.
A story told by the American Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan makes this point
more tangible.
One frigid winter day not many years ago, Hogan walked out of her cabin
in the Colorado mountains into “tall mounds of frozen whiteness.” Concerned
about getting enough nourishment to her horse and burro, she shoveled the
snow aside to make a path and then carried a heavy bale of hay to their stalls in
26 Phenomenologists also continue to share the contention that, whatever subjectivity might
be ascribed to nonhuman animals, only humans represent things to themselves. Cassirer
considers the difficulties of describing animal consciousness in vol. 3 of Symbolic Forms
(Cassirer 2020, vol. 3, pp. 74–75, 86). Animal consciousness is “permeated and saturated
with expressive lived experiences,” as Tito Vignoli’s Myth and Science recognized, but ani-
mal consciousness is purely expressive: an animal’s senses tell it that everything it senses is
“grasped […] as personally useful or personally dangerous.” Cassirer is skeptical of Vignoli’s
connection between human and animal consciousness, according to which the “psychic
[seelisch] drama from which myth is born thus has its point of departure not in human
consciousness but already in animal consciousness: already here an impulse [Drang] to
apprehend all existence [Dasein] in general, of which the animal becomes aware in the
form of personal existence [Existenz], prevails” (pp. 87–88). Cassirer cites work in the
animal psychology of his day that points to a “primacy of expressive lived-experience”
typifying animal consciousness, and that interprets much so-called animal ‘intelligence’
as “in reality achievements of pure expression […] based not on inferences and intellec-
tual processes but rather on the extremely fine feeling that animals possess for certain
involuntary expressive movements of the human” (p. 106). Later again, Cassirer stresses
that the animal responds to its environment; its consciousness does not ‘represent’ things
to itself: “The unity of the direction of sense [Sinnrichtung], however, that emerges in the
performance of the activity is not given ‘for’ the animal; it is not in any way ‘represented’
[repräsentiert] in its consciousness. […] Rather, the animal that moves in such a sequence
of activities is, as it were, a captive within it. It is not able to break out voluntarily from
that chain of events, unable to interrupt the sequence by re-presenting [vergegenwärtigt]
its moments individually. And here too, there is no possibility or requirement for such
a form of re-presentation [Vergegenwärtigung] of an anticipatory preparing of the way
[Vorwegnahme] of the future, an anticipation of the future in an image or ideal projection
[Entwurf ]. Only in the human does a new form of doing arise, which is rooted in a new
form of temporal vision [Schau]” (p. 213). Later we shall see how Amazonian peoples tend
to personify and subjectify all living beings.
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a barn. A few hours later, as the light of day began to fade, she was toting another
load around a corner of the path when (in her words) she encountered “thick
winter fur, four great legs, hooves, and […] enormous great antlers worn like a
crown as if I should bow to him.” It is Waapiti, a huge bull elk. “He stands large
before me,” she writes,
We are of two different minds. Two species. Two ways of being. Two lives,
both fragile for the moment, and neither of us able to even back up, move
away from the other. We continue sizing up what we know of each other.
To him, I could be a most dangerous animal. […] A boundary of not know-
ing stands between us as temporary fear. […] We live by different maps of
this world. […] The golden elk exhales as if there is no choice but to sur-
vive with one another. I look down, not to appear a threat. […] His teeth
click as if he will bite. Perhaps he has forgotten the weapons on his head.
I think a moment, then speak to him gently and walk past and back to the
barn [.]
In the following few days, Hogan leaves some alfalfa on the path for the great
Waapiti and recalls how
Each day we two animals learn a life together. It is a relationship, the

only word that addresses this kind of connection, conveys the eventual
lack of danger, and how two species new to one another learn to survive
together. I feel, smell, and see his breath. He watches me move. This is
part of how we speak. But his teeth still click together, as if to warn, Do
not come too close. I ask permission each time I pass. I speak, look down,
and pass around him as if the great antlers do not exist, and he allows the
way. (Hogan, 2020, pp. 136–139)
Living with her beloved horses, Linda Hogan often talks to them and marvels
at how they know her intentions, as if her gestures—the very ones she her-
self does not notice—speak wordlessly to them. “Our intent is felt through the
slightest movement of the human body, down the spine to the horse mind,” she
says. Their common tongue speaks to her of a
unique tangle and web of kinship and love, both my horse and burro seem
now to be part of the spirit of this mountain, forest, and earth where we
live, as if we are a part of it all. When I work with them, brushing, or using a
medicine, I sing as I do not sing before people. I sing horse songs [learned
from my] Chickasaw childhood. (Hogan, 2020, pp. 47, 55, 58)
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Aware that affinity does not exclude distance and difference, Hogan remarks
on the inscrutable otherness she knows intimately from her life experiences
in near wilderness. “Each nation of animals joins with all the others in an
undivided terrestrial intelligence” that encompasses the close and the distant.
Close is the familiar feel of her horses, but close, too, is a heart that stops, for a
moment, at seeing five mysterious wolves who cross her vision one misty morn-
ing, or at hearing the uncanny cry of a mountain lion, which she knows to listen
to in silence as it “announces it is somewhere near” (Hogan, 2020, pp. 18, 71, 115,
114, 97).
Hogan relates her interactions with other animals from a stance that, for all
their differences, grants them equivalent worth. That stance also allows her so
easily to recognize that ‘language’ can describe nonhuman forms of communi-
cation. She writes,
Bird and animal languages are many. So are the languages of trees. The for-
est has exceedingly complex methods of communication still being dis-
covered. Nonhuman languages, we have learned, are more plentiful than
just the well-documented songs of water mammals who fill the oceans,
more also than the enormous vocabularies of crows and ravens or the
endangered prairie dogs at the edges of many towns, small burrowing
animals who use numerous nouns to describe persons passing by with
a language so richly developed it has syntax and other elements common
to ours. (Hogan, 2020, p. 18)
Linda Hogan’s claim about the syntax of prairie dog language is controversial.27
Research has demonstrated that animal systems of communication lack the
kind of syntax that distinguishes human languages: rule-driven, generative syn-
tax that allows us to embed one phrase within another, in a hierarchy like a Rus-
sian doll or a Chinese box, in order to articulate relationships in sentences that
express complex states of affairs (like this very sentence). Yet were we to judge
27 The source of Hogan’s comment about prairie dog syntax may be Jabr, 2017, a newspaper
report about the observations and conclusions of the biologist Con Slobodchikoff. Slo-
bodchikoff (2021) claims that prairie dogs are not the only animals whose language
displays syntax: “Both Japanese tits’ and American chickadees’ vocalizations have syntax,
and blackbirds’ calls have recursion.” Refuting this observation, the neurosurgeon Michael
Egnor argues that supposed prairie dog ‘language’ is limited to concrete ‘signals’ that point
to proximate objects, as distinct from abstract ‘designators’ that signify things present or
abstract (see Stephen W. Hoyle, 2017). Yet the newspaper report about Slobodchikoff
claims, controversially, that the prairie dogs “could even combine the structural elements
of their calls in novel ways to describe something they had never seen before” (my emphasis).
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the cogency of Hogan’s observation by such linguistic criteria, we would miss

the point of her reflections. She and the other quoted Native Americans are
establishing a domain that we share with other animals in our environments
even as we divide ourselves from them. Hogan speaks to animals both tame and
wild by soft voice and by song, in what seems like it should be common sense.
We notice here a sense of our being consociates with other animals even as we
are aware of their difference. To be sure, Hogan is keenly aware of dividing lines:
“Those of us who live in wild zones know that wildlife is not meant for us,” she
says; it does not belong to us nor we to them. The fox who avoids her but tol-
erates her presence lives on “the other side of being human” (Hogan, pp. 114,
97). The ‘speaking with other animals’ reported by these Native Americans
indicates a communication among equivalents that shares yet divides—perhaps
better expressed by hyphenating German words for communication: mit-teilen
(to share with) and Mit-teilung (dividing from).
6.2 Hunting and Eating Other Animals

Among diverse native peoples, the stance of equivalence is also intimated
in the very practice that would seem to violate it most directly: the practice
of killing and eating other animals. Although humans wage lethal war often
enough, human societies typically have proscriptions against killing other hu-
mans and especially against eating them, and these proscriptions indicate
boundaries between humans and (other) animals that humans kill and eat,
often without any compunctions at all. So, when indigenous peoples hunt and
eat other animals, that would seem to mark an inviolable difference, for them,
between humans and the nonhuman.
And yet indigenous stories also place hunter and hunted in reciprocal rela-
tionships of equivalent worth. Listen to this story, related by the anthropologist
Barbara Tedlock: One day in the early 1970s a young Zuni hunter in New Mex-
ico was lucky enough to come across a female deer, a doe, that stood unmoving
in front of him. He was an inexperienced young hunter who shot the doe with
a rifle. When it was dying, he sucked the remaining breath from its nostrils, to
preserve his relationship with all animals. If he had been more experienced,
instead of shooting it and leaving a hole in the skin, he might have approached
the deer by singing a ritual song and smothering it with cornmeal, then inserted
his knife into her belly. If she was a deer that perhaps had once been a human,
“living off cooked food,” she could be reborn a deer, living off raw food, only
three more times. But if she had always been a deer, then “year after year they
might hunt her, and send her back over there to be reborn as a deer” (Tedlock,
1992, pp. 118–124.) The family prepared the body in ritual-like actions that seem
akin to a funeral and celebration of life.
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Tola placed a speckled, forked corn ear, the female kind, against Doe’s
breast, where her heart once was. Gathering around the doe, everyone
took up a handful of cornmeal, and Hapiya started singing her home.
Between stanzas we dusted her with jeweled cornmeal till head, neck,
and shoulders were coated, fluffy white, and she was on her way. (Ted-
lock, 1992, p. 121)
Tedlock (1992, p. 117) notes that Zunis consider predatory animals as hunters,
warriors and curers—just as humans can be. We can surmise, then, that Zunis
consider humans as predatory animals. The Zuni ritualistic treatment of the
deer carcass made the deer seem human, and the Zuni’s view of life makes
humans seem like fellow animals. The Zuni ‘myth’ of transposition between
deer and human goes beyond a sense of affinity with the animal, however. The
only English words we seem to have for the transformation of deer into human
and vice versa are ‘reincarnation’ and ‘metempsychosis,’ the transmigration of
souls between physical forms, human and animal. The standpoint of empiri-
cal science can only relegate such notions to mythic belief. If we hear the story
within an epoché that suspends judgment about the ‘reality’ of such phenom-
ena, however, then what the story discloses is a stance of respected equivalence.
Similarly, stories trans-lated as a transference of ‘spirit’ by way of ‘flesh,’ or of the
‘spiritual power’ of the eaten passing into the eater, can be read to imply a per-
ceived stance of equivalence. In that case, equivalence appears as a fluidity of
identity among living beings, or what appeared to Cassirer as the ‘lack of clear
distinctions’ characteristic of ‘mythical thought.’ The fluidity of identity will
engage our attention later. That fluidity can also cross acknowledged temporary
borders between the everyday realm and what outsiders call the “supernatural,”
which accords certain beings the status of ‘gods.’28 While that is a topic beyond
the scope of the present essay, we may also understand the reverence accorded
special animals as an extension of value equivalence and inclusion. Similarly,
the respect shown to special ‘totem animals’ reflects that shown to other clan
members and implies their inclusion in the group.29
28 The status of the sacrificial bear in the Ainu iomante ceremony is an example; the bear is
raised and revered until it is ‘sent off’ to the realm of the gods.
29 Totem animals are one example. Cassirer clearly recognizes that native groups who orga-
nize their lives according to a revered totem animal are not allowed to kill or eat their
totem. Apart from totem societies, the anthropologist Van Cauteren (2020, p. 295) has
investigated the widespread practice, among northern hunter-gatherer societies, of ritu-
ally treating animal remains after hunt and consumption “as an act of reciprocity with
animal persons.”
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Stories of a felt identity between hunter and hunted intimate a stance of

equivalence in other ways, as well. Listen to this report by a San (bushman)
hunter in the Kalahari Desert:
When you track an animal, you must become the animal. When [the
tracks show] it jumps, you jump. This is the great dance […] When I was
[running], I was really a Kudu [antelope]. It’s a long time since I felt like
this […] When you feel Kudu is with you, you are now [moving in unison].
Its eyes are no longer wild. You have taken Kudu into your own mind. You
think how hard Kudu is working. You feel it in your own body.30
This report presents hunting as identifying with the hunted and the eaten. An
observation about what the San do not hunt tells of affiliation through mutual
distancing. During the “unciphered span of time that the San people […] lived
as hunters […] they did not hunt lions. Their courtesy was repaid. Lions and the
San had somehow forged a solid truce.” Even taking prey from lions, outnum-
bered by them,
the San spoke to the lions firmly but respectfully. It was a respect not
paid to leopards or hyenas. […] No one had ever heard of a lion killing a
human. […] The San never hunted the lions, lions never hunted the San.
Perhaps each side knew that the other was potentially dangerous. Each
could have tested the other’s limits. Yet they did not. […] They chose not
to tamper with one another, lived well without doing so, and passed the
custom [on] to their children. (Safina, 2015, pp. 180–181)
Some hunting stories reveal an adverse form of affiliation, the sorry conse-
quences of a violation of a truce or tacit agreement with other animals. It is
told that in Siberia, the Udeghe and Nanai hunters of old
knew enough to stay out of a tiger’s way, but also left a cut of their hunted
meat [for the tiger] […] human hunters sometimes scavenged from tiger
kills, [but] the balance of power […] yielded a kind of mutual courtesy, an
understanding of mutual nonviolence. (Safina, 2015, pp. 179)
Once, modern hunters forced a tiger off its kill and took some of the meat. The
hunters tell how, after that,
30 !Nqate Xqamxebe, a !Xo San (bushman) hunter, in the film The Great Dance: A Hunter’s
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the tiger destroyed our traps, and he scared off the animals that came
to our bait. If any kind of animal got close, he would roar and everyone
would run away. […] That tiger wouldn’t let us hunt for an entire year.
(Vaillant, 2011, cited in Safina, 2015, p. 179)
At another, particularly lean, time, “a hunter decided to eliminate a tiger that

he perceived as a competitor.” He set up a trap with a trip wire connected to
a gun. The tiger tripped the wire, but avoided the bullet. It then went after
the hunter—went directly to his cabin without needing to follow his tracks.
It waited several days for the hunter to emerge before it finally left. “If a hunter
fired a shot at a tiger, that tiger would track him down, even if it took him two
or three months. […] Tigers will sit and wait specifically for the hunter who has
fired shots at them” (Vaillant, 2011, cited in Safina, 2015, pp. 179–180).
These and similar reports intimate more than interchangeable roles where
the (human) hunter becomes the hunted, or where other hunters (tigers, for
instance) deserve as much as humans. Stories that depict predatory animals
as hunters (or warriors and curers), and conversely pose humans as preda-
tory animals, often imply a transposition of identity that allows one to move
across borders and become the other. We glimpsed a momentary instance of
this transposition in the San hunter’s identification with the Kudu. It is more
conspicuous in languages that trans-late humans into animal others, or trans-
late animals as human others.
7 Animals and Other Humans
What counts as human and what counts as not-human, in the stories and lan-
guages of many native peoples, is far from being a fixed demarcation. To speak
of ‘humans and other animals,’ is, of course, to put both in the same category
and differentiate them at the same time. Not all peoples divide up the world
this way. Linda Hogan tells us that the Chickasaw word for ‘animal’ is Nan okcha,
meaning all alive. “In our human place [she says], we are only one of the earth’s
beings, surrounded by other intelligences we seek to understand,” including
insects, she says—the flies and mosquitos and spiders that we are more likely
to place on the other side of what counts as affinal animal (Hogan, 2020, pp. 80
and 67). The Ojibwe scholar Winona LaDuke says that she often hears the word
Story, 2000. The hunter reports at the end of this film that the Botswanan government no
longer permits this kind of hunt.
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dinawaymaaganinaadog, meaning “all our relatives—not just those with two

legs, but those with four legs, or wings, or fins” (LaDuke, 2006, p. 23, cited in
Onyemachi, 2020, p. 21).31 Ultimately, it may be ethnocentric to see indigenous
ontologies simply as anthropomorphic.
Viveiros de Castro tells stories of Amerindians who say that pig-like pecca-
ries are humans as are other living things who share their forests. Put more
precisely, not all are, and not all the time, and not only animals but also plants,
sometimes, under some circumstances. The words ‘animal’ and ‘human’ are
“equivocal translations of certain indigenous words” (Viveiros de Castro, 2015,
pp. 28–29). For our part, we cannot believe (as some Amerindians apparently
do) that peccaries are humans. And the propositional rule of traditional logic
commands an ‘either-or’: either we take the natives seriously or we take our-
selves seriously. In contrast, stories suggest a different grammar of belief and
often invite an epoché or suspension of judgment about facts. Viveiros says we
are misled if we think that such reports tell us about the people who believe
such things, not about what is believed (about the animals). The point for him
is that “the humans in question are saying not only something about the pec-
caries but also about what it is to be ‘human’” (Viveiros de Castro, 2015, p. 30).
Indeed, from the perspective of many Amerindians, we might speak of ‘animals
and other humans’ rather than ‘humans and other animals.’
I have emphasized the stance of equivalence assumed by native peoples that
places them and other animals on the same plane of due respect. More com-
mon anthropological terms are kinship and affinity. Along with alterity, these
terms are not uniformly implied among native peoples and consequently are
controversial among the anthropologists who study them.32 For the Amazo-
nian Piro people, the jaguar is the antithesis of kinship (Viveiros de Castro, 2015,
p. 184). The jaguar is the instantiation of the foe and a symbol of ultimate threat
to one’s well-being. The jaguar represents the enormous disparity of power that
people face in their enveloping world; it acknowledges an awesome presence
that commands respect. Precisely therein, I suggest, a stance of equivalence is
assumed: this recognition of the disparity of power is one aspect of a respect
for their simply being there. We typically conceptualize such parity of pres-
31 Onyemachi remarks, “Things we get from nature and other life forms are considered gifts
and not entitlements. Nature is not a hierarchy with humans at the summit; rather, human
should acquire wisdom from other creatures who are considered more knowledgeable
than humans” (Onyemachi, 2020, p. 21).
32 Anthropologists also argue among themselves about the range and validity of these con-
cepts and others like consanguinity. See Viveiros de Castro, 2015, pp. 100–138, et pas-
sim.
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118 maraldo
ence normatively as a ‘right,’ and would debate about the jaguar’s ‘right’ to be
what and where it is. Our ontology permits the ascription of rights to other liv-
ing beings only insofar as they are like us humans who, naturally (it is thought),
have various rights, including the right to exist. Stories among Amerindians and
statements by their observers imply a different perspective. It is not so much
that ‘they’ are like ‘us’ as it is a matter of us and them belonging to the same
world.
7.1 Equally Valued Subjective Points of View

This sense of belonging together equally in the same world appears more
explicitly in Amerindian perceptions of the ability to transpose points of view,
animal and human (Viveiros de Castro, 2015, p. 184). Once again, a situation
of disparity and enmity between points of view also reveals a sense of equiva-
lence in the shared ability to assume a point of view. With regard to encounters
with the jaguar—with the apotheosis of alterity, we might say—the Piro people
advise: “to avoid being devoured by the jaguar, one need know how to assume
its point of view as the point of view of the Self” (Viveiros de Castro, 2015, 184).33
This case of enmity rather than amity presents a ‘self’ (with its own interiority)
that can be(come) an instance of the radically Other—in contrast to the usual
presentation of the Other as an instance of oneself (Viveiros de Castro, 2015,
pp. 196–197).
The recognition that others, both friendly and hostile, both human and non-
human, have a point of view is what Viveiros calls perspectivism—the idea
that “the world is inhabited by different sorts of subjects or persons, human
and nonhuman, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view.” Viveiros
gives an extended argument that this idea is distinctly not relativist and actu-
ally “at right angles […] to the opposition between relativism and universalism”
(Viveiros de Castro, 2015, p. 195).34 This perspectivism avoids relativism in two
ways. It functions not as just another perspective but rather as a general anthro-
pological theory that describes Amerindian thought. And it assumes a single
center, a central point of reference. Viveiros recognizes all the various perspec-
tives as anthropocentric, in that they extend human-like subjectivity to many
33 This is Viveiros’s rendition of the Piro perception, not a direct translation. Comparing
the indigenous recognition of what we call the supernatural to the recognition of police-
and State-power in our societies, Viveiros (2015, p. 184) suggests that this transposition
of viewpoints poses the challenge of letting oneself “be invested with alterity without
becoming a seed of transcendence, a basis of power,” as is the State.
34 See also Viveiros de Castro, 2015, p. 10, on points of view. He proposes ‘multinatural-
ism’ and ‘uniculturalism’ to describe Amerindian viewpoints (Viveiros de Castro, 2014,
pp. 63, 56).
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creatures we experience as distinctly nonhuman. In effect, the human counts

as the reference point. But anthropocentrism need not assume a traditionally
‘Western’ or ‘European’ sense of the human, of anthropos, rather than allow-
ing the Amerindian sense of ‘human’ that applies to other forms of life. Our
ontologies may well regard the results of such extensions as anthropomorphic:
all creatures appear as human-like, as assuming human form and human char-
acteristics. But Amerindians modify the meaning of human when they include
other animals in that category. Their ‘homocentrism’ can be re-conceived as
biocentric, with all living beings taking their place on a par with one another.
The Amerindian languages that Viveiros describes often make more explicit
the sense of shared subjectivity and language intimated in Native American
and First Nation stories and statements. Invoking a sense of person as “a center
of intentionality constituted by a difference of internal potential” (Viveiros de
Castro, 2014, p. 58),35 Viveiros notes that
the ethnography of indigenous America is replete with references to […]

a universe inhabited by diverse types of actants or subjective agents,
human or otherwise—gods, animals, the dead, plants, meteorological
phenomena, and often objects or artifacts as well—equipped with the
same general ensemble of perceptive, appetitive, and cognitive dispo-
sitions: with the same kind of soul. This interspecific resemblance in-
cludes […] the same mode of apperception: animals and other nonhu-
mans having a soul “see themselves as persons” and therefore “are per-
sons”: intentional, double-sided (visible and invisible) objects constituted
by social relations and existing under a double, at once reflexive and
reciprocal—which is to say collective—pronominal mode. (Viveiros de
Castro, 2014, p. 56)
Viveiros then reminds us once again that this equivalence (to use my term)
entails a plurality of subjective viewpoints:
What these persons see and thus are as persons, however, constitutes the
very philosophical problem posed by and for indigenous thought. The
resemblance between souls […] does not entail that what they express
or perceive is likewise shared. The way humans see animals, spirits and
other actants in the cosmos is profoundly different from how these beings
35 This concept of the person “is anterior and logically superior to the concept of the human.”
Recall that Christian theologies conceive of beings superior to humans—angels and the
triune God godself—as persons.
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see them and see themselves […] In seeing us as nonhumans, animal and
spirits regard themselves as (or become) anthropomorphic beings […]
jaguars see blood as manioc beer, vultures see the worms in rotten meat
as grilled fish […]
and so forth (Viveiros de Castro, 2014, pp. 56–57). What we might have regarded
as analogical, mythical thinking appears, in the new anthropology, as a think-
ing that equalizes subjectivity and takes for granted a shared ability to possess a
perspective on the world.36 Living beings live by “different maps of the world,”
like Linda Hogan’s Waapiti, but that they so live is a way of being that binds
them together.
Even the practice of hunting and eating other animals preserves the bond,
as we intimated in the stories and statements of the Zuni and the San peo-
ples. Some anthropologists explicitly tie the bond felt by native hunters to
the recognition of shared subjectivity and ‘personhood.’ Philippe Descola gives
numerous examples of hunting tribes that experience their prey as relatives.
Their tacit ontology places what they kill for food in the same category as the
humans they are. The Achuar people in upper Amazonia between Ecuador and
Peru are “complete persons” (penke aents) by virtue of their linguistic ability,
but what they kill and eat are also persons endowed with a soul who live in
a “network of intersubjectivity.” Indeed, the hunted animals are the in-laws of
the hunters and, like in-laws who act in vendettas, “they too can wish to kill us”
(Descola, 2013, pp. 4–7). (Meanwhile the women regard the plants they culti-
vate as children.) The Achuar can speak in incantations to all these beings who
possess a soul, although these beings may respond only in dreams and trances.
The nearby hunters of the Makuna people similarly regard their ‘prey’ as one of
their own kind, by virtue of the metamorphosis that humans and other animals
undergo. These tacit ontologies place the beings that populate their surround-
ings in a “vast continuum … governed by an identical regime of sociability.”
This continuum does not preclude different levels, such as we see in the view
of the Achuar people who distinguish themselves as “complete persons.” But as
Viveiros de Castro reminds us, Amerindian perspectivism “denies a privileged
point of view from on high to human beings” (Descola, 2013, pp. 7–9, 11).
36 “[V]irtually all peoples of the New World share a conception of the world as composed of
a multiplicity of points of view. Every existent is a center of intentionality apprehending
other existents according to their respective characteristics and powers” (Viveiros, 2014,
p. 55).
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8 Recapitulating ‘Our’ View and ‘Theirs’
At times the indigenous views I read about seem too far-fetched, too incred-
ible. Descola writes about the Cree people of the northern Canadian forest,
who like many Amazonian peoples imbue most animals with a soul capable of
“reflective consciousness, intentionality, an affective life, and respect for eth-
ical principles […] hunting is a mode of social interaction with entities that
are well aware of the conventions that regulate it” (Descola, 2013, pp. 14–15).
What is more, in some of these worldviews the human form is interchange-
able with (other) animal forms in a partial duality that sees the bodily form
as the transitory cloak for a soul that undergoes metamorphosis—as we heard
in the words of some Zuni people. Descola notes more generally, “the hunter
does not destroy the hunted animal but simply appropriates its flesh in order
to eat” (Descola, 2013, p. 19). Such views seem to go far beyond an attitude of
equivalence that would allow the hunter to respect the life he takes in order to
eat and survive. A cynical response might take such views to be naive rational-
izations for the necessity of killing for food. A more charitable response might
regard them as practical accommodations to restrictive environmental condi-
tions. The philosophical attitude I have advocated would place belief in animal
subjectivity and personhood under an epoché that suspends judgment as to its
correspondence to ‘reality’—reality as the natural sciences know it. Contin-
ued philosophical research can consider the overlap between such views and
Cassirer’s paradigm of mythic thought, but without presupposing that indige-
nous views are mythical. For now, I find evident a remarkable parallel between
native stories and current scientific research that attributes intelligence and
intentional communication to nonhuman animals. I would advocate caution
in ascribing human ‘rational’ intelligence to other species while ignoring in
humans the kind of sensitivity that nonhuman animals clearly display. Etho-
logical evidence for nonhuman animal subjectivity and agency is a topic for
a separate inquiry.37 What I wish to stress here is that the tacit ontologies of
natives and the trans-lations of anthropologists present a profound shift in pre-
vailing views of what it means to be a human being. Even the most demythol-
ogizing, most modernizing trans-lation of that shift moves us toward a respect
for the nonhuman. Does not the survival of all living beings on this planet call
for renewed respect?
37 In “Nature Without or Within Us?” (Maraldo 2019a, pp. 429–462), I criticized as anthro-
pomorphic the ascription of human-like communication to plants and trees. As evidence
for an expansive view of animal subjectivity and agency, see the works of the anthropol-
ogist and philosopher Thom van Dooren and the ecologist Carl Safina.
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8.1 Human Beings Still in Search of Their Place in the Cosmos

This question makes evident the practical thrust of my inquiry, as I forecast it
earlier in a tentative statement. I sense the urgency of this concern in reports of
the prospect of extinction, not only of animal and plant species but of human
societies that can teach us how better to live on earth. Peoples who know that
humans have never lived apart from nature and are not superior to it consti-
tute an endangered group. Even where native societies continue to exist in
acculturated forms, their languages and ways of living on earth are vanishing.
Notwithstanding the dangers of over-generalizing, romanticizing, and exoticiz-
ing ‘the native,’ their stories and their practices will be forgotten to the peril
of animalkind. The Cree Indians of northern Canada, the Amazonian peoples,
the aboriginals in Malaysia, on the Pacific island of Seram, and in the Americas,
Asia and Oceana, all live on the brink of extinction. The life of San people in
the Kalahari is imperiled. Twenty-four years ago, they were evicted from their
homeland and no longer allowed to hunt; a court ruling restored their rights
in 2006 but they still face terrible harassment and often torture from outsiders
invested in the land’s diamond mines and fracking fields. The Zunis today, for
better or worse, live in the margins of mainstream urban, industrialized, capi-
talist American society. We call these peoples ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’ as if they
were the ones supposed to be most at home. And now many face expulsion—
some driven to the edge of survival, others fighting to retain their identity in
face of acculturation. Perhaps these endangered human groups ‘bring home’ to
us the real prospect that humans and nonhumans alike may face extinction.38
That is the negative lesson.
There is a positive lesson as well. To learn from marginalized indigenous peo-
ples means to recognize them as more than an ‘endangered species’ subject to
our control. From their own recognition of the plurality of ‘actants’ or subjec-
tive agents in the world, we can learn that they, too, count as political subjects
who have something to say regarding the destiny of all of us. Their inclusion of
nonhuman animals in this ‘us’ clearly says that the power imbalance between
dominating and oppressed peoples parallels the power imbalance between
humans and (other) animals. And the equivalence of worth (not of power)
that they ascribe to nonhuman animals informs the world of their own political
worth as distinct societies with their own say.
But do their stories and their trans-lations present alternatives that point
to better ways to live in post-industrial societies? When confronting practical
38 Perhaps, as Lucas dos Reis Martins suggested to me, what we can learn from indigenous
peoples is how to live at the end of the world. See Danowski and Viveiros de Castro,
2017.
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problems, we tend to think of ‘worth’ as use value, and we want to know of

what use are native stories and ontologies to the masses who no longer live in
pre-industrial societies. For example, ecologists tell us that the dominant way
of raising of animals for human consumption has to change to preserve life on
earth. Yet even if we eat less and less meat, it will not be possible for us to feed
our appetites by going deer hunting as did the Zuni. The enormous feed lots
and slaughter houses and the acres of fields of corn as far as the eye can see to
feed the cattle—these may become as marginalized as is the traditional Zuni
way of living today. I suggest what the Zunis have to teach us is not a practical
way to feed massive populations; it is rather a way to moderate and to meet our
needs by exercising respect for the beings that cohabit our environment, and
respect for the environment itself.
We cannot simply will a revolution in what we think we are, in what it is to
be a human be-ing. Heidegger rhapsodized that such will to power is itself but
a way that Be-ing presents itself in an epoch of history, a Schickung or dispensa-
tion given to us. From this wild idea we might extract one thing: A revolution in
how we (industrialized) humans relate to the nonhuman is not some new idea
we could conjure up, nor simply the application of empirical research or his-
torical analysis. It is a way to envision things that will come to us from what
we see, and that way may be violent, violating our current habits and prac-
tices and expectations. Learning from the stories of indigenous peoples entails
a reflection on practices, on what we are doing, more than on concepts and
conceptualizations of the world. If we still need to distinguish human beings,
let it be in ‘our’ ability to imagine the perspective of other beings.
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4
Anthropology as an Intercultural Philosophy of
Culture
Tobias Endres
Abstract
The paper takes up the anthropological question, as presented by Cassirer and Heideg-
ger in Davos, and asks how it could be systematically transformed along the lines of a
new concept of philosophy. The fictious presence of Nishida in Davos stands for the key
idea that such anthropology can only be spelled out interculturally. In the article this
tenet is bound to the observation that in both rivaling Western philosophical cultures,
i.e., analytic and continental philosophy, whereby intercultural philosophy is mainly
debated in the latter, the problem of naturalism is widely misjudged. It is argued that a
critical view on the problem of naturalism can only be retrieved from Cassirer’s philos-
ophy of culture turned intercultural. The article concludes with the demands of such an
intercultural philosophy of culture with a glance at approaches that have already taken
this direction and with the question of what kind of modifications Cassirer’s anthro-
pology and philosophy of culture would have to undergo.
Keywords
Cassirer – Heidegger – Intercultural philosophy – Naturalism – Culture – Philosophy

of culture
1 From the Philosophy of Culture to Intercultural Philosophy and

Back Again
Let us imagine that Nishida Kitarō had joined the conversation between Mar-
tin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at the Second Davos University Conference
in 1929, where they entertained the Kantian question “What is Man?” What
horizon of meaning might then have been gained? This is the thought exper-
iment that is at stake in one way or another in most contributions gathered
here, under the title Kyoto in Davos. It has a double counterfactual thrust in
© Tobias Endres, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_006 - 978-90-04-68017-3

128 endres
view of the real historiography of philosophy and against the background of

my own question: what might an anthropology as an intercultural philoso-
phy of culture look like? For one thing, this much is clear, Nishida Kitarō was
simply not present in Davos in 1929. Second, it was Heidegger, and not Cas-
sirer, who influenced the thinking of Nishida’s student Nishitani Keiji in the
late 1930s. The modernization of Japanese philosophy by the philosophers
Nishida Kitarō, Hajime Tanabe, and Nishitani Keiji, who successively held the
Chair of Modern Philosophy at Kyōto University from 1913 to 1963, is on the
whole characterized by a confrontation with the Neo-Kantianism that dom-
inated Germany at the turn of the century before last. However, if we look
back from the beginning of the 21st century to the further developments in
the 20th century, we can see that methodologically phenomenology domi-
nated where there was a confrontation between philosophies from East and
West. The Neo-Kantian outlines of a philosophy of culture, it seems, were
as quickly forgotten in the exchange between East and West as they were
within the separation of Western philosophy into an analytic and a conti-
nental tradition. What already became apparent with the National Socialists’
seizure of power in Germany in 1933 and, as a consequence, the expulsion
and extermination of the European Jews—and thus of many Jewish scien-
tists and intellectuals—was completed for Western philosophy at the latest
with the end of the war in Europe: Neo-Kantianism is history, and the con-
tinental philosophy that has now emerged in the break with Anglophone
philosophy—notwithstanding the intellectual independence of structuralism,
post-structuralism, existentialism, and many other currents—is in very large
part phenomenological. Nobody will talk about a philosophy of culture for a
very long time.1
This changed in the 1990s with the rise in importance of intercultural ap-
proaches in philosophy on the one hand and the so-called Cassirer-Renaissance
(Endres et al., 2016) on the other. Of course, it should be noted that the con-
cept of culture has played an eminent role in international research since the
1960s, and increasingly since the 1980s, within the framework of interdisci-
plinary and transdisciplinary approaches of cultural studies. In the following,
however, we will not deal with these, but exclusively with a new or redefinition
of the concept of philosophy along the concept of culture. On the one hand,
this procedure is motivated by the fact that a regulative idea of philosophy
as a universal science is to be maintained, which is explicitly connected with
the prospect of a mediation in the contradiction of the two scientific cultures.
1 Regarding some few exceptions see Endres (2021d, pp. 309–313).
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anthropology as an intercultural philosophy of culture 129
The supposed incompatibility of research in the humanities and the natural

sciences, which C.P. Snow already stated in 1959, has not been overcome by
the differentiation of cultural studies—despite their interdisciplinary claim.
In fact, this problem has become even more acute in the new millennium,
which is often visible not least in the formation of camps in disputes about,
for example, freedom of opinion and research at universities.2 The solution
cannot be found within the cultural studies, especially because—and this is
a fundamental hypothesis of this article—the problem of naturalism is largely
unrecognized or at least unthematic in them. I will return to the extent to which
such a diagnosis is justified later on. Moreover, according to another obser-
vation, the concept of culture itself is currently not very much in vogue in
cultural studies, which is especially true for empirically oriented cultural stud-
ies such as ethnology and cultural anthropology. Here, in the past ten years,
an ontological turn, dating back in its beginnings to the early 1990s, has come
to a breakthrough (Descola, 2013; Viveiros de Casto, 2014; Holbraad and Peder-
sen, 2017). In this, anthropology in particular opposes the concept of culture,
which is currently under suspicion of essentialism (Abu-Lughod, 1991, p. 146)
and vagueness (Baumann and Rehbein, 2020, p. 8). Contrary to these trends,
the concept of culture is to be recovered here in a non-essentialist way and
in the sense of a philosophy of culture as prima philosophia.3 Under an inter-
cultural sign this can only happen in a changed form of such a first philoso-
phy.
Now, what is and what should be the intercultural philosophy? There is
widespread consensus among those researching intercultural philosophy that
intercultural philosophy is not a discipline like theoretical or practical philos-
ophy, nor is it a sub-discipline like epistemology, philosophy of language, aes-
thetics, or applied ethics (Stenger, 1996, pp. 90–91; Weidtmann, 2016, p. 7). Nor
is it simply the history of philosophy, although its history is, according to the
intercultural claim, of eminent importance. The simplest and most unapolo-
getic answer would be that intercultural philosophy is simply philosophy. It is
philosophy as it finds itself in the 21st century under the globalized auspices
of an emerging, if one wants to speak of it, world society. This, of course, is
2 In the recent past, for example, the case of Kathleen Stock comes to mind. The accentuation
of claims of gender studies on the one hand and biology on the other is perhaps a partic-
ularly paradigmatic case where the gap between scientific and cultural theoretical research
sometimes becomes especially wide.
3 For objections against discarding the concept of culture from within anthropology cf. Bru-
mann (1999).
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connected with the normative claim that philosophy today cannot be under-
stood in any other way—whether for reasons of intellectual honesty, on the
basis of the state of research, the claim of a decolonization of thought, or on
the basis of entirely different motives, we will leave aside for the moment.
Thus, “a fundamental question in the context of intercultural philosophy is
the question of the content and concept of philosophy” (Yousefi, 2006, p. 43,
my translation). Let us first ask ourselves why this is so. What philosophy is,
is itself the object of philosophy and thus an open question for discussion.
Already in ancient Greece the question of the birthplace of philosophy plays
a role, whereby Lucian of Samosata (1981, pp. 51–52) locates it in Persia and
India, while Diogenes Laertius (1967, pp. 3–4) adopts the narrative of a birth of
philosophy in Greece. The idea that philosophy is Greek in the proper sense
remained dominant in Europe into the 20th century, and its justification in
such notable thinkers as Hegel (1955, p. 528), Husserl (1962, p. 320), and Hei-
degger (1972, p. 7) is well known. This image has been changing in the West
since the end of the 1980s at the latest (Mall and Hülsmann, 1989) and has
meanwhile progressed to such an extent that, within the framework of a world
historiography of philosophy,4 for example, the idea of a pre-modern African
philosophy in the sense of an ethnophilosophy, as it was first brought into the
discussion by Tempels (1945), has its fixed place (Kagame, 1994). We then see
that the image of an authentic European philosophy, supposedly characterized
by a transition from myth to logos and by an intimate attachment of philosophy
to scientificity, has become at least questionable to us. This pure questionability
is now in principle already sufficient to demand interculturality for philosophy,
because insofar as the conceptualization of philosophy is itself a philosophical
activity, the methodological pluralism that we already find in the horizon of
Western philosophy also applies to it. And accordingly, we are well advised to
precede the analytical clarification of terms with a phenomenological sifting
and to see what different cultures may understand by philosophy. From here,
one could then argue that every conceptual definition of philosophy, which
is after all—as we said above—inconclusive, is at least based on a regulative
ideal, which one could address from the Western tradition as philosophia peren-
nis. Karl Jaspers drew attention to this for the first time, as Yousefi (2006, p. 46,
my translation) points out:
4 See for instance Adamson (2014–) and Baggini (2018), but also the research project Histo-
ries of Philosophy in Global Perspective at the University of Hildesheim and the new edition
of Ueberweg’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Gerald Hartung and Laurent
Cesalli.
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The regulative unity of the one philosophia perennis is compatible with

the multiplicity of its concrete cultural forms. Philosophia perennis fun-
damentally precedes the concept of philosophy. The acceptance of this
fact is the key to a universal communication that gives the word to the
dialogical conceptualization of a world history of philosophy. Ram Adhar
Mall considers Jaspers an exception among many modern philosophers
because the figure of one philosophia perennis does not give sole posses-
sion of philosophy to any particular philosophical tradition.
Thus, in terms of such a basic shape of philosophy, if we first assume that the
activity of philosophizing exists in all cultures, we sharpen rather than dilute
its concept. The fundamental claim that the determination of philosophy must
be made by philosophy and the shift of the fixed point away from occidental
philosophy to the regulative ideal of an eternal and universal philosophy then
also leads precisely not to cultural relativism, but strengthens the universal-
ism inherent in philosophy. This consideration can be understood even if one
wants to hold on to the idea that universalism in the sense of a single human
reason and in the historical shape of the human rights declarations up to their
Universal Declaration of 1948 is essentially a heritage of the European Enlight-
enment. Weidtmann (2016, p. 11, my translation), referring to Waldenfels’ (1993,
p. 63) paradox of a “universalization in the plural,” has summed up this idea as
follows:
Philosophy just makes the step beyond its own to the universal or sim-
ply to the ‘One’. Philosophy therefore only becomes—and must only
become—intercultural if it can maintain the claim to universality of the
originally Greek and since then European-Western philosophy and yet
show the plurality of ‘philosophies’ that thematize quite different experi-
ences but can equally claim universality and world character.
So even if one could show that universalism as universalism in the sense of an

explanation of the world, nature, and morality is thematic for the first time in
ancient Greece, this does not yet win an argument showing that other philoso-
phies do not base their thinking on universalism. Consequently, the idea of
interculturality can only be to find another, integrative and universalistic con-
cept of philosophy. And from this thought then also arises the basis for advocat-
ing an intercultural rather than, say, transcultural or multicultural philosophy.
If one wants to hold on to a universalism that does not make the differences
disappear but wants to use them as a basis for gaining a higher point of view,
it needs an in-between that neither assimilation nor a closed coexistence can
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afford. This in-between, from which Niels Weidtmann and Georg Stenger try to
think interculturality, makes it possible to overcome the contradiction between
identity and difference of cultures, because:
The other culture is nothing else than the own culture, it is the same—
only different. […] The contradiction that lies in it can only be resolved by
giving up the reifying understanding of cultures and already learning to
understand one’s own culture as living, i.e. as constantly renewing itself
and striving beyond itself. ‘The same’ that another culture is in a differ-
ent way is then not a ‘something’ but merely the between of cultures, out
of which all cultures are equally constituted. (Weidtmann, 2016, p. 41, my
translation)
It should have become clear by now why intercultural philosophy is not a sub-
discipline of (Western) philosophy and also why it is not only interesting in the
horizon of a global historiography of philosophy, but that it is about nothing
less than philosophy itself. One could formulate the expectation expressed in
it in such a way that one says that a concept of philosophy extended by the
cultural differences between the philosophies gives hope for a complication
of the overall philosophical situation. In concrete terms, this meant asking,
for example, how moral claims to validity are constituted in relation to the
universal in cultures that are more collectivist than individualist, or within
political systems that are not in the tradition of liberal democracies. How are
subjectivity and objectivity of taste judged in cultures whose aesthetic con-
ceptions have not developed in confrontation with Baumgarten and Kant?
What shape does the Gettier problem take when discussed in relation to Indian
or Buddhist conceptions of knowledge? Why this is a desirable complication
must, of course, be justified, and it can be, and this leads us further into the
problem area between philosophy and the history of philosophy. An impor-
tant criterion for a philosophically relevant question is its connectivity to the
discourses of the present, that is its contemporary relevance. For example,
one could ask: What does Descartes say about the problem of representation
and what does this mean for the current critique of the concept of represen-
tation? Or: How would Nishida judge the contradiction between being and
nothingness against the background of the principle of bivalence and what
does this mean for logic? If such a reference to philosophical authors hap-
pens across temporal, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, this usually means
that a great deal of translation work has to be done and the concepts may
first lose their sharpness. In contrast, however, there is a gain in systematic
and historical terms. Systematically, if it can be shown, for example, that in a
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hopeless argumentative situation not all premises have to be shared or that

they are based on further, so far intransparent presuppositions; or if it can be
shown that a problem is formed only against the background of the choice of a
non-mandatory alternative. Historically, when, for example, a medieval debate
appears in a new light due to new research questions. Or to put it with Jay
Garfield:
To take another example, when we read Reply to Objections and see Nāgār-
juna criticizing Nyāya semantics and epistemology […], there is nothing
wrong with extrapolating his arguments as general attacks on what we
would regard as a Fregean program in natural language semantics or a
foundationalism in epistemology, even though these broader categories
would have been unavailable to Nāgārjuna. By doing so, we recognize
both the historical context and the contemporary relevance of Nāgār-
juna’s work. If it did not have this contemporary relevance, there would
be no philosophical reason to engage with his corpus. Moreover, when we
appreciate this philosophical relevance, it allows us a new perspective on
the history of Indian philosophy, allowing us to see nascent concerns that
otherwise might escape notice. (Garfield, 2015, p. 328)
If we once again bring this fundamental access to philosophy to mind, if

we realize that the above-mentioned regulative idea of a philosophia peren-
nis allows, as it were, an unlimited access to what philosophy can mean—
irrespective of temporal, linguistic and cultural boundaries—, then at the same
time the normative claim of an intercultural philosophy conveys in a partic-
ularly clear way. Jay Garfield explains this succinctly with reference to the
Western tradition, which even in its most historically critical variety, analytic
philosophy, naturally cannot do without references to the very greats of its own
tradition:
It is important to distinguish between the role of a curator of philosophi-

cal mummies and that of the role of a participant in an ongoing dialogue,
and it is all too easy, for instance to treat Śāntarakṣita as a distant, iso-
lated curio, while treating Aristotle as one of us. When we do that, we
distinguish living philosophy from dead ideas on the basis of an arbi-
trary criterion of cultural proximity, and in doing so, license an intellec-
tual attitude toward that which we designate as distant that we would
never permit toward that which we regard as proximate. (Garfield, 2015,
p. 334)
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Thus, anyone who claims that it is still worthwhile to read Aristotle, Heraclitus
and Parmenides or even Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche today cannot, in princi-
ple, want to close his or her eyes to Laozi, Dōgen or Watsuji. Now one could
argue—and here I pick up a thread already mentioned above—that such an
intensive study of thoughts originating from completely different epochs and
cultural areas and written exclusively in languages much more difficult to learn
than English is an idle affair. After all, philosophy, just like all other sciences,
can only be about ahistorical truth, and this is in principle representable in
any language, as long as it is conceptually clearly articulated, and thus translat-
able into the lingua franca of our time. Why, then, should philosophy be sought
elsewhere than in the leading international journals that adhere to the norm
of the Anglophone debate culture of the analytic mainstream? With regard to
the question of interculturality, the question is quickly answered, because in
one form or another, the heroes of the Occident also play a role—albeit often
reduced to the pure systematics of their thoughts—in said philosophical cul-
ture. Jay Garfield therefore writes:
Now, to be sure, there are philosophers who would reject this historicist
reading of our discipline, and who see philosophy as an ahistorical search
for the truth in which contemporary philosophy has no more connection
to its history than does physics. I find this self-understanding very foreign,
although I know many who adopt it. Even on that view, however, to the
extent that one takes the history of Western philosophy to be a legitimate
or an important domain of study for philosophers (and I don’t know any-
body who disputes that) it is, I hope, clear that to restrict that study to
the history of Western philosophy is irresponsible. (Garfield, 2015, p. 321,
fn. 1)
Here, however, it is not merely to argue that the philosophical effort to relate
the thoughts of long-dead thinkers to the debates of the present is subject to the
imperative of intercultural circumspection, but rather the stronger thesis that
progress in philosophy is possible only through dialogue with its past, admit-
tedly now in a world-embracing sense. Ernst Cassirer had already expressed his
displeasure about a “purely systematic” philosophizing in 1929 and one could
think that he already saw the momentous disagreement of continental and
analytic philosophy in the offing when he wrote the following lines:
[F]or the custom, which has once more become popular, of throwing
one’s own thoughts out into empty space as it were, without inquiring
as to their relation and connection to the total labor [Gesamtarbeit] of
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systematic philosophy, has never appeared to me as beneficial or fruitful.

(Cassirer, 2021c, p. 6)
Methodologically, I am concerned in the following with what philosophy can

do and how a philosophical anthropology could be designed, thus about “a close
fusion between [systematic and historical considerations]” (Cassirer, 2021c,
p. 5) in the spirit of Ernst Cassirer. In order to justify this approach, it is not
necessary to refer to Cassirer again, e.g. with the idea of a problem history. In
the background there is the idea, which already came to the breakthrough with
Nietzsche, that the Kantian sharp separation of questions of validity (quid iuris)
and questions of genesis (quid facti) cannot be maintained in an absolute sense
(Endres, 2021b, pp. 121–125). Reasons, discourses and arguments always stand in
a context and have their own historical becoming. This is not to say that the
origin of a thought determines its truth. However, historical conditions, the
constellation of the interlocutors, the choice of method and much more can
point to the conditionality of a line of argumentation and possibly, as a con-
sequence, to its limitations. First of all, this is nothing unusual at all, because
the history of philosophy shows us in retrospect at which points a rethinking
became necessary—and it always will at some point. To put it in a nutshell once
again with Jay Garfield:
While we often take ourselves to be asking abstract questions that arise

from pure, context-free reflection, this is serious false consciousness. Our
philosophical questions emerge from our engagement with our tradition,
and are answered often by judicious revisiting of the insights proffered
by our predecessors. […] Sometimes in order to see that the ideas and
intuitions we take as bedrock are not transcendental facts, it is neces-
sary to follow Nietzsche in a genealogy of our thought, to discover the
historical roots of our thought, and thereby to see the singularity or even
arbitrariness of that we take to be necessary, or to see how our current
arguments recapitulate those of our intellectual forbears. This is why the
discipline of philosophy must contain its own history. Without it, we don’t
even know what we are doing, or why. Our engagement with Buddhist
philosophy is hence not novel in its attention to a tradition in the devel-
opment of a philosophical problematic, but only in its extension of our
purview beyond Europe and its diaspora. (Garfield, 2015, p. 321)
As a crosscurrent to the now won intercultural and historical-systematic claim,

however, the thesis shall now be put forward that there is (apart from possible
problems of the hegemony of discourses, which shall not be further discussed
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here) a factual reason why globally a specific form of philosophy dominates.

My hypothesis is that the problem of naturalism, as it took shape in 19th cen-
tury European philosophy, is a still unsolved problem, not an ideology.5 In the
following, I would like to argue for the idea that only by solving this problem
the divide between continental and analytic philosophy can be overcome and
that only on this ground a framework for an intercultural determination of the
concept of philosophy can be gained at all.
The often invoked specificity of occidental philosophy, that it created the
preconditions for the modern natural sciences, first in Greek antiquity, then
in early modern times, does not necessarily have to lead to the ‘from myth
to logos’ narrative and the well-known metaphysical hypostases based on it.
From the self-conception of Western philosophy, however, it is equally impos-
sible to renounce the claim that philosophy must continue to develop in close
dialogue with, in principle, all other sciences. The transfer of once philosoph-
ical disciplines into the individual sciences during the revolution of the nat-
ural sciences in the 19th century and the steadily increasing scientification of
the entire life world since the 20th century first of all speaks for the cultural
fact that the most important and most urgent resource of philosophical reflec-
tion at present is the technical-scientific world and not, for instance, religion.
In his monumental work on the European constellation of faith and knowl-
edge, Habermas (2020, p. 10) therefore also raised the question of whether
philosophy in its traditional form will have a future at all. He diagnoses that
the scientification of philosophy will bring it to an end as an administrator of
its own history and as a purely concept-analytical auxiliary science (Haber-
mas, 2020, pp. 11–12). This view is, of course, not new. Against this, I would
argue that philosophy can dare more again as soon as the view that the human
mind is not naturalizable prevails. Even if this thesis for the subjective mind
could be represented only with restrictions, it applies nevertheless altogether
to that area, which one can address as objective mind, or simply as culture.
Why the naturalization of the mind necessarily fails cannot and should not
be reconstructed in detail here. Kreis (2010, pp. 257–281) has already convinc-
ingly argued in detail on this view with reference to Cassirer. Before I explain
how to get from the problem of naturalism to anthropology, I would like to
quote Cassirer, who has positioned himself very precisely on the possibility
of a reductive materialism, which is hidden behind almost all common nat-
uralisms, and on the problem that goes along with it for the philosophy of
culture:
5 Cf. Spiegel (2020, p. 69) who holds the opposite.
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[T]here can be no question that we wanted to lift [the cultural objects] out
of the “physical” world as something different, other-worldly, somehow
“transcendent”—they rather have their “existence,” their spatio-temporal
reality merely at these physical things—In order to “be there” for us they
have to “embody” themselves and this “embodiment” is the condition for
their “existence”—In this sense one can rightly carry out the thesis of the
strict “physicalism”: everything that exists at all, exists as a physical object.
(Cassirer, 2004b, p. 67, my translation)
The fact that the natural scientific description of those objects in which an
aesthetic, religious, linguistic, etc. sense is realized, does not coincide with
it, is therefore the main argument why we cannot reduce all those questions
which people ask themselves to questions which can be answered by natu-
ral science. However, the naturalistic challenge is not off the table with this
insight. Rather, the question horizon now shifts from a reductionist scenario to
one that asks about the transition from nature to culture: Against the back-
ground of the natural history of our species and all the knowledge gained
about this in the last 200 years, how is it possible for humans to exist cul-
turally and what does this mean for them? This question was posed by Ernst
Cassirer and in the following I would like to present how Cassirer gains his
anthropological questioning that is central throughout the Davos disputation
against the background of a philosophy of culture that operates on both tran-
scendental and genealogical grounds, which he elaborates between 1923 and
1929 as a philosophy of symbolic forms. It offers points of contact for all those
symbolic dimensions of our cultural existence that are commonly discussed
in cultural studies, without losing sight of our naturalness. Cassirer’s philos-
ophy, so my hypothesis, provides the foundation that is needed to overcome
the currently dominant form of naturalism, scientism. In the following, there-
fore, the standpoint of Cassirer’s anthropology, as already relevant during the
debate with Heidegger, will be recovered in order to then ask, subsequently
and at this point conclusively, how it could be transformed with regard to inter-
culturality. For from the system of symbolic forms it could be shown that, for
example, human rights are not simply a result of scientifically enlightened
thinking, but can only come to a breakthrough in a specific constellation of
the symbolic forms of science, religion, art, morality, custom and technology,
in which none of these forms succeeds in enforcing their claim to absolute-
ness.
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2 Philosophical Anthropology and the Problem of Naturalism
It would be somewhat hasty to equate naturalism simply with materialism,

although that naturalism, as it presents itself to us today as a philosophical
problem, has certainly formed in the historical context of the materialistic
philosophies of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. The Darwinism contro-
versy (Bayertz, Gerhard and Jaeschke, 2012b), which broke out at the end of the
1850s, is immediately preceded by the so-called materialism controversy (Bay-
ertz, Gerhard and Jaeschke, 2012a), and if we cite the third in the group, the
Ignorabimus controversy (Bayertz, Gerhard and Jaeschke, 2012c) triggered by
Emil Du Bois-Reymonds in 1872, we can state that in the 19th century, possibly
as never before in Western culture, there was a dispute about the explanatory
powers of philosophy, religion and the natural sciences, and that the outcome
of these disputes continues to shape the Western world to this day. This out-
come could be abbreviated with Richard Rorty to the simple statement “There
are no ghosts,” (Rorty, 1979, p. 387) in which it is essentially expressed that the
extent of whether man successfully discerns the world and himself lies in the
domination of nature and the “disenchantment of the world” (Weber, 1992,
87). Naturalism understood in this way is essentially equivalent to metaphys-
ical realism in that reality is identified with all that is not dependent on man.
Thereby, the circularity of the assumption that self-pictoriality must not belong
to the self-portrait—for nothing else is any philosophy (Gabriel, 2018; Gabriel,
2020, pp. 46 & 60)—of man is mostly generously overlooked. The problem of
naturalism thus shifts from the impetus of a rationalism of the Enlightenment
to the fabulous success of the scientific method in the 19th century to a one-
sided objectification of all life conditions, which Edmund Husserl (1962, p. 275)
already deplored at the beginning of the 20th century. Historicism, the method-
ological distinction between nomothetic Naturwissenschaften and idiographic
Geisteswissenschaften, the neo-Kantian philosophies of value and of culture
have not been able to prevent that the current view of naturalism is that
what is real is coextensive with the natural world, especially as revealed

by modern, empirical, scientific methods, and that no entity that is not
obviously natural in this sense (for example, values and norms) counts
as real unless it can be explained in terms of natural entities (drives, for
example, or evolutionary advantages). (Bowman, 2020, p. 115)
This view is obviously scientistic, and yet it is often accepted as a consensus

in the present day, albeit with reference to the subtle gradations of reduc-
tionist, eliminativist, and antireductionist programs (Livingston Smith, 2017,
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p. 7). And so, it is not surprising that at present one strives to interpret Cas-
sirer’s philosophy as a radical naturalistic non-reductionism in order to prove
the current relevance of the philosophy of culture for philosophy (Anony-
mous, 2022, pp. 13–15). Such a naturalism would emphasize the objective real-
ity, as it is investigated in the natural sciences as well as in the humanities,
and oppose any philosophy based on intersubjectivity. It is therefore sup-
posed to be the perfect candidate to follow on from the linguistic turn that
has now been overcome (Anonymous, 2022, p. 12). The central role that lan-
guage occupies in Cassirer’s philosophy suggests from the outset that such a
reading would be difficult to justify and would neglect important pieces of the-
ory in the philosophy of symbols. But this is not the point of the following,
but rather the positive proof that Cassirer’s philosophy represents a certain
form of naturalism, which makes it imperative, following the functional deter-
mination of culture as plurality of forms of human expression, to direct the
view to the outline of a philosophical anthropology. Such anthropology must
be able to make the transition from nature to culture plausible in the light
of Darwinism and can therefore justifiably be called naturalistic in a sense
that remains to be defined. It is exactly this challenge that I meant when I
spoke before about the cultural sciences of our time misjudging the prob-
lem of naturalism. They do so by working solely on the consensus meaning
of naturalism, which can easily be seen through as scientism. In what fol-
lows, I will outline the most important aspects of a theorization of the tran-
sition from nature to culture within the framework of Cassirer’s anthropol-
ogy, and then conclude by asking what this means for an intercultural phi-
losophy of culture. The rationale of the main part of the article is thus not
developed against the background of the narrow sense of the Davos disputa-
tion, i.e., of the minutes of Hermann Möhrchen and others of the workgroup
formed by Heidegger and Cassirer, but against the background of the con-
ference theme that set up the disputation—anthropology or the question of
man.
2.1 Cassirer’s Philosophical Anthropology

Cassirer’s preoccupation with philosophical anthropology probably dates back
to 1921, but certainly to 1928, when he elaborated the third, concluding vol-
ume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Endres, 2021a, p. 302). In its preface,
Cassirer announces a follow-up publication that will deal with the problems
of contemporary philosophy in the form of philosophical anthropology and
contemporary philosophy of life. In 1930, an article appears in the Neue Rund-
schau under the title ‘Geist’ und ‘Leben’ in der Philosophie der Gegenwart (‘Spirit’
and ‘Life’ in Contemporary Philosophy), which is dedicated to Max Scheler’s
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philosophy, but does not fulfill the claim to critically establish the connection
of the philosophy of symbols with the philosophy of life and philosophical
anthropology. In the post-war reception, this fact has caused great astonish-
ment. However, at the latest since the publication of the first volume of the
Hamburg edition of the Nachlass in 1995, Cassirer scholars have known that in
the final volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer refers to a long
unknown manuscript completed on April 16, 1928 which is part of the bundle
no. 184 of the Cassirer-Nachlass kept in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library at Yale and bears the title Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen.6
In this there is a first chapter on the subject of Spirit and Life and a second
on the subject of The Problem of Symbols as a Basic Problem of Philosophical
Anthropology. The completion of this manuscript, however, does not suggest
that Cassirer approached the aforementioned topics only with the preparation
of the third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Probably the drafts of
this volume emerged progressively from 1921 on (Cassirer, 1995, p. 295). They
show that with the elaboration of the philosophy of symbols Cassirer gains
for the first time a positive concept of metaphysics, which admittedly cannot
find its realization in an ontology of substance, since Cassirer (2021a, p. xxix)
remains avowedly faithful to the systematic, metaphysics-critical standpoint
from Substance and Function. Instead, the tension between life and spirit must
be explored in anthropological terms.
Exactly in the time between the elaboration of these manuscripts, which
were presumably written between 1921 and 1928, and the publication of the
article on Scheler in 1930, Cassirer (2104, p. 328) gave his Heidegger lecture
on three days—on March 18, 19, and 25, 1929—at the Second Davos University
Conferences under the title Grundprobleme der philosophischen Anthropologie
(Basic Problems of Philosophical Anthropology). Unfortunately, it must first be
stated that the Arbeitsgemeinschaft E. Cassirer und M. Heidegger, which was
organized on March 26 and later called Cassirer-Heidegger debate or Davos
disputation, has long overshadowed the actual topic of the Second Davos Uni-
versity Conferences in Cassirer’s reception: The three-week event centered on
the Kantian question, “What is man?” Heidegger published his answer to this as
late as 1929 in the publication Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics), which is based on his (also three) lecture manu-
scripts from Davos. As far as Cassirer’s view of the anthropological question is
concerned, research was for a long time exclusively referred to the minutes of
the Cassirer-Heidegger debate, which were prepared by Heidegger’s students
6 This was first pointed out in Werle (1988).
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Hermann Mörchen, Helene Weiss, and Otto Friedrich Bollnow, as well as Cas-
sirer’s assistant, Joachim Ritter, and first appeared in 1973 in the third volume of
the Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe. A revised version was published in 2014 as vol-
ume 17 of the Cassirer-Nachlass. It contains in particular Heidegger’s reproach
to Cassirer that The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms only focuses on the terminus
ad quem, but not on the terminus a quo of human existence. Cassirer, how-
ever, anticipates this objection in the above-mentioned Heidegger lecture from
Davos, in which he not only seeks an answer to Heidegger’s Being and Time,
but also explores the terrain of that philosophical anthropology on which he
has been working for some time. The fact that Heidegger is still considered the
acknowledged “winner” (Cassirer, 2003, p. 188) of the Davos disputation can,
from a longer historical perspective of reception, no longer be attributed to the
perception of the young students present in Davos. Those—according to the
classic reception—saw Cassirer as a dusty traditionalist and idealist (Gründer,
1988, pp. 300–301). From today’s perspective, the condition for this narrative to
prevail owes more to the fact that Cassirer did not want to comply with Erich
Rothacker’s request to publish his lecture manuscripts because he considered
their elaboration unfinished (Cassirer, 2014, pp. 334–335).7 Before publishing it,
he first wanted to deepen the path he had taken. At the latest since the publi-
cation of this Heidegger lecture in the aforementioned volume 17 of Cassirer’s
Nachlass, we know that its contents largely overlap with the basic anthropo-
logical problem of the aforementioned Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. It can
therefore be stated that Cassirer anticipates Heidegger’s critique raised during
the Davos disputation already in the context of the elaboration of The Philos-
ophy of Symbolic Forms and therefore works on putting a metaphysical basis
in the sense of a philosophical anthropology at the side of the phenomeno-
logical analysis of the forms of spirit. But what can this mean? To derive the
terminus a quo, here: the nature of man, from the terminus ad quem, here:
the forms of mind, does not seem to be a viable path within symbol philoso-
phy, since this would amount to an essentialist idealism, which Cassirer (1996,
7 This historical fact should be disseminated at the latest now, after publication of volume 17
of the Nachlass, in order not to perpetuate the legend of the winner of Davos. Esther Oluffa
Pedersen, who approaches this problem of reception history on a metaphilosophical level,
provides further arguments in this volume to put a stop to the reproduction of this legend.
One of her key-arguments is that we should drop the idea of a winner altogether, because it
rests on a problematic “school concept” of philosophy and thus cannot account for a global
or, to speak with Kant, “world concept” of philosophy: “The interpretive strategy which calls
a winner of a philosophical debate depends on the school concept of philosophy as its main
attraction to fortify a school of philosophy.” (‘The Davos Debate, Pure Philosophy and Nor-
mativity: Thinking from the Perspective of the History of Philosophy’, p. 87 in this volume).
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pp. 14–15) would have to reject as a metaphysical hypostasis according to all

the presuppositions of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. So, what is Cassirer’s
early engagement with anthropology about?
In this sense, relating the analyses from The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
back to an anthropological question is a metaphysics of symbolic forms inso-
far as it attempts to outline human existence in a field of tension between life
and spirit. Cassirer understands such a form of metaphysics as a synthesis of
the preceding analyses of the objective expressive forms (the symbolic forms),
which is to fall under the concept of life and that of a living subjectivity:
But now, after these particular directions have been sorted out, after phe-
nomenological analysis has sought to bring out the basic forms of linguis-
tic, mythic, and scientific thought, the need for synthesis seems to exert
its demand on us all the more urgently and insistently. (Cassirer, 1996, p. 5)
This positive turn of the concept of a metaphysics stands in sharp contrast to

the concept of metaphysics as ontology (metaphysica generalis), which Cassirer
always rejected and which Heidegger also considers at least in need of justifica-
tion. For, according to Cassirer, every ontology leads to the attempt to translate
all relations of sense into real relations of being. Thus, it is essentially based
on the mistake to subordinate the concept of form to the concept of thing and
the causal concept instead of proceeding vice versa according to the critical
method (Cassirer, 2021c, pp. 115–116).
The result of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms was that the theoretical
worldview is essentially split into (1) a general form of perception as expressed
in myth, (2) a general form of intuition constructed by means of language, and
(3) a general form of cognition as constructed by science in its symbol systems
(Cassirer, 1996, pp. 4–5 and p. 22). This transformation of the Kantian a priori of
cognition into a pluralism of basic types of understanding the world does not
aim at a rigid consideration of the existence of symbolic forms, but asks for the
dynamics of their sense-making. Cassirer describes this dynamic as a dialec-
tical process from the perceived via the intuited to the abstract, i.e. to pure
thinking (Cassirer, 2021a, p. 279; Cassirer, 2021c, pp. 45 & 65), which takes place
at three basic types of symbolic functionality: at the expressive function, the
representational function and the signifying function (Cassirer, 1996, pp. 5–6).8
It is not necessary to go into the technicalities of Cassirer’s functional thinking
8 This tripartite schema, known from the third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
also here plays a role that cannot be suspended.
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in more detail at this point, since his concern in the question of anthropology
is not the analysis but the synthesis of these functions of meaning. We achieve
such a situation if we understand the “natural world-picture” (Cassirer, 1996,
p. 5) lying before the abstract separation of reflection as a unified layer of expe-
rience, in which the symbolic functions of expression, representation, and pure
meaning are effective but not yet reflexively known. This unity is “the creative
subjectivity itself” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 7). Instead of examining the dialectics of
the separation, the unfolding of the opposites, as it shows itself most sharply in
the world views of myth, religion, art, technology and science, it is now neces-
sary to take the “act of breaking away from the simple basis of nature and life”
(ibid.) into the focus of the investigation.
Against this background, Cassirer’s criticism of the contemporary philoso-
phy of his time is primarily directed at philosophical anthropology and the
philosophy of life as its precursors. According to Cassirer, both are concerned
with an essential problem: The opposition of spirit and life, already diagnosed
in the philosophy of life, can only exist as a logical paradox, because it desig-
nates this tension only from one side, namely from that of life. For example,
when Simmel speaks of the transcendence of life, that is, that transcendence
is immanent to life, then, according to Cassirer, culture is unilaterally thought
of as immanent to the life process, which is why it cannot really be objectively
opposed to life. From this Cassirer derives a contradiction: According to Sim-
mel, life demands to be form as spiritual life and at the same time more than
this living form, namely pure life (Cassirer, 1996, pp. 10–11). Cassirer’s central
argument against this idea is that the thought of a pure life—just like that of
a pure form—generates an inner contradiction (Cassirer, 1996, p. 15). Instead,
life and form are to be thought of as correlation in the sense of Paul Natorp. The
form is that shaping which the spiritual life gives itself. From this point of view,
they are not real oppositions, as Cassirer assumes in Simmel,9 among others,
but functions of the living becoming of form. The metaphysics of symbolic forms
thus determines the living becoming of culture as a pendulum game of forma
formans and forma formata (Cassirer, 1996, p. 19). Anthropology, therefore, is to
conceive of spiritual life as showing itself in symbolic forms as “Will to Forma-
tion” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 28). Any negation of form, on the other hand, amounts to
a performative self-contradiction, for it “must make use of the intellect’s admin-
istration of judgements, which it rejects, and in doing so it indirectly accepts
the use of judgement” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 31).
9 How valid such a reading of Simmel (1999, pp. 209–425) is would have to be examined again
specifically.
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This critique of contemporary philosophy in Cassirer’s times is followed by

a section that now focuses on the newly posed problem of a philosophical
anthropology in a positive sense. Cassirer prefaces his thoughts with the fact
that his philosophical anthropology is to be understood as part of a critical
philosophy starting from Kant and in no way stands outside of it (Cassirer,
1996, p. 34). The determination of a being of man understood in the func-
tional sense, the Janus face of spirit and life, can—here Cassirer becomes very
clear—consequently “come only from a philosophy of ‘symbolic forms’ ” (Cas-
sirer, 1996, p. 38).
But how exactly should a synthesis “on the part of” The Philosophy of Sym-
bolic Forms look like? The will to form cannot be determined genealogically
in the sense of a hard naturalism or ontologically in the sense of a metaphys-
ica generalis, which has already been pointed out. Nevertheless, the naturalistic
turn, which anthropology experienced through Charles R. Darwin, can also not
be completely lost sight of. Especially Darwin’s writing The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals provides important insights for anthropology,
which make the proof of the continuity of species fruitful for the philosophy
of symbols. Thus, for example, it can be shown that the expressive function
is a sublimation of acts of life, in which also higher animals participate. The
clenched fist as expression of the threat is e.g., an inward, into the spiritual,
turned act of the attack. Mental content is interwoven with vital acts through-
out. This approach allows Cassirer (2021a, pp. 39, 126, 139)—unlike Kant’s strict
opposition of quid facti and quid iuiris—to reconstruct the realm of validity
genealogically without committing a category mistake. Human activity only
slowly detaches itself from its basis of life by confronting practice with the the-
oretical intuition, which, according to Cassirer (1996, pp. 40–41), is particularly
evident in technology. Viewed superficially technology seems to be traceable
to a useful action, but it is one of those symbolic forms with which the “self-
liberation of the mind” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 41) begins. In the tool an indirect
reference to the object has arisen, man beholds the object of desire in a refrac-
tive medium, for the tool in the sophisticated sense arises only where man has
become capable of grasping a possible object in a planning way (Cassirer, 1996,
p. 41). This awareness of the tool shows itself particularly succinctly—and in
this, humans differ from animals that use tools—in that humans worship it
mythically: it is not only used, but regarded as a spiritual force.10 This theoret-
ical view ultimately leads to the idea that what Jakob von Uexküll called the
10 A critique of the fetishization of modern tools like the smartphone could start with this
thought.
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closedness of the functional circuits in the animal kingdom—i.e. of receptor

system and effector system—is successively loosened in the actions of humans.
With this break, man is at the same time as if expelled from the ‘paradise’
of organic existence, for he no longer arranges the objects of his world only
according to what they do for him, but also according to what they mean to
him.11 According to Cassirer, Kant’s disinterested pleasure (of the aesthetic
judgement) applies in this sense to every kind of intuiting and forming, to every
“creation and grasping of worlds of form and of values in these worlds” (Cas-
sirer, 1996, pp. 45–46). The most concise definition of man for Cassirer in 1928 is
therefore: Homo capax est formae; man is capable of producing forms or simply
“capable of form” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 46).12
11 John Maraldo, whom I am very grateful for extended discussions about the nature-culture-
complex and the related subjects, pointed me to the fact that theorists like Bruno Latour,
Philippe Descola, and Donna Haraway argue that the old nature-versus-culture distinc-
tion is obsolete from which it does not necessarily follow that the concept of culture has
to be dropped altogether. New concepts, such as natureculture, might grasp the thought
that culture is tied to nature and not only radically opposed to it and that some ani-
mals have culture. Still, such writing invites more radical theorists to argue that there
is no specific difference between human culture and animal culture at all. According to
for example Carl Safina it is plainly clear that “[w]hales have whale culture” and that
“[e]lephants have elephant culture” and that therefore it is “obvious that other animals
don’t have human culture.” (Safina, 2020, p. 72f.) I conclude from this that natureculture
does not resolve the problem at stake, i.e., the question how and to what extent nature
becomes culture, because it waters down the concept of culture. The specificity that Cas-
sirer sees in human tool use and the more general claim that in human culture objects are
also arranged according to meaning, not only to use, cannot be grasped in such a way.
12 Literally, the passage from the Nachlass reads: “The simplest and most praegnant defini-
tion that a philosophically oriented ‘anthropology’ is capable of giving for mankind would
therefore perhaps be that mankind is ‘capable of form’. Capaso formae: this is how, borrow-
ing a scholastic term, mankind can be briefly and sharply defined.” (Ibid.) ‘Capaso formae’
is likely to be a transcription error of the Nachlass-edition, which has been overlooked in
Cassirer research so far. I have checked the archives at Yale and the manuscript, although
one could read ‘Capaso formae’, shows a cursory written ‘x’ instead of ‘so’. Still, it is notice-
able that Cassirer put a squiggly line under the entire term ‘capax formae’. The context
anthropology and Cassirer’s reference to a variation (the German text reads in Abwand-
lung eines) of a scholastic term lead me to the assumption that Cassirer alludes here to
the Christian doctrine of a ‘God ability’ (Capax Dei). Cf. Thomas Aquinas: Summa The-
ologiae, i.ii, 113, 10 c: “[…] naturaliter anima est gratiae capax: eo enim ipso quod facta
est ad imaginem Dei, capax est Dei per gratiam, ut Augustinus dicit.” (“[…] naturally the
soul is susceptible to grace: for by the very fact that it is created in the image of God, it is
susceptible to God through grace, as Augustine says.”). Cf. further Augustine of Hippo:
De Trinitate xiv, 8: pl 42, 1044: “[…] eam [mens] etsi amissa Dei participatione obsole-
tam atque deformem, Dei tamen imaginem permanere. Eo quippe ipso imago ejus est
quo ejus capax est, ejusque particeps esse potest[.]” (“[…] although the spirit is rejected
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The task of a synthesis to follow the analysis of the symbolic forms can now
be formulated more precisely. The reconstruction of the objective constituent
of mind as a totality of the forms of objectivity must be correlatively related to
the modes of subjective experience. Herein lies the methodological task of an
anthropology in critical terms. In Kantian terms, the subjective and the objec-
tive deduction must not only be separated from each other, but subsequently
linked again. Anthropology should determine the world of man, but neither as
metaphysics of life nor as exaltation of the spirit. It is to determine the “main
focus” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 60), the common center of life and spirit. Dasein—
to use a term of Heidegger—is consequently only apparently dualistic:13 As
spiritual life, life has become objective to itself, but it has not lost itself with
it, but has—now with Hegel—experienced a turn from in-itself to for-itself.
The objective shaping of the world by culture, the transition from being-in-
the-world to presenting and representing the world is a mode of consciousness
peculiar to man.14 The latter establishes a counter-world of signs in the imme-
diate, which is why man’s access to the ‘paradise of immediacy’ is barred from
the very beginning.15 However, the immediate has not disappeared with the
world of signs, but—speaking again with Hegel—has been sublated.16
This basic thesis of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is to be confirmed by
a critically founded anthropology, which is in agreement with the results of
and deformed after the loss of the participation in God, it remains nevertheless image of
God. By this very fact he is God’s image, that he is receptive to him and can participate in
him[.]”).
13 This, of course, does not mean that Heidegger’s concept of Dasein is dualistic, since, as is
well known, he aims at overcoming Cartesian dualism.
14 It is also not assumed that Heidegger’s Dasein does not know any forms of presenting and
representing. These are certainly implied in the concept of being-in-the-world. Cassirer’s
symbolic forms, in turn, may give the impression of being located in an unspecified space
(at least this is how one might read Heidegger’s terminus a quo-critique). Cassirer (2021a,
p. 9), however, points out to his readers that these are based on a concrete action of man.
It should therefore be noted at this point that both thinkers have both a pragmatic and
a theoretical level in view. They merely set different accents, but are closer to each other
factually than is often assumed.
15 Cassirer (2021a, p. 48; 2021c, p. 45) repeatedly uses this idea in relation to Kleist’s On
the Marionette Theatre. Going beyond Cassirer and Kleist, this thought could also be pro-
ductively reinterpreted: Actually, humans live in paradise, for they live in a certain sense,
after all, in immediacy. This is merely no longer recognizable as paradise through the lens
of culture. The littering of the world with greenhouse gases, plastic, etc. would therefore
already be preceded by a ‘symbolic Fall of Man’ constitutive of the human form of life. It
would therefore be an aspect of human freedom in which way man creates culture and
whether the paradisiacal can still shine through in it or not.
16 On the scope and limits of Hegelian Cassirer-readings see Endres (2022).
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the individual sciences. Only in this way, according to Cassirer, a philosophical

anthropology could be carried out as a determination of the essence of man,
and in this respect, Cassirer (1996, p. 62) sees himself in agreement with con-
temporary anthropology.
2.2 The Birth of a Critical Naturalism from the Spirit of Darwinism

In the previous section it was already mentioned that Cassirer identifies in
Darwinism a piece of teaching that is fruitful for the philosophy of symbols
and appropriates it in the context of his anthropology. This is the analysis of
emotional expressive gestures, which, according to Cassirer, goes far beyond
“Darwin’s biological framing of the problem” (Cassirer, 2021a, p. 126). In The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Darwin interprets the
affect expression of anger, as already stated, as an attenuated attack movement.
The sensual drive emerges from the immediacy of life and undergoes a turn-
ing back inward, awakening a first form of consciousness. Cassirer appropriates
this idea as follows:
In this sense, the reaction contained in the expressive movement pre-

pares the way for a higher stage [Stufe] of action. As the action [Aktion]
withdraws, as it were, from the immediate form of effective action [Wir-
ken], it acquires a new room to move [Spielraum] and a new freedom;
it is, therefore, already in transition from the merely “pragmatic” to the
“theoretical,” from physical to ideal doing. (Cassirer, 2021a, p. 126)
The bodily expression of anger still contains the physical reaction as an expres-
sive movement, but by withdrawing from the immediate stimulus-reaction
event, a higher spiritual form of expression is already prepared here. A refer-
ence to this doctrine can be found in almost all of Cassirer’s larger works since
the development of the anthropological question: In the first volume of The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Cassirer derives speech from expressive move-
ments and introduces for the first time the scheme ‘Mimetic, Analogical and
Symbolic Expression’, which exemplifies in a dialectical manner the diremp-
tion (Hegel) of life and spirit in the phenomenon of speech. The idea of this
construction is best outlined from a transcendental-genetic perspective on the
divisiveness of life and form:
Indeed, a continuous transition thus seems to lead genetically and actu-

ally from “grasping” [Greifen] to “comprehending” [Begreifen]. Sensate-
physical grasping becomes sensual interpretation [sinnliches Deuten, my
addition]—however, the latter already contains the first approach toward
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148 endres
the higher functions of signification as they emerge in language and

thinking. In order to measure the extreme range of this opposition, we
might say that the sensible extreme of mere “showing” [Weisen] stands
over against the logical extreme of “demonstration” [Beweisen]. (Cassirer,
2021a, p. 128)
Cassirer wants to show that there is a natural transition from the active ori-
entation of living organisms in their environment to the genealogically seen
first formation of sense: A stimulus-response event transforms naturally into
expressive movements and these in turn into the phenomenon of language. In
the second volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1925) Cassirer char-
acterizes the transition from the subjectivity of life to the objectivity of form
for the first time explicitly, but not yet terminologically, as a natural transition
from bodily expressive movements and their perception to mental forms of
expression, which is why it is manifest that Cassirer, in the sense of a minimal
naturalism,17 assumes that human consciousness sees the light of day in the
transition of an interplay of impression and expression. Cassirer characterizes
such a natural transition as follows:
To the factual world [Sachewelt] [sic: read Sachwelt] that envelops and
dominates it, spirit opposes an independent image-world—the active
force [Kraft] of “expression” ever more clearly and consciously opposes
the power [Macht] of “impression.” This creation, however, does not yet
bear the character of a free spiritual act; rather, it has a character of natu-
ral necessity, the character of a determinate psychological “mechanism.”
(Cassirer, 2021b, p. 27)
How such a shift from a ‘mechanism’ to a free act becomes possible, Cassirer
then summarizes in his later works in the terminological specification of pas-
sive and active expression. The pair of terms “passive expression” and “active
expression” is found for the first time in the five-part treatise The Logic of the
Cultural Sciences and stands here in the same context to Darwin as the phase
of mimetic expression discussed in the volume on language. Here, in a second
study entitled The Perception of Things and the Perception of Expression, Cas-
sirer again draws on Darwin’s study of expressive movements to conceptually
specify the transition from natural behavior to human productive action:
17 What I call ‘minimal naturalism’ at this point is what the first translator of The Logic of
the Humanities (original translation), Clarence Smith Howe, calls in the preface to his
translation a “consistent idealistic naturalism” (Cassirer, 1961, p. x).
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We must have recourse to still another argument; within what we term

expression we must distinguish two diverse factors. There is “expression
of emotion” even in the animal world. Charles Darwin has studied and
described it minutely in one of his works. Still, all that we are able to
establish with respect to it is and remains passive expression. But in
the province of human existence and human culture we immediately
encounter something new. For, diverse as they are from one another, all
culture-forms are active expression-forms. They are not mere reactions-
like blushing, frowning, or doubling of the fist-but genuine actions. (Cas-
sirer, 1961, p. 110)
According to this idea, the language of animals, if one wants to speak of it,
falls exclusively under what Cassirer calls passive expression. The gestural com-
munication of higher creatures is clearly characterized by the phenomenon
of expression. It can be described without much ado as a meaningful and
conscious phenomenon, but it too remains within the framework of passive
expression in the sense that animals do not create symbols or, if they can learn
and use symbols, they hardly create any new ones.18 The birth of form begins
with the change from passive to active expression. Cassirer’s anthropological
problem, how life becomes capable of form, can thus be conceptually grasped
in the phenomenon of expression, which, like the phenomenon of life, con-
stitutes an original phenomenon for Cassirer. Cassirer repeatedly brought the
distinction between passive and active expression to bear in other places in
his later work. The third study from The Logic of the Cultural Sciences of 1942,
entitled Concepts of Nature and Concepts of Culture, introduces the difference
between passive and active expression in the context of the intersubjectivity
of the cultural world. The problem Cassirer (1961, p. 142) faces here is that the
intersubjectively constituted “thing-world” of the natural sciences is objective
to the highest degree, but at this price also “inherently soulless.” Culture as a
whole, as well as the expressive phenomenon in particular, have no place in
18 On a related note, John Maraldo pointed me to the work of Marjolein Oele (2020) who
shows that affectivity throughout human, animal and plant life is an active ability to be
receptive—a thought that seems inspired from the enactive approach in perception the-
ory. John and I have come to agree that Cassirer’s terminology should and can be updated
in light of current research. For instance, have I already opted elsewhere (Endres, 2024)
for translating objective mind with extended mind and it seems to me that the same is
possible for the distinction active vs. passive expression or propositional vs. emotional
language—as long as the philosophical question as of the emergence of culture and the
specific differences I insist on are not lost sight of.
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150 endres
this world. But since the scientific worldview is part of culture—and not vice
versa—the cultural world must also be intersubjectively constituted:
But this participation is radically different from that in the physical world.
Instead of relating themselves to the selfsame spacio-temporal cosmos
of things, they find and relate themselves within the medium of the var-
ious worlds of form out of which culture comes into being. Here, too,
perception must take that first and decisive step—here, too, it is the pas-
sage from the “I” to the “you.” But passive experience of expression is as
inadequate here as mere feeling, simple “impression,” is for knowledge of
objects. This genuine “synthesis” is first realized in that active exchange
which we encounter directly in every verbal [act of imparting] “informa-
tion.” The constancy required for this is not that of properties or laws, but
of meanings. (Cassirer, 1961, p. 143)
Language is here the instance which helps a constancy of meanings to break

through. But Cassirer also makes it very clear that active expression begins
much earlier, namely in the phenomenon of perception. According to this doc-
trine, man is familiar with other minds through the perception of expression,
which is already the subject of the study The Perception of Things and the Per-
ception of Expression. However, these topics are already addressed in the third
volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. This bridge between living indi-
viduals is, according to Cassirer, a prerequisite for common action and for the
construction of the intersubjective world of culture.
What Cassirer takes as a whole under passive expression, he had also let fall
under the concept of a ‘natural’ symbolism in the first volume of The Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms. We can identify in this another indication of how Cassirer
theorizes the transition from nature to culture, which is a central question of
philosophical anthropology. Strangely enough, this conceptualization does not
sound any other time in Cassirer’s work and Nachlass. However, the late work
gives the reader some important hints that natural symbolism can be equated
with passive expression (Endres, 2020, pp. 163–186). Thus, Cassirer writes in An
Essay on Man:
The most elementary human utterances do not refer to physical things

nor are they merely arbitrary signs. […] They are ‘natural’, not ‘artificial’;
but they bear no relation to the nature of external objects. They do not
depend upon mere convention, upon custom or habit; they are much
more deeply rooted. They are involuntary expressions of human feelings,
interjections and ejaculations. […] Violent outcries—of fear, of rage, of
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pain or joy—are not a specific property of man. We find them everywhere

in the animal world. (Cassirer, 2006, pp. 125–126)
Humans and animals share the natural aptitude of expression in the form of an
emotional language, which on the one hand reveals subjective needs and on the
other hand prepares the intersubjective world via the understanding of other
minds. What distinguishes humans from animals, however, is that already this
emotional language is not entirely passive, but already in large parts actively
formed expression. From here on, those types of generality emerge in increas-
ing complexity, as they are peculiar to man, for example, as the ability of propo-
sitional language.
These central anthropological considerations are mentioned once again in
Cassirer’s last work, The Myth of the State (1946), which was completed during
his lifetime but only published posthumously. Here he emphasizes once again
that even the emotional basis of man, which is examined here in the interac-
tion with technically fabricated myths, is for the most part already symbolically
structured:
Here we grasp one of the most essential elements of myth. Myth does
not arise solely from intellectual processes; it sprouts forth from deep
human emotions. Yet on the other hand all those theories that exclu-
sively stress the emotional element fail to see an essential point. Myth
cannot be described as bare emotion because it is the expression of emo-
tion. The expression of a feeling is not the feeling itself—it is emotion
turned into an image. This very fact implies a radical change. What hith-
erto was dimly and vaguely felt assumes a definite shape; what was a pas-
sive state becomes an active process. To understand this transformation it
is necessary to make a sharp distinction between two types of expression:
between physical and symbolic expressions. (Cassirer, 2007, pp. 45–46)
This passage ultimately also makes it clear why Cassirer spoke of ‘natural’ sym-
bolism (in inverted commas) in the first volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms and not of the fact that man lives naturally, i.e., in the sense of a second
nature, in the symbolic. The symbolic in the anthropologically significant sense
encompasses all spheres of human expression, for these symbols are active
expression. Animals, on the other hand, do use some kind of symbolism—
Cassirer, for example, identifies the behavior of even lower organisms with
the ability to discriminate and individuate—19 but from the dance of bees to
19 “They would not be able to survive if they could not discriminate, in their behavior,
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the sign language of apes, no animal reaches the human symbolic. Their lan-
guage remains passive expression and thus attached to ‘natural’ symbolism as
an expression of pure affect language. With humans, on the other hand, an
“independent mode of configuration emerges, a specific activity of conscious-
ness, which is differentiated from the givenness of all immediate sensation and
perception, but which makes use of this very givenness itself as a vehicle, as a
means of expression” (Cassirer, 2021a, p. 39). In addition to the concept of form,
the concept of expression constitutes a second central motif in answering the
question of what makes human beings human, for through it the difficult-to-
theorize transition from nature to culture can be marked and the separation of
life and form can be conceptually caught up with.20
between what is advantageous and disadvantageous, beneficial or harmful.” (Cassirer,

2007, pp. 45–46).
20 Cassirer’s differentiation between passive and active modes of expression was recon-
structed in this section as the fulcrum of a transition from nature to culture. From the
perspective of cultural anthropology, such a maneuver has become at least questionable
at present. It has already been emphasized that it is currently in vogue among anthro-
pologists and ethnologists to reject the old nature-culture distinction. At the conference
Kyoto in Davos, John Maraldo and I discussed these challenges, particularly from the per-
spective of communication between humans and animals. In particular, Cassirer’s view
that animals are also capable of symbolic expression was the subject of our agreement,
but also of our dissent. I would like to summarize the dissent here by recourse to Mar-
aldo’s article “Humans and other Animals: The Forgotten Other Beyond Davos and Kyoto”
and formulate some queries. (1) On p. 99, Maraldo tentatively formulates his later
conclusion “Humans are not simply animals, but (other) animals are not simply lesser
humans, either.” In the view that humans are not simply animals, we certainly agree (and
so also with Cassirer). However, I do not see yet, why from the statement of an anthro-
pological difference the value judgment should follow that animals are lesser or inferior
humans. The implicit hierarchy revealed by the thesis of anthropological difference is
merely related to the standpoint of a cognizing being. However, Maraldo hints at the
idea of a value judgement when he writes on p. 97: “The great thinkers of Davos and
Kyoto have ostensibly marginalized our animality if not entirely forgotten it, and as a con-
sequence they have alienated us from other animals and formulated their philosophies
out of such alienation.” Nevertheless, the claimed marginalization does not yet neces-
sarily follow from the hypothesis of an anthropological difference and thus not that of
an alienation. Cassirer highlights the crucial difference between human language and
animal communication, and so implicitly also between human culture and what some
ethologists now call culture in the animal kingdom, through the concept of represen-
tation, which Maraldo takes up on p. 98. For Cassirer, however, representation is only
another term for “symbol” and his thesis was that animals only participate in the passive-
symbolic, consequently they do not penetrate into the actual-representational dimension
of the symbol. Such a hypothesis is not simply outdated from my point of view, because
for this it would have to be shown empirically that there are non-human animals that can
master language in the sense of representational objectivation, that can e.g., communi-
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3 From Critical Anthropology Forward to an Intercultural

Philosophy of Culture
Two things have been shown so far: (1) that in systematic terms philosophy
must understand itself interculturally according to its universalistic self-expec-
tation, and (2) that in historical retrospect only that philosophical anthropol-
cate facts or otherwise prove fallibility or can deal with the idea of truth and falsity. To my
knowledge, such evidence has not been produced to date, and Maraldo’s reference to syn-
tactic ability in animals, which he cites on p. 112 with reference to Linda Hogan, undercuts
the important distinction that animals—to current knowledge—do not know generative
syntax (Zuberbühler, 2019, p. 7). In a follow-up discussion (personal communication,
November 2022), John Maraldo and I came to the agreement that the recursion-paradigm
that comes to the fore in the demand for generative syntax might be under pressure
if further research unveils that animals prove to have semantics by compositional syn-
tax, defined along the lines of context-sensitivity, response to signals and combination
of signals (Suzuki, Wheatcroft and Griesser, 2019, p. 3). Some researchers like Con
Slobodchikoff (2012), though being a minority, since long claim that certain animals
like prairie dogs (cf. Slobodchikoff, Perla and Verdolin, 2009) have semantics and
actually do talk. If the scientific community found it to be true that certain animals do
exchange statements like ‘There’s a tall predator with white fur arriving from south’ there
might still be room, the way I see it, to uphold a distinction between animal and human
language. Since Cassirer’s claim that symbolic representation by active expression essen-
tially opens a space of infinite possibilities of thought it would need to be shown that
animals master negation, counterfactual statements, fictional talk and alike. Though John
Maraldo also pointed me to the fact that some cephalopods are capable of intentional
deception (Brown, Garwood and Williamson, 2012), I would still stress the point
that such behavior is not articulated use of statements with false or no truth-value. Evo-
lutionary continuity, not just for species, but thereby also for language does not rule out
qualitative leaps between humans and other animals. (2) Another objection concerns the
problem of anthropocentrism that is in the background of Maraldo’s article (cf. p. 94).
Heidegger (1988, pp. 282–285) commented on the problem of anthropocentrism against
the background of Schelling’s treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom. He takes seri-
ously the charge of anthropocentrism as a philosophical problem and responds with seven
counter-questions. Heidegger’s point, as I read the counter-questions, is that from the
statement that it is (exclusively) the human being who asks and cognizes, it precisely does
not follow that cognizing in itself is a form of humanization, since being able to ask implies
having already left the purely human standpoint and being objectively related to the
world. Cf. also p. 231–232 & p. 238 of Rossella Lupacchini’s Article “Cassirer and Nishida:
Mathematical Crosscurrents in their Philosophical Paths” in this volume about the posi-
tive function of anthropocentrism and Nishida’s idea of the “knower as the form of forms.”
(3) With these considerations in mind, I now come to the crucial question of whether
Maraldo’s arguments for a point of view that sincerely recognizes the power imbalance
between humans and animals (and between dominant and oppressed cultures) really
achieve their goal and provide true equality between the parties involved. One could
equally argue that the blurring of the anthropological difference (transferred to cultures:
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154 endres
ogy which understands human being as a form-constructing being provides

those resources with which the transition from nature to culture can be the-
orized in a critical way and the problem of naturalism can be given a right
beyond scientistic constrictions. Because this anthropology is based on a phi-
losophy of culture, it is assumed in the following that the spelling out of the
latter according to intercultural standards does not only give the concept of
philosophy a contemporary universalistic framework, but also that of philo-
sophical anthropology, whereby Cassirer’s philosophy would be fully taken into
account. Such a project can, of course, only be roughly outlined at this point
and set on its way according to the idea. In conclusion, let us ask what modifi-
cations Cassirer’s philosophy of culture would have to undergo in order to meet
the demands of an intercultural philosophy.
So far, Cassirer’s philosophy of culture has been most comprehensively
examined by Raji Steineck and Jens Heise in terms of intercultural claims and
confronted with extra-European sources. Steineck clearly emphasized here, on
the one hand, that Cassirer’s theory of culture carries insofar as it recognizes
the “plurality of normative systems” (Steineck, 2014, p. 128, my translation) and
thus the unity of culture in the sense of a “complex unity” (ibid.) as irreducibil-
ity of cultures, but at the same time called for an essential correction to the
architectonics of symbolic forms. This would consist in abandoning the idea of
development in Cassirer’s system, since this perpetuates the well-known nar-
rative from myth to logos and ultimately amounts to a hierarchization, within
which science and technology are at the top, myth and religion at the bottom.
Heise (2003, p. 101, my translation) also criticizes Cassirer’s model of develop-
ment, which he locates not far from an “evolutionary model that measures the
history of the species as a progress of rationality along the lines of the math-
ematical natural sciences.” The idea that for Cassirer the irreducibility of all
cultural forms is in contradiction to a development from symbols, which still
carry the full face of sensuality, to purely abstract signs, is not new. Already in
1948 Wilfrid Sellars pointed out an “extreme initial implausibility” (Sellars, 1948,
the difference of dominant and dominated culture) is the opposite of recognition, pre-
cisely by obscuring an existing power imbalance. In the same discussion mentioned above
the question came up whether distinguishing systematically two power differentials, that
between humans and animals and that between dominant and oppressed peoples, might
lead to a more critical stance. I agree to this suggestion when it comes to spelling out the
relations of dominance in question in more detail. Nevertheless, I am not optimistic about
the idea that the recognition of a Gleichwertigkeit between humans and animals, as Mar-
aldo suggests, will lead to less oppression of, e.g., ‘native’ peoples, because their oppression
is based, in my opinion, more on a lack of recognition as a political subject than on the
rejection of their supposedly mythical world views as metaphysical.
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p. 327), not, however, with reference to the idea of development, but that of the
coequality of language, science, and myth.21 In Friedman (2000, pp. 129 & 134),
the idea of development is taken to be a burdensome legacy of Hegel’s teleology
of freedom and described for the first time as a conflict with the idea of auton-
omy of symbolic forms (Friedman, 2000, p. 124). Similarly to Sellars, this tension
results in a contradiction, since, according to Friedman (2000, p. 126), Cassirer
cannot explain how different forms of objectivity, e.g., the objectivity claim of
religion in contrast to the objectivity claim of modern biology, can be related at
all, if one assumes that only mathematical physics can claim objectivity in the
strictest and most developed sense. Friedman considers this set of problems
“radically unclear” (Friedman, 2000, p. 144) and ultimately unsolvable in Cas-
sirer’s philosophy. In Cassirer-research, Friedman’s diagnosis has led to spur of
having to resolve this supposed contradiction. Thus, Sebastian Luft has pointed
out with good reason that Cassirer does not exclusively assume a rivalry and
tension between the claims to validity of the different symbolic forms, but sees
them as complementing each other, thus describing the standpoint of symbolic
philosophy as a complementarism (Luft, 2015, pp. 14, 166–168, 178, 210). Moss
(2014, p. 13) strikes a very similar note when he describes the tension between
the autonomy of symbolic forms and their simultaneous development through
the conceptual pair of horizontalism and verticalism, resolving their contradic-
tion through a modal change in the dialectical claim of development from myth
to more self-conscious forms of culture. Accordingly, more advanced forms of
culture do not appear necessarily, but by chance (Moss, 2014, p. 14).
Other attempts to deal with this supposedly central problem in Cassirer’s
philosophy of culture could be adduced,22 which, however, shall no longer be
done at this point. I would only like to point out that Krois (1987, pp. 135–138)
already related Friedman’s problem to the concept of truth and to the problem
of a relativistic pluralism in the sense of Paul Feyerabend (Krois, 1987, p. 141).
Unlike Luft and Moss, Krois is not concerned with introducing new terminol-
ogy to solve a problem that Cassirer supposedly did not see himself, but points
to Cassirer’s little-noticed Rectorate speech (Krois, 1987, p. 138), in which Cas-
sirer (2004a, p. 357) speaks of a functional ideal of truth. This idea rejects a
unified concept of truth that spans all cultural forms and all sciences, point-
ing out that such an ideal presupposes an uncritical, metaphysical monism of
knowledge. The functional ideal of truth, on the other hand, emphasizes that
the strict objectivity of the scientific description of the world gains its specific
21 On the influence of Cassirer on Sellars see Endres (2021c).

22 Cf. Truwant (2015), Matherne (2021), Kinzel (2024).
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meaning as “especially objective” only in contrast to other forms of objectiv-

ity: physics is differently objective than art, because it proceeds methodically
differently. The objectivity of the work of art asks for a completely different
meaning than the claim to validity of religion, which may be preoccupied with
the boundary questions of life, which art can occupy, but also reject. The uni-
fying factor that runs counter to the relativity of a pluralism of arbitrariness is
precisely the difference that is expressed by the different claims to validity, but
not a metaphysical substrate that must apply to every form of culture. But what
does this mean for an intercultural philosophy of culture?
As we have seen above, in the discourses of intercultural philosophy one
is particularly unsatisfied by the idea of development in Cassirer’s philosophy
of culture. Moss (2014, p. 3) specifies that today any form of verticalism, i.e.,
the assumption of an objectivity hierarchy, is under suspicion of Eurocentrism.
Why is this actually so? At first glance, it would seem obvious to point out
that the unbroken success of modern natural science began in the European
cultural epoch of the Renaissance and reached its final breakthrough in the
Europe of the 19th century. Their ideal of objectivity could therefore only be
the philosopher’s stone to the exclusion of other cultures. A second and more
thorough look reveals, however, that nobody seriously objects to the fact that
in South and North, East and West, for example, modern physics is published in
English, today’s lingua franca, and that research is carried out exclusively with
the aid of a uniform mathematical symbol system. The idea that mathemat-
ics is suspiciously culturally impregnated, especially since it has non-European
origins, is not sustainable. The idea of development becomes problematic in
the light of a centrism only under the optics of the significance of the natu-
ral scientific world view and the problem of scientism. Cassirer’s philosophy
of culture, as we have seen, helps us to reconcile the naturalistic claims of
the scientific worldview with the claims of all other forms of culture by insist-
ing on their own right and value within a theory of cultural genesis. However,
it would have to be examined whether Cassirer’s concept of culture excludes
non-European cultures or, instead, precisely here provides a special potential
for integration. The question arises whether the symbolic forms mentioned
by Cassirer (myth, custom, religion, language, art, economy, technology, sci-
ence, and history) and their categories (space, time, and number) as well as
their underlying functions (expression, representation, pure meaning) would
have to be expanded or even recast.23 Susanne Langer and Jens Heise have
already supplemented the theoretical framework of Cassirer’s philosophy of
23 During the Kyoto in Davos conference, Steve Lofts had already pointed out that in the
project of a philosophy of culture the symbolic form religion would have to be conceived
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culture with non-discursive, presentational symbols, Raji Steineck confronted

the symbolic form of myth with ancient Japanese mythologies. Such experi-
ments require methodical attentiveness—e.g., ancient Japanese does not know
a concept of myth (Steineck, 2017, p. 321)—but have proven to be fertile in car-
rying them out. The task of an intercultural philosophy of culture would be
to continue to work here and to, as it were, further enrich the transcendental
framework of Cassirer’s system in terms of empirical content, in order to exam-
ine at which points the architectonics of this edifice of thought would have to
be readjusted. The basic elements of an integrative cultural theory, this would
be my conclusion, are already all found in Cassirer. This includes in particu-
lar the critical defense of any claim to absoluteness with which the specific
forms of culture appear through their claim to validity. But it also includes the
insight that symbolic forms necessarily compete with each other, because each
of them appears with a claim to universality. Universalism, seen in this way, is
nothing culture-specific at all—something that a hegemonic culture demands
from a dominated culture—but simply the claim to validity of a cultural form
that, raised to the absolute, undermines its own claim to validity (as, for exam-
ple, in scientism). From Cassirer’s point of view, it is the task of philosophy to
reject such exaggerated claims to absoluteness through critique and thereby
to balance all cultural forms in a non-relativistic way in their claims to valid-
ity. The question of the interculturality of cultural philosophy merely repeats
this critical impetus on a higher level by widening the perspective towards
globality and by continuously enriching the system of symbolic forms empiri-
cally.
4 Conclusion
In a first step, it was shown that philosophy and thus also the philosophy of
culture today are committed to interculturality in order to be able to redeem
their universalistic claim as philosophy. Then, the thesis was put forward that
differently in order to be able to catch up with Eastern thinking, which possibly distin-
guishes differently between religion and, for example, philosophy. In his article “Cassirer,
Heidegger, and Miki: The Logic of the Dual Transcendence of the Imagination” he intro-
duces on p. 394 the idea that Cassirer’s project could gain intercultural contour by a
reorientation to Miki Kiyoshi’s The Logic of Imagination. How exactly such a further devel-
opment would look like remains a desideratum with regard to the question of symbolic
forms and their categories. Lofts, however, has convincingly argued that Cassirer’s philos-
ophy of culture must be transcended with Miki to its Genetivus subiectivus, to the “basic
experience” (ibid., pp. 394, 405, 406, 407, 408, 414) of the human being.
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158 endres
the division of Western philosophy into an analytic and a continental tradition

has significance for an intercultural philosophy of culture in the form of the
problem of naturalism, which often takes the form of scientism on the part of
analytic philosophy and is often simply misjudged on the part of continental
philosophy and the cultural studies. Cassirer’s philosophy of culture, intercul-
turally thought out, offers a way out that can integrate the problem horizons
of both poles within the framework of a philosophy of cultures. The basis for
this is an anthropology that understands the human being as a culture-creating
being, and an architectonics of human culture that is characterized by an open
system of symbolic forms whose categories are open to revision and can only
be put to the test by empirically enriching it with the “intellectual inventory” of
all cultures. Herein lies an unfinishable task and consequently a desideratum
of interdisciplinary research.
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5
Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism: Reflections
on an Intercultural Philosophy
Domenico Schneider
Abstract
The article Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism. Reflections on an Intercultural Philos-

ophy is about Kantian schematism, which, among other aspects, was a central concern
of the philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. It is argued that the Davos
debate cannot be reduced to the event of the Davos University Conference of 1929,
but that the debate had already taken place before and after in the form of written
arguments. In addition to an interpretation of both thinkers with regard to Kantian
schematism, the article wants to develop schematism in a methodological sense for a
practice of intercultural philosophizing. For this purpose, examples from the Japanese
philosophy of the Kyoto School will be drawn upon. Thereby, the understanding of the
foreign in the light of the own is explained via a doctrine of embodied schematism. The
latter will be plausibilized via current results produced by embodiment philosophy.
Keywords
Kantian schematism – Intercultural philosophizing – Davos debate – Martin Heideg-

ger – Ernst Cassirer – own and others – language – embodiment
1 Introduction
In this article I will develop conceptual requirements for an intercultural phi-

losophy based on the Kantian theory of schematism. The philosophical dis-
putation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos in 1929 pro-
vides a further point of discussion alongside other aspects of the question
of what it is to be a human being: i.e., the Kantian doctrine of schematism.
In Kant research, but also in anthropology, the doctrine of schematism is of
central importance with regard to the ability to imagine. Abstract concepts
(understanding in terms, cognitive patterns) are brought together with sensual
© Domenico Schneider, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_007 - 978-90-04-68017-3

164 schneider
concepts (understanding by means of perception). This locus of contention is

continued in various writings by Cassirer and Heidegger, and the Kantian doc-
trine of schematism is thus a focal point in the discussion. Cassirer’s way of
using the theory of schematism, which he assigns to spatial metaphors as a
form of schematic understanding in the first volume of his main work, seems
important here. Taking into account the linguistic research of the 19th and early
20th century, Cassirer explains simple spatial metaphors as a form of schematic
understanding by referencing bodily perception in the form of basic spatial ori-
entations. In this way, Cassirer connects space rather than temporal structures
with the theory of schematism. Heidegger, on the other hand, in his Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics, remains faithful to the interpretation of time that
Kant originally had in mind, and interprets the schematic structures from the
perspective of time. It must be emphasized that Cassirer was generally ahead
of his time, because in the more recent cognitive sciences, the Kantian doc-
trine of schematism is explicitly developed based on language understanding
by means of spatial structuring patterns, namely image schemes. It is precisely
this interpretation that is being revisited by a number of cognitive scientists
by applying it to European languages such as English and German as well as to
other languages such as Japanese in order to explain consistent structures of
understanding in languages by employing the concept of spatial understand-
ing. These philosophical aspects will be further illuminated by looking at more
current ideas of embodiment theory based on Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s inter-
pretation of Kant.
In addition, these results should also be seen as methodological require-
ments for intercultural understanding and philosophizing. In this regard, the
following theses will be investigated. First, the understanding of the other can
only be attained beyond the horizon of one’s own possibilities of understand-
ing, i.e. one’s own linguistic possibilities and the creative and cultural setting
variants (facial expressions, gestures, phonetics). Second, the translation takes
place on several levels, i.e. the dialogue with a person from a different culture
or even with whole groups or within cultural spaces. The discussion must not
always be face to face with a person; understanding also takes place increas-
ingly by means of texts. So we actually have to take the medium, the sign, into
account. After all, understanding always takes place in an oscillating relation-
ship between one’s own being and that of others, with a residue of what is not
understood. This is not only a statement for an everyday interaction in the
understanding of the other, but must be seen as a requirement for the textual
and philosophical examination of the other.
For any continuation of the discussion, I would like to add a few prelim-
inary notes that relate to the Davos Disputation itself. These preliminaries
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heidegger and cassirer on schematism 165
to the Davos Disputation are inserted to sharpen and clarify the connection
to my article. As can already be found in the anthology edited by Dominic
Kaegi, Cassirer–Heidegger: 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation (2002), the Davos Dis-
putation between Cassier and Heidegger cannot be reduced to the temporary
event of the Davos University Conferences of 1929 (Kaegi, 2002). If one takes
John Michael Krois’s thesis seriously, no serious debate took place in Davos.
Both opponents rather made statements than really discussed and tackled the
big questions about the human condition (Krois, 2002, p. 234). The discus-
sions and thus the struggle over the questions of human beings were a matter
of intense debate both before and after the Davos University Conferences. A
whole series of text documents were dealt with much more extensively before
and after the actual event of 1929 (Kaegi, 2002, pp. 67–105; Krois, 2002, pp. 235–
236; Schwemmer, 2002, pp. 49–65). An important document is Cassirer’s 1931
review of Heidegger’s Kant book, in which the relation to Kant’s doctrine of
schematism is clearly discussed. In addition, there are a variety of topics that
were addressed by both which were not really directly discussed in 1929 (Kaegi,
2002, pp. 67–70). It seems important to me that, from a thematic perspective,
the Davos Disputation should therefore be taken as a whole and as synony-
mous with a longer-lasting cycle of discussion between Heidegger and Cassirer.
Therefore, it makes more sense overall and above and beyond this one event
to focus on the question of what man essentially is. As is well known, in his
first creative phase Heidegger wanted to answer this question in an existential-
ist sense of Geworfensein and Dasein with all its facets. Cassirer, on the other
hand, seeks an answer much more anchored in the cultural-philosophical and
semiotic processes of understanding. But if one separates oneself from the brief
event of 1929 as a main focus of the debate and opens oneself to the work
of both philosophers beyond that single discussion, the whole program can
be enriched by substantive results emanating from other philosophers, which
leads to a much more productive way of philosophizing. The latter seems to me
to be all the more imperative with regard to Japanese philosophy, since both
Heidegger and Cassirer had their personal connections to the Japanese philo-
sophical tradition.
2 Human Being and Imagination
Imagination (German: Einbildungskraft) is a central element of human nature.

In particular, it does not only occur in the mere form of imaginative images
in the mind and does not have to be reduced to a source for artistic creativ-
ity. Rather, imagination represents an indispensable skill on several levels of
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166 schneider
cultural, social and scientific cooperation, which we can use consciously, but
which also runs continuously pre-reflective in the form of linguistic, metaphor-
ical sedimentation and bodily expressions (gesture, facial expressions). The
imagination is also anchored in the deep structures of our corporeality (propri-
oception) and is constantly expressed in everyday practices. Since we actively
use imagination for our expression and also used it for creativity in a higher
form, it plays a determinate role in all our ways of being human. In Western and
European-influenced philosophy, this special status and role of the imagina-
tion can only be found in a few selected thinkers. For the most part, imagination
in philosophy was left to aesthetics and the central questions of philosophy
were rather pursued by means of prefabricated, logified tools: everything that
cannot be specifically said cannot taken up by philosophy. This fact robs phi-
losophy of extensive areas that are or could be of central importance: Every
culture has its own intrinsic way of understanding and this determines its own
way of exploring the world. By means of mutual interactions, one can become
aware of the limits of one’s own thinking habits. It is precisely here that a deeper
consideration of metaphors and semiotic conditionality is required. The whole
area of metaphor in the philosophical debate is considered bulky and contrary
to the paradigm of clear and distinct words advocated by Western philosophy.
This paradigm leads to an attitude that is usually accompanied by a disinter-
est in other non-Western-European styles of thinking. The extent of this is so
great that philosophy is genuinely written as a European traditional story and
all other considerations are relegated to the realm of ‘wisdom-teaching.’ In this
way, philosophy itself fails to entertain the possibilities of knowledge that is ini-
tially beyond a linguistic construction. Such a philosophy should not develop
an historical outline of other styles of thinking, but should gain new insights
into the philosophy as a whole by means of a targeted discussion of the con-
tent. The ability to translate styles of thinking and the recognition of a discovery
of non-habitual figures of thought can only be achieved by an intercultural
mediating philosophy. Certainly the task of an intercultural philosophy is to
see the analytical abilities of Western-European thinking as one way among
several and to establish an dialogue between different cultural approaches by
means of a specific way of translation. This specific way of translation must be
understood as a critical one and cannot be seen in the sense of a linguistic task,
but already represents a genuine aspect of intercultural philosophizing. This
approach appeared to have been central to the philosophy of the Kyōto School,
which itself must be seen in connection with increased internationalization
and globalization. Methodologically, this bridging can only be achieved with
a deeper understanding of the imagination of philosophisms, i.e. the actual
underlying imaginative structures of a second power must be exposed. On the
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one hand we have to consider the immanent and culturally conditioned meta-
structure of philosophizing and on the other hand, and at the same time, we
have to apply our own culturally conditioned meta-structure of philosophizing.
3 Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism
It is well known that Kant’s schematism proceeds from a connection of the

initially separate areas of perception qua sensuality to conceptuality. In his
book Critique of Pure Reason, Kant begins the doctrine of schematism with
the dissimilarity between understanding concepts and visual space (German:
Anschauung): “Nun sind aber reine Verstandesbegriffe, in Vergleichung mit
empirischer (ja überhaupt sinnlichen) Anschauungen, ganz ungleichartig, und
können niemals in irgend einer Anschauung angetroffen werden” (Kant, 1977,
p. B 176, A 137). Indeed, in a phenomenological sense, we see objects as they
are given for themselves. We see objects as configurations, as manifolds or
complexities. The objects are not completely unstructured, as, for example in
William James’ sense of a blooming buzzing confusion, but initially we do not
encounter any abstract concepts. As is clear from the Kantian considerations,
the doctrine of schematism functions on two levels: on the one hand, we have
the pure concepts (German: reine Verstandesbegriffe) or categories, that have
to be brought together with pure sensuality or pure visual field (German: pure
Anschauung), i.e. space and time. According to Kant, this connection is estab-
lished with what is known as transcendental schematism. Interestingly, this
connection is being made between pure concepts qua categories and time.
On the other hand, the schematism is also accomplished on the level of ordi-
nary concepts by Kant. Kant suggests a sensual correlate for every concept: in
fact, the schemes that accomplish this figuration should have a sensual and
an intellectual aspect: “In der Tat liegen unsern reinen sinnlichen Begriffen
nicht Bilder der Gegenstände, sondern Schemate [sic] zu Grunde” (Kant, 1977,
p. B180, A140). Kant’s examples are a dog and a plate: both concepts are linked
to general schemes that contain figurative elements. Even if it could be crit-
ically questioned again, most of the ideas of an ordinary plate are given by
a circular shape. Most people think of a dog as something four-legged with
a corresponding muzzle shape and a tail. In some respects there is a certain
similarity to Gestalt psychology, but ultimately there is more to Kant’s work,
because both visual concepts and abstract concepts are taken into account by
Kant.
Of course, the question arises why Kant seeks this connection on these two
levels between concepts (pure concepts/ordinary concepts) and perception
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168 schneider
or sensuality (pure sensuality/ordinary visual space). The answer is found in

his take on “power of judgment” (Urteilskraft) that we constantly need and
utilize in dealing with the world, our fellow human beings, our everyday life
and scientific activities. Kant also characterizes this concern with his well-
known words: “Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe
sind blind.” (Kant, 1977, p. B75) “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions
without concepts are blind.” Kant’s solution is to demand a third in mental
activity (emotions, German: Gemüt): he calls this the transcendental scheme
or as the way we see schemes on the level of ordinary things. These schematic
structurings have both aspects: they are in a certain sense intellectual but also
sensuous or sensory, at the same time. In Kant’s writings, all of this becomes the
core of the later elaborated imagination that stands at our side in all everyday,
scientific and creative actions.
As the doctrine of schematism has been presented so far, it seems that for
every concept there exists a scheme. This assumption would be too broad and
also implausible. It must always be seen that the Kantian schematism is about
the connection between visual space (German: Anschaulichkeit) and intel-
lectual spontaneity. There are no schemata in the Kantian sense for abstract
concepts or ideas such as peace, morality, friendship, etc. These examples
belong in the area of reasoning (German: Vernunft) which is not equal to
reason (German: Verstand) and can therefore not be located in a connection
between the conceptual and visual space. Therefore concrete terms cannot
all be inferred by schemes in the Kantian sense. As Kant emphasizes sev-
eral times, only concepts that relate to sensual objects are made accessible
through schemes. Almost exclusively, Kant speaks of the power of imagina-
tion, which, surprisingly, is hardly dealt with in Kant’s aesthetics and in his
transcendental and metaphysical deductions. The power of imagination is to
be seen as a faculty of consciousness which, in figurative terms, allows us to
recognize a complexity or multiple representations—in Kant “manifold” (Ger-
man: ein Mannigfaltiges)—in a unified one. The imagination makes use of
schemes:
Dieser Schematismus unseres Verstandes, in Ansehung der Erscheinun-

gen und ihrer bloßen Form, ist eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen
der menschlichen Seele, deren wahre Handgriffe wie der Natur schwer-
lich jemals abraten, und sie unverdeckt vor Augen legen werden. So viel
können wir nur sagen: das Bild ist ein Produkt des empirischen Vermö-
gens der produktiven Einbildungskraft, das Schema sinnlicher Begriffe
(als der Figuren im Raume) ein Produkt und gleichsam ein Monogramm
der reinen Einbildungskraft a priori, wodurch und wonach die Bilder nur
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immer vermittelst des Schema, welches sie bezeichnen verknüpft werden

müssen, und an sich demselben nicht völlig kongruieren. (Kant, 1977, p.
B180f., A141 f.)
The imagination as an almost creative authority makes use of the schemes,

to make visual perception real and effective for us. This is more than a mun-
dane sensualism. In Kant’s presentation, the concept of the monogram must
be understood in a particular way. In conventional usage, a monogram is a sig-
nature in the form of a character, which consists of parts of letters. What Kant
has in mind here is certainly the ability of a monogram to refer to its author.
But also the sketch-like or, better, figurative level in the form of a portrait is
encompassed by the concept of a monogram: The monogram has an unmis-
takable shape and is therefore identity-giving and figurative at the same time.
Precisely these properties, which Kant repeatedly assigns to the scheme of a
concept, are caught up again here. In addition, however, the creative aspect and
creation as a temporal event is also considered. The monogram emerges from
an author who created it and it is constantly being re-developed. This property
is taken into account through creation or formation of a product by means of
the imagination. Heidegger recognized the temporal dimension of the schemes
in this creating or forming (German: Bilden), which I will eventually come back
to later.
In the following I will try to relate the particulars of Kant’s theory of schema-
tism and the imagination that are found in the Davos disputation. The argu-
ment at the Davos University Conferences in 1929 (French: Cours univeri-
taires de Davos, German: Davoser Hochschulkurse) between Ernst Cassirer and
Martin Heidegger continued in different writings by both authors. The actual
debate cannot be fully reproduced here. Much of the processing of the Davos
disputation can be found in the following anthology: Cassirer–Heidegger: 70
Jahre Davoser Disputation, edited by Dominic Kaegi. In addition, the present
anthology offers some important and central additions by including elements
of Japanese philosophy following the school of Kyōto. Briefly summarized,
most representations agree that Heidegger wanted to accentuate human fate-
fulness through his existential point of view. Finiteness plays a central role in
Heidegger’s conception. Heidegger puts the “thrownness” (German: Geworfen-
heit) of the human being—as in being thrown into the struggle of life without
any choice—, and the fact that the human being has a passive participation in
the culture in the foreground. In particular, Heidegger seemed to stick to his
concept of existence and pointed out that it could not be grasped by any con-
cepts of Cassirer’s philosophy. Cassirer, on the other hand, tries to see cultural
events and life as “symbolic forms” that are the basis of all understanding and
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170 schneider
all contexts of knowledge. In a very rough summary, these are the standpoints
of the two sparring philosophers. In the following I would like to concentrate
on the schematism and work out the role of the imagination with regard to the
question of what it is to be a human being.
As is well known, Heidegger devotes himself to the question of being in
Being and Time, which he poses right at the beginning of his treatise. He
answers this through his concept of Dasein and his distinction between ontic
and ontological. Beyond that, the concept of being can only be considered
through man’s understanding of being and his capability of understanding as
such. Heidegger sees Kant’s important achievement in his emphasis on tempo-
rality in the doctrine of schematism:
Der Erste und Einzige, der sich eine Strecke untersuchenden Weges in der
Richtung auf die Dimension der Temporalität bewegte, bzw. sich durch
den Zwang der Phänomene selbst dahin drängen ließ, ist Kant. Wenn erst
die Problematik der Temporalität fixiert ist, dann kann es gelingen, dem
Dunkel der Schematismuslehre Licht zu verschaffen. (Heidegger, 2000,
p. 23)
For Heidegger, Kant was the only one who developed the way towards a tem-
poral interpretation within the framework of the human imagination. Heideg-
ger develops this idea in more detail in the so-called ‘Kant Book’: Kant und
das Problem der Metaphysik, (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics). Tempo-
rality and imagination play a central role in Heidegger: After Kant develops
the concept of imagination (Einbildungskraft) with the third and connecting
authority, schematism, Heidegger went on to connect schematism and tem-
porality. The detailed description of the elements of knowledge (Verstand and
Anschaulichkeit) led to Heidegger’s examination of the theory of schematism
in an appreciation at the core of the entire extensive work. The imagination
serves as a cohesive center for the inner possibility of ontological knowledge
(Heidegger, 1991, pp. 88–91). Heidegger’s Kant Book is strongly influenced by
his own fundamental ontology and many interpretations must be seen in that
light. Nonetheless, Heidegger goes beyond Kant. This can be clearly seen in
the elaboration of shaping and forming (German: Das Bilden von …, English:
The Forming of …). Heidegger recognizes that the power of imagination has a
unifying function and that it thus shows the self-formation of transcendence.
The motif of forming oneself and the terms “image” and “image as a whole”
represent a recurring trope in Heidegger’s examination of Kant. In particu-
lar, it will be possible to show that the character of forming oneself (German:
Sich-Bildens) by virtue of the imagination is the central theme. In his analy-
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ses, Heidegger speaks of an “affordance” (German: Angebotscharakter) and the

possibility of being-able-to-meet is provided precisely by this double structure
of the connection between imagination and time. One is therefore not com-
pletely trapped in a bubble of the subjective, but the encounter with worldly
things becomes meaningful by means of the imagination, which creates the
structure of time only through the formation of images. How Heidegger imag-
ines this double structure, or rather, how this relation between imagination
and temporality occurs, is regulated by the doctrine of schematism: “Die reine
Versinnlichung geschieht als ein ‘Schematismus’. Die reine Einbildungskraft
gibt Schema-bildend im vorhinein den Anblick (‘Bild’) des Horizontes der Tran-
szendenz” (Heidegger, 1973, p. 90). The human being is capable of sensual-
ization through the power of imagination. Things appear to us not only in a
structured way because of a functioning perceptual apparatus but also because
we as humans have something like imagination. In addition, Heidegger uses a
Kantian interpretation to suggest a connection between imagination, sensu-
alization, schematism and temporality, which should provide an answer to the
question about what it is to be human. His answer consists primarily in the fact
that man must be regarded as a finite being. Finiteness is clearly worked out in
the Kant Book.
Another aspect examined by Heidegger is the regularity that is privide by
the schematic. The rule of schematism consists in the fact that the many are
shown in the one. in the formation by means of the schemes the many shows
itself as unified in one: “Reine Versinnlichung muß daher das Hinnehmen von
etwas sein, was sich im Hinnehmen selbst zwar allererst bildet, […]” (Heideg-
ger, 1973, p. 94). In addition to different types of the pictorial, the formation
of oneself can also refer to creating a sight (providing an image), if empiri-
cal viewing takes place. As Heidegger calls it, the picture or figuration shows
the “this-there” (German: “Dies-Da”). We are talking about a pictorial figura-
tion (German: Abbild), e.g. a photograph. According to Heidegger, a pictorial
figuration show how something is in general. This is now also important for
the schema term. In addition to photography, Heidegger also mentions the
death mask as an example. Although a particular death mask may refer to an
individual face, what the death mask initially shows is the regularity of the con-
figuration of a face. In a pictorial figuration (photography or death mask) one
can see “in the one thing that which applies to many” (German: “im Abbild zeigt
sich in dem Einem, was für viele gilt.”), (Heidegger, 1973, p. 94). What applies
here initially to the pictorial configurations, Heidegger transfers in his further
analyses of the schema. But he adds to the scheme that in the imaginative rep-
resentation the above-mentioned regularity is included, i.e. the rule that the
one shows what applies to the many. So this is not a subsequent attachment
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172 schneider
of intellectual knowledge, rather it simply belongs to the structure of the pic-

torial, operational and mental understanding. Where Heidegger goes beyond
Kant is that he, at least at the time of the publication of the Kant Book, saw
the connection between the activity of the mind and perception through the
agency of the schemata not only on the level of the pure concepts of the under-
standing (categories) and the pure intuition (time). Even the usual notions that
relate to the senses are related to time, through the character of their proces-
suality:
Die Zeit ist als “reines Bild” das Schema-Bild und nicht etwa nur den
reinen Verstandesbegriffen gegenüberstehende Anschauungsform. Das
Schema der Notionen hat demnach einen eigenen Charakter. Als Schema
überhaupt stellt es Einheiten vor, und zwar als sich in einem möglichen
Anblick hineintragende Regeln. Nun beziehen sich aber die in den Notio-
nen vorgestellten Einheiten nach der transzendentalen Deduktion we-
sensnotwendig auf die Zeit. Der Schematismus der reinen Verstandes-
begriffe muß diese daher notwendig in die Zeit hineinregeln. […] Daher
ist die Zeit nicht nur das notwendige reine Bild der Schemata der reinen
Verstandesbegriffe, sondern auch ihre einzige reine Anblicksmöglichkeit.
Diese einzige Anblicksmöglichkeit zeigt selbst in sich nichts anderes als
immer nur Zeit und Zeithaftes. (Heidegger, 1973, p. 104)
In other words, the process of all sensuality and all sensualization has in
Heidegger a connection to a temporal structure. The temporal is inherent in
the schemes. With that I would like to leave the deliberatons on Heidegger
and turn to Cassirer’s criticism and his position on the theory of schema-
tism.
In the anthology Cassirer–Heidegger: 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, edited
by Kaegi and Rudolph, the text Why was there no debate in Davos? (German:
Warum es keine Debatte in Davos gab?) by Krois provides the political dimen-
sion under which this discussion took place. It is thus clear that the discussion
between the two thinkers has continued throughout their writing. Indeed, Cas-
sirer gives an answer to Heidegger’s claims in his text, which has the same title
as Heidegger’s Kant Book: Kant and the problem of metaphysics (German: Kant
und das Problem der Metaphysik), (Cassirer, 1931). It is important to see that the
argument of both men are made on the same basis with regard to the anthro-
pological question about human beings. The ability to imagine appears central:
Und es muß sogleich betont werden und anerkannt werden, daß er [Hei-
degger] diesen Teil seiner Aufgabe mit außerordentlicher Kraft und mit
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größter Schärfe und Klarheit durchgeführt hat. Es ist mir stets als das
seltsamste Zeichen der völligen Verkennung von Kants Grundabsicht
erschienen, daß man immer wieder in der Kant-Literatur der Vorstel-
lung begegnet, als habe Kant die Lehre vom Schematismus “erkünstelt” –
als habe er das Vermögen der “transzendentalen Einbildungskraft” aus
bloß äußeren Gründen der “Symmetrie” und “Architektonik” eingeführt.
Vielleicht wird dieser Vorwurf doch endlich einmal in seiner Absurdität
erkannt werden, wenn man sich in Heidegger eingehende, jeden Ein-
zelzug herausarbeitende Darstellung des Schematismuskapitels vertieft.
Ich selbst kann diesem Punkte nur die volle Zustimmung zu Heideg-
gers Auffassung und meine prinzipielle Übereinstimmung mit ihm beto-
nen; denn die Lehre von der “produktiven Einbildungskraft” erscheint
auch nur […] als ein schlechthin unentbehrliches und als ein unendlich-
fruchtbares Motiv der Lehre Kants wie der gesamten “kritischen Philoso-
phie.” (Cassirer, 1931, p. 2)
With regard to the Kantian doctrine of schematism, Cassirer emphasizes its

intrinsic importance for the Kantian philosophy. Both authors seem to be
in agreement on this point. Nevertheless, Cassirer also criticizes Heidegger’s
approach: the central point of that criticism is the overuse of Heidegger’s
concept of Endlichkeit (finitude). It is precisely with regard to reason (Ger-
man: Vernunft) that human beings go beyond their finitude. In fact, in Kan-
tian philosophy, one cannot equate reason (German: Vernunft) in the sense of
self-legislation with the finiteness of intellectual activity (German: Verstand).
Moreover, in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant does not advocate a monism
with regard to the imagination, as Heidegger suggests. All other mental activi-
ties (German: Gemütsbewegung, i.e. understanding, sensuality, etc.) play a role
and they are analyzed by Kant: “Aber der Schematismus und die Lehre von der
“transzendentalen Einbildungskraft” steht zwar im Mittelpunkt der Kantischen
Analytik, aber nicht im Brennpunkt des Kantischen Systems.” (Cassirer, 1931,
p. 18) (English translation: “But the schematism and the doctrine of the “tran-
scendental power of imagination” is the center of the Kantian analytics, but
not the focus of the Kantian system.”)
In his main work The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, but also in other texts,
Cassirer often deals with Kantian doctrine of schematism. In the following it
will be shown that in the first volume on Language (German: Die Sprache) from
1923 Cassirer develops a thoroughly modern view of the Kantian doctrine of
schematism. In doing so, he operationally weaves the ideas of schematism into
his conception of language. In the preliminary remarks to the first volume of
the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer clearly shows that both aspects of
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language must be considered: i.e. content and form, but the unity and proces-
suality of language, must also be examined as well. In this respect, for Cassirer,
the temporality of language appears to be essential. With reference to Hum-
boldt, Cassirer makes clear the intersubjective power of language. Language
for him is a phenomenon in which we participate individually, but in partic-
ular this mere participation expresses an intersubjectivity of language that is
part of its essence as language. Just as metaphorical or denotative structures
(container scheme, inside-outside scheme, etc.) have sedimented phonetically
or grammatically, these structures reflect a constant moment (Cassirer, 1923,
p. 31). In the systematic part of his first volume, he comes back to Humboldt for
an examination of language on a content and linguistic level. This reference to
Humboldt and other linguists of 19th and early 20th century,1 led Cassirer to the
development of a concept of spatial metaphor that can be found in all known
languages:
Vor allem ist es die räumliche Anschauung, an der sich dieses Ineinan-
der des sinnlichen und geistigen Ausdrucks der Sprache durchgehend
beweist. Gerade in den allgemeinsten Ausdrücken, die die Sprache zur
Bezeichnung geistiger Prozesse erschafft, tritt die entscheidende Mit-
wirkung der räumlichen Vorstellung aufs deutlichste hervor. Noch in den
höchstentwickelten Sprachen begegnet diese »metaphorische« Wieder-
gabe geistige Bestimmung durch räumliche. (Cassirer, 1923, p. 148)
In Cassirer’s view, a study of language cannot completely separate the intellec-

tual and sensual realms. The relationship to the forms of space-time is found
in all sensual perceptions and is also sedimented in the linguistic forms of
expression. This is completely independent of how complicated the speech for-
mation is from a grammatical or phonetic point of view (Cassirer, 1923, p. 147).
In Cassirer’s analysis the spatial structures that originally go back to body per-
ception and body movement play a central role. This is where the sensual
root is found. With his observations on miming, haptic pointing, gestures and
phonetic considerations, Cassirer expands this “sensual root” of language to
include additional aspects. But it is precisely the concept of spatial metaphors
that is repeatedly taken up and even explicitly associated with Kant’s theory of
schematism:
1 Philologist and Philospher: Chajim Heymann Steinthal.
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In alledem offenbart sich ein gemeinsamer, auch erkenntniskritisch

höchst bedeutsamer Zug des sprachlichen Denkens. Kant fordert, um die
Anwendung der reinen Verstandesbegriffe auf die sinnlichen Anschau-
ungen zu ermöglichen, ein Drittes, Mittleres […] und er findet diese Ver-
mittlung in dem transzendentalen Schema, das einerseits intellektuell,
andererseits sinnlich ist. […] Ein solches Schema, auf das sie alle intellek-
tuelle Vorstellungen beziehen muß, um sie dadurch sinnlich faßbar und
darstellbar zu machen, besitzt die Sprache in ihren Benennungen für
räumliche und ideelle Beziehungen dem Sprachbewußtsein erst dadurch
faßbar, daß sie sie auf den Raum projiziert und in ihm analogisch »ab-
bildet«. An den Verhältnissen des Beisammen, des Neben- und Auseinan-
der gewinnt es erst das Mittel zur Darstellung der verschiedenartigsten
qualitativen Zusammenhänge, Abhängigkeiten und Gegensätze. (Cas-
sirer, 1923, pp. 149–150)
Therefore, in contrast to Heidegger, Cassirer goes far beyond Kant and, with
regard to language, also tries to incorporate aspects of embodiment philoso-
phy into the framework of imagination. Interestingly, the justification of this
spatial understanding can be found in the first approaches to embodiment phi-
losophy, because for Cassirer there is a connection between the designations of
individual human body parts and the basic pictorial structures such as inside,
outside, front, back, etc. With reference to the philologist H. Steinthal, Cassirer
formulates this as follows:
In der Tat ist es eine fast durchgehende beobachtete Tatsache, daß der
Ausdruck räumlicher Beziehungen aufs engste an bestimmte Stoffworte
gebunden ist, unter denen wieder die Worte zur Bezeichnung der einzel-
nen Teile des menschlichen Körpers den ersten Platz einnehmen. Das
Innen und Außen, das Vorn und Hinten, das Oben und Unten erhält seine
Bezeichnung dadurch, daß sie je an ein bestimmtes sinnliches Substrat
im Ganzen des menschlichen Leibes angeknüpft werden. (Cassirer, 1923,
pp. 157–158)
Certainly other passages in Cassirer’s oeuvre could be used to make clear the
central importance of spatial imagination for language. In addition, the close-
ness to Kant’s theory of schematism, which Cassirer establishes in the devel-
opment of his conception, appears to be felicitous, as he anticipates essential
ideas of more recent cognitive science findings. In particular, he not only trans-
fers the ideas of a basic imaginative understanding of space to the metaphors
in language, but also develops this for thinking and understanding in general:
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“Die Vorstellung eines konkreten räumlichen Gegenstands beherrscht den Aus-

druck der räumlichen Relation” (Cassirer, 1923, p. 159). All of this is repeated in
An Essay on Man and in the second volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
in various detailed considerations, of which I have only singled out language
here as an example.
The analysis given above shows that with regard to imagination and the
Kantian doctrine of schematism, we see a focus on temporality in Heidegger
and a focus on spatiality in Cassirer’s example of metaphors. Furthermore,
these forms of perception must be brought together in order to establish a
dynamization of spatial understanding. Since the experience of space through
the medium of the living body is an organismic characteristic of all people,
there is the possibility here of converting the different cultural approaches into
an intercultural philosophy. In the following I try to establish this concept with
the help of some aspects of embodiment philosophy and enrich these consid-
erations with some results on intercultural philosophy.
4 Hermeneutics and the Schematization of Our Imagination
Within a framework of theory of metaphor Lakoff and Johnson provide a sim-

ilar conception as is found in Cassirer’s results. Our ability to understand and
our imagination are both based on bodily interaction. Only from that basis can
humans develop as understanding beings. Johnson speaks of recurrent struc-
tures that emerge from our bodily movement, namely image schema. Before
we have an abstract description of our world we experience the world in a
prereflective way with our body. This establishes fundamental modes of under-
standing, that also results in our capability to understand metaphorically with
the help of our native language. It is important that image schema operate not
only at a metaphorical level in language. Rather, image schemas are intermodal
and operate on overarching levels of imagination that combine bodily inter-
action, imagination and linguistic understanding: “In sum, image schemata
operate at a level of mental organization that falls between abstract proposi-
tional structures, on the one side, and particular concrete images, on the other.”
(Johnson, 1986, p. 29) These findings lead Johnson to the following definition:
[…] in order for us to have meaningful, connected experiences that we can

comprehend and reason about, there must be pattern and order to our
actions, perceptions, and conceptions. A schema is a recurrent pattern,
shape, and regularity in, or of, these ongoing ordering activities. These
patterns emerge as meaningful structures for us chiefly at the level of our
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bodily movements through space, our manipulation of objects, and our

perceptual interactions. It is important to recognize the dynamic charac-
ter of image schemata. (Johnson, 1986, p. 29)
Typical examples are container schema, balance schema, force schema, etc. We
already experience the concept of a container as infants and toddlers. They
are used to bring food to us, constantly entering and leaving rooms and deal-
ing with containers from an early age such as a glass of water or a bucket of
sand. Unfortunately, not all details of this philosophical approach can be given.
In addition to the fact that Cassirer, with his cultural-philosophical approach
and his statements on the imaginative and metaphorical depth of human com-
munication and understanding, is manifestly close to Lakoff and Johnson, I
would like to emphasize two further points. The first of these concerns the
question of the relation between cultural situatedness on the one hand and
the metaphorical depth of language or the cognitively embodied possibilities of
understanding on the other. The second point addresses the semiotic problem
of the medium. The signs (phonetic, typographical, haptic, etc.) have acquired a
life of their own in the course of cultural and civilizational development, which
is partly intertwined with the metaphorical level but in a certain sense is also
independent of it.
If we have a closer look at the first point, we can see that Lakoff and Johnson
explicitly emphasize a culture-related framework for the design of the respec-
tive languages. Certainly there may be such spatial metaphors, especially image
schemas, in all languages. But how exactly they are reflected in the language is
still unclear in many ways. The container schema does not always have to be
expressed in the form of a verb or noun or a preposition. So we have to realize
that not all spatial metaphors (images schemes) can explain language in a uni-
versal way. Rather, it must be understood as a constant framework or scaffold
that varies in its inherent design from language to language or from under-
standing to understanding. This is, as it were, a cultural instance of the free-
dom of language development. This entire area also concerns whether there
are universal structures or whether pluralism or relativism can ultimately be
postulated. This question can really only be answered relative to one’s own
philosophical claims.
Indeed the entire approach of Lakoff and Johnson has interestingly been
expanded in various ways to include other languages such as Korean and
Japanese. Lakoff is developing a psycho-linguistic program that analyzes ideas
for specific languages. Lakoff’s linguistic investigations are examined through
case studies addressing different languages and the associated cognitive phe-
nomena (Lakoff, 1990, pp. 377–605). These Lakoffian approaches have been
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taken up in different ways by linguists and ethnologists. Kanako Cho (2010)

shows in her article how English learners who are originally Japanese speakers
deal with the prepositions in, on and at in an efl (English as a Foreign Lan-
guage) classroom setting. Functional use of English prepositions are harder for
Japanese learners to master than the prototypical and topological uses. These
results show that pedagogically the cognitive approach with respect to the
original use of prepositions of space is more convenient and more appropri-
ate than the traditional approach where the original motivated polysemy is
not respected. Shun Morimoto and Shawn Loewen (2007) also compare differ-
ent ways of learning in their studies. Image-schema-based instruction (isbi) is
compared with translation-based instruction (tbi). It turns out that the isbi is
at least as effective as the tbi and that in one of the cases there was even an
improvement in learning success.
Further linguistic studies of various languages, which have developed in con-
nection with Lakoff’s and Johnson’s research program, could certainly be added
here. According to Cassirer, however, it cannot be the task of a philosophical
investigation to reflect on all aspects of a linguistic research activity. It can
only be hinted at here and the work of all facets of a language must be left to
the linguists in detail. What seems important to me for philosophy is that the
metaphorical depth of our understanding of language is an important aspect of
the question of human beings in general. Our imagination is related to a bodily
incorporated understanding of culture.
If we take a closer look at the second point concerning the semiotic level
of signs, we see that it is also an underestimated philosophical problem. With
respect to (a) Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of signs, (b) Cassirer’s philoso-
phy of symbolic forms and (c) Susanne Langer’s consideration of feelings and
forms, Jens Heise provides a philosophy of signs to consider the independent
force of signs themselves. A form or a concrete sign is needed to establish some-
thing like a mental process of thinking (Heise, 2003, pp. 137–139). This level of
the medium is mostly never private and only partially entangled with the body,
e.g. in the form of a spoken language string that is conveyed through the speech
organs. In the case of the early real signs in the form of letters and characters
we must clearly see the independence of bodily understanding in the first years
of a person’s life. The acquisition of written language, i.e. learning to write, only
comes about through a cognitive and physical learning process through the use
of hands. In this respect, the signs are only given within an independent civi-
lizational outer world that can already be found. The signs therefore have a
life of their own that is independent of the imagination, but which can nev-
ertheless have an influence on the imagination if the language acquisition is
sufficiently good. On the other hand, Sotirova Kohli’s et. al. (2011) research on
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the Kanji in the Japanese language showed that the character strings can have
a cultural impact in a psychological sense. Kanji are the characters of Chinese
origin used in the Japanese writing tradition. Sotirova Kohli et. al. tested the
hypothesis that these Chinese characters which function in a non-phonetical
sense, are archetypal images and therefore part of a collective unconscious
memory.
In addition to the fact that the signs can usually have a mode of being inde-
pendent of the imagination of a person in the form of expression, form and
representation, there are also many examples in which the respective signs
with spatial cognitive structures of understanding, especially in gestures and
facial expressions can be entangled. Debra J. Occhi (2011) provides research
where Japanese people are observed with respect to the direction of their eyes
as the talk. The direction of the line of sight was examined with regard to the
connection between the content of the speech and the social position of the
interlocutor. The social status is determined by the height of the line of sight
(high, low) in the conversation through this facial expression. In the respective
speech act situations, culturally sedimented forms of expression play a cogni-
tive role with regard to the position, which is anchored pre-reflectively.
All of these examples are only intended to show the versatility of the demand
for intercultural understanding. This becomes all the more difficult when it
comes to philosophical issues and styles of thinking. The outlook for such an
intercultural philosophy and what it might look like is presented in the last sec-
tion.
5 Methodological Access to Intercultural Philosophizing in the Light

of an Oscillating Understanding—The Own and the Foreign
It seems to me to be a successful approach: instead of using a noun “philoso-

phy” the verb “philosophizing” is used instead, because at least that way one
can circumvent the historically generated problems of a Eurocentric perspec-
tive. As mentioned in the introduction above, the common understanding of
philosophy comprises an historical development that begins with the Greeks,
progresses to ancient philosophy in the heartland of the Roman Empire (Italy),
then to the philosophy of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlighten-
ment and finally to the Modernity and Postmodernism. This is a thoroughly
European perspective. Therefore, my concern would thus be to understand
philosophy from the perspective of a practice that inhabits the contemporary
situation and largely consists of dealing with the written and spoken word and
is oriented towards specific and more precisely defined questions. It can be
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seen from a cultural and linguistic perspective that the mode of asking does not
itself necessarily have to be universal. The Japanese philosophy of the Middle
Ages, with particular reference to Dōgen, has a structure of thesis-like asser-
tion and description. It can be seen from a cultural and linguistic perspective
that the mode of asking itself does not necessarily have to be universal. The
Japanese philosophy of the Middle Ages with Dōgen in particular has a struc-
ture of thesis-like assertion and description. One could say that this is a way
of answering without a question. The writings consist of instructions for the
life as a monk but should also offer advice for the layman. Nevertheless, with
Dōgen’s descriptions and instructions, which can certainly be discussed within
the contemporary situation, one is already on the way to a philosophical under-
standing. Keiji Nishitani did precisely this work by translating what was ini-
tially foreign to him into his own perspective by taking up Dōgen’s ideas anew.
In doing so, he makes use of the academic way of working in modern times,
which is certainly interspersed with Western and European facets. Neverthe-
less, a philosophical dialogical confrontation arises concerning what is one’s
own and what is foreign. This work has been taken up again in the present
volume through Sebastian Hüsch’s text From despair to authentic existence.
Kierkegaard’s anthropology of despair in the light of Nishitani’s thought. It looks
at of the question of despair and an authentic existence from the perspective of
Kierkegaard and Nishitani. In Hüsch’s article, the presentation of both spheres
within the applicable anthology is guaranteed in an analogous way: there is
a substantive examination of a topic and a methodological recourse to inter-
cultural philosophizing. In his discussion with the existentialist and religious
philosopher Kierkegaard and the philosopher Nishitani, Hüsch is concerned
with the question of the self and the connection to a religiosity or spirituality
that determines this self. With the help of a mythical-transcendentally con-
stituted human (personality), the character of such a personality can really
only emerge in the light of despair (German: Verzweiflung). This is determined
entirely analogously to Nishitani’s concept of self and nothing. This compari-
son (Kierkegaard vs. Nishitani) is better structured by Tugendhat’s intellectual
honesty. The discussion also shows that an interculturality of philosophy has
to take up the topics of religiosity and spirituality, since overarching human
structures of cultural understanding can be found here. In addition to these
findings, Hüsch demonstrates that an intercultural philosophical practice can
contend with the concepts of individual authors in order to allow the thinking
of the other to become clear in the light of one’s own thinking.
Intercultural philosophizing is practiced in a completely different way by
Fernando Wirtz. It is true that his work is based on the philosopher Miki
from the Kyōto School; he asks questions about Miki’s philosophy in light of
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the global cultural changes taking place in the beginning of the 20th century.
Wirtz’s article Miki and the Problem of Humanism explains Miki’s concept of
humanism, which was itself influenced by various Western European concepts,
such as the communist systems that were emerging at the time (1930–1940).
In addition, Wirtz’s analyses show how such upheavals as the Italian Renais-
sance or German Romanticism influenced Miki’s work. This makes it clear that
Miki’s approach represents a mode of intercultural philosophizing. In terms of
content, i.e. based on what Miki’s work is about, it is informative to examine
the role that the terms logos and pathos play in the mental ability to achieve
understanding. Wirtz uses Miki’s position in his discusses about the circum-
stances where one has to speak of a union, or an already existing unity of,
logos and pathos. Such discussions lead to a new understanding of the human
being (ningen, 人間), which in all respects touches upon the whole subject of
intercultural philosophizing. This is also true in the case of the Kyōto School’s
examination of central concepts such as nothing or nothingness (Miki: 無, Ger-
man: Nichts) and being out of being (有から有, German: Sein aus dem Sein)
and the corresponding claims about humanism. Intercultural philosophizing
must therefore also take into account the moods and feelings produced by cul-
tural conditions that are beyond an individual’s philosophical position. This is
a way of philosophizing that Cassirer wanted to make explicit in his second vol-
ume, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Understanding depends on the style of
thinking that is framed by a culture.
With Wirtz and Hüsch I have chosen out two examples of how intercultural
understanding can take place and which areas and levels of this approach need
to be addressed. On the one hand, philosophical exchanges can affect the think-
ing of individual philosophers. On the other hand, in the case of intercultural
philosophy, epochs and the cultures connected with them must be addressed
as a community of understanding. Besides these two main aspects, there would
certainly be other subdivisions as well. Interestingly, the Japanese philosopher
Watsuji, who also comes from the Kyōto School, opens up another perspective:
the concept of Fūdo (風土). With the concept of Fūdo, the worldly aspects of
nature are also taken into account the cultural perspective, whereas in western
thought these concepts are generally treated separately. In the classical epochs
of Western European philosophy, considerations about nature are clearly sepa-
rated from culture. In Watsuji’s thinking, the role of nature seems to be essential
with respect to culture. David W. Johnson gives the following attempt at an
approximate translation into English:
Fūdo is an ordinary Japanese word that indicates the natural environment

peculiar to given region—such as the fertility of its soil, its climate and
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its topography—which adheres to and influences the life and culture of

the people who live there. […] There is no straightforward equivalent of
this concept in English or, as far as I am aware, among the major Western
languages. This is part because fūdo does not merely designate a zone
or region of nature simpliciter, as the English word climate does when
speaking, for example, of the climate of the Arabian peninsula. Fūdo indi-
cates an area of nature implicitly considered from a certain standpoint,
namely, insofar as it shapes or determines a culture. The concept of fūdo
hence represents one among many possible ways of looking at the natural
world, just as a map does when it selects or highlights certain features of
a terrain and omits others. Thus Antarctica, for instance, is characterized
by a certain climate but not by a specific fūdo, since this is an expanse of
the natural world without any connection to or influence on a particular
human culture. (Johnson, 2019, pp. 17–18)
Again, I can only hint at Johnson’s excellent work. His examination of Wat-
suji’s nature-culture conception of fūdo shows that this term is not graspable
in Western-European terms. Nevertheless, we gain access to fūdo through a
philosophical paraphrase and translation practice, which, using the example,
are generally fruitful for the philosophical questions of our time. Using the
example of fūdo, it becomes clear that an overly strong anthropocentric under-
standing of being-in-the-world breaks down again into a subjectivism that only
includes the natural environment afterwards but does not think of it as a neces-
sity. A similar suggestion can be found with the philosopher Bianca Boteva-
Richter, who calls for a method transfer of Western-Asian philosophy following
Watsuji. This then, would enable a new way of intercultural philosophizing.
After these exemplary explanations, I would like to come back to the Kan-
tian schematism and the Davos debate between Cassirer and Heidegger. As we
have seen, the imagination plays an immense role in the process of interpreta-
tion and understanding. Methodologically, this has to be done by means of a
phenomenology that schematizes along the lines of terms that are available
to us. Overall we need a deeper look into things like cultural and intercul-
tural frameworks. Only through reflections utilizing philosophies and modes
of understanding from other cultures, we can gain insight into our own level of
understanding through such a contrast. In his methodological postscript, Jay
Garfield develops a concept of cultural dialogue through text analysis and text
understanding. Garfield writes with reference to Ricœur: “The second dialog-
ical commitment central to serious, respectful conversational engagement is
what Ricœur felicitously called “hermeneutical suspicion.” […] A hermeneutic
of suspicion demands a critical reading in which we locate error and fallacy and
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diagnose it, just as we locate truth and cogency, and learn from it. This is textual
respect” (Garfield, 2015, p. 329). Weidtmann and Stenger demand this dialogical
perspective even more radically. Weidtmann understands intercultural philos-
ophy dialogically: being able to hear precedes being able to understand (“Das
Hören-Können geht dem Verstehen-können voraus” [Weidtmann, 2016, p. 41]).
Weidtmann rejects an unreflective transculturality and champions the idea
of the existence of cultures that can, however, interact: hence the search for
a polylogue between cultures. Stenger strengthens the concept of concreativ-
ity. For him concreativity reflects an approach to understanding the “other”
culture. An intercultural discussion by means of a concreativity can only be
developed within the framework of understanding the other by means of one’s
own schemes and one’s own words. As Kant explains, the schemes of our con-
cepts are burned into the soul. Our mother tongue and cultural situatedness
cannot simply be abolished, but they can be used proactively in the form of
imaginative and dialogical understanding.
Culture as a term means the care of the spirit/mind/body and therefore high-
lights a number of possible dimensions: Language (facial expressions, gestures,
phonetics, syntax, semantics, etc.), rites, religion, technology, myth, art, scien-
tific activity, social behavior, technical and social media, gender-specific behav-
ior, etc. With Watsuji and his concept of fūdo, we have seen that the climatic
attachment to a point of view with its associated natural conditions determines
another dimension of culture. It is therefore important that philosophizing in
an intercultural sense can and must address all of these topics. This should then
be guided by the possible ways of understanding one’s own framework, which
can be set by the dimensions mentioned above. It has to be taken into account
that not all dimensions have to be disjoint, and it seems quite plausible that
some of these conceptually differentiated dimensions can merge into a few.
In general, it is certainly true that they are intertwined with one another. Lan-
guage simply anticipates a lot of possibilities of expression. This must be seen
as an external condition that should not be underestimated. As a community
of intercultural philosophizing, we will refer to texts and lectures within the
conditions of an academic and university working group. The performatives
of a culture can therefore only be presented to a limited extent and conveyed
through texts and language, a circumstance under which a whole series of pos-
sibilities for expressing the other are lost. Access to the other can only take
place by means of an oscillating process in the understanding between what
is one’s own and what is foreign. This then represents a new type of philos-
ophizing: Instead of locating oneself exclusively historically in an exegetical
habitus of overcoming, one works much more with a dialogical attitude that
recognizes and respects the other. Dialogue should be meant here in the origi-
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nal sense. First of all διάλoγoς, diálogos means conversation and, discourse and
describes an attitude of a speaker. The word consists of the two particles “διά,”
“diá,” English: through, by and “λóγoς,” “lógos,” English: word or thinking. There-
fore, the flow through the words or the throughness of words, is addressed here.
If you take this approach seriously, you cannot avoid dealing with the symbolic,
the metaphors, the semantics, the pragmatics and the syntax in a balanced
sense. Therefore, intercultural philosophizing will not be able to understand
itself linguistically, anthropologically, historically, etc. in just one way. Embod-
iment philosophy (embodiment) with all its facets (lifeworld and metaphor
theory) and its associated offshoots has yet to discuss the extent to which
one would like to include fundamental considerations and results of the cog-
nitive science in the discourse. If one focuses the above dialogical approach
on the interplay between the respective horizons of the “own” and the “for-
eign,” it becomes clear that the new approach also consists in a con-creativity
(Stenger, 1996) of the other: In the light of one’s own, the path of foreign access
is illuminated and becomes effective. This standing in the light can only take
place through the metaphors, the language, the symbolic and the other cul-
tural phenomena (above dimensions) of a culture. Contemporary condition
must be taken into account: one is already in a culturally globalized situation
(Weidtmann). This fact must also be dealt with in the context of intercultural
philosophizing.
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ländisch-asiatischer Vorschlag für das Arbeiten im interkulturellen Bereich. Nord-
hausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz.
Cassirer, E. (2010) Philosophie der symbolischen Formen—Die Sprache. Vol. 1, Ham-
burg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
Cassirer, E. (1931) ‘Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik’, in: Kant-Studien 31, Berlin:
Walter De Gruyter, pp. 2–26.
Cho, K. (2010) ‘Fostering the acquisition of English prepositions by Japanese learners
with networks and prototypes’, Fostering language teaching efficiency through cog-
nitive linguistics, 17, pp. 259–276.
Heidegger, M. (2001) Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Heidegger, M. (1973) Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Frankfurt am Main: Vit-
torio Klostermann.
Johnson, D.W. (2019) Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger,
Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
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Johnson, M. (1987) The Body in the Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination,
and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, M. (2007) The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding,
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Kaegi, D. and Rudolph, E. (eds.) (2002) Cassirer – Heidegger 70 Jahre Davoser Dispu-
tation. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
Keagi, D. (2002) ‘Davos und davor—Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Heidegger und
Cassirer’ in Cassirer–Heidegger 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, pp. 67–105.
Krois, J.M. (2002) ‘Warum fand keine Davoser Debatte zwischen Cassirer und Heideg-
ger statt?’ in Cassirer–Heidegger 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, pp. 234–246.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (2008) Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the
mind. Chicago: University of Chicago press.
Maraldo, J.C. (2001) ‘Watsuji’ in A Companion to the Philosophers, Arrington, R.L.
(ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 662–666.
Morimoto, S. and Loewen, S. (2007) ‘A comparison of the effects of image-schema-
based instruction and translation-based instruction on the acquisition of L2 poly-
semous words’, Language Teaching Research, 11(3), pp. 347–372.
Occhi, D.J. (2011) ‘A cultural-linguistic look at Japanese ‘eye’ expressions.’ in Embodi-
ment via body parts: Studies from various languages and cultures, pp. 171–191.
Schwemmer, O. (2002) ‘Ereignis und Form. Zwei Denkmotive in der Davoser Disputa-
tion zwischen Martin Heidegger und Ernst Cassirer’ in Cassirer–Heidegger 70 Jahre
Davoser Disputation, pp. 48–66.
Shinohara, K. (1999) ‘Epistemology of space and time: Analysis of conceptual meta-
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Sotirova Kohli, M., Rosen, D.H., Smith, S.M., Henderson, P., and Taki Reece,
S. (2011) ‘Empirical study of Kanji as archetypal images: understanding the collec-
tive unconscious as part of the Japanese language’, Journal of Analytical Psychology,
56(1), pp. 109–132.
Stenger, G. (1996) ‘Interkulturelles Denken: Eine neue Herausforderung für die Philo-
sophie. Ein Diskussionsbericht: Teil i’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 103.1, Freiburg: Ver-
lag Karl Alber, pp. 90–103.
Watsuji, T. (1992) Fūdo—Wind und Erde. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Klima und Kul-
tur. Translated by Fischer-Barnicol D. and Okochi R. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-
liche Buchgesellschaft.
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by Geoffrey Bownas, Westport CT: Greenwood Press.
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Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag (utb-Nr. 3666).
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part 2
Nishida Joining the Davos Debate
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6
Absolute Self-Contradictory Human Existence:
Nishida in Davos
Francesca Greco
Abstract
The aim of this article is to apply the philosophical approach of Nishida Kitarō’s work
on human existence to a counterfactual Davos disputation. Because of his inclination
to think relationality in a radical fashion by starting from the tensions inherent in the
absolute self-contradictory nature of human beings, I argue that Nishida’s presence in
Davos would have had a transformative effect. The famous 1929 dispute originated from
the question “Was ist der Mensch?” Many commentators have emphasized how uncom-
promisingly antithetical the personalities as well as the philosophical views of the two
speakers were. Against such dualistic polemics between monological views, my idea is
to introduce Nishida as a third interlocutor and thereby to offer a tool to analyze the dis-
cussion between Cassirer and Heidegger. My analysis will be articulated on two levels:
(1) a behavioral meta-level, in which the attitude and approach of the two disputants
will be considered and (2) a thematic level, which will reflect upon the results of the
first level by using a thematic key that traces the respective arguments each disputant
gave about the question of the finitude and infinity of human knowledge. Finally, I will
sketch some of the central concepts of Nishida’s thought, concepts which have guided
his most important arguments, such as the self-contradictory tension between human
existence and the modalities of its production. My aim when sketching these concepts
is also to underscore how they relate to Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s respective thinking.
After having seen, through Nishida’s eyes, how the form of this discussion affects both
the topics and the presentation of the discussion itself, we are then in a position to ask,
what are the most productive forms of discussion that we can possibly undertake for
the sake of the flourishing of philosophical conversations in the context of academic
philosophy?
Keywords
Nishida Kitarō – Human being (Mensch) – Davos disputation – Absolute self-contradic-

tion – Oppositions – Neo-Kantianism – Ernst Cassirer – Martin Heidegger – Finitude –
Infinity
© Francesca Greco, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_008 - 978-90-04-68017-3

190 greco
1 Introduction
The intercultural theme of the Kyoto in Davos conference at the university

of Hildesheim in 2020 gives us the opportunity to look at the original Davos
debate and its implications on philosophical community with a certain inter-
pretative distance and from a pluralistic point of view. The organization of this
online conference allowed for a vital and multi-layered exchange among the
participants, which stimulated both the discussion and the alignment of this
collected volume that has followed from it. Furthermore, the idea of perform-
ing a counterfactual encounter in various ways, as the title of the conference
already suggests, helps us to think more deeply and with greater flexibility
about the themes of the original Davos debate. I want to express my sincere
gratitude to the organizers for inviting me to be part of this project.
The 1929 Davos disputation touches on several nodal points in the history
of Western philosophy and therefore offers abundant, primarily dichotomous,
insights on many different classic philosophical topics.1 The resulting mixture
of syncretism and discordance has been consequently understood as a type of
philosophical, cultural and political allegory that posits a division between two
worlds, and thereby corresponds to opposite research fields and conceptions.2
To their relation and, more importantly, their relational arising in the philo-
sophical landscape of the late 1920s, the disputants as well as their interpreters
have not been given much weight, even though Immanuel Kant, who was at the
base of the debate, articulates some ways of coexistence for example of finite
and infinite in human being (Gordon, 2012, p. 185). The invited speakers of the
Davos debate integrate but also gradually overcome Kantian thinking, as we
will observe in the case of Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, both during the
debate itself and in the written production that was composed from it. Kant’s
philosophy is not an easy object of analysis, not only because of its undisputed
complexity and influence, but also and above all because of the criticisms his
writings have been subjected to in recent years, especially from intercultural
perspectives.3
1 Examples include the pairs ontic/ontological, anthropology/ontology, ancient/modern, epis-

temology/metaphysics, liberalism/authoritarianism, plurality/unity, transcendence/imma-
nence, foundation/abyss, translatability/untranslatability, truth/untruth, finitude/infinity,
and so on. Similar dichotomies have been made, for instance, based on the conceptions of
imagination and freedom.
2 Cfr. (Cassirer, 2010; Friedman, 2011; Gordon, 2012; Krois, 2004; Malka, 2004; Rudoph
and Kaegi, 2002).
3 See the discussion series Kant—ein Rassist?, which is dedicated in an interdisciplinary way
to the questions of whether Kant’s thinking is involved with racism and whether it supports
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absolute self-contradictory human existence: nishida in davos 191
With a similar critical eye, we should look back at the Davos debate in order
to undermine some of the clichés that marred it and also to bring to light
some of the patterns that have gone unnoticed or even taken for granted. My
contribution to analysis of the Davos debate will come in the form of a hypo-
thetical thought experiment, where we speculate about what it would mean if
Nishida Kitarō had also taken part in the Davos debate. What would Nishida
have noticed and how would he have commented if he had been seated among
the audience, for example if he had sat next to philosophers as noteworthy
as Rudolf Carnap?4 If he had been invited to Davos and allowed to partici-
pate with the Kant scholars there, would Nishida have helped to refine the
conversation by underscoring conceptions of relationality and contradiction,
concepts which are so central to his philosophical thought?5 From the incep-
tion of his first philosophical work, Nishida has tried to think and write directly
from relations themselves, in order to address being as relationality, first as pure
experience (純粋経験), then as place (場所) and finally as absolutely contra-
dictory self-identity (絶対矛盾的自己同一); additionally, he has ceaselessly
sought those types of relations that are inherently oppositional and contra-
dictory. By inserting Nishida hypothetically into the Davos debate, we have a
better opportunity to see the types of oppositions and relations at work, which
is closer to a battle field than an Arbeitsgemeinschaft (working community).6
I will establish my analysis on two levels: (1) on a behavioral meta-level, in
which Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s respective attitudes and approaches will be
considered, and (2) on a thematic level, in which the models of the first meta-
level will be reflected upon in terms of the topics under discussion, especially
colonialism. Cfr. https://www.bbaw.de/mediathek/archiv‑2020/kant‑ein‑rassist‑interdiszipli-

naere‑diskussionsreihe (last accessed 11.09.2021).
4 Speaking of mediation here, it is worth mentioning that for Michael Friedman (Friedman,
2011) the main disagreement was between Martin Heidegger’s and Rudolf Carnap’s views.
Because of this, Cassirer, with his philosophical anthropology, was put in the position of medi-
ator between Heideggerian existential ontology and Carnap’s logical positivism.
5 Here we should recall Nishida’s engagement with Kant.
6 Speaking of community of work and relationality, it is important to recall the process of the
formation of the Kyoto School, which was produced precisely by this exchange of ideas as well
as criticism and the mutual influence of its components in each other’s work. In fact, several
parts of the thought of the representatives of the Kyoto School were developed precisely as
a result of harsh criticism or supplements that were requested by those who would later be
counted among the representatives (Ohashi, 2014, pp. 23–30; Nishida, 1999, p. 5). In this
sense, a certain implemented relationality in the philosophical practice, even if in an uncon-
scious form, is at the base of Nishida’s work, a figure who is here counterfactually called on
to be a spectator of a disputation that actively goes in the opposite direction from the above
mentioned philosophical practice.
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from how they engage the respective arguments on finitude and infinity of
human knowledge. Only toward the end of my investigation will I explicitly
address the key concepts of Nishida’s thought that have guided his central argu-
ments, concepts such as the self-contradictory tension inherent in the nature
of human existence as well as the modalities of its production. The purpose of
this procedure is, therefore, to avoid the simple presentation of Nishida’s philo-
sophical contributions; instead, as Gregory Moss remarks in his comment on
my video contribution to the conference, the procedure “gives us an indica-
tion of how self-contradictory identity can be employed to solve problems that
arise not only in the Davos dispute but also for intercultural philosophy more
generally.”7 (Moss Panel 3) The principal questions I wish to address are the
following: What kind of relation do we get involved with in terms of our philo-
sophical encounters and discussions? How do we deal with discussions, with
respect to modalities and contents, in the philosophical and personal spheres?
How do we deal with the oppositions and contradictions that rise daily within
ourselves and from our relations with others? The question of the nature of
the human being, consequentially, implies a more fundamental issue about
the limits and boundaries that characterize the human being and their interac-
tions. This is why, before the question of the human being can be analyzed, we
must address the question of the limits and boundaries. Ultimately, how do we
conceptualize those differences and divisions that so deeply mark us as human
beings?
2 Methodological Meta-Level
2.1 Performed Oppositions

The form of the discussion in Davos, not only the setting of the conference,
had more of an influence on the audience and the content of the conference
than one might initially assume. I am referring to the general attitude of the
disputants, on the one hand, and to the way in which their philosophical posi-
tions are embodied as well as enacted on stage in Davos, on the other hand.
7 A similar remark to my contribution was made also by Hans Peter Liederbach. In regards
to intercultural philosophy, Lara Hofner wrote an interesting comment about philosophical
anthropology: “Furthermore, it seems to me that you are hinting at a revised understanding
of philosophical anthropology by introducing Nishida’s claim of a contradictory existence of
the human being itself. This could be an interesting start to open up philosophical anthro-
pology for intercultural philosophy debates—even though this might be a tough (but still
very worthwhile) undertaking as Kant places his Human Being and his anthropology on too
abstract a level to include any intercultural dimension.”
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The disputants start their controversy from the same question as the Kantian
one: “What is the human being?” Apparently, they work from the same ground
as the current philosophical trend of Neo-Kantianism, and they are ensconced
in the same frame of the Davos lectures on Kant. Despite this, or perhaps pre-
cisely because of such proximity, they seem to want nothing but to diverge;
by moving away from the common ground of Kant’s philosophy, they under-
score these “intentionally singled out […] differences” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 204).
Even when they seem to agree on various assumptions, such as a common con-
ception of the presence of the infinite in the finite, as the capacity of human
knowledge, as well as on the manifold expressions of being, as soon as they
realize their arguments overlap with each other, they pull away abruptly with
disproportionate reactions, almost aggressively and sarcastically refusing the
possibility of reconciling their central terms and in this way of exchanging ideas
and opening dialogue. In this sense, it seems to be no coincidence that Cassirer,
even though he complies more often than Heidegger, begins the discussion by
addressing Heidegger with terminology that would be better suited to a battle
or a competition of ancient rhetoric or medieval questio than to a philosoph-
ical discussion. He asks Heidegger: “Who is the opponent [Gegner] to whom
Heidegger has addressed himself?” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 193). The fact that this
is only a rhetorical question can also be seen from the fact that it will be Cas-
sirer himself who will then propose an answer to his own question, almost as if
speaking to himself and not to his interlocutor. Rather than letting themselves
affect, stimulate, and influence each other with arguments and interpretations
of the other’s work—in other words, rather than follow a natural form of rela-
tionality that fits the dialogical situation—Cassirer and Heidegger end up in a
direct controversy where neither wants “to make an attempt to break […] [the
other] from his position, to force him into another direction of seeing” (Heideg-
ger, 1991, p. 204). The result of this is that “[h]ence we have been condemned
here to a relativity” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 205) of merely logical arguments and
empirical individuals. The Davos scholar Peter Gordon puts it in the following
way: “It is nevertheless hard to overlook the fact that as the debate proceeded,
both Heidegger and Cassirer grew increasingly bold in speaking to the broader
anthropological and cultural ramifications of their disagreement. Their con-
cepts ramified, and as they did, so too the arguments transfigured, perhaps
notwithstanding the philosophers’ own intentions, into opposed and possibly
irreconcilable ‘worldviews’” (Gordon, 2012, p. 173).
In other words, the disputants actively show from the outset that they have
no intention of working together to shape their thinking into a common con-
tribution; instead, they remain significantly isolated in their own worldviews
in the attempt to promote their own positions and to claim victory over each
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other.8 This was visible both in the attitude of the discussants as well as in
the arranged format of the discussion. Having a formalized method of debate
designed to uncover and establish truths is not at all unusual in academic phi-
losophy, although it comes more often from fields like rhetoric and law, and less
often from medieval-style debates about theology and science. The process of
this formal method includes fixed rules and requires adherence to traditional
written authorities as well as a thorough understanding of each side’s argument
from their own terms. In the end, based on this formal method, the winner
will be called by a higher authority, such as a moderator or a special professor.
Something similar happened in Davos: the audience witnessed a polemical dis-
cussion between two philosophers with the public playing the role of judge.
But the real question here is why this debate was organized in this way and
why the two participants construed and followed this format and played by
these rules. To put it provocatively, I would say that they were not following
all of the rules of rhetorical or medieval debates precisely since neither Cas-
sirer nor Heidegger demonstrated that they understood or really wanted to
understand each other’s arguments because each was solely focused on his
own concerns. In this sense, we see by this play supposedly one object, such
as Kant’s philosophy, from two independent and impermeable points of view
without the possibility of seeing the link between them, a link which is never-
theless present and active in the discussion.9
I propose to address this modality of encounter as a monistic dualism or a
dualistic monism:10 The difference between the two expressions here lies only
in the way we access or, in the way we emphasize the unity, on the one hand,
or division of the concept, on the other hand, which does not have the effect
8 Many participants of the conference Kyoto in Davos discussed and developed in different
directions the oppositional character of the debate. For example, Hans Peter Liederbach
(Panel 2), Esther Oluffa Pedersen (Panel 1) and Michel Dalissier (Panel 1) each effectively
analyzed opposition in their videos.
9 On the topic of the irreducible interaction between subjects, Jan Strassheim held an inspir-
ing presentation entitled The Scandal of Intersubjectivity at the conference Kyoto in Davos.
Strassheim’s talk clarified many points that cannot be addressed here (Strassheim Panel
3).
10 In the synchronic online session of the conference Kyoto in Davos from September 10th
2020, I briefly addressed the question of monism with regard to Rossella Lupacchins con-
tribution on Nishida, Cassirer and mathematics. On this occasion, I specified that what
I meant by monism is the human tendency to find structures where there is no struc-
ture in itself so that the structure is brought into the observed situation by human beings
themselves. As Lucas Dos Reis Martins shortly thereafter pointed out in a comment, this
happens because “we are the structures,” he says, and that consequently human beings
cannot be thought of outside of the structures they create.
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of reducing the incompatibility and incommunicability between the interlocu-

tors in Davos. In fact, in both cases, we hold the same idea, where each side is
incompatible and stands in opposition to the other side. Yet, at the same time,
the incompatibility of the idea is based on an opposition that is, more precisely,
contradictory, and from this draws its lifeblood. Both disputants assume that
their own position is only possible if they stand radically opposed to each other,
in an almost contradictory way. These two perspectives could not encounter
each other otherwise than by overlapping with each other, which has the effect
of making them indistinguishable and collapsing each into the other.11 The con-
sequence is that one or the other position must assimilate and defeat the other,
or, as Pedersen puts it “[t]he assumption that a debate has a winner, one who
comes out best, implies a belief in reciprocally exclusive positions. It is a nar-
rative of the type ‘The winner takes it all’” (Pedersen Panel 5).12
The substantial subsistence of their perspectives is actively present for both
discussants. Heidegger points out how impossible and undesirable it is to speak
from the nowhere and asserts the following: “I would misunderstand myself if I
said that I gave a philosophy free of points of view” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 199). Fur-
thermore, he repeatedly asks “From where, then, do we know of this eternity?”
(Heidegger, 1991, p. 198, my emphasis), “What path does the human being have
to infinitude? And what is the manner in which human being can participate
in infinity?” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 200, my emphasis).13 And, finally, “the ques-
tion of what human being is […] must first be properly clarified with regard to
the perspective from within which it wants to be posed” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 202,
my emphasis). The importance of such perspectivity is reflected in the dis-
cussion, throughout which Heidegger and Cassirer both ask each other many
11 There are several stimulating ways we can spatially imagine such monistic dualism or
dualistic monism: we can imagine the surface of two circles perfectly overlapping on each
other or we can be inspired by the artwork of Markus Raetz “Yes No,” in which the same
sculpture shows the letters “yes” and “not” depending on the perspective from which the
sculpture is observed. What is particularly stimulating about the second case is the open
possibility to look at the sculpture from many other perspectives, perhaps by trying to
catch both words from the same point of view, or by concentrating on the exact moment
when our perception shifts, or by looking from above and below, even if in the latter two
cases the meaning of the two words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ still dissolves into the shape of each
other’s letters. It is precisely through this work of art that we can understand how privi-
leged points of view on certain concepts or social situations are formed.
12 A similar idea related to identities in intersubjective relations was stressed in the video
contribution by Jan Strassheim (Panel 3).
13 This is a slightly modified quotation from the English translation of the German term
“Mensch,” translated here as “human being” instead of “man.” The same applies to the fol-
lowing occurrences of the same term and other expressions throughout this book chapter.
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direct questions and offer reflections about the act of asking and answering
questions. This supports the reference to a more personal rather than a more
philosophical perspective for the discussion. This way of conducting the con-
versation is, in turn, indicative of the approach to the Kantian question, “What
is the human being?,” a question which is, in itself, a very open question, which
has been reformulated through the disputants’ answers in the form of various
dichotomous questions. For example, Heidegger refers to the Kantian question
when he asks: “What is the inner structure of Dasein itself? Is it finite or infi-
nite?” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 197). In this way, the two move away from the context
of their encounter and crystalize their positions in their own philosophies; all
the while, Cassirer tries to explain the core meaning of his Philosophy of Sym-
bolic Forms, and Heidegger tries to express the main project of Being and Time.
The polemics of their respective positions is taken for granted, for example,
when Heidegger anticipates Cassirer’s trans-subjectivity of truth (Heidegger,
1991, p. 198).14 Heidegger notices that they were moving away from their sup-
posed common field of exchange, and so he proposes to return to Kant: “I would
like once more to place our entire discussion in terms of Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason and to fix once more the question of what human being is as the cen-
tral question” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 204). These references solidify and distance
the two philosophical perspectives from each other, which nevertheless collide
in the context of an organized disputation. At the same time, the disputants
seem to overlook their crucial interdependency and indispensable points of
contact, i.e. the outlines of their discussion, or, as Heidegger mentions it with-
out developing the issue, the discussion as “horizontal character” (Heidegger,
1991, p. 198).15
Both interlocutors underscore the monistic-dualistic proceeding and suc-
cessive outcome of their encounter by refusing to engage in a fruitful way with
each other’s ideas. This is expressed also in how incompatible each philoso-
pher’s terminology is in terms of Kant’s lectures. Heidegger says openly that
“[i]t is not suitable to the task at hand if we come up against a process of level-
ing” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 204). Cassirer immediately follows up on this point by
saying: “I, too, am opposed to leveling” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 204). Both agree that
14 Another sign of the focus-points of each philosophy comes from the lecture publications
that appeared after the Davos debate. See Cassirer’s Geist und Leben in der Philosophie der
Gegenwart (1930) and Heidegger’s Kant und das Problem der Methaphysik (1929).
15 It is important to note in this context that when I talk about boundaries, I do not mean a
neutral background that unites the two ideas. In this case, it could be a pure understand-
ing of Kant’s positions of a neutral understanding of the finitude on which basis finitude
and infinity are both contradictory terms.
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the “[m]ere mediating will never amount to anything productive” (Heidegger,

1991, p. 207) because, if they were merely to mediate, they would have to sacri-
fice parts of their theories, which neither was willing to do. Neither could they
find ways to correspond over the fundamental terms of their philosophies from
within each other’s terminology, nor could they paraphrase their own terminol-
ogy by using each other’s vocabulary. Cassirer felt that “[w]hat we both want to,
and must, strive for, and also what we can achieve, is that anyone, for all that he
remains with his own position, would see not only himself but the other as well”
(Heidegger, 1991, p. 204). However, Heidegger remained outwardly skeptical
about the compatibility of their terminologies. Speaking against the translit-
eration of his term “Dasein” as “consciousness” and rejecting Cassirer’s attempt
to grasp his concept of Being, Heidegger states clearly: “I believe that what
I describe by Dasein does not allow translation into a concept of Cassirer’s”
(Heidegger, 1991, p. 203). Their attitude towards each other reveals the signifi-
cant presuppositions lurking at the bottom of their discussion: both frame the
other philosophy in a historical light that is inferior to their own and thereby
accuse the other perspective as a position that needs to be overcome (Gordon,
2012, p. 212). Cassirer sees in the philosophy of symbolic forms a development of
cultural and intellectual modernism that aligns the celebration of human cre-
ativity, or spontaneity, with philosophically enlightened trends; Heidegger, in
contrast, sees his philosophy as an event of disclosure that restores the human
being to a deepened recognition of its thrownness and nihility. Furthermore,
Cassirer presents Heidegger’s philosophy as a regression to an old metaphysics
of substance, while Heidegger inscribes Cassirer’s philosophy in the narrative
of the oblivion of Being (Seinsvergessenheit). Gordon summarizes this tense
situation as follows: “The result is what one might call a stalemate of mutual
historicization: both philosophers seemed to believe they occupied a position
of superior historical knowledge from which they could characterize the errors
of their opponent. Neither had in fact shown that the opponent’s philosophy
was wrong on argumentative grounds alone. Their separation was complete”
(Gordon, 2012, p. 209). Based on these assumptions, which became more and
more evident as the discussion unfolded, the task of finding a genuine ground
for common exchange becomes complicated and even daunting.
A common core of philosophizing should be found since “[i]t is not fruit-
ful, however, to highlight this disagreement again and again” (Heidegger, 1991,
p. 204). At the end of the discussion, Cassirer and Heidegger each make differ-
ent attempts to find a common ground, partly with a retrospective look at the
differences and partly with the intention of setting a good example for the audi-
ence. There is also a final possibility to reconcile their monistic opposite views,
which is to let a higher, third party recollect and analyze their differences. The
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initial ground of the Kantian philosophy has revealed itself to be ineffective at

assisting to unify their positions, mainly because Cassirer and Heidegger have
irreconcilably different readings of Kant. Since Kant cannot be used as a media-
tor for their ideas, the last chance of an opportunity to bridge their work comes
from the thesis that there could be a common task of philosophy, the exercise
of philosophizing in general, which might bring them together.16 At the end
of their confrontation, the two opponents agree that they have an obligation
to show to the audience some accordance and to try to regain a contact point
for the whole discussion. Cassirer does this by addressing this explicitly after
his failed hermeneutical attempts to understand Heidegger. Heidegger, in turn,
does this by attempting to search for a compromise through the common task
of philosophizing. Seeing the need to reconcile after exaggerating their differ-
ences, each philosopher claims to have successfully emancipated himself from
one-sidedness. Cassirer does this by asking “where the common core of our dis-
agreement lies. […] We must search again for the common center, precisely in
the disagreement. And I say, we do not need to search” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 205).
Heidegger, for his part, sees potentiality as a common ground through the main
question of philosophy toward Being and Metaphysics. He ends the discussion
by stressing this point, but without renouncing his jargon:
What it comes down to is that you take one thing with you from our
debate: do not orient yourselves to the variety of positions of philoso-
phizing human beings, and do not occupy yourselves with Cassirer and
Heidegger. Rather, the point is that you have come far enough to have
felt that we are on the way toward once again getting down to business
with the central question of metaphysics. And on top of that, I would
like to point out to you that in small measure what you have seen here
is the difference between philosophizing human beings in the unity of
the problematic, which on a large scale expresses something completely
different, and that it is precisely this freeing of itself from the difference
16 The potential of reconciling the opponents through a third party, such as the issue (die
Sache) between the interlocutors, was stressed by Liederbach in one of his comments rely-
ing on Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Regarding this suggestion, Liederbach asked what the
context would be like in which dialogues for Nishida. I answered that I choose Nishida
to balance the two strong parties of Heidegger and Cassirer, not because he counts as
a mediating or neutral third party, but because he has reflected at long intervals on the
oppositions with respect to their emergence and occurrence in the situation itself, con-
centrating on their relationship, but not as a third camp that could bring them together.
On this topic of whether Nishida’s basho can function as third, higher party rather than
as a relational texture, see Greco and Krings (2021).
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of positions and standpoints which is essential in the debate with the his-
tory of philosophy, that it is the first step in the history of philosophy; [it
is essential to see] precisely how the differentiation of standpoints is the
root of the philosophical endeavor. (Heidegger, 1991, p. 207)
As we can expect from having witnessed such a performance of clashing ideas,

this undertaking, where each philosophy tries to reach a common ground to
the disagreement, would appear to be primarily a rhetoric one.
2.2 Structural Oppositions

Once we have clarified that the dispute between Cassirer and Heidegger devel-
ops in the form of a contradictory opposition between two polarizing philo-
sophical positions, born from the common ground of Kant’s question “Was ist
der Mensch?” and from the common task of philosophy, we are now in a posi-
tion to analyze the structure of this opposition and, in general, to come to terms
with how the oppositions work.
Oppositions are first of all relations, which implicate the mutual concern
of differences. They rely, in turn, on open differences (≠) or on sharper con-
trasts (vs) between the sides of the relations. Whether differences move closer
to oppositions or move closer to contradictions depends on the form of nega-
tion assigned to the sides of the relations. Each side of the relation can, on the
one hand, differ without excluding the other side and can even keep open the
possibility of further sides, i.e. elements of the relation such as the ideas or
aspects not included in their current confrontation. In this way their relation
differentiates them without including them in a rigid hierarchy. On the other
hand, each side of the relation can banish the other side from its own field.
Such differentiation or distancing can involve, for example, the confrontation
of A with B as well as the confrontation of C with T and so on, with a whole
set of combinations within these contrasts. For example, although the Latin
alphabet does not exclude the presence of other letters (for example, C ≠ T), it
does emphasize the relation between C and T, if we focus on this, and thereby
places other letters of the alphabet in the background, which has the effect of
highlighting, on the one hand, the respective outlines, in other words, the iden-
tities of C and T (“C is different from T”) and, on the other hand, of making such
outlines play the role of being the dividing lines. These dividing lines include
or exclude what touches their boundaries. The dividing lines are what draw the
differentiation (≠) closer to an opposition (vs): in an oppositional relation the
sides of the relation can move more or less vigorously against each other, work-
ing directly from such boundaries. The circumscribed elements of the relation
can move so vehemently and in such a focused way against each other that the
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presence of the one ends up implying the absence of the other, so much so that
the open background of their relation, as for instance in the context of the Latin
alphabet, disappears from their actual connection. The consequence of this is
that there is a reduction of the range of action of their relationship in consid-
eration of each other. This situation implies respectively a greater focus from
the one to the other, not only in the assertion of their different identities (T ≠
C) but also in the negation of their own identity (−T) as it is projected in the
positive identity of the other (C) which turns into its opposite (C = −T). In turn,
this affects the identity which is now perceived as the negation of the other
(T = −C). In this way, a relation between differences has turned into a relation
between mutually excluding identities; all other possible sides that could miti-
gate this opposition (A, B, D, …) are momentarily but actively blocked. Based on
this situation, the occurrence of one element (C) in the field of another element
(T) triggers either persecution and removal or inclusion and appropriation of
one element into the other, following a dialectic of power struggles between
strong identities. The operation of mutual negation (−C, −T), which adds more
to the binary selection, and which places the blocking of each from each other
into the background, is still mitigated by these strong identities, so much so
that their oppositional relationship is not able to pass all the way to the form of
contradiction—(C ∧ −C). In fact, it is first and foremost through the exposure
of the contradictory relationship that these identities become challenged.
If we look closer at the single elements instead of at the relation, distinct
shapes or aspects of the related elements emerge according to the distinct
forms of their relations. Since the difference relation is a less defined, i.e. more
open relation than the binary oppositional one, it allows for a more peace-
ful coexistence between its elements. When the exclusionary process that I
described above takes place, the elements of the relation undergo a transforma-
tion toward both stronger identities and sharper distinctions. The one strong
identity (C) fixates on its own self-affirming point of view and tends to con-
sequently see in the other a projection of itself, but a projection that is the
negative variant of itself. In this sense, from the perspective of C, T would be
a sort of appendix of C and yet, at the same time, would remain distinct from
C, as −C. Consequently, the elements involved in the relation are exclusively
modalities of C and −C. They are elements which will certainly not be found in
the same place if we want to avoid contradiction as well as the indistinguisha-
bility of C and −C. The consequence of this is that a split in C is created, which
is expressed by its negation: C creates an external projection of itself in T and,
at the same time, distances itself from itself by projecting itself away from its
identity. Since the perspective of C is not transcending its own perspective in
any of its modalities, we can define this situation as a monism, in which C splits
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into dual modes, a positive (C) and a negative (−C). This division is occasion-
ally covered over by its strong identity (T) in an oppositional relation. When we
focus on the elements of the relation, we detect something which had not been
made clear enough from the standpoint of the relation: Through the expansion
and differentiation of C in T, we recognize that C is located both inside and
outside of the defined boundaries. To recognize this double location means
to enter into the monistic perspective and, at the same time, to shut out the
contradiction if the sides of the relation where to touch.17 This situation is in
fact based on the complication that, on the one hand, the existence of one ele-
ment of the relation seems to precede the relation itself, and yet, on the other
hand, the relation itself seems to have been added a posteriori as its accident;
nevertheless, it is exactly by means of the relation—a relation of identity or
difference—by which the sides come to be defined as such.
To express this in a very simple and less abstract way, we can note how the
relation itself and all sides of the relation grow indissolubly together into one
another. And, at the same time, we can also note further details about this
state of affairs. Imagine being at a bar and someone asking you, “Do you drink
coffee?” (“C”?) The person who asks you this invites you to meet them on the
common ground of “drinking something” (alphabet). You could answer, “No, I
prefer tea” (T) or “No, I don’t drink coffee” (−C). With the first answer, on the
one hand, you compare the first option (C) with the second option (T), which
is not directly linked to the first since the question here could have asked about
juice, whiskey and so on, anything within the category of drinking something,
not specifically tea. Yet, on the other hand, the first possibility introduces a new
element, namely a new identity, which contains a slight implicit negation of the
first identity, represented by the “no” at the beginning of the sentence.
In terms of the second answer, you linger on the proposition of your inter-
locutor (C) and negate it expressly (−C). Independently, if you want to continue
the conversation by asking something else about the coffee or about some other
17 An inspiring examination of contradiction was made at the conference by Gregory Moss

(Panel 3) in his video contribution Nishida’s Absolute Dialetheism. During the synchronous
session of the conference, Michel Dalissier asked me a very complex question about the
Nishidian concept of contradiction. The question addressed at the same time the his-
tory of contradiction, that is, whether all philosophers who have dealt with contradiction
have understood the same concept of “contradiction,” especially regarding Aristotle and
Nishida. I still do not know how to answer this question adequately, but I do think that
Nishida relies on different philosophical conceptions of oppositions and finally, by try-
ing to overcome or rework them, finds his own concrete historical use of contradiction, a
use which I will briefly address at the end of this paper. In any case, this very important
question would require a whole separate study to explore it adequately.
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issue, there are three points to stress from here: First, you essentially repeat
back what you heard; second, you define and reduce the boundaries of the con-
versation by delimiting them; and third, you maintain the interplay of the two
modalities of the identity coffee (C) and not coffee (−C). As for the third, you
do this without differentiating either of the possible aspects of the negation,
which happens in the first case of tea, and you do this without exploring the
field of communication, even if this procedure is hinted at from the question
itself.
At the Davos debate, Heidegger and Cassirer reproduce the above sketched
monistic dualism or dualistic monism. The reason why they decided to do the
disputation is because they each desired to express these differences. And yet,
they focus so much on their own interpretations that they end up exaggerat-
ing these differences, so much so that these differences become contradictions,
and then they find themselves contradicting each other. This proceeding can
be supported if we follow the behavioral level of the disputation and establish
two main points: (1) The form of the unproblematized statements from Hei-
degger’s first lines in the discussion and (2) the employment of a few common
assumptions, from which I briefly highlight Kant’s ethical theory.18 It is inter-
esting to notice Cassirer’s reaction to Heidegger’s first lines about the issue of
appearance (Schein) in Kant.19 Irritated and incredulous when faced with the
immobility of Heidegger’s statement, Cassirer tries to recast it as an open ques-
tion but, by doing this, affirms the following:
I ask this question because I really do not yet know. The fixing [Fixierung]
of the point of transit [Durchgangspunkt], then, lies first with Heidegger.
I believe, however, that Heidegger cannot be capable of abiding by it, nor
can he want to. He must first pose these questions himself, and then, I
believe, whole new problems emerge. (Heidegger, 1991, p. 196)
Moreover, we have already shown that the points of agreement between the
two philosophers do not establish a consensus or common ground between
their two asserted visions but, instead, should only be taken as the basis of the
18 Another example could have been the issue of freedom (Heidegger, 1991, pp. 202–203).
19 In particular, Heidegger’s argument runs as follows: “On the grounds of my interpretation
of the Dialectic as ontology, I believe I am able to show that the problem of appearance
in the Transcendental Logic, which for Kant is only negative in the form in which it first
appears there, is [actually] a positive problem, and that the following is in question: is
appearance just a matter of fact which we state, or must the entire problem of reason be
apprehended in such a way that we grasp from the beginning how appearance necessarily
belongs to the nature of human beings” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 194).
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fundamentally opposed vision of each opponent. One example of this behavior

is Heidegger’s feedback of Cassirer’s development of the finitude-thesis:
Cassirer wants to show that finitude becomes transcendent in the eth-

ical writings. In the Categorical Imperative we have something which
goes beyond the finite creature. But precisely the concept of the Imper-
ative as such shows the inner reference to a finite creature. Also, this
going-beyond to something higher is always just a going-beyond to the
finite creature [and] still remains within the [sphere of] creatureliness
[Geschöpflichkeit] and finitude. (Heidegger, 1991, p. 196)
Therefore, if, for Cassirer, ethics infers a specifically transcendent conception

of the infinity of human knowledge, for Heidegger, this same concept infers
limitedness. A similar parallel comes about when we consider the undeniable
knowledge of the concept or meaning of infinity, which is, for Cassirer proof of
the infinity of human knowledge, while, for Heidegger, “this infinitude of the
ontological is bound essentially to ontic experience so that we must say the
reverse: this infinitude which breaks out in the power of imagination is pre-
cisely the strongest argument for finitude, for ontology is an index of finitude.
God does not have it” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 197).
We saw how complex oppositions develop in contrast to how we might think
they initially develop, and we also saw how the involved parties of an opposi-
tion, Cassirer and Heidegger, engaged in such an entangled variety of transfor-
mations by virtue of their relations, so much so that we should let go of all hope
of a substantial construction between the two at the beginning of our analysis.
After having outlined some of the main features of this complexity, we are now
in a position to move on from our reflection of the methodological meta-level
to the thematic level, focusing above all on the relation between the finite and
the infinite in the context of human knowledge.
3 Thematic Level
3.1 The Finite and the Infinite

The thematic level of the discussion is in turn shaped by the above mentioned
oppositional meta-level of the relation, and this also applies to the bound-
aries separating and connecting the two positions. The moderator of the Davos
debate, Hendrik Pos, enters the discussion with a philological remark that, in
a productive fashion, underscored the crucial role that boundaries play insofar
as they cannot be overstepped: “[B]oth men speak a completely different lan-
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guage. For us, it is a matter of extracting something common from these two
languages. […] Should it be found that there is no translation for these terms
from both sides, then these would be the terms with which to differentiate the
spirit of Cassirer’s philosophy from Heidegger’s” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 201). What
cannot be overreached by either side of the boundary embodies the core of
each oppositional theory.
The inquiry starts from the shared assumption that, because of appear-
ance (Schein) and productive imagination (Kant’s Synthesis Speciosa), human
knowledge is to some extent finite; nevertheless, this finitude bears an indis-
soluble relation to its contradictory opposite, namely the infinite together with
other aspects of such non-finite, including the transcendent, the absolute, the
eternal, truth, necessity, universality, objectivity and so on, which come up in
the discussion as related to infinity. Cassirer is the one who tries to develop
Heidegger’s strong claim by addressing the link between finitude and infinity
through the freedom of the ethical20 (das Sittliche), a freedom which all ratio-
nal entities (alle Vernunftwesen) enjoy, and which leads us beyond the world of
appearances. For Cassirer, this is a matter of the transition to the mundus intel-
ligibilis so that “a point is reached which is no longer relative to the finitude of
the knowing creature. Rather, an Absolute has now been set in place” (Heideg-
ger, 1991, p. 195, pp. 194–196). In this sense “Kant fled from Heidegger’s problem
[of finite knowledge], but he expanded upon this sphere [or] how does such
a finite creature in general come to have knowledge, to have reason, to have
truth?” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 195). Heidegger admits that the presence of the idea
of infinitude in human knowledge leads to “a finite creature [which] has a cer-
tain infinitude in the ontological. But the human being is never infinite and
absolute in the creating of the being itself; rather, it is infinite in the sense of
the understanding of Being” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 197).
Relativeness, in the sense of relying on something beyond that transcends
the human being, as something different from it, is at the core of Heidegger’s
argument that human knowledge cannot create absolutely like God’s creatio
originalis can. Human beings are, ultimately, relative to Being (Sein). The border
line between the human being and Being is what makes a determination deter-
minate, and so by confining the first determination to the finitude of the human
being as that which is what it is and that which knows what it knows, we have,
20 On the ethical question and its relation to laws, Liederbach captured some nodal points
in his video contribution at the Kyoto in Davos conference, which were then developed
in the dense commentaries that followed. See also Heidegger (1991, p. 196): “We cannot
discuss the problem of the finitude of the ethical creature if we do not pose the question:
what does law mean here.”
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in the end, founded the determination on nothing (Heidegger, 1991, pp. 198–
204). The absolute otherness of Being is in itself from itself thus unknowable
for human beings, and yet it is perceivable for them as a lack, as an absence of
knowing as well as a limitedness, which is precisely the reason why it makes
sense to focus specifically on such limitedness in order to investigate Being in
itself through the Being of beings. Such a deficiency can only be addressed as
infinitude, as the negative form of finitude, as the word itself implies. Because
of the dependency of human beings on Being, Being-in-truth means at the
same time Being-in-untruth as the converse side of it. Heidegger explains this
when he writes, “[i]f Dasein does not exist [as a finite creature], there is no
truth […] [and therefore] [t]ruth is relative to Dasein” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 198).
This is why the dependency (Angewiesenheit) of something on something else
in order to know and to inhabit the world is crucial for Heidegger’s understand-
ing of the human being as structured Dasein.
In contrast, Cassirer claims without hesitation that there is a clear access for
human beings to the infinite, which appears directly in the concept of the form
Cassirer articulated when he was pressed to answer three radical questions
posed by Heidegger. One of these questions was, “Is infinitude to be attained as
privative determination of finitude, or is infinitude a region in its own right?”
(Heidegger, 1991, p. 200). In response, Cassirer invokes Goethe: “If you want to
step into infinitude, just go in all directions into the finite” (Heidegger, 1991,
p. 201). “[T]his is the opposite of privation,” Cassirer continues, “it is the perfect
filling-out of finitude itself” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 201), while the infinite “is not
just an opposition to finitude, […] it is just the totality, the fulfillment of finitude
itself. But this fulfillment of finitude exactly constitutes infinitude” (Heidegger,
1991, p. 201). Cassirer then develops this argument by claiming that there is a
strong relatedness between the finite and infinite, a relation that does not make
the infinite something that goes beyond the finite and would only, therefore, be
experienced in the negative, but is, rather, something concretely present in the
finite itself. This fixation on the human being, which, however, does not con-
sider its infinity, forces us to withdraw from a fundamental part of its essence.
Form “leads finitude out into something new. And that is immanent infinitude.
[…] [A]lthough it is not one obtained in a purely negative way in addition to
the finite” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 201). The relatedness of the finite and the infinite
manifests itself in the function of how form incarnates the factual existence
of the transcendent and thus guarantees the intersubjective construction of a
shared objectivity, an existence which can be called truth, and which is worth
seeking beyond any individuality. Moreover, this shared platform of truth is not
something that levels, neutralizes, or makes uniform, but is, instead, the only
standpoint from which differences may be named.
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Hence, while Cassirer’s view is based on the relation of continuity between

the finite and the infinite and considers infinity as fulfillment of finitude, Hei-
degger builds his argument from a discontinuous21 relation, where infinity acts
as a privative mode of finitude and as the definitive proof of the irreducible fini-
tude of Dasein as given. Putting the question in the spatial terms of tracing and
defining boundaries, we can say that while Cassirer focuses on the beyond of
the finitude of the human being, with a built-in desire to reach the beyond, Hei-
degger focuses his philosophical efforts precisely on this side of the boundary
and on the characteristic finitude of the human being. Nevertheless, the bound-
ary still remains for both thinkers, and it is really this boundary that binds them
together.
The arguments in favor of and against the (in)finitude of the human being
follow from and help to advance the above outlined behavior of the monistic
dualism of C. If we keep in mind the example we already worked through at the
thematic level about the relation between the finite and the infinite, and now
look back at the analysis of the behavior of the disputants and close the circle
in this way, we will notice how the behavior of the disputants analyzed above is
reflected in their own ideas and how, once again, the boundaries between them
play a fundamental role in their relation. Cassirer was most likely motivated by
the unifying power of trans-subjectivity and of the symbolic forms in general to
present himself in a more conciliatory manner than Heidegger, who, concen-
trating on difference and finitude, tries to highlight the limits and dysfunctions
of certain definitions and conceptions. Cassirer presents himself also as the one
who seeks “idea[s] which Heidegger too will appreciate [and] want[s] only to
make his position understandable” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 204). Cassirer attempts
over and over again to translate their jargon and even tries to shift the discus-
sion to a common reality, which he hopes will eventually prove to the audience
that their theories contain within them some level of objectivity. Cassirer even
believed that he had found at least one common area of disagreement in the
language and in the “common, objective human world in which the differences
between individuals have in no way now been superseded, but with the stipu-
lation that the bridge here from individual to individual has now been knocked
21 As Hans Peter Liederbach remarks in one of his comments to my video contribution,

Heidegger seemingly never overcomes the problem of discontinuity. Because of this, on
the one hand, other discontinuities arise, such as authenticity and inauthenticity, truth
and the correctness to recall; however, on the other hand, there remains in Heidegger’s
thinking something specifically unspeakable. The question of continuity and discontinu-
ity in Heidegger’s thinking will become more complex than Heidegger himself admits in
the Davos disputation, and for this reason it is worthwhile to compare his thinking with
Nishida’s conception of discontinuous continuity (非連続の連続).
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down. […] We assert here that we tread on a common ground […] as a postu-
late” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 205). Being a postulate, Cassirer’s argument does not
seem to be that strong or have much substance to it, especially for someone
like Heidegger, who was often skeptical and rarely felt he had been understood
by any interlocutor or interpreter. Against all expectations, however, towards
the end of the conversation, the two philosophers attempted to exchange ideas
again and present their positions coherently to each other. This often happens
between negating opposites, and it is Heidegger himself who completes the dis-
cussion from his own terms, alluding to the common task of philosophy, which
he claims “opens out onto the totality and what is highest in human being”
(Heidegger, 1991, p. 207).
3.2 Absolutely Contradictory Existence

Although most of my analysis on the oppositional relationships at play in the
Davos dispute has so far been guided by Nishidian concepts and ways of dealing
with these issues, now it becomes indispensable to call Nishida himself briefly
into question in order to bring this analysis to a conclusion. In my supposition,
Nishida, whose conception of truth is similar to Heidegger’s, would never sep-
arate the finite from the absolute other (絶対他). The infinite, as the intimate
correlation of the finite, is implied by the word itself, however not in terms of
deprivation or absence. I imagine that Nishida would have explained the rela-
tion between the finite and the infinite as an incessant, oscillating movement
that takes place between the two concepts:
While thing [物] and self [我] are utterly opposed and utterly contradict
each other [相反し相矛盾する], the thing affects the self and the self and
self affects the thing; as contradictory self-identity, the world itself forms
itself [世界が自己自身を形成する], moving in active intuition [行為的
直観的] from the made to the making […] So it is in respect to the fact
that we are historically productive [歴史的制作的] that there is true self
[真の我]. (Nishida, 2012, p. 144)22
This movement is not only about overstepping the limits of finitude toward a
reunification of both in the fullness of the immanent transcendence of fini-
tude, as it is for Cassirer. This movement is also at the same time the reverse
22 Nishida (2003, p. 259): 「物と我とは何処までも相反し相矛盾するものでありながら、

物が我を動かし我が物を動かし、矛盾的自己同一として世界が自己自身を形成
する、作られたものから作るものへと行為的直観的に動いて行く。[…] 而して斯く
我々が歴史的制作的なる所に、我々の真の我といふものがあるのである。」
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of this, a transcendent immanence that creates a self-contradictory identity

(矛盾的自己同一) between finitude and infinity. The tension between imma-
nence and transcendence, between the finite and infinite, brings the emphasis
of our analysis away from the single contradictory elements and back to the
boundaries (極限) that stand between these concepts, and which now become
places of vitality. Precisely from the tensions of this movement, the one-off
existence of the human emerges. Boundaries also do not tremble at contradic-
tion because they have a natural tendency to be contradictory, in contrast to the
struggle for survival seen above from the static point of view of the individual
elements. The reason why boundaries naturally withstand simultaneous self-
negation (自己否定) in absolute otherness as well as in the self-determination
(自己限定) of absolute identity is because these boundaries arise neither
before nor after the sides with which they relate. Therefore, the boundaries
themselves do not follow those sides in their changes of identities, but, instead,
arise from and build upon the contradictory nature of the simultaneity (即)
of their sides. In the form of boundaries, i.e. as boundaries, their sides remain
in contact and therefore shape each other by maintaining a considerable ten-
sion between substances and insubstantiality, determinations and indetermi-
nacy, and affirmations and negations. Based on Nishida’s understanding, the
whole world behaves in a very similar manner. It revolves around a dynamic
axis (中軸), at which mirror point (射影点) it transcends itself and merges
into historical focal points (焦点) on the border between self-determination
and self-negation. In this way, the world oversteps (移り行き) itself again and
again, while at the same time maintains itself exactly through this movement.
It is because of this process of self-transformation that the world also main-
tains its absoluteness (絶対者). Nishida’s concept of the absolute can help us
to better illustrate the relations between the finite and the infinite, and also
between general oppositions such as those that I analyzed in the contribution
above. In his last work, Nishida stresses vigorously that “[t]he absolute [絶対
者] does not simply go beyond [絶する] the relative [対], but in its absolute
self-negation [絶対的自己否定] it must maintain and see itself [於て自己を
見る]” (Nishida 2002, p. 347).23 Someone who has gained enough confidence to
interpret Nishida’s terminology effectively immediately notices the connection
23 「絶対者とは、対を絶するものではない、絶対的自己否定に於て自己を有つも
の、絶対的自己否定に於て自己を見るものでなければならない。」Translated by the
author. (Nishida, 1999; Nishida, 1986; Nishida, 1987a; Nishida, 1987b) “The absolute
does not destroy the relative, but possesses itself and sees itself in its own absolute self-
negation” (Nishida, 1987b, p. 103). “Absolute Being does not transcend the relative, but it
has its existence and sees itself through its absolute self-negation” (Nishida, 1987a, p. 101).
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between the activity of exceeding a certain limitation (絶する) and the oper-
ation of (self-)negation (自己否定) as it is carried out by the absolute and as
it leads to true absoluteness (絶対者). Let’s recall the schematic sketch of the
examination of oppositions we did in the last section: The absolute (A) does not
leave the relative (B) behind in the sense of its complete overcoming or erad-
ication of its relativity to something other. Precisely because of this, however,
the absolute enters into a more intense relationship with it (A = -B and A = B),
a relationship that changes both fundamentally, that is, both the conception of
the relative in its relativity (B = -B) and also the conception of the absolute in its
absoluteness (A = -A). Through their (self-)negating relationality, the absolute
and the relative arise dynamically from the reciprocal tensions of their rela-
tions as well as from the movement of their differentiations and identifications
with each other and as themselves. The operation of negation, instead of elim-
inating something, has here the function of opening or freeing a space. It is in
this space that relational dynamics take shape. It would be good at this point to
remember that the character 絶 (zetsu; ta) contained in the Japanese expres-
sion for the “absolute” 絶対 has also the meaning of “to cut,” similar to the Latin
expression ab-solutum, which means “to separate” or “to loosen,” and which has
gradually come to form the philosophical nuance of transcendent or encom-
passing as well as the similarities of to the split function of a boundary. With
respect to these two characteristics, Nishida enriches the concept of the abso-
lute by layering it with new implications, such as the dynamic tension between
differentiation and identification. When we observe this on a larger scale as an
uncountable number of interactions, then we come to the self-production of
what Nishida calls the world (世界) as historical self-creation.24
Conceived in this way, human beings are part of the self-production of the
world. Through this participation, they exhibit a self-contradictory identity,
which they sustain through their relations to the world. Because of this, human
beings turn out to be, in my view, the epitome of dynamic boundaries. Nishida
expresses this thought in the following way:
24 During the asynchronic part of the conference Kyoto in Davos, Tak-Lap Yeung commented
on my presentation by offering a difficult, stimulating question about the self-forming
activity of the human being. He wondered whether “Nishida is giving an ontological
account for a more original origin of the self-forming activity, or a description of the fact
of human cultural creation regarding the concept of historical dialectics.” In response, I
remarked that part of the originality, and possibly also part of the difficulty, of Nishida’s
philosophizing lies in the task of how to maintain a double tendency in his writings. On
the one hand, Nishida employs ontological and metaphysical terminology, and yet, on the
other hand, his terminology serves to explain the reality surrounding him, his relations,
his feelings and the concrete events he experienced.
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210 greco
We ourselves touch [接する], as self-determination of the Absolute, the

Absolute throughout in contradictory correspondence [逆対応]; the
more we become the individual [個], the more we are facing the Abso-
lute [一者] or God [神]. We ourselves stand opposite God as the limit [極
限] of the individual God. We are facing, in contradictory self-identity in
the border of the individual self-determination [個物的自己限定の極限]
of the historical world, the border of the all-embracing One [全体的一の
極限]. Therefore, each individual I is a representative of humanity […].
Here, every ego [我々の自己] is the center of an infinite sphere, which is
center [到る所が中心] everywhere and without circumference [無限球
の無数の中心]. (Nishida 2002, pp. 340–341)25
The liminal position between the individual and God, which is one of the many
positions Nishida gives to the human being, expresses both of the oppositional
conceptions that face off against each other in Davos. And yet, the human
being is, for Nishida, neither finite nor infinite and can be neither character-
ized by privation nor fulfillment. Remarkably, both Cassirer and Heidegger
agree that the question of the human being cannot be answered with anthro-
pocentrism or subjectivism in the sense of the individual person; instead, both
philosophers look respectively at transsubjective objectivity and at the Being
of Dasein. In contrast to both Cassirer and Heidegger, Nishida combines the
level of individuality with God’s oneness, places the human being at the bound-
ary between, recovers, in this way, the historical dimension of individuality, a
25 「我々の自己は絶対的一者の自己否定として、何処までも逆対応的に之に接
するのであり、個なれば個なる程、絶対的一者に対する、即ち神に対すると云ふ
ことができる。我々の自己が神に対すると云ふのは、個の極限としてである。何
処までも矛盾的自己同一的に、歴史的世界の個物的自己限定の極限に於て、
全体的一の極限に対するのである。 […] 此に我々の自己は、周辺なくして、到
る所が中心である無限球の無数の中心とも考へることができる。」 Translated by the
author. (Nishida, 1999; Nishida, 1986; Nishida, 1987a; Nishida, 1987b) “The self always
encounters the absolute as the paradox God himself—that is, as the self-negation of the
absolute One. And thus the more the self is a consciously active individual, the more it
faces God. It does so as an absolute individual. The self faces the limit point of God, the
absolute One, at the limit point of its own being as a simply individual self-determination
of the historical world. […] Precisely, therefore, is each self a radiant center of the infi-
nite universe” (Nishida, 1987b, p. 95). “The self as the self-negation of the Absolute One
faces this Absolute One in an utterly inversely correlative way. The more it becomes an
individual, the more it faces the Absolute One, i.e., God. It faces God at the outer limit
of individual existence. At the limit of the individual self-determination of the historical
world the self faces the extremity of the holistic One in a thoroughly contradict only self-
identical way. […] In this we may be likened to the countless centers of the infinite sphere
which has no circumference and yet whose center is everywhere” (Nishida, 1987a, p. 94).
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topic which was largely ignored in Davos, and thereby recollects the individu-
ality through his conception of absoluteness.26 The nature of the human being
lies in a self-productive activity, which comes about through a tension which
is constituted by contradictions. Nishida claims that “[t]his occurs because we
ourselves are an absolutely contradictory existence [絶対に自己矛盾的存在]”
(Nishida 2002, p. 324).27
4 Conclusion
The oppositions we see performed in the famous Davos debate seem to be

characteristic of the human being. These oppositions are also characteristic
for Nishida, although in a different sense, since, for Nishida, what needs to
be stressed in the field of academic philosophy is the urge to criticize and
move away from interpretations of philosophical differences, which are full of
metaphors of battles, winners and defeated philosophical positions. In conclu-
sion, I would like to echo the suggestion Maraldo made in his comments on
Pedersen’s contribution at the Kyoto in Davos conference, namely that philos-
ophizing is like dancing (Pedersen, Panel 5).
In my contribution to the question of the human being from an intercultural
vantage point, I have tried to analyze the Davos dispute from the standpoint
of two main levels: from the meta-level, which focuses on the behavior of the
two big personalities, Cassirer and Heidegger, as well as from a content-level,
which is limited to the finite-infinite relation. To further develop this analy-
sis, I ask a hypothetical, intercultural question, what would have happened if
Nishida had been among the Kant scholars at the Davos debate and if he had
taken part in the dispute? Would Nishida have effectively mediated between
the visions of the human being proposed by Heidegger and Cassirer? More
intriguingly, would Nishida’s conception of the human being as an absolutely
self-contradictory existence have affected them and caused them to rethink
the core of their commitments? And what would this have meant for the con-
tinuation of the history of philosophy in the 20th century, which was largely
influenced not only by the protagonists of the dispute, but also by the dis-
pute itself? As it emerges from the analysis I have just completed, Cassirer and
26 The decisive openness toward the world in general, given here in Nishidian terms, and
not only toward the human world, is actually not wide enough to encompass, for exam-
ple, an attentive analysis of the animal world. This question is brilliantly discussed by John
Maraldo in his video contribution (Panel 1) at the conference Kyoto in Davos.
27 「に一去った如く、我々の自己は、絶対に自己矛盾的存在なるが故である。」
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212 greco
Heidegger do not seem to be open to any contact between each other, and
this would suggest that they would have been even less open to a philosoph-
ical contribution almost unknown to them, from Nishida, for example. On the
other hand, we have also seen how the proximity of Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s
visions has greatly contributed to the aggravation of the conflicts and opposi-
tions between them. Would it have been possible, therefore, that the presence
of Nishida could have transformed the perceived diversity and distance of the
conference, and even brought about a certain exoticism of Japanese philoso-
phy that would have facilitated a more attentive listening on the part of the
participants? European philosophy at the end of the 1920s had not yet seemed
ready to accept this type of philosophical contribution, since it was still caught
up in a traditional, narrow, enclosed philosophical heritage. With this volume, a
century later, it is possible to finally demonstrate an important paradigm shift.
Bibliography
Cassirer, E. (2010) Versuch über den Menschen: Einführung in eine Philosophie der Kul-
tur. Hamburg: Meiner.
Friedman, M. (2000) A Parting of the Ways. Chicago/LaSalle: Open Court.
Gordon, P. (2010) Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge/London:
Harvard University Press.
Greco, F. and Krings, L. (2021) ‘Logik der Grenze: Räume des Übergehens im An-
schluss an Nishida Kitarō’ in Greco, F., Krings, L. and Kuwayama, Y. (eds.) Tran-
sitions. Crossing boundaries in Japanese Philosophy. Nagoya: Chisokudō, pp. 122–174.
Heidegger, M. (1973) Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. (ga 3.) Frankfurt am
Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Heidegger, M. (1991) Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans. by Richard Taft.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Krois, J.M. (2004) ‘Why Did Cassirer and Heidegger Not Debate in Davos?’ in Ham-
lin, C. and Krois, J.M. (eds.) Symbolic Forms and Cultural Studies: Ernst Cassirer’s
Theory of Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 244–262.
Malka, S. (2004) Emmanuel Lévinas: eine Biographie. München: C.H. Beck.
Nishida, K. (1986) ‘The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview i’, trans. by Michiko
Yusa, The Eastern Buddhist, 19(2), pp. 1–29.
Nishida, K. (1987a) ‘The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview ii’, trans. by
Michiko Yusa, The Eastern Buddhist, 20(1), pp. 81–119.
Nishida, K. (1987b) Last Writings. Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. Trans. by
David A. Dilworth. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press.
Nishida, K. (1999) Logik des Ortes. Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgesellschaft.
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Nishida, K. (2002) Nishida Kitarō zenshū [西田幾多郎全集]. nkz 10 Tokyo: Iwanami

Shoten.
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Nishida, K. (2012) ‘Human Being (1938)’ in Ontology of Production. Three Essays.
Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Ohashi, R. (2014) Die Philosophie der Kyoto-Schule. Freiburg in Breisgau: Alber Verlag.
Rudolph, E. and Kaegi, D. (eds.) (2002) Cassirer-Heidegger. 70 Jahre Davoser Dispu-
tation. Hamburg: Meiner.
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7
Cassirer and Nishida: Mathematical Crosscurrents
in Their Philosophical Paths
Rossella Lupacchini
Abstract
“Kyoto in Davos” is a perceptive thought-experiment which encourages reviewing

Nishida’s philosophy against the background of the notorious Davos disputation be-
tween Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in 1929. Rather than imagining Nishida as
a possible mediator between Cassirer and Heidegger, I suggest considering Nishida’s
mathematical way of thinking in relation to that of Cassirer. In his A Parting of the Ways.
Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Michael Friedman traces to the Davos meeting the
origin of the intellectual divergence between the analytic and continental traditions
which has characterised the development of Western philosophy afterwards. Neverthe-
less, he appreciates Cassirer’s work as “a heroic attempt to bridge the ever-widening gulf
between the scientifically oriented approach to philosophy championed by Carnap and
the decisive attempt to move philosophy in a quite contrary direction represented by
Heidegger.” In tune with Friedman’s reading of Cassirer, my purpose is to shed light
on some Wahlverwandtschaften between Cassirer’s catholic approach to the “prob-
lem of knowledge” and Nishida’s original attempt to work out a self-mirroring model
of “the individual and the cosmos” through a genuine confrontation with European
philosophy. Those affinities find common ground in a shared mathematical sensibil-
ity.
Keywords
Transcendental imagination – self-awareness – space intuition – force field – basho –

active intuition – symbolic forms – productive seeing
1 Introduction
“Kyoto in Davos” is a perceptive thought-experiment which encourages review-

ing Nishida’s philosophy against the background of the notorious Davos dispu-
© Rossella Lupacchini, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_009 - 978-90-04-68017-3

cassirer and nishida: mathematical crosscurrents 215
tation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in 1929. Michael Fried-
man (2000) traces to the Davos meeting the origin of the intellectual diver-
gence between the analytic and continental traditions which has characterised
the development of Western philosophy afterwards. Indeed, the event was
also attended by Rudolf Carnap whose article Überwindung der Metaphysik
durch logische Analyse der Sprache (1932) would develop an openly polemical
attack on the meaningless “pseudo-sentences” of metaphysics such as Heideg-
ger’s “Nothingness itself nothings.” As for Cassirer, however, his comprehen-
sive philosophical vision extended beyond the Carnap-Heidegger opposition
of logical empiricism and existential hermeneutics. While Friedman recog-
nises in Cassirer’s work “a heroic attempt to bridge the ever-widening gulf
between the scientifically oriented approach to philosophy championed by
Carnap and the decisive attempt to move philosophy in a quite contrary direc-
tion represented by Heidegger,” my purpose is to shed light on some Wahlver-
wandtschaften between Cassirer’s catholic approach to the “problem of knowl-
edge” and Nishida’s original attempt to work out a self-mirroring model of “the
individual and the cosmos” through a genuine confrontation with European
philosophy. Those affinities find common ground in a shared mathematical
sensibility.
2 Kant and the Problem of Philosophy
The Davos encounter was between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger,1 the
debate was about Kant and the destiny of philosophy, in particular, about the
meaning of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In contrast to the neo-Kantian inter-
pretation of the Marburg School, Heidegger does not regard the Critique of Pure
Reason as a theory of knowledge based on mathematical natural science, but as
an attempt to establish the conditions of the possibility of metaphysics. Follow-
ing Heidegger, metaphysics can only be grounded in an a priori analysis of the
nature of finite human reason; hence, what he calls the “existential analytic” of
Dasein, the concrete finite human being, plays a crucial role. The problem of
the “essence of man” must precede any “philosophy of culture.” As finite, the
human intellect is necessarily dependent on sensible intuition and, therefore,
Kant’s transcendental schematism as a “metaphysics of reason” wanes. Sensi-
1 Rudolf Carnap was in the large audience of students and professors participating in Cassirer-
Heidegger lectures and debate at Davos. For more, see Friedman (2000).
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216 lupacchini
bility and intellect, the two fundamental sources of human cognition, are both
rooted in transcendental imagination whose ultimate basis, for Heidegger, is
temporality.
For Cassirer, by contrast, the human being cannot be limited to the sphere of
finitude. Unlike Heidegger who submits every truth to Dasein, Kant was mainly
concerned with how the finite human creature can break free of finitude into
the realm of objectively valid, necessary and eternal truths, both in moral expe-
rience and in mathematical natural science. On one point, however, Cassirer
agrees with Heidegger: the “productive” imagination is of vital importance for
Kant. It is that which Kant called synthesis speciosa and connects all thought
to intuition. But Heidegger’s understanding of such a synthesis appears the
obverse of Kant’s.
In so far as Heidegger attempts to relate, and indeed to reduce, all “fac-

ulties” of knowledge to the “transcendental imagination,” only a single
plane of reference, the plane of temporal Dasein, remains for him. The dis-
tinction between “phenomena” and “noumena” vanishes and is levelled;
for all being now belongs to the dimension of time and thus of finitude.
[…] Kant never represents this kind of “monism” of the imagination; he
rather persists in a decisive and radical dualism, a dualism of the sensible
and intelligible worlds. For his problem is not the problem of “being” and
“time,” but the problem of “being” and “ought,” of “experience” and “idea.”
(Cassirer, 1967, p. 16)
This dualism does not signify a metaphysical opposition between two differ-
ent “realms of being,” rather it makes it possible what Goethe would call “the
eternal systole and diastole” between sensible and intelligible worlds. Here,
Cassirer stresses, the mathematical intermediary is decisive. While Heidegger
concedes “no eternal and necessary truths for human beings,” Kant weighed up
the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements, which is to say, judgments that
are not simply finite in their content but universally necessary. “This is the prob-
lem for which Kant exemplifies mathematics” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 278). Even
though Cassirer tried to challenge Heidegger’s reading of Kant with the exam-
ple of mathematics, Heidegger maintained that a transcendental theory of the
object of mathematical science was not Kant’s main concern. What is certain,
and relevant to the issues under discussion in this paper, is that Heidegger’s
demand for radical finitude placed mathematics as the science of the infinite
outside his own philosophical path.2
2 For a comprehensive examination of the Davos debate, see the recent Truwant (2022).
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As for Nishida, his encounter with Kantian philosophy was motivated by his
wish to go deeper into methodological questions and refine his instruments of
critical analysis.3 This stage of his work is documented by a series of essays writ-
ten over the years 1913–1917 and collected in the volume Intuition and Reflection
in the Self-Awareness. The notion of “self-awareness” [ jikaku, 自覚] is conceived
as a “mirroring” of the self within itself, hence, the self recognizes itself not only
in the mirror image but as the mirror itself. In other words, self-awareness uni-
fies the knowing self, the known self, and the locus in which the self knows
itself.4 According to Nishida (1917), Kant urges us to dismiss the common view
of the mind as a mirror reflecting objects as well as the more scientific view
of a mind able to “sense the reality of the external world while transforming
it.” Rather, to know things is to unify the given experiential content. But then,
if knowledge is the unification of the concrete manifold of experience from a
certain standpoint, how can the notions of objectivity and subjectivity be sep-
arated?
We commonly think of the mind as subject[ivity] and the contrasting

external world as object[ivity], but what we call the self as the object of
introspection is grasped by the cognitive subject in the same way as exter-
nal objects are, as simply one object among others in the world of cogni-
tion, located in a causal relationship with external objects and belonging
to the same rank as a phenomenon of the natural world, deserving no less
than they do to be called “object.” The true epistemological subject is not
to be known in introspection, but the unifying activity which constructs
a certain objective world. (Nishida, 1987, p. 165)
For Nishida, this self, i.e., the “true subject of cognition,” is an a priori standpoint
that cannot become an object of reflection.5 It is the process of construction
As argued by Truwant, Cassirer and Heidegger’s disagreement is motivated by their differ-

ent views on philosophy and on the human condition. Within this framework, then, while
Cassirer draws his functional conception of philosophy from mathematics and infinity is
inherent in his view of the cultural nature of the human being, in Heidegger’s hermeneutic
conception of philosophy, mathematics has no role and finiteness is inherent to the temporal
nature of human being.
3 To some extent, “the torture of neo-Kantian thought” encourages Nishida to shift the focus of
his view from experience to “a standpoint of the self,” hence to distinguish “self-awareness”
from what western philosophy calls “self-consciousness.” For more, see Heisig (2001, pp. 42–
52).
4 On the “topological” character of self-awareness and its influence on the development of
Nishida’s idea of basho, see Fujita (2018).
5 As John Maraldo kindly pointed out to me, the English translation leaves out the following
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218 lupacchini
of the objective world; hence, strictly speaking, “subject[ivity] and object[ivity]

are to be defined as the two inseparable extremes of a single reality.” This makes
it clear how the world of the mathematician, the world of the artist, the world
of the historian, are all different object worlds taking shape from different sub-
jective positions. Even the world of natural science, commonly considered as
the only one, is only one world among others. Such a variety of worlds seems
definitely in tune with Cassirer’s multiverse of symbolic forms:
Every authentic function of the human spirit has this decisive charac-
teristic in common with cognition: it does not merely copy but rather
embodies an original, formative power. […] This is as true of art as it
is of cognition; it is as true of myth as of religion. All live in particu-
lar image-worlds, which do not merely reflect the empirically given, but
which rather produce it in accordance with an independent principle.
Each of these functions creates its own symbolic forms […] They are not
different modes in which an independent reality manifests itself to the
human spirit but roads by which the spirit proceeds towards its objecti-
vation, i.e., its self-revelation. (Cassirer, 1955, p. 78)
Although Cassirer and Nishida come from different worlds to the ‘problem of
philosophy’, both their paths appear to be lighted by mathematics at some
nodal passages. Underlying Nishida’s general methodological strategy of reduc-
ing every dualism to an original unity, there appears to be an implicit ‘principle
of continuity’. Such a principle, which gains more and more shine through the
mathematical lens of Cusanus, Leibniz, Dedekind, and Hilbert, also orients
Cassirer’s philosophical inquiry into the theory of concept formation. Then, to
play along with the “Kyoto in Davos” experiment, if we look back at the intellec-
tual development of Cassirer and Nishida at that time, the question at issue is
whether Cassirer’s ‘geometry’ of symbolic forms may unfold in the background
of Nishida’s basho.
3 Objective Knowledge and Ideal Vision
Tackling the problem of objective knowledge, Nishida (1917) recognizes that

the Kantian claim that “thoughts without content are empty” (Kant, 1999, B75)
sentence: “This self, the true subject of cognition is that certain standpoint or apriori that can-
not become an object of reflection.”
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might urge the Hegelian position, shared by the Marburg School, according to
which thought is equated with being. But his stance is different: to start from
given experience. If knowledge demands a relationship to reality in the sense
of Kantian objectivity (not in the sense of a transcendent reality), objective
knowledge is to be attained as a “system of self-consciousness.” Kant, how-
ever, maintained the unifying activity and the unified content as separated. For
Nishida instead, in immediate concrete experience, the content of conscious-
ness has an inherently dynamic character: “If we set content and activity over
against one another, the activity of synthesis can be regarded as subject, and
the synthesized content as object” (Nishida, 1987, p. 70). To clarify this point,
Nishida calls attention to the “consciousness of a straight line.” In the math-
ematical sense fixed by Dedekind and Cantor, he remarks, a continuum is a
“perfect set,” namely, a set such that all asymptotic limits belong to the set itself
and all of its members can be such limits. Accordingly, the consciousness of a
straight line is to be grasped as a single object, as a single consciousness pos-
sessing a single meaning.
I submit that the creative system of concrete experience, autonomously

operative, is what fundamentally constitutes consciousness of a contin-
uous straight line, and that this system is most exactly illustrated by the
mathematical definition of continuity. (Ibid., p. 69)
Behind the concept of continuity there must be the intuition of a given total-
ity, which is not an extrinsic assemblage, but a totality determined by its own
parts.6 For a set of points to become a continuum line at its limit, it must coin-
cide with the set of the limiting points derived from it. This is possible, Nishida
observes, although point and line as well as polygon and circle are concepts
essentially different, based on different a priori and corresponding to different
intuitions in immediate experience. The central issue then is to grasp the sig-
nificance of limit, i.e., that which allows one a priori to pass over into another.
For a set of points to approach a continuous straight line as its limit, or for
a polygon to approach a circle as its limit, “the intuition of a new standpoint
is required.” This demand for a new standpoint brings back Nicolas Cusanus’
request for what he termed visio intellectualis (“intellectual vision”), namely, a
new mode of knowledge allowing the finite human intellect to see the absolute
infinity of God. In Cassirer’s words:
6 Cf. Nishida, “Various A Priori as Grounded in the Mind’s Demand for Objectivity,” in Ni-
shida (1917, §26).
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220 lupacchini
the visio intellectualis presupposes self-movement of the mind as well as

an original force in the mind itself that unfolds in a continuous process
of thought. To explain the meaning and purpose of the visio intellectu-
alis, Cusanus relies not on the mystical form of passive contemplation,
but on mathematics, which considers the only true, genuine, and precise
symbol of speculative thought and of the speculative vision the resolves
contraries. (Cassirer, 1972, p. 14)
For Cusanus, Aristotelian logic, which is a logic of the finite, cannot lead to
“unconditioned divine being” beyond all conceptual distinctions of discursive
knowledge. Hence, he asked mathematics for help. In his De docta ignorantia,
the symbolic function of mathematics came into the limelight and revived the
Platonic notion of “otherness.” The clear cut between thing and idea, the finite
and the absolute, can never be dissolved. No measure can precisely equal the
thing measured, no matter how close it may come.
The finite intellect, therefore, cannot know the truth of things with any
exactitude by means of similarities, no matter how great. For the truth is
neither more nor less, since it is something indivisible […] The intellect is
to truth as the polygon is to circle […] For the truth is absolute necessity,
which can never be more nor less than it is; whereas our intellect is only
possibility. (Cusanus, D.ign. i.3)
Nonetheless, the ideal vision conveyed through mathematical symbols and

figures suggests that the limitations of perception and measure can be off-
set.7 The unbridgeable gulf between the infinite possibilities of reason and
the absolute necessity of truth becomes functional to cognitive experience
itself. It guarantees the validity of experience and gives knowledge its relative
truth.8 Even though the truth of things is attained as it is by the divine intellect
alone, human understanding partakes of that truth “with a degree of other-
ness.”9
7 “Since in the case of quantitative things a line and a triangle differ incomparably, the imagi-
nation, which does not transcend the genus of perceptible things, does not apprehend that
the former can be the latter. However, this [apprehending] will be easy for the intellect”
(Cusanus, D.ign. i.14.37).
8 In Kantian language, as Cassirer emphasizes, it shows that just the inescapable limits which
bound our knowledge enable it to extend in all directions.
9 On the notion of eternal “otherness” in Cusanus, cf. Cassirer (1972, pp. 23–24).
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Cusanus’ methodological reflection constitutes a main reference for both

Cassirer and Nishida. While Cassirer (1906) presents Cusanus as “the first mod-
ern thinker” for his mathematical approach to the human comprehension of
the absolute infinity of God, Nishida (1911) discerns Cusanus’ vision of God as
“absolute nothingness.”10 Yet, in the light of Dedekind’s analysis of continuity,
which marks another nodal passage where Cassirer’s and Nishida’s roads come
to cross, the two images of the “absolute” appear to bring to completion the
“otherness” of the one in the other.
The essence of continuity, according to Dedekind, was to be traced in the
elements of arithmetic, purging any “geometric intuition” from number the-
ory. To achieve his goal, he compared the rational numbers with the points of
a straight line. Every point, he observed, produces a separation of the straight
line into two parts such that every point of one part lies to the left (right) of
every point of the other. How about the converse? Thinking of the separation
as the initial condition, Dedekind captured the special character of continu-
ity in the “unifying activity” which creates a new mathematical object to fill
the section.11 This property of the line, Dedekind remarked, is nothing but an
axiom by which “we think continuity into the line.” Even if we knew for cer-
tain that space is discontinuous, nothing could prevent us from filling up its
gaps in thought by creating new point-individuals. Then the same procedure
allows us to complete the discontinuous domain of rational numbers. When-
ever we have a division of all rational numbers into two classes produced by no
rational number, we create a new number—an irrational—which we regard as
completely defined by the cut itself.12
From a mathematical point of view, the “new creative act” involved in defin-
ing an irrational number raises distinguishability to a higher level of abstrac-
tion, from elements to structures, as it establishes a relation not merely be-
tween “number-individuals” but between infinite sets.13 It is the division it-
10 See Nishida (1911, § ii.10 and § iv.4). As Cusanus remarked, “the great Dionysius says that
our understanding of God draws near to nothing rather than to something” (Cusanus,
D.ign. i.17.51).
11 “If all points of the straight line fall into two classes such that every point of the first class
(Klasse) [A1] lies to the left of every point of the second class [A2], then there exists one
and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing
of the straight line into two portions” (Dedekind, 1996a, p. 771).
12 Ibid., p. 773. This allows the system of real numbers to be obtained by filling up the gaps
in the domain of rationals and making it continuous.
13 As Dedekind emphasized, if “one regards the irrational number as the ratio of two mea-
surable quantities,” then this manner of determining it is already set forth in the clearest
possible way by Euclid. But the phenomenon of the cut in its logical purity is completely
independent of the existence of a measurable quantity. See Dedekind (1996b, p. 794).
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self—the “cut” [Schnitt]—to bring into existence the irrational number. None-
theless, Dedekind’s emphasis on the mathematician’s right to create a new
object to fill each gap might dull the active seeing involved in the creative
act.14 In some sense, it appears as if geometric intuition detected an inherently
dynamical character of continuity, which logical understanding reckons out of
reach. Establishing continuity as completeness, Dedekind let a dynamical prin-
ciple be absorbed into the ‘field’ of mathematical creation. All this might help
us see how Dedekind’s work on the foundation of arithmetic, on the one hand,
may encourage Nishida to recognize in the “contradictory identity” of the dis-
crete and the continuous a generative structure of all knowledge as well as of
self-awareness, on the other, it may guide Cassirer to revise the theory of con-
cept formation.
For Nishida, when experience is considered as discontinuous, the continu-
ity of the self is already presupposed. Real experience always involves a uni-
fying ideal which makes it continuous, whereas discontinuous experience is
an abstraction. In tune with Cusanus’ vision, Nishida (1917) regards the corre-
spondence between the points of a straight line and the rational numbers as
a dialectical contrast between the ideal and the real. If an irrational number
is an ideal point, which can never be attained by measure, the ‘discrete’ points
expressed by rational numbers, which can always be attained by division, are
real points. Thus, a continuum can be titled “the ideal plus the real,” or the con-
crete, as it contains the limit points within itself. Accordingly, the self can be
seen as an ideal limit point which we can reflect on infinitely but never reach
through reflection (Nishida, 1987, pp. 84–85).
For Cassirer (1910), Dedekind’s deduction of the irrational marks a turning
point in the mathematical construction of concepts: from the concept of sub-
stance to the concept of function.
The conceptual ‘being’ of the individual number disappears gradually and

plainly in its peculiar conceptual ‘function’. On the ordinary interpreta-
tion, with which Dedekind’s deduction is at first connected, although a
certain number, given and at hand, produces a definite ‘cut’ in a system,
none the less the process is finally reversed, for this production comes to
be the necessary and sufficient condition of our speaking of the existence
of a number at all. The element cannot be separated by the relational
14 “It is perfectly valid, and more economical, to insist that the gap itself is a genuine mathe-
matical object, which we can take to be the pair [of sets of rationals defining the irrational
number]” (Stillwell, 2010, p. 23n).
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complex, for it means nothing in itself aside from this complex, which it
brings to expression, as it were, in a concentrated form. (Cassirer, 1953,
p. 61)
What Dedekind claims for the creation of the system of real numbers is ex-
panded by Cassirer to hold in general for the production of theoretical con-
cepts. Whenever we have a system of conditions that can be realized in differ-
ent contexts, we should be indifferent to the contexts and hold to the form of
the system itself as an invariant, and then develop its laws deductively. “In this
way we produce a new ‘objective’ form, whose structure is independent of all
arbitrariness” (Ibid., p. 40).
The attentive and detailed exploration of how mathematics and physics give
form to their concepts remains a matter of common concern for Cassirer and
Nishida. In their proceeding, the philosophical reflection on geometry plays a
fundamental role.
4 Kant and the Problem of Geometry
In his Kant und die moderne Mathematik (1907), Cassirer observes that criti-
cal philosophy would be deprived of its value and significance if its link with
mathematics and mathematical natural science were severed. The stability
of its principles must always be justified anew with regard to the changes of
scientific concepts and ideas. As it happened, in the 19th century, Kantian
philosophy was confronted with notable transformations in scientific con-
cepts and theories. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry raised doubts
about Euclidean geometry, not only as the geometry of physical space, but
also as the fundamental discipline of mathematics. Of particular interest, in
the present context, is to examine how the changes in the traditional under-
standing of geometry as a science of space affected the Kantian theory of a
priori intuition, and the insightful reactions of Cassirer and Nishida to those
changes. If Dedekind’s structural approach could suggest a modern version of
the Kantian thesis that mathematics is “rational cognition from a construc-
tion of concepts,” (Heis, 2011) Hilbert’s formal axiomatics (Sieg, 2014) and Ein-
stein’s gravitational theory lead to a revision of the Kantian theory of the a
priori.
According to Hilbert, a thorough study of geometric axioms and their mu-
tual connections cannot be divorced from “the logical analysis of our intu-
ition of space.” Elaborating on previous models, such as those of von Staudt,
Pasch (in geometry), and Herzt (in mechanics), in his Grundlagen der Geome-
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trie (1899), Hilbert not only explicitly introduced geometric axioms that Euclid
had used unconsciously (incidence, order, congruence), but also highlighted
the relationship between geometric constructions and the arithmetic of real
numbers.15 Moreover, in the wake of von Staudt’s projective arithmetic,16 he
came to extract the properties of a field from the projective axioms of Pappus
and Desargues. Reversing somehow Dedekind’s standpoint, Hilbert showed
how the field of real numbers can flow from geometry.
The ‘common ground’ of numbers and geometry is fully grasped by Nishida.
Hilbert’s geometric axiom of ordering, he remarks, is not different from an
ordering of numbers.
Viewed epistemologically, the most fundamental object of geometry, the

point, […] is an object of cognition grasped independently of its content;
it indicates merely the position of our cognition, the “something” which
is the object of the purely logical act of posing an object. We might think
of the simplest relationship determined between two such “somethings”
as a straight line. This entirely abstract relation between “position” and
“position” can take any concrete form. It may be a relationship between
color and color, or between two persons. In itself it has no specific con-
tent. (Nishida, 1987, p. 102)
The core of Nishida’s argument is that, in order to grasp the purely relational
structure “between,” we are bound to discern a comprehensive background,
a “homogeneous medium,” against which two distinct interchangeable “posi-
tions” stand out and take shape as a “concrete form.” There is no difference
between the number two and two points insofar as their positions are inter-
changeable by means of a homogeneous medium. It is this homogeneous
medium that provides the basis for mathematics: before being identified with
the quantitative “one,” it is the qualitative universal wherein one thing and
another are mutually reflected. Thus, in the case of analytic geometry, instead
of applying numbers to space, Nishida encourages seeing numbers and space
as united at their common basis in the homogeneous medium. Space is the
15 In the following edition of his Grundlagen (1902), Hilbert added two axioms of conti-
nuity (the Archimedean axiom and the completeness axiom) not needed by Euclid, to
guarantee that the line has no gaps (in the sense of Dedekind), hence, it is isomorphic to
the real number line. Euclidean geometry only needs a field that includes the rationals
and is closed under the square root (of positive numbers), since these are the numbers
that arise from ruler and compass constructions.
16 In his Geometrie der Lage (1847), Christian von Staudt used Pappus’ projective axiom to
define addition and multiplication of points on a line.
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stage on which the numerical system, a system of pure thought, determines

itself in coming into contact with experience. If geometric space is taken as
the qualitative limit of number, “unified” space embraces continuous numbers
as a concrete subject. Thus, the geometric dimension arises in self-awareness:
here is the “qualitative” a priori of geometry (Ibid., p. 104).17
For Nishida, all experiential content is qualitative “in itself,” is quantitative
“for itself” (as an object of cognition) and appears as the quantitative “one.”
In continuity, it returns to the state of being “in itself.” The progression from
number to space in analytic geometry, like the progression from discrete to con-
tinuous numbers, is a progression from the abstract to its concrete foundation,
a progression towards objectivity, which fulfills the epistemological demand
for objective knowledge.18 Through “reflection-action,” self-awareness binds
together infinite progression in a permanent unity; hence, its distinctive char-
acters are both infinite transformation and infinite determination. Whereas
time and number express its infinite progression, space expresses its “absolute
reality” as a creative action. Space acts as a “concrete subject” behind the series
of changing numbers, as the continuum does behind discrete numbers:
Just as behind our thinking of discrete numbers as objects a contin-

uum extends as concrete subject, and is later manifest as the system of
real numbers, so too behind our understanding of the unity of numbers
as object there is a continuum which is the unity of this unity, and it
later appears positively as spatial intuition. As irrational numbers have
a higher unity than rational numbers, spatial unity is of a higher order
than numerical (temporal) unity, and implies a new kind of intuition, a
new élan vital. (Nishida, 1987, p. 98)
As for the nature of such a vital intuition, Nishida appears to be clearly inspired
by the notion of geometrical space sets forth in Staudt’s projective geometry
and refined by Hilbert, which, however, has its germ in Leibniz’s thought of a
17 Here, as John Maraldo made me noticed, the English translation leaves out an eloquent
passage. Indeed, in my eyes, the following passage might even contain the germ of Ni-
shida’s idea of basho: “As quantitative mathematical objects are the limits of (qualitative)
logical objects, and as qualitative continuous numbers are the limit of quantitative discrete
numbers, may not purely geometric objects in turn be purely qualitative relationships
transcending all quantitative relationships? And may not the object of analytic geome-
try be a limit that unifies continuous numbers as a concrete subject? But what kind of
property is a geometric object like this? and where does the underlying determination of the
geometric object come from? These kinds of problems need to be considered in more detail.”
18 Cf. in particular, Nishida, “From Number to Space,” in Nishida (1987, pp. 97–98).
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pure “geometric analysis.” Already in his Logical Comprehension and Mathemat-

ical Comprehension (1912), Nishida meditated on self-awareness in mathemati-
cal terms.19 Then, taking into account the neo-Kantian critical analysis of pure
intuition, he is guided to sharpen the parallel between the space of conscious-
ness and the space of geometry as a “qualitative universal.” What remains as
absolute geometrical elements, once not only all empirical features, but also
the element of magnitude, are excluded? Since his essay Leibniz’s System in
seinen wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen (1902), Cassirer’s thorough examination
of geometrical concepts has focused on the same issue. Here the common Leib-
nizian attitude of Cassirer and Nishida becomes apparent.20 “The reduction of
metrical relations to projective,” writes Cassirer, “realizes the thought of Leib-
niz that, before space is defined as a quantum, it must be grasped in its original
qualitative peculiarity as an ‘order of coexistence’ (ordre des coexistences possi-
bles)” (Cassirer, 1953, pp. 91–92).
In particular, it is worth recalling Leibniz’s original idea of a Characteristica
geometrica, as a new kind of geometry based on the relational notions of space
and situs. If space is that which contains any situs, Leibniz maintained, a point
is that which “is in space,” meaning, that which has a locus but is not a locus.
Since a situs is always mutual or “relational” (relatio loci vel situs), all points
are similar to one another (Leibniz, 1679/1995, p. 152). To connect space and
points via the notion of situs, the relation of congruence is crucial. Since con-
gruence is the possibility of coincidence, i.e., geometrical identity, space turns
out to be the locus of all these necessarily congruent points. It is clear that the
relative and perceptive character of the situs is inherited by the monad. Find-
ing a symbolism truly appropriate to express “directly the situs just as algebra
expresses magnitude,” Leibniz believed that it would be possible to construct
a “science of imagination” not figurative but rather productive (Ibid., pp. 148–
152). Although his belief was ahead of his time, with hindsight it appears to offer
significant pointers to combinatorial topology as well as to the theory of vec-
tor spaces.21 It is his vision of mathematics as a general theory of forms, more
than as a general science of magnitudes, that reaches its ultimate in Hilbert’s
formalism.
19 For more, see Maraldo (2006).

20 I am indebted to Agustín Jacinto Zavala for telling me that Nishida knew and appreciated
Cassirer’s essay on Leibniz, which he sent to the physicist Kuwaki Ayao, recommending
its reading.
21 In his Die Ausdehnungslehre (1844), Hermann Grassmann credited the germ of his the-
ory of vector spaces to Leibniz’s manuscript of Characteristica geometrica. For more, see
Grassmann (1995).
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In his struggle to secure the foundations of mathematics, Hilbert relied on

“formalism” to overcome the tension between Dedekind’s logicism and Kro-
necker’s finitism. And yet, the demand for finite means at the basis of his
Beweistheorie suggested not only an answer to Kronecker, but also a revision
of the Kantian a priori. According to Hilbert, in fact, Kant made the mistake
of overestimating the role and the extent of the a priori, but the fundamen-
tal idea of Kantian epistemology retained its significance, “namely the philo-
sophical problem of determining that intuitive, a priori outlook and thereby of
investigating the condition of the possibility of all conceptual knowledge and
of every experience” (Hilbert, 1996c, pp. 1161–1162). Once the Kantian view is
purged of “anthropological dross,” what is left is just that a priori “finitist” atti-
tude which also oriented his so-called “consistency programme.” After proving
the consistency of geometry with a method of reduction to the arithmetic of
real numbers,22 Hilbert realized that, for securing pure theoretical structures,
such as number theory and set theory, nothing but logic could be invoked. The
ideal constructions of geometry as well as the imaginary elements of number
theory guided him to conceive of a “theory of proof” which could surpass the
domain of finite logic and obtain provable formulae that are the images of the
transfinite theorems of ordinary mathematics.23 Thus, Hilbert’s Beweistheorie
presents mathematics with a mirror: on the one side, mathematics in the strict
sense results as a “stock of formulae,” which are the ideal objects of the theory;
on the other side, a new metamathematics stems from the formalized mathe-
matics to allow for a mathematical proof to be built from scratch.
Kant already taught—and indeed it is part and parcel of his doctrine—

that mathematics has at its disposal a content secured independently of
all logic and hence can never be provided with a foundation by means of
logic alone […] Rather, as a condition for the use of logical inferences and
the performance of logical operations, something must already be given
to our faculty of representation [in der Vorstellung], certain extralogical
concrete objects that are intuitively [anschaulich] present as immediate
experience prior to all thought. (Hilbert, 1967a, p. 376)
22 “By showing that any contradiction in the consequences of the geometrical axioms must
necessarily appear in the arithmetic of the system of real numbers as well” (Hilbert,
1996a, p. 1112).
23 As Hilbert explained, “the transfinite axioms and formulae are adjoined to the finite
axioms, just as in the theory of complex variables the imaginary elements are adjoined
to the real, and just as in geometry the ideal constructions are adjoined to the actual”
(Hilbert, 1996b, p. 1144).
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As bricks of the formal construction such “extra-logical discrete objects” can

prevent the reduction of mathematics to pure logic. But how can they pre-
vent mathematics from dissolving into an empty game of symbols? Hilbert’s
answer was that, besides its mathematical value, the “formula game” of his
Beweistheorie has a primary philosophical meaning as it is carried out “accord-
ing to certain definite rules in which the technique of our thinking is expressed”
(Hilbert, 1967b, p. 475). Here the Leibnizian characteristic seems to be reborn
to new life. Both Leibniz and Hilbert, as Cassirer underlines, clearly saw that
only the use of symbols allows a mathematical proof to become “something
concrete and displayable.”
The succession of the steps of thought must be replaced by a pure simul-

taneity of synopsis. This only symbolic thinking can achieve. For its very
nature it does not operate with the thought contents themselves, but cor-
relates a definite sign with each content of thought and through this cor-
relation achieves a condensation which makes it possible to concentrate
all the links of a complex chain of proof in a single formula, and embrace
them in one glance as an articulated whole. (Cassirer, 1957, pp. 388–389)
Hilbert’s symbols, however, are something given in der Vorstellung, “prior to all
thought,” whereas each character of the “alphabet of thought,” on which Leib-
niz dreamed of constructing his universal language, is asked to embody nothing
less than the “will to form” of an idea. As Nishida lucidly clarifies, the distinc-
tion between the symbol, which provides the idea with objective form, and the
act, which gives the idea its symbolic form, is functional to the correlation of
knowledge with experience.
There is no visual act apart from form and color and no aural act apart
from sound, but neither are there color and form apart from the visual
act nor sound apart from the aural act. Act and object are interrelated.
The dynamical content of self-generative and self-developmental experi-
ence is the content of the act, and what is constructed by it is its objective
world. If we interpret Kant’s a priori in dynamical terms, then the a priori
is precisely the act, and the world that it constructs is the objective world
that we cognize by means of it. (Nishida, 1973, p. 121)
Now, if we interpret Kant’s a priori in dynamical terms, intuition becomes

“active” and drives time to join space in the geometry of the objective physi-
cal world. On the other hand, if we interpret Kant’s a priori in Hilbertian terms,
mathematics becomes a fabric of forms. Their synthetic unity comes to light, in
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a most splendid way, in Einstein’s gravitational theory (Cf. Bernays, 1998, p. 196).
At this point, it should not come as a surprise that Cassirer’s notion of “symbolic
form” as well as Nishida’s idea of basho have bloomed in the light of Einstein’s
physical geometry.
5 Two Roads from Leibniz
Einstein’s theory of relativity has been generally received as an obstacle to Kan-

tian philosophy. By contrast, Cassirer holds that it has improved on Kant by
sharpening the role of pure intuition in empirical cognition. Two main com-
ponents coalesce into Cassirer’s reading of Einstein’s theory of relativity: a
methodological reflection on mathematical form, from Leibniz’s characteristic
to Hilbert’s formalism; an aesthetic comprehension of natural form as “living
and moving,” from Leibniz’s monadology to Goethe’s morphology. Thus, to the
extent that Einstein’s theory “accomplishes the most definite application and
carrying through of the standpoint of critical idealism within empirical sci-
ence,” (Cassirer, 1921/1953, p. 412) it may also unveil the Leibnizian rationale
behind.
As Cassirer emphasizes, in transcendental philosophy, space and time are no
longer viewed as “things,” but as “sources of knowledge” or “conditions of the
possibility of experience” (Ibid., p. 411.) Precisely because they are forms of pos-
sible experience, if any sort of objectivity can be ascribed to them it is in the way
“they lead to certain judgements to which we must ascribe the value of neces-
sity and universality.” In this perspective, relativity theory provides the criti-
cism of knowledge with genuinely new material.24 Cassirer does not ignore the
major step forward from Kant’s philosophy of nature to Einstein’s spacetime
physics. Rather, he reckons this advance as new evidence for Kant’s claim that it
is a “rule of understanding” that shapes all our temporal and spatial determina-
tions. Following Minkowski, events are the essential stuff of physics. Every event
occurs in (a four-dimensional) spacetime, and marks a point in the coordinate
system of an observer. Different observers obtain different values by measur-
ing the space distance and the time distance between a pair of events, but the
24 “That the sciences, in particular, mathematics and the exact natural sciences furnish the
criticism of knowledge with its essential material is scarcely questioned after Kant; but
here [in Einstein’s theory of relativity] this material is offered to philosophy in a form,
which, even of itself, involves a certain epistemological interpretation and treatment”
(Cassirer, 1921/1953, p. 355).
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spacetime interval has the same value for all the observers.25 Therefore, only the
four-dimensional world is given through the phenomena, while the space dis-
solves into an infinite number of spaces. As Minkowski stressed: “Space and
time will recede completely to become mere shadows and only a world in itself
will exist” (Cassirer, 1953, p. 443). In Cassirer’s opinion, such a “postulate of the
absolute world” is to be read as a “postulate of absolute method.”
The relativity of all places, times and measuring rods must be the last
word of physics, because “relativization,” the resolution of the natural
object into pure relations of measurement constitutes the kernel of phys-
ical procedures, the fundamental cognitive function of physics. (Cassirer,
1953, p. 446)
The special theory of relativity (str) rests on two principles: that the speed
of light is constant in a vacuum and that the laws of physics are the same in all
inertial frames of reference (covariance). They belong to different ranks: the for-
mer results from empirical data; the latter poses a condition on the form of nat-
ural laws. The essential step, taken by the general theory of relativity (gtr), is to
place the “formal” principle above the “material” one. Consequently, when the
frame of reference is not inertial, the invariance of light speed may fail.26 This
does not question the validity of the str but clarifies its role in the construction
of the gtr. While the str distinguishes the inertial systems from the others,
the gtr cancels such a distinction. “The expression of the universal physical
laws is freed from any connection with a particular system of coordinates or
with a certain group of such systems” (Cassirer, 1921/1953, p. 389). Cassirer cor-
rectly recognizes in the principle of general covariance, as the requirement that
the laws of nature must be formulated without a background space and time,
the most significant philosophical aspect of Einstein’s theory.27 How does he
square such a requirement with Kant’s theory of pure intuition? For Cassirer,
the point at which the general theory of relativity must implicitly rec-
ognize the methodic presupposition that Kant calls “pure intuition” can
be pointed out exactly. It lies, in fact, in the concept of “coincidence,” to
which the general theory of relativity ultimately reduces the content and
form of all laws of nature. (Cassirer, 1921/1953, p. 418)
25 This can be seen if we look at the formula: (interval)2 = (space distance)2 – (time distance)2.
26 When a gravitational field is present, the light speed depends on the coordinates.
27 This opinion is held and comprehensively discussed in Ryckman (1999).
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What the physicist calls “space” and “time” is a concrete measurable manifold,
which results from the coordination of “point-events” according to certain laws.
For the philosopher, instead, space and time are the forms, or modi, of such a
coordination. They do not result from the coordination, they are the coordi-
nation from the standpoints of coexistence and of succession. A “coincidence”
of two world lines, in fact, presupposes nothing about the metrical relations of
space and time; it involves only topological relations (Ryckman, 2005, p. 44).
Only in this sense, which, however, appears closer to Leibniz than to Kant,
space and time are regarded as “forms of intuition.” Now, we can also see how,
from a methodological point of view, the gtr provides the exemplar model
of Hilbert’s formalism. Matter has become an event, and the objective struc-
ture of physical world is drawn by the world lines that fill up spacetime. By
their crossings and bends, they mark events (spacetime-coincidences) with a
uniqueness beyond all need of coordinate systems. For Cassirer, the transition
from the substantial to the functional approach to physical concepts is fully
accomplished. The invariance of relations between magnitudes, rather than
the existence of particular entities, forms the “ultimate stratum of objectivity”
(Cassirer, 1921/1953, p. 467).
Yet, in the last chapter of his Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie, Cassirer
contrasts Planck’s demand for “de-anthropomorphism” as distinct character
of physical objectivity with the “anthropomorphism” of all our concepts of
nature held by Goethe.28 After Einstein’s theory of relativity, Cassirer observes,
even this anthropomorphism acquires a universal, critical, and transcenden-
tal sense. Physical reality, as a system of “abstract symbols” expressing precise
relations of magnitude and measure, stands against the reality of our immedi-
ate perception. This separation is functional to physics as it proceeds relating
mathematical forms to empirical data and, conversely, the latter to the former.
In this way, the sensuous manifold increasingly loses its “contingent”

anthropomorphic character and assumes the imprint of thought, the
imprinting of systematic unity of form. Indeed “form,” just because it rep-
resents the active and shaping, the genuinely creative element, must not
be conceived as rigid, but as living and moving. (Cassirer, 1953, p. 421)
While Kant raised the problem of the mathematical form of natural science,
Cassirer regards the ongoing transformation in physics as a second-stage for-
28 As “man is the measure of all things,” Goethe maintains, “all philosophy of nature is still
only anthropomorphism” (cited in Cassirer, 1953, p. 445).
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mal construction, as a mathematization of mathematical physics itself. There-

fore, Einstein’s principle of general covariance takes both an objective and a
methodological meaning. On the one hand, it leads the way to “synthetic unity”
necessary to the concept of physical object; on the other hand, it reveals the
“ideal standing” of a fully de-anthropomorphized physical thought.
It may be the purest, most universal and sharpest expression of the phys-
ical concept of objectivity, but this concept of the physical object does
not coincide, from the standpoint of the general criticism of knowledge,
with reality absolutely. […] Rather if the thought of such an ultimate def-
inite reality is conceivable at all, it is so only as an Idea. (Cassirer, 1953,
p. 447)
Thus, Goethe’s anthropomorphism is confirmed at a higher level. Even the

purest de-anthropomorphized physical form is “relativized:” it is one of the
many possible symbolic forms of human thought.29 Goethe’s view of nature and
his original conception of morphology also guides Cassirer to discern a Leib-
nizian metaphysical attitude underlying Kant’s Critique of Judgement. In par-
ticular, the Kantian concept of “purposiveness,” as a systematic unity in which
each member possesses its characteristic function, derives from what Leibniz,
in his metaphysical system, called “harmony.” Leibniz’s harmony, however, is
pre-established, whereas Kant’s purposiveness involves cognitive faculties. It
can be found in the accidental formations of nature as well as in the perfect
forms of geometry (Cassirer, 1981, p. 288). But the will to form (Formwille) by
which nature is guided cannot be schematized. Thus, Cassirer remarks, “it is
the immanent development of the actual tasks of the critique of reason that
leads to the critique of judgement” (Cassirer, 1981, p. 294). In the critique of rea-
son, it is the form of knowledge which determines the form of objectivity but
here a “second-stage creative process” (Cassirer, 1981, p. 296) is involved. Beside
Newton’s mathematical natural science, Kant discerned a technic of nature as
a mode of ordering phenomena conformal to an immanent structure, rather
than to a cosmic mechanism. Nature appears as an art, in a subjective rela-
tion to our faculty of knowledge, and not in an objective relation to the facts.
Only in art, the individual does not refer to the abstract universal, as it is char-
acteristic of the universal itself. Here is the link between formal finality and
creative freedom, between an idea of harmony as a natural forming and as a
29 Cassirer’s essay Goethe und die mathematische Physik appears in the same year (1921) of
Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie.
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road to symbolic construction, which leads Cassirer to combine Goethe’s “see-

ing” and Kant’s transcendental30 in conceiving his philosophy of symbolic forms
as a “morphology of spirit.”
6 The Breath of Gravity
In his reading of Kant, Nishida also perceives a sort of “sensory imagination,”

in the sense of Goethe, as an inherent character of spatial intuition. “The space
that Kant thought of as the a priori of intuition,” he writes, “is the internal
creative force that unifies sensory contents as individual acts. Our concrete per-
ception is creative by means of this” (Nishida, 1973, p. 22). While Kant conceived
of imagination as an art, hidden “in the depths of human soul” (Kant, cpr, p.
B181), in the experience of art Nishida recognizes the ideal unity between the
self and the world, between intuition and reflection. Artistic intuition appears
to embody the will to form of the artist.
Artistic intuition is not mere intuition; it is intuitive content that has been
disclosed through expressive movement. Artistic creation is not mere cre-
ation; it is a productive seeing. It is the development of content itself. As in
Goethe’s experience, from within the mental image of one flower, num-
berless new flowers emerge spontaneously. The intuition of the artist is
an act of formation [Gestaltungstätigkeit]. (Nishida, 1973, p. 27)
Art is never mimesis for Nishida. Art dwells in reality, where the self also lives,
and artistic intuition is a way of expression inherent in the reality of which the
artist is part. The reference to Goethe’s experience is not occasional. In fact,
Goethe’s view of nature as an infinite formless space, which produces form
everywhere (Nishida, 2015, p. 149), and Leibniz’s view of monads as living mir-
rors merge into Nishida’s perception of intuition as a productive seeing. Nishida
appreciates the similarity of Leibniz and Goethe in the emphasis they place on
individuality, but also the difference in their approach to monad’s living expe-
rience. Whereas Leibniz’s monad has no windows, Goethe tried to enter the
monad’s mind and take its view.
The highest [favour] we have received from God and Nature is life, viz.,
the rotating motion of the monad around itself, which knows no rest nor
30 Cf. Cassirer (1921a). For an insightful discussion, see Ferrari (1996, pp. 73–84).
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234 lupacchini
ceasing. The tendency to preserve and cherish life is naturally and indeli-
bly inborn in everyone, but its nature remains a mystery to us as well as to
others. The second favour which comes from the Supreme Being is what
we call experience in life, our becoming aware of things, and the influ-
ences which the living and moving exerts upon the surroundings of the
outer world. Thereby the monad feels itself as infinite within and limited
without. (Goethe, 1870, pp. 1028–1029)
It might be worth contrasting Goethe’s ‘spiritual’ perspective on monadology

with Kant’s attempt to turn Leibniz’s monads into Newtonian ‘material’ points,
to reconcile metaphysics with geometry. In his Physical Monadology, Kant pre-
sented each monad as a simple element of a body which fills a space by means
of its “sphere of activity” and, therefore, without losing its simplicity.31 As a con-
sequence, Newtonian physics of central forces compelled monads to act upon
each other. But then the universal harmony of all created things was no longer
pre-established, it was rather due to the universal law of mutual interaction,
i.e., Newtonian attraction or universal gravity.
Physical influence, in the true sense of the term, however, is excluded.

There exists a universal harmony of things. Nonetheless, this does not
give rise to the well-known Leibnizian pre-established harmony, which
is properly speaking agreement between substances, not their reciprocal
dependency on each other. (Kant, 1992, pp. 43–44)
Monads lost life and sight. Leibniz’s monadology dissolved into the Newto-
nian mechanics of material points, while the sphere of activity of Kant’s phys-
ical monads would remain a riddle until Einstein’s theory of general relativ-
ity.
Nishida addresses the problem in What Lies Behind Physical Phenomena
(1924):
What does it mean, in physics, that one thing acts upon another and
causes its physical changes? According to the physics of action at a dis-
tance, one thing moves immediately another because of the force of the
former upon the latter. Thus, one transcendent object acts upon another.
31 Cf. Physical Monadology (1756), “Proposition vi: The monad does not determine the little
space of its presence by the plurality of its substantial parts, but by the sphere of activity,
by means of which it hinders the things which are external to it and which are present to
it on both sides from drawing any closer to each other” (Kant, 1992, p. 57).
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According to the physics of ‘locality’, however, rather than ascribing force

to things, physical phenomena are explained considering space as a “force
field.” Things do not act upon one another; when things exist, space
becomes a field of force. Thus, the various physical phenomena can be
explained as changes in the force field. In this approach, physical reality
shifts from the things that acts to the space where acting take place. Space
seems to have a physical quality. (Nishida, 2015, pp. 77–78)32
Indeed, what made it possible to dispense with the hypothesis of “action at

a distance” was the concept of field, introduced by Faraday and elaborated by
Maxwell, in the realm of electromagnetism. Here, the continuous field was con-
ceived of as an agent carrying electromagnetic interactions. The behavior of
such a field was described by differential equations, which remain invariant
if the spatial coordinates and the time are subjected to a particular group of
linear transformations, the “Lorentz transformations.” Assuming invariance as
a general heuristic principle, Einstein realized that the Lorentz group can be
defined independently of Maxwell’s equations as a group of transformations
leaving the light speed invariant. On this account, he establishes as a “principle
of relativity” that all equations of physics must be covariant with respect to the
Lorentz group. But, from an epistemological point of view, the str retains the
defect of classical mechanics of considering certain reference frames as “privi-
leged.” As mentioned above, the speed of light is invariant in all inertial systems
because space is empty.33 But a gravitational field cannot arise in the empty
space, for its existence is revealed by the way in which coordinates transform
(Einstein, 1950, pp. 15–16). This creates the demand for a space flexible to mate-
rial influences.
The idea of a physical geometry, first put forward by Riemann, guided Ein-
stein to his gravitation theory. Einstein considered how an observer in a closed
box would explain a temporary free fall of objects with a constant accelera-
tion. The observer can follow two lines of reasoning. First, the box is hung up
motionless in a temporarily constant field of gravity; second, the box moves
upward with a constant acceleration. Accordingly, the fall of objects is due to
the action of gravity, in the first case, to the inertia of objects, in the second.
The same phenomena can be described as gravitational effects or as inertial
movements. If gravitation is considered as a field, Einstein noted, there is no
independent means for recognizing the absence of forces which is supposed
32 This passage is slightly different from Brink (2021, pp. 19–20).

33 For more, cf. Taylor and Wheeler (1992, p. 56).
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236 lupacchini
to characterize a system as inertial. Acceleration is to be taken as equivalent to

a gravitational field (equivalence principle). While in Newtonian physics, gravity
forces bodies to curve their natural rectilinear motion, now “gravity manifests
the curvature of spacetime” (Taylor and Wheeler, 1992, 275). The principle of
general covariance can be established: “The general laws of nature are to be
expressed by equations which hold good for all systems of coordinates, that is,
are covariant with respect to any substitutions whatever” (Einstein, 1997, p. 153).
A sort of heuristic principle of invariance also inspires Nishida’s search for a
“place where things exist” (oitearu basho) that remains unchanged through the
continuous transformations of things.34 Just as the concept of field reveals the
hidden soul of physics in the systole and diastole between matter and space,
the concept of basho captures the very breath of self-awareness in the dialec-
tical unity of the world and the self. While Kant’s a priori forms of intuition
were the condition of the possibility of knowing, Nishida’s basho as “a form
of forms” seems to penetrate through the transcendental veil of knowledge to
unfold the eidetic power of seeing, the “absolute nothingness” where the self is
self-mirroring.
Looking back at the development of Nishida’s thought about the relation-
ship between intuition and will, in the years 1912–1926,35 the parallel between
the world of will and the world of force appears to emerge as a natural step for-
ward. The dialectical opposition of the self and the world mirrors the dialectical
opposition of spacetime and matter in the geometry of physics. What medi-
ates the force? How does it act through space-time? The dynamical nature of
intuition, which the dialogue with neo-Kantianism as well as the reflection
on artistic experience encouraged Nishida to place on absolute will, gradually
assimilates the essential character of a field wherein forces dwell. The notion
of will functions as a link in a conceptual chain stretching from the idea of pure
experience, through what has been named “active intuition,” “productive see-
ing,” and “self-awakening” (Cf. Ghilardi, 2008).
In the actual will subject and object are one, and the self functions in
the horizon of behaviour. This is precisely the horizon of absolute will.
To enter into true reality that is the object of this kind of actual will is aes-
thetic activity. To enter into this reality, the whole body must become one
living power, one activity. (Nishida, 1973, p. 104)
34 Cf. L’acte d’expression (1925), in Nishida (2015, pp. 172–176).

35 Cf. Tremblay’s introductory essay to Nishida [1924] in Nishida (2015).
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On this ground, Einstein’s view of gravitation could hardy remain unproduc-

tive. In Newtonian physics, the actual motion of a body resulted from a conflict
between the natural tendency to follow the inertial law and the deviating force.
The inertial structure of the world was conceived as a rigid geometric entity.
According to Einstein, instead, the world structure in its inertial as well as in its
causal aspects must be a physical entity. Therefore, in the dualism between iner-
tial guidance and deviating force, “gravitation belongs on the side of inertia; the
suspected variability of the inertial field and its dependence on matter manifest
themselves in the phenomena of gravitation” (Weyl, 2009, pp. 43–45). If Kant’s
space intuition was confronted with Newton’s geometrical physics, Nishida’s
conception of basho ripens in the shadow of Einstein’s physical geometry. In
some sense, basho absorbs and dissolves the “absolute will” into a curvature of
awareness. Remote from Newton’s absolute space, the “absolute nothingness”
of basho seems rather to reawaken Leibniz’s monadology. Interestingly, the
philosophical reflection of a subtle mathematician like Hermann Weyl appears
remarkably in tune with such a broad Leibniz-Nishida perspective. To bring the
physical world to life, Weyl suggested considering a world point not merely as
an abstract entity, but as a “point-eye” of a consciousness creeping upwards
along the world line of its body. Connecting the spacetime of physics with
human consciousness, the objective might be associated with the relative, the
subjective with the absolute. In the transition from consciousness to reality,
there is no a priori stage; the self and the world rise into existence indissolubly
connected and, as it were, at one stroke.36 Thus, from a physical point of view,
the logic of basho appears to capture the essential characters of light itself: a
formless form living and moving, a formative energy field.
7 Back to Davos
“What is the way for man to reach infinity? How can man participate in the
infinity?” To such questions posed by Heidegger at the Davos meeting, Cassirer
answered that, for man, there is no way but the way of form. Man turns his
existence into form, as he converts all that which composes his lived experi-
ence in objective figures, in symbolic creations. He cannot free himself of his
own finitude but can transfer it in something new, which delivers to the imma-
nent infinity. Quoting Schiller’s lines which close Hegel’s Phänomenologie des
Geistes, “from the chalice of this realm of spirits, foams forth for Him his own
36 For more, see Weyl (2009, pp. 49–50).
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238 lupacchini
infinitude,” Cassirer stressed that “this realm of spirits” is not to be taken as a

metaphysical realm, but as a human creation. Indeed, in the spiritual world
that man creates is the seal of his infinitude.
Although Nishida would not dissent, his standpoint is “more fundamental
and more immediate.” The symbolic forms built up in the history of humanity,
as concrete expressions of man’s cultural life in all their richness and vari-
ety, are somehow filters for the space of consciousness. His goal is to consider
“knowing” by attributing it to the space of consciousness, as a sort of dynami-
cal self-forming structure. To the extent that form is conceived as belonging to
the subject, knowledge is not established in the place of experience, but rather
in the sphere of ideal construction. Thinking of the relationship between form
and matter, as Nishida (1926) explains, to know is not simply a formal construc-
tion but an enveloping of the opposition of form and matter. Thus, if we regard
matter itself as a lower-level form [keisō], we may also speak of the knower
as the form of forms [keisō no keisō]. While Cassirer sees knowledge in terms
of forma formans, Nishida sees knowing as giving form to “the self within the
self,” as a self-mirroring. It would be “out of place” to judge it right or wrong, or
to establish it through logical forms. Rather, “it is basho that establishes logical
form,” out of some subject-object coincidence. “No matter how far we proceed
with forms, we cannot go beyond so-called form. The true form of forms must
be a basho of forms” (Nishida, 2012, p. 6).
Now, if we contrast the art of knowing as a productive seeing, or saper vedere
to recall Cassirer’s attentiveness to Leonardo’s eidetic vision, with the grasp
of knowing as a seeing without a seer, Leibniz’s “doctrine of shadows” might
help us conjugate Cassirer’s perspective with Nishida’s. According to Leibniz
(1840, p. 170), the doctrine of shadows37 is nothing but a reverse perspective
in which the light replaces the eye, the opaque replaces the object, and the
shadow replaces the projection. When the light replaces the “point-eye” of the
seer, the vanishing point of the ideal construction dissolves into a vanishing
background “from which everything emerges and to which everything returns;”
a background which is “absolute nothingness,” like in oriental painting, and also
a sensitive space, like in general relativity. Thus, as gravitation, enveloping mat-
ter and space, depicts the geometry of the physical world, so basho, enveloping
the self and the world, performs as a matrix out of which the symbolic universe
grows.
Concerning the Cassirer-Heidegger Auseinandersetzung, John M. Krois
holds that “there was really not a Davos debate; instead, two ships were floating
37 Préceptes pour avancer les sciences.
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away from each other in the darkness.” How about an imaginary Auseinander-
setzung of Nishida with Cassirer? I am inclined to think that, although floating
in the darkness, the two ships would have felt affinities with each other not
only through “the gentle sound of humanity”38 but also because of their com-
mon philosophical involvement with the “geometrodynamics” of form, with
the morphology of human existence.
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8
Lask, Heidegger, and Nishida: From Meaning as
Object to Horizon and Place
John W.M. Krummel
Abstract
Emil Lask provides the bridge from Kant to phenomenology but also from Kant to
Kyoto School philosophy. Heidegger and Nishida, contemporaneously but indepen-
dently, took Lask’s collapsing of Neo-Kantian hylomorphism—that amounted to a
deconstruction of Kantianism—in distinct directions. They accepted and appropri-
ated Lask’s anti-subjectivism while moving beyond his object-centrism. Heidegger
broadened Lask’s notion of lived experience in the direction of the “horizon” explicated
in terms of temporality. Nishida takes it in terms of a pre-objective “predicate,” indica-
tive of the “place” wherein beings, objects, grammatical subjects are implaced. Both
assume “world” as the contextual (back)ground, which however Heidegger understood
in terms of “horizon” and Nishida in terms of “place.” The essay thus examines Heideg-
ger and Nishida in light of Lask as a common source of their creative thought, moving
beyond Kantian dualism. In the conclusion I also address a few other related issues
surrounding their relationship to Neo-Kantianism and transcendental philosophy in
general.
Keywords
Emil Lask – Nishida Kitarō – Martin Heidegger – Kyoto School – phenomenology –

neo-Kantianism – dualism – horizon – place
1 Introduction
The famous 1929 conversation held in Davos between two contemporary philo-
sophical giants of the German speaking world, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Hei-
degger, focused on the central question of Kantian philosophy, “Was ist der
Mensch?” Both thinkers emerged from out of the rubbles of the waning Neo-
Kantian movement. At the same time that these thinkers were driving phi-
© John W.M. Krummel, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_010 - 978-90-04-68017-3

lask, heidegger, and nishida 243
losophy in new directions beyond the limits of Neo-Kantianism, the Kyoto

School on the other side of the globe, in Japan, was also developing philoso-
phy that had been imported from the West in novel directions. The founder of
the Kyoto School, Nishida Kitarō, a contemporary of Husserl, Heidegger, Car-
nap, and Cassirer, along with his students, was greatly indebted to German
philosophy, especially the Neo-Kantian movement, but had been dissatisfied
with its conclusions and endeavored to take philosophy beyond those Kantian
confines. And so the question can be raised: What directions the debate might
have taken had Nishida been present at the Davos disputations. If Heidegger’s
phenomenology and Rudolf Carnap’s logical positivism represent two oppos-
ing directions that post-Kantian philosophy was to take, leading to the present
analytic/continental divide, and Cassirer represents a middle ground as sug-
gested by Michel Friedman (Friedman, 2000), Nishida and the Kyoto School
following him may also represent another development that philosophy would
take, at least in Japan, but which also suggest possibilities for philosophy on a
global scale as well. This is suggestive if we take into consideration Nishida’s
connections not only to Neo-Kantianism and Lebensphilosophie (philosophy
of life) as well as Husserlian phenomenology. In this regard, an important fig-
ure, easy to miss, is Emil Lask, who has often been regarded as forming a bridge
between Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology.1
That Emil Lask (1875–1915) forms a bridge from Kant to phenomenology
is apparent when one notices his profound influence upon Martin Heideg-
ger (1889–1976). Taking the significance of Lask for Nishida Kitarō (西田幾
多郎) (1870–1945), one could argue as well that he provides the bridge from
Kant to Kyoto School philosophy. Heidegger and Nishida, each independently,
took Lask’s anti-subjectivist deconstruction of Neo-Kantian dualism in parallel
but distinct directions, deepening Lask’s conception of a pre-thematic object-
paradigm (gegenständliches Urbild) and the relationship within that paradigm
between category and material. While appreciating Lask’s anti-subjectivism,
each moved in distinct directions beyond Lask’s object-centrism. In the case of
Heidegger, Lask’s sense of meaning and validity is deepened to signify the phe-
nomenological “horizon” (Horizont) he explicates in terms of the temporality
1 In presenting this paper at the “Kyoto in Davos conference” in the summers of 2020 and
2021, I received some thoughtful and helpful comments from a number of participants. These
include Domenico Schneider, Gregory Moss, Lara Hofner, Jan Strassheim, John Maraldo,
Rosella Lupacchini, Esther Pedersen, and Hans-Peter Liederbach who provided a variety of
questions, comments, and suggestions. In finalizing this essay for the volume, I have incor-
porated their comments and my attempts at answering them. I would like to thank them for
helping me in clarifying my thoughts.
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of human existence, providing the meaning of beings. In the case of Nishida,

he assimilates the Laskian notion of a pre-judicatively lived category to his
notion of a pre-objective “predicate” ( jutsugo 述語) in his 1926 essay, Basho
(「場所」 “Place”), deepened in significance as indicative of a “place” (basho 場
所) wherein beings, objects, or grammatical subjects are situated. For Nishida,
place in its deepest sense is the place of nothing (mu no basho 無の場所); for
Heidegger time as horizon is the meaning of being (Sinn des Seins). Both indi-
cate a pre-theoretically lived sense of meaning or truth, implying a network of
meanings or “world” (Welt, sekai 世界). Here I look at possible convergences
and divergences between Heidegger and Nishida via Emil Lask as a common
source of influence and catalyst for the development of their distinctive think-
ing.
There are a number of reasons for bringing Heidegger and Nishida into dia-
logue through Lask. First of all, why compare Heidegger and Nishida to begin
with? There has been an existing interest in bringing Heidegger into dialogue
with the Kyoto School in general. A number of Nishida’s students, such as
Nishitani Keiji (西谷啓治), Miki Kiyoshi (三木清), and others, and close col-
leagues like Tanabe Hajime (田辺元), Kuki Shūzō (九鬼周造), Watsuji Tetsurō
(和辻哲郎)—all collectively but loosely regarded as members of the Kyoto
School—have either studied with Heidegger or met him and exchanged ideas
with him when studying in Germany. Nishida himself had never left Japan and
never met Heidegger. He did read a little of Heidegger’s works though not to
the extent of being influenced by him and in fact made some critical remarks
concerning Heidegger. It was rather his students who were initially enthusi-
astic about Heidegger’s new direction (his hermeneutical phenomenology) in
the late 1920s that gave birth to his Sein und Zeit. In turn Heidegger himself
had never read anything by Nishida but had heard something of his philos-
ophy from Nishida’s students who were in Germany. Nishida and Heidegger
thus had some awareness of each other but their knowledge of the other’s phi-
losophy was somewhat superficial. Nevertheless we notice common themes
in their attempts to overcome modern epistemology, especially the Kantian
issue of subject/object. Both look to that which precedes that dichotomization.
This relates to the question of how bringing Heidegger and Nishida together
can “open up a space for dialogue …” across borders. Their own conceptions
of that space is what drew me to each thinker in the first place. I am refer-
ring here to Nishida’s notion of basho (“place”) and Heidegger’s notions of da
(“(t)here”), Lichtung (“clearing”), Offen (“open”), and so on, as well as both of
their notions of “world” (sekai, Welt). Both were interested in this space or
dimension that shapes our being prior to our conceptualizations, theorizing,
and judgments (propositions). On this basis I felt there is a ground for dia-
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logue. But why examine Nishida and Heidegger through the third figure of Emil
Lask? There is the recent (since the late 1980s through 1990s) rediscovery in
both Heidegger and phenomenology circles of the relationship and relevance
of this little known Neo-Kantian thinker, Lask, to phenomenology, especially
Heidegger but also Husserl. And there is also the significant fact that Nishida
in his 1926 essay Basho (「場所」) refers to this little-known Lask, not once or
twice, but numerous times throughout the essay. When I discovered Emil Lask’s
influence on both thinkers—as they were struggling to overcome the limita-
tions of Kantian philosophy—I realized how Lask’s thought acted as a catalyst
to move each beyond Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism to that pre-theoretical
dimension, each in his own way. Hence I decided to look into the relation-
ships between the three and examine Heidegger and Nishida via Lask.2 I will
begin with a discussion of Lask’s ideas relevant to Nishida and Heidegger, fol-
lowing this with sections on Heidegger and Nishida, and end with concluding
thoughts.
2 Emil Lask
Emil Lask (1875–1915) may have been the most original member of the Baden/
Southwest School of Neo-Kantianism. He left two major works articulating his
unique philosophical logic:3 Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre
(The Logic of Philosophy and the Doctrine of the Categories) (1911) and Die Lehre
vom Urteil (The Doctrine of Judgment) (1912).
Lask attempted to ground transcendental logic in a realm of transcenden-
tal validity independent of the cognizing subject. He criticized Kant for leaving
out of his logical investigations the conditions for transcendental critique itself,
the conditions for knowing the conditions of knowledge. Lask intersects with
Husserl here in their critique of Kant, and this is precisely what led to Lask
being regarded as a bridge between Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. Max
2 I have written other essays (Krummel 2010, Krummel 2016, Krummel 2018) on Nishida
and Heidegger from different angles (the sacred or religion, nothingness, and chōra), and this
is the fourth one, focusing on Lask’s influence.
3 Lask regarded these works as provisional. He did, however, begin to provide a more com-
prehensive treatment of his problematic in his late lectures and draft, Zum System der Logik
(Towards a System of Logic) which comprises the third volume of his Gesammelte Schriften
(Collected Works) (Schulmann and Smith 1993, 452; Beiser 2008, 284). In the following,
while I consulted the available translations along with the originals for works by Lask and
Heidegger, and sometimes the translations for Nishida’s works, the translations given here
are often modified or either my own.
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Scheler, Heidegger, and even György Lukács noticed Lask’s closeness to phe-
nomenology, and Lask himself admitted to being influenced by Husserl (his
early works) (sz, p. 218 n. 1; Lukács, 1918, p. 350; Scheler, 1973, p. 329).4 Hei-
degger said that if Lask lived long enough he would have eventually turned
to phenomenology. In his critique of Kant, Lask proposed that the categories
themselves as valid forms are cognized as “objects” of knowledge.5 What makes
Lask distinct as a Kantian is this “Aristotelianism” in that he emphasized the
object while de-emphasizing the subject, refusing to talk about transcenden-
tal subjectivity as the holder of forms (categories). Rather categories or forms
that make matter meaningful exist in the world “out there.” Things in the world
already have meaning (i.e., forms) independent of the subject-knower. That is
to say that the world out there consists of objects that are form/matter combi-
nations, whether physical objects or logical objects. Hence, for Lask, in a way
somewhat akin to Husserl’s categorial intuition, we intuit categories “out there.”
Categories, for Lask, as logical objects, are objects of knowledge. They are logi-
cal objects of transcendental knowledge but are ontologically independent of
the cognitive subject. The object of philosophical knowledge as such is intelli-
gibility which logically precedes things. Logical objects (categories) are made
possible not because of a transcendental subject but rather because of higher-
level categories (forms) existing independently of the subject-knower while
they themselves serve as matter for the higher forms. That is to say that for
categories to be objects of knowledge, they themselves must have categories
making them meaningful—categories of categories or forms of forms. In other
words, a category or form can also be matter subsumed under a more univer-
sal category. Each level of categories is made possible by higher level categories,
and those higher categories by even higher ones and on and on, until ultimately
at the highest level, validity (Geltung) is the most universal category making
possible all meaningful (“valid”) categories. In turn at the “lowest” level, mat-
ter (material) would be individual material beings (Seiende) belonging to the
category of “being” (Sein).
Lask, inherits the terminology of Hermann Lotze, to discuss these logical
conditions in terms of validity (Geltung), often using its verbal form of being-
valid (or “the valid,” Gelten, Geltendes). What are valid are forms that pertain to
their material, whereby their material-content has meaning. Lask took other
concepts like value (Wert), norm (Norm), sense (Sinn), and meaning (Bedeu-
4 sz identifies Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Also see Lask’s letter to Husserl of December 25, 1910
(Sommerhäuser 1965, p. 340).
5 On this and the following, see Emil Lask’s “Announcement” of The Logic of Philosophy and the
Doctrine of Categories (1910), trans. Arun Iyer (Luft 2015), pp. 399–400.
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tung) to be all derivative of this concept of validity, which he inherited from

the Southwest Neo-Kantians, who spoke of validity in general to include logi-
cal laws, mathematical truths, moral norms (imperatives), and so on. But this
notion of validity ultimately stems from Lotze. As he did with the concept of
validity, Lask also took his understanding of value from how Lotze used it.
Value as a transcendental category in Lask is thus clearly distinguished from
our valuing act. For value as a transcendental category is also transcendent; it
transcends our judgments (or propositions) in that it is part of the world of
our pre-theoretical interactions or pre-judicative experience. Once we make
a judgment about the value we experience—e.g., the beauty of a flower—we
ascribe a second order value to it. That is, the value-making act (or judgment),
using the copula (is or is-not)—e.g., “the flower is beautiful”—in turn can be
“truth-accordant” (wahrheitsgemäß) or “truth-discordant” (wahrheitswidrig),
thus possessing truth-value (Wahrheitswert) based on the already lived catego-
rial involvement of the material. We pretheoretically experience that intertwin-
ing of form (category) (in this case value) and matter (the material involved in
the category) prior to making a propositional statement (judgment) about it.
We then form a judgment (a proposition) pertaining to that experience, which
may or may not accord with the experience. The proposition can thus be true
or false. In any case, validity as a whole, not just values, entails a transcenden-
tal realm that also transcends the judging subject, a realm where categories of
meaning, sense, value, and so on belong (gs ii, p. 26)6 independently of our
judicative acts. Nevertheless, the valid category as form must always refer to
that which is beyond itself, requiring fulfillment in its material (gs ii, pp. 32,
33, 63), as valid pertaining to … (Hingelten). Form requires its material but the
material content is clothed (umkleidet), encompassed (umgriffen) by the form
giving it meaningfulness (Sinn) (gs ii, pp. 34, 74, 75): “Form is indicative of
matter and matter stands in form” (gs ii, p. 330). Alone, however, the mate-
rial is unintelligible, alogical (gs ii, p. 36), logically impenetrable (gs ii, p. 77),
brute facticity that limits reason, conception, cognition (gs ii, pp. 58, 61, 65).
As the logical wraps or clothes the alogical, they interpenetrate in primal rela-
tionship (Urverhältnis) (gs ii, pp. 78, 394). He describes the material’s engage-
ment by logical form in terms of “involvement” (Bewandtnis) that contextu-
6 References to Emil Lask’s two major works, Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre
and Die Lehre vom Urteil are taken from his Sämtliche Werke Zweiter Band (Lask 2003). How-
ever, pagination is from the older Gesammelte Schriften Band ii (Tübingen, 1923) which in
Sämtliche Werke appears in square brackets and is here identified as gs ii. And writings from
Band iii will be identified as gs iii.
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alizes the particular material in relation to other material. But that interpen-
etration, involvement, or context transcends judgment and is pre-judicative,
pre-propositional.
Parallel to this, within the transcendent pre-judicative trans-subjective
realm, Lask, espouses two fundamental domains of objects: what are valid (Gel-
tende) and what are (Seiende), the valid and beings. Lotze had characterized the
ideal norm of judgment as validity (Geltung) in distinction from being (Sein). In
lieu of the traditional metaphysical two worlds theory that takes the two sides
of the dichotomy in terms of different kinds of beings—sensible and intelligi-
ble, apparent and real—and which led to the difficulty of how to bridge their
gap, Lotze attempted to overcome that ontic dualism by taking the more funda-
mental dichotomy to be between being (Sein) and validity (Geltung), the ontic
and the normative, reality (Wirklichkeit) and value (Wert), what is or occurs and
what counts or holds. So this Lotzean notion serves as the starting point for
Lask’s theory of validity (Lotze, 1838; Lotze 1888, vol. ii, pp. 200–223; esp. § 316,
p. 208; §317, p. 211; §320, pp. 217–218, §341, p. 269). The valid are non-sensible
but intelligible objects that need not exist (gs ii, pp. 6, 7). On the other hand, a
being is a spatio-temporal object that exists and can be sensed, but in itself not
valid (Nicht-Geltende).7 They belong to distinct categories: the domain category
(Gebietskategorie) of being to which non-valid beings belong and the domain
category of the valid to which valid categories belong. But both domain cate-
gories are valid. The domain category of being (Sein) is valid as the logical form
for beings (Seiende) (gs ii, p. 119). And validity in providing the intelligibility
for beings is itself not a being, and this means also that the category being is
itself not a being.8 So being is not a being, it cannot be (gs ii, pp. 31, 46, 47, 57).
Validity is what provides the meaning or intelligibility of that which belongs to
it (which can be lower level categories or beings). And each lower level cate-
gory (validity) receives its meaning as valid from the highest, all-encompassing
category of validity per se. In this way there are categories of categories, forms
of forms, allowing each category falling under another category as matter to
become an object of knowledge. And validity in itself is a domain-category
(Gebietskategorie) in the sense of this over-encompassing category of all cat-
egories (or meanings = Sinn), including being (Sein). There are many possible
categories of validity, each a domain for its own material and serving as “form”
intertwined with its “matter.” But the category of categories, the form of forms,
7 The distinction goes back to Lotze’s famous statement about the valid that “it is valid without
having to exist” (es gilt, ohne sein zu müssen). E.g., see his Logik § 316 (Lotze 1874).
8 This is surely the source of Heidegger’s notion that “being (Sein) is not a being (Seiendes).”
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as already stated would be validity itself. The category of the valid is the all-
encompassing category of categories, “theoretical primal form” (theoretische
Urform) (gs ii, p. 72), while the category of being is one of those valid categories.
In turn, as we descend the scale, the domain categories become differentiated
into more particular forms through “meaning-differentiation” (Bedeutungsdif-
ferenzierung) by specific material. At the bottom end of the spectrum is primal
matter (Urmaterial) (gs ii, p. 50). Between primal matter and primal form are
thus levels or tiers (Stockwerke) of form/matter unities. Moreover since Lask
uses the verbal form Gelten more than Geltung, it appears that he wants to
underscore that validity as such is really the verbal act of being-valid that its
material partake in. As I stated above the category of being is valid for beings.9
In the same way that the act of being is what unifies and forms the material as
beings, the act of being-valid is what unifies and forms material as valid con-
tent. In such a way Lask takes the Lotzean validity/being distinction or relation
in the Aristotelian terms of form/matter while also underscoring that form and
matter are always already intertwined.
Matter is given in our lived experience (Erleben) prior to judgment. We han-
dle objects—not only beings but valid content—without thematizing them
and as such they are “logically naked” (gs ii, p. 74; gs iii, p. 110; Kisiel, 1993,
p. 27; Kisiel, 2002, p. 105). Lask describes this in terms of Hingabe—absorption
or immersion—whereby we are “given-over” (hingegeben) to the form, mean-
ing, value (gs ii, pp. 56, 85, 129, 132, 191, 196, 204, 205). Absorbed within cate-
gories, we live through them as in contexts10 and so “live in truth” (Leben in der
Wahrheit) (gs ii, pp. 86–87, 124–125, 191, 192). Truth as such, pre-judicatively
experienced, is “non-artificial originary meaning” in contrast to judicatively-
cognized truth which is an artificially reproduced (nachbildend) meaning
(Guelberg, 1997, pp. 143–144). The object as this a priori foundation is the
paradigmatic meaning in contrast to the meaning constructed in judgments. A
judgment in affirming or denying (gs ii, p. 298) may or may not be correct vis-
à-vis its object-paradigm (gegenständliches Urbild). Judgment therefore always
implies a “fall” from the “lost paradise” of lived originary truth (gs ii p. 426).
The realm of cognitive judgment then is a field of oppositions that can hit
(treffen) or miss (verfehlen) its object while the transcendent realm of lived
meanings is oppositionless (gegensatzlos) or trans-oppositional (übergegensät-
zlich) (gs ii, pp. 294, 297, 298, 387, 389ff.). Lask’s underscoring of the transcen-
9 Here also is one root that led to Heidegger’s ontological difference.

10 Kisiel compares Lask’s understanding of the category that is lived with the context: “I live
in the category as in a context” (Kisiel, 2002, p. 103).
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250 krummel
dent-transcendental objectivity of meaning served as a clue for both Heidegger

and Nishida but both found Lask’s object-centrism to be insufficient.11
3 Martin Heidegger
We see the impact of Laskian concepts in Heidegger’s works from his student
days up to Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). Heinrich Rickert, his dissertation
supervisor noted that Heidegger is “very much obligated to Lask’s writings for
his philosophical orientation as well as his philosophical terminology …” (Shee-
han, 1988, p. 118; also Kisiel, 1993, p. 25; Kisiel, 2000, p. 248). As a student Hei-
degger reviewed Lask’s Logic of Philosophy in a 1912 article, Neuere Forschungen
über Logik (“Recent Research in Logic”) (ga 1, pp. 17–43; Kisiel and Sheehan,
2007, pp. 31–44).12 In his 1913–1914 dissertation, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychol-
ogismus (The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism), Heidegger turns to Lotze’s
conception—but following Lask’s reading—of validity (Geltung) and discov-
ery of “that decisive expression in the treasury of our German language” that
11 What is interesting is that in his latest and posthumous work, Zur System der Philoso-
phie (Towards a System of Philosophy) (gs iii), which was never quite completed, Lask
explains the act of judging and cognition as itself set in motion by the will to domi-
nate and control. The will as such is an expression of life (Leben) or lived experience
(Erleben), which ordinarily is pretheoretical and prejudicative. Prethematic life thus is
already meaningful, filled with value (Wert) in our comportments or relations (gs iii,
p. 232). Life here seems to provide the framework for understanding his earlier doctrines
of the categories and of judgment and how they relate. The theorizing or judging act on
the other hand is life momentarily pausing, repressing itself, breaking up that experien-
tially given pre-judicative holistic unity of meaningful being, object with valid content. It
is life’s suspension of its interaction with things for the sake of contemplation. Theory as
this contemplation is just one way in which life expresses itself. By theorizing life medi-
ates itself even while this very unfolding occurs through immediate lived experience itself
(gs iii, p. 219). Theory and the scientific way of viewing the world, including philosophy
as “the most remote from life” (gs iii, p. 286), are thus results of a “castrated and blasé
sort of knowing” as opposed to absorption (Hingabe) (gs iii, p. 240). And the Cartesian
thinking substance is an abstraction constituted out of life through its self-abstention, a
“fall out from the fullness of life” (gs iii, p. 232). In that regard life is the ultimate pregiven
horizon for both theoretical-cognitive and pre-theoretical practical experience. It seems
to designate the process of interaction involving the subject and the world. (On this see
Schuhmann and Smith, 1993, p. 465.) His premature end however prevented Lask from
working out this possible solution to how the semantic dualism between object and judg-
ment is bridged. What is interesting is that both Heidegger and Nishida, in working out
their own distinct philosophies, started with a similar sort of life-philosophy without hav-
ing read—or so it seems—this posthumous work of Lask.
12 Here ga identifies Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe followed by the volume number.
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“beside an ‘it is [das ist]’ there is an ‘it holds [das gilt; it is valid]’ ”; and that log-
ical forms as “forms of reality” (Wirklichkeitsform) are not but are valid (ga 1,
p. 170).
In his 1915–1916 habilitation, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns
Scotus (Duns Scotus’ Doctrine of Categories and Meaning), he repeats Lask’s call
for a “philosophical logic,” stating that “[l]ogic itself requires categories of its
own. There must be a logic of logic” (ga 1, p. 288). He appropriates Lask’s notion
of being as a category (gs ii, 46), to examine the issue of being in general (ens
commune) in medieval Scholasticism, stating that “[i]t is the function of form to
give an object its being” (ga 1, p. 325).13 He appropriates here Lask’s understand-
ing that validity signifies the “involvement” (Bewandtnis) of material (ga 1,
pp. 318, 381). He links Lask’s reflexive categories of identity and difference (gs ii,
pp. 137ff.) to the medieval transcendental category of unum (one) (ga 1, pp. 215–
216, 218, 224, 230f., 381). In the simplest tautology of ens est the verb being as
categorial form is the subject-matter’s involvement (ga 1, p. 387), “even if it
is only a matter of being identical with itself and different from something
else” (ga 1, p. 381). Being something (Etwas-sein) is the “primal involvement”
(Urbewandtnis) of anything that is (ga 1, p. 346). Form determines the nexus
of meanings and thereby the environing world (Umwelt) (ga 1, p. 255). Thus
later in one of Heidegger’s early lectures from 1919, he says that “Lask discov-
ered in the ought and in value, as in an ultimate lived experience, the world …”
(ga 56/57, p. 122). That Laskian notion of a pre-theoretical value that we pre-
judicatively or pre-cognitively experience rather than know with propositions
influences Heidegger’s notion of the world, including his notion of “involve-
ment” or “relevance.”
Heidegger, however, was not completely satisfied with Lask’s logic. It was
“simply not possible to compare judgment-meaning with the real object” as
Lask’s logic seemed to require, since one knows about real objects only through
cognition, judgment (ga 1, p. 273). Heidegger thus felt the need to go beyond
Lask’s object-centric logic to consider “subjective logic” (ga 1, p. 404): “[f]orms
are … the objective expression of the different ways in which consciousness
is intentionally drawn to what is objective” (ga 1, p. 319) the way the object is
given (ga 1, p. 316). Husserl’s intentionality proved useful but in turn Heideg-
ger balances intentionality with Lask’s doctrine of material “differentiation of
meaning” (gs ii, pp. 58ff., 63, 102, 169; ga 1, 288, 313, 317, 319, 402). Combin-
13 Heidegger explains later that what he accomplished in the habilitation work is an “onto-
logic” (Onto-Logik) (ga 1, p. 55) of the categories of being that are timeless and ideal and
whereby judgment gains access to real being, grounded in the absolute being of God (Van
Buren, 2002, pp. 5–6).
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ing Lask and Husserl, Heidegger calls for a “higher unity” (ga 1, p. 404 n. 3)
between transcendental realism and transcendental idealism. Recognizing the
unity of ideal being and historical actuality leads transcendental logic to the
recognition of the living “historical spirit” (ga 1, p. 407). History as the arena
of “value-formation” (ga 1, p. 410) is the “meaning-determining element for the
problem of categories” (ga 1, p. 408).
In the 1919 course Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem
(“The Idea of Philosophy and the Problem of Worldviews”). Heidegger takes the
a priori primal something (Ur-etwas) in the realm of lived meaning, to be the
sheer intentional movement that is the comporting relation (Verhalten) of “out-
toward ….” and whose sense is a “worlding.” The world that Lask had discovered
in the ought and in value, for Heidegger, was historical. History as matter in
material determination “motivates” the giving of norms or values. The given-
ness of matter and the giving of forms are dynamically united, whereby “being-
valid is a phenomenon … presupposing not only intersubjectivity, but historical
consciousness in general” (ga56/57, p. 51), which can only be expressed in the
impersonal “it is valid” (es gilt). Lotzean non-being is thus de-objectified in the
anonymous event of pre-thematic life. Inspired by Lask’s formulation of the
reflexive category, Es-Geben (“being-there,” literally “it-gives”) (gs ii, pp. 130, 142,
162ff.), Heidegger formulates his own idiosyncratic phrases to express the true
locus of experience in the dynamism of the “it” that “worlds”: “es gilt, es soll,
er wertet–es gibt–es weltet, es er-eignet sich” (“it is valid, it should, it values–
it gives/there is–it worlds, it en-owns/a-propriates”) (ga 56/57, pp. 46, 73, 75;
Kisiel, 2002, p. 127).
In Being and Time of 1927 Heidegger develops the ambiguity of being in
Lask, taking its inner distinction as the ontological difference (ontologische
Differenz). He conceives the being of beings as the contextual space of intelli-
gibility articulated in our interpretive understanding. Its structure is categorial
like the valid, but occurs with our being-(t)here (Dasein) (sz, p. 151). Meaning
as the material’s involvement or relevance thus becomes manifest under the
light of our projects (sz, pp. 83–87). Beings are discovered as belonging to a
network of involvements or relevance, related to the environing world as the
contextual horizon wherein one is (t)here (da) encountering beings at-hand
(sz, pp. 85, 86). Here Heidegger’s notion of the world, which we are “thrown”
into, as already meaningful is indebted to Lask’s notion of categories as logi-
cal forms “out there.” But ultimately Heidegger was dissatisfied with the one-
sidedness of Lask’s analysis and wanted to balance his object-centeredness
with an analysis of the subject in terms of Husserl’s intentionality, eventu-
ally leading to his own notion of Dasein. But Heidegger also inherited from
Lask the terms Bewandtnis and Hingabe, which proved to be useful in this
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balancing act. For Lask, form (category) is the Bewandtnis of the material. In
Heidegger this becomes the network of relevance or the world that contextu-
alizes an entity, giving it its meaning. And Heidegger refers to Lask’s notion
of Hingabe in connection to the care-structure of being-(t)here (sz, p. 199).
Through these terms Heidegger attempts to overcome the dichotomization
between subject and object. Lask’s emphasis was more on the objective side
to the neglect of the subjective side. Heidegger with his phenomenological
background thus seeks to deepen the subjective side to meet the objective
side through what some may regard as an “enactivist” position. The result is
a deepened sense of subjectivity (and objectivity) as “ek-static thrown project”
(Crowell, 1996, p. 87), whereby we live through the network of relevance that
makes things meaningful. This grounds both Husserlian intentionality and the
emergence of Laskian object-paradigms. This is also what Heidegger sought
to capture with terms like “being-in-the-world” (In-der-Welt-sein). All of this
radicalizes Lask’s Urverhältnis of Bewandtnis and Hingabe through the situ-
atedness of our projects, the facticity of our being-in-the-world thrown into
existence as finite, contingent, facing death (sz p. 263). It was during this
time that on the other side of the globe, a Japanese thinker was appropriat-
ing Lask’s concepts to develop his own version of “originary logic,” a “logic of
place.”
4 Nishida Kitarō
In Nishida’s 1920s works Lask serves as a catalyst for the genesis of his ideas. The
breakthrough to his “logic of place,” came in his 1926 essay, Basho (“Place”).14
References to Lask first appear here, where we find more references than in
any other work (Guelberg, 1997, p. 132). Lask’s name is also conspicuous in Tori-
nokosaretaru ishiki no mondai (「取り残されたる意識の問題」; “The Issue of
Consciousness, Remaining”) of the same year.15 Further references appear in
the 1930 Ippansha no jikakuteki taikei (『一般者の自覚的限定』; The System of
Universals in Auto-Realization) and in Tetsugaku no konpon mondai (『哲学の
根本問題』; Fundamental Problems of Philosophy) of 1933–1934.
14 Originally published in Tetsugaku kenkyū (『哲学研究』 Research in Philosophy), nr. 123

(June 1926). References will be to Nishida’s Complete Works (Nishida Kitarō zenshū) iden-
tified as nkz, followed by the volume number.
15 Published in Tokunohakushi kanrekikinen tetsugaku ronbunshū (『得能博士還暦記念哲
学論文集』 Philosophical Essays in Commemoration of the Sixtieth Birthday of Dr. Tokuno)
(Tokyo: Iwanami, 1927). An English translation of this essay is available in Nishida 2012.
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In contrast to Aristotle’s definition of substance as “that which becomes

the subject and not the predicate,” Nishida16 defines consciousness logically
as “that which becomes the predicate but not the subject.” While the subject
is grammatically determinate, the predicate can be broadened in its universal-
ity to an indeterminate “nothing” (mu), encompassing determinate beings ( yū
有) (nkz 18, pp. 303–304). Nishida asserts: “the true a priori would have to be
that which constitutes its own content within itself. Thus we may conceive, as
in Lask, a domain category (Gebietskategorie) beyond constitutive form. To see
universal concepts determined in the object realm of our cognition is due to
this place determining itself” (nkz 3, pp. 426–427). A few years later he asserts
that Lask’s “domain” (Gebiet) is founded upon such determination that is a self-
determination (nkz 4, p. 191). The domain category of the valid, as the primal
form (Urform), the form of forms, corresponds in Nishida to the intelligible
world (eichiteki sekai 叡知的世界) (nkz 3, p. 432), wherein we live in inter-
personal connections with others (nkz 3, pp. 485–486) in the concrete situat-
edness of the place of true nothing (nkz 3, p. 432). As in Lask’s domain category
of the valid, the intelligible world for Nishida is precognitively, prejudicatively,
experienced (nkz 3, p. 418.) for validity and values are found in the concrete
situatedness of our lived experience (nkz 3, p. 481),17 providing the guiding
horizon for acts of consciousness (nkz 3, 432), and for “the emotive interpene-
tration between mutually intuiting persons” (nkz 3, pp. 485–486). The Laskian
notion of a pre-theoretical value or validity here influenced Nishida’s under-
standing of the intelligible world and his sense of the ought (Sollen, tōi 当為) in
a similar way to how it influenced Heidegger. Nishida understands this “alogical
lived experience” as a kind of place (basho 場所) that is peri-logical (hōronriteki
包論理的) (nkz 3, p. 418),18 enveloping its articulations in judgment.
16 As he writes in his June 1926 letter to his student, Mutai Risaku (務台理作) who was
studying in Germany at the time.
17 Almost all the Japanese commentators on the Lask-Nishida connection seem to have
missed this sense in Lask of prethematically given valid forms—values and meanings—
in which we are precognitively absorbed and through which we live and experience the
world.
18 I use the neologism “peri-logical” to translate what Nishida calls hōronrieki. The Japanese
hō (包) with its verb form tsutsumu (包む) has the sense of “envelop,” “embrace,” “wrap,”
“comprehend,” “include.” The neologism seems appropriate since the Greek prefix peri
(περί) has the spatial senses of “around,” “about,” “round about,” “surrounding,” as well
as the verbal sense of “enclosing” or “wrapping.” With verbs it can mean “concerning” or
“about.” In this aspect it reminds us of the Hingeltung or Hingelten aspect of form in Lask.
And it also corresponds to Lask’s use of the prefix um-. Hence “lived experience” as “peri-
logical” is a kind of place. If by hōronri Nishida means what he will come to call “logic of
the predicate,” peri-logic seems the best translation for hōronri.
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In the same way that Lask’s domain category as itself valid therefore is not,
the universal place embracing the intelligible world and all beings for Nishida is
nothing (mu 無). Here Nishida was certainly inspired, along with other sources,
by Lask’s understanding of validity as non-being. For Lask, it is a “nothing” in
the sense that it is not a particular sensible being. Every valid category would be
a nothing in relation to its material. And the all-encompassing category, valid-
ity itself, would thus be a nothing in relation to all that lies under as well. In
Nishida’s system, likewise, there are levels of what he calls relative nothingness
(sōtai mu 相対無) leading up to the broadest and most encompassing nothing-
ness which is absolute nothingness (zettai mu 絶対無). For Nishida even the
highest category, validity as such, is meaningful. Validity as a domain category
in Lask is equivalent, for Nishida, to the intelligible world (eichiteki sekai), the
world of meanings in which we are always already implaced. Yet each intel-
ligible world as a context of meanings is relative to other possible intelligible
worlds. Even the broadest sense of validity as such would be a meaning and
as such has a certain determinateness that would distinguish it from the abso-
lute nothing that is indeterminate, undetermined. The absolute nothing that
encompasses all of intelligibilities and validities, and all intelligible worlds or
contexts, as the ultimate place that is without limits and is undetermined is
thus beyond validity in that sense, a meaninglessness that encompasses all pos-
sible meanings. Validity in Nishida’s terms would still be a relative nothingness,
each form of validity relative to other forms of validity but also ultimately rel-
ative to the absolute nothingness.
Nishida repeatedly refers to Lask’s transcendent “trans-oppositional” (über-
gegensätzlich; chōtairitsuteki 超対立的) or “oppositionless object” (gegensat-
zloser Gegenstand; tairitsunaki taishō 対立なき対象). With Lask’s object-para-
digm (gegenständliches Urbild) in mind he explicates it as the object for how
we ought to think (tōiteki shii no taishō 当為的思惟の対象) (nkz 3, p. 424–425).
But in experiencing it we are beyond the field of consciousness (ishiki no ba 意
識の場) that establishes judicative oppositional content (nkz 3, pp. 424, 425;
nkz 7, p. 223). Thus “the place that establishes the intertwining of form and
matter and the place that establishes the opposition of true and false must be
distinct” (nkz 3, p. 418). The former refers to the world of lived experience and
the latter refers to the field of consciousness. So he asks, “What kind of a thing
is Lask’s oppositionless object that utterly transcends acts?” and responds that
“even this object must be implaced somewhere” (nkz 3, p. 422). In “The Issue
of Consciousness, Remaining,” he states that when consciousness conceived as
a place of nothing becomes an absolute nothing, “what is implaced there is the
oppositionless object” (nkz 7, p. 223). But once cognized and judged, its expe-
rience is abstracted and dichotomized into subject/object, predicate/subject.
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Nishida thus provisionally accepts Lask’s logical objectivism while ground-

ing its object-centrism upon the deeper standpoint of place. He looks to the
placial character of self-realization as the self-determination of that which pre-
cedes and exceeds both subject and object of cognition, whereby knowing is
the self-formation of the formless. Akin to Lask’s transcendent sphere, the orig-
inary sphere for Nishida is not yet divided by oppositions. But whereas Lask
understands this in terms of an “object,” Nishida focuses on Lask’s character-
ization of it as a “domain” to take it as a “place.” On that basis, “… to cognize
is none other than for experience to form itself within itself …. [and] the so-
called subject/object opposition is realized … in what endlessly mirrors itself
within itself, that which contains endless beings by itself becoming nothing.”
He adds: “It is a place that we can neither say is identical nor that it is differ-
ent, neither that it is being nor nothing, a place that cannot be determined by
so-called logical forms but instead permits the establishment of logical forms”
(nkz 3, pp. 418–419). Thus the “true form of forms must be a place of forms”
(nkz 3, p. 419).
He pursues the form of forms in the direction of the knower as “something
like a place” (nkz 3, p. 421). But thereby “consciousness of the oppositionless
object does not mean that consciousness transcends itself but that conscious-
ness deeply enters into itself. One speaks of this as transcendence only because
one is seeing this simply as a relationship of objects without deeply thinking
of the essence of consciousness itself” (nkz 3, p. 473). We might characterize
this rather as a “trans-descendence” into the deeper pre-epistemic place that
envelops our lived experience, a descent into that presubjective place. But in
suggesting the primal interfusion of being and meaning in lived experience,
Lask had provided a clue for Nishida. Lask’s interfusion of form and matter for
Nishida is the self-formation of true nothing. Nishida thus sought to bridge the
dualistic gap by taking the divide as the self-articulation of the self-determining
nothing. Hylo-morphism thus collapses into the self-forming formlessness of
place, the event of reality-cum-experience.
5 Conclusion
Heidegger and Nishida found in Lask a clue to surmounting dualism while rec-
ognizing the limits of his logical objectivism. Lask for both hinted at a way
to escape the impasse of the modern focus upon the epistemological sub-
ject. But the problem with Lask was that he did not clarify how one knows
whether one’s judgment about the world out there, including the transcenden-
tal categories as transcendent objects of logical cognition, is “truth-accordant”
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or “truth-discordant.” This was the reason why Heidegger felt he needed to

balance Lask’s object-centrism with an inquiry into subjectivity, leading him
to Husserl’s notion of intentionality and eventually to his own notion of the
human being-(t)here (Dasein) and being-in-the-world. In Nishida’s case as well
that limit in Lask’s system that left unexplained how one can transcend one’s
knowing or judging subjectivity to reach the transcendent object led him to
deepen his analysis of the subject and eventually led him to his notion of a
place (basho) that pretheoretically encompasses subject and object. Perhaps
one might say that both thinkers “betrayed” the Aristotelian side of Lask’s Kan-
tian philosophy that focused too heavily on the object. Both were led to trans-
descend subjectivity to look at its prethematic engagement with the world. But
this does not mean that they were returning to the traditional modern con-
ception of the subject. It led Heidegger to our finite being-(t)here (Dasein).
For Nishida it led to our implacement in the place of nothing (mu no basho).
Both were led to the lived world of meaning/s. Both the Heideggerian notion
of being-(t)here in a (t)here or horizon and the Nishidian idea of implacement
in a place, both as a pre-objectively and pre-subjectively—pre-epistemically—
lived environment, are implicit already in Lask’s characterization of the cate-
gory as a domain that embraces, as their form, the material things belonging to
it, and his definition of form as the very involvement or relevance (Bewandtnis)
of that material. This also served to inspire Heidegger’s notion of the onto-
logical difference as it did Nishida’s place/implaced relationship. Also relevant
in this regard is Lask’s notions of lived experience (Erleben) or absorption or
immersion (Hingabe) and of living “in truth,” whereby we find ourselves already
immersed, prior to judgment or cognition, “out there” in the already meaning-
ful world—that is the domain categories contextualizing their material. Both
Nishida and Heidegger found inspiration in that Laskian notion of a presup-
posed wherein.
An important development of Heidegger’s appropriation of Lask is the onto-
logical difference between being (Sein) and beings (Seiende). But there is an
analogous development in Nishida. For Lask being as a domain category is valid
but not a being. Heidegger understands being in terms of meaning, associating
this with the horizon of our being-in-the-world. Nishida associates validity qua
intelligible world with place wherein beings arise and disappear. Akin to the
valid in Lask place ultimately—in its deepest level—is a nothing in distinction
from beings. For Heidegger as well being is not, hence a nothing (Nichts). For all
three what envelops beings is not—not a being.
And if form is the material’s involvement or relevance, it implies context,
which both Heidegger and Nishida understood in terms of the world. In Hei-
degger involvement as constitutive of the meaning of handy things ultimately
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points to the contextualizing horizon toward which one is thrown. In Nishida

the constitution of objects by the predicate ultimately points to the intelligi-
ble world as place. Both also assume, in this regard, Lask’s notion of absorption
(Hingabe) as mentioned above, whereby we are immersed, prior to judgment,
in that already meaningful world.
The hylomorphic collapse in that lived wherein is another consequence of
their radicalization of Lask. Heidegger transmutes the interfusion of form and
matter into the projection and thrownness of being-(t)here. Nishida collapses
the hylomorphic duality into the self-forming formlessness. Lask spurred both
thinkers beyond Kantian dichotomies but also beyond his own object-centered
logic towards the lived realm of meaning as the true a priori preceding objects.
We might even say that the seeds for both thinkers’ mutation of, and then
turn away from, even the destruction of, transcendental philosophy as they
deepened or trans-descended subjectivity into pre-subjective depths of lived
existence was already planted in Lask’s alteration of Neo-Kantianism into his
object-centrism that ignores epistemic or judicative subjectivity while permit-
ting the possible unfolding of a pre-epistemically meaningful world of immer-
sion. A few more words then is in order on the position of transcendental phi-
losophy in these thinkers. As we saw above Lask attempted to ground transcen-
dental logic in a realm of transcendental validity independent of the cognizing
subject. Both Heidegger and Nishida also attempted a transcendental ground-
ing of the conditions of cognition but, in contrast to Lask, turned towards the
subject while radicalizing the interior turn to arrive at the pre-subjective. Their
relationship to transcendental philosophy in that respect is somewhat ambigu-
ous.
Heidegger consciously attempted to move away from the language and
method of transcendental philosophy and yet, at least during the time of Being
and Time, still regarded his philosophy as transcendental. He states at the
beginning of Being and Time that “every disclosure of being as the transcen-
dens is transcendental knowledge” (sz, p. 38). The transcendental knowledge
characterizing Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is the disclosure of the tran-
scendence of our being-(t)here, constitutive of our being (Dahlstrom, 2005,
pp. 34–35). Fundamental ontology as this foundational mode of inquiry that
inquires after being (Sein) as distinct from beings (Seiende) is thus to be accom-
plished through the existential analytic of being-(t)here (sz, p. 14). Nevertheless
Heidegger refused to grasp being-(t)here as transcendental subjectivity due to
the ontologically substantialist connotations of the modern subject he wished
to reject. In the case of Nishida, the charge of psychologism towards his initial
attempt in 1911 to found cognition in “pure experience” in his Zen no kenkyū (『善
の研究』; Inquiry into the Good), led him in the 1920s to turn to Neo-Kantianism.
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With its help he sought to provide a logical grounding. As we already saw, the
search for transcendental foundation led him in the direction of the predicate
vis-à-vis the object that becomes the subject of a proposition, and which he
thus characterized as the transcendental predicate (chōetsuteki jutusgo 超越的
述語). In tracing the conditions of objectification back to the non-objectifiable
predicate or place (basho) wherein objects and subject are implaced, Nishida
was thus attempting—akin to Lask’s own project—to ground critical philoso-
phy, that is, transcendental knowledge itself in what he called in his 1930 The
System of Universals in Auto-Realization “radical criticism” (tetteiteki hihanshugi
徹底的批判主義) (nkz 5, p. 184). But that deepest ground for Nishida proved
to be what Kant, Husserl, Rickert, and Cohen, each failed to discover, revealing
itself to be indeterminate or groundless and selfless in the auto-realization (or
“self-awareness”; jikaku 自覚) of the absolute nothing—an idea foreign to the
tradition of transcendental philosophy. While these works of Heidegger and
Nishida—the period of Being and Time for the former, the period spanning
“Place” to The System of Universals in Auto-Realization for the latter—can be
considered transcendental philosophy, their position towards subjectivity per
se as transcendental foundation was ambiguous.19 The attempt to overcome
subjectivity might be traced to Lask’s attempt to eliminate the significance of
the epistemological or judicative subject. But the ambiguity lies in the fact that
both Heidegger and Nishida attempted to overcome subjectivity as the final
ground by plumbing the depths of subjectivity itself to reach its pre-subjective
and hence non-subjective ground—a ground that precedes the subject/object
split connecting one always already to and in the world. But this also fuels their
eventual abandonment—explicitly or implicitly—of transcendental philoso-
phy.
Heidegger in the 1930s becomes explicitly critical of the transcendental
method, including his own Being and Time, for defining everything in ad-
vance—being as objectness—to thus close off further questioning, especially
of the essential origin of being that must be thought in terms of the history of
being or “being-historically” (seinsgeschichtlich) (Heidegger, 1957, p. 150; 1961,
p. 415). During the 1930s he turns his focus away from the “transcendental
horizon” and instead towards “enowning history,” a leap from an inquiry into
the meaning of being as the temporal horizon to the truth of being as its
opening (Dahlstrom, 2005, p. 32; Hermann, 2001, pp. 110 ff.; Vallega-Neu, 2001,
pp. 68f.). The un/ground (Abgrund) of that opening is no longer attributable
19 See Ishihara Yuko’s work on this topic of transcendental philosophy in Nishida (Ishihara,
2017).
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to the human subject (ga 65, pp. 373, 387–388).20 From this perspective even
being-(t)here’s transcendence is viewed as an inappropriate characterization
when being-(t)here is always already the opening of being’s self-concealment
while transcendence implies both degrees and the activity of a subject (ga 65,
pp. 216ff., 322, 337; Dahlstrom, 2005, p. 40). This is not to deny, however, that, as
Dahlstrom has argued, there may be vestiges of transcendentalism in the later
Heidegger, such as in his talk of time-space (Zeit-Raum) providing a clearing as
the singular condition for our ordinary concepts of space and time (Heidegger,
1988, p. 16; Dahlstrom, 2005, pp. 47–48).
If Heidegger, in his post-1930 works, is explicit in the denigration of tran-
scendental philosophy, Nishida’s position remains ambiguous, but he does
turn away from the Kantian form of transcendental philosophy to explore
the dialectics of mutual determination. In his System of Universals in Auto-
Realization, he found the deepest level of the self in auto-realization to be the
enactive or performative self (kōiteki jiko 行為的自己), involving the self in
interaction with the world externally in self-expression (nkz 5, p. 155). Here the
meaning of “transcendental” comes to align with the sense of “transcendence”
outwards into the world—the two senses of the Japanese chōetsu (超越) that
in English are kept distinct. But this transcendence, by virtual of the fact that it
occurs at the deepest level of the self, seems to acknowledge the self’s already
accomplished interactive immanence within the world in its embodiment. And
so during the 1930s and later he begins to speak of the human individual as a
productive element within the creative world (nkz 8, p. 259). On the other hand
when he speaks of the transcendental in such works the reference is now to the
world itself—the world as ground, un/grounded in the nothing—rather than
subjectivity or the self. Here he has moved further away from Kantian transcen-
dental philosophy. Instead of the one-sided constitution of objects by transcen-
dental subjectivity, he sees the self’s involvement with the world in terms of
dialectical mutual determination of whole and part, world and individual, in
what he calls the “self-identity of contradictories” (mujunteki jikodōitsu 矛盾
的自己同一). The seed for such dialectics might be traced to Hegel as well as
Mahāyāna Buddhism (especially Kegon via D.T. Suzuki) (Krummel, 2015). But
neither can we ignore Lask’s spurring of Nishida to look for the transcenden-
tal in the pre-subjective rather than in subjectivity—the pre-subjective that led
him to the extra-subjective, which in Lask’s case was the material’s meaning-
20 The task of enowning history, instead of looking for the transcendental foundation of
knowledge, now becomes the appropriation of the “first beginning” to prepare the way
for an “other beginning” through thoughtful dialogue with thinkers who defined the his-
tory of that “first beginning” (Dahlstrom, 2005, p. 37).
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ful involvement within the environing world in which we find ourselves always
already prior to judgment or cognition. For both thinkers, Lask was the catalyst
for looking to a ground deeper than, and beyond, the epistemological sub-
ject. In that respect their relationship to transcendental philosophy, especially
that of Neo-Kantianism, is not simple. Within Neo-Kantianism, both showed
interest in the later thinkers, who were already moving beyond the traditional
confines of Kantianism, over the founders. Within the Southwestern School,
Nishida and Heidegger preferred Lask over Rickert as we have seen. Within the
Marburg School, it appears that Nishida preferred Cassirer to Cohen.21 Heideg-
ger’s relation to Cassirer, on the other hand, was expressed more polemically
in their public discussion at Davos. The relationship of Nishida and Heidegger
to Cassirer is a distinct topic to that of the current work but one worth pursu-
ing.
Finally, in conclusion, I would like to respond to the issue of comparing
an Eastern and a Western thinker through their relations to a third, Western,
thinker. Is it problematic here that the tertium comparationis is situated in
Europe? In my view this is one out of many other possible ways to juxtapose
or compare these thinkers. I would not consider Nishida’s Japanese setting as
closed. Nishida himself is very much a modern philosopher and in the Japanese
context that means he studied and absorbed much of Western philosophy
(from ancient Greek to medieval to modern to contemporary philosophies).
Even though he is a Japanese native he is also a Western philosopher and a part
of the Western tradition in that respect. This is not to deny that he has also
been influenced by the East Asian traditions as that was also part of his educa-
tional upbringing. But in the university setting, at the time of Nishida as now,
Japanese students studying in a department of philosophy would study West-
ern philosophy. Western students and scholars interested in Nishida often de-
emphasize this, perhaps, because of a fascination with the Asian or Japanese
aspect of Kyoto School philosophy. But Nishida as an individual philosopher,
while also influenced by, and incorporating insights from, the East Asian tra-
ditions (especially Mahāyāna, Zen, and Pure Land Buddhism), also had his
feet firmly planted within the Western philosophical tradition. I am bring-
ing Nishida into dialogue with Heidegger, not necessarily as a representative of
Japanese thought, but as an individual philosopher, who happens to be a part of
both the Western and the Japanese traditions. I am not denying that there could
be other ways of comparing these two, perhaps through an Asian setting, such
21 Nishida’s relationship to Cassirer has been the topic of research of a couple of scholars,
Stephen Lofts and Saulius Geniusas.
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262 krummel
as their relations to Zen or Daoism (as Heidegger also had a little interest—
even if perhaps superficial—in them). But I would not want to stereotype each
thinker as quintessentially Western or quintessentially Japanese in a way that
would close off any genuine philosophical exchange or dialogue. How then
ought we to deal with the inevitable potential power structures or inequalities
brought into play in comparative analyses? We can pluralize or multiply the
possibility of such structures in different power configurations, always open to
other possible configurations, and remind ourselves that no configuration is
the only possible one.22
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9
From Kyoto and Hong Kong to Davos: Nishida
Kitaro and Mou Zongsan’s Possible Contributions
to the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate
Tak-Lap Yeung
Abstract
This text explores the impact of Kantian philosophy on Western and Asian philoso-
phy, specifically the interpretations of Kant by Nishida Kitaro and Mou Zongsan. The
Davos debate of 1929 between Cassirer and Heidegger revealed a conflict over the
appropriate interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. Nishida and Mou were not present
at the Davos debate. However, if they had attended, what contributions might they
have made to the conversation? In comparing Nishida and Mou’s interpretations of
Kant, Nishida’s ideas are more closely aligned with Heidegger, whereas Mou’s ideas
align more closely with Cassirer. Nishida and Heidegger highlight the problem of origin
and argue for a “negative grounding” of human knowledge, claiming that the Kantian
dualistic view of knowledge will dissolve into the monistic origin of Nothing. They
also prioritize existence and the ontological primacy of existential experience in gen-
eral over moral and cognitive experience in particular. In contrast, Cassirer and Mou
acknowledge the fundamental dualistic character of Kantian philosophy and recog-
nize the primacy of human freedom and autonomy. They follow Kant’s “fact of rea-
son,” acknowledging the primacy of practical reason as the foundation of morality
and human infinitude. Cassirer focuses on culture, while Mou emphasizes the moral
heart-mind in Chinese philosophy, aiming to extend the meaning of the primacy of
practical reason. Although Nishida and Mou’s contributions may not directly resolve
the conflict in Davos, they redirect the problem towards the potential of intellec-
tual intuition and emphasize the unique aspects of Asian philosophies. Their view-
points expand the debate to include an even more pronounced discord concerning
the interpretation of Kant in either a monistic or dualistic manner. These perspec-
tives challenge traditional Western philosophical views and highlight the potential for
transcultural philosophical dialogue. By examining these perspectives, we can gain a
more comprehensive understanding of Kant’s philosophy and its contemporary signif-
icance.
© Tak-Lap Yeung, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_011 - 978-90-04-68017-3

266 yeung
Keywords
Davos debate – Kant – Heidegger – Cassirer – Nishida Kitaro – Mou Zongsan – intel-
lectual intuition – Asian philosophy
1 Introduction
The impact of Kantian philosophy has been significant not only in the develop-
ment of European philosophy but also in Asian philosophy. Many philosophers
have faced the challenge of reading and reinterpreting Kant’s work to nourish
their thoughts and construct their philosophical systems. The Davos debate
of 1929, which took place between Cassirer and Heidegger, is known to have
altered the trajectory of Western philosophy. Michael Friedman’s book, A Part-
ing of the Ways, reconstructs this story, emphasizing the division between ‘ana-
lytic philosophy’ and ‘continental philosophy’ that emerged in the twentieth
century. Friedman contends that “the proper interpretation of the philosophy
of Kant” was the central force behind this division, which had lasting con-
sequences (Friedman, 2000, p. xi). According to Friedman, the philosophers’
encounter in Davos revealed not only a particular cluster of philosophical prob-
lems but also a dispute over the appropriate interpretation of Kant’s philosophy
and how to properly develop his intellectual legacy.
This insight can be applied to the philosophical traditions on the other side
of the world. For example, Nishida Kitaro and Mou Zongsan, two founding fig-
ures in the Kyoto School and New Confucianism established solid foundations
for contemporary philosophical development in the Japanese and Sinophone
world. These interpretations have certain similarities with the interpretations
of Heidegger and Cassirer, respectively. With these philosophers in juxtapo-
sition, it is possible to see not only how they comprehend Kant’s philosophy
with different philosophical presuppositions, but also how their cultural back-
grounds lead to distinct readings and arguments about Kant.
Nishida and Mou were not present at the Davos debate. However, if they
had attended, what contributions might they have made to the conversation?
Could their Asian heritage provide unique insights into the interpretation and
development of Kantian philosophy? Keeping these ideas in mind, I would like
to explore the following points:
1) What are the main disagreements between Cassirer and Heidegger in
their interpretations of Kant during the Davos debate?
2) How did Nishida and Mou comprehend Kant’s philosophy? What are the
limitations of Kant’s philosophy? How did Nishida and Mou adapt Kant’s
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from kyoto and hong kong to davos 267
ideas and integrate them into a novel framework compatible with both
Western and Eastern traditions?
3) Can the adaptations of Kant by Nishida and Mou resolve the conflict
between Cassirer and Heidegger? How should we evaluate their contri-
butions?
In this paper, I propose that their distinct interpretations of Kant not only lead
to varying understandings of Kantian key concepts and ideas (such as freedom,
morality, and the primacy of practical reason) but also facilitate the further
advancement of Kant’s philosophy in relation to cultural-historical factors. I
will commence by exploring the Cassirer-Heidegger debate at Davos and subse-
quently integrate insights from Nishida and Mou to enrich the discussion with
Asian perspectives.
2 Debate in Davos: Heidegger and Cassirer on Kant
While the Cassirer-Heidegger debate regarding the interpretation of Kant’s phi-

losophy is recognized to some extent as contributing to the “parting of ways” in
German philosophy, their divergent interpretations do not have a direct impact
on the revolution of Kantian research, particularly in the case of Heidegger’s
interpretation. It is widely recognized among Kant scholars that Heidegger’s
interpretation of Kant’s philosophy is a distortion and thus deemed unwor-
thy of investigation. One factor contributing to this disregard is Heidegger’s
purportedly “dishonest explanation” of Kantian philosophy (cf. Henrich, 1994,
pp. 17–54; Horstmann, 2018, p. 9, n. 7; Hanna, 2003). Cassirer, in particular,
became more convinced of this after reading Heidegger’s Kant and the Prob-
lem of Metaphysics, published in 1929, leading him to refer to Heidegger as a
usurper (Usurpator) rather than a commentator (Kommentator) in a review
(Cassirer, 1967, p. 185). In fact, in my view, Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant
is not only unpopular among Kant scholars but also among Heidegger schol-
ars. This has given rise to what I call the “double oblivion of Heidegger’s Kant
interpretation” (Yeung, 2020, pp. 50–54).
However, what is the crucial factor that leads to the characterization of Hei-
degger’s interpretation as not ‘Kantian’ or even a ‘usurper’ of Kantian philos-
ophy? I believe that the divergent understanding of the concept of freedom
constitutes one of the critical distinctions between Kantian and Heideggerian
perspectives. As Dieter Henrich posits, freedom is the “keystone” of the arch of
reason, or in other words, of Kant’s critical philosophy (Henrich, 2008, pp. 46–
Who are those 61). For some Kantian scholars, the dualistic system, which presupposes the
Kantian
phenomena-noumena distinction and the primacy of practical reason, repre-
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268 yeung
sents the essential character of Kantian philosophy. Hence, an interpretation

of Kant that aims to diminish the first and highest position of freedom in Kant’s
entire system is likely to be deemed a misunderstanding or even a distortion of
Kant.
The disagreement between Heidegger and Cassirer regarding the fundamen-
tal essence of Kantian philosophy involves several points of contention con-
cerning Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant. Nevertheless, this brief essay will
concentrate solely on one aspect: Cassirer’s principal critique of Heidegger’s
interpretation of Kant pertains specifically to the accurate comprehension of
the concept of freedom, which presupposes a dualism in relation to the division
between the causality of nature and freedom. Cassirer clarifies this by asserting
that, within the context of Kant, the separation of the mundus intelligibilis from
the mundus sensibilis implies that “all human existence and all human activi-
ties are to be measured by two completely different modes of orientation and
judgment” (Cassirer, 1967, p. 181).
The meaning of “world (mundus)” in this context refers to the realm of “all
human existence and all human activities,” where humans have two different
modes of orientation and judgment: one towards the natural world and the
other towards the moral world. Therefore, according to Cassirer, “all human
existence and all human activities are to be measured by two completely dif-
ferent standards and are to be considered from two standpoints that are in
principle opposed to each other” (ibid.). This statement demonstrates that the
phenomena-noumena distinction and the distinction between practical and
theoretical reason are essential elements of Kantian philosophy, which provide
us with the “two standpoints that are in principle opposed to each other.” Cas-
sirer argues that human finite reason is dualistic in Kantian philosophy because
humans are both members of the natural world, subject to natural law, and
members of the moral world, subject to the law of freedom, which is grounded
upon human autonomy.
Human freedom is characterized by the autonomy of the will, which enables
individuals to establish their own goals and pursue them according to their
own judgment. For the will to be truly autonomous, it must be self-determining
and independent, meaning that it must be spontaneous in nature. This is why
Cassirer criticizes Heidegger’s thesis, which attempts “to demonstrate an essen-
tial dependence and finitude for practical reason” (ibid., p. 182). Heidegger
argues that “the ego can appropriate the moral law in no other way than in
the feeling of respect, restriction and finitude again arise in this foundation on
a feeling” (ibid.). However, from a Kantian perspective, this is a significant mis-
understanding. According to Kant, “the content of the moral law is in no way
grounded in the feeling of respect. The meaning of the moral law is not consti-
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tuted through respect” (ibid.). In Cassirer’s words, the idea of freedom and prac-
tical reason is “purely intelligible, is not bound to merely temporal conditions.
It is rather the pure view into the timeless—the horizon of transtemporality”
(ibid.).
The fundamental disagreement between Heidegger and Cassirer pertains to
their interpretation of Kant’s concept of freedom in relation to the temporal
dimension. Cassirer maintains that Kant’s philosophy is dualistic as it recog-
nizes humans as members of both the natural and moral worlds, and subject
to natural law and the law of freedom respectively. He underscores that the
faculty of morality is spontaneous, not influenced by natural causality, and
not constrained by temporal conditions. Conversely, Heidegger’s interpretation
aims to establish a practical reason that is finite and dependent on the tempo-
ral horizon of existence, which Cassirer deems a significant misinterpretation.
According to Cassirer, the notion of freedom and practical reason is “purely
intelligible” and not rooted in the feeling of respect, as Heidegger asserts. Con-
sequently, the primary divergence between Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s inter-
pretations of Kant’s concept of freedom concerns their comprehension of the
role of human autonomy and the connection between practical and theoreti-
cal reason. Cassirer maintains the dualistic nature of Kantian philosophy, while
Heidegger’s interpretation challenges this idea and has generated controversy
among scholars in the field.
To summarize this topic, Peter E. Gordon, in his book Continental Divide,
provides the best remark to the conflict between Cassirer and Heidegger. He
writes:
Where Cassirer sees an increase in our capacity of self-legislation, Heideg-

ger sees only a forgetting of the “nullity” that lies deeper than any appar-
ent freedom. What Cassirer calls spontaneity is for Heidegger merely a
metaphysical conception of the human being that underwrites the drive
to technological domination. What Heidegger calls thrownness is for Cas-
sirer merely a primitive and mythic conception of humanity destined to
be surpassed. (Gordon, 2010, p. 363)
At this juncture, we may redirect our focus from Europe to Asia to explore
diverse viewpoints concerning these conflicts.
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3 Kyoto and Hong Kong in Davos: Nishida Kitaro and Mou Zongsan
on Kant
During the same period, several philosophers in the Far East endeavored to
interpret and transform Kant’s philosophy in their unique ways. Notably, in
Kyoto, Nishida Kitaro devoted significant effort to developing his philosophi-
cal system through in-depth discussions with both classical and contemporary
Western philosophers, including Kant.
Around 40 years after Davos debate, Mou Zongsan translated and inter-
preted Kant’s three Critiques with limited resources during his late years in
Hong Kong. He invested considerable effort in later years to assimilate West-
ern philosophy to bridge the gap between Western and Eastern philosophical
traditions in his works including Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy,
Appearance and Thing-in-Itself, etc.
To comprehend the philosophical undertakings of Nishida and Mou, and
to evaluate the feasibility of combining diverse philosophical traditions, it is
essential to initially examine their respective understandings of Kant’s phi-
losophy. This necessitates identifying the limitations of Kant’s philosophy and
assessing how Nishida and Mou transformed Kant’s ideas to fit within novel
frameworks capable of accommodating both Western and Eastern philosoph-
ical traditions.
3.1 Nishida’s Endeavor to Surpass the Kantian Framework

From his initial major philosophical work, An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no
Kenkyu 善の研究, 1911), Nishida demonstrates his reception and dissatis-
faction with Kantian framework concerning human understanding and self-
consciousness. He posited that Kant’s division, as presented in the Critique of
Pure Reason, was only applicable to conscious states, not pre-conscious states.
In his earlier work, he illustrated a unified field preceding consciousness, where
the subject-object division does not exist:
Regardless of its nature, as long as consciousness maintains a strict unity

it is a pure experience: it is simply a fact. But when the unity is broken and
a present consciousness enters into a relation with other consciousnesses
it generates meanings and judgments. […] Upon careful reflection, how-
ever, we see that even these unities and disunities differ only in degree;
there is neither completely unified consciousness nor completely disuni-
fied consciousness. All consciousness develops systematically. Just as an
instantaneous knowing implies various oppositions and shifts, so behind
the relational consciousness that is seen in meanings and judgments must
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there be a unifying consciousness which makes the relations possible.

(Nishida 1990, 9–10)
Prior to conscious states, there exists a unifying consciousness that can unify
the phenomena of consciousness, which Nishida referred to as “pure experi-
ence.” At this juncture, Nishida believed that Kant’s analysis merely explicated
how the natural world and cognitive experience are formed by analyzing the
field of consciousness. To elucidate the foundation of human knowledge and
self-consciousness, the dualistic character of Kant’s analysis, concerning the
two stems of human knowledge (i.e., sensibility and understanding), may be
preserved. However, to expound on the basis of the world of consciousness,
further exploration of its root, the realm of the unconscious or pre-conscious,
is necessary.
In his paper, The Intelligible World (1928), written during his middle period,
Nishida addresses the question of the meaning of “the Universal.” In his explo-
ration, Nishida postulates that the Universal can be discerned through three
stages or layers that define three distinct worlds. The first stage is the Universal
of judgment, which Nishida asserts “belongs to the natural world in the widest
sense of the word” (Nishida, 1966, 69). The second stage is the Universal of self-
consciousness, which envelops the Universal of judgment and encompasses
something that “transcends the plane [or field] of predicates.” Nishida further
clarifies that “[e]verything that has its place in this Universal, and is determined
by it, belongs to the world of consciousness” (ibid.). The third stage, the intel-
ligible world, envelops even the Universal of self-consciousness and contains
aspects that “transcend the depths of our conscious self” (ibid.).
In this paper, Nishida develops a new framework that incorporates his con-
sideration of the Kantian system (and also Husserl’s phenomenology) and
demonstrates his attempt to transcend the Kantian framework. The first and
second levels of the Universal can be categorized into the realm of conscious-
ness, which Kant comprehensively discussed in the first Critique. This realm
of consciousness includes consciousness regarding things and the self and is
both the realm and limit of possible experience for human beings. Kant traced
back the universal foundation of judgments that are rooted in the pure cate-
gories using the transcendental method. The forms of judgments, which must
be expressed in linguistic format, are considered by Kant to be the basic forms
of constructing human cognition and experience. Hence, we could understand
the reason why Nishida named Kantian subject as “the grammatic subject” and
“subject of expression” in his later works (Nishida, 1987, pp. 61–62).
Another critical disagreement between Nishida and Kant is related to Kant’s
understanding of the unifying consciousness. In the chapter on the transcen-
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272 yeung
dental deduction, Kant argued that the “I think must be capable of accom-
panying all my presentations” and that “this presentation [i.e., the I think] is
an act of spontaneity; i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility
(Kant, 1996, B131–132).” Kant’s concept of the “I think” can be seen as the most
fundamental source of consciousness regarding things and the self, as Kant
notes:
I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from empirical apper-

ception. Or, again, I call it original apperception; for it is the self-conscious-
ness which, because it produces the presentation I think that must be
capable of accompanying all other presentations[,] and [because it] is
one and the same in all consciousness, cannot be accompanied by any
further presentation. I also call the unity of this apperception the tran-
scendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate that a priori
cognition can be obtained from it. (Kant, 1996, B132)
Kant proposes that self-consciousness is the most fundamental source of all

consciousness, and this original apperception can be identified with Nishida’s
second level (i.e., the Universal of self-consciousness). It encompasses not only
the first level concerning all consciousness in the form of judgment but also
self-consciousness.
However, Nishida argues that while Kant touched on the root of the entire
realm of experience, i.e., consciousness-in-general or Bewusstsein überhaupt,
he was only able to provide a complete picture of the Universal regarding
the world of consciousness. This is due to the fact that in Kant’s critical sys-
tem, there is no place for unconsciousness or pre-consciousness. One rea-
son for this limitation is Kant’s rejection of the positive use of the concept
of intellectual intuition in his system of human cognition. To overcome this
limitation, Nishida introduces the idea of the intelligible Universal, which
allows for a fuller description of both the world of consciousness and pre-
consciousness. To understand the concept of the intelligible Universal, we
must explore Nishida’s understanding of pure experience and intellectual intu-
ition.
3.2 Intellectual Intuition and the Intelligible Universal

Nishida’s notion of intellectual intuition reflects the convergence of the sub-
ject-object dichotomy and forms an integral part of his philosophy from his
early career. In the first chapter of An Inquiry into the Good, he comprehensively
discusses the concept of “pure experience,” which subsequently becomes the
foundational concept of the Kyoto School. Notably, in the fourth and final sec-
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tion of this chapter, Nishida introduces the concept of “intellectual intuition”

as a bridge between the unique qualities of pure experience and subsequent
discussions on “Reality” and “The Good.” He explicitly articulates his under-
standing and application of intellectual intuition as follows:
Intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Anschauung] is an intuition of the

ideal, usually trans-empirical one. It intuits that which can be known
dialectically. Examples of this are found in the intuition of artists and
people of religion. With respect to the process of intuiting, intellectual
intuition is identical to ordinary perception, but with respect to con-
tent, intellectual intuition is far richer and more profound. (Nishida, 1990,
p. 30)
Nishida’s interpretation of intellectual intuition is indeed closer to the tra-

ditional Western understanding prior to Kant, who rigorously distinguished
empirical intuition from intellectual intuition. In contrast, Nishida does not
overtly differentiate intellectual intuition from ordinary perception or sensi-
ble intuition in Kantian terms. Instead, he posits that the difference between
intellectual intuition and sensible intuition is a matter of degree. He argues, “I
believe […] intellectual intuition and ordinary perception belong to the same
category and that the two cannot be clearly demarcated” (ibid.).
In The Intelligible World, Nishida reiterates the topic that an intellectual intu-
ition is reached, where subject and object are united (Nishida, 1966, pp. 119–
120). He subsequently revises Kant’s established relationship among the self,
cognitive faculty, and sensible intuition. In a later chapter of the essay, he pro-
vides a definitive statement:
To transcend in the depth of the conscious Self, and to reach the intelli-
gible Self, means nothing else but to go beyond the world of inner per-
ception, and to enclose the transcendent object; it means that the Self
becomes conscious of the object without mediation; this union of sub-
ject and object is intellectual intuition. In the depth of the conscious Self,
we see the deeper content of ourselves, and finally we see ourselves with-
out mediation. (Nishida, 1966, pp. 126–127)
According to Nishida, once one reaches the intelligible Self, the subject-object
distinction dissolves, and this unification is called intellectual intuition. At
this level, individuals can perceive themselves “without mediation (cf. Nishida,
1966, pp. 127 and 129),” indicating that self-understanding is achieved not
through conceptual means, but through direct and immediate intuition.
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274 yeung
Nonetheless, this does not represent the pinnacle. The Self is still limited
to the aspect of an “act,” and Nishida believes that “[t]he Self is more than
act” (Nishida, 1966, p. 127). The Self includes not just the part that acts but
also the part that can potentially act. The intelligible Self must be free, sur-
passing all internal contradictions, including the negation of values and the
Self. To reach this ultimate level, we must enter the world of religious con-
sciousness, which overcomes all self-contradictions and ultimately leads to the
rejection of the Self. The final stage, which “surrounds even the intelligible Uni-
versal and serves as the ‘place’ for our true Self, can be named the ‘place of
absolute Nothingness.’ It is the religious consciousness” (Nishida, 1966, pp. 134–
135).
To summarize, Nishida believes that Kant’s criticism has a dogmatic aspect
in its starting point, but he surpasses Kant’s limitations by clarifying specific
standpoints related to different forms of knowledge, starting from the perspec-
tive of consistent criticism (Nishida, 1966, p. 141).
4 Mou’s Transformation of Kantian Framework
Mou Zongsan, a prominent figure in the development of New Confucian-

ism, dedicated significant effort towards interpreting Kantian philosophy and
reconciling Western and Chinese philosophical traditions in his later years
in Hong Kong. In his late work Appearance and Thing-in-itself (Xianxiang
yu Wuzishen 現象與物自身), Mou begins by considering two fundamental
premises of the Kantian philosophical system: the transcendental distinction
between phenomena and noumena, and the finitude of human beings. Mou
maintains that these premises are inseparable and essential to Kantian philos-
ophy.
4.1 From Cognitive Finitude to Moralistic Infinitude

While the concepts of the noumenon and the thing-in-itself are problematic
for many Kant scholars, Mou argues that they remain significant for inter-
preting Kantian philosophy as well as for Chinese philosophy in general. He
contends that the noumenon, in Kant’s practical philosophy, is a necessary
and helpful concept for grounding the possibility of morality, even though the
thing-in-itself, which is for him interchangeable with the noumenon in the
context of Kant, is cognitively unjustifiable for theoretical reasons. As a result,
Mou suggests modifying the first premise of Kantian philosophy to “humans
are finite but can be infinite (ren sui youxian er ke wuxian 人雖有限而可無
限)” (Mou, 2003a, pp. 20 and 24ff.).
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Mou’s modification focuses on the shift from the “factuality” of human exis-
tence to the “possibility” of human existence. He draws on Heidegger’s formula-
tion of the problem of finitude to argue that humans are potentiality-for-being
and can live “as” infinite beings through the concepts of “infinite heart-mind”
and “intellectual intuition” (cf. Mou 2003a, pp. 24–31). Mou asserts that these
concepts possess not only logical possibility but also real possibility, meaning
they can be felt and confirmed with the heart-mind authentically in the course
of life.
To support his reinterpretation of Kantian philosophy, Mou turns to Chinese
philosophy, particularly Confucianism, which he views as fundamentally dif-
ferent from Western philosophy in its approach to knowledge. He argues that
This is
Chinese philosophy regards nature as an organic whole with intrinsic value
rather than holding a purely naturalistic view. Furthermore, Chinese philoso-
phy does not pre-establish a gap or antagonism between the self and the world,
the object and subject, or the immanent and transcendent. Mou believes that
the cognitive and normative dimensions of humans can be reconciled in Chi-
nese philosophy as they are not divided by the subject’s possession of sensible
or intellectual intuition.
Mou’s reconceptualization of knowledge integrates the finite and infinite
dimensions of human beings through the dual-aspect perspective of one heart-
mind. He posits that while humans are finite in terms of knowledge, they can
be infinite with respect to wisdom. Mou reinterprets Chinese philosophy more
broadly through his “two-level ontology (liang ceng cunyoulun 兩層存有論),”
inspired by the model of “one heart-mind opening two gates (yi xin kai er men
一心開二門)” found in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (Dacheng Qixin
Lun 大乘起信論). Mou’s two-level ontology consists of “ontology of attachment
(zhi de cunyoulun 執的存有論)” and “ontology of non-attachment (wuzhi de
cunyoulun 無執的存有論)” (cf. Mou, 2003b, pp. 283–312). He aims to broaden
our conception of knowledge’s limits (cognitive finitude) and advocates for
boundless knowledge (moralistic infinitude).
4.2 Mou’s Argumentation for the Real Possibility of Intellectual Intuition

Mou argues for his stance by emphasizing the unique aspects of Chinese phi-
losophy. He advocates for the real possibility of intellectual intuition, which
Kant does not accept in the knowledge domain, by drawing from Eastern tra-
ditions such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism.
Mou interprets Buddhism to illustrate the concept of non-attachment ontol-
ogy using the “Yuanjiao 圓教” concept from the “Tiantai school 天臺宗” (com-
pared to the “Huayan school 華嚴宗”). He demonstrates his understanding
of Tiantai’s “noumenal ontology 本體界的存有論” as the ontology of non-
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276 yeung
attachment, contrasting it with Kant’s ontology of attachment (Mou, 2003b,

p. 429). According to Mou, although the Huayan school’s doctrine on “ālaya-
vijñāna 阿賴耶識 (store consciousness)” can explain “all dharmas 一切法 (all
phenomena)” empirically, it requires further explanation for the transcenden-
tal ground of Buddhahood’s origin. He suggests Tiantai’s system of “tathagāta-
garbha 如來藏 (the womb of the thus-come-one),” which directly asserts Bud-
dhahood’s origin through intellectual intuition (Mou, 2003c, pp. 285–286, also
cf. 2003b, p. 420).
In Daoism, the focus is on heart-mind training to remove life’s sickness,
namely “the manufacture 造作.” This training, “Kungfu 功夫,” aims to achieve
a state of vacuity and “maintain the silence and calm 致虛守靜” within one’s
heart-mind (Mou, 2003b, p. 445). In this state, the heart-mind can genuinely
return to its root, revive its nature, and comprehend the constant, thereby illu-
minating all beings as themselves (Mou, 2003b, p. 446). The ultimate goal of this
training is to understand and experience the origin of beings, which implies a
negation of beings, “Wu 無.” Mou argues that affirming the origin of beings as
a negation of beings depends on the affirmation of intellectual intuition. As
intellectual intuition relies on nothing, it can lead to the detachment of fixa-
tion, or in other words, a state of non-attachment. This state of non-attachment
represents true freedom for Daoists.
In Confucianism, Mou identifies the starting point as the affirmation of
“moral awareness 道德意識,” which reveals the metaphysical entity (the nou-
menon). He explains that humans can make moral judgments due to an inner
standard originating from the moral entity, which our moral awareness directly
reveals. Mou asserts that this realization is possible because Confucians, par-
ticularly from the “school of heart-mind 心學,” generally believe in the heart-
mind’s reality. Unlike Buddhism and Daoism, which fundamentally deny sub-
jectivity’s reality and value, Confucianism positively affirms moral subjectivity
and the constructive effect of moral actions (Mou, 2003b, p. 452). Mou con-
cludes that both the “realization of things and self 成己成物” are grounded in
the same transcendental ground, the a priori moral awareness. This dual pro-
cess is ultimately grounded in the possibility of intellectual intuition.
In summary, Mou’s reinterpretation of Kantian philosophy and his integra-
tion of Chinese philosophy provide a new horizon for resolving the crisis of
knowledge in the West, which he views as naturally inclined towards pan-
scientific and pan-technological tendencies leading to a crisis of self-destruc-
tion. The solution, according to Mou, resides in the real possibility of intellec-
tual intuition found within Chinese philosophical traditions.
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5 Conclusion
By interpreting Kant in their unique ways, can Nishida and Mou’s adaptations
resolve the conflict between Cassirer and Heidegger? As we have established in
the early session, the main point of contention between their interpretations of
Kant centers around the concept of freedom in relation to human finitude and
infinitude, as well as the dualistic nature of Kantian philosophy. In comparing
the two, Nishida’s ideas are more closely aligned with Heidegger, whereas Mou’s
ideas align more closely with Cassirer, in regards to their respective philosoph-
ical developments.
Nishida and Heidegger highlight the problem of origin and argue for a neg-
ative “grounding” of human knowledge, claiming that the Kantian dualistic
view of knowledge will dissolve into the monistic origin of Nothing. They also
prioritize existence and the ontological primacy of existential experience in
general over moral and cognitive experience in particular. In contrast, Cassirer
and Mou acknowledge the fundamental dualistic character of Kantian philos-
ophy and recognize the primacy of human freedom and autonomy. They follow
Kant’s idea of the “fact of reason,” acknowledging the primacy of practical rea-
son as the foundation of morality and human infinitude. Cassirer focuses on
culture, while Mou emphasizes the moral heart-mind in Chinese philosophy,
aiming to extend the meaning of the primacy of practical reason.
While Nishida and Mou hold different views towards the Kantian frame-
work rooted in the transcendental method, they offer alternative insights to
the Cassirer-Heidegger debate due to their Asian background and their views
on intellectual intuition. Despite their rejection of Kant’s limitations on human
experience, both philosophers recognize intellectual intuition as a reality for
humans that deepens and expands our understanding. Mou upholds a dual-
istic view of Kantian philosophy and prioritizes practical reason, viewing the
transcendental capacity of morals as extending from the individual to every-
thing under heaven. In contrast, Nishida places importance on existence and
focuses on the more ontologically primordial realm of pure experience and the
intelligible Universal, ultimately leading to the Absolute Nothingness found in
religious consciousness.
Nevertheless, their application of intellectual intuition also highlights dif-
ferences in their understanding and philosophical agendas. Mou’s approach to
Kantian philosophy aims to bridge Chinese and Western thought, and he draws
parallels between Kant’s practical philosophy and Confucian moral philosophy.
On the other hand, Nishida views Kant as an interlocutor for general philo-
sophical issues, using the Kantian framework to expound on his ideas rather
than as the basis of his system. Nishida’s interpretation leans towards a lay-
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278 yeung
ered monistic unity that transcends Kant’s dualism. He tends to use religious
consciousness, which surpasses the consciousness of values and morality, to
replace Kant’s emphasis on moral consciousness, offering a unique contribu-
tion to Asian religious thought that is less influenced by Abrahamic monothe-
istic religion.
Although Nishida and Mou’s contributions may not directly resolve the
conflict in Davos, they redirect the problem towards the potential of intel-
lectual intuition and emphasize the unique aspects of Asian philosophies.
Their viewpoints expand the debate to include an even more pronounced
discord concerning the interpretation of Kant in either a monistic or dualis-
tic manner. However, by prioritizing the ‘reasonable’ development of Kant’s
philosophy, we can consider transcending the limitations imposed by Kant
and advocate for a possible unitary theory. For sure, the decision to pursue
this path or not depends on our individual academic interests and objec-
tives.
In conclusion, the four philosophers’ interpretations of Kant’s philosophy
and their contributions to philosophy demonstrate how different philosoph-
ical systems and cultural backgrounds influence philosophical debates. Their
interpretations provide insights into the role of intellectual intuition, the rela-
tionship between practical reason and morality, and the dualistic character of
Kantian philosophy. These perspectives challenge traditional Western philo-
sophical views and highlight the potential for transcultural philosophical dia-
logue. By examining these perspectives, we can gain a more comprehensive
understanding of Kant’s philosophy and its contemporary significance.
Bibliography
Cassirer, E. (1931) ‘Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Bemerkungen zu Mar-
tin Heideggers Kantinterpretation.’ Kant-Studien 36, pp. 1–26. Translated as ‘Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics.’ In M. Gram, ed. (1967) Kant: Disputed Questions.
Chicago: Quadrangle.
Friedman, M. (2000) A parting of the ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago:
Open Court.
Gordon, P.E. (2010) Continental divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge: Har-
Hanna, R. (2003) ‘Review: Weatherston, Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant: Cat-
egories, Imagination, and Temporality,’ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Avail-
able at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/heidegger‑s‑interpretation‑of‑kant‑categories
‑imagination‑and‑temporality/ (Accessed: 5.1.2023).
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Henrich, D. (1994) ‘On the Unity of Subjectivity.’ In The Unity of Reason. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Henrich, D. (2008) Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Horstmann, R.-P. (2018) Kant’s power of imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Kant, I. (1996) Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by P. Guyer & A.W. Wood. Cam-
bridge University Press.
Mou, Z. (2003a). Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy [智的直覺與中國哲學],
in Complete Works of Mou Zongsan, vol. 20. Taipei: Linking.
Mou, Z. (2003b). Appearance and Thing-in-Itself [現象與物自身]. In Complete Works
of Mou Zongsan, vol. 21. Taipei: Linking.
Mou, Z. (2003c). Nineteen Lectures of Chinese Philosophy [中國哲學十九講]. In Com-
plete Works of Mou Zongsan, vol. 29. Taipei: Linking.
Nishida, K. (1966) ‘The Intelligible World.’ In: K. Tanabe & J. Heisig (eds.) Philoso-
phers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. University of Hawaii Press,
pp. 69–141.
Nishida, K. (1987) Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. University
of Hawaii Press.
Nishida, K. (1990) An Inquiry into the Good, translated by M. Abe and C. Ives. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Yeung, T.-L. (2020) Einbildungskraft als Orientierungskraft: Neuinterpretation der
phänomenologischen Kant-Deutung Heideggers. Baden-Baden: Academia.
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10
From the Problem of Meaning via Basic
Phenomena to the Question of Philosophy after
Metaphysics: Cassirer, Heidegger, and Nishida
Ingmar Meland
Abstract
Can “Davos 1929” become a symbol of a new “merging of the ways” under the aegis of
this initiative in intercultural philosophy? This might be the essay’s overarching ques-
tion, but the essay mainly illuminates a more specific question: How might one connect
Kant, the Davos debate of 1929 and The Kyoto School so that the project of intercultural
philosophy can be furthered in a philosophically fruitful way? The answer is a com-
plex one, but the essay suggests that by using the protocol of the Davos dispute as an
important heuristic source of orientation in working with the complex of issues called
intercultural philosophy, especially when it comes to dialogues Between Eastern and
Western philosophies, one can open both important educational contexts and unex-
plored realms of research. An educational use of the protocol could serve to pick up
central issues and key texts in European-Western philosophy, from Kant onwards, and
first and foremost one could use it to problematize the concept of philosophy, but the
main thrust of the essays has to do with the significance of the Davos dispute between
Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger for contemporary philosophy. The essay starts
with the assumption that both philosophers take issue with the dualistic and substan-
tialist metaphysics of the Western tradition, each in their own way. Its main argument
is that the basis for a fruitful comparison of Cassirer, Heidegger and Nishida lies at a
fundamental phenomenological level, namely at the level of what Cassirer came to call
basis phenomena, and that it is vital for the project of intercultural philosophy to invite
open-minded investigations into how the exploration of such phenomena can further
the project. The author is of the opinion that this might be one of the ways forward for
the project of intercultural philosophy.
Keywords
Western metaphysics – intercultural philosophy – meaning – reason – freedom – Cas-

sirer – Heidegger – Nishida – Urphänomen – basis phenomena
© Ingmar Meland, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_012 - 978-90-04-68017-3

from the problem of meaning via basic phenomena 281
1 Introduction1
Here is the overarching question that I wish to explore in this essay: How might
one connect Kant, the Davos debate of 1929 and The Kyoto School so that the
project of intercultural philosophy can be furthered in a philosophically fruitful
way? The answer I give, is that this can be done in connection with what Cas-
sirer came to call basis phenomena.
Firstly, in exploring this question, I would like to draw attention to some-
thing Cassirer and Heidegger have in common, namely that they both take
issue with the metaphysics of the Western tradition, each in their own way (2).
Next, I will give a summary of the lectures Cassirer gave at Davos (3) and then
try to substantiate the claim that the explicit doctrine of basic phenomena is
Cassirer’s response to Heidegger’s question concerning the terminus a quo of
his philosophy of culture (4). I go on to argue that the basis for a comparison
of Cassirer, Heidegger and Nishida lies at a fundamental phenomenological
level, namely at the level of basis phenomena (5). This line of reasoning, I
suggest, can be tied to Nishida’s early concept of “pure experience,” but even
more so to what has been called Nishida’s “ontology of production,” i.e., his
view of the interconnection between expressive activity, active intuition and
the human being (6). Finally, in way of conclusion, the essay will try to point
out the significance of this comparison for the project of intercultural philoso-
phy (7).
2 Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: Overcoming Kantian Dualism
The overarching theme of the Davos dispute was the question “What is Man?”
This is the question Immanuel Kant asks in his lectures on logic that sum-
marizes the three foundational questions of philosophy: “What can I know?,”
“What should I do?,” and “What might I be allowed to hope for?”
A point that both Cassirer and Heidegger make in the dispute at Davos, in my
view, is that what Man can know, cannot not be related to what is, and that the
question of being cannot be only about knowledge as scientific knowledge or
episteme. It must also be about being, and the meaning of being, even when nei-
ther the ancient nor the modern metaphysics of the West is tenable anymore.
1 The author would like to thank Professor Steven G. Lofts for his insightful comments on an
earlier version of this essay. I have adopted many of his good suggestions, but the author alone
of course bears full responsibility for the errors and omissions the essay may be burdened
with.
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282 meland
As finite beings, we cannot meet the hitherto demands of Western metaphysics,

which implies the prospect of a final knowledge of what is and—based on this
knowledge—a fulfillment of our perfection as moral beings. Based on our cur-
rent knowledge and insights, we cannot uphold the traditional, western project
of metaphysics. Cassirer and Heidegger agree on this.
However, this insight comes with a price: One must overcome Kant’s thor-
oughgoing dualism. Both Heidegger and Cassirer aim at such an overcoming.
Cassirer wants to overcome it, not just by problematizing our dualistic notion
of pure sensory perception vs. pure cognitive intellect (by way of the concept
of the symbolic), our notion of theory as pure cognitive and contemplative vs.
practice as pragmatic and actionable (by way of the notion of the symbolic func-
tion), and our notion of freedom vs. necessity (freedom as a collective, institu-
tional, and historical project; the philosophy of symbolic forms). Together with
Goethe’s teaching on primordial phenomena (Urphänomene), Kant’s teach-
ing on the productive power of imagination becomes decisive in this project.
Based on the neo-Kantian Marburg School’s interpretation of Kant, Cassirer
continues to work with the metaphysical language handed down to us in the
philosophical tradition, transforming it in accordance with new insights that
his work on central philosophical issues has given him, seeking to understand
the facts of human culture as a system of symbolic forms (Cf. Cassirer, 2008,
pp. 238–244).
Heidegger wants to take a more radical approach, by leaving both modern
science and the language of metaphysics behind, to uncover the phenomeno-
logical basis of our understanding of the meaning of being from the ground
up. The question concerning time is crucial when western metaphysics is at
issue, and Heidegger wants to open the question of being anew by way of a
fundamental ontology, which has as its goal to interpret Dasein as temporality
(Heidegger, 1997, pp. 162–173). To achieve this, Heidegger goes about in a phe-
nomenological manner, with the aim of clarifying the essential structures of
Dasein, of which the Da indicates Dasein’s openness to being, i.e., the primary
phenomenon (Urphänomen) of what he later came to call clearing (Lichtung).
In Heidegger’s radical re-interpretation of Husserl’s notion of intentionality—
the structuring structure of consciousness that extends beyond itself and to-
wards the world—the life of human beings is seen as a self-motivating and
self-transcending movement. The mode of being of this movement, the human
being’s form of life, is called “existence” or “ecstatic temporality” (Cf. Heidegger,
1986, §§45–83).
So far so good, when it comes to the common ground between Cassirer and
Heidegger, but what about the differences between them?
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3 “Davos 1929”—Cassirer’s Lectures at the High Alpine University

Course
Since the Davos meeting is fairly well known and duly dealt with in the intro-
duction to this volume, I will start in medias res and go directly to Cassirer’s
critique of Heidegger, as it was performed at the “high alpine university course”
in Davos in 1929, and I will enter through the four lectures that Cassirer gave in
Davos and then move on to the Ritter/Bollnow-protocol from the public dis-
pute between Cassirer and Heidegger (Heidegger, 1997, pp. 193–207).
3.1 Philosophical Anthropology and Life-Philosophy

The four lectures Cassirer gave in Davos have remained almost unknown to
both scholars and the public.2 They deal with the question of philosophical
anthropology, and in all of them Cassirer tries to clarify the points of connec-
tion and difference between Heidegger’s philosophy in Being and Time and his
own philosophy of symbolic forms. The first three lectures targeted the basic
concepts of space and place (first lecture), language and speech (second lec-
ture) and life as being-towards-death (third lecture), all of which are central
topics in Being and Time.3 The last lecture took “life and spirit” as it subject, a
lecture he also wrote up and published in 1930.4
2 The lectures are published in ecn 17 (Cassirer, 2014, pp. 2–72) under the heading “Hei-
degger-Vorlesung.” The ecn 17 consists of two parts. The second part contains Cassirer’s lec-
tures on Hermann Cohen, and letters from Hermann and Martha Cohen to Ernst and Toni
Cassirer from 1901–1929. The first part, which I will go into, contains Cassirer’s extensive lec-
ture manuscript for the Davos lectures and his notes on Heidegger’s Kant and the problem
of metaphysics, as well as Helene Weiss and Hermann Mörchen’s notes from Cassirer’s lec-
tures at Davos. These notes are added in concordance with the running text of Cassirer’s
“Heidegger-Vorlesung,” with Mörchen’s notes in the left column and Weiss’ in the right. In
his philosophical biography on Cassirer, Ernst Cassirer: Von Marburg nach New York, Heinz
Paetzold gives a short synopsis of the lectures (Paetzold, 1995, pp. 88–91).
3 Cassirer’s lectures notes are based on notes he took for the fourth volume of The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms (Cf. Cassirer, 1995, pp. 200–211), some of which he added as footnotes into
the third volume (Cf. Cassirer 2021, p. 187, note 6 (on space); p. 220, note 3; p. 221, note 10;
p. 225, note 41).
4 First printed in Die Neue Rundschau, 41, 1930, with the title “ ‘Geist’ und ‘Leben’ in der Philoso-
phie der Gegenwart.” It is reprinted in the ecw, Vol. 17, pp. 185–205. A new translation of
this essay into English is added as an appendix in Lofts’ new translation of The Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms (Cassirer, 2021, pp. 561–583). Cassirer had finished the third volume of
his magnum opus in 1927. His plan was to include a final part on trends of contemporary
philosophy, a plan he abandoned because it would burden the book “with discussions that,
in the final analysis, lie outside the ambit prescribed by its substantive [sachlich] problem”
(Cassirer, 2021, p. xxxvi). He also states that “the critical part that should have concluded
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The background for this order of the lectures was that Cassirer had observed
“philosophical anthropology” turn into a type of philosophy “in a new key”—a
form of philosophy in the concrete—which he also connected to what Hein-
rich Rickert had analyzed as a fashionable trend in contemporary philosophy
under the heading “Life-Philosophy” (Rickert, 1922). Cassirer considered that
Heidegger in a sense belonged to this movement in European philosophy, plac-
ing him in a religious linage from Luther, Pascal, and Kierkegaard, treating
him alongside Henri Bergson and other contemporary philosophers that con-
strued an opposition between “life” and “spirit,” such as L. Klages, G. Simmel
and M. Scheler (Cf. Cassirer, 1996, p. 200–211).
To give an impression of how Cassirer deals with the topic “Heidegger,
philosophical anthropology, and Life-Philosophy” in Davos, I will go on in
the next subsection to give a short and, I believe, not too freewheeling para-
phrase of them, with a view to the gist of their content and with support
from the Ritter/Bollnow-protocol and other texts belonging to Cassirer’s Nach-
lass.
3.2 Place/Space – Speech/Logos/Language – Death/Life

By differentiating between “the space of life” (Lebensraum) that we share with
other animals and the “symbolic space” (symbolische Raum) that only humans
have access to, Cassirer makes the point in connection with Jakob von Uexküll
that the space of the human animal is different form the space of other ani-
mals, in that it not only has a “functional circle” [Funktionskreis] consisting in
a “construction plan’” [Bauplan] with a receptor system, a “memory/noticing-
network” [Merknetz] and an effector system, an “activity/handling” network
[Wirknetz]. In addition, the human animal also has what Cassirer in An Essay
on Man calls a “symbolic net” [Symbolnetz], “a symbolic system” of symbolic
forms (Cassirer, 2008, pp. 29–30).
Now, therefore the human being is a being who comes to be conscious of the
limits of his own being, and a specific “symbolic ideation” underpins the human
being’s access to the atmospheric-expressive space of myth, the space of plastic
arts, the significatory-representative space which is dependent upon language,
and the space of pure mathematical significations. This whole constellation
constitutes a “spiritual ‘horizon’, says Cassirer, which gives the human being
an access to “symbolic space” (Cf. Cassirer, 2014, pp. 15–23), which is further
this volume will be reserved for a future publication that I hope soon to bring out under
the title ‘Life’ and ‘Spirit’—Toward a Critique of Contemporary Philosophy” (Cassirer, 2021,
p. xxxvi).
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differentiated into “space of expression” [Ausdrucks-Raum], “space of presen-

tation” [Darstellungs-Raum] and “space of significance” [Bedeutungs-Raum]”
(Cassirer, 2014, p. 25).
The reader should notice that the expression “symbolic ideation”5 is closely
connected to Cassirer’s terminus technicus “symbolic pregnance” (Cassirer,
2021, pp. 226–242), and that his remarks are clearly related to what he sees as
Heidegger’s “sharp analysis” of “those determinations related to the primary
lived experience of space, to purely pragmatic space,” but Cassirer is driving
towards something else: He does not want to stop at this purely pragmatic space
“and its mode of ‘spatiality’.” Without denying Heidegger’s position, Cassirer has
set himself the task of extending his considerations beyond that position. He
wants to follow the path [Weg] that leads from spatiality as an element in the at
hand [Zuhanden] to space as the form of objectively present [Vorhanden] and
furthermore to show how this leads right through to the domain of symbolic
forming [Formung]—in the twofold sense of “presentation” [Darstellung] and
of “signification” [Bedeutung] (Cassirer, 2021, p. 187).
If it can be acknowledged that our relations to being have “always already”
been mediated by symbolic forms, a system of symbolic nets, then language
must be considered as such a symbolic form. Language is definitely something
more than “a merely a social phenomenon which, as such (similar to Berg-
son), carries no genuine intelligent content” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 202) because it
is both an originary phenomeneon (Urphänomen) and “the formative organ of
thought” (W. v. Humboldt). In short, Cassirer makes the following points: (1)
it is through language that an “I” relates to a “you”; (2) a subject is connected
with an object (an “it”) through language in an “objectifying” way, (3) and that
it is hence only through language that the human being acquires the ability to
“determine” things in a definite way, which allows for various kinds of objectiv-
ity. The scientific, theoretical outlook of the exact sciences, which is dependent
on logic, mathematics, and highly specialized symbolic languages, is based on
the function of presentation (Darstellungsfunkion) that language makes possi-
ble, and so this in turn makes possible the function of pure signification (reine
Bedeutung).
Now, even if skeptics such as the Greek rhetorician Gorgias, as well as mystics
of all kinds, scorn language and its ability to adequately grasp reality, they can-
not go behind or beyond language as a condition of symbolic ideation. When
5 Cassirer uses this expression in to designate “an act of original forming [Formung] that applies
to the intuition as a whole and first “makes it possible” as a whole” (Cassirer 2021, pp. 155).
From Cassirer’s notes on symbolic pregnance, it is also clear that the two terms are connected
(Cf. Cassirer, 2011, pp. 49–82).
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Heidegger speaks of language as speech in Being and Time, in its mode of “idle
talk” (Gerede), it seems that “[d]iscourse is not grasped as logos, as embodied
reason; rather it hardens into mere ‘talk about’, into superficial ‘idle talk’ ” (Cas-
sirer, 1996, p. 202). Heidegger seems to be following the mystics in their scorn of
language. Now, Cassirer asks, can language really be seen as a fall from authen-
ticity, as a deficient mode of existence and a “fall from grace,” so to speak? Can
we really draw an essential distinction between real speech and idle talk? And
must we not say that language as a symbolic form—in its propositional, logical
and argumentative aspect, as speech acts, and as idle talk—marks everything
that we associate with intelligence and spirituality in human behavior, human
action, and human culture as a whole?
Death: When it comes to the question of death, Cassirer differentiates be-
tween two different positions one can adopt. On the one hand, there is the
Christian religious conception, which is to be found in Luther’s first sermon
held in Wittenberg in 1522:
Death catches up with all of us and none of us can die for the other, rather,
each one must armor and arm himself personally to fight with the devil
and death on behalf of himself. Well, we can scream our ears off at one
another, comfort the other and admonish him to be patient in strife and
battle, but for him we can neither fight nor strife, because everyone must
take his chance and jump into battle with the enemy, with the devil and
death, and take the fight himself with them all. I will not be there with
you then, nor will you be with me.6
On the other hand, we have the classical “heathen” conception from antiquity,
which is represented by Plato in Phaidon. In Cassirer’s eyes, the Heidegger of
Being and Time emerges more like a Lutheran and less like a student of the clas-
sics. In Cassirer’s view, Heidegger follows the Christian religious line, insofar as
his theme is the ontological meaning of dying for the one dying, as the possi-
bility of his or her being, and not according to the manner of the co-existence
and still-existence of the deceased with those who remain.
6 “Wir sind alle zum Tode gefordert und wird keiner für den anderen sterben, sondern ein
jeglicher in eigener Person nur geharnischt und gerüstet nur für sich selbst mit dem Teufel
und Tode zu kämpfen. In die Ohren können wir wohl einer dem anderen schreien, ihn trösten
und vermahnen zu Geduld zum Streit und Kampf; aber für ihn können wir nicht kämpfen
noch streiten, es muß ein jeglicher allda auf seine Schanze selbst sehen und noch mit den
Feinden, mit dem Teufel und Tode selbst einlegen und allen mit ihnen im Kampfe liegen. Ich
werde dann nicht bei Dir sein noch Du bei mir” (Cassirer, 2014, p. 65, my translation [im]).
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The Christian religious focus on the isolated individual’s fear of death stands
in contrast to the attitude of the ancient philosopher Socrates, who tries to
learn how to die and transcend the finitude of his own existence. It also con-
trasts with that modern philosopher Montaigne, who is not so much concerned
with the Christian view of life as a detour to death and a new beginning in an
afterlife.
For Cassirer, the problem of death is not a question of the fear of death as
such, on the ontic plane, or of coming to terms with the finitude of one’s own
being through the idea of death as an “end” that is integrative of being there
as a temporalizing existence. It is a question of realizing the other side of this
finitude and of overcoming the ontic fear of death. It may be thought of as
an intellectual overcoming (as in Plato) or as an aesthetic overcoming (as in
Schiller), or finally as a religious overcoming (as in Luther). In Cassirer’s view,
it is this overcoming—transcendence—which is characteristic of human exis-
tence: Man is the finite being that knows his finitude, and in and through this
knowledge the human being can overcome its finitude and becomes certain of
a certain infinity.
It is important to bear in mind the inner connection between these lectures:
In close connection with Heidegger’s Being and Time, Cassirer works his way
from the theme of space and place—an enlarged “transcendental aesthetics”
(dealing with symbolic ideation in space and time), and dealing also with the
notion of Da-sein, its Da as a clearing (Lichtung) and its Being-in-the-World
as an engagement with meaning, a kind of Urphänomen—to a conception of
language, which is also a kind of Urphänomen (the logos of thought and rea-
son that establishes dialogue, communication and a public space of arbitration
and judgment) through to the question of “life and death” and the anxiety of
death (the practical meaning of philosophy for the individual, which as well is
a Urphänomen).
Along the way, and in accordance with Heidegger’s notion of being-towards-
death as a kind of limit to Dasein’s temporalizing of the totalizing potentiality
of its own being, his points relate to self-knowledge in a way that stresses the
reflective self and “distantiation” as a means of ontically overcoming the fear
of death (finitude) and as a means of understanding the human being’s tran-
scendence towards the transcendental (the infinite).
3.3 The Connecting Thread: “Life” and “Spirit,” “Spirit” and “Life”
The last of Cassirer’s lectures in Davos dealt with “Spirit and Life in Scheler’s
philosophy,” a lecture that he held after the public debate—but as a part of the
university course—and published a version of in Die Neue Rundschau in 1930.
Based on his own philosophy of culture, he is clearly taking on the problematic
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of “Life-Philosophy” and “philosophical anthropology,” also pertaining to “the

question of method” in relation to these ways of philosophizing in and of “the
concrete.”
The thread that connects these themes of “place/space,” “speech/language,”
“death/life” is what Cassirer associates with spirit (Geist) and spiritual energy
(geistige Energie), the place where thinking and acting coincide in the spon-
taneity of thinking, with the thrust of his argument seeming to be directed at a
performative inconsistency or an ambiguity on Heidegger’s part. For Cassirer,
as for Heidegger, “theory” is not just “aloof” or “abstract” or “objectifying,” for
as already noted it is also quite the opposite: it is concrete and always already
at work whenever we see something and see something as something, which
is always a symbolic seeing through symbolic forms, because the symbolic is
itself a primary or originary phenomenon (Urphänomen).7
Let me bring this short exposition of Cassirer’s lectures in Davos to its con-
clusion. First, it is important to remember that Cassirer lectures and speaks
in Davos within the context of the interconnection between “the problem
of meaning” (under which Cassirer subsumes the problem of knowledge and
truth), “the problem of reason” (reinterpreted as the problem of giving a philo-
sophical critique of culture) and “the problem of metaphysics” (understood as
the problem of the relation between “life” and “spirit”). Second, the direction
that his criticism of Heidegger takes in Davos is wholly determined by this
order of various levels that the question of being can be posed at, a point about
levels which he also makes in the public debate with Heidegger. Third, the
progression of his criticism of Heidegger is reflected in Cassirer’s persistent
division between the symbolic forms of myth, language, and science, which
corresponds to the three symbolic functions of “expression” (Ausdruck), “repre-
sentation” (Darstellung) and “pure significance” (reine Bedutung), all of which
are clearly recognizable in his lecture on space in Davos, particularly in his
7 Cassirer makes a plea for what he calls “a broadened concept of theory,” as noted, and this
concept of theory has “symbolic form” and “symbolic pregnance” as its two central concepts.
In the chapter on symbolic pregnance, the truth a priori is depicted not as a self-constituted
subjectivity of an interior, but as “already out there” in the world. Steve Lofts points out that
“[t]he concept has a particular role in a phenomenology of cognition and addresses another
aspect of the dualism that Cassirer located at the very base of metaphysical thought, which
the theory of the symbolic function was seeking to overcome” (psf, iii, Translators introduc-
tion, p. xxii). From chapter 5 in the third volume of psf, this concept is clearly not only to “be
understood within the context of Cassirer’s Hegelian-styled phenomenology of cognition”
and “his interpretation of the history of thought” (loc.cit.), but also as an alternative to Kant’s
notion of synthesis and Husserl’s concept of intentionality. Rudolf Bernet has thus argued
that Cassirer has developed a “hermeneutic mode of perception” (Bernet 2010, p. 46).
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notion of “symbolic ideation.” Fourth and last, all the phenomena that Cassirer
deals with in his lectures dealing with Heidegger and Scheler at Davos are such
primordial or originary phenomena.
4 “Davos 1929”—The Public Debate
I will pick up my examination of the protocol from the public dispute at the
point where Heidegger continues the explanation of his own thinking for the
audience. His points are directed at Cassirer’s understanding of philosophy,
concerning not only what came to the fore in the public debate but also the
criticism Cassirer had put forth in his lectures.
4.1 Heidegger’s Questions to Cassirer, and Cassirer’s Answers

Denying that his thinking represents any type of philosophical anthropology,
Heidegger continues to explicate his own thinking, claiming that “there is a
problem here of a kind which hitherto has not been brought up as such” (Hei-
degger, 1997, p. 199). This problem, he says, has been determined by a certain
question:
If the possibility of the understanding of Being is itself to be possible, and

with it the possibility of the transcendence of man, and with it the pos-
sibility of the formative comporting towards beings and of the historical
happening in the world history of man, and if this possibility has been
grounded in an understanding of Being, and if this ontological under-
standing has been oriented in some sense with respect to time, then the
task is: To bring out the temporality of Dasein with reference to the pos-
sibility of the understanding of Being. (Heidegger, 1997, p. 199)
This in fact is not one problem, but several problems in one (a mixtum com-
positum) that summarizes Heidegger’s entire project and paves the way for his
main thrust concerning Cassirer’s objections. Even if one gets a certain feeling
of circularity here, what Heidegger’s entire train of thought amounts to finally
becomes clear when he explicitly answers Cassirer’s question—raised earlier in
the public debate—about the inconceivability of freedom. If we, in the Kantian
manner, ask the critical question of its possibility, freedom is inconceivable.
According to Cassirer, one must take notice of the remarkable transition that
takes place with the passage from the epistemological to the ethical in Kant: the
categorical imperative is not something that is valid by chance just for human
beings—it is not conceived by Kant in an anthropocentric way. In principle,
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the law set up in the categorical imperative is valid for all rational entities
[Vernunftwesen] in general, although strictly speaking it is not a question
of knowledge but one of insight. Making freedom conditional on the ethical
demand for universality, the restrictedness to a determinate sphere falls away,
“and in the ethical a point is reached which is no longer relative to the finitude
of the knowing creature” (Heidegger, 1997, pp. 194–195).
But for Heidegger, this argument of Cassirer’s is not valid, because both
knowledge and insights are the result of a more primordial freeing or setting
free of freedom in Dasein:
Cassirer says: We do not grasp freedom, but only the ungraspability of

freedom. Freedom does not allow itself to be grasped. The question:
How is freedom possible? is absurd. From this, however, it does not fol-
low that to a certain extent a problem of the irrational remains here.
Rather, because freedom is not an object of theoretical apprehending
but is instead an object of philosophizing, this can mean nothing other
than the fact that freedom only is and can only be in the setting-free
[Befreiung]. The sole adequate relation to freedom in man is the self-
freeing of freedom in man [das Sich-befreien der Freiheit im Menschen].
(Heidegger, 1997, p. 200)
For Heidegger, “this setting-free of the Dasein in man must be the sole and cen-
tral [thing] which philosophy as philosophizing can perform” and entering this
dimension of philosophizing “is not a matter of learned discussion,” but “is a
task to which the philosopher has submitted himself.” This task, this obliga-
tion to engage in a setting free of the Dasein in man, is not something that the
philosopher knows much about in advance. Because it is the very movement
of his thought, it is also a matter of the individual philosopher’s experience in
and with philosophizing. So, where Cassirer sets up a goal beforehand, a termi-
nus ad quem in the sense of a programmatic philosophy of culture, Heidegger
insists on the radical questioning that the philosopher performs in and through
his thinking. But Cassirer cannot really explain the starting point from which
philosophy philosophizes, a problem which needs to be addressed.
After his presentation of this long—but also quite truncated—train of
thought, Heidegger puts three direct questions to Cassirer. This initiates a new
stage in the dispute, in which the topic of finitude and infinitude becomes the
focal point of the dispute:
1. What path does man have to infinitude? And what is the manner in
which man can participate in infinity?
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2. Is infinitude to be attained as privative determination of finitude, or

is infinitude a region in its own right?
3. To what extent does philosophy have as its task to be allowed to
become free from anxiety? Or does it not have as its task to surren-
der man, even radically, to anxiety? (Heidegger, 1997, p. 200)
Cassirer gives short and pointed answers to these questions.

For man, firstly, the path to infinitude goes through the medium of form,
through symbolic forms. The function of form is to transform living experience
into some objective shape, not necessarily given on beforehand, a transforma-
tion which also changes the form of man’s Dasein. This does not mean that
man becomes radically free from the finitude of his point of departure, from
his finite perspective, but it leads finitude out into something new. Cassirer calls
this “immanent infinitude,” and thereby he emphasizes that man cannot make
the leap into any kind of realistic infinitude.
Second, the finite Dasein, possesses his infinity solely in the region of pure
form: “The spiritual realm is not a metaphysical spiritual realm; the true spir-
itual realm is just the spiritual world that man has created from himself. That
he could create it is the seal of his infinitude” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 201). So, the
path goes through symbolic forms, and that path leads to a participation in
“immanent infinitude.” In short, it is this “transcendence in immanence”—the
transcends toward the transcendental—that creates the spiritual realm which
is also the seal of Dasein. This means that the distinction between finitude and
infinity must be understood within the bounds of human life and experience.
It is a seal of man’s infinitude because it is the product of man as a finite being.
In other words, it is the fulfillment of finitude that constitutes infinitude.
Infinitude is not just a privative or negative determination of finitude, what
finitude is not or is formally defined in opposition to, but it constitutes a strange
sphere which is just the totality of finitude itself, as it goes out in all directions.
As Cassirer points out, “this is the opposite of privation; it is the perfect filling-
out of finitude itself.” He cites Goethe to illustrate his point: “If you want to step
into infinitude, just go in all directions into the finite” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 201).
What lies ahead of us is not some transcendent infinitude, but more of the fill-
ing out of immanent infinitude.
The third question: Should philosophy deliver man to anxiety or should
it free him from it? For Cassirer, this is a radical question that can only be
answered with a type of confession. Cassirer believes that if we can say that
philosophy helps man to become free, “it frees man […] from anxiety as a mere
disposition. I believe, even according to Heidegger’s explanations earlier today,
that freedom can properly be found only along the path of progressive freeing”
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(Heidegger, 1997, p. 201). This process of freeing cannot be a finite process, it

must be an infinite task (“not given, but given as a task,” with the Kantian for-
mula that the Marburg neo-Kantians liked to express themselves), and Cassirer
thinks that Heidegger can agree with this interpretation. At the same time, he
grants “that the most difficult problem is found here,” and then confesses to
the position of idealism with a citation from Schiller: “Throw the anxiety of
the earthly away from yourself!” [Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!] (Hei-
degger, 1997, p. 201).8 In short, as an ongoing historical and cultural process,
freedom can only be found along the path of progressive freeing. When individ-
uals encounter their fears, dread and anxiety, philosophy can teach how to live
with and confront them, so to speak, by appealing to our initiative and capacity
for action.
At this point, the Dutch philosopher and linguist Hendrik J. Pos intervenes
in the dispute and makes what he calls a philological remark, introducing the
topic of language explicitly into the public dispute. Pos says that Cassirer and
Heidegger speak completely different languages and that the audience is faced
with the challenge of identifying what can be thought of as common in these
languages. Alluding to Cassirer’s lecture on space and the centrality of place
and “the there” (Da) of being there (Dasein), Pos urges Heidegger to assess Cas-
sirer’s term “Space for Action” [Aktionsraum], referring to the first of Cassirer’s
public lectures.
For his own part, Pos has gathered different terms from Cassirer’s and Hei-
degger’s vocabularies that he doubts would allow for translation from one
language into the other. He notes “Dasein,” “Being,” and “the ontic” on Hei-
degger’s part, and “the functional in spirit” and “the transformation of original
space into another one” on Cassirer’s part. The translational possibilities then
become a criterion of demarcation or differentiation: “Should it be found that
there is no translation for these terms from both sides, then these would be the
terms with which to differentiate the spirit of Cassirer’s philosophy from Heideg-
ger’s” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 201).
8 My translation, [im]. Taft’s translation totally distorts the meaning of this aphorism when
he renders it “Anxiety throws the earthly away from you!” Cassirer is making a point about
idealism that is the opposite of the point Nietzsche makes, that idealism (= Platonism) turns
the world upside down and makes us long for a world beyond. The point is not that anxi-
ety carries us away from the earthly, but that we should not fear or dread earthly matters.
Personally, I find that Cassirer’s statement has quite an Epicurean ring to it, more so than
Stoic.
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4.2 Heidegger’s Response to the Question of Translatability

Heidegger responds to Pos’ question of translational possibilities by way of
recapitulating his entire train of thought. He starts with a reflection on the
“where from” (terminus a quo) and “where to” (terminus ad quem) of his own
and Cassirer’s philosophy. Heidegger says that for Cassirer, “the terminus ad
quem is the whole of a philosophy of culture in the sense of an elucidation of
the wholeness of the forms of shaping consciousness” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 201).9
According to Heidegger, this is utterly problematic. On his part, Heidegger
develops the problematic of the terminus a quo, the “where from” of philos-
ophy.10
But what is the terminus ad quem for Heidegger? It is the question of “what
in general is called Being?” It is this question that motivates the project of Being
and Time, where it is a matter of winning a foundation for the basic problem
of metaphysics through a fundamental and radical questioning, and through
this questioning the terminus a quo is laid out in its concreteness as Da-sein
(ex-istence), as In-der-Welt-Sein (Being-in-the-World), as Sorge (Care), and as
temporality, but it cannot be set up on beforehand what the terminus ad quem
of this questioning would be, other than that what is formally indicated as an
answer to the question the meaning of being.
But this terminus ad quem, and the project of Being and Time, is at the core of
Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant.11 Once more, emphasizing the meaning of
his interpretation of Kant, Heidegger goes on to discuss the difference between
his and Cassirer’s perspectives. Firstly, Cassirer has not clearly coined the prob-
lematic of the correlation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad
quem in his philosophy. “Is this just a heuristic questioning or does it lie in the
essence of Philosophy that it has a terminus a quo which must be made into a
problem and that it has a terminus ad quem which correlates to the terminus a
quo”? (Heidegger, 1997, p. 202).
9 Heidegger is thinking of “consciousness” in the Husserlian sense, but this is not Cassirer’s
sense. Cassirer thinks in terms of spirit, i.e., subjective and objective spirit in the Hegelian
sense, and uses the term “spiritual energy” (geistige Energie), rather than consciousness, to
express the principle of mental spontaneity and creative activity traditionally associated
with Kant’s notions of consciousness and the subject.
10 These terms relate to the four Aristotelian “causes”—materialis, formalis, efficiens, and
finalis. They stem from scholastic philosophy, and the terminus a quo is related to the causa
materialis, while the terminus ad quem is related to the causa finalis. Hence, it is a question
of philosophy’s “where from” and its “material” but also of philosophy’s outmost “where
to” and “for the sake of which.”
11 Therefore, self-freeing is thought of by Heidegger in its Ich bin aspect, but we must remem-
ber that this is done to shed light on the terminus ad quem of his philosophy, which lies in
the Es gibt aspect and constitutes—as I see it, the “turn” in his thinking.
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Second, having pointed this out, Heidegger goes on to mark the difference
more sharply between his own and Cassirer’s philosophy. Cassirer emphasizes
various shaping forms (language, myth, art, science) and subsequently points
out “a certain dimension of the shaping powers themselves,” which in a sense
is the terminus a quo of his philosophy of culture. Thus, this dimension of the
shaping powers could be understood as basically being the same as that which
Heidegger calls Dasein, but that would be a mistaken understanding, and the
difference becomes obvious in the interpretation of freedom: Where Cassirer
speaks of freeing as “becoming free to a certain extent for the forming images of
consciousness and for the realm of form,” Heidegger speaks of “a freeing in the
sense that the freeing of the inner transcendence of Dasein is the fundamental
character of philosophizing itself” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 203).
Hence, Cassirer speaks about becoming free to think and act through sym-
bolic forms, while Heidegger is talking about freeing oneself from the inau-
thentic (Uneigentlich) aspects of our everyday existence to gain access to an
original and authentic (Eigentlich) freeing. The authentic sense of freeing in
this sense “is to be found in becoming free for the finitude of Dasein.” This free-
ing is the task of philosophy. To become free for the finitude of Dasein is to
rid oneself of all illusions of eternity, which means that freedom belongs to
Dasein as a finite possibility and that “Dasein is the authentic basic occurrence
in which the existing of man, and with it every problematic of existence itself,
becomes essential” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 203). In short, this is Heidegger’s artic-
ulation of the Kantian view that philosophy cannot really be learned, and that
metaphysics belong to the nature of man.
Based on this reasoning, and relating it to the essence of philosophizing and
the difference between Cassirer’s perspective and his own, Heidegger answers
Pos’ question concerning the translatability:
I believe that what I describe by Dasein does not allow translation into
a concept of Cassirer’s. Should one say consciousness, that is precisely
what I rejected. What I call Dasein is essentially codetermined [mit-
bestimmt]—not just through what we describe as spirit [Geist], and not
just through what we call living [Leben]. (Heidegger, 1997, p. 203)
Heidegger rejects the traditional metaphysical names for the shaping forces
of existence, especially consciousness, but also to a certain degree “life” and
“spirit,” and instead emphasizes the dependence of Dasein on “the original
unity and the immanent structure of the relatedness of a human being” to its
body. Dasein finds itself thrown into the midst of this dependency and code-
termined by Being, and finds that it is free, always spiritual and radically acci-
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dental: “[It is] so accidental that the highest form of the existence of Dasein
is only allowed to lead back to very few and rare glimpses of Dasein’s duration
between living and death” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 203).
Furthermore, Heidegger argues that he has made thematic and problem-
atic what is presupposed in the philosophy of symbolic forms, namely that the
originary finite temporality of Dasein is the authentic terminus a quo of this phi-
losophy. The metaphysic of Dasein determines the question concerning what
type of being this being is. It does not determine it in terms of something that
is given beforehand such as “the intention of a previously given systematic of
the cultural jurisdiction and of the philosophical disciplines,” but from out of
“the central question concerning the inner constitution of Being.” From this
clarification of the question concerning the meaning of Being, Heidegger then
intends to ask the proper question of Being. This can only be done if one leaves
the traditional shape and form of the philosophical disciplines undecided and
does not mindlessly differentiate between epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and
metaphysics.
So, if the three basic Kantian questions lead back to a fourth, “What is man?,”
then this fourth question leads Heidegger further back and into the more orig-
inary question: “What is philosophy?” Heidegger has no interest in leveling
the discussion, just to come to an agreement. Rather, he wants the difference
between his own and Cassirer’s thinking to be made clear, as clear as possible.
Hence, it is a matter of once more fixing the question of what man is as the cen-
tral question that Kant poses in his Critique of Pure Reason, and that this ques-
tion “is only essential for the philosophers in the way in which the philosopher
simply disregards himself, so that the question may not be posed anthropocen-
trically” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 204). There is no use in studying human beings
empirically or in projecting a philosophical anthropology based on the sci-
ences, because the real question concerns the essence of human beings. And
this question of essence “only makes sense and is only justifiable as far as it
derives its motivation from philosophy’s central problematic itself,” which is to
clarify the meaning of Being (Heidegger, 1997, p. 204,). The central problem-
atic of philosophy—freedom—leads man into the totality of beings and not
primarily into a totality of forms.
With this move, Heidegger also makes explicit the meaning of nothingness in
his philosophy, which is only indirectly dealt with in Being and Time. Nothing-
ness indicates contingency and radical freedom, and so the central problematic
of philosophy
leads man back beyond himself and into the totality of beings in order
to make manifest to him there, with all his freedom, the nothingness
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[Nichtigkeit] of his Dasein. This nothingness is not the occasion for pes-
simism and melancholy. Instead, it is the occasion for understanding
that authentic activity takes place only where there is opposition [daß
eigentliches Wirken nur da ist, wo Wiederstand ist] and that philosophy
has the task of throwing man back, so to speak, from the shallow aspect
of a man who merely uses the work of spirit into the hardness of his fate
[die Härte seines Schiksals]. (Heidegger, 1997, p. 204)
To meet up with nothingness is to meet up with freedom, radical freedom,

and only through surrendering man radically to anxiety can this freedom be
made manifest as to what it truly is, namely a nothingness in the midst of
Dasein. Philosophy should not soothe people or shelter them from this noth-
ingness because philosophy would then partake in the covering up of freedom,
which robs people of the possibility to discover freedom for themselves, which
is contrary to the essence of philosophy. Rather, philosophy must throw man
back into the hardness of his fate, which is to be and become free for the
finitude of Dasein, and to stop covering up this fate with the dullness of “cul-
ture.”
4.3 Cassirer’s Response to the Question of Translatability

Retrospectively, it is almost impossible not to think of Cassirer—the cultured,
aloof, and conciliatory Bildungsbürger—when reading Heidegger’s remark
about “the shallow aspect of a man who merely uses the work of the spirit,” but
Cassirer seems unaffected by this ambiguous and somewhat spiteful remark.
He goes on to state his points in a lucid, pointed manner. Cassirer is not accus-
ing Heidegger of any leveling of the differences between them. Neither is he
interested in any such leveling nor is he trying to break Heidegger from his posi-
tion. But there is a demand inherent in philosophical discourse that anyone
participating in it “would see not only himself, but the other as well. That this
must be possible appears to me to lie in the idea of philosophical knowledge
[philosophischen Erkenntnis] in general” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 204). Applying this
demand reflexively, Cassirer then states that he only wants to make Heidegger’s
position understandable to himself.
He finds that the disagreements and where they lie have become very clear,
but that it is not fruitful to repeatedly highlight these disagreements. Merely
logical arguments are of no help in bringing the opponents closer because “no
such purely logical compulsion can force someone to begin with the position
which appears to me to be the essential one.” Cassirer cites Fichte—“What one
chooses for a philosophy depends upon what sort of human being one is”—to
illustrate the manner in which Heidegger’s line of thought threatens to con-
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demn them to a kind of relativity “which would be central for empirical men”
but is untenable for philosophers (Heidegger, 1997, p. 205).
Cassirer then goes on to turn Heidegger’s implicit charge about anthro-
pocentrism on his part against Heidegger himself: If Heidegger means what he
has said about the centrality of Kant’s fourth question (What is man?), about
posing it in a non-anthropocentric way and about philosophy’s central prob-
lematic, then Heidegger’s position cannot be anthropocentric. Furthermore, if
Heidegger’s position cannot be anthropocentric, “and if it does not want to be
such, then I ask where the common core of our disagreement lies. That it can-
not be empirical is clear. We must search again for a common center, precisely
in the disagreement” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 205). If authentic activity takes place
only where there is opposition, as Heidegger said, what makes this opposition
and the disagreements that follow from it possible?
No searching is needed to find this center, says Cassirer, because it is there
even as they speak: It is to be found in “the primal phenomenon of language”
[dem Urphänomen der Sprache] (Heidegger, 1997, p. 205). It is so obvious that
it is easy to forget: “we understand ourselves through the medium of lan-
guage.” The common core of their disagreement lies in language, which—as
Pos pointed out—is the medium of their disagreement. And language is but
the clearest example of the type of objectivity that we reside in us as human
beings, due to the symbolic net of symbolic forms. Language is a “common
ground” and the condition for the possibility of philosophical communication
and translatability, for Auseinandersetzung as well as an eventual consensus or
disagreement.
The assemblage of symbolic forms together forms what Cassirer calls, with
Hegel, “the world of the objective spirit” [die Welt des objektiven Geistes]:
From Dasein is spun the thread which, through the medium of such an
objective spirit, again ties us together with another Dasein. And I believe
there is no other way from Dasein to Dasein than through this world
of forms. There is this factum. Should this not be so, then I would not
know how there could be something like self-understanding. Knowing
[das Erkennen] is also just a basic instance of this assertion: that an objec-
tive statement can be formulated about a matter and that it has the char-
acter of necessity which no longer takes notice of the subjectivity of the
individual. (Heidegger, 1997, p. 205)
Even if Dasein should—in some sense—be the terminus a quo of both Hei-
degger and Cassirer, and even if this terminus a quo is not sufficiently thought
out by Cassirer, how can one even begin to have any type of opinion about the
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meaning of being without language? As Heidegger himself has shown, there is

a creative force at work in the world, which from a contingent point of depar-
ture (Dasein) produces objective statements about “this or that,” statements
that have the character of necessity which no longer take notice of the subjec-
tivity of the individual. There is no need for any metaphysical theory about any
substantial “subject” that stands behind or constitutes these forms.
Cassirer is of course aware of Heidegger’s questioning of Western meta-
physics; that it goes back to Plato and Aristotle, that it concerns the question
ti to on (what is it that is?) and that Kant has asked this question in a new way,
although Kant’s “Copernican revolution” has not made the question of being
go away. That would be a gravely misconceived interpretation of Kant’s oeuvre.
Therefore, it is also legitimate that Heidegger should try to interpret Kant in
a radically new way, and Cassirer concedes this without further ado. Still, he
cannot really make Heidegger’s position understandable to himself because it
seems to be running into contradictions.
For Cassirer, there is an essential difference between antiquity and moder-
nity concerning this question of being, “with respect to what Kant called the
Copernican Turn [sic.]” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 205). Not that the question of being
has been done away with by this “turn,” not at all, but it has been transformed
so that “a completely new multiplicity enters into the problem of the object in
general” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 206). With the Copernican revolution, there is no
longer one single structure of being, but different ones, with different a priori
presuppositions. Thus, for instance, the aesthetic object is not simply bound to
the empirical object. The aesthetic object can be shown to have its own a priori
categories and to obey laws that are different from the laws of the physical, as
Kant has shown in the first part of the third critique. Put another way: Is it not
these “categories” that we must lay bare if we are to understand art, not just as
a form of consciousness that shapes itself, but also in its metaphysical meaning
“within the basic occurrence of Dasein itself”? (Cf. Heidegger, 1997, p. 204).
From this point about the Copernican revolution and its methodological
bearing, Cassirer moves on to make a point as to the significance of this rev-
olution for his own way of thinking: “Being in the new metaphysics is, in my
language, no longer the Being of a substance, but rather the Being which starts
from a variety of functional determinations and meanings” (Heidegger, 1997,
p. 206). In Cassirer’s view, this is the essential point that distinguishes his posi-
tion from that of Heidegger’s, suggesting that there might be a residue of sub-
stantialist philosophy present in his thinking. What follows next, is Cassirer’s
explicit answer to “the question of method” that Heidegger brought up earlier
in relation to how a metaphysics of Dasein must be put forth (Cf. Heidegger,
1997, p. 200; p. 206). Once again, in solidarity with his teacher Hermann Cohen
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but with a marking of the difference between Cohen’s and his own understand-
ing of the transcendental method, he states the following:
I stand by the Kantian posing of the question of the transcendental and

the way in which Cohen repeatedly formulated it. He saw the essence of
the Transcendental Method in that this method begins with a factum;
but he further narrowed down this general definition—to begin with a
factum in order to ask about the possibility of this factum—in that he
constantly made the mathematical natural science out to be what is prop-
erly to be put into question. Kant does not stand within this downscaling.
But I ask about the possibility of the fact of language. How does it come
about, how is this thinkable that we are able to come to an understanding
from Dasein to Dasein in this medium? (Heidegger, 1997, p. 206)12
Four points can be extracted from this quotation. First, the transcendental
method—even in its neo-Kantian reformulation can mutatis mutandis be used
in analyzing any symbolic form whatsoever, which is exactly what Cassirer
has done in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Secondly, any fact whatsoever is
stated through the medium of language, so it becomes a task of utmost impor-
tance to ask about the condition for the possibility of language as such, even
if this is not a question that Kant himself asks. Thirdly, we need to differen-
tiate between “the language of myth” and “the language of math,” so to speak,
because language is differentiated and specialized in relation to certain regions
of being and different symbolic forms. Fourthly, it is pointless to bracket the tra-
ditional shape and division of the philosophical disciplines, to get back into the
inner, authentic problematic of philosophy, because any problematic of philos-
ophy is always already articulated in this or that (specialized) language.
What we can do, according to Cassirer, is to apply the transcendental ques-
tion to language, and to philosophy itself, and see where that brings us. In
Cassirer’s eyes, that is what Heidegger has done in Being and Time. This ques-
tioning of Heidegger has brought to the fore certain metaphysical assumptions
and presuppositions that are implicit in philosophical discourse, though the
meaning and purpose of this procedure is unclear in Heidegger, even when
he lays out the transcendental logic of his hermeneutical-phenomenological
modus operandi. Therefore, the question of the meaning of this way of asking
questions in a transcendental way must be asked:
12 I have modified Taft’s translation because it obscures the fact that Cassirer is contrasting
his own way of asking questions with Cohen’s way, giving Heidegger his due on his point
about the Neo-Kantian narrowing down of Kant’s “transcendental method.”
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This question must be settled. Perhaps from it not all questions of philoso-
phy are to be solved. Perhaps from it there are vast areas that one cannot
reach. But it is necessary to pose this question in the first place. And I
believe that only then, when one has posed this question, is one free to
make access to Heidegger’s question. (Heidegger, 1997, p. 206)13
I consider this a last effort on Cassirer’s part to bring Heidegger to acknowl-

edge the common ground of their respective undertakings, which is language
as a symbolic form and a certain way of asking philosophical questions. He
is appealing to Heidegger on behalf of the transcendental method, which he
deems necessary if we are to get access to Heidegger’s question. And must
Heidegger not ask himself about the objectivity of his own language? Could
Heidegger even begin to ask his question without the language of philosophy?
In fact, Cassirer is in a way returning to his first point in the dispute in which
he puts it to Heidegger that he might be a neo-Kantian as good as any: Neo-
Kantianism “is a matter of a direction taken in question-posing. As I had not
expected to find it in him, I must confess that I have found a neo-Kantian in
Heidegger” (Heidegger, 1997, p. 193). Of course, Cassirer is perfectly aware of
the fact that Heidegger’s phenomenological procedures are not the same as his
own, but he is putting it to Heidegger that he might want to reconsider the pre-
suppositions of his way of proceeding with philosophical questions.
Heidegger clearly took Cassirer’s critical points with him in his thinking
“after Davos,” especially Cassirer’s main points about language and him being
a transcendental philosopher as good as any, and he developed these points in
his own way, after his so-called “turn,” but how did Cassirer respond to Heideg-
ger’s critique? My contention is that the articulated doctrine of basic phenom-
ena is the answer to Heidegger’s question to Cassirer about the terminus a quo
of his philosophy of culture. In short, it is a qualified guess at a riddle: Why did
Cassirer develop his somewhat vague Goethean notion of “primordial/originary
phenomena” (Urphänomene) into an explicit doctrine of basis phenomena?
13 Taft renders “von hier aus” as “from here on” in the sense of “from now on,” although
that distorts the meaning of what Cassirer is saying. I take “von hier aus” to mean “from
out of this question,” i.e., the question of the fruitfulness of asking questions—mutatis
mutandis—the Kantian way. Cassirer is not primarily saying that from here on = “from
now on” philosophy must settle for less than Being, even if that is one aspect of what he is
saying. He is making his point clear: There is a question that must be settled, which is the
question of how to ask questions. Maybe we cannot solve all of philosophy’s problems by
using the transcendental method, and maybe vast areas must remain inaccessible to us if
we continue asking questions in “the transcendental way,” but we must ask the question
about this way of asking questions.
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5 Cassirer’s Answer to Heidegger: From Originary Phenomena to

Basis Phenomena
The purpose of this part and the next one is to make plausible the argument
that a basis for a comparison of Cassirer’s, Heidegger’s, and Nishida’s philoso-
phies is to be found at a fundamental phenomenological level, the level of basis
phenomena.
So fare, we have seen Cassirer underscoring language as an originary phe-
nomenon (Urphänomen), and Heidegger too utilizes this Goethean notion,
when he indicates what he means by “the clearing” (Lichtung), “the free open-
ness” in which “pure space and ecstatic time and everything that is present
and absent in them first have the sheltering place that gathers everything” (Cf.
Heidegger, 2007, p. 81), which is in Being and Time intimately connected to Hei-
degger’s the Aristotelian logos as speech or Rede (Cf. Heidegger, 1986, p. 133ff.).
I will proceed by giving a plausible answer as to why Cassirer found it nec-
essary to formulate an explicit “doctrine” about primordial phenomena called
basis phenomena. I want to qualify my guess by presenting the gist of my read-
ing of Cassirer’s doctrine, and from this presentation I want in section six to
appeal to Nishida’s arguments about the status of “human being” (ningenteki
sonzai) in his remarkable essay from 1938.
5.1 On the Question of Anthropocentrism

I have argued that, even if it is a humanist philosophy, Cassirer’s philosophy
of symbolic forms is not anthropocentric. Rather, it might be called “anthropo-
eccentric.”
Philosophical anthropology has taught us that the human being is eccentric
(Plessner), and so the task is to understand what sets in the human being apart
from other living beings. This might be the reason why Cassirer decided for the
term animal symbolicum rather than homo symbolicum. The genus proximum
part of the definition thus puts the human being at par with all other animals,
while the symbolic realm is the diffentica specifica that sets the human being
apart and makes it “eccentric.”
Now, even if this “definition” is modeled on an Aristotelian “substantial def-
inition,” Cassirer’s definition is functional: What we call “the human being”
is a function of symbolic forms, and symbolic forms have emerged in nature
through what we call history. This is not to say that Cassirer lapses into nat-
uralism or that he builds his philosophy on intuitions, which are abstracted
into principles and articulated in substantial definitions à la Aristotle. It is to
say that Cassirer, in contrast to Heidegger, utilizes the traditional language of
metaphysics for communicative purposes.
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Whether Heidegger was eager to win the debate in Davos or not, he seems to
be doing what he can to deny that he and Cassirer are in fact making a common
front against the naturalism and scientism that prevailed in their time, and this
denial seems to be part of his unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious points
that Cassirer makes in order to establish a common ground between them.
And, notwithstanding this psychological explanation of Heidegger’s comport-
ment in Davos, one might argue in line with Cassirer that there is a tendency
towards Fichtean decisionism in Being and Time, one which is both covertly
anthropocentric and overtly voluntaristic.
So, to state my point, I must first underscore the fact that the question “What
is Man?,” integrative to the three foundational questions of philosophy—i.e.
“What can I know?,” “What should I do?,” and “What might I be allowed to
hope for?”—is motivated by the question “What is Philosophy?” Furthermore,
the wider or even universal horizon for this question, something Kant is very
clear about in his lectures on logic, is the question “What can Man, in the
capacity of being Man, know at all?” It is at this level that both Cassirer and
Heidegger ask the question “What is Man?,” and so the anthropological ques-
tion becomes a meta-philosophical question, a non-anthropocentric question
about the meaning of philosophical questioning. From the preceding analysis,
I think it plausible to make this claim.
5.2 The Basis Phenomena: I, Action, Work

The three basic phenomena might be articulated in a language that connotes
the old faculty psychology of Tetens and Kant, and Dilthey’s Hegelian adap-
tion of it as the feeling-willing-thinking human being. In fact, Cassirer does
this, and he also connects them to the nature of pronouns, von Humboldt’s
linguistic triad of “I,” “You,” and “It,” but his “metaphysical” conception of the
basis phenomena is much closer to Peirce’s doctrine of firstness, secondness,
and thirdness, i.e., his basic phenomenology/phaneroscophy that starts with
his essay on “a new list of categories.”14
This language is of course entangled in the history of metaphysics, but there
is no escape form this language, so Cassirer tries instead to relate different
metaphysical languages to each other, instead of endeavoring to invent a whole
new vocabulary. He starts out with
Goethe’s Maxims 391–393, from Maximen und Reflexionen:
14 See Peirce, 1991, pp. 23–33; 180–185; 186–202. John M. Krois (to my knowledge) was the
first Cassirer-scholar to point out and elaborate on this connection in a convincing way
(Cf. Krois, 2004).
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391. The highest gift we have received from God and nature is life, the
rotating movement of the monad about itself, knowing neither
pause nor rest. The impulse to nurture this life is ineradicably im-
planted in each individual, although its specific nature remains a
mystery to ourselves and to others.
392. The second benefit from active higher beings is the experienced,
our becoming truly aware of the living monad’s intervention into
the surroundings of the outer world. Through this, it becomes truly
aware of itself as an internal lack of limits, and as externally limited.
Although it requires a predisposition, attention, and luck, we can
become clear ourselves about what we experience; but to others, it
remains a mystery.
393. As the third there now arises what we direct toward the outer world
as actions and deeds, as speech and writing; these belong to it more
than to ourselves; this is why the outer world can more readily attain
an understanding about it than we ourselves are able to. However,
in the outer world one senses that in order to really be clear about
this, it is necessary to learn as much as possible about what we have
experienced. This is why people are so greatly interested in youthful
beginning, sages of education, biographical details, anecdotes, and
the like. (Goethe cited in Cassirer, 1996, pp. 127–128)
In these three maxims, Cassirer sees not only a poet’s expression of poietic
activity but an “attempt to reconstruct life according to the character of its
being and the way in which we ourselves and others can come to know of
it according to the kind of knowledge that we can have of it” (Cassirer, 1996,
p. 128). If in human life the question of being and the question of knowing
belong together inherently, it is because “human life is conscious of itself. It
does not simply exist; rather it ‘knows itself’ and this ‘knowing of itself’ is con-
stitutive for it, defines its specific difference” (Cassirer 1996, p. 128). In short,
the three maxims identify three distinct levels of life, according to Cassirer’s
interpretation.
First, life is given to us as a monadic form of being that shows up in us “as a
process, as movement—the ‘stream of consciousness’ which constantly flows
and knows neither rest nor quiet.” Cassirer takes this as a primary phenomenon,
an Urphaenomen in Goethe’s sense, that it is no use in trying to explain in
the usual sense of the word, i.e., to reduce it to something more basic or to
trace it back to its cause or ground. Every such explanation presupposes this
very phenomenon which it tries to explain, and we must simply acknowledge
that it shows up in us as being there: “Must I not also simply accept (admit)
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myself insofar as the monas remains unknown, but not a ‘mysterium’. It is,
rather, unknown and revealed to all, the primary revelation itself” (Cassirer,
1996, p. 128).
Second, this monadic form of being in flux does not stay indoors in a room
without windows because it is also a “‘becoming aware’ in the sense of doing—
both action and reaction. […]. It comes forth ‘to the outside’ and testifies to
its own existence by being effective and reactive” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 128). The
monas meets up with the outer world, through influencing on it and being
influenced by it. This is not simply the monas in its always either active or
passive aspect, respectively, but a result of an activity that is neither “active”
(acting) nor “passive” (receiving). It is rather an aspect of the monas’ movement
as such: “It is only through this form of activity that we find the monas in a new
sense: as something internally unbounded, as externally bounded” (Cassirer,
1996, p. 128).
This, for Cassirer, is the true meaning of the spontaneity of thinking: it always
already comes forth to the outside, and it is also only through this coming forth
to the outside that we can talk about any kind of moral striving: The “centripetal
(ego-centric) movement” of the monas around itself is given up on, as it “turns
to the outside, to others; it gives itself over to the ‘world’” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 128).
This world is not primarily the world of things but the world of others. The
centripetal movement of the monas is counterbalanced, so to speak, by a cen-
trifugal movement that slings the I outside of itself. “Insufficiently expressed,”
this signifies “that the monas, the ‘I’, as an ‘individual’ turns toward the ‘social’
world” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 129). In this way, with this turn towards sociality, the
primary phenomenon of the I “comes together with the primary phenomenon
of love. And from love follows the act” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 129).
This condensed reasoning follows from Cassirer’s interpretation of Goe-
the’s maxims 391–393, and from connecting these with maxim no. 442, verses
from Wanderlied, from Urworte. Orphisch (Primal words—Orphic, the verse
“Tyche—Chance”), from the play Torquato Tasso, and Fichte’s Sittenlehre. In
Cassirer’s interpretation, with what is insufficiently expressed as the monas’
turn, not about itself but toward the social world, we here stand over against
what he deems to be “the ethical primary phenomenon,” in which “the “I” rec-
ognizes others “next” to it, “outside” itself, not extra but rather praeter nos and
enters into an active relationship toward them”:15
15 Cassirer’s note and editor’s note no. 8: “Cf., again Fichte, Sittenlehre.—Probably a refer-
ence to the discussion of the “Freedom of the other” in Fichte’s “System der Sittenlehre
nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, pp. 221 f.—Eds.”
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In its regard for others, mankind observes the first clarification about
itself. It can never, according to Goethe’s basic conviction, attain a view
of itself by means of mere self-study: by introspection never, but through
action. Try to do your duty, and you know your mettle straightaway.
Mankind can only recognize itself in others. By introspection, no man can
discover his inmost heart (Tasso). (Cassirer, 1996, p. 129)
The ethical primary phenomenon is not the social phenomenon per se but
rather what makes the monas aware of another per se, so that it becomes aware
of itself from the outside, from those others who are beside it, and takes notice,
further, of the others besides us (praeter nos). The monas’ movement outwards
meets up with the primary phenomenon of the love of others (our parents and
our kin), which leads up to the recognition of others besides “us” (or “neigh-
bor(s)” and, by extension, humanity and “the whole world”).16 The basis for the
experience of this ethical primary phenomenon is the perception of expres-
sions, not the perception of things, because it is a necessary basis for the ethical
concept of “personality.”
At the third level it is not a question about how the “I” comes to know of
others but of how others come to know of us. Does the other not meet up with
us in the same ways as we meet up with the other? Yes, but the other cannot
know me as an “I,” and vice versa. I can only see and notice the signs of an “I,”
another “I” besides itself. As the monas comes forth to the outside and meets
up with the other it cannot but become an expression of itself, so that the “I”
who meets up with another “I” becomes a sign of the “I” for the other. Therefore,
says Cassirer, others do not come to know us “through ourselves, not by means
of how we live or the way we are, but only through objectification, through the
“works” that we create. Others can know us only in our work, as what we do
and make, as what we say and write, as πραξισ [praxis] and ποιησις [poiesis]”
(Cassirer, 1996, p. 130).
In this way, what for me is the I, is an activity that becomes for the other a sign
of a doing or a making (in the present), a sign for something done or made (in
the past), or for something to be done or made (in the future). The signs that we
give away in this manner, escape us and open up the sphere of what Cassirer
calls the Phenomenon of Work [Werk-Phänomen]: “here a strange turnabout
[takes place]. These works no longer belong to us; they mark the first level of
‘alienation’. They stand in an order of their own, which follows objective stan-
dards. The ‘I’ can no longer find itself again. It feels hemmed in.” (Cassirer, 1996,
p. 130).
16 A Husserlian approach to this problematic can be found in Held (1991).
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As suffering and acting beings, we experience the imposition of restraints

upon our lives, restraints that comes from “inside” us as well as from the “out-
side,” and “lose” ourselves in the process of expressing ourselves. As “works”
in this sense, as voluntarily and involuntarily signs of a life that loses itself as
it expresses itself, these expressions come to belong more to the outer world
than to us. And implicitly Cassirer makes the distinction between a first level
of, which I experience when the other does not understand what I mean, and
the order of works proper that are produced in accordance with some sort of
“standard of excellence.” Not only do these works belong more to the world
than to us, but they are also no longer recognizable in full measure. For the
being of the works outlives that of their creator. We must of course make a
distinction between the signs that we give in day-to-day interaction with oth-
ers and what can more properly be called “work,” because we must distinguish
between what Max Weber calls “meaningfully oriented behavior” in praxis and
the products of poietic activity, but Cassirer’s point is in principle applicable
to all kinds of signs in which psychic life expresses itself (Dilthey’s Leben-
säusserungen).
From this initial interpretation of Goethe’s maxims, Cassirer then goes on
to explicate different aspects of the three basis phenomena. He starts out with
the turn towards the primary phenomena (Urphänomene) as a reflective turn
in the history of thinking, then he provides a systematic overview of the basis
phenomena as something prior to all thought and inference, before he system-
atically relates them to basic psychological categories, to metaphysics and to
epistemology. To give an impression of the complexity of Cassirer’s doctrine of
basis phenomena, I have made this schematic overview:17
Basis phenomena The I-phenomenon The phenomenon The phenomenon of work

of activity-action
In relation to personal I You It

pronouns:
In relation to basic psy- Feeling Willing Thinking
chological categories:
In relation to social The Self The Other The World
categories:
17 This schema is taken over and slightly modified from my essay “The Doctrine of Basis
Phenomena. A Phenomenological Foundation for The Philosophy of Symbolic forms?”
(Meland, 2013, p. 57).
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(cont.)
Basis phenomena The I-phenomenon The phenomenon The phenomenon of work

of activity-action
In relation to types of Varieties of mys- Two versions (1) the The problem of culture and history
metaphysics: ticism and the metaphysics of the in varieties of the metaphysics of
metaphysics of life. will as blind drive work: (1) the metaphysics of roman-
(Schopenhauer) and ticism, (2) Hegel’s metaphysics, (3)
(2) the metaphysics of Dilthey’s philosophy of history and
ethics (Fichte). lived experience, (4) Cassirer’s own
metaphysics of symbolic forms.
In relation to epis- Theoria: Praxis: Poiesis:
temology or “the the I-basis in rela- the You-basis in rela- the It-basis in relation to “contem-
hermeneutics of tion to intuition as a tion to action as a plation” as a form of knowledge
knowledge”: form of knowledge form of knowledge (Socrates, Kant, Cassirer)
(Descartes, Husserl, (Fichte, James, Dewey,
Bergson). Russel, Heidegger)
In relation to “Ziele und “Die mathema- „Die Invarianten der „Kulturwissenschaften und Geis-
Wege der Wirklichkeit- tische Synthesis” Wahrnehmung und teswissenschaften” [Cassirer, 1999,
serkenntnis”: [Cassirer, [Cassirer, 1999, des Begriffs” [Cassirer, pp. 133–175]
1999, pp. 3–31] pp. 33.81] 1999, pp. 82–133]
To my mind, there is not much doubt that the basis phenomena is Cassirer’s bid
for what is a common terminus a quo for himself and Heidegger, notwithstand-
ing their very different visions about philosophy’s terminus ad quem. What
about Nishida?
6 Nishida and the Davos Dispute
Steven G. Lofts has argued “that the common philosophical aim of Cassirer’s
and Nishida’s projects is to overcome the entrenched dualism of the Western
metaphysical tradition, and that this was to be achieved through a paradoxical
synthesis of the two antithetical philosophical perspectives of transcendental
philosophy and Lebensphilosophie” (Lofts, 2020, p. 98).
I largely share this point of view, and we could add the early Heidegger in
this picture, but I would like to argue here that it is less a matter of a paradox-
ical synthesis between transcendental philosophy and Life-Philosophy, which
is more of a “textbook contradiction,” and that it is more a matter of articulat-
ing a fundamental phenomenology, philosophically speaking. In that regard, I
also consider Nishida as a philosopher doing phenomenology.
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6.1 Pure Experience and the Monad

I believe the concept of “pure experience,” which Nishida developed in order
to conceptualize the non-dualistic nature of reality, is his starting point on this
path toward a fundamental phenomenology, and it is also closely connected to
his later adaption of Leibniz concept of the “monad.”
If we can speak of an “ontology of the self” in Nishida, it is this constantly
fluctuating monad that certify us in so doing, and it is the monad’s interaction
with the world that explains the character of “pure experience”: It results from
the meeting that occurs at the intersection between self—a feeling-willing-
thinking-intuiting self—and world (Cf. Nishida, 1990, pp. 3–34)
This also means that the body becomes a central theme in Nishida’s think-
ing. Although not a prominent theme in An Inquiry into the Good, largely due
to the book’s psychologically marked language, the bodily side of experience
is already very much present in this work. And later the theme becomes more
prominent in his writings (Cf. Krueger, 2008).
Furthermore, if one reads Nishida’s three essays “Expressive Activity” (1925),
“The Standpoint of Active Intuition” (1935), and “Human being” (1938) together
(Nishida, 2012), bearing in mind “Davos 1929,” the public lectures delivered by
Cassirer and Heidegger and the public dispute between them, one is struck by
the fact that there are many points of connection with what was debated there.
6.2 Poiesis and the Historical World

Nishida’s essay engages with dialectical logic, especially with Marx’s version of
it, even if the name Marx does not figure in the text. The essay it clearly cen-
tered on the notion that “man produces universally” and that this is a kind
of metabolic relation between man and nature, unfolding in a historical pro-
cess:
The World of historical actuality must be thought form the fact of produc-
tion. And that is a standpoint one can reach neither from the standpoint
of the cognition of objects nor from the standpoint of introspective con-
templation. Therefore, a person is frequently thought to be uncreated,
unmediated—a miracle. But even the activity of the intellect must, as
intentional action in the historical world, be mediated by the historical
world. (Nishida, 2012, p. 145)
If we can say that Marx found the roots of human potentials in history, and
that in this he also anticipated central themes in 20th century phenomenol-
ogy, themes that we associate with the notion of the Life-World, perhaps we can
also say that Nishida here underscored the importance of seeing the Life-World
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not as an objective dimension separated from the self, but as the historical-
experiential genesis of all horizons?
6.3 The Transcendental, Objective Spirit, and Productive Imagination

The concept of production is tied by Nishida not only to Marx, but also to Kant,
and the transcendental indicates the a priori or the condition for the possibility
of making sense of something, connected with productive imagination.
Cassirer’s systematic concept “symbolic pregance” comes to mind, being an
alternative to both the Kantian notion of synthesis and the Husserlian concept
of intentionality. And the fact that Nishida “refused to situate the possibility of
sense (or reason) in a necessarily ideal essence of the human but sought it in
logos, conceived as the original immanent transduction of ideality and materi-
ality” (Haver, 2012, p. 13), points to the importance of “expressive activity” and
language in Nishida’s philosophy.
A closer comparison between Nishida’s notion of the transcendental and
Cassirer’s notion of symbolic pregnance would be of outmost interest, and so
would a ditto comparison between Nishidas understanding of language and
Cassirer’s phenomenological analysis of language as a symbolic form.
6.4 Phenomenology and the Problem of the Phenomenon of the

Phenomenon
What is called phenomenology has moved from there [from Descartes’

‘self of speculative thinking’] in the direction of the standpoint of the
merely conscious self. But there might be a path other than that. (Nishida
2012, p. 185)
Clearly, Nishida is highly critical of phenomenology, especially the transcen-

dental phenomenology of Husserl, but I imagine that a closer examination of
his thinking in relation to both Heidegger’s version of phenomenology and
Cassirer’s doctrine of basis phenomena would reveal that Nishida might be
a phenomenologist in his own right. A phenomenologist, that is, who brawls
with the basic problem of phenomenology, namely the problem of the many
ways that being shows itself, which Nishida thought of in terms of “absolute
contradictory self-identity” in relation to the question of “the one and the
many.”
It would take a much closer reading than I am able to perform, in order
to bring out the many strands that are woven together in Nishida Kitarō’s
very dense essays, but here I have just wanted to suggest how one might
connect “Kant,” “Davos 1929” and “The Kyoto School” in such a way that the
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310 meland
project of intercultural philosophy perhaps can benefit from it in a philosoph-

ically fruitful way. Here are some clues as to what such a reading might start
with.18
7 Concluding Remarks
The Davos debate has become a symbol of a schism in philosophical discourse,

a schism that Michael Friedman some twenty years ago called “a parting of the
ways” between analytic and continental philosophy (Friedman, 2000). Perhaps
this philosophical event might now become a symbol of a new “merging of the
ways” under the aegis of this initiative in intercultural philosophy called Kyoto
in Davos? In any case, I owe it to the reader to be clear about the relevance of my
analysis and my somewhat sketchy suggestions, and to point out how it might
contribute to bring intercultural philosophy forward in a fruitful way.
Both the title and the overarching question indicates that the essay tries
to find a way from the problem of meaning via the question of the founda-
tion of meaning, so that a new question arises: How might we do philosophy
today, without foundationalist ambitions? If we cannot find our way by way of
a philosophical anthropology of some sort, reaching an agreement or a con-
sensus on the questions of what we are, where we come from and where we
are going as human beings, how then do we go about doing philosophy in this
situation?
In general, I have maintained that a basis for comparing the philosophies
of Cassirer, Heidegger and Nishida can be derived through a reading of the
Davos disputation. More specifically, despite their differences, my contention
has been that all three thinkers can be said to be practicing a kind of foun-
dational phenomenology without classical fundamentalist aspirations. To the
best of my ability, I have tried to make it probable that Cassirer’s lectures in
Davos and the protocol from the Davos dispute between Cassirer and Heideg-
ger can function as key sources for the ongoing efforts to bring intercultural
philosophy forward, both in educational efforts and as clues to substantial
research, after the critique of Western metaphysics. What, in my view, is the
topicality of these documents for the project of intercultural philosophy?
Firstly, they pinpoint some key issues that are also in the agenda in con-
temporary philosophy, and these issues can be generally summed up as the
18 Steve G. Lofts has kindly made me aware that, gently put, it would require some more work
to substantiate a reading like this. Regrettably, in this instance I have only had occasion to
facilitate these condensed points.
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problem of meaning, the problem of reason, and the problem of freedom. The
significance of these philosophical problems is related to essential questions of
modernity, as far as they are constituted by the problematics of the making and
unmaking of sense, which is to say the problem of nihilism, the problematics
of instrumental reason, and the problematics of what might mean to be a self:
What are the conditions under which we might be capable of leading mean-
ingful lives today? How do we relate to the fact that there are many cultures
rather than one? What might it mean, given today’s globalized conditions of
being human, to be able to be free to start one’s own liberation?
Secondly, by way of an analysis of these minor and “impure” philosophical
documents from the Davos dispute, I have argued that Cassirer’s humanistic
philosophy is no more a purely anthropological one than is Heidegger’s anti-
humanistic philosophy, and I have tried to make it probable that Cassirer’s
explicit doctrine of basis phenomena can be considered as his answer to Hei-
degger’s question in the public debate, about the terminus a quo of his philos-
ophy of culture.
Thirdly, I have suggested that this terminus a quo can provide a basis for
comparing the philosophies of Cassirer, Heidegger and Nishida. I have also
tried to sketch how the claim that the basis for a comparison of Cassirer’s,
Heidegger’s and Nishida’s philosophies might be found at a fundamental phe-
nomenological level, the level of basis phenomena. This line of reasoning is tied
to Nishida’s early notion of “pure experience,” to his concept of the “monad,”
and to what has been called Nishida’s “ontology of production,” i.e., his view
of the interconnection between expressive activity, active intuition, and the
human being.
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11
The Self-Aware Individual and the Kyoto School’s
Quest for a Philosophical Anthropology
Dennis Stromback
Abstract
To understand how the early thinkers of the Kyoto School contribute to a philosophi-
cal anthropology, we have to explore how Nishida Kitarō, Miki Kiyoshi, and Nishitani
Keiji frame self-awareness as part of the dialectics of history. Nishida, and his stu-
dents Miki and Nishitani, all begin from a similar view of self-awareness, this view that
self-awareness cannot be placed outside of the epistemological object, but differences
between them arise when we examine how they formulate self-awareness and its role
in historical reality. Although Miki and Nishitani both adopt Nishida’s standpoint of a
historically active self, Nishitani and Miki begin to diverge on the historical direction
regarding the “crisis of human existence.” While Nishitani formulates this crisis as a
problem of nihilism and seeks to resolve it by locating self-awareness in the field of
religious awareness, Miki, on the other hand, interprets this crisis as a problem of self-
alienation that repeats itself throughout social history, that which calls for a new type
of self-awareness through a unity of logos and pathos expressed in the material forms
of the social world. That is to say, for Nishitani, as well as for Nishida, continuously
returning to the “original” or “extra-conceptual” realm of human experience is what
leads to a genuine historical world, whereas for Miki, it is through a unity of logos and
pathos where the basic experience (kiso keiken 基礎経験) of proletariat subjectivity
and the ideology of the public domain are negotiated in the service of bringing forth a
new anthropological self-understanding of human existence that can meet the critical
demands of a given historical juncture. This chapter will explore these philosophical
tensions of the early Kyoto School thinkers as a series of discussions and discourses
that were devised in response to each other and to Western conceptions of subjectivity
in the aim to overcome Western modernity.
Keywords
Self-Awareness – Overcoming Modernity – Philosophical anthropology – Logos and

pathos – Historical creativity
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the self-aware individual 315
1 Introduction
The history of philosophical anthropology is the history of standpoints of self-

awareness positioned for a cosmopolitan engagement. Kant’s question of Was
ist der Mensch? was this first attempt to establish a foundation for anthropol-
ogy, which sought to encompass the whole of philosophy. Set to be the highest
of all the disciplines, Kant’s anthropology was determined to divert rational
psychology or a priori theorizing away from explaining the phenomenal nature
of human beings by calling for empirical studies to examine the natural capac-
ities of human behaviors within particular cultures in the service of educating
the human being in order to bring about global progress. This is because, as
Kant believed, anthropology is the very “knowledge of the human being as a
citizen of the world” (Kant, 2007, p. 120). Now Hegel’s anthropology, which
followed Kant’s anthropology, found new ways to bring history into the dis-
cipline by formalizing a system of absolute knowledge through the tracing of
the historical movement of logical concepts. As Hegel saw it, a philosophical
anthropology must explain the emergence of self-awareness from within the
context of the subject-object relationship and then apply the logic behind this
cultivation to the context of ethical life. The most visible difference between
Kant’s and Hegel’s anthropology was that Kant’s concept of the individual
mind was to be replaced by the concept of Geist in Hegel, a concept that was
to capture a logic of historical and cultural self-understanding at the same
time.
The philosophical anthropology developed by Kant and Hegel would pre-
pare the stage for the early Kyoto School’s attempt to formulate its own philo-
sophical anthropology. Contra Kant’s and Hegel’s anthropology, which was
thought to be born out of a subject-object duality,1 Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多
郎) (1870–1945) would publish an article in 1930 titled “Anthropology” (Ningen-
gaku 「人間学」) that expands Maine de Biran’s philosophical anthropology,
arguing for the need to develop a science of self-awareness that not only begins
from the exterior (homo exterior) but from the interior (homo interior) of sub-
jectivity as well (Nishida Vol. 12, 1965, pp. 18–20). As Nishida argues, a science
of self-awareness that breaks from the duality of subject and object would have
to dialectically unite the exterior with the interior in the form of an embodied
existence that is inherently active, creative, and intuitive. What was missing
from Hegel and Kant, as Nishida would have it, is this subject-object relation-
1 For the Kyoto School thinkers, their non-dual position of epistemological reality represents
an overcoming of the duality between the cultural philosophies of East and West.
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ship that is more actively connected to a logic of historical creativity by virtue of

its prior epistemological unity located in what he calls the “basho of absolutely
nothing” (zettai-mu no basho 絶対無の場所). Such a view of the subject-object
relationship would then be the basis on Nishida’s own take on cosmopoli-
tanism that theorized the idea of “world culture,” not as a single monolithic
culture, but rather as a variety of cultural particulars developing themselves
through their dialectical encounters and interactions with other particulars.
That is to say, there is a unity-in-diversity (a unity among cultural particulars)
that is being advanced in Nishida’s approach to cosmopolitanism, that which
is grounded in the logic formulated in his anthropology.
This particular science of self-awareness would eventually find a home be-
yond Nishida’s anthropology, however. Both Nishida’s students, Nishitani Keiji
(西谷啓治) (1900–1990) and Miki Kiyoshi (三木清) (1897–1945), would pur-
sue this track of thought of dialectically uniting the subject and object in the
aim to overcome Kant’s and Hegel’s anthropology (and by extension, their cos-
mopolitanism). While Nishitani would align himself mostly with Nishida’s own
positions, particularly around his religious sentiments, Miki on the other hand,
would take a slightly different direction. Not unlike Nishida, Miki builds on
Maine de Biran’s “science of the interior” as well by dialectically uniting the
exterior and the interior expressed within the self-aware agent of social history,
but in contrast to Nishida’s science of self-awareness, the dialectical movement
articulated in Miki’s standpoint of self-awareness would unite the subjective
interiority with the objective materials of the world through the production of
historical forms. Not only is Kant’s and Hegel’s anthropology being challenged
here, but Nishida’s as well, because of this failure to link historical production
to the temporality of forms. As Miki thought, a philosophical anthropology can
move beyond Nishida’s science of self-awareness as well as his brand of cos-
mopolitanism and thus overcome the dualities of Eastern and Western thought
by a subject-object relationship that connects back to the temporality of mate-
rial production. While the early Kyoto School thinkers mostly succeeded in
overcoming the Kantian dilemma, particularly by replacing one single cultural
narrative for which to educate people to become citizens of the world to a more
pluralistic view of human and cultural life, where they failed to further advance
themselves, however, is mostly around the problem of reification lying at the
heart of capitalist society.2 This chapter will investigate the discussions and
2 Other scholars, like Takeuchi Yoshimi for instance, would add that the Kyoto School thinkers
also failed to address the aporia between their own views of anti-colonialism and Japan’s own
colonial mission. Such a topic is important for this particular study but will not be developed
in this chapter due to a lack of space.
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arguments made by the early Kyoto School thinkers in their attempts to develop
a philosophical anthropology grounded within the self-aware individual.
2 The Return to Religious Awareness
The concept of “self-awareness” ( ji-kaku 自覚) within the Kyoto School began
with Nishida’s quest to clarify the “historically active self.” From the notion of
“pure experience” to “action-intuition,” Nishida’s culminating reflections on the
“historically formative act from the standpoint of the ‘historically active self’ ”
(Nishida Vol. 12, 1965, p. 265; Nishida, 1987, p. 125) was determined to stand
against Western standpoints of self-awareness that struggled to locate the sub-
ject in relation to the object of consciousness. If the subject is outside of the
object, as Nishida questions, then how is it possible for the self to even com-
municate with the outside world?3 Or, to put it another way, how would it be
possible for the self to express itself in the world? In order to avoid falling into
the problem of solipsism, Nishida believes there needs to be some sort of prior
unity between subject and object. That is, the epistemological raft from the
subject to the object would not only move philosophy beyond the critical haz-
ard point of an infinite regress, but such would also move philosophy into a
deeper plane of existence where religion can be investigated as another form of
self-awareness, like the way science and morality can be investigated systemati-
cally (Dilworth, 1987, p. 6). In this sense, Nishida’s standpoint of self-awareness,
which is part of his search for a “concrete logic,” can be thought of as a return
to religious awareness.
Inspired first by William James’s view of experience and then later by Hegel’s
dialectics of self-consciousness, Nishida’s non-dualistic standpoint of self-
awareness seeks to rescue religion from being explained away by the objective
rationality of Western philosophy. This is because in Western modernity, reli-
gion is often treated as subordinate to rational thought. For Bertrand Russel,
for instance, science, logic, mathematics, are all rational systems of knowl-
edge that demonstrate what it means to be “human,” whereas religion can be
described as forms of mystical knowledge that articulate passions, emotions,
and animal instincts, that which need to be curbed in order for one to become
a fully rational human being (Russell, 2003, pp. 75–83). Hegel and James, how-
ever, found a way to make religion and rationality compatible: the absolute
3 Nishida reflects on this problem in “The Unsolved Issue of Consciousness” (torinokosaretaru

ishiki no mondai 「取残されたる意識の問題」, (Nishida Vol. 12, 1968, pp. 5–17)).
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318 stromback
spirit is the monistic One (God) in the case of Hegel, while the base of “pure
experience” found in the religious traditions of the world cannot be reduced
to anything mental nor physical in the case of James. Nevertheless, Nishida
took cues from these thinkers in terms of reconciling rational consciousness
and religious awareness by positioning their unity within their own place in
the dynamic structure of history. Since religious experiences cannot be truly
investigated through any kind of objective logics, they must be governed from a
wholly different logic—an absolute contradictory logic. As Nishida holds, such
a logic of experience is difficult, if not impossible, to apprehend if we start from
an Aristotelian standpoint that forces us to choose stances on the basis of gram-
matical contradictions especially if the entire historical world is a groundless
and timeless unfolding of particularities expressive of bottomless contradic-
tions.
This all to say that the development of a self-awareness is not a rejection
of the processes of science and rationality as such, but an inclusion of them
from within a logic of religion as an absolute contradictory identity. We can
be both religious and scientifically rational because the formation of these
types of awareness proceeds from the same ground that is absolutely contra-
dictory. As Nishida writes: “I do not reject object logic, but I hold that it must be
seen as only an abstract moment within a more concrete logic” (Nishida Vol. 11,
1968, p. 416; Nishida, 1987, p. 83). In this particular instance, however, Nishida’s
search for a concrete logic that is absolutely contradictory stems less from his
Hegelian readings and more from his Buddhist past, but this process of trans-
lating the historical world from a Buddhist worldview, “was indirect, almost
covert” (Heisig, 2015, p. 36). Nishida rarely drew on Buddhist texts for pur-
poses of clarification, at least until his last writings, and chose to subsume ideas
relating to no-self or enlightenment under the heading of “self-awareness.”
Nonetheless, Nishida’s standpoint of the self-aware individual is dialectical—
i.e., as a form of an absolute contradiction—such that the highest unity of
existence is expressed as religious, cultural, and historical awareness through
the very acts of self-negation. To emerge on the world stage in the most human
way can only arrive by means of the logic of soku-hi:4 that is, to affirm the self
by negating the self opens the door for the realization of religious, moral, and
historical self-awareness at the same time. To put it another way, the more one
cultivates religious awareness via self-negation, the more one is apt to become
even more socially, morally, and historically (self-)aware (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965,
4 Textual evidence supports the idea that Nishida’s logic of soku-hi was borrowed from D.T. Su-
zuki (Yusa, 2019, pp. 589–616).
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pp. 447–448). This is because “science and morality have their basis in the reli-
gious form of life,” (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 425; Nishida, 1987, p. 91) and that
whenever “the religious self returns to its bottomless depths, it returns to the
absolute and simultaneously discovers itself in its ordinary and everyday, and
again in its rational, character” (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 425; Nishida, 1987, p. 91).
In the case of Nishitani Keiji, the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Like his teacher Nishida, Nishitani develops a standpoint of self-awareness by
perusing Buddhist texts, but unlike Nishida, the process of absorption and re-
articulation from its mother source was more explicit and direct. For instance,
Nishida formulated “the place of absolutely nothing” (zettai-mu no basho 絶対
無の場所) to reference the groundless ground in which all things, forms, ideas
emerge and dissolve, but Nishitani chose to use more direct Buddhist trans-
lations: e.g., “emptiness” (śūnyatā) as the transcendental predicate to describe
the intra-relational dynamism of historical reality. Although the idea that West-
ern culture and philosophy departs from a logic of being originally came from
Nishida’s critical reflections on Western epistemology, such would provide the
foundation for Nishitani’s critique that elaborates on the cultural problems of
modernity from the standpoint of Buddhist emptiness and Nietzsche’s view of
creative nihilism. The greatest danger afflicting modernity according to Nishi-
tani is the reduction of life fueled by an underlying nihility, and the only way to
overcome it is by confronting its empty face head on. In this regard, Nishitani
posits nihilism as both the crisis (kiki 危機) of modernity and the best oppor-
tunity (kikai 機会) for creative transcendence. As Nishitani writes: “By being
thrown into nihility, the self is revealed to itself. Only in such encounters does
nihilism (like death) become a real question” (Nishitani, 1990, p. 2). Here we
see Nishitani deploy the concept of Prajñā (wisdom) from the Abhidharma
systems to clarify how the mind intuitively discerns the things of the world
(the dharma—which is often translated by “phenomena”) by means of decon-
struction rather than by mere discursive construction. To destroy the cycle of
samsara and realize liberation can only occur by allowing our own attachments
to a seemingly objective reality die and fall away. To be a fully self-aware human
being, in the Nishitanian world, is therefore to grow aware of reality as empty
of all things and beings (and non-things and non-beings)—in other words, a
self-awareness qua the place where self and knowledge are emptied.
Nishitani’s colorful symphony of self-awareness as a Buddhist enlightened
existence plays in concert with Nishida’s own tune of reality as one being reli-
giously grounded. Like Nishida, Nishitani prescribes a return to the religious
standpoint in order to cultivate a self-aware, creative, intuitive human being in
the world, one that is not caught up in the discursive dimension of the every-
day and as a result more adept at navigating the labyrinth of one’s symbolic
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320 stromback
reality. This is not a rejection of intellectual thought nor a rejection that lin-
guistic signs exist, but rather an attempt to posit an openness to the world
through the “liberation of thinking,” as Dōgen might conceive of it. The stand-
point of self-awareness in Nishitani’s religious philosophy is therefore seeking
to generate the transwisdom of Buddhist thought, a non-knowing knowing of
reality that is spontaneous and playful not unlike a child who is earnest, seri-
ous, and improvisational in its engagements with a world it desires to know
(Nishitani, 1996, pp. 33–36). In the end, we can approach Nishitani in a sim-
ilar fashion as we did with Nishida where there is a positing of an original
realm of human existence that is the source for authentic self-understanding
and creative potentiality. Of course, we have to be careful not to conflate Nishi-
tani’s and Nishida’s thought, but we should not deny their shared philosophical
projects and future imaginings, which celebrate extra-rational knowledge for
purposes of genuine psychological, social, and historical change. The visions
they see of the future, however, begin to clash with Miki Kiyoshi, who returns
to religion for the purpose of re-asserting its mythological narrative in the ser-
vice of a socio-economic project rather than for its tonic energy.
Unlike Nishida and Nishitani, who approach self-awareness from a stance
that looks more like the literary cleverness and meditative astuteness of elite
Zen masters, Miki approaches self-awareness from a stance that looks like a
Pascalian humanist defending the “religion of the common man” for the pur-
pose of manifesting a classless view of history. Miki was both a Pure Land
Buddhist and a Marxist enthusiast (though covered its language within a dif-
ferent garb later on) but did not find a return to the extra-rational realm of
religious practice as the transcendental pivot for overcoming the alienation
and loneliness humans experience in the world. This is because, as Miki sees it,
Zen Buddhism borders too much on an idealism concerned with other-worldly
things (Miki Vol. 13, 1978, p. 10), and that in order for the problem of alienation
and loneliness to even be resolved, a new human being would have to emerge
organically in a way that is appropriate for the everyday life at a given social
historical juncture. In fact, Miki believes that the anxiety afflicting subjectivity
cannot be reduced to psychological methods because alienation and loneliness
represent a cultural and spiritual angst that is deeply grounded in the human
condition, perhaps even beyond the forces of history (Townsend, 2007, p. 189).
In order to uproot such angst and to create a new sense of self and belong-
ing, however, Miki insists that a new subjectivity would have to be renewed or
revived in the historical present, but then engendered from a different type of
consciousness, one that dialectically unites logos (reason and language) and
pathos (the unconscious affective dimension of the subjective interior). In the
likes of Nishida’s pursuit of developing an inter-civilizational logic that over-
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comes East and West, Miki’s new human being seeks to dialectically unite the
best characteristics of Western and Eastern civilization within the standpoint
of self-awareness, except that it must include material forms within itself as
well.
It is on these grounds where we see Nishida’s and Nishitani’s view of reli-
gion and Miki’s view of religion differ. For instance, Miki does not think religion
alone is sufficient in this task to give birth to a new subjectivity relevant to social
history. This is because “religion shouldn’t ever be seen merely as one of cul-
ture,” (Miki Vol. 13, 1978, p. 29) as an aspect of logos, because it is grounded
within subjective pathos. In other words, “religion is not arrived at from acquir-
ing this [more-than-life] within the direction of the idea, but on the contrary,
due to the breaking through from within the direction of pathological things”
(Miki Vol. 13, 1978, p. 29).5 So if religion teeters on the side of pathos, then it also
serves as the fountainhead for cultural creation (Miki Vol. 13, 1978, p. 30). But, as
Miki’s dialectics suggest at the same time, there is still a need for logos to help
steer the course of social history by directing the common sense of the people
towards a particular future. This is not to say that Miki subordinates religion
altogether either: on the contrary, Miki is critical of Marxist views of religion
that assumes its inherent purpose is to justify oppression and poverty (Miki
Vol. 13, 1978, p. 19). In fact, in step with the rest of the Kyoto School thinkers,
Miki protects the essence of religion from any ongoing secular attacks, main-
taining that “religion, at its essence, is the most serious critic of reality,” (Miki
Vol. 13, 1978, p. 67) because it is deeply rooted in human nature (Miki Vol. 18,
1978, p. 110). What needs to be saved then is its narrative kernel—namely, the
function or role of religion in society—and not its contradictory logic that
articulates the structuring of historical creativity as such à la Nishida (and per-
haps Nishitani). At the end of the day, Miki insists that we have to distinguish
between pure religion and institutional religion: while the purist forms of reli-
gion are about bringing us into the world rather than removing us from it, insti-
tutional religion is about reinforcing class domination because it legitimizes
the interests of the ruling class. Miki claims that the purist form of religious
expression is about the natural desire for happiness for all human beings, or
what he calls the “eudaemonistic impulse” (kōfukushugiteki keikō 幸福主義的
傾向), that which arises internally but then connects with the material world
through affective relationships in order to create a place where people are actu-
ally living the good life (Curley, 2017, p. 130). Toward this end, Miki scholar
5 Here, Miki is drawing on Georg Simmel’s concept of “more-than-life” that speaks of how
the principle of life is an uninterrupted creative movement and how life becomes real and
expressed through forms.
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Melissa Anne-Marie Curley suggests that Miki’s last published piece on Shin-
ran was in many ways a re-reading of Pure Land Buddhist history that aims to
inspire and orchestrate a proletarian class struggle (Curley, 2008, p. 90). This
cross-reading of Shinran and Marxism expresses the dialectical unity of logos
and pathos in the form of the mythical structure of a Marxist Pure Land because
it provides the necessary ingredients for a pathos to unite with the Marxist logos
towards creating a historical world that overcomes the modern crisis. In this
regard, the Pure Land is the religion of the people, not Zen Buddhism.6
As one can gather here, there seems to be little (logical) tension between
Nishida’s and Nishitani’s view of creative awareness, but when stacked against
Miki’s philosophical standpoint, a tension arises instantiating the divide within
the early Kyoto School thinkers—between those who sublate religion and
those who take its logic as the final expression. In Miki’s case, religion has a
role in social history, but it must become re-mythologized in the direction of a
secular future, whereas for Nishida and Nishitani, there is a logic to religion that
dialectically structures the entire historical world, which means that it resists
a full secularization because it is not incompatible with it. As we will see in
the next section, while Nishida, Nishitani, and Miki are all looking to discover
a logic of historical creativity that breaks from the subject-object, mind-body,
and particular-universal dualities, another tension arises between Nishida and
Nishitani on one hand and Miki on the other in terms of the role and relation-
ship the self-aware agent has with social history. The implications of this role in
social history will not only allude to how the crisis of modern life is framed but
to what a future historical world would look like in the eyes of the early Kyoto
School thinkers.
3 Creative Action and Social Reality
The religion of the people found in Miki’s philosophy is not a romanticization

of the masses at large, but rather an attempt to bring out the most creative ele-
ments of human existence by dialectically uniting the social and the individual
on the basis of creating new social institutions congruent to the desires and
needs of the individual. Miki suggests as such in “After Liberalism” ( Jiyūshugi-
igo「自由主義以後」) when he discusses the importance of developing a new
form of liberalism, one that transcends the bourgeois liberalism characteristic
6 Note that Miki’s early interest in religion began with Pascal, but then came into fruition with
his interest in reading Shinran. For more on this topic, see Iwata Fumiaki (2021, pp. 7–41).
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of capitalist society. He writes: “[Liberal] Freedom must be granted in order for

humans to show the fullest extent of their intellectual and cultural activities
and these things are also necessary for the development of history as well as
the realization of its significance” (Miki Vol. 13, 1978, p. 173). With religion join-
ing the ranks of class struggle, history will set in motion the mythic power to
galvanize action toward the overcoming of angst by laying the groundwork for a
system of cooperation, a system Miki believes will maximize the creative capac-
ity of subjectivity. But what is this creative capacity exactly? And how is this
creative capacity foundational to a system of cooperation? In a spirit similar to
Nishida and Nishitani, Miki frames self-awareness as a dialectical movement
of creativity that becomes expressed in social history, but contra Nishida and
Nishitani, this movement is more material at its origins. For instance, Miki finds
agreement with Nishida’s view that historical creativity is articulated as a logic
of poiesis, where the making of things flow back and forth from “inside and out-
side” between subject and object, but what Nishida fails to make explicit, and
what Miki works to develop, is the very source or fuel that generates this cir-
cuitous movement between interior and exterior—what Miki calls the pathos
of subjectivity. For Miki, the body itself belongs to pathos, because it is the
site of passions, impulses, hopes, fears, cravings, all of what is described as
the “affective” dimensions of subjectivity, and so pathos is not merely a pas-
sive state of existence, but active as well, because it urges our bodies toward
action and creating the social historical world (Miki Vol. 18, 1978, pp. 152, 399;
Fujita, 2011, p. 311). In other words, historical creativity begins with human
desire because the material world is always registered from within the subjec-
tive interior.
Although Miki was clearly influenced by Marx, we have to resist thinking of
Miki as a card-carrying Marxist in the sense of how we think of Lenin as a card-
carrying Marxist. After all, Miki was forced out of Marxist circles on account of
his “humanism,” and his later writings on the dialectics of logos and pathos re-
assert a view of the historically active self (similar to Nishida) against orthodox
Marxism, because the latter destroys the concept of a universal type of human
being as it reduces the conscious historical agent to the relations of produc-
tion (Curley, 2018, p. 448). While the new subjectivity born out of a unity of
logos and pathos is not the revolutionary hero of Marxism, it is also not anti-
thetical to the early Marx in the sense that the new subjectivity must produce
works and realize itself in its creative projects in order to overcome its deeply
rooted alienation. Therefore, Miki’s standpoint of self-awareness as a unity of
logos and pathos secures a concept of agency within the material production
of social history while re-connecting Nishida’s standpoint of action-intuition
to the material realm of reality by grounding self-awareness within the creative
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imagination. Within the context of the early Kyoto School’s quest for a philo-
sophical anthropology, Miki’s dialectics of logos and pathos therefore serve as
a corrective for Nishida’s failure to elucidate how history moves from each his-
torical form. This is because, according to Miki, Nishida’s concept of time (“the
eternal now” eien no ima 永遠の今) is just too abstract and empty for it to have
any explanatory power on how institutions and traditions change over time
(Miki Vol. 10, 1978, p. 433). But if Miki is too humanist and Nishidian to be a
full Marxist, and too materialist to be a Nishidian, how does he manage to fill
the lacuna between the individual with its own creative spirit and the Marxist
project of overcoming of class domination? In other words, how does he man-
age to accommodate both missions?
Miki resolves this tension by placing the logical structure of self-awareness
within an I-Thou relationship, rather than an I-It relationship. The I-Thou rela-
tionship does not equate to society, but rather society is where the I-Thou
relationship is established (Miki Vol. 18, 1978, pp. 372–373). As Miki maintains,
framing self-awareness from within an I-It relationship reduces human exis-
tence to a simple consciousness, arising from external material forces, while
framing self-awareness from within an I-Thou relationship establishes an ontol-
ogy rooted in the same existential ground. That is to say, if the I and Thou
arise from the same existential ground, then the development of self-awareness
of I and Thou cannot only be thought of as sharing the same fundamental
structure, but must be thought of as correlative and reciprocal as it unfolds
dialectically, because an act of objectification from the standpoint of the I
negates the immanence of the Thou, while an act of recognizing the other’s
immanence enables both to develop self-awareness along their own axis—to
realize that its freedom is dependent on the responsibility to the Thou. One
can see how Miki’s later writings on the advancement of cooperative action
as the proper praxis to overcome feudalism and the capitalist class structure
corresponds to the “equally shared ground” formulated in the I-Thou relation-
ship:7 since the ontological ground expressed in the I and Thou relationship
structures the dialectical development of self-awareness, the creative capacity
of self-awareness can only be fully realized in the self-negating formations that
become articulated in cooperative fellowships.
While for Miki, a certain social-economic order that unites logos and pathos
is necessary in order to help bring out the creative spirit of the individual, for
7 For more on Miki’s cooperativism, see the “the Basis of Cooperation” (kyōryoku no kiso 「協力
の基礎」) (Miki Vol. 15, 1978, pp. 257–263). Also, see “The Foundation of East Asian Thought”
(tōashisō no konkyo 「東亜思想の根拠」) (Miki Vol. 15, 1978, pp. 308–325) for how a new
principle of cooperation among East Asian countries can bring about a new world order.
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Nishida, this creative spirit depends more on each particular’s own cultivation
of the (contradictory) logic that articulates the religious dimension of life. In
Zen no kenyū 『善の研究』, Nishida examines this from the standpoint of “pure
experience” and then proceeds in Art and Morality (Geijutsu to dōtoku 『芸術
と道徳』) to examine this from the standpoint of moral and artistic conscious-
ness as rooted in a self-awareness involving the absolute will. While religion,
art, and morality are all distinct and irreducible forms of experiences, these
experiences nonetheless manifest in accordance with the contradictory logic
of affirmation qua negation (Nishida Vol. 2, 1965, pp. 313–320). Recall that the
paradox of affirmation qua negation is the basis of Nishida’s concept of the
absolute, an absolute that is thought to stand in contrast to Hegel’s Absolute
qua monistic One, and that Nishida’s absolute is more of a reference to how
subject and object, being and non-being, form and formless, and all the other
oppositional categories of thought placed within the groundless reality can-
not determinate themselves without their own self-negation. This is why, as
Nishida says,
the true absolute does not merely transcend the relative. If it did, it could
not avoid being a mere negation of it, and on the contrary, would become
relative too […] the true absolute must face its own absolute negation
within itself. It must absolutely negate, and thereby express, itself within
itself. (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 420; Nishida, 1987, p. 87)
In other words, the truest forms of creativity expressed in the historical world
derive from this absolute logic of self-identity.
Nishida’s contradictory logic that seeks to explain how creativity is even pos-
sible in the world elucidates the paradox of how poiesis is praxis and praxis
is poiesis. Within the Nishidian world, the production of things is the pro-
duction of oneself, because when we make things in the world, the things
of the world in turn make the maker. In what we call Nishida’s standpoint
of “action-intuition” (kōiteki chokkan 行為的直感) is part of this attempt to
ground this bilateral movement between poiesis and praxis within an embod-
ied existence that is inherently active, intuitive, and creative. In other words,
action-intuition refers to the world of historical production from the ground
of the body (shintai 身体) as a standpoint of knowing that acts based on what
it intuits. According to Nishida, intuiting the world and acting in it are insep-
arable and simultaneous, but they resist conflation in the sense that subjec-
tivity actively relates to the world with the body but then intuits the world
in a more passive sense (Krummel, 2015, p. 86; Nishida Vol. 8, 1965, pp. 295–
296, 337–344, 347–348). We should also be reminded here that such a view
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opposes departing from Descartes’s “I think therefore I exist,” opting instead

for an “I exist because I act,” because we act on the things we see and think
in the world and then create them by giving them form (Nishida Vol. 8, 1965,
p. 373; Nishida Vol. 7, 1965, p. 174). Since we are embodied subjects in the world,
we are stimulated by external things and then express outward the things we
have internalized (Nishida Vol. 4, 1965, pp. 135–136). But there is also not a
self that knows without the body, which is why the social-historical world can
only be dialectically created and altered through what is expressed in action-
intuition.
The contradictory logic Nishida is deploying as the frame of historical cre-
ativity is picked up by Nishitani who then immediately re-fashions it for an-
other purpose: for critiquing the culture of modernity. Nishitani’s view of the
truly creative moment expresses the same contradictory logic in the claim
that progress comes into fruition through the act of regression. As Nishitani
writes:
[…] progress is at the same time regress. To return to the origin, in the
true sense, is to advance forward. That is to say, our constant creation of
novelty is fundamentally made possible only by our standing on some-
thing unchangeable. The term “unchangeable” is here meant to refer to
the creative power, which is the source from which the enlivening power
gushes. The unchangeable has to do with the source of this spring of life
and creation. (Nishitani, 2006, p. 135)
According to Nishitani here, there is a source of creativity for all that exists in
the world, a source that emerges from the negation of something from within
the place of emptiness. But negation here is not a mere negation of all exter-
nal conceptual categories, leaving the ego intact within the subject that faces
the world; the negation spoken of here includes the negation of one’s own self-
identity as a subject seeing itself as a being seeking to free itself from the cycle
of samsara—it is the point or place where samsara is nirvana and nirvana is
samsara is realized. Nishitani’s view of a creative subjectivity is therefore a
returning of Heidegger’s Dasein to its own home-ground.
The nihilism underlying modernity is the ultimate target for Nishitani’s cri-
tique, but such can only be transcended through our acts of self-emptying.
Here, Nishitani is re-interpreting Nietzsche’s notion of “will to power” as one
of “creative nihilism” but in a way that looks to a Buddhist view of liberation.8
8 While Nietzsche thought highly of Buddhism in terms of its liberating force (especially com-
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Unlike Nishida, however, who describes the creative act that occurs from self-
negation more as a unique logic that stands opposed to Western philosophy,
Nishitani chooses to describe the truly creative act as an infinite openness
(mugenna-ake 無限な開け) where the negation of both being and the “nothing-
ness” of nihility clears the way for subjectivity to exist more intimately with the
world, an existence that is on the level of equality beyond the dualities of good
and evil and gratitude and revenge and so on (Nishitani, 1961, p. 115). That is to
say, Nishitani’s view of infinite openness refers to a creative plane of existence
that transcends all forms of common-sense experiences, because the existence
of an emancipated subjectivity is freed from the self-centeredness binding the
subject-object dichotomy, that which would allow for a life of creative peace
and freedom rooted in radical spontaneity and playfulness (Nishitani, 1961,
pp. 269–272). Nishitani here deploys the image of a child to represent the “play-
ful samādhi” ( yūgi-zammai 遊戯三昧) of an emancipated awareness, where
all work and labor takes on the character of play (asobu 遊ぶ), much like a
child doing innocent activity in an elemental and earnest way (Nishitani, 1961,
pp. 279–280). Such earnest playfulness exemplifies a creative existence even
beyond Nietzsche’s “will to power” because the “I will” has been negated and
thus no longer driven by anything seeking to construct the ego and expand its
realm of power (i.e., through the will itself).9
There are many parallels among the early Kyoto School thinkers on the struc-
ture of creative action and its place in social history. While they all recognize
pared with Christianity), he also thought of it as the highest form of negating life and there-
fore represents a passive form of nihilism. This is because nirvana is a culmination of a “will
to nothingness” that looks to put an end to life as such. Scholars have debated to what extent
Nishitani critically responds to Nietzsche. Bret Davis (2011), for instance, claims that Nishi-
tani challenges Nietzsche’s philosophy from the standpoint of emptiness and non-ego, and
argues that “self-will” is not much more than an infinite drive of passions, desires, and crav-
ings. Therefore, the will to power is more of a lust for authoritative power that needs to be
negated within religious consciousness while Nishitani’s creative nihilism characterizes this
conversion from a great death to a great life (and thus not a rejection of life but an affirmation
of it). Nishitani maintains that there needs to be a “cutting of the roots of the will” in order to
experience the radical freedom from self-will (Davis, 2011, pp. 89–95).
9 Perhaps Nietzsche, like many other nineteenth century Western intellectuals, misunderstood
Buddhism by confusing the “Great Death” for a renunciation of life that is nothing more than
a rejection of life. But the problem is that Nietzsche thinks that the essence of life is that of a
“will to power,” and as a result, was unable to understand how the negation of the “I” (which
implies the cravings, desires, of it and so on) actually opens the door to a higher affirma-
tion of life within Buddhism. From the Buddhist standpoint, “the will to power” or the “will
to become a master” are derived from the same source that causes suffering—namely, this
“thirst” or “volition” or “desire” of the “I” to exist and to become more and more.
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that social history is established from the creative actions of subjectivity, stand-
ing apart in terms of how to view the generative source of this process, however,
is Miki’s philosophical anthropology—which ends up positioning the engine
of creativity within the subjective imagination in the form of pathos. Indeed,
for all these thinkers, there is a feedback loop between the internal and the
external, with historical reality being this very dynamic structuration, but Miki,
much more than the others, threads this loop through another layer of inter-
nal complexity, a layer that articulates the cries of alienation and loneliness
of humanity, that which becomes expressed in art, religion, and mythology.
There is certainly a human face to Miki’s dialectics, which is even more visi-
ble in his attempt to clarify the crisis of human existence and what this means
for the future of the historical world. As Miki scholar Fernando Wirtz tells us,
the task of Miki’s anthropological humanism is therefore to create myths in
the service of creating a new type of human being.10 Of course, this is not
to say that such a task is lost in Nishitani’s pursuit to elucidate the crisis of
human existence, because if anything, to resolve the human crisis and to move
beyond the present state of nihilism demands a return to the human heart
in Nishitani’s critique of modernity from the standpoint of Zen Buddhism.
What about Nishida though? Where does Nishida take us here with his con-
cern for the logicization of historical creativity? What is the state of crisis
Nishida wants to address and what does this suggests for the future of human-
ity in the pursuit to unite and overcome (Western) modernity and Eastern
thought?
4 The Crisis of Human Existence and the Future of the Historical

World
Nishida’s standpoint of self-awareness was developed as a response to the

abstract logics of Western philosophy. As Nishida argues, since the logic of sub-
stance formulated by Aristotle prepared the way for Kant’s subject-object dual-
ity and Hegel’s object-logic11 to foster the structure of modernity, the notion of
10 See Fernando Wirtz, ‘Miki and the Myth of Humanism,’ (p. 487) in this volume.
11 Nishida describes Hegel’s dialectics as a “logic of objects” because it presupposes a unique,
ready-made reality where movement and change could be observed as if they occur out-
side of subjective awareness. But for Nishida, a true dialectic is one where the knower
is positioned directly within the very dynamic movements of historical creativity, where
the knower and the known, or where subjectivity and objectivity, emerge, transform, and
dissolve as a result of their encounters and interactions with the other.
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a contradictory logic as the very expression of the absolute itself often becomes
dismissed as non-sensical in the West’s rational consciousness. Hegel’s dialec-
tical method, of course, seeks to ease the tension between contradictory posi-
tions via negation as well, but then falls short in upholding the absolute as an
infinite set of contradictions because his philosophical inquiry starts from the
standpoint of spirit (Geist) that travels on a temporal plane rather than from a
standpoint of place that allows for a bilateral movement. Nishida’s view of self-
awareness as an absolute contradictory identity represents a critique of moder-
nity and its crisis, that which necessitates an “overcoming” of Western intellec-
tual hegemony by means of foregrounding the differences of cultural worlds
and to build a new global paradigm of thought that respects and empowers
all of its particulars. For Nishida, and for the rest of the early Kyoto School
thinkers, much of Western modernity draws on logics that are insufficient for
accounting for cultural differences in the world of philosophy, because baked
within the formal logics of Western intellectual heritages is the assumption that
non-contradiction is the rule of judgement. Any vision of philosophical plu-
ralism, one that includes the logical particularities of Eastern thought, is hard
to accommodate within Western philosophical discourse because the impulse
there is to discriminate on the basis of an “either-or” logic instead of a “both-
and” logic.
What Nishida’s contradictory logic implies through a clarification of the
dynamism of historical creativity is a limit to the tendencies of discursive think-
ing because it demonstrates how the positing of ideals or substances as the
basis for apprehending the world only represents particular standpoints of cul-
tural history. Nishida’s move here characterizes the critique and the crisis of
modernity because any gesture to think, exist, or feel in any static or fixed way
cannot find a home in absolute freedom since that would only be a univer-
salization of a particular rather than a particular realizing its own universal-
ity. We have to remember that Nishida’s quest for self-awareness is the quest
for absolute freedom as articulated from the standpoint of religion. The quest
here is not a defense of traditional forms of religion against secular forms of
self-awareness, because religion is not about finding a peace of mind,12 but
12 Nishida argues that looking for a peace of mind is not a religious question, but rather a
biological one. He writes: “Peace of mind is not a religious matter; it arises from a stand-
point opposite to that of the problematic of religion. It does not even qualify as a moral
question. The desiring self, which lives by a calculus of pleasure and pain, is only a biolog-
ical being, and not yet a true individual. From such a perspective, I cannot help agreeing
with those who criticize religion as a kind of narcotic” (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, pp. 429–430;
Nishida, 1987, p. 95).
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rather about “confronting the truth in which the historical world is grounded”
(Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 432; Nishida, 1987, p. 97). To “live by dying” (Nishida
Vol. 11, 1965, p. 420; Nishida, 1987, p. 87), to use Nishida’s words, is the supreme
mark of absolute freedom, that which can only be realized from an absolutely
contradictory identity, and not from the standpoint of object-logic. Nishida
adds:
This absolute religious freedom arises from a perspective that is diamet-

rically opposed to the prevailing concept of freedom in modern culture.
The latter is an abstract freedom, something merely Euclidean. In the
logical articulation of this absolute religious freedom, I am opposed to
Western mystical philosophy in that the true individual must be estab-
lished from the absolute’s own existential negation. Those who consider
my standpoint to be mystical are thinking from the standpoint of object
logic. (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 450; Nishida, 1987, pp. 111–112)
What Nishida is claiming here is that the object logic standpoint itself is the
very crisis or problem that needs to be transcended in modernity because it
only provides a freedom that is abstract, a freedom theorized from objective
rationality, instead of a freedom realized as absolutely contradictory. But if we
start from a standpoint that is absolute contradictory vis-à-vis an object-logic
standpoint, then we can realize (absolute) freedom in a more concrete way,
one that includes oppositions within themselves. This is why, as Nishida writes,
“even scientific cognition, the self’s abstract thinking, is grounded in this free-
dom [of religion qua absolutely contradictory]” (Nishida Vol. 11, 1965, p. 425;
Nishida, 1987, p. 91). In short, then, the crisis of modernity is not one of (tradi-
tional) religion vs. secularism, East vs. West, universal vs. particular, but how to
realize religion qua secular, the East qua West, the universal qua particular, or
the existential qua historical in self-awareness.
Nishitani, following Nishida’s critique of the philosophical foundations of
modernity, sees the problem of modern existence as one where the rejection of
religion gave way to an excess of scientific rationality,13 that which has created
the conditions for a mechanization of human life. What Nishitani specifically
calls “progressive atheism” (shinpotekina mushinron 進歩的な無神論), which
is this combination of materialism, scientific rationality, and the notion of lin-
ear progress dominating modern consciousness, has led subjectivity to treat
13 What Nishitani is mostly criticizing here is the scientization of the world (e.g., scientism).
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the natural world as if it is made up of dead, spiritless objects, ready to be sub-

jugated and controlled by technological rationality (Nishitani, 1961, pp. 61–62).
The modern subject therefore becomes “one-dimensional.” The telos of moder-
nity is to free the ego from the plight of nature by ensuring that the subject
maintains its distance from the object in order to continue its domination
of it. But the mechanization of the natural world disguises the real (existen-
tial) consequences underlying modernity because progressive atheism regards
itself as an unquestionable truth: the result of all of this is that subjectivity not
only fails to recognize the pyrrhic victory in the scientization of the world, that
mechanization ends up with subjectivity’s own self-domination, but also that
what is driving these impulses to control and dominate the natural world is
a nihilism that lies deep within historical consciousness. While nihilism is an
epistemological problem for Nishitani, derived from the split between subject
and object, the effects it has on human life are sociocultural (Nishitani, 1990,
pp. 1–5). Therefore, to overcome the crisis of human existence that culminates
in modernity involves an epistemological confrontation with nihilism, a con-
frontation that summons the help of Zen Buddhism.
For Nishitani, there is something fundamentally unique about Zen Bud-
dhism. Unlike Christianity, Buddhism is both a religion and a philosophy that
is fully equipped to look at nihilism as a form of relative nothingness that can
be directly negated within subjective awareness, all without having to give up
on the role of science and technology in the world. Christianity, on the other
hand, has historically struggled between faith and reason, which is why the
division we see between science and religion is still strong today. But more
importantly, Nishitani tells us that the nihilism underlying the crisis of mod-
ern existence cannot be understood independent of the history of Christian
thought. The idea of the free individual subject stems from the theology com-
manding a personal relationship with God, where each individual subject is
dependent upon the divine will for freedom (Van Bragt, 1992, p. 40). By virtue
of one’s personal faith with a God that is believed to be the ground of all exis-
tence, the individual subject either clings to God in its pursuit for freedom
or reacts and turns against God by searching for freedom within oneself as
a fully autonomous ego. Nonetheless, it is this very logical bifurcation that
rendered secularization a natural development following the death of God in
the West: or, to put it another way, within the very negation of religion—e.g.,
Christianity—is the birth of progressive atheism and its view of the natural
world as lifeless matter. But in either case, as Nishitani claims, subjectivity is
robbed from ever experiencing any real human freedom, because Christian-
ity only tends to do away with some sense of self-centeredness within a limited
domain while encouraging another form of self-centeredness from within one’s
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332 stromback
relationship with God (Nishitani, 1961, pp. 221–224, 229–232), but then the sec-
ularization (such as the various iterations of liberalism) of the world tends
to expand self-centeredness by maintaining and protecting the egoistic self
against the forces of the world. In the end, neither secularism nor Christianity
can go deep enough to eradicate the ego-centered self-awareness of modern
life. It is only Buddhism that can fully annihilate the self-centeredness of mod-
ern subjectivity and thus overcome the nihilism fueling progressive atheism
by bringing a new religious standpoint as the basis for the scientific world-
view.14
Unlike Nishida and Nishitani, who are more spiritual visionaries, Miki is
more of social reformer seeking to bring out the creative capacity of subjec-
tive awareness through the introduction of socio-economic projects within the
dialectics of history. But the role of self-awareness in the production of social
history is what ultimately divides Nishida, Nishitani, and Miki. Of course, all
unite on the view that the subject cannot be placed outside of the object in
the formulation of a logic of historical creativity, but it is Miki, more than
the others, who values the role of social, political, and economic institutions
within the dialectical formation. This is most visible in Miki’s Logic of Imagi-
nation (kōsōryoku no ronri 『構想力の論理』), where human activity is framed
as technical production ensued from a unity of logos and pathos within the
creative imagination. As alluded to earlier, Miki’s view of the creative imag-
ination is not a reference to mere conceptual activity as it is much deeper
than that: rather, it is the very source or power within the embodied sub-
ject that is responsible for the creation of historical forms. Human actions
are “technical” (gijutsuteki 技術的), according to Miki, which means that all
historical forms are created out of the formlessness within our imagination
(creation ex nihilo) but come to have meaning as the world in which we live.
As mentioned already, Miki calls the root of this creative force pathos, but
then the formless itself gets its form after it unifies with logos (Miki Vol. 8,
1978, p. 7; Miki Vol. 18, 1978, p. 340). On the whole, however, Miki’s view of
“technics” or “technology” as a logic of transformation is an attempt to sublate
Nishida’s view of social history, because it seeks to clarify how history moves
from one period to the next through the production of material forms. Miki
14 Nishitani states that a contemporary religion should not lie in resistance to science, but to
ground the vision of science within one’s spiritual existence—to bring forth both a true
conception of reality and a true cultivation of religiosity at the same time. On the surface,
these viewpoints look as if they conflict, but such do not in the end because each “partakes
of one side of the truth” since the “truth rather demands a single vision that can grasp both
sides simultaneously” (Nishitani, 2004, pp. 99–100).
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holds that humans have an internal relationship with the institutions (seido
制度) of social history (e.g., customs and traditions) by existing in dialectical
relationship with them, which is why in his view of the future historical world,
self-alienation is addressed by the dialectical unity of logos and pathos that
drives technical production toward what he calls a creative society (sōzōteki
shakai 創造的社会) (Miki Vol. 8, 1978, pp. 183–184; Miki Vol. 14, 1978, pp. 307–
317).
Miki’s notion of the human being is one where it makes and re-makes social
history in and for itself, but in order to direct the course of history and realize
itself in history, Miki maintains that the self must engage in self-transformation
through technical production toward an ideal end that is appropriate for that
historical time period. In terms of the crisis of modern life, however, Miki
looks to the practice of cooperatives because they dialectically sublate all of
the economic, cultural, and political forms that seek to resolve the problem
of alienation expressed in bureaucratization, class domination, and feudalis-
tic oppression (Miki Vol. 17, 1978, pp. 522–523). The cooperatives Miki envisions
also aim to expand to all of Asia in the struggle against Western colonialism—
although the assumption was that Japan would take the lead—and to create a
new world civilization that transcends the limitations of classical liberalism (or
what he calls “bourgeois liberalism”), communism, totalitarianism, and ethnic-
nationalism as articulated in the Eastern and Western imaginaries. In a vision
similar to Nishida’s concept of the global world, which calls for a unity of cul-
tural or ethnic particulars in mutual engagement within the world-historical
space, Miki’s cooperative regional bloc seeks to establish a world-stage of cul-
tural pluralism through the very act of resistance to Western imperialism, but
the system of cooperatives here transpires from an internal spirit, realized
in the feeling of a modern Gemeinshaft, a sentiment many critics would call
“latent fascism.”
How the collective body moves toward this creative society is a matter of a
mutual conditioning between the subjective experiences and the logos of social
history. In “A Marxist Form of Anthropology” (Ningengaku no marukusuteki
keitai 『人間学のマルクス的形態』) (1927), Miki re-interprets Marx’s infrastruc-
ture-structure-superstructure triad to one of basic experience, anthropology,
and ideology in the attempt to make explicit how anthropology and ideol-
ogy can fruitfully negotiate with basic experience—the pre-reflective or pre-
theoretical experience of everyday life (Miki Vol. 3, 1978, pp. 5–19). Unlike the
pre-conceptual, unmediated base of experience that illuminates the prior unity
between the subject and object found in Nishida’s junsui keiken (純粋経験),
Miki’s concept of basic experience is a discursively structured category that
illuminates what is prior to the unity of the subject and object expressed as
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334 stromback
a historical form. For Miki, each historical period has its own form of basic
experience, and for the modern period, this form is called “the proletarian
basic experience” (musanshateki kiso keiken 無産者的基礎経験). According
to Miki, anthropology is the initial self-reflection or self-interpretation of the
collective body arising out of basic experience, which allows self-awareness to
move beyond the pre-theoretical template of basic experience, whereas ide-
ology refers to the theoretical and philosophical categories, vocabulary, and
discourses that circulate the public sphere. But basic experience and ideology
cannot mutually condition one another without the mediation of anthropolog-
ical self-understanding (Miki Vol. 3, 1978, pp. 39–41), because ideology is just too
dominating of a system if it exists as a single guide for basic experience. Since
anthropology is the primary logos needed to regulate the structure of ideology
(Miki Vol. 3, 1978, pp. 8–10, 37, 119–120), the proletarian basic experience would
not be able to be influenced and incrementally guided by an ideal and then led
to discover its true creative nature without this initial process of negotiation
(Miki Vol. 3, 1978, p. 40).
The later Miki would eventually drop such explicit Marxist language and
begin to imagine a new configuration of social history from a different dialecti-
cal framework—where historical forms are created out of nothing and come to
have meaning through a dialectical unity of logos and pathos. But the guide for
this logic of historical creativity must be articulated in myth and function as an
anchoring point for a collective praxis with the aim to produce a fundamental
event in social history. In the first chapter of the Logic of Imagination Miki dis-
cusses how society creates a meaningful world in the form of mythologies and
how they can inspire and motivate action in and for history through its unity
of logos and pathos generated within the creative imagination. Of course, we
often think of myths as stories that are fake, but for Miki, “myths” refers to the
fictional creations of reality and as such possess the power to carve out a new
(symbolic) reality from the natural world. This is because “in the world of his-
tory, what is real is fictional and what is fictional is real” (Miki Vol. 8, 1978, p. 180).
In this regard, as Miki says, “society is a building of fictions” (Miki Vol. 8, 1978,
p. 179). Since myths are ideological forms, originating within the pathos of sub-
jectivity, they have a danger in terms of its political power if they are reduced
to fictional propaganda or empty slogans (Wirtz, 2019, p. 220). But if they are
continuously revived and renewed in the present, uniting the past and future
through a dialectical unity with logos, then they will have enough of a critical
edge to inspire and give birth to a revolutionary form of subjective awareness
relevant to social history. But whether or not such a dialectical unity is suffi-
cient to ward off the production of dangerous myths that end up in genocide
and war remains to be seen despite Miki drawing some distinctions between
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myths on one hand, and utopia and dogma on the other (what he calls “mere
ideology”), or between what he describes as “critical ideology” on one hand
and “bad ideology” (e.g., the commodification of consciousness or ideas) on
the other.15
While Nishida’s philosophical anthropology, and perhaps Nishitani’s as well,
can be said to be responding to Kant’s anthropology, interestingly enough, we
find a return to Kant in Miki’s Logic of Imagination in the very placement of
the notion of Einbildungskraft as the source for how reality is created.16 Here,
the Kyoto School has now come full circle: the tension that existed between
Kant and Nishida has now moved its location to the space between Miki and
Nishida by way of Kant. But the question now is whether the early Kyoto School
thinkers were ultimately successful in their attempts to formulate a philosoph-
ical anthropology that overcomes the Kantian dilemma? In the quest to answer
Was ist der Mensch?, Kant becomes fundamentally concerned with developing
an account of human self-understanding as it relates to its civilizing capac-
ity. To see ourselves as creators of our own nature is to complete the mission
of self-understanding and so to become truly civilized means learning to get
along as members of a community. The central dilemma here then is how to
move from a state of nature, where we are forced to live with each other as
unrefined beings, to a state of cosmopolitanism, where we rationally choose
for ourselves how to act as “citizens of the world” (Sweet, 2017, pp. 343–346).
For Kant, since this transition is mostly about cultivating good manners, his
anthropology is often viewed as ill-equipped to truly heighten global awareness
where all particulars (e.g., racial and ethnic) are fully respected and empow-
ered. Drawn from Rousseau’s account of the social contract as well as leading
anthropological race theories of the day, Kant would end up making racial-
izing remarks such as the white race possessing all the necessary motivating
forces and talents that would allow them to move to a state of social per-
fection (Chukwudi Eze, 1997, p. 117). Kant (2012) implies as such when he
writes:
We find nations that do not appear to have progressed in the perfection of

human nature, but have come to a standstill, while others, as in Europe,
are always progressing. If the Europeans had not discovered America, the
Americans [Indians] would have remained in their condition. […] China
15 For Miki, Marxism is one of these critical ideologies.

16 Miki does criticize Kant for developing an overly formal system of rationality.
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and Hindustan […] will not proceed further since it lacks spirit. […]
[while] the Negroes, however, are also no longer susceptible of any fur-
ther civilizing. (pp. 274–276)
But within the context of the early Kyoto School thinkers, who inherited their
narrative frame of self-understanding and cosmopolitanism constitutive of
philosophical anthropology from Kant, the transition is quite different: here, it
is mostly about cultivating self-awareness positioned towards creating a social
historical world expressive of a unity-in-diversity in a way that collapses the
dualities between the cultures and philosophies of East and West. For the early
Kyoto School philosophers, building this historical world of cultural plural-
ism cannot advance without the self-negation of the particulars themselves,
which means that in order to overcome the Kantian dilemma, a proper philo-
sophical anthropology would have to frame European rationality (à la Kant
and Hegel), as well as Eastern spirituality (e.g., Buddhism), as just standpoints
among many others in the historical world in order to bring forth a new global
paradigm of philosophical thought—what Nishida dubs “the world-of-worlds”
(sekaiteki sekai 世界的世界), or just “global world.” Any attempt to naturalize
a hierarchy of cultures is rejected on the basis that it objectifies a particular
standpoint. This is because elevating one’s own stance above the other vio-
lates the paradoxical logic structuring historical creativity by objectifying what
cannot be objectified while negating only the other (but not itself). There-
fore the early Kyoto School’s philosophical anthropology is about develop-
ing a space for each cultural particular or self-awareness to realize itself as a
non-substantive identity within the very circular unfolding of social history,
but with space leftover for others as well to creatively assert their own self-
awareness or particular standpoint with the aim of contributing to a new global
culture and to a new global world. From the standpoint of the early Kyoto
School, the philosophical anthropological paradigm itself, as formulated in the
West, can therefore be transformed by grounding historical reality within the
logic of basho because it makes possible the dialogical encounters between
Eastern and Western logics to function in the service of mutual transforma-
tion. At this point, the various standpoints of the West can become transformed
by Eastern cultures and logics, and vice versa, the East can become trans-
formed by Western cultures and logics. Therefore, an overcoming modernity
by means of philosophical anthropology is predicated on all regional tradi-
tions, including Japan, to transcend themselves by passing through the other so
that all particulars of the world can truly realize themselves as part of a global
world.
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5 Conclusion: The Intersection between East and West in the

Standpoint of Self-Awareness
The concept of self-awareness within the early Kyoto School philosophy is

tied up in the pursuit to overcome the dualities that are thought to underlie
Western intellectual history—particularly, Western modernity. In the case of
Nishida and Nishitani, Kant’s epistemology stood as an impediment for devel-
oping a philosophical anthropology that centralizes self-awareness because
of his insistence on maintaining the subject-object distinction, whereas for
Miki, the problem lies mostly in the challenge of how to engage the (West-
ern) materialist view of history without reducing self-awareness to the rela-
tions of material production. Nonetheless, the early Kyoto School’s pursuit
for a philosophical anthropology represents not only a series of tensions and
debates that were played out among each other, but also a struggle to chal-
lenge the dominance of Western thought on the structure and nature of self-
awareness and its relationship to social history. For the early Kyoto School
thinkers then, a philosophical anthropology that seeks to develop a stand-
point of self-awareness must be found at the intersection between East and
West, a standpoint that incorporates the cultural strengths of each within
itself.
How did these pursuits fare up historically? Did the early Kyoto School
philosophers manage to develop a philosophical anthropology that truly over-
comes modernity and its concomitant East-West binary? In the book The Dis-
course on the ‘Overcoming of Modernity’ 『〈近代の超克〉論：昭和思想史の
一視角』, Japanese Marxist Hiromatsu Wataru (廣松渉) launched a critique
against the Kyoto School by claiming that it failed to see modernity as a mere
historical stage characterizing the age of the capitalist system itself (which the
Kyoto School philosophers recognized themselves) (Hiromatsu, 1989, p. 240).
To truly overcome modernity, according to Hiromatsu, requires more of a sub-
lation of the system of capitalism rather than a renegotiation of the conceptual
origins of modernity (Hiromatsu, 1989, p. 242). In this regard, in a critique rem-
iniscent of Tosaka Jun, Hiromatsu maintains that the Kyoto School amounts
to a kind of bourgeois ideology, and its search for a philosophical anthropol-
ogy that overcomes the contradiction between idealism and materialism stops
short of its goal by virtue of its inability to escape the problem of humanism
and anthropocentrism (Hiromatsu, 1989, pp. 240–253). Since the subject-object
duality the Kyoto School wanted to resolve epistemologically can only be tran-
scended through an inter-subjective structure that articulates the essence of
humanity as a system of social relations, Hiromatsu claims that failing to make
this correction only really serves the reorganization of the state monopoly cap-
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338 stromback
italist system itself (Hiromatsu, 1989, pp. 240–243). While Hiromatsu confesses
that the ontological system of Marxism resonates with Buddhist conceptions
such as no-self (anātman), interdependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda),
and emptiness (śūnyatā), which reveals their shared ability to go beyond sub-
ject and substance, on the whole however, Buddhism does not eliminate the
anthropocentricism crystallized at the material base of the capitalist system
because it does not unmask and overcome the capitalist ideology of moder-
nity. Therefore, the ontological departure within Buddhism, and by extension,
the Kyoto School, points to the limits of their critique of the anthropocentrism
of the West, because their teachings are merely content with awakening sub-
jective consciousness to the truth of no-self and the impermanence of reality
(i.e., the present reality) within the de facto moral order instead of abolish-
ing the real social relations constituting the material basis of human existence
(Hiromatsu, 2010, pp. 227–228). The implication here is that it is only through
a Marxist approach to social history, which is inherently prescriptive in its pur-
suit of political-economic liberation, where there is a viable path to negotiating
the limits and problems of modernity—like anthropocentrism, for instance.
But is it really fair to suggest that the entire Kyoto School itself fails to have
some hand in addressing the limits of the capitalist system? And what about
Miki’s attempt to overcome the capitalist system through a system of cooper-
atives? It is true that Buddhism, as a de-historicized series of texts, is insuffi-
cient in terms of providing enough instructions on how to change the social-
economic world or situation at hand, but it is also true that Buddhism is not a
pure theoretical object as such—it is, rather, a series of texts and practices that
continuously absorbs, evolves, and responds to the social, cultural, and political
histories they encounter. In this regard, Buddhism is not inherently antithetical
to socialism and confronting the problem of capital,17 but can in fact support a
Marxist and Buddhist transformation of (inner and outer) reality at the same
time through its Mahāyāna ideal of the bodhisattva. The ultimate task towards
this end then is to interweave both (the interior subjective and the objective
material) without reducing its own fundamental principle to its contrastive
other (perhaps something along the likes of Miki’s philosophical anthropol-
ogy). Furthermore, it is also true that Miki’s anthropological humanism, which
draws on Marxist categories, does fail to fully clarify the problem of reification
17 This goes for all the ascetic traditions of India. While the “mindfulness” tradition found in
Western Buddhism can serve liberal notions of self-hood fitted for global capitalism, the
religious traditions from which they stem from are more fitted for resistance (Godrej,
2016, pp. 772–800). Also, for more on Buddhist socialist movements in Japan, see James
Mark Shields (2019, pp. 255–287).
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and thus overcome the ideology of modernity (Nakajima, 2011, pp. 118–119), but
on the other hand, it is also totally possible to re-interpret Miki’s hermeneutical
Marxism, and other Kyoto School thinkers for that matter, toward an uprooting
of the problem of reification upholding the global capitalist system.18 Perhaps
we will need to wait until the fourth generation Kyoto School philosophers
to make this happen, but until then, we should not discard the philosophical
anthropology envisioned by the early Kyoto School thinkers, even though their
attempts to overcome modernity remain incomplete.
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40(1), pp. 233–252.
Sweet, K. (2017) ‘What is Philosophical about Kant’s Anthropology?’, International
Journal of Philosophical Studies 25(3), pp. 336–347.
Townsend, S. (2007) Miki Kiyoshi, 1897–1945: Japan’s Itinerant Philosopher. Leiden:
Brill.
Wirtz, F. (2019) ‘Presentación: Miki Kiyoshi: Consciencia Histórica y Consciencia Mít-
ica.’ European Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 4, pp. 218–222.
Wirtz, F. (2023) ‘Miki and the Myth of Humanism.’ in Endres, T., Müller, R., Schnei-
der, D. (eds.) Kyoto in Davos: Intercultural Readings of the Cassirer-Heidegger Debate.
Leiden: Brill, pp. 503–481.
Van Bragt, J. (1992) ‘Nishitani the Prophet.’ The Eastern Buddhist, 25, pp. 28–50.
Yusa, M. (2019) ‘D.T. Suzuki and the ‘Logic of Sokuhi’ or the Logic of Prajñāpāramitā.’
in Kopf, G. Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer
Publications, pp. 589–616.
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part 3
German-Japanese Ramifications
of the Davos Debate
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12
The Davos Debate and Japanese Philosophy:
Welt-Schema and Einbildungskraft in Tanabe and
Miki
Tatsuya Higaki
Abstract
Not long after Cassirer and Heidegger’s Davos debate on the problem of the A and B edi-
tions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Tanabe Hajime and Miki Kiyoshi in Japan, react-
ing to the debate, proposed various interpretations of the notions of Einbildungskraft
and Schema. In this paper I take up these interpretations and show how the Kyoto
School, Japan’s school of modern philosophy, assimilated Lebensphilosophie, Neo-Kan-
tianism, and phenomenology, and had the potential to develop these currents of
thought in unique ways. As is well known, the debate between Heidegger and Cas-
sirer was centered on Kant’s shift in his view of the Einbildungskraft in the B edition
of the Critique of Pure Reason, which Heidegger had taken up in his Kant and the Prob-
lem of Metaphysics. Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, which laid emphasis on the
Einbildungskraft, along with the details of his debate with Cassirer, were immediately
communicated to Japan by Kuki Shūzō. Stimulated by this, Tanabe Hajime developed a
“logic of species,” a theory of Welt-Schema going beyond Heidegger’s Zeit-Schema; and
Miki Kiyoshi, in his incomplete book The Logic of the Einbildungskraft, likewise assim-
ilated Heidegger’s philosophy and linked it to his own theory of the Einbildungskraft.
Both thinkers developed unique philosophies under the influence of Heidegger, with
the Neo-Kantian Cassirer in their sight. These developments reveal that the Davos
debate between Heidegger and Cassirer had a certain impact even on some of the
philosophical currents in Asia, and at the same point to a possible line of further devel-
opment.
Keywords
Tanabe Hajime – Miki Kiyoshi – Einbildungskraft – Kritik der reinen Vernunft – Welt-
Schema – Logic of species – Kuki Shūzō – Logic of Einbildungskraft
© Tatsuya Higaki, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_014 - 978-90-04-68017-3

346 higaki
1 Introduction
The debate between Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Ernst Cassirer (1874–
1945) that took place at Davos, Switzerland in 1929, the main points of which
are excellently summarized by Tobias Endres and Michel Dalissier in their con-
tributions to the current volume, was a deeply interesting debate not only
from the standpoint of the Western philosophical world, but also from the per-
spective of Japanese philosophy, particularly the Kyoto School. In the debate,
which has been published as Appendix 4 in Heidegger’s Kant and the Prob-
lem of Metaphysics (1991), Cassirer agrees in part with Heidegger’s attaching
great significance to Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) concept of productive Ein-
bildungskraft in the Critique of Pure Reason (cf. Heidegger, 1991, p. 275). There is,
however, an unbridgeable gap between Cassirer, who, within the Neo-Kantian
framework based on the philosophy of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), empha-
sizes epistemological and scientific problems, and Heidegger, who is concerned
solely with developing an ontology through an analysis of “temporality” from
his reading of Kant. The two men seem to argue on different planes when deal-
ing with Heidegger’s question of “infinity” as the “absence of finitude,” and
the theme of “angst” that Heidegger discusses in his existential analytic (Hei-
degger, 1991, p. 285), both of which have been taken up by Tobias Endres. For
Cassirer, while humans cannot leap to infinity, they can reach infinity through
metabasis with the “function of form” (die Funktion der Form, Heidegger, 1991,
p. 286), whereas Heidegger is only interested in the analysis of Dasein, which
is an analytic of finitude, and he ends up interpreting Cassirer’s ideas in the
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in terms of his own metaphysical framework
of Dasein (Heidegger, 1991, p. 290). Cassirer is consistent in emphasizing the
significance of language and its symbolic forms, describing his own position
as one that “proceeds from the manifold of functional determinations and
meanings” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 294), and he also consistently praises Hermann
Cohen, who emphasized the framework of Kant’s transcendental philosophy.
It was inevitable that a debate between such two men would end in a stale-
mate.
This debate is also deeply interesting from the standpoint of Japanese phi-
losophy, particularly the Kyoto School. Here I want to consider this point,
which is also related to Odagiri Takushi’s article on Miki, Hans Peter Lieder-
bach’s article on Watsuji, and John Maraldo’s perspective on Japanese philoso-
phy.
It is clear that Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the founder of the Kyoto School,
was heavily influenced by Neo-Kantianism, especially Cohen, during the
middle period of his career. Nishida’s concept of “self-awareness” would have
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the davos debate and japanese philosophy 347
been impossible without Cohen’s philosophy of the differential. Again, there

are many passages in Kuki Shūzō’s (1888–1941) magnum opus, The Problem
of Contingency (1935), that were written under the influence of Neo-Kantian
thinkers like Wilhelm Windelband. These are points that should be kept in
mind.
But at the same time, Nishida and Kuki also sharply responded to and
engaged with the thought of their contemporary, Heidegger. After returning
to Japan from his long study in Europe, Kuki wrote an essay entitled “Bergson
and Heidegger” (1929). There, he describes Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant,
noting his emphasis of Kant’s theory of the Einbildungskraft and the A edition
of the Critique of Pure Reason, but also raises doubts about Heidegger’s ideas
and adopts a position similar to that of Tanabe, which we will discuss below
(see Kuki, 2016, especially pp. 99 and 104).1
While these connections that Nishida and Kuki have with Neo-Kantianism
and Heidegger are important, here I want to focus on the thought of two men
who were deeply influenced by Nishida: Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) and Miki
Kiyoshi (1897–1945).
Tanabe started his career in mathematical philosophy. He was invited to
Kyoto University by Nishida, but later criticized Nishida’s ideas about unmedi-
ated direct experience (“Nishida Sensei no Oshie wo Aogu” [西田先生の教
を仰ぐ, Seeking the Guidance of Prof. Nishida], 1930) and went on to develop
an original theory of negative mediation which he called the “philosophy of
species.” The most important idea in his philosophy is the schematism. Hei-
degger had extracted the theory of the Einbildungskraft and schematism from
Kant in the form of a movement from Zeit-Schema to Welt-Schema. Tanabe
highlighted this idea as a logic of mediation and developed it into an original
philosophy.
Miki Kiyoshi, in his magnum opus Kōsōryoku no Ronri (構想力の論理, The
Logic of the Einbildungskraft) (1939, 1948), examines Kant’s problem of the Ein-
bildungskraft in connection with various ideas, including those of Bergson and
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant is an important theme
in the fourth part of the book, which is entitled “Keiken” (経験, Experience)
and deals with the Einbildungskraft within the framework that connects the
Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of Judgment. Miki criticizes Heidegger
and places the issue of Form, conceived as a movement from form to form,
1 From a very early point in his career, Kuki had studied Bergson’s theory of time on the basis
of the latter’s interpretation of Einstein in Duration and Simultaneity, and summarized the
main points of Heidegger’s philosophy.
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348 higaki
at the basis of the theory of the Einbildungskraft, and further goes on to deal
with the various formative aspects of the Einbildungskraft such as mythology,
institutions, and technology. In this sense his discussion seems close to that of
Cassirer.
From the standpoint of Europe at the time, these developments in Japanese
philosophy were most likely viewed as only a variant of the reception of Euro-
pean thought in a remote part of Asia. But there is no doubt that these develop-
ments will also throw light on the Heidegger-Cassirer debate from a different
angle.
2 Tanabe Hajime and the Theory of Welt-Schema
While Tanabe came to Kyoto University as an assistant professor of Nishida,

his philosophy was very different from Nishida’s, being based on a logic of neg-
ative mediation which he called “shu no ronri” (種の論理, logic of species).
The key concept of Nishida’s philosophy was “pure experience,” and as this sug-
gests, he through and through pursued the immediacy of experience, absorbing
the ideas of James, Bergson, and the differential philosophy of Cohen along
the way, until he reached the notion of “absolute nothingness.” Tanabe, on the
other hand, in an essay entitled “Seeking the Guidance of Prof. Nishida,” criti-
cized Nishida’s idea of direct immediate experience as a mystical idea similar to
Plotinus’ theory of emanation, and focused on the reality of “species” as medi-
ation. It is true that in his late works Tanabe came closer to Nishida in one
respect, in that he developed a dialectic of “life and death.” Yet, it is the logic of
species that characterizes Tanabe’s philosophy as a whole, and there is no doubt
that his unique theory of sekai-zushiki (世界図式, Welt-Schema) is derived via
Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant. Again, Tanabe’s logic of species is heavily
influenced by his contemporary Bergson, and the problem of what Nishida
called the “continuum of discontinuities,” which has to do with continuity in
the philosophy of life, also occupies a significant place in Tanabe’s theory. How-
ever, Tanabe’s theory of Welt-Schema was worked out from his examination of
Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, and we can see its implicit resonances in
the Davos debate.
First, in “Shakai sonzai no ronri” (社会存在の論理, The Logic of Social Being)
(1934–1935, published in Tanabe, 2010), Tanabe examines his own notion of
“species” in light of the threefold distinction between genera, species, and indi-
viduals in both biology and logic, and from there he highlights the unique role
played by the mediating entity called “species.” In contrast to Nishida’s phi-
losophy of life, which contemplated the individual and whole in terms of a
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confrontation between the “I and Thou,” Tanabe’s philosophy introduces the

“third-person” moment of “Him/Her” and emphasizes the importance of this
mediating entity, claiming that both the individual and universal are depen-
dent on it:
In the determination of the direct living will, there is only a series of

relative unities of particular universals in which everything transitions
continuously. There is no individual other than the unity of the species,
and likewise, there is no genus qua absolute universal. 直接なる生命意志
の限定には、すべてが連続的に推移する特殊普遍の相対的なる統一の
系列があるだけで、種の統一以外に不可分の個も無く、また同様に絶対
的普遍としての類も無い。(Tanabe, 2010, pp. 129–130)
What is Tanabe’s concept of “species” modelled on? He emphasizes Kant’s she-

matism, which is closely related with the latter’s Einbildungskraft theory. In an
essay entitled “‘Shu no ronri’ to sekai-zushiki” (「種の論理」と世界図式, The
‘Logic of Species’ and Welt-Schema) (1935, published in Tanabe, 2010), he draws
on Kant as follows:
In the logic of absolute mediation, logic is mediated by its negation, i.e.,

intuition, and not only does logic involve the moment of intuition, but
intuition also involves the moment of logic. If we apply to this the con-
cepts of Kantian philosophy, we can say that logic becomes schematized
and intuition is made into the Einbildungskraft. The schema of the tran-
scendental Einbildungskraft mediates the categories of logic and the pure
forms of intuition. It is through the schema that the logic of absolute
mediation mediates the intuition and the self. Logic must necessary con-
tain the schematism. 絶対媒介の論理においては論理はその否定態たる
直観と媒介せられ、論理は直観の契機を含むと共に、直観もまた論理の
契機を含む。ここにカント哲学の概念を適用すれば、論理は図式化せら
れ、直観は構想化せられる、といってよい。先験的構想力の図式が論理
の範疇と直観の純粋形式とを媒介するのである。絶対媒介の論理も直観
に自己を媒介するのは図式においてする。論理は必然に図式論を含まな
ければならぬ。(Tanabe, 2010, p. 308)
In particular, I call this logic which establishes absolute mediation in tan-

dem with the Welt-Schema the “logic of species.” It can also be called the
logic of substances. 私はこのように世界図式論と相即して絶対媒介を成
立せしめる論理を、特に種の論理と名づける。それはまた基体の論理とい
うこともできる。(Tanabe, 2010, p. 330)
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350 higaki
Let us set aside Tanabe’s unique term Welt-Schema. For Tanabe, who empha-
sized the reality of mediate entities as opposed to the idea of immediacy and
thereby tried to establish a kind of rationalist philosophy (and is thus in a sense
close to Neo-Kantianism), species are the very mediate entities without which
neither individuals nor genera could exist. Therefore, species are “substances”
and yet bear only a negative relation with individuals and genera.
In depicting the species as a mediating entity, Tanabe draws on Kant’s
Einbildungskraft—which is a faculty that mediates between the sensibility and
understanding—and the schemata used by this faculty. In Kantian terms, if
the intuition possesses the forms of space and time (which are sensible and
individual) and the understanding possesses the logicality of the categories
(which leads to universals and genera), then the Einbildungskraft that bridges
the two becomes the key in Tanabe’s description of the mediating entity called
“species.” And what lies at its foundation is the schema. It is the schema that
enables Tanabe to depict his unique “dialectic” negation.
Of course, in his examination of the schema, Tanabe emphasizes to the
greatest extent Heidegger’s discussion in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.
Yet, can be seen in the fact that he places the Welt-Schema at the center of his
theory, the issue at stake here is not the concept of Einbildungskraft which Hei-
degger conceived as a theory of time. For Tanabe, the Einbildungskraft is merely
a Zeit-Schema. He makes his position vis-à-vis Heidegger quite clear:
Even if we were to make the establishment of a science of man the task of

a priori (transcendental) philosophy, as Heidegger does in his book on the
interpretation of Kant, and take up, as the major task of self-aware ontol-
ogy, the interpretation from this standpoint of the problem of the tran-
scendence of cognition on the basis of the temporal structure of human
existence, transcendence cannot be understood in terms of mere tempo-
rality. The ecstatic unity of time in the present may seem at first to sight
to establish transcendence, and the horizon of time may appear to enable
transcendence […] but the coexistence of the past and future within the
present is actually the spatial opportunity for time. ハイデッガーがその
カント解釈の書においてとる如く人間学の確立を先験的（超越論）哲学の
課題とし、その立場からの認識の超越性の問題を人間存在の時間的構
造に基き解釈することを、自覚存在論の主要課題として取上げるとしても、
単なる時間性に由って超越が理解せられるとは考えられない。時間の現
在における脱我的統一は一見超越性を成立せしめ、時間の地平が超越
を可能ならしめる如くに見えるけれども […] 現在における過去と未来との
共存は実は時間の空間的契機なのである。(Tanabe, 2010, p. 294)
Let us consider this point.
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3 The Confrontation between Tanabe and Heidegger (The Other

Davos Debate)
Tanabe’s position can be interpreted as follows. It is true that Tanabe com-

mends Heidegger for emphasizing Kant’s Einbildungskraft and schematism.
However, the reason Heidegger overemphasized the theory of the Einbildungs-
kraft in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason is because it consti-
tuted Heidegger’s concept of time or temporal horizon in an ecstatic way. Thus,
for Tanabe, Heidegger’s schema was merely a “Zeit-Schema” which he distin-
guished from his own Welt-Schema. This is expressed more clearly in an earlier
essay entitled “Zushiki ‘jikan’ kara zushiki ‘sekai’ e” (図式「時間」から図式「世界」
へ, From the Schema ‘Time’ to the Schema ‘World’) (1932, published in Tanabe,
1963, vol. 6):
However, not only does Heidegger’s ontology not make it its task to merely
concretize Kant’s theory of Zeit-Schema into a theory of Welt-Schema;
on the contrary, it clings to the theory of Zeit-Schema, and attempts to
develop this in a one-sided way even further than Kant. As a result, as
we have already mentioned, he fails to achieve his aim of establishing a
history of being; time only belongs to the structure of consciousness and
cannot possess a sense in which it belongs to the being of the world. 然る
にハイデッガーの存在論はただにカントの時間図式論を世界図式論にま
で具体化することを問題としないばかりでなく、却て飽くまで時間図式論を
固執し、カントよりも一層一面的に之を発展しようとするものである。その結
果企図する存在の歴史性確立の目的を果す能わず、時間は意識の構造
に属するのみで世界存在に属するという意味を有することが出来ないの
は既述の通りである。(Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6, p. 22)
Tanabe further considers the equivalence of time and space, and claims that
while he sufficiently understands Heidegger’s emphasis of temporality, it is
necessary that the conception of Welt-Schema contains an element of spatial-
ity. Tanabe’s theory of Welt-schema is thus depicted as follows:
For someone who conceives the schema of the Einbildungskraft not

merely as the formative criterion of the ideal species that mediate the
form of inner sense, time, but at the same time as a “world” qua forma-
tive principle of representations with real objective meaning, it must be
regarded as inevitable that a speculative reason which grounds the unifi-
cation of subject and object, which are opposed in a completely immedi-
ate way, lies at the basis of the Einbildungskraft’s synthesis, in accordance
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352 higaki
with the double character of representation. 構想力の図式を単に内官の

形式たる時間を媒介にする観念的形象の形成基準と解するのでなく、同
時に実在的なる客観の意味を有する表現の形成原理としての「世界」と解
する者にとっては、表現の二重性格に対応して、全く無媒介に対立する
主観客観の統一を根拠づける思弁的理性が構想力の総合に根底となる
ことは必然と考えられなければならぬ。(Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6, p. 37)
That is, something that mediates between the dynamic character of time and
the static character of space is necessary in the dynamic development of the
world. Tanabe expresses this as “Iwayuru eien no ima” (所謂永遠の今, the so-
called eternal now) (Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6, p. 38), which is Nishida’s terminology.
With only Heidegger’s privileging of time, we are unable to reach a situation
where a unification with the static character of space is necessary (the prob-
lem of inner and outer sense is related to Kant’s argument in the “Refutation
of Idealism,” and Tanabe tries to incorporate both. As I already pointed out in
note 7, this is also connected to Kuki’s critique of Heidegger’s theory of time).
Pursuing this idea, Tanabe draws the following conclusion about Heidegger’s
reading of Kant, which is from “‘Shu no ronri’ to sekai-zushiki” (1935):
Heidegger, however, who erected an ontology of temporal being, saw

Kant’s critique of reason as a precursor of his ontology and regarded the
schematism as the core of the critique […] But Kant’s own writings make
it quite clear that his critique of reason did not have as its sole motivation
[the erection of] an anthropological ontology, as Heidegger understood it;
rather, its main aim is without doubt epistemological. An ontology arises
only as a derivative by-product of the critique’s anthropological interpre-
tation. しかるに時間存在の存在論を建設したハイデッガーは、自らの見
地からカントの理性批判をかかる存在論の先蹤と看なし、図式論をもって
その中心をとなすものと解した […] しかし理性批判は氏の解するが如く人
間学的存在論を唯一の主動機とするものでないことは、カント自身の所説
の明かに示す所、それは疑もなく認識論を主たる目的とするのである。存
在論はむしろその人間学的解釈に由って副次的に成立するものであろ
う。(Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6, p. 319)
Tanabe then goes on to say: “Therefore, it is utterly inaccurate to claim, as Hei-

degger believes, that the schematism is an interpretation of the finitude of
human existence” (それ故図式論をハイデッガーの考える如く人間存在の
有限性を解釈したものとすることはとうてい当たらない) (Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6,
p. 319). This is an important passage. Later, while Tanabe writes that the A edi-
tion of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason does have a strong connection with the
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Einbildungskraft and temporality, he praises Kant for rewriting his book in the
B edition, saying: “in the second edition of the Critique of Reason, the exteri-
ority of time, which has become even more conspicuous, is integrated into the
schematism, and the Zeit-Schema is concretized into Welt-Schema” (『理性批判』
の第二版において一層顕著となれる空間の外在性が図式論に採り入れられ､
時間図式が世界図式にまで具体化〔された〕). Here, Tanabe separates the idea
of Welt-Schema, which is the foundation of his own theory of species, from Hei-
degger’s ontology of “Zeit-Schema,” and furthermore maintains some distance
from Heidegger’s reading which prioritizes the A edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason. Here, Tanabe explains his own theory of Welt-Schema, which, unlike
the Zeit-Schema, involves spatiality:
It need not be repeated here that the concreteness of the Welt-Schema

vis-à-vis the Zeit-Schema consists in the mediate character of the specific
substance, with which it is in a relation of spatial exteriority. The individ-
ual realities that are possible in the theory of Welt-Schema are therefore
not abstract persons as in existential philosophy, but are concrete ethical
beings that realize themselves in historical society as substance-subjects.
世界図式の時間図式に対する具体性が、その空間的外在の関係にある
種的基体の媒介性に存することは、今改めて繰返す必要はない。これに
由って世界図式論の立場に成立する個的実在が、実存哲学における如
き抽象的人格でなく、基体即主体として歴史社会に自己を実現する具体
的なる人倫的存在なることができるのである。(Tanabe, 1963, vol. 6, p. 321)
Going back to the Davos debate, there is certainly some affinity between Tan-
abe and Cassirer. Just like Cassirer, Tanabe gives credit to Heidegger’s percep-
tive interpretation of Kant. But for Tanabe, just as Cassirer worried, there is
something mystical in Heidegger’s leaning toward ontology (this is the same
thing that Tanabe saw in Nishida).
Tanabe’s Welt-Schema theory is only intended to capture society as well as
“species”—which will later become related to ethnic groups—in their medi-
ate reality. The reality of these species must be depicted in their “historical-
social” concreteness, and entities such as individuals and the state must also
be defined in terms of these concrete species. According to this picture, Hei-
degger, who interpreted the concept of the Einbildungskraft as a theory of time
in order to deepen his ontology, has abstracted away the spatial element req-
uisite for these realities. In this sense, while Tanabe emphasizes Heidegger’s
theory, he presents his Welt-Schema theory through a criticism of it.
Obviously, he introduces the element of space as something indispensable
(in this context he emphasizes the role of Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism”).
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354 higaki
That is, in contrast to Heidegger, who argued against the reduction of the Ein-
bildungskraft to the understanding in the B edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason, Tanabe clarifies his Welt-Schema theory by supporting the B edition,
which clearly connects the Einbildungskraft with the understanding. This is
most likely a consequence of the fact that, in contrast to Heidegger, who was
concerned with the problem of the foundation of ontology, Tanabe’s focus is
only on concrete historical spatiotemporal realities. There seems to be a strong
connection between this point and the fact that Cassirer was thoroughly con-
cerned with the formative element (Bildung). This is also probably related to
the fact that Tanabe began his career as a philosopher of science. Furthermore,
in a sense it seems that Tanabe sees Heidegger’s theory as overlapping with the
philosophy of the early and middle-period Nishida, who sought to deepen his
theory of pure experience, regarding both as a target of his critique. For Tanabe,
both Heidegger and Nishida needed to be criticized for being mystical.
It is also interesting that this response by Tanabe is related to the ques-
tion of infinity that Heidegger posed to Cassirer. While Heidegger draws his
ontology from the finitude of Dasein, Cassirer brings up the concept of the
“medium of form” (Medium der Form) along with the aforementioned “func-
tion of form” (“Funktion der Form,” Heidegger, 1991, p. 286). Tanabe would com-
pletely agree with Cassirer’s response. This is because while the Welt-Schema
theory is a dynamic coexistence of time and space, it is a “medium” and does
not lose its character of “form.” The interpretation of the Einbildungskraft as
a theory of spatiotemporal forms is connected with the philosophy of Miki,
who was through and through concerned with the movement “from form to
form.”
4 Miki Kiyoshi and the Einbildungskraft Theory
Miki Kiyoshi developed his philosophy under the strong influence of Nishida
Kitarō and wrote many works. It need hardly be said that his philosophical
magnum opus is the incomplete Kōsōryoku no Ronri. The entire book consists
of four chapters—“Shinwa” (神話, Mythology), “Seido” (制度, Institutions),
“Gijutsu” (技術, Technology), and “Keiken” (経験, Experience) (a further chap-
ter on “Gengo” (言語, Language) was also planned)—and while Miki’s theory of
the Einbildungskraft is clearly related to that Kant, his references to Kant mostly
occur in the second half of the last chapter (the first half deals mainly with
Hume). In the preceding chapters on “Mythology” and “Institutions” (this is the
part that was published in 1939), he frequently cites Lévy-Bruhl, Gabriel Tarde,
and Bergson, indicating that Miki’s Einbildungskraft theory has a broad context
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not restricted to Kant’s Einbildungskraft. Yet the fourth chapter on “Experience”

consists largely of references to Kant and Heidegger’s book on Kant, suggesting
that Miki was engaged in his own way with contemporary philosophical dis-
cussions.
It seems that Miki responded to the discussion of the Einbildungskraft and
schematism in two ways. The first is that he understood the Einbildungskraft
broadly as imagination, and emphasized the topics of mythology and insti-
tutions as manifestations of the imagination. He does not refer to Cassirer in
this context. His references to Cassirer have to do with Kant’s Einbildungskraft.
Nonetheless, the fact that Miki begins his discussion of Einbildungskraft by tak-
ing up the topic of mythology overlaps to a large extent with Cassirer’s stance.
This is because they both regard the Einbildungskraft as a locus of poesis that
is fundamental for humans, a faculty necessary for mythology and institutions
to arise.
But at the same time, in the following chapter on “Experience,” Miki goes
into a lengthy discussion of Hume and Kant. He emphasizes that Kant’s con-
cept of the Einbildungskraft derives from Baumgarten, but suggests that it is
related to a kind of ontological foundation. This is clear from the fact that he
highlights Kant’s definition of the Einbildungskraft as “a common but unknown
root” (einer gemeinschaftlichen, aber uns unbekannten Wurzel) from which the
sensibility and understanding spring (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 369), that is, “the
general root of our cognitive power” (die allgemeine Wurzel unserer Erkennt-
niskraft) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 370), and further connects this with Kant’s discus-
sion in the Anthropology. In a different way from Tanabe, Miki’s theory of the
Einbildungskraft and the schematism that lies at its foundation emphasizes the
connection with various concrete phenomena, and examines Kant’s concept of
the Einbildungskraft as the basis for developing an ontology.
In developing his far-ranging theory of the Einbildungskraft, Miki was from
the start strongly and self-consciously influenced by Nishida’s philosophy. This
can be seen in Miki’s illustration of the Einbildungskraft, mainly in the “Intro-
duction” of his book. There, Miki writes that his theory of the Einbildungskraft
takes its departure from the question, “how can the objective and the sub-
jective, the rational and the irrational, the intellectual and the emotional be
unified?” (観的なものと主観的なもの、合理的なものと非合理的なもの、知的
なものと感情的なものを如何にして結合し得るか) and describes this as the
“problem of the unification of logos and pathos” (ロゴスとパトスとの統一の問
題) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 4). The Einbildungskraft is regarded as that which con-
nects these two domains, and it also manifests itself in the problem of “kōi”
(行為, action), in particular “rekishiteki kōi” (歴史的行為, historic acts) (Miki,
1985, vol. 8, pp. 6–7). Noteworthy here is that when Miki discusses the Einbil-
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356 higaki
dungskraft, he is always concerned with the “logic of form.” This is related to

an ideal “eidology” (Eidologie), and he further connects this with morphology
(Morphologie) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 7). Not only can we discern in this an exten-
sion of Nishida’s philosophy of poesis, but Miki’s desire to go beyond Nishida is
also clear. This can be seen in the following passage, where Miki uses Nishida’s
term “kōi-teki chokkan” (行為的直観, acting intuition):
The logic of the Einbildungskraft stands on acting intuition and recog-

nizes a fundamental significance in intuition, which has been unduly
belittled in traditional philosophy. However, it is not a mere intuition-
ism […] the logic of the Einbildungskraft is not a mere logic of so-called
mediation. A logic of mediation is no more than a logic of reflection, and
cannot be a clear-cut logic of action. 構想力の論理は行為的直観の立
場に立ち、従来の哲学において不当に軽視されて来た直観に根源的な
意味を認めるであろう。けれどもそれは単なる直観主義であるのではな
い […] しかしながら構想力の論理は単にいわゆる媒介の論理であるので
はない。媒介の論理は、結局反省の論理に止まって、端的に行為の論理
であることができぬ。(Miki, 1985, vol. 8, pp. 8–9)
Here we can see that while Miki develops Nishida’s idea of acting intuition,
in contrast to Nishida, he places a stronger emphasis on the connection with
the intellect, and furthermore tries to keep his distance from Tanabe’s notion
of Welt-Schema as mediating entities, so as not to be pulled into the doctrine
of mediation. The result is none other than a logic of “transformation,” a logic
of poesis where forms are modified within historical reality (Miki, 1985, vol. 8,
p. 10). It is because according to Miki, the Einbildungskraft is not merely a bridge
between the sensibility and understanding, but is also part of the historical gen-
esis of forms, which are the result of the synthesis of the two faculties, that Miki
goes into a discussion of technology after dealing with a series of concrete phe-
nomena.
This is clearly indicated in the following passage from the chapter on “Tech-
nology”:
The fundamental concept in all technology is that of Form. Everything

brought about by technology has some form, as does technological activ-
ity itself […] it is because everything that has life can also be thought of
as having some form that nature too can be regarded as technological […]
thus, where there is form there is the activity of the Einbildungskraft, and
the logic of the Einbildungskraft is the logic of form. あらゆる技術にとって
一つの根本概念は形Formの概念である。技術によって作られたものはす
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べて形を有し、技術的活動そのものも形を具えている […] 自然も技術的

であると考へられるのは、すべて生命を有するものは形を有するところか
ら考へられるのである […] かように形の見られたるところに構想力の活動
が見られ、構想力の論理とは形の論理である。(Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 227)
For Miki, the Einbildungskraft is similar to acting intuition but is not intuition
itself; it is a mediating entity but he does not describe it as such (that is, he dis-
tances himself from both Nishida and Tanabe). It is always grasped within the
process of historical (or natural-historical) production, within the movement
of transformation. This overlaps with the stance of Cassirer, who was consis-
tently focused on the concept of Bild.
5 Kant and Heidegger in Miki’s Einbildungskraft Theory
As was mentioned above, in the latter half of the chapter on “Experience,” Miki
devotes many pages to an examination of Kant. He begins by explaining the
“raireki” (来歴, genealogy) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 324) of Kant’s Einbildungskraft
concept, namely, that it derives from Baumgarten, and traces how Kant’s Ein-
bildungskraft theory emerged through a reconstruction of this concept. As a
result, the logic of the Einbildungskraft, as it was uniquely formulated by Kant,
is summarized as follows: (1) the synthesis of perception in intuition, (2) the
synthesis of representation in the Einbildungskraft, and (3) the synthesis of
recognition in the concept. Kant further illustrates the relation this has with
temporality. The Einbildungskraft, which mediates between intuition and the
concept, is then regarded as being related to temporality, as it is the general
“root” of the two faculties.
Here, Miki takes up Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and
goes into a detailed examination of the differences between the A and B edi-
tions of the Critique of Pure Reason and Heidegger’s emphasis of the A edi-
tion:
As we have already mentioned, if pure perception can be regarded as cor-

responding to a present-formative Abbildung, and pure representation as
corresponding to a past-formative Nachbildung, then cannot pure recog-
nition be thought of as corresponding to a future-formative Vorbildung in
the sense of the Metaphysical Lectures? Heidegger indeed thought of it
as such, and described it as follows. 既に述べた如く、純粋覚知は現在形
成的な Abbildung に、純粋再生は過去形成的な Nachbildung に相当す
ると看做され得るとすれば、純粋再認は形而上学講義にいふ未来形成
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358 higaki
的な Vorbildung に相応すると考へられないであらうか。実際、例えばハ
イデッゲルはそのやうに考へ、そして次の如く説明したのである。(Miki,
1985, vol. 8, p. 355)
Miki then writes that Heidegger, from the standpoint of temporality, inter-
preted pure perception, pure representation, and pure recognition as “belong-
ing to the transcendental Einbildungskraft, and being none other than the
‘three modes’ pure synthesis, expressing the unity of the three elements of time,
i.e., present, past, and future” (先験的構想力に属し、その純粋総合の「三様態」
にほかならず、現在、過去、未来としての時間の三要素の統一を表してゐる)
and further writes:
The transcendental Einbildungskraft, being a pure formative power, is

time-formative, or in other words, it makes time manifest. This is the
internal essence of the pure, i.e., productive, Einbildungskraft; simply put,
the transcendental Einbildungskraft fundamental time. 先験的構想力は
純粋な形成的能力として時間形成的である、或ひは、時間を発現せし
める。これが純粋な、即ち生産的な先験的構想力の内的本質であり、一
言でいふと、先験的構想力は根源的時間であるといふことになる。(Miki,
1985, vol. 8, p. 356)
However, while Miki holds that Heidegger’s interpretation is important, he asks

whether according to his interpretation, the transcendental apperception, i.e.,
the Ich denke, “can coincide” (一致しうるであらうか) with time (Miki, 1985, vol. 8,
p. 357). The two should coincide according to Heidegger’s interpretation. But
Miki, again taking up the A and B editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, con-
cludes as follows against Heidegger’s claim:
The Einbildungskraft is given the status of mediator between the sensi-

bility and understanding […] We must say that it is the achievement of
Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant that it has in this way revealed the sig-
nificance of the Einbildungskraft. 構想力に対して感性と悟性との媒介者
としての地位が認められた […] かくの如き構想力の重要性を明かにし
たことはハイデッゲルのカント解釈の功績といはねばならぬ。(Miki, 1985,
vol. 8, p. 372)
However, affording such a fundamental role to the Einbildungskraft seems

to contradict the central role given to the apperception in many passages
in the Critique of Pure Reason […] this is not simply a problem of formal
“priority” between the apperception and Einbildungskraft, but an even
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more fundamental problem of “structure.” しかしながら右のやうに構想力

に根底的な地位を認めることは、純粋理性批判の多くの個所において統
覚に中心的な地位が与へられていることと矛盾しないであらうか […] それ
は統覚と構想力とに関する単に形式的な「優位」の問題でなく、一層本質
的な「構造」の問題である。 (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 372)
Here, Miki takes up the fact that “indeed, in the second edition [of the Critique
of Pure Reason], the status of the Einbildungskraft is greatly diminished, even
almost eliminated” (実際、第二版においては構想力の地位は著しく低められ
てをり、殆ど抹消されようとさへしている) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 373) and concludes
that
The problem I have posed to Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant can be

completely answered only by giving the apperception a different possi-
ble meaning and reconsidering its relation with the Einbildungskraft and
hence time. ハイデッゲルのカント解釈に対して提出しておいた問題は、
この統覚の他の可能な意味を見出し、それと構想力、従ってまた時間と
の関係を問題にすることによつて初めて完全に答へられ得るであろう。
(Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 378)
That is, while Miki accepts Heidegger’s reading to some extent, he argues that
the problem of the Einbildungskraft cannot be solved unless we also take into
account Kant’s intention in his rewriting of the Critique of Pure Reason in the B
edition. Miki’s stance seems fair in a sense.
Furthermore, this discussion takes place in the context of the “schema”
which was important for Tanabe. Miki writes that Kant’s schematism is “the
application of the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, to phe-
nomena” (純粋悟性概念或ひは範疇の現象への適用) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8,
p. 379), and has as its basis the idea of subsumption (Subsumtion). Miki further
argues that this subsumption is made possible by a “transcendental determina-
tion of time” (先験的な時間規定), a mediator that subsumes the phenomena
under the concepts of the understanding (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 379). Here he
brings out the concept of Schema-Zeit, describing it as “the product of the pro-
ductive Einbildungskraft” (生産的構想力の産物) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 380).
This can be thought of as a process in which Miki is assimilating Heidegger’s
theory in his own way and expanding it to include the schematism.
Miki further develops Kant’s schematism by associating it with the problem
of the Critique of Judgment. This is because the theme of “subsumption” is a
bridge that connects the Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment. And
in order to make the direction of his reading clear, he makes use of Cassirer’s
discussion:
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360 higaki
Kant’s three Critiques were indeed called the “Critique of Judgment.”

According to Cassirer, this is connected with what Baumgarten and his
disciples Meier and Tetens call the “logic of the Einbildungskraft” or “logic
of the imagination.” The critique of judgment or logic of the Einbildungs-
kraft that appeared in the first Critique as the schematism can be thought
of as having been deepened in the third Critique. カントの第三批判書は
実に「判断力批判」と称せられたのであるが、これはカッシレルによるとバ
ウムガルテン及びその弟子マイエル並びにテテンスなどのいふ「構想力
の論理」或いは「想像の論理」につながるものである。第一批判書におい
て図式論として現はれた判断力の批判乃至構想力の論理は第三批判
書において深化されたものと見ることもできるであらう。 (Miki, 1985, vol. 8,
p. 394)
This development of the schematism is linked, via Cassirer, with the idea in the
Critique of Judgment that “to the Einbildungskraft in art corresponds the tech-
nique of nature (die Technik der Natur)” (芸術における構想力に自然の技術die
Technik der Naturが対応させられる) (Miki, 1985, vol. 8, p. 395). Miki does not
simply relate the Einbildungskraft, the hidden “root” of our cognitive powers,
to temporality, but rather tries to explicate it in terms of the problem of aes-
thetic judgement, taking into account its unique Bild-power and its spatiality.
Noting that “as Kant said, the productive Einbildungskraft is a power of original
exhibition (exhibitio originaria)” (カントがいったやうに生産的構想力は根源的
表出exhibitio originariaの能力である), he links the Einbildungskraft broadly
with artistic aesthetic judgment, which leads to the problem of the expression
of the Idee.
Miki’s argument is quite clear. For Miki, who had originally placed mythol-
ogy, institutions, and technology within the scope of the Einbildungskraft the-
ory, Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant played an important role in that it con-
ceived of the Einbildungskraft as the general root of our cognitive powers. But
unlike Heidegger, Miki does not delve into the problem of temporality in search
of an ontological foundation. In this respect, he highlights the significance of
the B edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, integrating the Einbildungskraft
into the schematism and adapting more broadly to the various themes of the
Critique of Judgment.
Given that Miki devotes a chapter to mythology, one might expect him to
refer more frequently to Cassirer in The Logic of the Einbildungskraft. The only
place in the chapter 4 where Miki cites Cassirer by name is in the passage on the
schematism quoted above.2 But this is an important reference, in that here Miki
2 In addition to it, Miki cites Cassirer two times in this book, but that doesn’t concern the prob-
lem of the Einbildungskraft.
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relates the schema to a kind of aesthetic judgment, thereby expanding it to a

broader range of problems. Moreover, although it may not be his intention, con-
sidering that Miki develops the problem of the Einbildungskraft in the context
of concrete historical affairs, his approach overlaps with Tanabe’s development
of the Einbildungskraft theory into the theory of Welt-Schema, which also deals
with concrete historical-social phenomena.
However, Miki and Tanabe were in very different circumstances during the
last stages of the Second World War. As the Dean of the Kyoto University
Department of Letters, Tanabe sent his students to war and later wrote a book
entitled Philosophy as Metanoetics, living in seclusion in the mountains of
Gunma. Miki, on the other hand, was arrested under the Peace Preservation
Laws and died a tragic death in imprisonment after the war. The entirety of
The Logic of the Einbildungskraft was published posthumously.
6 Conclusion
What bearings do the ideas developed during the dawning period of Japanese
philosophy discussed so far have on the Davos debate between Cassirer and
Heidegger? This question can be examined from various standpoints. What
is noteworthy is that during the several decades following the Davos debate,
many philosophers of the Kyoto School paid tribute to some extent to Heideg-
ger’s interpretation in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, without, however,
following Heidegger into his ontology but rather trying to escape his power-
ful magnetism in their own unique ways. And what made this possible is the
fact that there was a strong strain of Neo-Kantian thought, presumably derived
from Nishida, in the basic framework of their philosophy.
Tanabe and Miki, as well as Kuki, who introduced these ideas in Japan early
on, all give some credit to Heidegger for his emphasis on the A edition of the
Critique of Pure Reason, but at the same time they hold that the B edition
should be given equal weight, further trying to develop the theme of the Ein-
bildungskraft in different ways. In the case of Tanabe, this was done by placing
the schematism as mediator at the core of the logic of species, in an effort to
extract the nature of concrete existential beings in historical-spatial reality. In
the case of Miki, this was done by placing the Einbildungskraft, broadly con-
ceived as encompassing mythology, institutions, and technology in general, in
the context of the schema, in order to depict it in connection with the Critique
of Judgment. Even in the absence of direct references, it is quite characteristic
of their theories that they both lean toward Cassirer as opposed to Heideg-
ger.
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362 higaki
It is true that these discussions are not directly related with the interpreta-
tion of the Davos debate. Nonetheless, it would be worthwhile to reconsider,
as part of the development of world philosophy, the significance of the fact
that the debate between Heidegger and Cassirer was discussed during the same
period far away in Japan in light of similar interests (such as mythology and
nature), and furthermore, that the Neo-Kantianism derived from Nishida main-
tained a certain influence over Japanese philosophers at the time.
Bibliography
Heidegger, Martin, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Frankfurt am Main: Vitto-
rio Klostermann 1991.
Kuki, Shūzō 九鬼周造 Jikanron Hoka Nihen 時間論他二編 (Philosophy of Time and
Two Other Essays), ed. Obama Yoshinobu 小浜善信, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書
店 2016.
Miki, Kiyoshi 三木清 Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū Dai 8 kan 三木清全集第8巻 (Collected Works
of Miki Kiyoshi, Vol. 8), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店 1985.
Tanabe, Hajime 田辺元Tanaba Hajime Zenshū Dai 6 kan 田辺元全集第6巻 (Complete
Works of Tanabe Hajime, Vol. 6), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō 筑摩書房 1963.
Tanabe, Hajime 田辺元 Shu no Ronri 種の論理 (The Logic of Species), ed. Fujita
Masayoshi 藤田正勝, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店 2010.
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13
From Despair to Authentic Existence: Kierkegaard’s
Anthropology of Despair in the Light of Nishitani’s
Thought
Sebastian Hüsch
Abstract
The discussion of the Davoser Disputationen centers on the famous Kantian question
“What is Man?” Both Cassirer and Heidegger try to approach this issue with regards to
Man’s relatedness to finitude and infinity. The discussion, however, remains remark-
ably abstract and distanced from the existential importance the question could imply
and which in particular Søren Kierkegaard confers to it with his radical claim that
being human is being in (conscious or unconscious) despair. The only way to over-
come despair is, according to Kierkegaard, to take into account both the finite and
the infinite dimension of being human. However, the solution Kierkegaard offers for
an existence free of despair remains unsatisfying if one holds, as does Ernst Tugend-
hat, that in today’s world, the attempt to find an answer to the challenge of exis-
tence by referring to a transcendent God fails to respond to the exigencies of intellec-
tual honesty (“intellektuelle Redlichkeit”; Tugendhat, 2004). The recourse to God was
already dismissed by Martin Heidegger in the phenomenology of Dasein he drafts
in Sein und Zeit. Although his attempt to disclose the structures of Dasein and the
development of a distinction between authentic and inauthentic being (eigentliches
and uneigentliches Dasein) recurs to a reflective structure that parallels Kierkegaard’s
anthropology, contrary to Kierkegaard, this structure is maintained within the frame-
work of a merely immanent concept. However, Heidegger’s attempt remains problem-
atic in that it leads to an “empty decisionism” (Habermas, 1985, 168). My paper will
suggest that the philosophical thought as developed by the Japanese philosopher Keiji
Nishitani might offer yet another solution. Thus, Nisihitani builds upon an anthropo-
logical premise that is somewhat comparable to that adopted by other philosophers
insofar as he attributes a pivotal role to despair. Nishitani differs from Kierkegaard,
however, in that his conception of despair can be overcome without depending neither
on a “leap of faith” nor on an empty decisionism, but on a particular type of transfor-
mative experience.
© Sebastian Hüsch, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_015 - 978-90-04-68017-3

364 hüsch
Keywords
Søren Kierkegaard – Keiji Nishitani – Ernst Tugendhat – Despair – Finitude – Infini-

tude – Transcendence
1 Introduction
The discussion of the Davoser Disputationen centers on the famous Kantian

question “What is Man?” Both Cassirer and Heidegger try to approach this issue
with regards to Man’s relatedness to finitude and infinity. The discussion, how-
ever, remains remarkably abstract and distanced from the existential impor-
tance the question could imply (and should contain?). The only—marginal—
exception is a short utterance in Heidegger’s intervention, where he addresses
the abyssal challenge that existence represents for human beings. Heidegger
brings this observation to the fore when asking Cassirer whether philosophy
has a responsibility to free man from anxiety or whether it is not rather phi-
losophy’s very essence to expose Man to it (Heidegger, 1973, pp. 274–296, here
p. 286). It is in the context of this existential issue that Heidegger also brings
into play the fundamental consciousness of Man’s very nothingness (Heideg-
ger, 1973, p. 291), but without developing it further. However, I would argue that
it is precisely this abyssal dimension of man’s existence, revealed when reflect-
ing on finitude and infinity, that is deserving of further investigation. Thus, in
order to focus on this existential dimension, I detach the question of finitude
and infinity from the Davos debate and consider it by taking both a step back in
the history of philosophy and a step out of the Western philosophical tradition.
More concretely, I will bring two thinkers into dialogue—Søren Kierkegaard
and Keiji Nishitani—both of whom stress the highest existential importance
of the question “What is man?” by situating it in the horizon of nothingness
and the existential feeling of despair. The timeliness of this undertaking will
be demonstrated with the help of recent reflections by Ernst Tugendhat on reli-
gion and mysticism.
In Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard links despair to the fundamental chal-
lenge with which man has to cope, which is the need to bring finiteness and
infinity—as the incommensurate dimensions of our humanity—into a synthe-
sis. However, the consciousness of the need to synthesize finiteness and infinity
emerges only in the instant in which man is held over the abyss of nothingness
and total annihilation. Only then can man realize himself as an authentic self.
For Kierkegaard, the possibility to realize one’s authentic self and thus expe-
rience one’s life as meaningful and fulfilling, remains dependent upon what
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from despair to authentic existence 365
he calls a “leap of faith.” Kierkegaard’s Christian credo quia absurdum, how-

ever, may seem somewhat problematic in the early 21st century, both for its
“occidento-centrism” and its dubitable metaphysic assumptions. It is at this
point, I will argue, based upon Ernst Tugendhat’s reflections on religion and
on what he calls “intellectual honesty” (see Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 48 ff.; 2010,
pp. 85ff.), that it is instructive to take a look at Nishitani’s philosophy. Nishitani
too sees in despair a key experience for realizing one’s authentic self. However,
given his Zen Buddhist background, he can ground his claim differently.1 I will
hence argue that, using contributions from these different thinkers, it is possi-
ble to arrive at an exacting conception of an authentic self based upon the idea
of existential crisis, but which is “intellectually honest” in the sense of Tugend-
hat2 and thus to be considered as relevant even in the present 21st century.
To develop my claim, I will first very briefly sketch the general lines of
Kierkegaard’s anthropology, before addressing Tugendhat’s concepts of “reli-
gion” and “mysticism” in the light of what he calls “intellectual honesty.” Tu-
gendhat’s reflections on the possibilities at our disposal to lead our lives in a
fulfilling yet intellectually “defendable” manner will help link the discussion to
Nishitani. In the final part of the paper I will develop the claim that it is possible,
based upon Keiji Nishitani’s thought, to develop an “intellectually honest” alter-
native to Kierkegaard, an alternative that is anchored in similar anthropological
assumptions but can unfold immanently as a particular type of transformative
experience and thus makes a timely contribution to the fundamental question
of “What is Man?”
2 S. Kierkegaard’s Anthropology of Despair
As said in the introduction, according to Kierkegaard, human existence is

unavoidably despair. The reason for this is the synthetical structure of the self,
1 That this is not an easy enterprise within the occidental framework of thought is well
illustrated by Martin Heidegger’s attempt to do so. Thus, Heidegger’s drawing upon the
Kierkegaardian thought structure by suggesting a disclosure of Dasein in its authenticity, as he
does in Being and Time or in the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, remains unsatisfying.
If Heidegger maintains his philosophy within immanence, the cutting off of the transcendent
anchorage leads to a peculiar emptiness of the claim of authenticity to a point that, according
to Jürgen Habermas, it ends up in “empty decisionism” (Habermas, 1985, p. 168).
2 However, I will have to leave unanswered the question as to whether the anthropological
model that attributes to despair a pivotal role for authentic self-conception can be univer-
salized beyond the horizon of Western and (Zen-)Buddhist philosophizing that is taken into
consideration here. I will content myself with the sketch of one non-Western answer to a
constellation that is not only Western.
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which necessitates the union of the incommensurable dimensions of infinity

and finiteness as the two elements of the synthesis. In the well-known opening
passage of Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard defines the self in the following
way:
The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self […]. Man is a syn-
thesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of
freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. (Kierkegaard, 1941, 9)
This definition is complemented by the momentous claim that the self cannot
have posited itself, but that the synthetic structure must be traced back to the
transcendent instance which is at the origin of this synthesis. Consequently,
becoming an authentic self means, according to Kierkegaard, to meet the chal-
lenge of integrating the paradoxical structure of the self by relating oneself to
God. To put it differently, one could say that becoming a self means linking one-
self to transcendence on the one hand and to immanence on the other. If we
now take a look at Kierkegaard’s definition of the state in which we are free of
despair, it becomes clear why, according to Kierkegaard, every human being is
always already in despair, be it conscious or not. Kierkegaard writes:
This then is the formula which describes the condition of the self when
despair is completely eradicated: by relating itself to its own self and by
willing to be itself the self is grounded transparently in the Power which
posited it. (Kierkegaard, 1941, 11)
The condition of the possibility to free oneself of despair is thus (1) to be con-
scious of one’s despair (2) to find the origin of despair; and (3) to overcome
despair by positing oneself as a synthesis between immanence and transcen-
dence. To become conscious of despair (1) is unavoidable for every human
being insofar as Man, according to Kierkegaard’s definition, is essentially spirit,
and as soon as spirit awakes, Man knows himself to be in despair. However (2), it
is possible (and even usual) that we try to free ourselves from despair by acting
on the symptoms rather than on the actual cause of our despair. We erroneously
hold certain difficulties, shortcomings, or life situations for responsible for our
despair without seeing that it comes from within us. Acting on these symp-
toms means thus simply repressing despair rather than genuinely overcoming
it. Thus, to authentically overcome despair, we have to seize its true origin,
which is to see that we usually are subject to a misconception of our self. Only
once we have gained lucidity of that state of affairs can we (3) comprehend that
we as spirit must posit our self as the synthesis of infinity and finitude in accor-
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dance with the way in which the transcendent God has posited us. In other
words, we have to cope with concrete reality, which implies accepting our own
finitude while simultaneously linking our self to the Eternal. Without this link-
ing of the self to the Eternal, despair cannot be overcome. Only by taking into
account both the finite and the infinite in us are we able to overcome despair
and to participate in divine plenitude and meaningfulness for which the self is
naturally longing.3 Thus, no human being can ever find their true self without
having been confronted with existential despair. Despair is the attunement that
represents the condition of possibility to access our true self. It leads to insight
into the incommensurability of the essential constituents of our self and into
the necessity to bring them to unity within the self by linking the latter to the
Divine.
However, if Kierkegaard’s analysis of the sources of despair and of the in-
evitability of despair as a key experience of existing provides a rather convinc-
ing anthropological model, it was my opening claim that it only does so up to
a point. That point is Kierkegaard’s claim that there is no way out of despair
beyond a—highly occidental—“leap of faith,” a claim that might be consid-
ered not particularly convincing for us in the 21st century for at least two rea-
sons: First, because of the eroded plausibility of Christian faith within Western
societies and, second, because universalist monotheistic religious claims are of
reduced plausibility in a globalized world in which a large majority of Mankind
is acculturated in non-Christian, and even, in large parts, non-theistic thought-
worlds.
At this point, I want to move on to the second part of my paper and consider
Ernst Tugendhat’s reflections on religion, mysticism, and intellectual honesty.
These will be useful in two ways. First, Tugendhat’s argumentation will legit-
3 See Kierkegaard, 1944, p. 171: “[N]othing finite, not the whole world, can satisfy the soul of a
man who feels need for the Eternal.” Heidegger draws upon this structure for his fundamental
distinction between “authenticity” and “inauthenticity” in Being and Time (see Heidegger,
2001, p. 236) and equally in the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (see Heidegger, 1955).
Yet, we have seen that for Kierkegaard, the relation to God as the transcendent third, which is
at the origin of the synthesis, is crucial. Thus, the question arises as to whether the claim for
authenticity based upon the experience of crisis can be maintained when the dimension of
transcendence is abandoned. In Being and Time, Heidegger tries to fill the void left due to the
immanentization of this structure by deriving our authentic possibilities from the anticipa-
tion of our own death. However, such different thinkers as Peter Sloterdijk and Richard Rorty
stress the arbitrariness of this derivation; and the claim of determination formulated in the
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics seems to confirm this criticism (see Sloterdijk, 1983,
pp. 376ff.; Rorty, 1989, pp. 183ff.). Here, we find a number of empty formulas of determina-
tion that can confirm Jürgen Habermas’ judgment that Heidegger has hardly more to offer
than mere decisionism (see Habermas, 1985, p. 168).
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imize the attempt to find answers to the challenge of despair beneath the tra-
ditional “solution” to seek refuge in the claim of a transcendent God for which
Kierkegaard opts. Second, it will help me to set up an argumentative horizon
that transcends a merely Western perspective and within which I will be able
to situate Nishitani’s philosophy.4
3 Religion and Intellectual Honesty
Tugendhat develops his reflections on religion and his call for intellectual hon-
esty in the context of the quest for finding possibilities to attain “peace of mind”
(“Seelenfrieden,” Tugendhat, 2016, p. xxv [7]). For him, such possibilities must
be compatible with the exigency of what he calls, following Nietzsche, “intellec-
tual honesty” (Tugendhat, 2016, p. 48).5 I will shortly sketch the train of thought
Tugendhat develops and which leads from the problem of “peace of mind” to
that of religion and intellectual honesty.
For the problem of finding peace of mind, Tugendhat stresses the fact that
we as human beings are unavoidably confronted with a paradoxical struc-
ture of the self which is oriented towards both immanence and transcen-
dence, an observation that thus structurally strongly resembles that made
by Kierkegaard. However, Tugendhat offers a very different explanation of
this phenomenon as compared to Kierkegaard, an explanation that avoids
any metaphysical claims or implications. He very boldly de-mystifies our ori-
entation towards transcendence by reducing it to a mere evolutionary phe-
nomenon. In fact, according to Tugendhat, the need for transcendence is a
simple side effect of distinctive characteristics of human language which allow
self-consciousness. Tugendhat in fact identifies the decisive particularity of
human beings to be their quality as “‘I’-sayers” (“Ich”-Sager, Tugendhat, 2016,
p. 3; 2004, p. 13). For Tugendhat, it is the possibility to say “I” that generates
the propositional character of language and allows reflexivity and thus self-
consciousness. According to Tugendhat, this propositional character of human
language contains an important evolutionary advantage: It lifts human beings
4 As Domenico Schneider pertinently remarked in the discussion of my paper, the comparison

between Kierkegaard and Nishitani would perfectly work within itself. However, I decided to
link it to Tugendhat’s reflections on religion and intellectual honesty because it seems to me
that it helps to orient the discussion with regards to today’s topicality of the issue.
5 Tugendhat takes up here an idea already developed by Friedrich Nietzsche to whom he
refers explicitly (2016, p. 61).
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out of the dependence on mere chemical triggers for behavior and allows us to
reflexively identify what is good for us, and moreover, to give reasons for what
we consider to be good for us (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 4). Thus, propositional
language also supposes the possibility of deliberation: The ‘I’-sayer can take
a decision based on reasons, thus rationally and autonomously (see Tugend-
hat, 2016, p. 3). This capacity contains a major implication: The ‘I’-sayer has the
ability to anticipate his/her future. However, this capacity reveals itself to be
a double-edged sword: While it enables us to prepare our future and thus to
better our chances for survival by adapting ourselves to a variety of external
situations, the possibility to anticipate the future brings into sight the end of
our future. It makes us aware of our own finitude.6
What is important to retain in the present context is that according to
Tugendhat, self-consciousness brings forth a double concern with regards to
the future: One that is oriented towards our wishes, desires, and needs in every-
day life, and another which is linked to the insight into our own finitude.7 He
expresses this idea in the following way:
On the one hand, humans become completely absorbed in their respec-

tive activities and individual worries. On the other hand, they are troubled
by the question about what they want on the whole [im ganzen], about
what matters to them in life. (Tugendhat, 2016, p. 76; 2004, p. 97)
This is a crucial point for Tugendhat. As we are aware of our finitude, we need
to find an answer to the question of how—meaning, according to which per-
spective, with which stance (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 74)—we want to live and
thus fill meaningfully the limited time that is at our disposal. In other words,
how might we integrate meaningfully into this perspective the consciousness
of contingency (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 76)?
Tugendhat sees the coping with contingency (Kontingenzbewältigung) to be
at the origin of religion (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 98; 2004, p. 121).8 Religion is a
6 See Tugendhat, 2016, p. 77: “Why is finitude a problem for human beings? […] Human ego-
centricity […] implies care for the future: I-sayers want to cling to what they have, and so
the fear of transience and the appreciation of permanence arise. However, they also fear an
empty future, and so the torment of boredom and the need for change, which is the opposite
of permanence, are born. In all things, they wish the future to be just the way they want it to
be, and so—in the face of the impermanence and contingency of things—they experience
their own impotence.”
7 These two orientations reflect the idea of a synthesis of immanence and transcendence in
Kierkegaard.
8 The concept of Kontingenzbewältigung is developed more explicitly in Luhmann, 1990. For
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370 hüsch
means that allows for the decentering of oneself and enables us thus to take
a broader perspective in which our individual worries are relativized and in
which we relativize our own importance (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 26). Accord-
ing to Tugendhat, religion gives us a reference point that transcends our world
and allows us to organize the totality of our experiences and the totality of the
phenomena around this reference point.9 Within the context of these reflec-
tions, Tugendhat also explicitly invokes the notion of transcendence.10
If Tugendhat, like Kierkegaard, sees in perspectives of transcendence an
existential necessity with regards to the possibility to attain “peace of mind,”
his call for “intellectual honesty” means dismissing religion as an option.11
For Tugendhat, “intellectual honesty” is a stance or attitude which requires
us to resolve the frequent tension between the maintaining of understand-
able motives of self-delusion and the motive to clarify one’s own situation
by opting for the latter at the expense of the former (see Tugendhat, 2010,
p. 91).12 According to Tugendhat, religion is an understandable orientation as it
responds to our need to come to terms with contingency and to find mean-
a critical evaluation of the interpretation of religion as mere Kontingenzbewältigung, see

Rentsch, 2005.
9 Tugendhat illustrates the essence of this thought with the help of a double example—
one referring to religion, one to mysticism: A religious Jew, for example, would get beyond
the egocentric perspective by interpreting the totality of the phenomena and experiences
with regards to God, a Buddhist with regards to universal emptiness. God and universal
emptiness become thus respectively the new fixed points around which are organized
and interpreted the multitude of phenomena and events the individual perceives. See
Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 98ff.
10 See Tugendhat, 2016, p. 90 where he states that of such reference points “one can say
that they are ‘transcendent’ in one way or another, that they are ‘not of this world’.” If
he puts “transcendent” in quotation marks, he insists, on the other hand, that this refer-
ence point implied by contemplation and decentering, must imperatively be a reference
point transcending our world. According to Tugendhat, the decentering and the “collect-
ing” (“sich sammeln”; Tugendhat, 2016, p. 91; 2004, p. 113) he holds for most important
has to take a transcendent reference point. He uses Kierkegaard as a witness for the impos-
sibility to “collect” around another person or other persons (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 90).
As for the possibility to gather oneself around oneself (what he thinks Heidegger is sug-
gesting), this seems incoherent to Tugendhat (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 91).
11 When dismissing religion as a possibility, he stresses that he speaks out of a first-person-
perspective. However, I would argue that his argument transcends this first-person-per-
spective (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 92).
12 I take this definition from Anthropologie statt Metaphysik rather than from Egocentricity
and Mysticism as it stresses clearly the orientation of “intellectual honesty” whereas in the
latter, he focuses more on the motivational aspect: It is a stance of constant interrogation
of one’s own opinions and convictions with regards to their legitimacy (see Tugendhat,
2016, p. 61).
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ing in our existence. However, this is precisely the reason why it would be
dishonest to believe in God. Tugendhat’s argumentation goes as follows: We
have to acknowledge that there is not and cannot be any evidence either for
or against the existence of God. But if we understand that the only argument
for the existence of God is our felt need to believe in God, this is in fact—
from the perspective of intellectual honesty—the decisive argument against
the belief in God (see Tugendhat, 2010, p. 193).13 This is in fact the exact oppo-
site of Kierkegaard’s position. For Kierkegaard the “leap of faith” relies essen-
tially on the claim that for us God is an existential necessity (see Hüsch, 2016,
pp. 64f.).
However, if Tugendhat dismisses the claim of a transcendent God, he does
not dismiss all forms of religiosity. Instead, he introduces a distinction between
religion “in the broad sense” and religion “in the narrow sense.” His dismissal
only applies to religion “in the narrow sense,” which he understands—rather
narrowly indeed—in the sense of the traditional monotheistic religions with
their anthropocentric and anthropomorphic conception of God as a “superhu-
man personal entit[y]” (Tugendhat, 2016, p. 93). If Tugendhat rejects this kind
of religion “in the narrow sense,” he holds certain forms of religion “in a broad
sense” as still possible, and he refers to these forms by using the notion of mys-
ticism (Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 89ff.).14 Tugendhat understands “mysticism” as an
attitude or stance favoring self-transformation through self-relativization and
decentering and which does not require transcendent anchorage in the tradi-
tional Christian sense (see Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 92 ff.).15 It implies, however,
a kind of horizontal transcendence, but it is rationally accessible and can be
made transparent by giving reasons.16 My following reflections will—partly—
13 See also his more detailed argumentation in the footnote on pp. 112 f. in Tugendhat
(2010), here p. 113: “From the perspective of intellectual honesty one has to argue: if nei-
ther p nor non-p are founded theoretically, but one of these possibilities corresponds to
my wish (or need), the only reason why I opt for it would be my wish: It would thus be my
wishful thinking that would determine my world view; and that is why I must opt for the
other position.” (my translation; S.H.).
14 If Tugendhat’s sketch of Christian faith in the context of his conceptualization of religion
“in the narrow sense” can seem somewhat simplistic, when he recuses the possibility of
believing in God as a being that resides above the clouds (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 100),
he gives a more nuanced account of Christian religiosity later on where he explains that
for example the faith of Meister Eckhart is closer to his definition of mysticism than to
that of religiosity in the narrow sense (Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 115 f.).
15 According to Tugendhat, the decentering frees from egocentric volitions and thus
changes fundamentally our stance relative to the surrounding world (see Tugendhat, 2016,
p. 99 [122]).
16 It is thus rather unsurprising that in his reflections on different kinds of mysticism he
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372 hüsch
go in the direction of Tugendhat’s reflections, whose “intellectually honest”

proposal for attaining peace of mind suggests and implies the overcoming of
merely occidental perspectives.17
More concretely, I will argue that, building on Keiji Nishitani’s philosophy, it
seems possible to conceive of the idea of an authentic way of existing that over-
comes despair. The main gain with regards to Kierkegaard is that Nishitani’s
authentic self is placed beneath the irrationalistic “leap of faith” Kierkegaard
holds to be inescapable and essential, all the while conserving the crucial dou-
ble relatedness to immanence and transcendence.
4 Keiji Nishitani: The Authentic Self as Non-Self
If I suggest to take a look at Nishitani’s philosophy, this is, as indicated, because

he, too, attributes a pivotal role to despair and the experience of existential
crisis in the becoming of an authentic self; on the other hand, in its essential
structural aspects, Nishitani’s conception of the authentic self remains compat-
ible with Tugendhat’s exigency of intellectual honesty. As is characteristic for
the thought tradition of the Kyoto School more generally, Nishitani confronts
the self with the abyss of human existence. Emanuel Seitz stresses this crucial
aspect of the philosophizing of the Kyoto School emphatically, drawing a paral-
lel between the concept of “great doubt,” which is linked to this ground-shaking
experience, and Heidegger’s concept of “Angst.”18 I would argue that the “great
doubt” is even closer to Kierkegaard’s despair, as there is a striking analogy
favors those which have no or only very slight metaphysical premises or implications.
Thus, he manifests a clear affinity to Taoist mysticism which, as he reads it, is entirely
free of metaphysical assumptions (see Tugendhat, 2016, pp. 107 ff.).
17 It will only be partly for two reasons: First, because I do not share his reading of Buddhism
as metaphysical (see Tugendhat, 2016, p. 106). His is probably an appropriate view if
one focuses on Indian or South-Asian forms of Buddhism, but it is not appropriate for an
understanding of Ch’an/Zen Buddhism. The second reason is that I think that his claim
for transparency is problematic (see on this issue my concluding remarks). Let me add
that Tugendhat does not place himself in a perspective of intercultural philosophizing.
He actually draws upon Taoist and other Eastern sources in the same way he uses Western
philosophical thought. This can be considered either as a shortcoming or as a strength of
his argumentation.
18 E. Seitz, ‘Hineingehalten in das Nichts,’ p. 509 in this volume: “Im Zen-Buddhismus ist es
nicht die Angst, sondern der ‘Große Zweifel’, der mit dem Nichts in Verbindung steht. Auch
dort gibt es keine Ausflüchte, keine Rettung, kein faules Sich-weg-Stehlen in ewige Ideale
oder womöglich noch in ein ewiges Leben, das die Menschen niemals richtig sterben lässt.
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in the distinction Kierkegaard makes between the etymologically connected

concepts of doubt and despair (Tivele/Vertivele in Danish, Zweifel and Verzwei-
flung in German) and the distinction between “doubt” and “great doubt” we
find in Nishitani. Thus, Nishitani explicates “doubt” to be merely intellectual,
whereas the “great doubt” goes beyond reasoning and calls the entire self into
question. In his study Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani himself explicitly
links the great doubt to despair:
Despair is the truly real Form of existence: it makes its presence felt as
something that allows for no skepsis. Whereas skepsis is a matter for
the dimension of reason, despair belongs to the dimension of transcen-
dence. It is the Form that existence itself assumes in the nihility that has
opened up. This is the same sense in which we spoke earlier of the “self-
presentation of the Great Doubt,” the “doubt without doubt” that emerges
as human existence itself on the dimension of transcendence. (Nishitani,
1982, p. 176)19
Nishitani thus very similarly stresses the decisive role of despair for the discov-
ery of one’s true self, saying, as seen above, that being in despair is the “truly real
Form of existence” (Nishitani, 1982, p. 176). The starting point thus seems to me
very close to the anthropological constellation we find in Kierkegaard. How-
ever, Nishitani’s Zen Buddhist background allows him to sketch a fundamen-
tally different path out of despair as compared to Kierkegaard. As said earlier,
according to Kierkegaard, the only valid way out of despair is to link one’s own
Die Todesmeditationen vergegenwärtigen den Abgrund der Endlichkeit, der Angst macht
und verzweifeln lässt.”
19 See also Suzuki who insists on the difference between the overcoming of a problem that
is purely intellectual and the problem of existing: “La solution d’un problème de math-
ématiques résout le problème et ne va pas plus loin; elle n’affecte pas l’ensemble de la
vie du chercheur. Il en est de même des autres questions particulières, pratiques ou sci-
entifiques ; elles n’atteignent pas la note fondamentale de la vie de l’individu” (1972, p. 271;
italics mine). See in the same sense Nishimura, 2008, p. 77: “In Rinzai Zen Buddhism the
central concern to which a person is led is the realization of his true self […] within his
lifetime. The lifelong task is called ‘a long path of self-inquiry’ […]. And this life-long reli-
gious procedure starts with a person’s great doubt, as Hakuin puts it, over an inconsistency
in human existence. / This great doubt, therefore, is not the same sort of conscious doubt
which Descartes used as a method to establish the existence of the I as opposed to the
existence of the world of physical things. The content of the great doubt is, in fact, noth-
ing but the despair which people meet in their lives and by which they lose the meaning
of their lives.”
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374 hüsch
existence to a transcendent God (see Kierkegaard, 1941, p. 11). Any other pos-
sible attempt to posit the self will inevitably end in conscious or unconscious
despair.20
Nishitani has no need for such an extremely strong metaphysical claim.
Yet, we find an important parallel with Kierkegaard in that the overcoming of
despair is also intimately linked to the need for a fundamental reconstitution
or reconstruction of the self. In the Buddhist tradition, Nishitani claims that,
to genuinely surmount despair, we must first and foremost overcome the com-
mon delusion of ourselves as a self in the sense of an autonomous entity, or, as
Nishitani says, the self as an Ego (see Nishitani, 1982, p. 175). We are generally
attached to this “subjective, ‘egoistic’ mode of being” (Nishitani, 1982, p. 175).
However, this is not our true self. Instead, in despair we are confronted with
the limitations of this habitual but erroneous self-conception (see Nishitani,
1982, 176) and, at least as important, with the possibility to transcend it in order
to become authentically ourselves. To grasp the true, the authentic self that
becomes part of the horizon of our possibilities in despair, Nishitani uses the
paradoxical formula of the “self that is not a self” (Nishitani, 1982, p. 183).21
The authentic self is non-self because it is grounded in absolute emptiness
[sunyata], that is in the essential emptiness of all things and of the self. It has
reality not as a substance but in causal dependence on all other phenomena in
their “interdependent origination” (Nishitani, 2006, p. 13): As the self belongs
to the phenomenal world,22 it is in fact nothing in the sense that it has no
essence of its own and is what it is only in and through its relatedness to other
20 Be it the aestheticist’s stance as it is exposed in Either/Or, or be it spiritlessness as the

key feature of bourgeois existence as ironized upon in Sickness unto Death or The Con-
cept of Anxiety. If Kierkegaard abstains from any attempt to assert an epistemological or
metaphysical necessity of the existence of God and only claims that God is existentially
necessary, that is, from the position of the existing individual, it nevertheless remains true
that God serves as the ultimate reference point towards which all possible existences in
Kierkegaard are oriented, be it positively—as for the knight of faith—or negatively—as
for the Demonic.
21 Nishtani explains: “The self-conscious, self-centered self which we usually take for the
self—namely, the ‘ego’—is not grounded in itself. […] The essence of the ego is not of the
ego” (1982, p. 183).
22 Let me highlight here that for Zen Buddhism, there is only the phenomenal world. The
distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, which is based upon the dis-
tinction between subject and object belongs to a perspective of delusion. See Nishitani,
1982, pp. 119ff. See also Giles, 2008, p. 98: “But this distinction between the transcen-
dental and the phenomenal—that which presents itself to experience—has no place in
Buddhist thought. In Buddhist thought there is no such thing as transcendence. There is
only our senses and their objects.”
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phenomena. All phenomena have in common that they emerge from absolute
emptiness [sunyata] and that they have no essence and thus no independent
being.23 The idea of the self as an autonomous entity relies on the same delu-
sion as the belief in the reality of the phenomena in the world as substantial.24
Instead, everything emerges from absolute emptiness and returns into absolute
emptiness. To conceive of the self as non-self thus does not mean that there is
no identifiable personality with its specific character, but rather it refers to the
understanding of the self as emerging from absolute emptiness.25 In realizing
the self as non-self, we give up our inauthentic self—the self conceived of as
ego—to embrace our authentic self—which is the self as non-self. With some
allusion to Heideggerian language, Nishitani writes: “This self that is not a self,
the self emerging into its nature from out of non-geo, is the truly original self ”
(Nishitani, 1982, p. 257).26
23 See Yamashita, 2008, pp. 53–70, here 69: “By meditating on shῡnyatā (emptiness) one
recognizes that all is empty and has no substance.” However, he adds, “when this is real-
ized, the aspects of reality are truly received again as something irreplaceable.”
24 See Giles, 2008, p. 90: “[O]ur suffering stems not so much from the nature of existence as
from a false perception of existence. That is, it stems from delusion. This delusional aware-
ness then leads us to form attachments to non-existent or misconstrued objects, including
the idea of an unchanging self, and ties us into a cycle of suffering when the world does not
fit with our misperceptions and attachments. The way out of this cycle is to see through
one’s delusions and thus break these attachments.”
25 The term ‘understand’ is not fully appropriate in this context as it implies that we can get
hold of the self as non-self intellectually, which is not the case. It is important to stress
however, responding to the very pertinent interrogation by Fernando Wirtz in the discus-
sion of my paper, that the role of individuality is nonetheless very different in Kierkegaard
and Nishitani. I thus do not want to suggest that Nishitani holds a position similar to
Kierkegaard’s with regards to individuality, but rather make clear that a certain kind of
individuality is important also in the Zen Buddhist approach. This becomes visible in the
Zen teaching which is adjusted to each disciple in a way that is, as far as I see it, not dissim-
ilar to Kierkegaard’s “indirect communication” (I tried to develop these parallels recently
in another paper. See Hüsch, 2021). However, there is no “personal” relationship with
regards to nothingness unlike the personal relationship of the individual with regards to
God in Kierkegaard. And even if Kierkegaard’s concept does not imply any essentiality of
the self, it implies the idea of the self being “posited” by a transcendent instance (i.e. God).
See Kierkegaard, 1941, p. 11.
26 Tobias Endres objected in our discussions of Nishitani’s concept that his talking about a
truly original self sounds strongly metaphysical. I would indeed agree on this point but
argue that the problem is situated in Nishitani’s choice of a metaphysically connotated
vocabulary rather than in the conceptualization itself. As far as I understand Nishitani,
there is no metaphysical claim behind the understanding of the self as non-self. The key
idea seems to be the transformation of the “aperture” of the self, to use a Heideggerian
concept.
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376 hüsch
If it is thus clear that to understand one’s self as non-self requires a funda-

mental transformation of self-conception, it still has to be clarified why this
new, authentic self is free of despair, as being lucid about oneself does not nec-
essarily imply being at peace with oneself and thus free of despair.27 The reason
why the conception of the self as non-self can overcome despair is that despair
is linked to the attachment to the erroneous conception of the self and of the
phenomenal world, a conception that is based upon substantiality. A vision
based upon the substantiality of things will always be in conflict with reality.
Despair is grounded in the desperate attempt to get hold of something one
can never get hold of. The Zen Buddhist experience helps the individual to see
its self and the phenomenal world as they really are—that is, as nothing sub-
stantial. A vision on reality transformed according to the insight into the sub-
stancelessness of all phenomena allows detachment, and without attachment
despair disappears. The awakening (satori) to the authentic self is a transforma-
tive experience in which reality takes on a fundamentally new aspect. Daisetz
Suzuki puts it as follows: “Zen helps to acquire a new point of view, from which
life obtains a new aspect, fresher, deeper, more satisfying” (Suzuki, 1972, p. 269,
my translation).28
However, it is crucial to stress that the acquisition of this new point of view
does not mean to posit a transcendent, more real reality (in the sense of the
Nietzschean “back world”) but the transcendence at stake is to be understood
as a mere rectification of our vision of reality. This becomes clear in Nishi-
tani’s reference to Dōgen who emphasizes that nirvana is nothing beyond
our immanent world but it is the world of samsara rightly perceived, that is,
free of delusion and attachment (see Giles, 2008, p. 98).29 What we need to
understand, according to Dōgen, is that “the realization of things as they are
27 Albert Camus for instance claims that “[s]eeking what is true is not seeking what is desir-
able” (Camus, 1991, p. 41), implying thus that it is perfectly conceivable that being clear
about oneself could go hand in hand with the insight into the hopelessness of one’s situ-
ation. And on the other hand, Tugendhat suggests that religion (in the narrow sense) can
be a beneficial delusion with regards to peace of mind.
28 “[Le Zen] nous assure l’acquisition d’un nouveau point de vue, d’où la vie prendra un
aspect plus frais, plus profond et plus satisfaisant.” However, this transformation is not
‘easy going’, but requires hard work and implies the total destruction of the former, unfree
self, as Suzuki stresses in what directly follows: “Mais, bien entendu, cette acquisition est
en réalité le plus grand cataclysme mental qu’on puisse traverser dans la vie. Ce n’est pas
une tâche facile, c’est une sorte de baptême de feu et il faut passer au travers de tempêtes,
tremblements de terre, écroulements de montagnes, éclatements de rochers.”
29 “But this distinction between the transcendental and the phenomenal—that which
presents itself to experience—has no place in Buddhist thought. In Buddhist thought,
there is no such thing as transcendence. There is only our senses and their objects. There
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is enlightenment” (Giles, 2008, p. 98). In other words, in enlightenment, real-

ity undergoes a total metamorphosis and yet remains in a sense perfectly the
same.
5 Overcoming Despair: Similarities and Differences
It is interesting to note that up to an extent, we find a similar structure of trans-

formative experience in the becoming of the authentic self in Kierkegaard, for
instance when he has the ethicist in Either/Or describe the inner metamor-
phosis that comes with the leap of faith. The ethicist thus explains that in
embracing faith out of the deepest despair, we lose the world and the self which
the desperate person seems so desperately attached to, only to rediscover both
under a new light: “Everything,” the ethicist declares, “returns but transfig-
ured.”30 Kierkegaard even explicitly stresses that this transformative experi-
ence is based upon the insight into the self’s nothingness: “[K]nowing oneself
in one’s own nothingness is the condition for knowing God” (Kierkegaard, 1990,
p. 325; italics mine; S.H.). Only once we see the nothingness of our inauthentic
self can we aspire to our authentic self. In a way, the underlying thought struc-
ture is not too far from the idea of the self as non-self. Freed from the attach-
ment to the self as it is characterized namely by the aestheticist in Either/Or,
we attain a new vision on the world beyond egocentricity.31
is nirvāna, but it is only samsāra correctly perceived. Or, in Dōgen’s words, the realization
of things as they are is enlightenment.” This is satori, as Suzuki explains (see Suzuki, 1972,
p. 304).
30 See Kierkegaard, 1944, p. 227: “[D]espair reveals itself not as a breach but a metamor-
phosis. Everything comes back, but comes back transfigured.” The equivalent is found in
Suzuki’s description of the world after the satori: “[P]our ceux qui ont acquis un satori,
le monde n’est plus ce qu’il était auparavant; il peut garder ses rivières qui coulent et ses
flammes brûlantes, plus jamais il ne redevient le même” (Suzuki, 1972, pp. 270f.). Satori
is attained in an unpredictable manner, like a breakthrough which opens a completely
new vision on the world: “Sans la réalisation du satori, nul ne peut entrer dans le mys-
tère du Zen. C’est l’éclair soudain d’une nouvelle vérité dont on n’avait même pas rêvé
jusqu’alors. C’est une sorte de catastrophe mentale qui se produit d’un seul coup après que
l’on a longuement empilé les uns sur les autres les concepts intellectuels et des pensées
discursives. La pile a atteint sa limite, tout l’édifice s’écroule, et voici qu’un ciel nouveau
s’est ouvert à votre entière vision” (Suzuki, 1972, p. 307).
31 We find in Kierkegaard the idea of a new, second immediacy which can be attained only by
going through despair, and never by trying to return to a former condition. This new imme-
diacy is attained when the self gains lucidity with regards to the structures that ground it
as a self and thus with regards to God as the origin. Only in abandoning the self as an
inauthentic self and through resignation can the self attain itself as its true self.—It is
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378 hüsch
However, if we find an important parallel in the need for a fundamental

transformation of the self, this structural parallel has clear limits—and these
appear most obviously when we return to the question of despair as a lack of
meaning. For Kierkegaard, it is only the relating to a transcendent God which
can lead out of despair in that it can fulfill the need for meaning that expresses
itself in despair. The transformative experience which is linked to the leap of
faith charges the world with absolute meaning. The plenitude of the immanent
world is thus granted by the transcendent God. For Kierkegaard, God remains
existentially necessary as an absolute reference point. Without the possibility
to believe, there is no remedy to despair.
The Zen Buddhist answer to the challenge of existence goes in a direction
that is diametrically opposed: In a way that may appear strange, almost irri-
tating from a Christian and probably even more generally from a Western per-
spective, the answer to the challenge of meaninglessness and despair provided
by Zen Buddhism is not to claim the existence of an instance that could grant
meaningfulness but, on the contrary, to fully abandon the quest for meaning.
To see the things as they are means, in the last instance, to abandon the ques-
tion of “Why?” It is thus suggested that this Why-question is somehow linked
to the inauthentic self. Once delusion is overcome, the quest for meaning can
be abandoned. Thus Nishitani writes:
When our doing-being-becoming, when our existence, our behavior, and

our life each emerges into its respective nature from its outermost ex-
treme, that is, when they emerge from the point where non-ego is self into
their own suchness, they have already cast off the character of having any
why or wherefore. They are without aim or reason outside of themselves
and become truly autotelic and without cause or reason, a veritable Leben
noteworthy that in this context comes to the fore another major similarity not only with
Nishitani but also with Nishida, which is an existential rather than a moral conception
of religion. With regards to Nishida, Yeung pertinently stresses this similarity, quoting the
latter saying that “[t]rue religious experience does not consist, as many people think, in an
ethical progression from the finite to the infinite, from the relative to the absolute. It is first
consciously realized when the self’s very existence becomes problematic—when exis-
tence itself becomes problematic” (Nishida, 1987, p. 65, quoted in Yeung, 2022, p. 185).
Thus, Yeung argues, “[t]he religious experience and moral experience are incompatible
because, from the standpoint of morality, ‘the self’s very existence does not become prob-
lematic’ (Nishida, 1987, pp. 65–66). Religious consciousness concerns the negation and
self-contradictions; it annoys itself with the problematic awareness of one’s existence”
(Yeung, 2022, p. 185).
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ohne Warum. At bottom, at the point of their original, elemental source,

our existence, behavior, and life are not a means for anything else. (Nishi-
tani, 1982, p. 252)
Viewed through the usual logic of the intellect, this description seems of little
plausibility. Thus, it is of utmost importance to see that the stance of Without
Why that comes with satori (awakening) must be conceived of as an experience
that transcends reason, an experience in which there is no more separation
between the self and the world. The self as non-self inscribes itself affirmatively
in the eternal becoming and perishing which emerges incessantly from abso-
lute emptiness and thus attains a stance providing something that corresponds
to Tugendhat’s “peace of mind.”
Here, we can also bring this discussion together with the question of the
human at a more general level as it is addressed by John Maraldo in this vol-
ume. Satori is not conceivable as a merely anthropocentric experience. The
transcendence of the subject-object divide transcends at the same time the
Sonderstellung of Man in a sense that conforms with Maraldo’s insisting on
overcoming reductionist anthropocentric perspectives.32 Our relatedness to
other sentient beings, be they human or other, is profoundly transformed once
the rigid boundaries of subject and object are dissolved. In the light of what
precedes, I would even argue that the horizon of an enlightened conception of
the self as non-self not only transcends the limitations of the Davos Debate but
raises the question as to whether the concept of “anthropocene” referred to in
the Thematic introduction is not once again a problematic concept emerging
from the thought of modern Subjektphilosophie from Descartes to Nietzsche33
that essentializes the ego and—by extension—Man and thus the expression
of the overestimation of Man’s very importance, for once not positively but
rather negatively. However, it is important to stress that calling for a perspec-
tive beyond the subject-object opposition does in no way mean to neglect the
individual in its individuality. I would, on the contrary, argue that the current
excessive focus on global challenges implying the whole of Mankind at least
potentially sacrifices the individual for some supposedly ‘higher’ cause, be it
in the form of the claim for neoliberal economic growth or on the contrary to
‘save the planet.’ Such a claim would lead back to moralistic groundings of reli-
32 Nishitani transcends explicitly the realm of the human. Thus, in On Buddhism he

writes: “But the I-thou relationship obtains between one thing and another, irrespective
of whether it is a steer, a bird, a stone, or even a tree” (Nishitani, 2006, p. 96).
33 If we want to follow Heidegger’s reading of the history of metaphysics (see Heidegger,
1961).
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380 hüsch
gion refuted by both Kierkegaard and Nishitani. The abyss of existing cannot
be dealt with from the larger perspective of the Große und Ganze but remains
the insurmountable challenge of every existing human being. Linking the exis-
tential philosophy of Kierkegaard and its focus on this never bridgeable abyss
with the perspective of the self as non-self helps to comprehend the challenge
of existing. Each individual has to find their own way of dealing with both their
own finiteness and the Große und Ganze—but, and this would be my point—
from a perspective that does not sacrifice the individual needs in their concrete
Lebenswelt for the sake of a seemingly ‘higher cause.’
6 Conclusion
I have tried to show how a philosophizing that develops in the framework

of the Zen Buddhist thought tradition can lead out of an essentially Western
impasse. To overcome despair as an existential key experience, Nishitani offers,
from a starting point that is structurally comparable to the one Kierkegaard
sketches, a solution that is diametrically opposed to Kierkegaard’s. If for both
Nishitani and Kierkegaard the possibility to overcome despair depends on our
capacity to radically change the stance from which we perceive the world,
the ontological anchorage of this metamorphosis is fundamentally different.
Kierkegaard remains unquestionably attached to the tradition of the Helleno-
Christian metaphysic heritage: Although for him the traditional concept of
absolute truth based on metaphysical speculation is no longer an option, he
tries to preserve the Christian construct at least as a possibility.34 It is still God
who charges the world with absolute meaning and the overcoming of despair
is thus possible only if and insofar as the self is grounded in God.
Nishitani’s approach, rooted in Zen Buddhist experience, (and which nat-
urally lies fully outside of the scope of Kierkegaard’s thought), proposes a way
out of despair that does not require such a strong metaphysical claim.35 Instead
of claiming the existence of God as the guarantor of absolute meaningfulness,
the way out of despair is to gain insight into the absolute absence of meaning.
The self must free itself from its self as an ego and only then can one expe-
rience the unity and the emptiness of everything, enabling us to give up the
34 See Hüsch, 2014, pp. 257–258.

35 Which, as Tugendhat points out, remains indeed possible insofar as it lies outside of the
scope of human reason to prove both the existence of God and his non-existence, but
whose capability to convince is questionable in the 21st century.
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“Why”-question. The acceptance of the Without why? frees us from illusionary

attachment and thus from despair.
However, if the freeing from despair does not require an “intellectually
dishonest” leap of faith, it relies essentially on the individual experience of
satori36—an experience as ground-shaking and as transformative as the Kier-
kegaardian “leap of faith.” Thus, Ernst Tugendhat would likely object that the
concept of the self as non-self in the last instance lacks intellectual trans-
parency. However, that seems unavoidable in that the authentic experience
of the self as non-self owes its possibility to the dissolution of the distinction
between subject and object and thus necessarily transcends rational accessibil-
ity.37 Using a Kierkegaardian distinction, it would be possible to argue that this
leap is unavoidable in so far as any call for transparency belongs to the realm of
thought and the Zen experience to the realm of existence. Reconciliation of the
self with existence, with the world and with the other beings depends upon the
dissolution of distinctions and thus reaches beyond reason. Thus, in the end,
both Kierkegaard and Zen Buddhism would most likely agree that, to funda-
mentally overcome despair, a leap that transcends reason is unavoidable, be it
a leap that leads to a transcendent God or, as is the case for awakening (satori),38
a leap that shifts us from samsara to nirvana.
36 See Suzuki, 1972, p. 271: “On ne peut […] saisir le satori qu’en en faisant personnellement
l’expérience.”
37 Suzuki goes so far as to stress its irrational character: “J’entends par [irrationalité] que
le satori n’est pas une conclusion qu’on atteindrait par le raisonnement, et qu’il défie
toute détermination intellectuelle. […] L’expérience du satori est toujours caractérisée
par l’irrationalité, l’inexplicabilité et l’incommunicabilité.” (Suzuki, 1972, p. 22). As tran-
scending rationality, it necessarily is also ineffable: “La plus haute vérité est d’une pro-
fondeur insondable, elle n’est pas un objet de conversation ou de discussion; et les textes
canoniques eux-mêmes n’ont aucun moyen de la mettre à notre portée.” (Suzuki, 1972,
p. 276). Tugendhat has problems with the idea of the ineffable experience of satori and
its necessarily rational intransparency. He favors a somewhat “democratic” conception of
mysticism. However, such a conception seems problematic. Thus, one would have to ask
where the capacity to change one’s stance towards reality could come from if it is not
though some form of (a-rational) asceticism or spiritual exercise. As Tugendhat also—
and consequently—dismisses the idea of “grace” leading to a decentered ego, it remains
unclear from his reflections how he imagines the genesis of a stance that will pacify the
mind.
38 Suzuki classifies the Zen as belonging to the Buddhist doctrines that are to be qualified as
“immediates”: “Techniquement, le Zen appartient au groupe des doctrines bouddhiques
que l’on qualifie d’immédiates’, ‘discontinues’, ou ‘abruptes’ […], par opposition avec celles
qui sont ‘continues’ ou ‘graduelles’ […] ; d’après le Zen l’ouverture de l’esprit survient tout
naturellement comme un événement séparé et soudain, et non comme le résultat d’un
développement graduel et continu, dont chaque étape pourrait être suivie et analysée.
L’arrivée du satori n’est pas comme le lever du soleil qui fait graduellement émerger les
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382 hüsch
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14
Cassirer, Heidegger, and Miki: The Logic of the Dual
Transcendence of the Imagination
Steve Lofts
Abstract
This paper takes up a reading of Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) in the context of the Davos
debate and argues that Miki provides us with the beginnings of a way beyond the cur-
rent impasse. The paper is divided into three sections. Section one sets the context of
our reading of Miki by returning to the Davos debate in order to clarify how we are to
understand the irreconcilable opposition between Cassirer and Heidegger and the rea-
sons for the impasse in the debate. Section two provides a reading of Miki’s The Logic of
the Imagination that situates Miki’s philosophy between the irreconcilable opposition
that is at the heart of the Davos debate that opens a way beyond the impasse. Section
three examines the nature of freedom and ethics in Hegel, Heidegger, Cassirer, and
Miki. In the Conclusion, we return to the decisive historical moment that defines our
times from the perspective of Miki’s theory of radical creative politics.
Keywords
Cassirer – Heidegger – Miki – new humanism – dual transcendence – imagination –

Kyoto School
1 Introduction
The Davos Auseinandersetzung between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger

has become a mythical event. A watershed moment in European intellectual
history, it gave expression to the profound crisis in human self-understanding
in which we are still engulfed and that continues to transform our historical
world in ways we have yet to understand. It is not hard to appreciate Levinas’
account as being a witness to “the creation and the end of the world” and “the
end of a certain humanism” (Levinas, 2001, p. 35: italics added). “What is the
Human?”: the answer to this revolutionary question has always given expres-
© Steve Lofts, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_016 - 978-90-04-68017-3

cassirer, heidegger, and miki 385
sion to the opening of a new historical world. Kant’s critical philosophy sought
to provide a new image of the human that would bring about a cosmopoli-
tan world, one suited to the needs of the French revolution. Knowing the self
passes by way of the image we have of ourselves. In our critical moment in
history, however, we no longer seem able to imagine our place in the cosmos
and subsequently our future. No one is truly blind to the fact that our moment
in history is decisive, that what we do today will determine not so much our
own time as a time not our own, to speak with Levinas. We stand at the crucial
and decisive moment where we must choose between the end of the Anthro-
pocene or the end of humanity tout court. And yet, we appear at this decisive
moment paralyzed by the crisis in human self-understanding, by our inabil-
ity to imagine the human anew. Some might object and argue that there is
no shortage of new definitions of the human; others might argue that what
is needed is not a new definition but a return to the humanist tradition of
the past. However, I would contend that all these attempts at redefining the
human, especially those that are anti-humanist or naturalistic in nature, have
only made us even more uncertain and that there is no going back to the past, to
the humanism that, as Levinas observed, had come to an end at Davos. I would
also contend that those who maintain these positions already sense this. How-
ever, the moment is always decisive, it is always a rupture with the past that
opens the way to the future. For this reason, I believe, we keep returning to
the Davos debate, to that historical moment when the ontological ground of
our existence gave way and we became cognizant of our standing in the deci-
sive alchemic moment of the metamorphosis of a world no longer what it was,
not yet what it will become. The aim of historical knowledge, however, is not to
relive the past but to develop a “new understanding of the past” that “gives us at
the same time a new prospect of the future, which in turn becomes an impulse
to intellectual and social life” (Cassirer, 1943, p. 178). Every true renaissance, for
Cassirer, penetrates the historical works of the past in order to revitalize the
creative energies that gave expression to them. A historical reconstruction is
not a passive transition and preservation of the past but a triumph of creative
spontaneity and a moment of self-realization by which we envision or imagine
the future. The question “What is the Human?” is no ivory tower inquiry, it is
an existential project of self-realization as self-actualization. There is, of course,
no shortage of interesting and insightful literature on the Davos Auseinander-
setzung from which we can learn a great deal. This paper, however, takes up
a reading of Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) in the context of the Davos debate and
argues that Miki provides us with the beginnings of a way beyond the current
impasse. There are several reasons for this approach. First, Miki’s project speaks
directly to the issue at hand: namely, the imagining of a new humanism. Sec-
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ond, Miki’s philosophy has been influenced by both Heidegger and Cassirer and
is situated between them. Third, Miki was cognizant of the need to address the
question of the human from a non-European perspective. In addressing the
question “What is the Human?” today, we must remain vigilant to the dangers of
cultural hegemony in all its forms. However, the concept of cultural hegemony
itself posits a plurality of cultures and modes of being human and therefore
assumes “the” human that we share in the culturally other. In turning to Miki,
the intent is not to pit East against West, nor even to compare them. Rather, it
is to approach the question of the human from a new perspective. The paper
is divided into three sections. Section two (The Impasse at Davos) sets the con-
text of our reading of Miki by returning to the Davos debate in order to clarify
how we are to understand the irreconcilable opposition between Cassirer and
Heidegger and the reasons for the impasse in the debate. Section three (The
Human (Ningen 人間) and the Dialectical Logic of the Imagination) provides
a reading of Miki’s The Logic of the Imagination that situates Miki’s philoso-
phy at once between the irreconcilable opposition that is at the heart of the
Davos debate that opens a way beyond the impasse. Section four (The New
Human) examines the nature of freedom and ethics in Hegel, Heidegger, Cas-
sirer, and Miki. In the Conclusion, we return to the decisive historical moment
that defines our times from the perspective of Miki’s theory of radical creative
politics.
2 The Impasse at Davos
Peter Gordon has done us a great service by moving us beyond the polemical
framing of Davos and enabling us to focus on the real issue at hand: namely, the
debate between two “normative images of humanity” between which no via
media would seem possible (Gordon, 2010, p. 6). The Davos debate is, thus, not
primarily about the proper interpretation of the productive imagination and
the role of the schema in Kant’s transcendental philosophy per se, but about the
fundamental existential-ethical choice that stems from two antithetical images
of human existence, between spontaneity and thrownness, freedom and fini-
tude. Does the human possess the capacity to create worlds of meaning and,
thus, determine their own existence? Are they able to project a possibility for-
ward into the future and then work toward actualizing it and subsequently
the world around them? Are they, in other words, able to have a history only
because and insofar as they themselves create history? Or is their existence
always already determined by the finitude of their situatedness in a historical
world not of their own creation, into which they have been thrown and over
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which they ultimately have no control? Are they by nature condemned to await
with anticipatory resolve the destiny that will befall them?
Cassirer is seen as defending the humanistic tradition reaching back through
Humboldt and Kant to Pico, and arguing for the existence of objectively valid,
necessary, and eternal truths; whereas Heidegger is seen as pointing the way
forward to the anti-humanist tradition to come that focuses on the historicity,
facticity, and finitude of the human. These images of Cassirer and Heidegger
are, of course, not without substance. Cassirer himself provides a concise sum-
mary of Heidegger’s position as he understands it which goes to the heart of his
critique of Heidegger. Cassirer writes:
[according to Heidegger] the philosopher cannot strive for an “objective,”

universally valid truth. He can only give the truth of his individual exis-
tence, and this existence always has an individual character. It is bound
up with the historical conditions in which the individual lives. […] The
Geworfentheit is one of the fundamental and unalterable conditions of
human life. […] The human must accept the historical conditions of his
existence; he has to submit to his fate. (Cassirer, 1979, p. 229)
However, as Cassirer later states in The Myth of the State:
A theory that sees in the Geworfenheit of the human one of its principle
characters [has] given up all hope of an active share in the construction
and reconstruction of human cultural life. Such a philosophy renounces
its own fundamental theoretical and ethical ideals. It can be used, then,
as a pliable instrument in the hands of political leaders. (Cassirer, 2009,
p. 293)
At Davos, Heidegger succinctly states how he understands the difference be-

tween their respective philosophical projects which goes to the heart of his
critique of Cassirer: “I believe that what I designate with the term Dasein can-
not be translated by one of Cassirer’s concepts” (Hamburg, 1964, pp. 219/289).
In other words, a transcendental critique of culture, as an account of the a pri-
ori conditions of possibility of a world of signification, is limited to the factum
of culture and the world and, therefore, cannot give an account of the factic-
ity of the world as a radically unique historical existence. As Heidegger writes
shortly after Davos in his lectures of 1929–1930, The Fundamental Concepts of
Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude:
It is a widespread opinion today that both culture and man in culture

can only be properly comprehended through the idea of expression or
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symbol. We have today a philosophy of culture concerned with expres-

sion, with symbol, with symbolic forms. Man as soul and spirit, coming
to expression in forms that bear an intrinsic meaning and which, on the
basis of this meaning, give a sense to existence as it expresses itself : this,
roughly speaking, is the scheme of contemporary philosophy of culture.
Here too almost everything is correct, right down to the essential. Yet we
must ask anew: Is this view of man an essential one? (Heidegger, 1996,
p. 75)
Here, as elsewhere, nuances are important. Heidegger is not saying that Cas-
sirer’s philosophy is wrong; rather to the contrary, “everything is correct, right
down to the essential.” The problem is that it is not an “essential” account: that
is to say, an existential account of the historicity and facticity of the human.
Not only does it “not grasp us in our contemporary situation,” it “does not con-
cern or grip our Da-sein” but “necessarily misses it” and in fact “it is of necessity
unable to attain it because in itself it blocks the path to doing so” (Heidegger,
1996, p. 76). However, in his 1919/20 lectures Grundprobleme der Phänomenolo-
gie (1919/20), Heidegger recognized the need to speak of the unity of sense and
facticity in expression:
One must understand the factical (Faktische) itself as expression. Once

you have looked at factical life in this way, you can no longer come across
those old pseudo-problems (e.g., the relationship between the factical
and sense), including that of individuation. The facts of life itself no longer
lie next to one another like stones, but each has its own place […]. (Hei-
degger, 2010, p. 257)
Cassirer, too, speaks to the intrinsic relationship between facticity and sense in
symbolic expression:
The symbolic never belongs to the sphere of “this world” [Diesseits] or

“beyond” [ Jenseits], the region of “immanence” or of “transcendence”; its
value, rather, consists precisely in its overcoming this opposition, which
arises from a metaphysical theory of two worlds. It is not the one or the
other; rather, it constitutes the “one in the other” and the “other in the
one.” (Cassirer, 2021c, p. 447)
Beginning as it does from the facticity of the radical finitude of Dasein, Heideg-
ger’s existential phenomenology has no access to the realm of “trans-personal
meaning” require for Dasein to exist in a shared world. However, “there is no
other way from one Dasein to another Dasein than through this world of form”
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(Hamburg, 1964, pp. 220/295)—nor, I would add, from Dasein to itself. In other
words, “form” is the necessary vehicle of the disclosure of being—what Cassirer
often calls life.
Life [Cassirer maintains] cannot apprehend itself by remaining abso-

lutely within itself. It must give itself form, for it is precisely by the “oth-
erness” of form that it gains its “visibility” [Sichtigkeit], if not its real-
ity [Wirklichkeit]. To detach the world of life absolutely from form and
oppose the two means nothing other than to separate its “reality” from its
“visibility.” (Cassirer, 2021c, pp. 44f.)
It is only through form that the ephemeral flow of life gains the “consistent exis-
tence” (Bestand) of an intelligible reality. For Cassirer, the dichotomy between
life and spirit is a false one: there exists within life itself a “Zug zur Idee” (a
tendency toward idea) (Cassirer, 2021c, 570). Life’s becoming self-aware corre-
sponds with life’s self-realization, its own “self-formation” and self-determin-
ation; and so, the turn to the idea comes from out of life itself. For Cassirer, “life
is, at once flux without pause and yet something enclosed in bearers and con-
tents, formed about midpoints, individualized, and therefore always a bounded
configuration that continually jumps its bounds. [In short] life is an immanent
transcendence in life” (Cassirer, 1996, p. 9). For Cassirer, there is no more form-
less life than there is lifeless form. The question remains to explain “how the
transcendence of the idea [can] be reconciled with the immanence of life?”
(Cassirer, 2021c, 569) And the answer for Cassirer is the symbolic: “The symbolic
is […] an immanence and transcendence in one: insofar as in it a fundamen-
tally supra-intuitive content [Gehalt] is expressed in intuitive form” (Cassirer,
2021c, p. 448). Thus, to speak with Heidegger, form “gives a sense to existence
as it expresses itself.”
For Heidegger, the referential totality of signification of the environmen-
tal world (Umwelt) in which Dasein “lives” levels down the authentic sense of
being of Dasein (Seinssinn des Daseins) to the “average everydayness” of das
Man, to the impersonal self that lacks authentic self-awakening of itself. In this
way, the finitude (Endlichkeit) of Dasein, which is Dasein’s Seinsverständnis,
is sublated by the Weltverständnis of the environmental world (Umwelt): the
understanding of being (Seinverständnis) is nothing other than finitude and
can only develop as finitude. Cassirer’s response has serious implications for
Heidegger. Cassirer writes:
We do not understand the general as the mere “they,” but as “objective

spirit and objective culture.” For Heidegger, thought has no access to such
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objectivity. […] The “impersonal” does not consist merely in the pale,
diluted social form of the average, the everydayness of the “they,” but in
the form of a trans-personal meaning. For this trans-personal Heidegger’s
philosophy has no access. (Cassirer, 1996, p. 202)
Cassirer does not question the validity of the mode of “temporality” (Zeitlich-
keit) that Heidegger elaborates as the “original sense of being of Dasein” (ur-
sprünglichen Seinssinn des Daseins); however, he does argue that the project of
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms questions into the conditions of possibility
of the transition from this “existenziell” temporality, from the sense of being of
Dasein (Seinssinn des Daseins), to the “objective” sense of “logos”: in short, the
conditions of possibility of Heidegger’s philosophical project of writing some-
thing like Being and Time (Cassirer, 2000c, p. 220). Another consequence of
Cassirer’s view is that every Seinsverständnis proves to be the Seinsverständnis
of a historical Weltverständnis. Would this not, however, effectively undermine
the very project of Being and Time? And for the later Heidegger, while the dif-
ferent historical Weltverständnis of the Greek, the Medieval, and the Modern
each constitute a different Seinsverständnis, they are all only different epochs
in the history of being.
At Davos, Heidegger takes up Cassirer’s language of terminus a quo and ter-
minus ad quem to demark their differences. For Cassirer, the terminus ad quem
is the whole of a philosophy of culture. The terminus a quo of Cassirer’s phi-
losophy is, however, for Heidegger problematic. The reverse is the case for Hei-
degger. The terminus a quo of Heidegger’s project is found in the facticity of
Dasein but its terminus ad quem remains unclear and undefined. Heidegger’s
observation marks out the irreconcilable opposition between them. Heidegger
descends the Hegelian ladder into the existential ground of facticity on which
the ladder rests, but as for the nature and being of the ladder on which he him-
self must stand he can say nothing: Cassirer follows the ladder up to its highest
manifestations in ideas and thought, and ultimately to a philosophy of culture,
but on what the ladder stands he can say nothing. A transcendental critique
of culture is limited to determining the logic of sense that forms the factum of
culture, whereas existential phenomenology is limited to the hermeneutics of
facticity of Dasein.
Two things must be noted when we revisit the impasse in the Davos debate
over the question “What is the Human?” First, as Gordon himself concludes,
while we can frame the debate in terms of a clear irreconcilable opposition
between two normative images of the human, we must “remember that nei-
ther Cassirer nor Heidegger can be rightly understood as an unremitting advo-
cate for only one of these two principles” (Gordon, 2010, p. 364). Second, by
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1929 when the Davos debate took place, both Cassirer and Heidegger were
encountering the limits of their own philosophical projects. Cassirer had com-
pleted the third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms two years before
but could not complete the conclusion in which he brought his philosophical
perspective into dialogue with that of Lebensphilosophie. Part of the material
that was to make up this conclusion was given as his talk at Davos. The con-
clusion had, however, grown into a massive volume that was to become the
fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms titled The Metaphysics of the
Symbolic—a project that would force Cassirer beyond transcendental philoso-
phy. This volume was never completed and only appeared as the first volume
of his Nachlass. Heidegger too was now struggling with his project while he
was completing the Kantbuch, the project of Being and Time already seemed
to have been set aside and only a few years later signs of Heidegger’s famous
Kehre began to appear. In the Preface to the Fourth Edition Heidegger acknowl-
edges his reading of Kant was informed by the problematic of Being and Time,
and that “In truth […] Kant’s question is foreign to it, even though it would
have given another meaning to the presupposed manner of questioning” (Hei-
degger, 1997, p. xviii). In short, the two antithetical solutions to the crisis were
themselves in crisis: a fact that is often overlooked in the literature on Davos.
Why do the projects of Cassirer and Heidegger—as they are conceived at the
time of Davos—run into a limit beyond which they cannot complete them-
selves? I would like to argue, in short, that though they are responding to an
outmoded ontology that had ceased to be viable, they were not able to fully
replace that ontology, and thus their thinking implicitly continued to operate
within the presuppositions of the substantial ontology their projects sought to
address. Fundamental ontology remains ontology, and the philosophy of sym-
bolic forms remained ungrounded because though it has replaced an ontology
of substance with an ontology of relation, it too remains an ontology of sense
(Sinn). Heidegger’s existential phenomenology is focused on the historicity, fac-
ticity, and finitude that constitute the being of Dasein, but it is unable to access
the framework of sense (Sinn) necessary for Dasein to be in the world. There is
a rift between the world as the openness of being and the world as the concrete
historical place in which Dasein always already finds itself. Cassirer’s transcen-
dental philosophy provides a rich account of the sense (Sinn) bestowing hori-
zons that open and configure a world, but as a transcendental philosophy, it
can only speak of the factum of the world and not about the facticity of a con-
crete historical world. In this way, classical Western ontology had produced yet
another unresolvable dichotomy between existence and form because the logic
continued the logic of non-contradiction which is the expression of ontological
self-identity. Thus, we have a choice between spontaneity or thrownness, free-
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dom or finitude, existence or form, facticity or sense, subjectivity or objectivity;

but we can never think of them together, in that we cannot speak of being and
not being, as this would involve the logic of an “absolutely contradictory self-
identity.” And such a thinking would require thinking together Cassirer’s and
Heidegger’s projects, of going up and down the Hegelian ladder at the same
time. And this could not be accomplished unless we were to provide another
“ontological” foundation and logic—in fact, an ontology that was not ontolog-
ical: a logic in which, something could be said to be and not be.
3 The Human (Ningen 人間) and the Dialectical Logic of the

Imagination
3.1 General Introduction to Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945)

Miki is a member of the second generation of the Kyoto School. After being
arrested under suspicion of supporting the Marxist party, he was unable to
secure a permanent academic post and worked primarily as a literary critic and
journalist. A prolific philosopher and militant sociopolitical thinker, Miki seeks
not only to provide an account of a new sense of the human but to transform
the human so as to create a new world. Miki owes much to Nishida, Cassirer,
Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx. Although a student of Nishida Kitarō, the rela-
tionship between student and teacher is complex and it could be argued that
the influence was reciprocal. Thus, while Miki recognizes that “Nishida phi-
losophy has, consciously or unconsciously, continuously guided” him in his
treatment of the “problem of the human”1 (mkz 8, p. 5), he also states that there
is a “problem concerning the relationship between [his] logic of the imagina-
tion and the logic of Nishida philosophy that needs to be thought through on
a separate occasion” (mkz 8, p. 5). Although Miki does not clarify what this
“problem” is, it is clear that for Miki Nishida’s thought was too abstract, too
removed from the everydayness of our being in the world. It provided, if you
will, the logic of the concrete historical world without the flesh of that world,
to speak with Merleau-Ponty. In 1922, Miki traveled to Germany, where he ini-
tially studied with Heinrich Rickert and then with Heidegger. Miki studied not
with the Heidegger of Being and Time and fundamental ontology, but with the
early Heidegger working out a hermeneutics of life and facticity. As such, then,
Miki understood Heidegger’s philosophy as being concerned with the life of the
1 All the translations of The Logic of the Imagination (mkz 8) have been provided by John Krum-
mel.
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human being as the lived experience of facticity and as an active participant in

factical life. While in Germany, he also met Karl Mannheim in Rickert’s seminar
and “visited Mannheim every week and debated with German students about
the direction of philosophy aimed at by Scheler and Cassirer” (Gülberg, 1997,
p. 51). Miki’s humanist transformation of dialectical materialism is no doubt
informed by these weekly discussions with Mannheim. For Miki, Marxism is a
form of humanism (cf. “Marxism as a Form of Anthropology” in mkz 3) and
The Logic of the Imagination (mkz 8) seeks to provide “the human founda-
tion for historical materialism, indeed, from out of the same spirit” (mkz 8,
p. 5). This will require that Miki rethink the nature of material embodiment in
terms of pathos. Miki read the currents of modern philosophy, neo-Kantianism,
Lebensphilosophie, and existential phenomenology from the perspective of his
confrontation with Hegel and Nishida. He read, for example, Cassirer as a “neo-
Hegelian” (mkz 7, p. 373). During his early neo-Kantian phase (prior to leaving
for Germany), Miki provided an idealistic conception of history and of the cre-
ative power of the individual; a theme he will never abandon. Upon his return
to Japan, Miki took up Marxism and his work transitioned from a form of a
hermeneutic ontology of factical life (Heidegger) to a historical social ontol-
ogy (Marx), and then to his mature philosophy of the creative imagination and
technical production (Hegel, Nishida, Cassirer) in his Logic of the Imagination
(1939). Miki was arrested for a second time in 1945 and charged with sheltering
a political fugitive, Takakura Teru, who was a friend and fellow thinker of the
left wing of the Kyoto School. Miki died in prison in March 1945, forty days after
the end of the Second World War.
3.2 The Logic of the Imagination (kōsōryoku no ronri 構想力の論理)

and the Dialectic of Dual-Transcendence (nijū no chōetsu 二重の超
越)
The Logic of the Imagination presents us with a bold and original attempt to
show how factical, embodied, historical subjects conditioned by their histori-
cal environment are nevertheless creative in transforming the historical world
that has formed them; and in so doing are able to transform the human by way
of a new image of the human (ningen 人間) and by extension the conditions
for “the creation of a new culture” (mkz 8, p. 5). For Miki, the logic of action,
as a logic of creation, must be understood in terms of the logic of the imag-
ination, which is a logic of form-images (keizō 形像) that are transformed in
and as history. The imagination is an originary creative power located in the
depths of human nature. It is the fundamental ontological faculty by which
the historical forms that are the world are formed and transformed. Like Cas-
sirer and Heidegger, Miki provides us with a hermeneutical philosophy of the
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opening of the world. The Hegelian nature of Miki’s project is made clear in
the Introduction to The Logic of the Imagination when he states that “The nar-
rative here first adopts a phenomenological form; however, it will then advance
to a purely logical form” (mkz 8, p. 3). Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit aims to
provide its reader with a “ladder” to the standpoint of science and show him
“this standpoint within himself.” It thus chronicles the journey in and through
which the true (Wahre) arrives at its own concept of itself. “The true (Wahre)
is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end and its
goal, having its end also as its beginning; and only by being worked out to its
end, is it actual” (Hegel, 1952, pp. 20–21 [10–11]). Like Heidegger, Miki follows
the ladder down into its fundamental ground: however, unlike Heidegger, the
ground is not to be found in the finitude of Dasein but in the Ungrund, to speak
with Schelling, of nothingness or the formless form (katachi naki katachi 形
なき形). Like Cassirer, Miki will follow this ladder up to its highest manifesta-
tions in ideas and thought, and ultimately to a philosophy of culture: however,
unlike Cassirer’s “philosophy of culture” (objective genitive), Miki’s “philoso-
phy of culture” (subjective genitive) is a philosophical anthropology of the self-
understanding of the “basic experience” (kiso keiken 基礎経験) of the human
as a historically concrete “embodied” existence from the standpoint of the his-
toricity of a historical world as the self-realization and self-actualization of that
historical world. The ladder itself is the imagination. The imagination is the
dialectical unity of pathos and logos that gives expression to the formless form
of nothingness. Miki is able to think together in one gesture what remains an
unbridgeable dichotomy between sense and existence that we encounter in the
still essentially Western account of the human found in Cassirer and Heidegger.
What enables Miki to follow the ladder of the imagination in both direc-
tions is his concept of “dual transcendence” (nijū no chōetsu 二重の超越) as an
account of the dialectical process of “active self-awakening” as a dual process of
self-realization and self-actualization, as a process of formation and transfor-
mation of tradition, of the construction and reconstruction of culture by way of
the individual’s creative confrontation with the historical forms (rekishi-tekina
katachi 歴史的な形) and sociocultural institutions (seido 制度) that form the
individual as a sociocultural being. Reality for Miki is the act of relating, an
activity-between that differentiates as it integrates. The subject of action and
the object are related to each other as independent beings, and yet in this rela-
tion of opposition, they exist together situated in a single historical world to
which they give expression. Thus, experience is but a relation of opposition
mediated by the unity of the historical form. “However, form is not originally
external form but rather, the union of subjectivity and objectivity” (mkz 1,
p. 315).
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For Miki, “The environment [sakai 境: boundary] acts [sayō 作用: func-

tion] on man because man acts [sayō 作用: function] on the environment
[sakai 境: boundary]” (mkz 8, p. 267). And “institutions are not just human
actions, but rather have the meaning of a boundary in relation to human
actions” (mkz 8, p. 160). There is a co-responding (sich Entsprechen), to speak
with Cassirer, between action and environment, a “circular response” to speak
with Miki: “The function [sayō 作用: act] of integration is a creative prin-
ciple. Although the environment and behavior reciprocally influence each
other, this relationship does not remain a mere reciprocal function but rather
the behavior, as a circular response, as a single holistic behavior, synthesizes
the two activities into one whole within itself” (mkz 8, p. 267). In this cre-
ative process, the subjective interiority and objective exteriority are mutu-
ally conditioned: each is set out of the other. When Miki speaks of “dual
transcendence” (nijū no chōetsu 二重の超越), he gestures towards the fact
that there is “something transcendent within the human as well as without
it” (mkz 18, p. 147; Miki, 2011, p. 704). Action requires something transcen-
dent.
In this sense, a standpoint of acting self-awakening entails an objective

and a subjective dimension within self-awakening itself. Self-awakening
is the basis of philosophical anthropology, but this does not mean that
self-awakening is simply immediate knowledge; it has always to be medi-
ated. True self-awakening must be mediated subjectively and, at the same
time, objectively. Only a standpoint of acting self-awakening makes pos-
sible such a concrete understanding of human existence as that which
is simultaneously internal and external, simultaneously subjective and
objective. (mkz 18, p. 147; Miki, 2011, p. 704)
Thus, there is, within self-awakening, an interior transcendence beyond the

subjective self understood as interiority (what the tradition has called the
authentic self, be it the Cogito or Dasein) that is the ground of self-awakening;
as well as an external transcendence beyond the objective givenness, be it
the you or the historical world. “Our actions are not determined simply by
what transcends us from without but also by what transcends us from within”
(mkz 18, p. 147; Miki, 2011, p. 705). When Miki speaks of the “subject of culture,”
the ‘of’ must be understood as a double genitive. I am the subject of culture in
that I am immanent within the historical-cultural world that conditions me as
a cultural subject—I am assujetti to and by culture, to speak with Foucault. But
at the same time, I am the subject of culture in that my actions give form to
culture, thus transforming it into what it is becoming. This dual transcendence
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is the bi-directionality of the logic of the imagination as the logic of creative

forming that is always the transforming of a tradition that is the lived expres-
sion of that tradition.
Miki unfolds his position through a series of repetitions of his central claim:
namely, that the imagination is the dialectical unity of the dual transcendence
of pathos and logos. With each repetition, a new step in the understanding
of the ladder is revealed that distinguishes Miki’s philosophy of history from
Hegel’s. Hegel’s ladder chronicles the journey of Reason in and through which
the true (Wahre) arrives at its own concept (Begriff ) of itself. Reason, as the
substance of consciousness and nature, is the logic and end (telos) of history.
The system or logic of self-development as self-differentiation is the unfolding
of the Idea as it returns to and completes itself in full self-knowledge in the
Begriff. The reason of history is the history of Reason as it comes to its own
self-knowledge in and through the particular. This is why, in The Philosophy of
Right, Hegel maintains that the “rational is actual and the actual is rational”
(Hegel, 1967, p. 10). For Hegel, the living substance, Reason, the Idea, the Begriff
form the self-identity of the true (Wahre). Thus, in the end, Hegel’s dialectic
is a monologue of Reason in dialogue with itself. For Miki, the Idea is not the
beginning of history but the end. What is more, for Miki, as for Hegel, human
beings exist only in and as history; in difference to Hegel, they are not reduced
to the particular expressions or agents of the Absolute through the “cunning of
Reason,” but are, as subjects, the creative agents of history. For Miki, the imag-
ination as a fundamentally ontological faculty is more primordial than logos
or Reason. The formation of the image by the imagination (Einbildungskraft)
gives form to the formless. The form-images of the imagination are not illustra-
tive, they do not represent (Vorstellung) an already existing reality, but rather
are formative of reality, in fact, they are the reality in which we always already
dwell. All historical reality takes place in the domain of the imago, to speak with
Lacan, and constitutes “the imaginary relation of […] individuals to the real
relations in which they live,” to speak with Althusser (Althusser, 2001, p. 165).
Thus, whereas for Hegel the “rational is real and the real is rational,” for Miki
“the real is fictional and the fictional is real” (mkz 8, p. 180).
Fiction (gisei 擬制) here does not mean illusory or the product of feign-
ing, nor does it mean, as is sometimes suggested, being opposed to the facts
of life. Beyond the realm of the imago, beyond our imaginary relation to the
real, there is nothing (mu 無): thus, even the facts of life are formed in and
through the fictions of the imago. Fictions are a dialectical union of pathos
and logos that forms the fabric of human reality. “The logic of fiction, and the
logic of form, is the logic of the imagination” (mkz 8, p. 155). They are fictions
in that they are not the nothingness of which they are images. They are, there-
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fore, creations and thus conventional by nature. As conventions, fictions “bring

together” through customs that are the co-habitual actions of a people. Fictions
as the realm of the imago form the sociocultural institution (seido 制度) that
give normative form to the human. Miki writes:
[…] while convention, in the sense of fiction, is seen as something arbi-

trary, free, and belonging to logos, custom is seen as something natural,
necessary, and belonging to pathos. As such, institution has a certain
habitual or traditional character. We can think of convention in the sense
of fiction as something external to us. But custom (consuetudo) is related
to the Latin word suēscō [to accustom oneself], which in turn is related to
suum (sien) [one’s own], and so we can think of it as having the sense of
“noticing something as one’s own” so that we can conceive it as something
internal. (mkz 8, p. 103: italics added)
Miki illustrates the co-habitual praxis nature of customary-conventions of

institutions by way of the simple difference in the way we greet each other:
Westerners shake hands, and the Japanese bow (mkz 8, p. 107). Miki’s point is
that our sense of self is formed through such customary-conventions that have
no intrinsic meaning in themselves beyond their performance, nor any extrin-
sic metaphysical meaning that they make manifest: they are conditioned by the
radical historicity of the world. At the same time, they are entirely performative
in that they create that which they express: in this case, the recognition of the
other in and through a greeting; the intersubjective encounter that grounds a
historical world. “In practice, the principle parts of our lives move within innu-
merable institutions of various sizes that cannot be said to be rational or simply
irrational” (mkz 8, p. 108).
Miki’s example of the difference between a Western handshake and a Japa-
nese bow is not as innocent as it might first appear. Ueda Shizuteru writes:
In the encounter with one another, rather than directly becoming ‘I and
Thou’ as in the case of a handshake, each person first lowers his or her
head and bows. This does not stop at being a mere exchange of formali-
ties. In the depths of “the between,” each person reduces himself or herself
to nothing. Going from the bottom of “the between” into the bottomless
depths that envelop self and other, each returns to a profound nothing-
ness. Both persons, by means of bending their egos and lowering their
heads […] return for a moment to a place where there is neither self nor
other, neither I nor Thou. Then, by raising themselves up, they once again
face one another and for the first time become ‘I and Thou.’ Having each
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cut off the roots of unilateral egoism, they become an ‘I and Thou’ in
which each is opened to their mutuality. (Ueda, 2000, p. 116; cited in Davis,
2014, p. 183)
The form-images of the imagination thus provide the unity of the subjective
and objective, or in the case of our example, the unity of subjects and the
historical world. The customary-conventions of institutions produced by the
form-images of the imagination are the cultural practices of a historical form
of the human. The objectivity of institutions that form the cultural environ-
ment of a shared world condition the interiority of subjectivity.
By means of institutions, we create for ourselves a new environment. We

dwell in a world where not things, but fiction is all the more important.
That which was made through our actions now comes to guide our behav-
ior and effect a new and yet powerful influence upon us. Our life itself
becomes more or less something fictional from the fact that it is real.
(mkz 8, p. 180)
Such institutions, as customary-conventions (as the subjective-objective dia-

lectic of dual transcendence), are the sense of existence; where the “of” here
should be understood as a double genitive: the existence-qua-sense and the
sense-qua-existence. In the symbolic expression of greeting the act and the
sense of the act are one and the same. While institutions tend to appear to us
as natural, possessing as they do the authority of a normative law, they are not
eternal, but historical as they are conditioned by the radical historicity of the
world. As such, they are always in the state of being transformed in and through
their use. We cannot participate in them but by working on them. As such, insti-
tutions are always being shaped by the metamorphic nature of the historical
environment. “Instead of thinking of history from nature, we are thinking of
nature from history” (mkz 8, p. 11). In other words, there is no “nature” or eternal
“essence” to the human—even the second nature of customary-conventions of
cultural institutions—that is not historical, that is not always to be in becoming
and never to be. Because there is no essential ground to the historical world of
form-images, the history of nature is a history of the transformation of forms.
The logic of imagination is the logic of history itself and not the understand-
ing of history: it is a logic of action from the standpoint of making history.2
In fact, “history is inconceivable unless to make (ποίησις) at the same time has
2 Cassirer would agree with Miki here: “For the historical willing itself is not possible without
an act of the ‘productive imagination’—on the other hand, the imagination can be truly cre-
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the sense of to become (γένεσις). History becomes thinkable where at the same
time production (poíēsis) has the meaning of becoming (génesis)” (mkz 8, p. 7).
As such, true history is the radically creative process of the incessant meta-
morphosis of life becoming form, to speak with Cassirer. To be cognizant of our
historicity, then, is to take up a standpoint in that alchemic moment of the his-
toricity of life between birth and death, between a past that no longer is and a
future that is always yet to come. However, “The alteration of form (metamor-
phose) belonging to the fundamental phenomena of history is conceivable not
by means of the logic of the idée but by means of the logic of the form-image.
Form-images [keizō 形像] are not pure ideas but, so to speak, ideas with bod-
ies” (mkz 8, p. 62). In the Western tradition, something is if it is self-identical
to itself. From this fundamental logic, form becomes that which stands outside
time and thus is without history.
But in this case, form was thought to be unchanging and not historical.
Hegel’s logic, which is said to have completed dialectics, is ultimately also
a logic of form. Although Hegel introduced a historical perspective, he
remains within the standpoint of thinking of Greek ontology and does not
take up the position of action. […] If we take forms to be what changes,
Aristotelian logic cannot but reach an impasse. (mkz 8, p. 231)
For Miki, there is no more lifeless form than there is formless life: “Form is not
something merely static; instead, true form is that which is dynamic at the same
time as it is static, static at the same time as it is dynamic. This is the meaning
behind the idea that what has life is what has form” (mkz 8, p. 161). The logic of
the imagination is a logic of form, and so takes up the logic of Aristotle and that
of Hegel, but at the same time it grasps form from the standpoint of concrete
historical action. We find here the historization of the transcendental (univer-
sal form) and the historization of Kant’s transcendental subject.
For Miki, the logic of the imagination as a logic of creative historical form
is the logic of invention and not the logic of discovery. Heidegger’s philoso-
phy remains a logic of discovery, of the dis-closure of the fundamental exis-
tential dimension of Dasein—which is itself a dis-closure of being. The sense
of Dasein is not historical: Dasein as Dasein is its disclosedness as finitude.
Dasein’s historizing is found in Dasein’s constant being, in Dasein’s Sein zum
ative only where it is determined and inspired by a living impulse of the will. Thus, historical
consciousness rests on an interpenetration and a reciprocity of force of the deed and force of
the image: on the clarity and certainty with which the I is able to set before itself an image of
a future being and direct all individual activities toward this image” (Cassirer, 2021c, p. 211).
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Tode, being up to and until end that marks its finitude (Endlichkeit), in the way
that Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along until it is no more.
As an ontological faculty of the creation of historical forms, the imagination
is a dialectical unity of pathos and logos. Logos, for Miki, is not primarily the
formal logic of objects that finds expression in abstract language and pure rea-
son. Such a pure formal logic, which is logic in terms of logos, can never be the
ground of concrete historical institutions which are rooted in pathos. The logic
of the historical forms, the world, the self, the other, and of concrete things are
all rooted in pathos. Pathos is the embodied existence of praxis. The body is the
place in which pathos as situatedness arises and takes place. Miki writes:
This prescription [kitei-sei 規定性] from nothingness [mu 無] is what we

call pathos. Pathos is thought to be connected with the body; but it is only
first by means of pathos that the body is “endowed with heart-mind” (shin
心) as the human body, and that the heart-mind [shin 心] is embodied and
integrated as human heart-mind [shin 心]. At the ground of human praxis
[ningen-teki okonai 人間的行爲: behavior] lies pathos. (mkz 18, p. 399)
One is reminded here of the Buddhist saying: “Dwelling nowhere, the awak-
ened heart-mind arises” (ōmu shojū nishō goshin 応無所住而生其心). The root
of pathos is nothingness—it is the truth of the human:
Nothingness is what transcends the subjective and the objective and

envelops them. […] To be determined by this nothingness is what we call
pathos, and such pathos lies at the base of expressive activity. Every cre-
ation has the meaning of “creation from nothingness,” and creation from
nothingness is always determined by pathos. (mkz 18, p. 399)
Miki further defines this nothingness in Western terms: “Contrary to the Greek
way of thinking, the material or substantial is more primary than the tangible
[katachi aru mono 形あるもの: something that has form] and idea” (mkz 11,
p. 110). According to the hylomorphism of Aristotle, there is no form with-
out matter, no matter without form. All becoming is an actualisation of the
potentiality already existing in a given hylomorphic state. Form is the active
catalysis of being, it is what gives form and actualizes potency. The Unmoved
mover is defined as pure act as that which is unmixed with potency; that is,
with any intrinsic capacity for change or limitation. All other being is hylomor-
phic. While some maintain that Aristotle is committed to the idea of prima
materia as pure potentia, this is a controversial reading of Aristotle. From this,
in the Western tradition, the ground of the being of what is is found in the
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pure act: The One, God, the cogito, the transcendental subject, the Absolute,
being (Sein). The concept of primary matter as pure possibility forms a self-
contradictory proposition within Western ontology; for pure matter would be
without form and without the actuality of form would thus have no existence.
To speak of primal matter, then, would be to speak of something that both is
and is not. Pathos is rooted, Miki states, in the night and fire: in an essentially
indeterminate plenum of sheer possibility. Any yet, there is a tradition of this
prima materia as pure potentia in Western thought. The idea can be traced back
to the philosophy of Anaxagoras. As such it would be “deprived of all form”
(quod omni forma privaretur).3 For Augustine, prima materia is “something
formless” that is capable of all forms. This formlessness, however, is not abso-
lute nonbeing (nihil) but rather must be thought of as “something-nothing,” by
the logic of “is-is-not” (“nihil aliquid” et “est non est”).4 Finally, Eckhart’s God-
head is the “groundless ground” of God as pure being, as pure actuality without
potency. The Eckhart scholar Bernard McGinn points out that as the ground-
less ground beyond being, the Godhead is understood by Eckhart as nothing,
as “pure possibility” (McGinn 2005, p. 131). The nothingness of the Godhead is
the pure possibility of the emanation of being and thus of God. Robert Carter
has taken up McGinn’s language and suggested the link between this pure pos-
sibility in Eckhart and the absolute nothing in Nishida. “West and East seem to
converge, for this boiling over is a pure potentiality of the divine depths, just as
absolute nothingness is often referred to as a fullness, an unbounded richness
of possibility, a ‘pregnant’ emptiness” (Carter, 2009, p. 4).
“Pathos” thus implies being determined by the “nothingness” as the field of
pure possibility in which all existence is rooted. “What lies at the root of such
forms and ties them together is not something like the laws of modern sci-
ence, it cannot be something objectively graspable; rather, it must be a form
beyond form, a ‘formless form’ [katachi naki katachi 形なき形]” (mkz 8, p. 11).
The ground of history is not found, then, in the idea (ἰδέα) or form (εἶδος) as
pure act, but in the “formless-form.” In imaging the formless, the imagination
(Einbildungskraft) is the formation (Bildung) of an form-image (keizō 形像) of
the formless. For Miki, the idea or idea-form (kannenkeitai 観念形態) that pro-
vides the ontological horizon in which something is understood as the thing
that it is is not the beginning of the creative process of history but its end-
point. If it were there at the beginning, as in Western ontology (Plato’s Good,
Plotinus’ the One, Christian God, Cartesian cogito, Kantian transcendental ego,
3 Augustine, Confessions, bk. vi.

4 Augustine, Confessions, bk. xii, ch. vi.
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Hegelian Absolute, Heideggerian being), then all “history” would end up being
little more than an unfolding of the idea-form and there would, therefore, be
no radical creativity and thus strictly speaking no history: or more precisely,
all history would not be the history of the finite but the history of the infinite,
that which alone can be called pure act: that is to say, the unmoved mover, the
Good, the One, God, the Absolute, being (Sein). At the root of the world’s cre-
ation, we must think the creative imagination that is the unity of pathos and
logos, but the imagination itself is an immanent transcendence that contin-
ually reaches out into the nothingness of the formless form and provides it
with an image that in turn forms and transforms the world; opening, to speak
with Cassirer, “all reality in its path.” “Every creation must have the meaning
of ‘creation from [the sheer possibility] of nothingness’ [mu kara no sōzō 無
からの創造]. There must be some place where Idee-like forms come out from
within matter or nature, where the logos-element is engendered from within
the pathos-element” (mkz 8, p. 245). The historical form of reality is but one
form of the formless, one possible expression that, once formed, has its own
inherent possibilities. For this reason, Miki states that
An institution possesses its own life, and we can even say that it is some-
thing autonomous. Therefore, the structural nature of an institution man-
ifests not only an adaptation toward the environment but manifests an
adaptation toward itself. Adaptation toward itself is given by means of
itself imitating itself and accordingly signifies repetition. (mkz 8, p. 161)
However, the true creative force of institutions, and thus of history, is found in
the individual and not some abstract spirit or Zeitgeist that pulls the strings of
we marionettes who dance according to our nature on the world stage of his-
tory nor some anonymous das Man of the average everyday nor a discourse of
power.
What has been designated as the spirit or genius of a people is nothing

but a mere convenient cipher, nothing other than the anonymous synthe-
sis of the originality of various individual persons. Only this originality of
the individual is what is real and what continues to be effectively active
at every moment. And this innumerable originality is in a state of cease-
less fermentation due to the constant borrowing and exchange of models
executed between neighboring societies within each society. What we
regard as the collective and impersonal genius is the function of genius of
infinitely many individuals and not its coefficient. Every individual per-
son is a certain genius and a certain originality. (mkz 8, p. 122)
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This stands in stark contrast to Hegel. Within the dialectic of Reason, the indi-
vidual is negated and understood as a particular of the universal. The Absolute
comes to know itself in and through the particular, not through the individual.
Historical individuals, the Napoleons of the world, are attuned to the needs
of the Zeitgeist and even Weltgeist. Only such great individuals bring about
the historical changes needed by Absolute Spirit. For Kierkegaard, the relation
between the individual and the universal bypasses the culturally determined
particular but requires a leap of faith: a leap that few are able to make. And
for Heidegger, only “great art” is world forming. For Cassirer, however, there is
no individual act of speaking that has not formed the language spoken (Cas-
sirer, 2000, p. 127). For Miki too, “Everything comes from the infinitesimal, and
everything probably returns to the infinitesimal” (mkz 8, p. 124). The concrete
individual is a production point of the universal field of which it is an infinitesi-
mal focal point. The logic of the imagination is a logic of individuals, not a logic
of concepts and ideas about particulars. It is the logic of the concrete universal
in which the individual is universal, and the universal is individual. Hegel iden-
tifies speculative reason with objectified concrete universals and distinguishes
them from abstract universals. Abstract universality negates individuality and
levels down a group of individuals as being identical with each other in some
respect. By contrast, the concrete universal expresses, manifests, itself in and
through the different particularizations of the universal, which are held within
it as part of the universal’s sense. In Hegel, however, the individuality of the
individual is negated by the universal and becomes a particular expression of
the universal of Spirit. Hegel establishes the unity of subject and object by way
of a sublation of the differences into the overarching dialectical identity of the
living substance of the Absolute as the True: everything is but a moment or
element that expresses the universal and gains its truth from its place within
the True which is the whole. For Miki, each individual as individual is a cre-
ative focal point that opens the environmental whole in which the individual
stands. What is more, there is a plurality of individuals each of whom opens up
the whole from their infinitesimal creative point.
The individual, by completely expressing itself as an individual, is end-

lessly connected to other individuals that are likewise independent. The
logic of the imagination must be recognized where individuals are recip-
rocally related in a universal completely different from themselves even
while their independence is thoroughly acknowledged. (mkz 8, p. 43)
The individual, as the subject of history, as an embodied existence and praxis,

as a lived body, is situated between pathos and logos. The subject of history is
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the site of a double embodiment: a social-body individualized by corporality.

The body, however, is the place in which the nothingness of pathos, as situated,
arises, and takes place. In the unity of the social-body and corporality, we find
the symbol as the unity of sense and sensibility. With Cassirer, we can say that
for Miki the human is a symbolic animal and that the lived body (Leib) pro-
vides us with the prototype of the symbol because the flesh (sense-sensibility)
of the world is of a symbolic nature (cf. Cassirer, 2021c, p. 116). Thus, for Miki
“the logic of the imagination is the logic of symbols [shōchō 象徴].5 [How-
ever,] what Cassirer refers to as ‘the philosophy of symbolic forms’ needs to
be rewritten in accordance with the logic of the imagination” (mkz 8, p. 34).
Cassirer’s account of the symbolic remains for Miki abstract. As a transcen-
dental critique, it is limited to the factum of forms of the historical but cannot
account for the facticity of the concrete historicity of historical form (rekishi-
tekina katachi 歴史的な形). For Miki, “A symbol is a typological figure. A type
is not something like the genus in formal logic. A type is individual and, at
the same time, universal. It indicates something that is thoroughly individ-
ual and yet always universal” (mkz 8, p. 34). The historical forms created by
the imagination are both form and existence; or better form-qua-existence and
existence-qua-form. The rift between form and existence that plays out in the
Davos debate is not so much surmounted as recognized to have been a false
dichotomy, an empty abstraction that was a logical consequence of an ontol-
ogy of self-identity. Whereas Cassirer’s philosophy can explain how the forms
of objective spirit (language, myth, art), configure the image-world (Bildwelt)
of sense in which the subject and object are understood, it cannot speak to the
facticity of the historical reality, to a historical form. Whereas Heidegger’s phi-
losophy can explain the facticity and finitude of Dasein, it cannot speak to the
form that provides that Dasein with its historical form. The historical form of
which Miki speaks is both a sense and existence: it is not an abstract univer-
sality nor a radically concrete existence, but it is both universal and individual.
It must be remembered that what interested Miki in Heidegger’s philosophy
was his concern with the problems of subjectivity and interiority, that is to say,
with the things of pathos. Miki’s understanding of the symbol fuses objective
and the subjective, exteriority with interiority, and logos with pathos through
the logic of dual transcendence of the productive imagination:
5 At Davos, Cassirer reminds Heidegger that Kant calls the power of the imagination Synthesis
Speciosa and adds: “For Kant, however, [pure thinking] does not depend simply on synthesis
but depends instead primarily upon the synthesis that serves the species. But the problem
of the species leads into the core of the concept of the image, the concept of the symbol”
(Heidegger, 1997, p. 194).
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A type is not simply something objective. It is not merely a copy or

abstraction or generalization of something outside. Instead, it is pro-
duced from within, from the passion of the self. […] Symbols refer to the
fact that inner and outer are one. It is not that the interior exists sepa-
rate from the exterior, nor that the exterior exists apart from the interior.
Symbols obtain where inner is outer, and outer is inner. (mkz 8, p. 34)
For Cassirer, too, the symbolic is the “between region” that differentiates and
units the inner and outer.
It is the decisive achievement of every such form that in them the rigid
boundary between “inner” and “outer,” the “subjective” and the “objec-
tive,” does not subsist as such but begins, as it were, to grow fluid. Inner
does not stand alongside the outer, the outer alongside the inner, as if
each were its own separate precinct; rather, both are reflected in the other,
and only in this reciprocal reflection does each disclose its own content
[Gehalt]. (Cassirer, 2021b, p. 123)6
In reading Cassirer, however, there is a clear tension between the basic position
that there is no presymbolic reality that is represented by the symbolic forms
and the lingering suggestion that there nevertheless is an objective reality that
is symbolized. Thus, in Cassirer and Heidegger, it is often a question of disclo-
sure and closure and not creativity per se. For Miki, the logic of the imagination
is the logic of invention. In Miki, “A true symbol is not a symbol of something
[be it being or thought]. The essence of a symbol is to symbolize without some-
thing symbolized” (mkz 8, p. 40). Again, Cassirer would agree: “the symbol
hastens ahead of reality, showing it the way and initially clearing its path. It
does not merely look back on this reality as being [seiende] and become [gewor-
dene], but it is itself an element and motif of its becoming itself. […] It reaches
forward into the to come [Künftig] and outward into sheer possibility, while
placing both before itself in a purely symbolic act” (Cassirer, 2021c, p. 208).
At the core of this is Miki’s concept of “basic experience” (kiso keiken 基礎経
験) which is interpreted (expressed) in and as the lived anthropology (ningen-
6 “We began with the view that the meaning and value of the individual symbolic forms could
never be completely obtained if we were to see in each of them only a bridge between a fin-
ished ‘inner world’ and a finished ‘outer world,’ between an ‘I’ and a ‘non-I’ as given and fixed
starting points. They all had, rather, to be recognized as means for the creation of these oppo-
sites, as the mediums in which and only by virtue of which the ‘confrontation’ (Auseinander-
setzung) of the I and the world takes place” (Cassirer, 1998, p. 60).
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gaku 人間学) of a given historical period whose task it is for philosophy to work
out. Basic experience is not the anticipatory resoluteness of Dasein: nor is it the
“pure intuition” of Nishida; and Cassirer has nothing that would be compara-
ble. It is not some mystical or metaphysical hidden state or reality. Rather to
the contrary, it is the facticity of a basic intersubjective hermeneutical situa-
tion: it is the fact that “I am, I am with other people, among other things or
affairs [ jibutsu 事物 (Sache)]” (mkz 3, p. 6) and that this basic experience is
always already unfolded in and through its “self-interpretation” ( jiko kai shaku
自己解釋/Selbstauslegung7) in what Miki calls “primary logos” in which this
basic experience of the human is encountered, in which one is given to oneself.
Anthropology, as the primary logos of the human, is this self-interpretation of
the factical situation of basic experience in the historical mode of its unfolding
as life. Anthropology as the self-interpretation of the human is a “hermeneuti-
cal concept” (kai shaku-gaku-teki gainenv 解釋學的概念) in which the facticity
of the basic experience of the human is communicated, encountered, seen,
grasped, lived, expressed in action: for example, in shaking hands or in bow-
ing. Anthropology is not, for the most part, the science of the human, but the
“logic of the human” that is immediately lived by the historical subject as the
self-interpretation of its basic experience.
“What exists is only a physical anthropology. Human beings in each era can
only be fundamentally involved in existence in a way peculiar to them. […]
Anthropology can be directly taken from the fundamental body of life” (mkz 3,
p. 9). Such a primary logos is “woven into the reality of our lives and our actions
and productions are meaningful only from the point of view of this logos”
(mkz 8, p. 22). The praxis of “Rites and rituals possess the effect of realizing
a true symbiosis (symbiose) between a totem tribe and their totem” (mkz 8,
p. 23). As Cassirer writes:
no rite is originally “allegorical,” simulative, or depictive but rather in

a very real sense, they are so woven into the reality [Realität] of effec-
tive action as to form an indispensable component of it. It is a constant
belief—encountered in the most varied forms and from the most diverse
forms of culture [Kulturformen]—, that the survival of human life, indeed
the very existence of the world itself, depends on the correct execution of
rites. (Cassirer, 2021b, p. 49)
7 The terms Miki employs here (Grunderfahrung, Selbstauslegung, and Selbstverständigung)

and the distinction between them come from Heidegger as they are originally developed in
his lecture course of 1923 titled, Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity. My reading of Miki
is guided by a reading of Heidegger’s 1923 lectures.
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In the age of capitalism, “what fundamentally defines the structure of the pro-
letarian basic experience is labor” (mkz 3, p. 45). That is, it is the sense (Sinn)
of life in which it makes sense that I am a laborer, who labors with other labor-
ers for the bourgeoisie, and labors with tools to produce commodities. As Miki
writes:
What I mean by basic experience is the body of the existence of reality.

The existence of reality is always organized in a certain, inevitable limited
manner. The organization of existence […] is the most primitive structure,
the dynamic unification of the human and nature. (mkz 3, p. 44)
Anthropology provides the interpretation of the basic experience that con-

stitutes the individual’s active self-awakening. Here we must understand self-
awakening in the sense of a self-realization as self-actualization and not as
a move to a self-consciousness as one would find in modern philosophy. As
such, basic experience is not conditioned by the horizon of logos, but rather is
what conditions logos. For this reason, while basic experience can be grasped
through the mediation of logos, it cannot be sublated by it. Ideology, which Miki
calls “secondary logos,” concerns the “self-understanding” (Selbstverständi-
gung) of the human through idea-forms as opposed to the form-images that
mediate the anthropological. Ideology (kannen keitai 観念形態) is the logic of
ideas or idea-forms that determine the “forms of consciousness” (ishiki keitai
意識形態) that Hegel’s phenomenology lays out. The ideology is mediated by
a philosophical anthropology (tetsugaku-teki ningen-gaku 哲学的人間学) of
a specific era and is objectively limited by it. “Anthropology mediates between
basic experience and ideology, just as time in Kant’s schematism mediates intu-
ition and category”8 (mkz 3, p. 12). Basic experience conditions anthropology
which in turn conditions ideology: “for each ideology, the anthropology that
defines it is not directly related” (mkz 3, p. 13); it is always an anthropology
hidden in the roots of the ideology grounding it. “The anthropology [form-
image] acts as a determinant of the ideology [idea-form], but once it stands,
8 One can see this basic experience of I, other, thing at work in Heidegger’s surrounding
environmental world of das Man but not in the existential analysis of Dasein tout court.
Miki again is closer to Cassirer here in that the intersubjective situation is always a con-
crete historically lived one. Cassirer too differentiates between the I, you, and thing. The
“originary-phenomenon” of expression is situated in the lived body (Leibe) and is also always
an intersubjective situation of the I-you. Cassirer distinguishes between “you-perception”
that prevails in the expressive lived-experience and the abstract object consciousness of an
“it-perception.”
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408 lofts
it confiscates into the ideology” (mkz 8, p. 24). There is a dialectical move-

ment between the three levels that is driven by the necessary contradiction
that exists between basic experience and its historical interpretation in an
anthropology, and the conflict between every historical anthropology and the
system of ideology that seeks to intervene and determine our lives—that seeks
to impose the framework in which we are to exist (mkz 3, p. 16). “Materialism
is an ideology” (mkz 3, p. 42). However, just as “Aristotle and Machiavelli’s poli-
tics are not understood except by way of their anthropology” (mkz 3, p. 19), the
materialism of Marxism first arises in the form of an anthropology. The role of
philosophical anthropology (tetsugaku-teki ningen-gaku 哲学的人間学), how-
ever, is to articulate the basic experience that would guide both anthropology
and ideology. Philosophical anthropology is the process of self-awakening that
works out the dual transcendence: it must descend the ladder of the imagi-
nation into the well-spring from which the heart-mind is always in the pro-
cess of arising, while at the same time ascending toward a new future as a
response to the present. Miki’s ladder of the imagination, as the dialectical
unity of pathos and logos, brings us from the factical basic experience rooted
in the nothingness of pathos unfolding or laying itself out (Selbstauslegung) as
historical existence to a philosophical anthropology in which factical anthro-
pology is brought back to the basic experience of which it is an interpretation.
In such a way the philosopher remains existentially engaged in the basic situa-
tion itself of anthropology. We find here a direct link with Nishida who writes,
with reference to Augustine: “It can be said that anthropology is the meaning of
philosophy. It must, however, be an anthropology of the self-awakening human;
not the study of the exterior human (homo exterior) but the study of the inte-
rior human (homo interior)” (nkz 6, p. 112). Philosophical anthropology as true
anthropology is the self-interpretation of basic experience that remains rooted
in the body and by extension in the nothingness of pathos. Such a philosophy
must guard against becoming an ideology. In agreement with Hegel, every phi-
losophy, like every historical individual, is a child of its times. But in difference
to Hegel, philosophy must never be as it was for Hegel a conceptual enterprise
of ideology and scholarship: rather, it must become, to borrow an image from
Miki’s friend Nakai, “the salon of the soul.”9 “The salon of the soul” is a form of
collective subjectivity that could mediate between individuals and individual
classes. This collective subjectivity is not an ethnic subjectivity as a substan-
tial essence of an authentic culture, but a functional relationality of individual
collective creativity forming a creative society (sōzō-teki shakai 創造的社会).
9 Nakai Masakazu, “Nōson no shisō” [Thought in the Farming Villages], in (nmz, 4, p. 154).
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4 The New Human: Toward an Immanent Critique of Culture and the

Ground of Individual Creative Ethical Freedom
What is at stake in the question at Davos, “What is the Human?,” is the nature of
philosophy and its role in the construction and reconstruction of the human,
the nature of freedom, and by extension the possibility of ethics. For Hegel,
Cassirer, Heidegger, and Miki history is the process of the realization of free-
dom. How they conceive of this historical process and the nature of freedom
determines, however, their respective stances on ethics.
For Hegel, freedom is ultimately the “metaphysical freedom” of the Infinite,
the absolute Subject, and thus not of the finite human subject. For this rea-
son, there are no true actors in the Hegelian world: individual subjects are little
more than “marionettes in the great puppet show of universal history,” to speak
with Cassirer (Cassirer, 2009, p. 286). Moreover, there is no room in the world
of absolute power for individual agency, and thus no room for ethical freedom.
In ethical life, the unity of individuality and the universal are expressed in the
sublational activity that is done in the service of the common good of the whole
community and by extension the universal. Here the individual identifies with
the will (desire) of the whole: the family, the state, the Absolute: “individu-
als have to make themselves into the universal [will] through the negation
of their own [will], in externalization and formation [Bildung]” (Hegel, gw 8,
p. 257).
Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, beginning as it does from the rad-
ical finitude of Dasein, contains no possibility of ethics but only the possi-
bility of the care of/for the authentic self. It is not so much the thrownness
of Dasein into finite temporality that is the problem, but that Dasein’s only
authentic attitude towards this thrownness is one of anticipatory-resoluteness
in which Dasein takes up its transcendence towards its own most possibility,
i.e., its Nichtdasein, that is constitutive of its existence. Thus, “Dasein’s tran-
scendence and freedom are identical! Freedom provides itself with intrinsic
possibility” (ga 26, p. 238 [184]). Dasein is free by transcending, in transcending
it “liberates” itself from its ensnared, alienated, absorption in the universal life
of das Man of the Umwelt that levels down Dasein’s “mineness” ( Jemeinigkeit)
and “ownness” (Eigentlichkeit) to the average everydayness of communal life.
Dasein has, however, no responsibility for the Umwelt or those implicated in the
Umwelt, no way of transforming it, no authentic access to the objectivity of a
“shared world” and thus no connection to other Daseins. What is significant
in the world, the hammer, is because it is relevant to Dasein’s own finitude:
it is understood from the horizon of Dasein’s care structure. The hammer is
to build a house because Dasein is endangered: the project of being a house
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410 lofts
for the other is a nonsensical project for Dasein. Transcendence in Heideg-

ger is neither an inner transcendence beyond Dasein to the sheer possibility
of nothingness beyond the finitude of existence (but only to the negation of
itself) nor an outward transcendence to other Daseins and the world: it is
a transcendence to its own most possibility, not to something other. Finally,
the being of the world as something other than Dasein is never an issue for
Dasein.
This stands in sharp contrast to Cassirer. For Cassirer, philosophy must
always take up Kant’s main problem: “how is freedom possible?” “We have to
face the fundamental ethical question that is contained in the very concept
of culture” (Cassirer, 1979, p. 81). “The philosophy of culture may be called
a study of forms; but all these forms cannot be understood without relating
them to a common goal” (Cassirer, 1979, p. 81). This common goal is not the
metaphysical freedom of the absolute that sublates all individuals into the uni-
versal, nor the freedom of the transcendence of Dasein as a finite individual
self ex-isting independently of the commonality and averageness of the public
cultural Umwelt, but the ethical freedom to participate in the construction and
reconstruction of a shared and intersubjective world.
For Cassirer, there is a co-conditionality between the individual and the
world—in that the individual is a product of the world it itself opens (Lofts,
2004, pp. 61–62). The symbolic forms are world-forming, but the activity of the
individual is
tied to the whole as if by invisible threads. [Thus, e.g.,] there is perhaps no

individual act of speaking that has not in some way influenced “the” lan-
guage. […] This is because in its speech, its art, and all its cultural forms,
humanity has created, so to speak, a new [historical] body for itself which
belongs jointly to all. (Cassirer, 2000, p. 127)
However, because there is no substantial ground as in Hegel that determines

the telos of history, culture is always to be in the process of becoming and never
to be. Strictly speaking, we should perhaps speak of culturing rather than cul-
ture. There is an “indeterminateness” in both the whole and the individual of
culture. Culturing thus represents a “unity of direction,” a “common task,” and
not a “unity of being.” It “characterizes” but does not “determine” the particular
that it subsumes under the universal (Cassirer, 2000, p. 72). Thus, individuals
are dependent on the cultural world to which they belong, independent of each
other as radical individuals, and yet interdependent upon each other in form-
ing the surrounding world of culture to which they belong and give expression.
Cassirer writes:
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[When we speak of individuals belonging to a world, say of the Renais-

sance,] we do not mean to say that there is to be found in them a definite
individual feature that is fixed as regards its contents [i.e., a substantial
identity], in which they all agree. We will perceive them to be not only
thoroughly different but even opposed. What we assert of them is just this,
that, this opposition notwithstanding, and indeed perhaps just through it,
they stand in a certain ideal connection to one another; that each in his
own way cooperates in the construction of what we call the “spirit” of the
Renaissance or the culture of the Renaissance. It is a unity of direction, not
a unity of being that should be brought to expression here. The particular
individuals belong together—not because they are alike or resemble each
other but because they cooperate in a common task, which, in contrast to
the Middle Ages, we sense to be new and to be the distinctive “meaning”
of the Renaissance. (Cassirer, 2000, p. 73: italics added)
For Cassirer, unlike in Hegel, there is no metaphysical substantial ground work-

ing itself out in and through the particular as the teleological unfolding of his-
tory; no cunning of Reason that produces the illusion of freedom. Nor is there
simply a radical finite Dasein standing alone in “solitude,”10 as in Heidegger,
transcending out into the abysmal ground of its existence. History thus is not
the unfolding of the idea, nor the awaiting with anticipatory resoluteness to
one’s own most possibility. For this reason, as philosophers of history, neither
Hegel nor Heidegger can secure a foundation from which to critique their times
nor, what amounts to the same, to transform it: for Hegel, the “actual is rational
and the rational is actual”; and for Heidegger, every Umwelt is equally inauthen-
tic as every other and so all critique is reduced to the idle chatter (Gerede) of
a historical and anonymous das Man. For Cassirer, though we are thrown into
a world we do not create and are initially more assujetti by than the subject
of the world, we can transcend the world through critique and thus transform
the world by taking part in the world. Thus, like Hegel and Heidegger, we are
history, but unlike them, we are also the agents of history.
Miki is closer to Cassirer than to Hegel, Heidegger, or even Marx. With
Cassirer, and thus in contrast to Heidegger, Miki reads Kant’s philosophical
project from the perspective of the third Critique and thus as a philosophical
anthropology. Ultimately Miki’s philosophy of the logic of the imagination is
an account of the nature of freedom in the formation and transformation of
10 I would note here the title of Heidegger’s 1929–1930 work quoted above: The Fundamental
Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude.
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412 lofts
historical form and by extension the construction and reconstruction of the

sociocultural life of an intersubjective world. For Miki, ethics is not concerned
with a universal moral standard as much as it is with the nature of creative
freedom of individuals in the co-operative construction and reconstruction of
the sociocultural world they share. History is nothing other than the creative
process of co-origination and the self-awakening of the individual and culture
through a process of immanent critique. “Freedom is tied to responsibility, and
responsibility is twofold: the responsibility of the individual towards themself
and the responsibility toward a society which are bound together” (mkz 17,
p. 574). According to the logic of dual transcendence, the self and other, and
the self-other and the world they share are a dialectical relation of mutually
conditioning forces. “The human is made from society, and oppositely, it is said
that the human being creates society, and just as there is a dialectical rela-
tionship between the individual and society, there stands a relationship where
there is a dialectical unity and opposition between social ethics and individual
ethics” (mkz 15, pp. 262–263). Like Cassirer, Miki sees freedom as defining the
human and nature. There is no substantial ground as in Hegel that determines
the course of history or plays us like marionettes through the cunning of rea-
son. And although Miki maintains that Marxism is a form of humanism, clearly
Miki did not think that the dialectical materialism in the form given it by Marx
was able to account for the creative freedom of the individual actor of history.
As with Cassirer, there is a radical indeterminacy inherent in both the self and
the world, and thus in history that is the condition of their possibility. Whereas
Cassirer is unable to fully account for the source of this indeterminacy—is
unable to follow the ladder down the logic of dual transcendence—, Miki, fol-
lowing Nishida, has at his disposal the notion of absolute nothingness or the
formless form that is the origin of form (mkz 14, p. 262). It is in the inner tran-
scendence into nothingness that we find the source well of our being: not the
simply Nichtdasein of death. However, as we saw, Miki also goes up the ladder
in the external transcendence to the objectivity of trans-individual historical
forms that possess their own objective and formative energies. Miki is also crit-
ical of the dichotomy between the inauthentic averageness of das Man and the
authentic individuality of Dasein that Heidegger makes in Being and Time. This
distinction effectively severs the individual from the world, creating a sense of
solitude. Central to Miki’s view is the idea of “person” that is a unique sociocul-
tural being:
Freedom […] is the deepest emotion of the human being. It is the concept
of personality [and not Dasein] that has emerged to break the concept
of feudalism [the leveling down of the individual by a dominant socio-
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cultural world]. All human beings should be respected equally as person-

alities, and we should consider freedom to be the essence of personality.
(mkz 7, p. 469)
The person is a product of the dual transcendence: an internal transcendence

beyond the existence of the cultural self into the nothingness of the true self
and an external transcendence beyond the self to the otherness of the world
and other selves in the world: it is the relation of the self to the other and to the
common situation in which both the self and other stand, a common situation
that is of concerns to both, a product of the self-awakening of both. For Miki,
not only does the relation to the external world express a two-fold participation
in the world, of the world, and with the world, such that each echoes the other,
such that each is a co-responding (sich Entsprechen) to the other; but each, in
its radical uniqueness of inner transcendence in the other of nothingness, is a
co-responding (sich Entsprechen) to the nothingness of the other. Thus: “Every
individual person is a certain genius and a certain originality” (mkz 8, p. 124).
Every individual is an infinitesimal monad reflecting the inner formless against
which it is, and the collective world that it opens up in relation to other monads
in the collective cooperative project of worlding. And thus, as we said above:
“What has been designated as the spirit or genius of a people is nothing but a
mere convenient cipher, nothing other than the anonymous synthesis of the
originality of various individual persons. Only this originality of the individual
is what is real and what continues to be effectively active at every moment”
(mkz 8, p. 109). For Miki, an “institutional society” [seido-teki shakai 制度的社
会] (mkz 8, p. 184) is one in which the society has become an object of under-
standing of individuals: it speaks to the external transcendence, the objective.
Miki distinguishes this from the “creative society” [sōzō-teki shakai 創造的社
会] (mkz 8, p. 184) which speaks to inner transcendence into the absolute noth-
ingness of the formless form from where individual persons are created. “Cre-
ative society is indeed the true transcendental subject. By becoming one with
that creative society, the inventive individual can thus be inventive” (mkz 8,
p. 184).
Miki goes beyond Cassirer in recognizing that the concept of culture is a
concept of culture: that is, a concept that belongs to a specific culture. That
properly speaking culture is a process of self-awakening: not just of individu-
als but of the world in which the individual always already finds themself in
relation to other individuals. Cassirer’s critique of culture ultimately remains a
transcendental critique of culture in the sense of an objective genitive and is
never fully able to move to a critique of culture in the sense of a subjective gen-
itive; that is say, to an immanent critique of historical culture in the process of
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414 lofts
transcending itself; and in transcending itself be creative of itself. If Cassirer’s

critique of culture does not, however, become a militant project of immanent
critique, his philosophy nevertheless does argue for the need for this immanent
critique and provides the tools to undertake it.
5 Conclusion
Ours is a decisive historical moment that demands resolute action. But this
resoluteness must not be that of an anticipatory resoluteness that awaits its
fate, the end of humanity, but an imaginative resoluteness that sets before us
an image of a future and directs all individual activities toward this image in
a collective cooperative project of a creative society. For this, we must imag-
ine the human a new and in this way transform the human. The Davos debate
on the question “What is the Human?” ends in an impasse because it either
approaches the productive imagination from the standpoint of its highest man-
ifestations in ideas and thought, or from the standpoint of its ground in the
finitude of Dasein. Miki approaches the imagination from the perspective of its
dialectical unity of pathos and logos. As such he places below the imagination
a more originary ground, the formless form as a field of sheer possibility out
of which the form-images of the imagination are formed. These form-images
give flesh to the basic experience of the human in its intersubjective situated-
ness and provide the sense of being human as a self-interpretation of that basic
experience. However, the form-images form the bases for the further develop-
ment of the idea-forms that realize the possibility of self-understanding inher-
ent in the self-interpretation of the basic experience that is lived as the lived
anthropology. Philosophy guards us against the empty ideological power of
idea-forms to frame our basic experience of being ourselves and being with
others from a perspective that is ultimately not only alien to it but hostile to it.
Philosophy as philosophical anthropology must bring us back to an existential
engagement with interpreting our basic experience, and this demands the his-
torical will of action and imagination. Today, of course, our “basic experience”
is no longer that of the proletariat. What then is our “basic experience”? Such
a question lies beyond the scope of this paper. But perhaps it is the question
we began with, “What is the Human?” It is perhaps not so much that we are
at the moment unable to provide a clear answer to this question, but that we
no longer feel ourselves in a position to ever do so. The historical demand of
our times is to imagine the human in such a way that we can recognize the
human we share in the culturally other. Only in this way can we hope to cre-
ate a more egalitarian cooperative, co-existence of the “salon of the soul” for a
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world of worlds, to speak with Nakai and Nishida. But this world must not be
yet another human-centric world that continues the Anthropocene, it must be
a human existence that can recognize in other sentient beings, in the specieally
other, the life we share with them.
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15
Now, Ever or After: Contrasting the Pure Lands of
D.T. Suzuki and Tanabe Hajime
Abstract
D.T. Suzuki and Tanabe Hajime, two important philosophers of the Kyoto School, both
wrote about Pure Land Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism which believes that the bud-
dha Amida has been reborn in the Pure Land and has saved us all. This act of salvation
by another (other-power) means that we are not completely self-contained within our
consciousness but are part of an intimate self-other, I and Thou, relationship, in this
case with Amida. How close are we connected to Amida, our savior? For Suzuki it is,
ideally, the most intimate of relationships where a true devotee and Amida are one
with each other. For Tanabe, the relationship always sustains some distance from the
other. The two different visions of Pure Land other-power reflect a difference between
Suzuki and Tanabe regarding the goal of knowledge and philosophy. For Suzuki it must
end with absolute knowledge beyond knower and known. For Tanabe, it must be based
upon a submission to the constant existence of otherness in our world. This divergence
has consequences for the views both held regarding the question of thrownness versus
spontaneity (to express it in Davos terms). Suzuki, I argue, is the philosopher of thrown-
ness, the vision of self in the world and the world in the self. Tanabe is the philosopher
of spontaneity, a vision of the self freely carving its own history as it submits to that
other that remains other.
Keywords
D.T. Suzuki – Tanabe Hajime – Pure Land – reisei – other-power – zange – Jodo
1 Introduction
All philosophy generates rifts and rows. From Davos to Kyoto, great minds
clash and old ideas are given new spin and energy. One such confrontation
involved Tanabe Hajime and Nishda Kitarō along with D.T. Suzuki. Tanabe
© Rossa Ó Muireartaigh, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_017 - 978-90-04-68017-3

418 ó muireartaigh
attacked Nishida most forthrightly in his 1930 essay, “Requesting the Guid-
ance of Professor Nishida,” expressing irritation at the rarified otherworldly
nature of Nishida’s philosophy, particularly his take on Zen-inspired flight from
messy reality. He respected Nishida’s religious awareness but wondered if it
damaged his philosophical quest: “Even I have respect for such a profound
religious experience, but I wonder that this philosophy gives us reason to
fear the espousal of contemplative detachment from reality” (2020, p. 308). In
his later key work, Philosophy as Metanoetics, he also took aim at Zen (and,
we can assume, Nishida). He stated, for example, “there is no question but
that the in-itself tendency of Zen Buddhism runs the risk of falling prey to
unmediated self-identity” (2016, p. 285), and added further that his metanoet-
ics differs from Zen “in virtue of its being a for-itself mode” (2016, p. 286), in
other words, something more attuned to concrete social and historical real-
ity.
Tanabe also had problems with D.T. Suzuki’s Zen and its similar implications.
Nishitani discusses this in an article entitle “Remembering Daisetz Suzuki”
(1986) where he highlights Suzuki’s criticisms of Tanabe’s philosophizing of
Zen. Tanabe had written a book entitled My Philosophical Perspectives on the
Shobogenzo (1939) and Suzuki had written in his book Various Problems of Zen,
a critique (in Nishitani’s view) of Tanabe: “If you begin by intellectually fabri-
cating some philosophical system, you cannot then pull Zen out of it. You have
to do it the other way around” (Nishitani, 1986, p. 152). Tanabe had his own crit-
icisms. As Nishitani describes it:
Dr. Tanabe confronted the standpoint of Zen (especially Rinzai Zen) as

found in Dr. Nishida and Dr. Suzuki, as well as in Dr. Shin’ichi Hisamatsu,
from before Dr. Tanabe’s book was published until long after. During this
time I was sometimes made by Dr. Tanabe to play the opponent’s role so
to speak, to take a beating for them. (1986, p. 153)
The conflict between them was, at its most general, according to Nishitani,
about any relationship between Zen and philosophy. He does not give more
details than this. However, in this article, I wish to look instead at how both
Suzuki and Tanabe understood Pure Land Buddhism quite differently and use
this difference as a way of demarcating the more general split between them
(and by extension Nishida, who was never far from a Suzuki perspective). In so
doing, I wish to link it to one aspect of the Davos debate, the question of what
is it to be human?
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now, ever or after 419
2 Pure Lands
Pure Land Buddhism inspired both D.T. Suzuki and Tanabe Hajime. However,
what they each took from it was quite different. Suzuki believed Pure Land to
be an easier, more folkish path to what Zen also discovers, an awakening to
the infinite here in the eternal now transcendent of subject and object. Japan,
in Suzuki’s telling, has been particularly suited to these awakening-oriented
branches of Buddhism—Zen and Pure Land—since Japanese spirituality (日
本的霊性 nihontekireisei) has a unique sensitivity to non-duality. Tanabe, on
the other hand, saw in Pure Land inspiration for his concept of “metanoetics”
and the related “repentance” (懺悔 zange) which is linked to the Pure Land con-
cept of submission to other power, and the transformative power arising from
this: “The experience of accepting this transforming power of zange as a grace
from tariki (Other-power) is […] the very core of metanoetics” (2016, p. 72). The
core difference, I believe, between Suzuki and Tanabe, is the key word here
“transforming.” For Suzuki Pure Land was about the unchanging transcendent
as experienced immanently. For Tanabe it was about recognizing the transcen-
dent within immanent change.
3 Zen and Pure Land
Since both Suzuki and Tanabe tended to pair Zen and Pure Land together for
both comparison and contrast, it is worth reminding ourselves of what each
of these branches of Buddhism believe in. Both developed in Japan from the
late Heian period onwards and both are living religions with their own rit-
uals, styles and doctrines. Their lived reality may differ somewhat from the
intellectual interpretations they have been since granted by the Kyoto School.
But since any divergence between reality and image did not worry the Kyoto
School it should not worry us here. Zen is about attaining spiritual awaken-
ing (satori) through individual effort. This satori is directly experienced by the
practitioner and, in Suzuki’s explanation, does not involve any outside media-
tion. In this sense, the experience of satori is contentless, it is not an experience
of something by someone. In fact, such a distinction between something and
someone (subject and object, we can call it) drops away and all that is there
is the experience itself. As such, Zen is radically individualistic. It is ahistori-
cal and asocial (being individualistic). Suzuki would argue that the experience
granted by Zen does inform us of better ways to live our life and see the world
but these are secondary and derivative values and merely removed interpreta-
tions of the Zen experience. Direct experience, which is satori, does not grant
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direct understanding of anything else other than the direct experience. While
Zen does have its own temples, history, heroes and folklore, it is not about any
of these things which are contingent and accidental attachments to the con-
tentless truth of Zen. Real Zen has no myths or narrative. This is very much
in contrast to Pure Land Buddhism whose beliefs are based on very clear and
explicit personages and stories. Amida, a Buddha who dwells in the Pure Land
(mythologically seen as an actual place in another part of the cosmos), made a
vow (the Original Vow, hongan 本願) many eons ago in historical time (as in, we
could technically count back to when it supposedly happened) that He would
save all sentient beings by letting them be reborn in His Pure Land, otherwise
he would not become a Buddha. The fact that He is a Buddha is proof that the
Vow has been fulfilled and that we are all saved. The condition for this salva-
tion is that we simply chant His name “Namu-Amida-Budda.” Now, the fact that
we are already saved means that this condition too has already been fulfilled.
When we choose to chant his name that decision was already made before we
even made it.
The core difference between Zen and Pure Land is summarized by the con-
trasting concepts of self-power ( jiriki 自力) and other-power (tariki 他力).
Self-power is the way of Zen where it is through the efforts of yourself and you
alone that you attain satori. Other-power is the Pure Land route whereby you
are granted salvation through the intercession of Amida.
4 Suzuki’s Pure Land
Although famous for his Zen writings, Suzuki also wrote about Pure Land Bud-
dhism. He saw no particular conflict between Zen and Pure Land, and relegated
the distinction between self-power and other-power to nothing more than a
lifestyle choice. The passionate minority with strength and perseverance can
choose the Zen way and the humble majority can opt to submit to the other-
power of Pure Land. The end destination is the same, a spiritual awakening
where subject and other are transcended.1 But no synthesis is ever really sym-
metrical and in combining Zen and Pure Land, Suzuki arguably created a Zen-
1 As Suzuki explains in The Field of Zen (1980, p. 77). “Now here is the difference between Tariki
and Jiriki. This differentiation is possible only on the plane of relativity. When that plane is
transcended there is no Tariki, no Jiriki; no ‘other power’, no ‘self power’; the difference of ‘self’
and ‘other’ is possible only at the level of discrimination. When that level is effaced there will
be no self, no not-self; thus no Shin to be separated from Zen. When Shinran emphasized
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style Pure Land.2 In Zen there is direct satori, for Pure Land there is a surrogate
satori, an awakening that has all the characteristics of a Zen one but with the
borrowed consciousness of another involved. The spiritual awakening of Pure
Land grants a knowledge that is beyond faith, a knowledge that is absolute in
its assuredness. Although Pure Land is about “other” power, the attainment of
faith and hence absolute knowledge is something that is beyond self and other.
It implies the erasure of otherness as something that is unknown and less than
absolute.
In his book Japanese Spirituality (1972), Suzuki explains that Pure Land devo-
tion involves what he calls “direct spiritual awakening” (直接霊性覚 chokuse-
tureiseigaku). This awakening entails the transcending of self and other. As
such, the “other” of “other” power takes on a different function in the act of
awakening. Whereas Pure Land belief is traditionally seen as Amida vowing to
save us and then actually saving us, this transcendence of self and other means
that we cannot identify any agent as doing the saving or any self that is being
saved. Rather, it is as though it is the vow itself, the Original Vow, or rather the
will the vow expresses that is in operation, with any distinction between Amida
and the Pure Land devotee dropping away.
In Japanese Spirituality, Suzuki seems to argue that this direct spiritual awak-
ening could only be experienced in its most complete and mature form in
Japanese society, particularly during the Kamakura period when Pure Land
devotion was at its height. This is because, whilst every nation has its own
particular spirituality (霊性 reisei), Japan’s one was especially suited to allow
Zen and Pure Land to develop to their full potential. Japanese spirituality was
always ready made for any non-dualistic transcendence that any branch of
Buddhism that came its way may require. As Suzuki states: “It is impossible
in the world of dualistic logic for beings to have a connection to the highest
reality without the intervention of some intermediate condition; yet Japanese
spirituality accomplishes this connection directly, without any difficulty” (1972,
p. 21). A nation’s reisei is something implanted very deep in a country’s psyche.
It is something akin to the spiritual stems-cells of the nation’s body that may
or may not grow and mature depending on circumstances. Suzuki’s metaphor
on the relationship between Pure Land belief and Japanese reisei is rain (Pure
Land devotion) giving growth to plants (the reisei).
the awakening of Ichi-nen out of uniformity, that is Zen; that is where Zen and Shin become
one. He emphasised this Ichi-nen coming out of sameness, and this very moment constitutes
Satori.”
2 Others, such as Kaneko Daiei, have made this same point (Takemura, 2002, p. 113).
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To illustrate that this is the way the Japanese responded to Pure Land reli-
gion, Suzuki looked at the writings of various Pure Land thinkers, including
Shinran, as well as the poetry and the fragmented writings pious Pure Land
devotees (called “myokonin”) have left behind. Pre-modern Japan for Suzuki
could almost be described as the End of History, a time without alienation
when the self-other distinction was transcended and all was harmonious with
a perfect coalescence between what the individual desired from the world and
what the world desired from the individual. History was not going in a line
through time but was in an infinite circle. For example, one myokonin Pure
Land devotee and poet, Saichi, for whom “the voice of Japanese spirituality
was constantly whispering in his ear” (1972, pp. 200–201) knew that “now is
the eternal present, the absolute present. It is not the now that continues in
the straight line of past, present, and future” (1972, pp. 197–198). One important
point about Pure Land in its Jodo Shinshu form is that it holds to the belief
that because we are already saved we are already in Pure Land as we are liv-
ing our lives here on earth, a doctrine promoted by Shinran called “body lost
and not lost upon passing” (体失・不体失往生 taishitu-hutaishituojo). Suzuki’s
immanentized eschaton in Japanese Spirituality conforms to such a view. (By
the way, although Suzuki forgot to mention it, Pure Land Buddhism in pre-
modern times was also behind some serious agrarian resistance and agitation,
serving as an astonishingly potent weapon of peasant political empowerment.
But that’s another story.)
Suzuki’s description here of the relationship between Amida and the Pure
Land devotee is very much in keeping with his soku-hi logic (即悲論理 sokuhi-
ronri), a concept taken up by Nishida in his own writings. Soku-hi (A is not A,
thus A is A) expresses a fundamental fluidity of identity. The world may seem
to be divided into discrete objects and sentient beings who are other to us, but
such essentialized differences are created through a dualistic vision where sub-
ject and object, self and other, are always divided from each other. The Original
Vow in Pure Land operates within the self to create a direct awareness that does
not obliterate self and other—there is no Amida mind control pulsating from
Pure Land—but which moves or works at a level that is transcended of self
and other. When we experience direct spiritual awakening we see soku-hi in
operation, the breakdown of dualistic division into the condition of our here-
ness in the now. This means that the site of religious awakening is ultimately
within the self’s own sokuhi-style experience of its own non-selfhood. Nishida
in “The Logic of ‘Topos’ and the Religious Worldview” explains Suzuki’s idea of
spirituality thus:
There is something that thoroughly transcends the conscious self at the

foundation of the self. This is the fact of self-awareness. Anyone reflecting
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deeply on the reality of one’s own self-awareness inevitably comes to this

recognition. D.T. Suzuki calls it “spiritual nature” (reisei). Furthermore, he
says that the will power of the spirit transcends itself by being sustained
by spiritual nature. (1987, p. 85)
Nishida then remarks in a manner that intentionally or not refutes Tanabe’s

charges of Zen elitism: “This religious consciousness, as the fundamental fact
of our life, forms the basis for both scholarly inquiry and morality. Religious
awareness is not the monopoly of an elite but lies hidden in the hearts of each
and every one of us. One who does not recognize this cannot be a philosopher”
(1987, p. 85).
The book Japanese Spirituality in which Suzuki created his remarkably un-
critical quasi-völkisch picture of Japan was published in 1944. Its timing and
its claims have invited obvious suspicions of collaboration and support for the
militarism and ultranationalism of the time. But it could also be argued that
the idealization of Japan presented in this book is so remote, pacifistic and
bucolic that it can only be interpreted as a critique of Japan’s modern overseas
aggression, as in, the book is making the argument that Japan was once, many
centuries ago in pre-modern times, a far more civilized and advanced nation
than the one it had become.3 The book is dreaming about what the future could
have been.
5 Tanabe’s Pure Land
Tanabe in his book Philosophy as Metanoetics, first published in 1946, also har-
nesses Pure Land to help with national redemption from the shame of Japan’s
military defeats. He believed that repentance (zange) was the proper response
to the war that had ended in such disaster. Zange would lead to greater wisdom,
fraternity and freedom going forward. In fact, other nations too should perform
zange, Tanabe asserted, and in doing so the quest for a better world beyond the
limits of the current world order of imperfect democracy and socialism would
be won. The power of positive vergangenheitsbewältigung thinking indeed! It
is worth pointing out, though, that what exactly Tanabe was regretting about
the War is not completely clear. Satō Masaru, for example, comments:
3 For instance, Kemmyo Taira Sato writes, “Suzuki regarded ‘Japanese spirituality’—in his
view, the type of spirituality seen primarily in Japanese Pure Land figures like Hōnen 法
然 (1133–1212) and Shinran—as the religious ideal most suited to the religious culture of the
nation, and the best alternative to the failed State Shintoist ideology” (2008, p. 114).
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However, he sent [Tanabe] a lot of students off to that War. According

to his theory Japan was justified in its Great East Asian War and the self-
sacrifice of the students was justified. He never reflected at all on this.
He said that all of Japan was responsible. And so zange (repentance) was
something all of Japan had to do. He never believed that he had any par-
ticular responsibility at all. He was quite an irresponsible person. (2017,
p. 31)4
For Tanabe, Pure Land teaches us that it is the future that is determined and
the past that is yet to be transformed.5 Again, this is the logic of the Pure Land
claim: Amida took a vow to save us all or not be born a buddha in Pure Land.
Amida is now a buddha born in Pure Land. Therefore, the vow must have been
fulfilled. Therefore, we are all saved. This future has already happened and it is
unchangeable. It is the past that is the unknown into which we venture with
our history which is shaped anew.
Tanabe is not a preacher of Pure Land. Rather, this Pure Land philosophy
is his own expression of how the world can have meaning for us now when
we have found faith through our submission to the otherness of the world into
which we feel thrown. Our relationship with Amida is the ultimate analogy of
the I-Thou relationship we find ourselves in as soon as we reach consciousness
of there being others in the world. The act of submission to the other is an act of
faith that there is a deeper and significant unity with the other. It is faith rather
than transcended knowledge that reveals to us this unity beyond self and other.
For Tanabe the path to this Pure Land wisdom is through philosophy where
we encounter aporias and antinomies. Rather than provoking despair these
impasses are what can alert us to a greater wisdom if we submit to the otherness
we experience in the world we look out upon. We may be shocked and shoved
towards this submission through traumas in our own lives, such as the experi-
ence of being on the losing and shamed side of a horrific war, but life dramas
and encounters with the other force us to realize that the deepest meaning in
the world can only be given to us by the grace of the other once we recognize
4 ただ、彼はあの戦争に多くの学生たちを送り込みました。自分の理論によって日本は
大東亜戦争を正当化した、あるいは学生たちはおのれが特攻死することを正当化し
た、そのことに関して彼はまったく反省していなかった。それは日本全体に責任があ
るんだと。だから懺悔は日本全体でするべきであって、自分に特別の責任があるとい
う発想は、まるで持っていなかった人、ものすごく無責任な人です。
5 Tanabe writes, “Through the mediation of metanoesis, rebirth in the future is already con-
tained in the past as a destination; and apart from the absolute transformation of the past
by means of the absolute nothingness. Mediated by the future, the past can be transformed
absolutely”. (2016, p. 375)
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with every fiber of our being the existence of that other. Whereas for Suzuki
the path to Pure Land-style awakening is just a matter of history fortuitously
raining Buddhist belief upon the flora of Japan’s spirituality, for Tanabe it is the
struggles and failures of a thinking mind on the conscious level that are crucial.
It is when the rain does not fall that you crave it, value it, believe in it, know it
and grow towards it. For Suzuki, Zen satori and Pure Land devotion both reside
in conditions of absolute knowledge. Whatever path gets you there is irrelevant
since the absolute nature of the resultant knowledge is self-contained. For Tan-
abe, though, the path to get there is indispensable and not exchangeable with
any other path because knowledge that does not include the path, as in the
absolute knowledge of direct spiritual awakening, is not absolute. And not only
is it not absolute but it is devoid of any critical mechanism by which it can be
seen to be not absolute.
In describing other-power and one’s relationship through other-power with
Amida, Tanabe focusses on two core concepts “going” (往生 ōjō) and “coming
back” (gensō 還相). Going to Amida and coming back. This is perhaps the most
significant difference from Suzuki and his concept of direct spiritual awaken-
ing as the working of the Original Vow prior to the division of self and other.
Suzuki’s Pure Land awakening involves what he calls the “Person of the supra-
individual” and it is at this level, the level of the supra-individual where Amida
is met. The poetry of the Pure Land devotees, as analyzed by Suzuki, expresses
the joy of this meeting that becomes a union. For instance, Suzuki in inter-
preting a poem by the myokonin Saichi, talks about how in attaining “to the
supra-individual Person, […] the mirror of the individual self is received within
the mirror of Amida so as to be like two facing mirrors with no image between
them. And the joy in the consciousness of the individual self leads immedi-
ately to the Great Mirror Wisdom, where there is neither joy nor anxiety” (1972,
p. 212). What is to be noted here is the sense that this relationship with Amida
at some level involves a shared joy that is absolutely known to be shared. (But
to ask by whom would be to go around in an infinite circle). For Tanabe the oth-
erness of Amida is never penetrated to this extent. The submission to Amida is
an act of exchange where both sides still remain different and intact. There is
an absolute faith that the other is with you and that the world has meaning, but
there is no absolute awakening. Any awakening arising from the faith granted
by Amida is not an absolute awakening where self and other or subject and
object are transcended. The other remains other. The consequence of this is
that Tanabe’s Pure Land devotion implies a revaluing of the importance of our
myths and history. The I-Thou structure means that we can only ever under-
stand our world through particular narratives, something the awareness of an
eternal now does not grant. This contrasts with Suzuki who rejected mediat-
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ing mechanisms which take us away from that world of non-duality in which a
subject-other narrative does not operate.
6 Back to Davos
In his book on the Davos debate, Continental Divide, Peter E. Gordon (merci-
fully) distills the clash down to a clearer dispute between “spontaneity” and
“thrownness.”
The disagreement between Cassirer and Heidegger’s turns upon this fun-
damental distinction between spontaneity and receptivity, between the
human capacity for worldmaking as against our openness to the world.
Cassirer forges his philosophical system with an eye toward the uncondi-
tioned, the inexhaustible, and even the “infinite” spontaneity of human
expression. Heidegger works out his own philosophical ideas from the
basic premise that the human being is a creature of essential finitude, lim-
ited by time and history, which finds itself thrown into conditions it did
not create. Now, there are many ways one might characterize the essential
tension between these two visions of humanity. For economy’s sake I will
most often describe it as a contest between thrownness and spontaneity.
(2010, p. 7)
How would this dispute play between Suzuki and Tanabe? To see this, let us
ask the question how free is the human mind? What Buddhism (and phe-
nomenologists) know about the mind is that it is multilayered. We have mul-
tiple consciousnesses playing in our heads at once, many voices speaking to
us and for us at the same time. But which is our most real and ultimate
voice? Which consciousness of consciousness is our rock-bottom conscious-
ness? That final voice, the you that speaks for all the other yous, where does
its voice come from? Is it truly your voice, your spontaneous thought driven
only by your mind? Or is this voice at the very border where you and the world
are no longer separate. Our arms and legs are given to use, thrown upon us
at birth by the cosmos. We do not choose them and so somehow they were
never really ours to begin with. But what of our mind? Is it too something
bequeathed to us by nature and hence not really our own. Is that most inner
voice that you feel you are speaking with something that can only be you,
really you alone, or is everything that voice says going to come ultimately
from the world you mistakenly think is outside of you? Are we free or are we
thrown?
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Suzuki would seem at first to be on the side of freedom. Certainly, his Zen-
inspired rhetoric sprouts such assertions: “The Zen-man is an artist to the
extent that, as the sculptor chisels out a great figure deeply buried in a mass of
inert matter, the Zen-man transforms his own life into a work of creation, which
exists, as Christians might say, in the mind of God” (1959, p. 17). And yet, there is
that sense of oneness that tends to suffocate spontaneity when taken to its con-
clusion. In another book Suzuki wrote on Pure Land Shin Buddhism, Buddha
of Infinite Light, he stated, “We find our inner self when namu-amida-butsu
is pronounced once and for all. My conclusion is that Amida is our inmost self,
and when that inmost self is found, we are born in the Pure Land” (1998, pp. 41–
42). The problem here is who is this self when we find the other there.
Suzuki also discusses elsewhere in this book the poetry of another (un-
named) Shin believing myokonin. He comments,
Other-power actually comes quite unawares and unexpectedly to our

mind. When we really have Other-power, it takes complete possession of
our consciousness, and self-power goes away altogether. You might ask,
what makes us recognize that power as Other-power, when it occupies
the whole field of consciousness? In fact, we are not even conscious of
Other-power, for Other-power prevails and nothing stands against it. All
this defies linguistic description. Other-power is there, and I am conscious
of it, yet that Other-power identifies all my consciousness as itself. I am
there just the same. I am I. The Other is other. Yet there is consciousness
which cannot be expressed. When expressed, it becomes an absurdity. So,
Other-power must be personally realized. (1998, p. 76)
It is obvious with these assertions of absurdity and linguistically impossible

conclusions that he is struggling to square the circle (or perhaps circle the
square) between a belief in the utter satoried freedom of self-power and the
utter seamless communion of other-power. It is this all in one and one in
all antinomy that drives Suzuki to embrace a holistic culturalist view of the
human, as one born at one with the land that gave birth to you. One important
concept that Suzuki emphasized in his Japanese Spirituality was the “spirit of
the earth” (大地性 daichisei), an earthliness that dissolves subject and object
conundrums in the solid and stolid soil upon which the ontologically uncon-
fused country folk live so close. As Suzuki explains:
The spirit of the earth is the spirit of life. This life always unfolds itself
within the individual, who is a continuation of the earth—he has his roots
there, there is where he appears, and there is where he returns. The spirit
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of the earth breathes at the inmost recesses of the individual, so that real-
ity is ever present in him, sharing a pole in opposition to the world of
ideas. (1972, p. 45)
This foregrounding of earthliness is echoed somewhat in Heidegger’s “The

Origin of a Work of Art” wherein he states, “Earth is that which comes forth
and shelters. Earth, irreducibly spontaneous, is effortless and untiring. Upon
the earth and in it, historical man grounds his dwelling in the world” (2008,
pp. 171–172). The proper individual for Suzuki, we can surmise, is one who is
so much at one with his or her world that the question of spontaneity ver-
sus thrownness does not arise. But, alas, the question does arise and it seems
that evasive answers about linguistic absurdity cloak a fundamental disbelief
in spontaneity, leaving only circles of ahistorical non-dualistic transcendent,
what Suzuki called, in the same book, “spiritual insight” (霊性的直覚 reiseite-
kichokkaku).6
For Tanabe, the gensō of Pure Land offers a vision of the individual as that
point upon which culture is generated, not because culture is all dominating
but because there is no other place for culture to be other than where the indi-
vidual is at.
Culture is therefore merely one phase of a broader ethical and religious

totality. Put in terms of temporality, “specific” culture corresponds to
the past, and “individual” activity corresponds to the future. The eternal
present in which religious salvation takes place consists in the fact that
these two elements, representing tradition and freedom respectively, are
mediated in the nothingness of the present and transformed into a “uni-
versal” Great Action. Culture provides the underlying basis of continuity
here. Specific determination—as a mediator of gensō […] is the face of
this cultural unity. (2016, p. 430)
6 There is an interesting contrast between Suzuki’s notion of direct spiritual insight and the
way Ernst Cassirer talks about “mythico-religious attitude” in Language and Myth, wherein
his explanation very much describes something of the ōsō-gensō arc. He talks of how the
“focusing of all forces on a single point is the prerequisite for all mythical thinking and myth-
ical formulation. When, on the one hand, the entire self is given up to a single impression,
is ‘possessed’ by it and, on the other hand, there is the utmost tension between the subject
and its object, the outer world; when external reality is not merely viewed and contemplated,
but overcomes a man in sheer immediacy, with emotions of fear or hope, terror or wish ful-
fillment: then the spark jumps somehow across, the tension finds release, as the subjective
excitement becomes objectified, and confronts the mind as a god or a daemon” (1946, p. 33).
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But it is in another key section of Tanabe’s Philosophy of Metanoetics where

we see the clearest case of the spontaneity versus thrownness dichotomy shad-
owed in the grooves of Kyoto fissures. Tanabe tells us that “in an attempt to
clarify the logic of Zen, one authority on Zen Buddhism has characterized it
as the ‘discrimination of nondiscrimination’” (2016, p. 140). ‘Discrimination
of nondiscrimination’ (分別の無分別 bunbetsu no mubunbetsu) is actually a
phrase that Suzuki used in his 1943 book 『禅の思想』 (The Philosophy of Zen).
But Tanabe has borrowed this phrase from the ‘authority on Zen’ (most likely
Suzuki) merely to distinguish Zen from the idea of ‘nondiscrimination of dis-
crimination’ (無分別の分別 mubunbetsu no bunbetsu) which Tanabe equates
with the philosophy of Nishida with his “self-identity of absolute contradicto-
ries” (絶対矛盾の自己同一 zettaimujun no jikodōitsu). He argues:
If the “discrimination of nondiscrimination” is characterized as a “return

to the world” (gensō), the self-identity of absolute contradictories may
be characterized as a “moving toward the absolute” (ōsō). That is, the
self-identity of absolute contradictories posits an ontological “contradic-
tion of contradiction”—or identity—but lacks the existential witness of
action-faith. (2016, p. 141)
It turns out that Nishida, and I will argue by extension Suzuki, have philosophi-
cally veered down a different road, the road of ōsō, a road of non-discrimination
of discrimination. It is a road that will deny transformations of a self still in
the world because it is evading the discriminations of the world and, conse-
quently the separation from otherness a spontaneous free self will need. For
consciousness to be spontaneous and free, non-discrimination must be of that
for which it is not possible to discriminate—that which could be called the
‘absolute’ or the ‘nothingness’. Tanabe writes, “Only the ‘nondiscrimination’
of nothingness, which provides for an absolute return to this world through
the negation and transformation of the self, can provide discrimination with
transcendent unity on practical and paradoxical grounds” (2016, p. 141). The
discrimination of nondiscrimination is what gives us our contingencies, our
accidents, our histories. And our spontaneity and our freedom. As Tanabe tells
us, “Being that does not arise spontaneously cannot be called free” (p. 153). The
problem with thrownness is that it is disproved with every thinking moment
since every thinking moment proves that we are thinking ourselves and not
the puppets of an absolute other. Tanabe makes the point as follows:
There is no self-consciousness of “thrownness” as such. Since self-con-

sciousness belongs to the activity of the free subject, there can be no
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thrownness without a subject that projects itself into the future in order
freely to determine its own being. Were this not so, consciousness of time
itself would be impossible, and the thrownness and contingency of the
past could never reach consciousness. Freedom, not contingency, is the
principle of history and the essence of reality. Without a self projecting
itself and freely making plans, there is no history of reality. History is the
trail of footprints left by freedom. (2016, pp. 153–154)
Bibliography
Cassirer, Ernst (1946) Language and Myth. New York: Dover.

Gordon, Peter E. (2010) Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge,
Massachusetts; Lonon: Harvard University Press.
Heidegger, Martin (2008) ‘The Origin of the Work of Art.’ In: David Farrell Krell,
ed., Basic Writings. London: Harper Perennial.
Nishida Kitarō (1987) ‘The Logic of “Topos” and the Religious Worldview: Part ii.’
Translated by Yusa Michiko. The Eastern Buddhist, 20 (1), 81–119.
Nishitani Keiji (1986) ‘Remembering Suzuki.’ In: Masao Abe, ed., A Zen Life: D.T. Su-
zuki Remembered. New York; Tokyo: Weatherhill. pp. 148–159.
Satō Kemmyō Taira (2008) ‘D.T. Suzuki and the Question of War.’ Translated by Thom-
as Kirchner. The Eastern Buddhist, 39 (1), 61–120.
Satō Masaru 佐藤優 (2017) Gakuse wo senchiheokuruniha: Tanabe Hajime “akuma
no Kyotokougi” wo yomu 『学生を戦地へ送るには: 田辺元「悪魔の京大講義」を
読む』 (Sending Students to the Battlefield: Reading Tanabe Hajime’s ‘Devil Kyoto
Lecture’), Tokyo: Shinchousha 東京：新潮社.
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Shunjuusha 東京：春秋社.
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Tokyo: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Suzuki, D.T. (1959) Zen and Japanese Culture. Tokyo: Tuttle.
Suzuki, D.T. (1980) Field of Zen. London: The Buddhist Society.
Suzuki, D.T. (1998) Buddha of Infinite Light. Boston; London: Shambhala.
Takemura Makio (2002) “Zen and pure land: An Important Aspect of D.T. Suzuki’s
Interpretation of Buddhism.” The Eastern Buddhist, 34 (2), 117–141.
Tanabe Hajime (2016) Philosophy as Metanoetics. Nagoya: Chisokudo.
Tanabe Hajime (2020) ‘Requesting the Guidance of Professor Nishida.’ Translated by
Richard Stone and Morisato Takeshi. In: Takeshi Morisato and Roman Paşca,
ed., Asian Philosophical Texts. Milan: Mimesis, pp. 281–308.
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16
On Homo Faber: Nishida and Miki
Takushi Odagiri
Abstract
This study examines philosophical dialogues between Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) and
his teacher Nishida through close readings of their writings, with a focus on their tech-
nological view of the human. Miki was probably the first of the Kyoto thinkers who
turned to the question of the human. A few years prior to the Davos disputation by
Cassirer and Heidegger (1929), Miki wrote his first treatise whose title indicates his
commitment to philosophical anthropology (A Study of the Human in Pascal, 1926). In
the 1930s, along with several other Kyoto thinkers (most notably Nishida, Kuki, Watsuji,
and Kōyama), Miki further developed his thought on the human in numerous writings.
The period beginning with Miki’s return from Europe marks the highpoint of the Kyoto
school philosophical anthropology, during which Miki published his Rekishi Tetsugaku
(Philosophy of History, 1931–1932) and started his unfinished writing of philosophical
anthropology (1933–), which originated from his interest in Kantian Anthropologie and
his hermeneutics of everydayness. During this period, Miki had close communica-
tions with many Kyoto thinkers including Nishida, who wrote his own anthropological
texts, notably “Logic and Life” (1936) and “Human Being” (1938). These texts by Nishida
echoed Miki’s treatises on history, anthropology, and imagination (1939, 1946). Philo-
sophical/anthropological interlocutions among those members of the Kyoto School
are dense and complex, but this study focuses on (textual) dialogues on the human
between Miki and Nishida in the 1930s, which raise anthropological issues very differ-
ent from the continental debate by Scheler, Cassirer, and Heidegger. In particular, their
anthropology is based on their techno-ontology, which views the human as eidetic and
self-contradictory productivity.
Keywords
poiesis – Tatsache – action-intuition – zoon logon echon – non-duality – negation –

expression – katachi – technology
© Takushi Odagiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_018 - 978-90-04-68017-3

432 odagiri
1 Poiesis and Praxis*
In many of their texts in the 1930s, both Miki and Nishida argue that conscious-
ness arises from acting, a claim contrary to an ordinary view of contemporary
cognitive science. For example, in “Logic and Life” (1936), Nishida writes:
Our action does not arise from the depth of our consciousness but occurs
as the formative act of the historical world. It is because our bodily self is
an active element of the historical world that the self is a cognitive self.
(nkz8, 51)1
Right before these sentences, he writes that the world of homo sapiens is based
on the world of homo faber (51).2 The “formative act of the historical world” and
“our bodily self” in these passages correspond to homo faber, while “our con-
sciousness” and “cognitive self” to homo sapiens, respectively. Nishida essen-
tially claims that it is precisely because we act that we (can) think (or, more
precisely, our thinking arises from the formative act of the world). This denial
of an empirical (epistemological) view, that is, the reversal of the relationship
between cognition (“a cognitive self”) and acting (“the formative act of the
historical world”), is crucial for both Nishida’s and Miki’s philosophical anthro-
pology. This reversal is related to their views of the human as a technological
form, namely, as a merely contingent phenomenon in the historical world. I
would like to discuss this reversal (of homo sapiens and homo faber) in this
paper. My focus is primarily on Miki, but I will discuss Nishida in close corre-
lation with him. This reversal of the homo is related to their notions of poiesis,
homo faber, and Tatsache, all of which represent their technological views of
the human.
The contrast between acting and cognition partially (but importantly) corre-
sponds to that between poiesis and praxis. (1) Poiesis (“poiesisu”) is an essential
notion of Miki’s philosophical anthropology, often discussed vis-à-vis another
notion, praxis (“purakushisu”), in some of his major texts. Miki examines the
former notion in his drafts of Philosophical Anthropology, written between
roughly 1933 and 1937. The usage of this Greek term, however, is as much
clarifying as misguiding, especially if it comes with the common image of
craftsmanship. In Aristotle, poiesis is production of the craft, as opposed to
* This research was partially supported by KAKENHI JP20H04574 and JP20H04599.

1 我々の行為は意識の底から起るのではなくして、歴史的世界の形成作用として生ず
るのである。我々の身体的自己は、歴史的世界の作業的要素として思惟的であるの
である。
2 ホモ・サピーエンスの世界はホモ・ファーベルの世界の上に立つのである。
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on homo faber: nishida and miki 433
praxis, which is an ethical or political action. But Miki follows his teacher
Nishida’s definitions of these terms.
We see an object by our acting; this means that an object historically arises
[spontaneously]. It is true that that which is created is what our self has
created, but [once created] it becomes independent from us as it is placed
in the historical world and is active in the historical world. We see an
object, and what an object that is seen by us means is that nature cre-
ates an object, namely, that an object is created naturally. In other words,
one can say that historical nature determines itself. (nkz8, 27)3
This passage from “Logic and Life” shows that, for Nishida, poiesis is not sim-
ply a craftsman’s production of something; it is self-production of an object
itself; it is not an act of human craftmanship, but self-determination of (his-
torical) nature.4 That is, poiesis is closely related to intellectual intuition (more
precisely, what he calls action-intuition). The self-determination of historical
nature, if seen from our perspective, is called action-intuition.
In another context, both Miki and Nishida use the term (2) homo faber (the
human as a maker) in the mid-1930s.5 Again, with this term, the same prob-
lem arises (especially with respect to the image of craftsmanship). The term
homo faber, likely taken from the contemporary thought of Max Scheler and
Henri Bergson, emphasizes the view of the human as a craftsman, as opposed
to homo sapiens (the human as a knower). However, in Miki’s usage of this Latin
term, homo faber is not simply a maker of nature, but is both the maker and the
3 我々が行為によつて物を見るといふことは、歴史的に物が現れることである。造られ
たものは、我々の自己の作つたものではあるが、我々の自己を離れ、それ自身が歴
史的世界に於てあり、歴史的世界に於て働くのである。物を見る、物が見られるとい
ふことは、自然が物を形成することである、物が自然に形成せられることである。歴
史的自然が自己自身を限定すると云つても良い。Here, nature is said to be “historical”
because (for Nishida) the natural world is a phenomenon within the historical world.
4 Thus, Nishida writes that “every action of us is a historical event. (我々の行為はすべて
歴史的出来事である)” (nkz8, 27). On the other hand, he often underlines the role of an
eidos (形相 or イデヤ) or a form (形) in this self-production. For example, as discussed later,
he writes: “Even a moral act should be considered as poiesis. Otherwise, it is simply a mere
motive. An object is that which has a form. (道徳的行為の如きものでも、ポイエシスで
なければならない。然らざれば単なる動機に過ぎない。物とは形相を有つものであ
る)” (nkz8, 25). That is, action-intuition is not simply an action of an agent but an event, and
there is an eidetic element constitutive of this event. Thus, he writes: “We create an object
while seeing it (我々は見つゝ物を作るのである)” (nkz8, 25).
5 As discussed later, the term homo faber appears in Miki’s Philosophical Anthropology and
Nishida’s “Logic and Life.”
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434 odagiri
made in the self-productive “matter of fact” (Tatsache). In other words, despite

Miki’s emphasis on the productive aspect of the homo, the human is (for Miki)
not the locus or agent of the self-productive historical nature. This (potentially
contradictory) notion of production (or homo faber) is the key to understand-
ing his anthropological texts.
(3) Tatsache, which I have tentatively defined as a “matter of fact,” is another
common term to be found in both Miki’s and Nishida’s texts of the same period.
The German term itself does not often appear in Nishida’s writings, but its
Japanese equivalent, jijitsu, plays a significant role in his philosophy through-
out his entire career. Kōyama Iwao, another student of Nishida, discusses both
the German and Japanese terms in much detail in his Nishida Tetsugaku ([1935]
2012), which I will touch on later. As for the German term, Franks (1997) pro-
vides a definition of Tatsache as “a deed or occurrence whose actuality was not
inductively or deductively demonstrable but was nevertheless well-established
on the basis of reliable testimony” (318). It may appear that this “matter of fact”
idea of Tatsache, seemingly independent of one’s action, is contrary to the self-
productive image of humanity in homo faber. However, these two notions are
not only closely related in both Miki and Nishida, but they are also essential to
their anthropological and ethical thought in the 1930s. Furthermore, the simi-
larity of their discussions about these notions indicates that they had constant
dialogues in this period. I will examine some of their textual and philosophi-
cal dialogues in order to clarify certain important aspects of both Miki’s and
Nishida’s philosophical anthropology.
The passage from Nishida’s “Logic and Life” as above (nkz8, 27), which I ini-
tially introduced as an explication of poiesis, is in fact an explication of all the
three notions (1) (2) (3). The first two statements, “we see an object by our act-
ing” and “an object historically arises [spontaneously],” explicate their notions
of homo faber and Tatsache respectively. Taken together, these three notions
represent the genetic-eidetic view of a technological form, which underlies
their idea of the human. Production (or self-production) is an essential notion
of their anthropological thought. Although these Kyoto thinkers share their cri-
tique of zoon logon echon (logos-bearing animals) with the Davos thinkers (i.e.,
Heidegger and Cassirer), their anthropology has distinct characteristics. It is
this logic of a (technological) form that is the main issue of this paper.
2 Homo Faber and Action-Intuition
For all the three terms discussed thus far, whose philosophical significance is
closely intertwined, there were some complex interlocutions among the Kyoto
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thinkers including Miki and Nishida. In most cases, one can hardly tell, on the
basis of their texts alone, who initiated these dialogues. For example, while
the term homo faber appears in Nishida’s “Logic and Life” (nkz8, 51), which
was published in summer 1936, one also finds the same term in chapter three
of Miki’s Philosophical Anthropology (mkz18, 297–298). Given their mentor-
student relationship, one tends to assume that it is Nishida who influenced
Miki, but that may not be the case. According to Masuda, Miki drafted his
chapter in January and February of 1936 (mkz18, 536–537), several months pre-
ceding Nishida’s text. Ueda (1988) writes in his commentary that Miki’s diary
has lines in February of 1936 that he visited Nishida at Kamakura and had some
discussion about the body (shintai), the concept related to all the three notions
discussed above (413). It is difficult to tell whose text was written (or drafted)
earlier, but at least it is clear that they had a close (and often very construc-
tive) dialogue about these notions. Given the centrality of these notions and
texts in their philosophy, one can safely assume that their interlocutions had a
significant impact on their respective thought of that period.
Homo faber is associated with Nishida’s late thought of action-intuition, the
idea he elaborates in “The World as the Dialectical Universal” (1934), “Logic and
Life” (1936), and “Action-Intuition” (1937). At the beginning of “Logic and Life,”
Nishida writes:
Some call the human zoon politikon or zoon logon echon, or others con-
sider the human sensible and rational, but, as Franklin put it, we should
rather think of ourselves as tool-making animals. But a tool is not some-
thing made for its own sake. To make a tool is to make an object. An object
is that which is both objective and universal, namely, that which we are
unable to control, that which is self-productive. (nkz8, 9–10)6
Although the term homo faber itself does not appear yet, the passage, which
underlines the view of human beings as tool-making animals, anticipates his
subsequent discussions of homo faber in the same text.7 Action-intuition
6 人間はゾーン・ポリティコンとかゾーン・ロゴン・エコンとか云はれ、或は感性的・理性
的と云はれるが、それよりも、我々はフランクリンの云つた如く道具を作る動物である。
併し道具は道具の為に造られるのではなく、道具を作ることは物を作るといふことでな
ければならない。物といふものは、客観的にして一般的なもの、我々の如何ともするこ
とのできないもの、それ自身によつて変ずるものである。
7 Essentially, Nishida in the passage argues that being homo faber is a more basic fact of human
beings than being zoon politikon (political animals, living in a polis) or zoon logon echon
(logos-bearing animals). The human is primarily a maker rather than a social (rational) ani-
mal.
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436 odagiri
(“tool-making”) is formative, and for Nishida this formative act is a more essen-
tial aspect of the homo than consciousness. For example, Nishida writes: “con-
sciousness is intuition that has lost the meaning of the formative act. It [con-
sciousness] is action-intuition without creation” (nkz8, 51).8 Therefore, in con-
sciousness “only shadows of things are reflected. It [consciousness] is a [mere]
element of action-intuition, the element already included in those acts in
which we make things by tools. The world of homo sapiens is based on the world
of homo faber” (nkz8, 51).9 The passage I quoted at the beginning of the present
paper follows these sentences (51).
Another example of his mention of homo faber is found about halfway
through the paper, where Nishida writes:
The reason I began this paper with the statement that human beings are
tool-making animals is that the human’s being homo faber already means
that it is historical life that has an individual body. Having a tool means
having the body as a tool, and the body is that which sees by acting. See-
ing by acting means that historical life determines itself and a form arises
[from this self-determination of historical life]. (nkz8, 78–79)10
Again, one should bear in mind that here the locus of the self-production is
not the human agent (not even homo faber) but the objective world of history.
And when this self-production is conceived from the perspective of homo faber,
it is called action-intuition. Another important point of this passage is that he
writes that “a form arises [from the self-determination of historical life].” This is
related to Miki’s logic of form, which I will discuss later. These assertions about
the homo in Nishida’s “Logic and Life” are congruent with those by Miki in Philo-
sophical Anthropology. Miki writes:
All the human actions are formative acts [of poiesis]; therefore, they are
expressive [acts]. Seeing the human as expressive and thinking of the
8 意識とは形成の意義を失った直観である。無創造的な行為的直観である。
9 そこには、唯、物の影が映されるまでである。それは既に行為的直観の契機とし
て、我々が道具を以て物を作るといふ所に含まれてゐなければならぬ。ホモ・サ
ピーエンスの世界はホモ・ファーベルの世界の上に立つのである。
10 私が此論文を人間が道具を作る動物であるといふことから始めたのは、人間がホ
モ・ファーベルであるといふことは既に歴史的生命の個体たることを意味するが故
である。道具を有つといふことは身体を道具として有つことであり、身体とは働くこ
とによつて見るものである。働くことによつて見るといふことは、歴史的生命が自己
自身を限定することであり、そこに形が現れることである。
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human as “the human as a producer,” homo faber, are not at odds with
one another; on the contrary, these two [views] are most closely related.
(mkz18, 298)11
In this passage, in describing homo faber, Miki uses the same term as Nishida
uses, “formative acts [of poiesis].” Furthermore, in the subsequent paragraph,
Miki touches on various issues concerning homo faber: the embodied produc-
tion of (and by) human nature (specifically human hands), the statement of
Anaxagoras that having hands is essential for human intelligence, and even
Franklin’s definition of the humans as tool-making animals (mkz18, 298–299),
all of which resemble Nishida’s discussions in “Logic and Life.” These correla-
tions between Nishida’s and Miki’s texts written or drafted in the same year
textually verify their dialogues. One should also note that Miki equates “forma-
tive acts [of poiesis]” with “expressive [acts].” That is, for Miki, “expression” is
another aspect of homo faber.12 As I will discuss later, this is the aspect of Tat-
sache which Kōyama emphasizes in Nishida Tetsugaku.
Despite their close communications, however, there is one important divide
between Nishida and Miki. One could focus as much on the “maker” aspect of
homo faber as its receptive (or natural) aspect. Nishida often discusses action-
intuition as “from that which is created to that which creates” (nkz8, 216),
namely, from the receptive to the productive. On the contrary, Miki has an
opposite conception of this dialectics. In Philosophy of History (1931–1932), Miki
writes:
That which has been created by the human inversely acts on the human
who makes it and oppresses the human, even though it has been created
by the human; this is experienced in every situation. (mkz6, 92)13
One can define action-intuition as intellectual intuition that is both hermeneu-

tically and productively in the middle. In perceptual constitution, not only my
intellect constitutes this chair but also my constitution of the chair is con-
stituted by a host of conditions in historical reality. This is an act of both
11 凡ての人間的行爲は形成作用の意味を有し、從つて表現的である。人間を表現
的なものと見ることと人間を「制作的人間」 homo faber と考へることとは相反するこ
とでなく、却つて最も密接に相關聯したことである。
12 That is, the formative act of homo faber (i.e., the production of a form by homo faber) can
be considered an expression of its social and embodied reality in history.
13 人間によつて作られたものが、作られたものでありながら逆に、それを作る人間に
作用し、壓迫するといふことは、あらゆる場合に經驗されるところである
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438 odagiri
the hermeneutic and productive kind, which has neither the beginning nor
the end. Since this hermeneutic (productive) process has no beginning or
end, ultimately it should be conceived as self-production of historical nature.
Whereas Nishida has the tendency to consider this self-productivity actively,
namely, from the focal point of the active event in itself, Miki sees the same
phenomenon as pathos, as a kind of receptivity in the historical self-produc-
tion.14
What they do share, however, is their critical stance to humanism, namely,
their idea that the human as a maker is not simply the locus of this self-
production. Homo faber, in this sense, has a complex structure of being both the
maker and the made, or, more precisely, an intermediary of the self-productive
hermeneutic circle called poiesis.
3 Finitude and Non-Duality: Davos and Kyoto
So far, I have discussed mostly the notion of homo faber (specifically its tech-
nological characterizations) or tool-making animals in Miki’s and Nishida’s
writings around the mid-1930s. Historically, their work parallels the anthropo-
logical debates in Europe. For example, Miki’s first main work, A Study of the
Human in Pascal (1926), whose title already indicates his interest in philosoph-
ical anthropology, is contemporaneous with anthropological work by Scheler,
Heidegger, and Cassirer. It is therefore possible to regard Miki as another his-
torical antecedent of the Davos disputation (1929) and philosophical dialogues
associated with it, even though Miki’s work itself was written in Japanese and
was popular only among Japanese readers.
14 Pathos is defined as opposed to logos and has a special significance in Miki’s anthropo-
logical thought. In his first major work on Pascal and various later writings, Miki refers to
Pascal’s dictum that humans are thinking reeds and thereby criticizes the self-certainty
of Descartes’s cogito. Miki argues that self-awareness is irreducible to the epistemolog-
ical self-certainty of cogito. That is, self-awareness in action is both logos-bearing and
pathos-bearing. Pascal’s self-awareness does not simply lead to human self-certainty but
to “the unfathomable anxiety” (mkz18, 140). Miki argues that a Cartesian focus on epis-
temology ends up with underestimating this “pathos” of self-awareness (140). Again, it
is important to bear in mind that this “pathos,” “anxiety” is the natural (self-productive)
aspect of homo faber, the human as a maker. The locus of the self-production is not in
the homo, but in the hermeneutic and productive self-creation of an event. That is, here
again, Miki sees poiesis (not praxis) of the self-aware homo faber. But he focuses on its
receptive side, unlike Nishida, who tends to think of the logos-bearing aspect of action-
intuition.
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It is, thus, worthwhile here to situate the Kyoto thinkers’ (specifically Miki’s
and Nishida’s) anthropological investigations in the context of the Davos dispu-
tation. My reading of this 1929 debate is mostly based on the English translation
of Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, especially its “Part Four”
and “Appendices.” Miki himself does not specifically discuss this debate in his
Philosophical Anthropology and other writings, but given the fact that he stud-
ied in Europe in the early 1920s, it is likely that he knew Scheler’s work and also
Heidegger’s, which was influenced by it.
In general, although Miki mentions Cassirer a few times in his Logic of Imag-
ination (mkz8, 13; mkz8, 34; mkz8, 394), influences of Heidegger (as well as of
Pascal and Nishida) on him are more essential (mkz8, 4; mkz8, 6).15 I will, how-
ever, briefly discuss Miki’s criticism of Cassirer later in this paper.
In some sense, Logic of Imagination is Miki’s extensive commentary on
Kant’s third critique and Anthropologie, especially with regard to the power of
imagination. Therefore, it is useful to investigate Miki’s basic standpoint vis-à-
vis Heidegger’s reinterpretation of Kantian anthropology.
Heidegger’s examination of Kant’s anthropology is closely related to his
studies of the Critique of Pure Reason. Heidegger mentions three questions Kant
raises in metaphysics: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?
Kant adds the fourth question to these: What is the human being? According to
Heidegger, Kant thinks of the first three questions as related to the fourth. Then
Heidegger asks: “What is anthropology in general, and how does it become one
which is philosophical?” (Heidegger 1997, 146). His answer to this question is
very clear.
[T]he three questions, however, do not simply allow themselves to be

related to the fourth. Rather, in themselves they are in general no different
from it, i.e., according to their essence they must be related to it. However,
this relation is then a more essentially necessary one only if the fourth
question abandons its intimately given generality and indeterminacy and
attains an unequivocality so that in it we can ask about the finitude in
human beings. (152)
For Heidegger, the essence of the anthropological question is finitude. He

argues that the finitude of human reason and existence relates all the three
questions of metaphysics in Kant to the fourth question, the question of philo-
15 In Logic of Imagination (The First, 1939), Miki states that he has been guided by Pascal
(mkz8, 4), Heidegger (4), and Nishida (6).
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440 odagiri
sophical anthropology. This framework of Heidegger’s philosophical anthro-

pology is quasi-theological, not in the sense that it is based on any theological
views, but in that the human is considered in contrast to the infinite (if not to
the divine).
But Miki (like many other Kyoto thinkers) conceived of his anthropologi-
cal project differently on multiple grounds. First, whereas Heidegger’s anthro-
pology underlines finitude, Miki’s project begins with the fact of non-duality,
namely, the fact that both the subject and the object of anthropological inves-
tigations are human beings (mkz18, 133). That is, for him, anthropology should
be based on human beings’ non-dual self-understanding (which is called Tat-
sache). Importantly, as I will discuss shortly, a tool is an essence of this human
non-duality, because a tool is considered a mediation between the subject in
action with the object (mkz18, 298–299; also nkz8, 22). Second, closely related
to this non-dualism is his presentism, the standpoint that ethically and meta-
physically underlines our experience of the present. Third, there is a series of
concepts that are foregrounded in Miki’s anthropology, including poiesis, Tat-
sache, and homo faber. These three notions, which should be understood along
with Miki’s non-dualism and presentism, represent his technological (produc-
tive) view of the human. Fourth, both Miki’s philosophy of history and philo-
sophical anthropology focus on a hermeneutics of the everyday, quite unlike
Heidegger, who engages with quasi-theological investigations of human fini-
tude. One might even argue that finitude is a dualistic notion, which is incom-
patible with Miki’s (and Nishida’s) non-dual anthropology. Fifth, above all,
Miki’s hermeneutics of the everyday goes side by side with his techno-ontology.
It is precisely because the human is technological (homo faber) that the every-
day is Tatsache.
I would like to clarify in this paper this technological anthropology, and to
evaluate it as a view distinct from either Heidegger’s or Cassirer’s views. The
dialectic of a technological form, which partially but not entirely assimilates
Fichte’s first principle, is crucial for Miki’s anthropological thought and his
notions of expression, self-negation, and the body, none of which plays a major
role in the 1929 continental debate.
4 Tatsache and Tathandlung
In his treatise on history (Philosophy of History), Miki discusses “Tatsache,” a

German term that has some significant history in European philosophy since
Kant and Fichte. Tatsache is contrasted with Tathandlung in Fichte’s Founda-
tions of the Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre). As I discussed earlier,
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Franks (1993) defines Tatsache as a matter of fact whose actuality is established

on the basis of testimony. He argues that, as opposed to Reinhold’s interpreta-
tion of Kant, which emphasizes Tatsache as a fact of consciousness that attests
to the actuality of the moral law, Fichte insists that philosophy must begin with
Tathandlung, not with Tatsache.
Fichte did not deny that there were facts of consciousness, but he denied
vociferously that these facts could do any philosophical work; instead the
facts of consciousness were precisely what philosophy was supposed to
explain. And the starting point of philosophy had therefore to be the ulti-
mate ground of consciousness itself, which, as Fichte took Kant to have
shown, had to be the spontaneous activity of the subject: not a Tatsache
or reified act, but a Tathandlung or pure activity that recognized no law
but its own. (Franks, 319)
According to Franks, Fichte’s Tathandlung is pure activity by which the fact

(Tatsache) of consciousness is to be explained. One can never reify the activity
itself but can only posit its existence on the basis of the fact of consciousness.
The fact of consciousness is a trace of Tathandlung, so to speak. When one
becomes conscious of the latter, it has ceased to be its own.
However, Tatsache (literally “act-object”) and Tathandlung (“act-act”) have
slightly different meanings in Miki’s philosophy of history. Put simply, although
both are non-dual notions, whereas Fichte’s Tathandlung is the act/fact unity,
Tatsache for Miki is the act/fact dialectic. The (self-contradictory) embodied
dialectic of homo faber is crucial for understanding Miki’s Tatsache. Further-
more, this dialectic is closely related to the claim that our thinking arises from
the formative act of the world, a claim I mentioned at the beginning of this
paper. Put differently, the idea is that only for those who dialectically engage
with the historical world can a fact have a meaning of expression. As I will dis-
cuss shortly in the section on Kōyama, this idea is another key aspect of Miki’s
Tatsache.
In Miki’s 1931–1932 treatise on history, jijitsu (fact) is a key term along with
its German equivalent, Tatsache. Miki uses these terms (Tatsache and jijitsu)
interchangeably, in a clear distinction from Tathandlung.
Our definition of fact [ jijitsu] is “that object which acts.” The reason this
is called fact (Tatsache) is that an action and an object are non-dual in it.
(mkz6, 28)16
16 我々は「行爲するもの」を事實と稱する。そこでは行爲と物とが二つでないところか
ら、それは事實 Tat-Sache と云はれる。
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Presumably, Miki here implicitly criticizes Fichte’s transcendental principle of

Tathandlung. Both Tathandlung and Tatsache are non-dual notions in which
(objective) fact is none other than act; but, despite this similarity, there is an
important difference. By drawing attention to the literal meaning of the word
combination Tat-Sache (an acting-object), Miki emphasizes the body as an
essential component of poiesis. A fact (Tatsache) is embodied, that is, it is an
active body and conditioned by objective reality. For Miki, Tathandlung is not
only too subjective but also it cannot provide the ultimate ground of conscious-
ness; the non-dual productivity Fichte posits as the foundation of conscious-
ness lacks the embodied objectivity of Tatsache.17
5 Embodied Dialectics: Expression and Self-Negation
But why does Miki emphasize the embodied nature of fact as such (Tatsache)?
Miki’s idea of Tatsache (as opposed to Tathandlung) has many aspects, but the
key to understanding his idea is “act (Tat),” which for him signifies the self-
contradictory body. Again, it is useful to consult some of Nishida’s texts in order
to construe this idea. For example, in Self-Aware Determination of Nothingness
(1932), as compared with the dictum of German phenomenology, “to the things
(Sachen) themselves,” Nishida emphasizes “act (Tat)” of Tatsache.18 “Act” here
does not simply mean an execution of action, but the embodied dialectic of
action-intuition. Since Tatsache is an embodied act, it engages with historical
reality with conflicts and contradictions. For Nishida, without an agent’s con-
flicts, contradictions, and agony that makes history as such, history is an empty
concept. It is this “act” component of Tatsache that Nishida emphasizes.
Miki, in essence, shares this concept of the self-contradictory body. Both his
philosophy of history and philosophical anthropology are based on this idea of
17 Put differently, for Miki, Tathandlung (what Fichte posits as an agent) should be seen as
a fact (Tatsache). The agent is embodied in the sense that it is a fact rationalized retro-
spectively. For this reason, for Miki, there is no essential difference between the agent as
posited by Fichte and objective reality, as both are a matter of fact conceived retrospec-
tively. I partially owe this point to a reader of a previous version of this paper.
18 In Self-Aware Determination of Nothingness, Nishida argues that Heidegger does not fully
consider the contradictory nature of the body in the historical world. Nishida writes:
“When our acting self is merely considered to be the self of consciousness, Tatsache
becomes mere Sache; Tatsache becomes Sache when Tat of Tatsache is made infinitesi-
mal.” 我々の行為的自己が単なる意識的自己と考へられる時、タートザッへは
単にザッへとなるのである、ザッへはタートザッへのタートを極小にしたものであ
る。(nkz5, 130).
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Tatsache as self-contradictory historical bodies, and the afore-mentioned quote

from Philosophy of History (mkz6, 92) exemplifies this idea.
For both Nishida and Miki, the self-contradictory “act (Tat)” of the historical
body is crucial for their notion of homo faber. This is the reason they disagree
with Fichte and they underline Tatsache (“act-fact”), which one might consider
the first principle of their philosophical anthropology. In order to further clarify
their anthropology, two concepts are important. First, the “act” of Tatsache goes
hand in hand with their concept of negation (or self-negation). Self-negation
defines their worlds of object, life, and history. Second, as Kōyama argues, it is
from the standpoint of the “act” (Tatsache) that an object is fully understood
as an expression (of certain social reality). I will discuss these concepts in this
order.
5.1 Negation (Self-Negation)

In his “Introduction” to Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (which includes “Logic
and Life”), Nishida writes:
In the historical world, that which is negated defines that which negates
it. The negating stands upon the negated. Historical reality always has its
actuality on the basis of that which it negates. Consider a tool of a bodily
kind and a machine that transcends it; the relationship between them is
like this. (nkz8, 5)19
A handy tool defines what a machine is to the human, although the latter,
which becomes more autonomous, historically replaces the former. The same
analogy can be extended to all the aspects of historical reality, such as the rela-
tions of non-life and life, non-animals and animals, non-humans and humans,
or even the past and the present. Nishida also writes that “it is because our
selves are embodied that our selves are historical, and we can grasp the dialec-
tics of historical reality through analysis of our bodies, which I consider to be
the most immediately given to us” (nkz8, 4). It is precisely because the body
(and the will) is a self-contradictory phenomenon that it constitutes history (as
Tatsache). He then argues that “the embodied is both given to us and involves
self-negation. It is given to us to be self-negated” (nkz8, 5). Again, the “act (Tat)”
component of Tatsache (i.e., self-negation) is essential for his idea of the body.
19 歴史的世界に於ては、否定せられるものが否定するものを定める。否定するもの
が否定せられるものの上に立つのである。歴史的実在はいつも自己自身が否定
するものに於て自己自身の実在性を有つのである。身体的と考へられる道具と之
を越えた機械との関係についても、同様のことが云ひ得るであろう。
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5.2 Expression
Self-negation as an essential aspect of historical reality is closely related to its
other aspect, expression. The correlation between these two aspects of the his-
torical body is clear in the afore-mentioned quote from Philosophical Anthro-
pology (mkz18, 298).
Another student of Nishida, Kōyama Iwao, discusses jijitsu (fact as such)
or Tatsache in his Nishida Tetsugaku ([1935] 2012).20 Since Kōyama was teach-
ing in Kyoto and was in close communication with Nishida then, one can
read “Jijitsu Kai (The Factual Dimension),” chapter three of Nishida Tetsug-
aku, as a guide (from Kōyama’s perspective) for Nishida’s thought on jijitsu.
Kōyama analyzes Tatsache from various angles (specifically 123–171), and his
analysis is compatible with Miki’s. Starting from Nishida’s early non-dualism
(129), Kōyama argues that “jijitsu is an active fact” (130), and that “in jijitsu,
the self and fact, an action and an objective fact are one. That is, jijitsu is
Tatsache” (135). Despite the similarity of this fact/act unity (the unity of the
self’s action and an objective fact) to the pure activity of Fichte’s Tathandlung,
Kōyama names this non-duality “Tatsache.” Kōyama explains the reason in the
subsequent sections of the chapter titled “Hyōgen (Expression)” and “Shintai
(The Body).” He argues that “the standpoint from which an expression is fully
understood as an expression as such is the standpoint of action” (149). He then
writes:
The book I am writing now is an expression of my thought. Pieces of

paper, a pen, a desk, are all expressions as social products. A glass cup
on the desk is also an item of expression. The self who sees the cup just as
a piece of glassware is merely an intellectualistic, epistemic self. The cup
in reality is not a mere glass matter but is an expression, namely, is a tool
for drinking water. (149)21
He argues that “it is from the standpoint of fact in action that an expression is
understood as an expression” (149).22 His point is that the concepts of action,
expression, and the body are closely intertwined. Only for those who do some-
thing (those who are in action) can an objective fact (Tatsache) be an expression
20 The pagination refers to Nishida Kitarō Kenkyū Shiryō Shūsei (Kōyama [1935] 2012).
21 今私の書きつゝある書は私の思索の表現である。紙も筆も机も社會的生産物とし
て表現である。机の上のコップも同様に表現物である。コップを單に硝子と見る者
は主知主義的な知的自己に過ぎない。現実のコップは單に硝子ではなく水を呑
む道具として一個の表現物である。
22 表現を表現と解する立場は行爲的事實の立場である。
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(of my thought or of our social production). That is, “an expression is an objec-
tive fact” and “that which stands vis-à-vis an objective fact cannot help being
an acting self” (149).23 In order to examine this expressive and active self, one
cannot simply start from the pure activity of Tathandlung, but must think of
the embodied dialectic of Tatsache. This is why Kōyama names this non-dual
act/fact Tatsache.
Again, one should bear in mind that the locus of this self-production is not
in the homo, but in the historical event in itself. In other words, the act/fact
non-duality needs to be construed as a fact, rather than as an act.
6 Homo Sapiens and Homo Faber
Having clarified the notion of Tatsache with Nishida’s and Kōyama’s expli-
cations, I can now state more explicitly why the “matter of fact” Tatsache,
seemingly independent of one’s action, is closely related to homo faber (the
human as a maker) in Miki’s and Nishida’s philosophical anthropology. Under-
lying both ideas is the historical body that involves (1) expression and (2) self-
negation. (1) From the standpoint of a human being in action, Tatsache is none
other than expressions of objective and social reality, which provides a basis
for human actions. That is, only for those who act (i.e., the human as a maker)
can an objective fact (Tatsache) have the meaning of an expression. This is
Kōyama’s explication of Tatsache. (2) It is also important that this Tatsache,
which expresses self-productive historical reality, in turn counteracts human
actions. Tatsache as an embodied act (Tat) inevitably engages with conflicts
and contradictions. That is, Tatsache is a self-contradictory (self-negative) his-
torical reality, from which the human as a maker arises. It is clear from these
characterizations that the notion of Tatsache goes side by side with that of
homo faber in their idea of embodied dialectics.
I would like to explain the same point from another angle, in relation to
bodily dialectics of human eyes and hands. Homo faber not only creates an
object (by its hands) but also sees a form (by its eyes). This embodied dialec-
tic of seeing/creating corresponds to the notions of expression and negation
in Kōyama’s explication. I argued above that Nishida’s poiesis is not simply
a craftsman’s act of production but is self-production of a historical object
itself. I also previously defined action-intuition as poiesis of an embodied “act.”
23 表現は客觀的な事物である。表現としての客觀的事物に對する者は行為的自己
でなければならぬ。
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As mentioned already, in “Logic and Life,” Nishida explains action-intuition

as dialectics of homo sapiens and homo faber. More specifically, Nishida con-
trastively discusses human eyes (seeing) and human hands (making). On the
one hand, Nishida argues that the fact that we (our eyes) see an object means
that historical nature self-determines itself (nkz8, 27). On the other, he empha-
sizes the dialectic of our technology (human hands) as a defining feature of the
humanity. The figure of human hands appears a few times in the same con-
text.
Referring to Anaxagoras who says that human beings are the most intelli-
gent of animals because they have hands, Aristotle argues that one should
rather say that it is because human beings are the most intelligent that
they are given their hands. (nkz8, 10–11)24
The human intelligence (i.e., in line with the concept of homo sapiens) is con-
sidered closely associated with the productive (technological) essence of the
human (i.e., in line with that of homo faber). The fact of humans having eyes are
contrasted with humans “having hands.” Nishida further writes: “One should
conceive of a human being as that which both is embodied and always tran-
scends the so-called body” (nkz8, 22).25 A human being is embodied, that
is, has hands by which to manipulates things. But that’s not all about human
hands. A human being transcends this embodiment, and it sees eidoi (forms,
ideas) for those acts of production. For example, human hands make an object
as a chair. In other words, human hands do not simply make something, but
also see its form (what that thing is). “One cannot think of animals as seeing a
thing as a thing. Animals do not possess the world of object” (nkz8, 10). That is,
only human beings capable of seeing eidoi have the world of object and have
hands in the true sense.26
24 アリストテレスは、アナクサゴラスは人間が動物の中で最も叡智的なるのは手を有
するが故であると云つたが、寧ろ人間は最も叡智的なるが故に手が与えられたと
云ふべきであると云ふ。
25 人間の存在は身体的でありながら、いつも所謂身体を超えたものと考へられるの
である。
26 In “Logic and Life,” Nishida often contrastively discusses humans and non-human ani-
mals, which gives the misguiding impression as if the contrast were essential. However, he
is rather reacting to his contemporary biological sciences (e.g., J.S. Haldane) and attempts
to make a distinction between historical life and (merely) biological life. The notions of
expression, self-negation, and the dialectical body are essential in the context of his over-
all discussion of historical life.
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Animals are merely bodily beings. On the contrary, humans are not simply
bodily beings, but also possess the bodies as tools. Tools must be objects.
Being humans, we are already that which arise as the self-determination
of the world of affirmation of absolute negation. (nkz8, 22)27
One can do something by (by means of) one’s hands. One can also act with
one’s hands, being one with them. A hand can be conceived either instrumen-
tally or non-dually. A human being not only creates something by its hands
but also acts with its hands, being one with them. The production of an object
by a tool, if seen from the instrumental perspective, is a fact, while, consid-
ered non-dually, it is an act. That is, the fact/act unity arises from the self-
contradictory productivity of the human body (e.g., human eyes and human
hands). As Nishida states in the previous quote about Anaxagoras and Aristo-
tle, the functions of human eyes and human hands are closely intertwined. In
a sense, they define one another.
While we make an object by a tool, we also see an object; that is, our intu-
ition goes by our action. To intuit [a thing] is to produce [it], to create [it].
By saying thus, I am not thinking of the world subjectively; I mean that
our embodied self is an operating element of the world. Our body is both
that which acts and that which sees. (nkz8, 65)28
It is possible to interpret Nishida’s act/fact dialectics of the body as his cri-

tique of Fichte’s transcendental philosophy founded upon the first principle
(of Tathandlung). The focus is not on the pure activity (as in Fichte’s Tathand-
lung) but on the dialectics of human hands/eyes (as in Nishida’s Tatsache). In
other words, one can think of this embodied dialectic (of homo faber and homo
sapiens) as Nishida’s first principle of Tatsache.
27 動物は唯身体的存在である。併し人間は身体的存在たるのみならず、身体を道
具として有つ。道具は物でなければならない。人間といふものは、既に絶対否定
の肯定の世界の自己限定として成立するものでなければならない。
Again, one should bear in mind that the contrast Nishida attempts to make here is
not between humans and non-human animals, but between the historical world and the
(merely) biological world.
28 我々は道具を以て物を作ると共に、物を見て行く、行為によつて直観して行く。直
観といふことは形成することであり、創造することである。斯く云ふのは、世界を主
観的に考へることでなく、我々の身体的自己が世界の作業的要素なることを意味
するのである。我々の身体は働くものたると共に見るものであるのである。
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7 Tatsache: The First Principle
Tatsache as the first principle of Nishida’s and Miki’s philosophical anthropol-

ogy cuts across their views of objective reality, social reality, and religious con-
sciousness. Nishida refers to language as another form of human tool-making.
Language is a tool too. Our human nature is, first and foremost, defined
by our having a tool. But a tool is an object, and an object must have a
name. It is in the dialectical world of historical reality that we can have
language. Therein arise logos-bearing human beings. (nkz8, 22)29
Nishida sees the essence of language in this act/fact unity of body dialectics.
In making a chair, a human being sees it as a chair, conceiving it as an end-
product of the production. With this act/fact unity of the craft, one can make
and name it a chair. Therein arises the dual functions of human language. Logos
consists in both the act of making a chair (homo faber) and seeing the form of
a chair (homo sapiens). Nishida considers the former (the human as a maker)
a more fundamental aspect of the human being than the latter (the human as
a knower).
It is by having a tool and making an object that one is a human being.

A human being is creative, and our life has to be conceived historically.
Being epistemic selves, we have the world of object as that which negates
us. It is from this standpoint that one should think about the act of seeing
an object. (nkz8, 17)30
The passage is easily misunderstood to mean that a human being is an agent

that is “creative,” but what Nishida argues here is, in a sense, to the contrary. A
human being is a historical form which has been created and is creative as a
result of this historical production. This is why Nishida writes that “our life has
to be conceived historically” in this passage. Again, the locus of the production
is not in the homo, and homo faber precedes homo sapiens that is based on it.
29 言葉も道具である。我々は先づ道具を有つといふことから人間である。而して道具
は物であり、物は名を有つものでなければならない。弁証法的なる歴史的実在の
世界に於てのみ、言葉を有つことが可能であるのである。そこにロゴス的人間とい
ふものが成立するのである。
30 道具を有ち物を造る所に人間があるのである。人間は創造的であり、我々の生命
は歴史的でなければならない。我々が知的自己として自己否定の対象界を有つ。
物を見るといふことも、そこから考へられなければならない。
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This embodied dialectic of the homo (i.e., the dialectic of homo faber and
homo sapiens) runs through not only Nishida’s but also Miki’s philosophical
anthropology. As mentioned earlier, Miki writes in Philosophical Anthropology
that the views of the human as an expressive being and of the human as homo
faber are not at odd with one another (mkz18, 298), and Kōyama basically
makes the same point in Nishida Tetsugaku. I would like to argue that what they
both call “expression” is closely related to Nishida’s embodied (eidetic) dialec-
tic. That is, the fact that we transcend the body and see eidoi is an aspect of the
human’s expressive historical life. Only because one is homo faber (the human
as a maker) can one see an object as an expression of one’s social life. Poiesis
precedes eidoi.
Thus, the dialectics of human hands/eyes defines both their notions of Tat-
sache and homo faber. Finally, in “Logic and Life,” Nishida writes that the world
of historical life is the world “of that which involves negation within itself
and which, being nothing, determines itself” (nkz8, 21).31 This is related to
his unique concept of “katachi” (a form, or an eidos), a form that incessantly
involves self-negation. The concept of a form is of special significance to Miki’s
techno-ontology as well. This is another point of intersection between Miki and
Nishida, which is the last issue of this paper I now turn to.
The standpoint of action (i.e., the standpoint from which an expression is
fully understood as an expression as such) is the standpoint of a (technologi-
cal) form. That is, expression and negation are two sides of the same coin. When
one is creating something (homo faber), that which is created is not simply an
extension of one’s body but is an independent object that has its own form
as an expression of one’s physical or social reality (homo sapiens). But a form
that is created involves negation, precisely because it is created. This ongoing
dialectic is fundamental for Miki’s philosophy of technology.
8 Symbolic Form and Technological Form
In Logic of Imagination (specifically “Myth,” originally made out in Shisō in May

1937), Miki criticizes Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. Miki argues that
Cassirer’s philosophy of the symbolic does not take into consideration the non-
dual quality of productive imagination and therefore does not fully represent
“logic of imagination” or “logic of symbol” (mkz8, 34). Again, underlying this
31 自己自身の内に否定を含み、無にして自己自身を限定する歴史的生命の世界.
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critique is Miki’s non-dualism and embodied dialectic. Referring to Wilhelm

Dilthey, whose concept of imagination influenced him, Miki writes that “the
relationship between what is internal and what is external for us is given in our
mental-physical existence, and we transfer this relationship to everywhere.”32
He then writes:
The ideality, which is essential for a work of art, consists in symbol-

making of inner states by outer forms, or life-making of outer reality by
inner states. It is possible to regard logic of imagination as logic of symbol.
Cassirer’s so-called philosophy of symbolic forms (Ernst Cassirer, Philoso-
phie der symbolischen Formen, 3 Bde, 1923–1929) will have to be rewritten
on the basis of logic of imagination. (mkz8, 34)33
Miki criticizes Cassirer’s symbolic for lacking the dialectic of non-dual imagina-
tion. According to Miki’s own logic of imagination, “mental images themselves
are considered dynamic and form-making” (34).34 Thus, “one should not regard
a representation as an isolated fact; it is internally connected with emotion and
made alive by a single totality” (34).35 “Logic of symbol” is for Miki both embod-
ied and non-dual, and he regards Cassirer’s philosophy as not fully investigating
this non-dual symbolic. But, despite this explicit rejection of a certain view
of the symbolic, it is not entirely clear what Miki’s criticism actually consists
of. In fact, Miki’s definition of (the power of) imagination is far from system-
atic.36 It is, however, possible to interpret Miki’s critique of Cassirer as related
to his philosophy of technology, or more specifically his view of the humans
as tool-making animals. Miki and Cassirer share their critique of zoon logon
echon (logos-bearing animals), but they have different perspectives of human
culture. Contrary to Cassirer’s idea of animal symbolicum (symbol-making ani-
mal), Miki, along with Nishida, underlines our techno-ontological nature. Put
32 我々の精神物理的存在のうちに我々にとつて内的なものと外的なものとの關係が
與へられてをり、そしてこの關係を我々は到る處へ移し入れる。
33 藝術作品の核心をなす觀念性はかやうに外的形象による内的状態の象徴化に、
内的状態による外的現實の生命化に存してゐる。構想力の論理は象徴の論理で
あると云ふことができる。カッシレルのいはゆる「象的形式の哲學」(Ernst Cassirer,
Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 Bde, 1923–1929)は構想力の論理に從つて書
き更へられねばならぬであらう。
34 構想力の論理においては心像そのものが動的形成的なものと考へられる。
35 表象は形像として孤立したものでなく、感情と内面的に結合し、一つの全體によつ
て活かされてゐる。
36 This is partly because Logic of Imagination is an unfinished work in progress as of 1945.
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differently, while Kant mainly discusses the power of imagination in terms of

aesthetics in his third critique, Miki conceives of imagination as essentially
related to technology.37
The term “form (katachi),” which appears a few times in these passages, is of
central importance in Miki’s Logic of Imagination as a whole. In his 1939 intro-
duction, Miki narrates that, as he starts writing “Institution” (June 1937), he has
come to realize that what he previously called “logic of imagination” should be
reconceived of as “logic of form” (5–6).38 He then writes:
“Logic of imagination” is a rather subjective expression, and as I have

reformulated it as “logic of form,” which is a more objective expression,
my thought has reached a certain state of maturity. This makes me think
that, while I started from my own human problems, at the present stage I
have come close to Nishida philosophy as far as I understand it. (6)39
By 1939, Miki thinks of the concept of imagination as too subjective and at-
tempts to replace it with the concept of form.40
Miki’s logic of form is closely related to his idea of technology. Originally,
in “Myth,” Miki conceived of logic of imagination as “logic of emotion,” “logic
of concrete matter,” or “logic of agency,” as opposed to formal logic of reason
(mkz8, 13–15). It is possible to think of this initial definition as his critique of
37 More precisely, for Miki, human nature is essentially technological. He writes that “with
regard to the power of imagination, people have thought of it almost always as merely
related to artistic activities (構想力といへば、從來殆どつねにただ藝術的活動のこ
とのみが考へられた)”. But he wants to “reject these limitations, and to relate the power
of imagination to actions in general (その制限から解放して、構想力を行爲一般に關
係附ける)” (mkz8, 6).
38 「制度」について考察を始めた頃から、私の考へる構想力の論理が實は「形の論
理」であるといふことが漸次明かになつてきた。
39 構想力の論理といふいはば主觀的な表現は、形の論理といふいはば客觀的な表
現を見出すことによつて、私の思想は今一應の安定に達したのである。かやうにし
て私は私自身のいはば人間的な問題から出發しながら、現在到達した點におい
て西田哲學へ、私の理解する限りにおいては、接近してきたのを見る。
40 The previous passage from “Myth,” in which he criticizes Cassirer’s philosophy of the sym-
bolic (mkz8, 34), was written in May 1937, prior to this 1939 introduction. Thus, one should
be cautious about simply extrapolating the latter’s discussion of “form” to the former. How-
ever, given that “Institution” was made out in July 1937 (just two months after “Myth”), and
Miki consistently uses the term “form” throughout, it is safe to assume that he consid-
ers “logic of form” as a more “objective” expression of his logic of imagination fairly early
on.
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452 odagiri
zoon logon echon, and thus his standpoint (as of May 1937) is in this respect sim-
ilar to Cassirer’s anthropology of animal symbolicum. Miki mentions not only
Kant, Baumgarten, and Cassirer, but also Pascal and Théodule-Armand Ribot’s
psychology of sentiments at the beginning of “Myth” (13). But this “logic” of
emotion is clearly contradictory. As he himself writes in his 1939 introduction,
this “logic” can easily fall into “a kind of non-rationalism or subjectivism” (5).
Presumably, this is why he needs a more “objective” expression of his concept
of imagination, namely, the concept of “form.” It is also for the same reason that
he is consistently interested in technology, which seems to him both objective
and rational (5).41
A “form” for Miki is both technological and historical.42 A form is technolog-
ical because the essence of human nature is technological. A form is histori-
cal because the world of history is where technological inventions constantly
arise. In this paper, I mostly discuss the former aspect of Miki’s logic of form
(i.e., a technological form). But it is worth mentioning that the relationship
between his logic of form and philosophy of history is an issue equally impor-
tant.
9 Technological Form: Eidos and Self-Negation
At the beginning of his Philosophy of Technology (1942), Miki discusses Wolf-

gang Köhler’s observations of primate behaviors. In Köhler’s well-known exper-
iments, a primate animal could learn to make a detour to get food, could use a
stick-like object to reach it, and even could combine two objects to make a tool
useful for that purpose (mkz7, 198–199). These experiments provide a model
for Miki to think about the phylogeny of human technology.
41 Miki writes that it is his interest in “technology, which is both objective and rational, that
has saved him from this concern about subjectivism (この不安から私を支へてゐたの
は、「技術」といふ客觀的な合理的なもの)” (mkz8, 5).
42 In Philosophy of Technology, Miki writes that “philosophy of technology must be based on
philosophy of history, and philosophy of history must likewise be based on philosophy of
technology (技術哲學は歷史哲學を基礎としなければならず，歷史哲學もまた技術
哲學を基礎としなければならない)” (mkz7, 315). It is possible to interpret this claim in
the following way. On the one hand, since (as Miki himself argues) technology is not sim-
ply an application of natural science but an event in history (mkz8, 244–245), philosophy
of technology must be based on philosophy of history. On the other hand, since technol-
ogy is “an invention of a new behavioral form (mkz7, 200)” and the historical world is the
world in which forms constantly arises, philosophy of history must take technology into
consideration. See Odagiri (2022) for further discussions on this issue.
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Technology is essentially an innovation of new behavioral forms. What

Köhler’s experiments show is that technology is, in its phylogenetic arche-
types, an innovation of new behavioral forms as adaptation to a new envi-
ronment. (mkz7, 200)43
Again, the term “form (katachi)” is crucial for Miki’s philosophy of technology.
It has multiple meanings in Miki’s and Nishida’s writings. Obviously, the term
has the classical meaning of an “eidos” (a Platonic form). But it also refers to
a normative structure actively maintained in a living organism, which Nishida
explains in “Logic and Life.”44 In Nishida in particular, it can also mean eidoi
of truth, goodness, and beauty in some contexts. A form in their usage is not
an immutable essence of a thing (as in Plato), but a historical repetition (or
virtuality) whose preservation is a merely contingent fact. It is not necessarily
thus and can be non-existent when conditions change. A form, in other words,
arises from self-production of historical reality. The primates’ learning of a new
skill in Köhler’s experiments fits this definition of a form. But it is still equally
important for Miki that a form is an eidetic form.
Technology is based on the immanent and transcendent essence of

human beings. If human actions have no transcendent quality, technol-
ogy too cannot exist. Technology originally arises from this [human qual-
ity]; its purpose is not simply subjective but transcendent and eidetic. A
technological object expresses an idee. An idee (an idea, an eidos) origi-
nally means a form, but a form is not simply immanent but transcendent.
An idee arises from the act of making, and the reason an idee arises from
the act of making is that the act of making already has a transcendent
meaning. (mkz7, 221)45
43 技術は元來新しい行動の形の發明である。ケーレルの實驗が示してゐるのは、技
術がその發生的原型において、新しい環境に適應するための新しい行動の形の
發明であるといふことである。
44 Referring to J.S. Haldane, Nishida argues that a living organism has both external and
internal environments and actively maintains a normative structure (nkz8, 18). This idea
of a normative form in a living organism has a clear influence on his thought of action-
intuition.
45 技術は人間の內在的・超越的本質に基いてゐる。人間の行爲に超越的なところが
なければ技術もあり得ない。技術は元來そこから出てくるものとして、その目的とい
ふものも單に主觀的でなく、超越的なもの、イデー的なものである。技術的物はイ
デーを表現してゐる。イデー(イデア、エイドス)はもと形を意味するが、形は單に內
在的なものでなく、超越的なものである。イデーは作ることによつて生れる、作るこ
とによつてイデーが生れるのは、作ることが超越的意味を有するに依るのである。
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454 odagiri
The following quote from Nishida’s “Logic and Life” has the same concept of
a technological object, which is a form that is both immanent and transcen-
dent.
An action should be conceived as a bodily movement with consciousness

of a purpose. To be conscious of a purpose is to see an outcome outside
of us. … We make a thing while seeing [a form]. Even a moral act should
be considered as poiesis. Otherwise, it is a mere motive. An object is that
which has a form. (nkz8, 25)46
We have the body as a tool for making a thing, and this bodily production
of an object involves seeing an eidetic form. In the quote, Nishida finds this
immanent-transcendent production both in a handcraft and a moral action.
Nishida then further writes: “The fact that our eyes see an object already indi-
cates we are technological” (nkz8, 26).47 Seeing an object, one has a physical
organ of eyes (as a tool for seeing the object); but the act of seeing itself is a
form one has to have acquired in order to have eyes to see a thing.
In short, a form that is both immanent and transcendent (katachi) is consti-
tutive of not only human technology but also human nature itself. But what is
essential for both Nishida and Miki is that this form is a contingent being, that
is, it has negation within itself. For example, Nishida writes: “A true life inces-
santly involves negation within itself. This is the way a historical life is” (nkz8,
17).48 That is, a form is both formative and self-negative. Its contingency is no
less essential than its self-productive force.49
46 行為といふのは、目的を意識した動作と考へられる。目的を意識するといふこと
は、外に結果を見るといふことでなければならない。 … 我々は見つゝ物を作るので
ある。道徳的行為の如きものでも、ポイエシスでなければならない。然らざれば単
なる動機に過ぎない。物とは形相を有つものである。
47 眼が物を見るといふことは既に技術的でなければならない。
48 真の生命といふものは、自己自身の中に何処までも否定を含むものでなければな
らない。それが歴史的生命である。
49 Nishida’s colleague, Kuki Shūzō, begins his Gūzensei no mondai (1935) with the following
statement: “Contingency is negation of necessity. … For something to be contingent means
that [it] is contingently thus, namely, existence does not have a sufficient ground within
itself.” That is, “[contingent existence is] existence having negation within itself, existence
that can be non-existence (偶然性とは必然性の否定である。… 偶然とは偶々然有
るの意で、存在が自己のうちに十分の根拠を有つてゐないことである。すなわち、
否定を含んだ存在、無いことの出来る存在である)” (ksz2, 9). Kuki then provides
his own philosophical anthropology, with a systematic analysis of “existence grounded
on non-existence.” This same intuition runs through Nishida’s and Miki’s philosophy of
technology and, eventually, their anthropological thought.
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For Nishida and Miki, it is precisely because a human life involves negation
within itself that it has a transcendent and eidetic nature. This is also the rea-
son Nishida writes that “the human body cannot but be technological” (nkz8,
22).50 Its self-negation and technology is one and the same fact. Likewise, when
Miki writes that “every technological innovation has a form” (mkz7, 48),51 this
form should be understood as an eidetic form that involves negation within
itself.
Eventually, a human being itself is a self-contradictory form thus defined.
Miki writes that “the human is itself technologically created. Just as a machine
created by the human becomes an independent self-operating object, the
human created by a society becomes an independent self-acting being, which
in turn creates an object technologically” (mkz7, 314).52 This genetic-eidetic
view of the human body and technology is a convergent point of their ideas of
homo faber and Tatsache.
10 Miki’s Philosophical Anthropology: Kyoto in Davos Revisited
I would like to summarize the discussions thus far. In Miki’s and Nishida’s
anthropology, it is our bodily self, which is an active element of the historical
world, that makes us the human as a knower (homo sapiens). That is, the human
is a self-productive (and thus self-contradictory) form, which is both the maker
and the made in historical Tatsache. This genetic-eidetic view of a technologi-
cal form underlies their idea of the human. It is also important to note that, for
them, the human is not the locus or agent of this self-production. Poiesis is not
simply production by the human, but it arises from self-productive historical
nature.
These points clarify a distinct characteristic of Miki’s and Nishida’s anthro-
pology: their techno-ontology. For both Miki and Nishida (at least in the mid-
1930s), an essence of the human is its productive spontaneity (i.e., its engage-
ment with the world of object by having a tool). As Nishida argues, the humans
are “tool-making” (i.e., productively non-dual) animals whose bodies cannot
but be technological (nkz8, 10; 8, 22).
50 人間の身体は技術的でなければならない。
51 技術的に作られたものはすべて形をもつてゐる。
52 人間自身、技術的に作られたものである。ちやうど人間によつて作られた機械が
獨立なものとしてみづから働くやうに、人間は社會から作られたものでありながら
獨立なものとして働き、技術的に物を作つてゆくのである。
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456 odagiri
The history of humankind bears testimony to this techno-ontological an-

thropology of Miki and Nishida. Throughout history, technology is an impor-
tant aspect of humanity’s development: From stone tools to letterpress printing
and the worldwide network (e.g., the internet), human beings have defined
themselves with various technological inventions.
Furthermore, in case of Miki, this techno-ontological view is closely associ-
ated with his presentism. Miki attempts to conceive this productive aspect of
human beings with his non-dualism and presentism (i.e., as a present matter of
fact) in his historical and anthropological writings. In short, he focuses on the
present (everyday) spontaneity as an essence of human history.
In lieu of a conclusion, I would like to further situate these philosophical
interlocutions of Miki and Nishida in the context of the Davos disputation
by Cassirer and Heidegger (1929). As mentioned earlier, Miki’s Philosophical
Anthropology is an unfinished project drafted probably between 1933 and 1937,
shortly after Miki published his Philosophy of History (1931–1932). A few years
after the Davos disputation, this is the period in which many Kyoto thinkers
developed their own works on philosophical anthropology (most notably
Nishida, Kuki, Watsuji, Kōyama). They are not only competing with one an-
other but also disagreeing upon various issues, including the very notion of
philosophical anthropology. For example, Watsuji in his Ethics (1937–1949)
emphasizes the difference between his ningengaku and the European notion
of anthropology, criticizing the latter for its blindness to betweenness (wtz10).
The term (either anthropology or ningengaku) is a relatively recent coinage,
and, in fact, what philosophical anthropology exactly means is largely undeter-
mined even today. Thus, the Davos dialogue, from which much of the debate on
anthropology in continental philosophy originated, is an important historical
background to consider in the present investigations of Miki’s (and Nishida’s)
anthropological work in Kyoto.
How should we situate their anthropological thought in the context of the
Davos disputation? I have already explained some major differences between
the Davos and Kyoto thinkers: specifically, the latter’s non-dualism, presentism,
their notion of homo faber, their hermeneutics of everydayness, and techno-
ontology.53 Especially, the logic of (technological) form makes Miki’s anthropo-
53 It is important here that, in both Philosophy of History and Philosophical Anthropology,

Tatsache refers to a matter of fact of everydayness. That is, Tatsache for Miki is not simply
a matter of fact of consciousness but is a fact in everyday history. Unlike Franks’s Tatsache,
which means a fact of consciousness that attests to the actuality of the moral law, in Miki,
this term refers to a matter of fact one encounters in the everyday. Given this definition
and his presentism, for Miki, Tatsache cannot simply be established retrospectively on the
basis of testimony. Rather, the fact that Tatsache in the present comes with unexpected dis-
coveries is of crucial significance for his techno-ontology.
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logical project quite distinct from either that of Heidegger or Cassirer. I would
like to mention a couple of supplementary points. First, it is often mentioned
that, in contrast to Heidegger’s vertical investigations of human finitude, Cas-
sirer’s standpoint underlines a horizontal integration of human and empirical
sciences. Some may argue that Miki’s anthropology is an inquiry even more
vertical than Heidegger’s, as it is essentially characterized by his non-dualism.
However, since Miki consistently focuses on everydayness, it is also possible
to view his anthropology even more horizontal than Cassirer’s. In some sense,
his project aims at not only a horizontal integration of human and empirical
sciences but also of the sciences and the everyday. Second, finally, Miki’s techno-
logical (productive) view of the human (his techno-ontology), with his notions
of poiesis, Tatsache, and homo faber as its core, is similar to neither Heidegger’s
nor Cassirer’s philosophical anthropology in another important aspect. Miki
does not see the human as the agent of historical self-production. It is true that
the human is a maker, but the human is more fundamentally a technological
form whose production is a merely contingent phenomenon in the histori-
cal world. As Nishida writes, “our action does not arise from the depth of our
consciousness but occurs as the formative act of the historical world” (nkz8,
51); that is, our technological form does not arise from our consciousness. This
dehumanized ontology (of homo faber) is another important characteristic of
Miki’s philosophical anthropology.
Abbreviations
ksz Kuki Shūzō Zenshū [Collective Works of Kuki Shūzō], ed. Amano Teiyū
et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 1980–1982.
mkz Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū [Collective Works of Miki Kiyoshi], ed. Ōuchi
Hyōe et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 1966–1968.
nkz Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [Collective Works of Nishida Kitarō], ed.
Takeda Atsushi et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 2002–2009.
wtz Watsuji Tetsurō Zenshū [Collective Works of Watsuji Tetsurō], ed.
Abe Yoshishige et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 1961–1963.
Bibliography
Franks, Paul 1993 ‘Freedom, Tatsache and Tathandlung in the Development of

Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre.’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Volume 79,
Issue 3, 1997: 310–323.
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458 odagiri
Kōyama, Iwao [1935] 2012 Nishida Tetsugaku in Nishida Kitarō Kenkyū Shiryō Shū, Vol-
ume 1 Kōyama Iwao Shū, Tokyo: Kuresu Shuppan.
Ueda, Shizuteru 1988 ‘Kaisestsu’ in Nishida Kitarō Tetsugaku Ronshū Volume ii, Iwana-
mi Bunko.
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17
Anti-Cartesianism East and West: Watsuji and
Heidegger on the Possibility of Significant Dealing
with Entities
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to add the voice of Watsuji Tetsurō to the Davos-disputation
by bringing him into a dialogue with Martin Heidegger on the structure of human
existence. For this purpose, I suggest reframing the original disputation in terms of
anti-Cartesianism. This is to reflect the epistemological turn from certainty to necessity
in the application of concepts, and the practical turn from descriptive to prescrip-
tive conceptions of intentionality, both of which originated in Kant and have proven
essential to the widely acknowledged achievements in recent scholarship in Kant and
post-Kantian philosophy (Taylor, Pippin, Pinkard). Within the context of this paper,
these developments merit attention, for the novel readings of Kant and Hegel over-
lap to a large extent with what, as I claim, the anti-Cartesianism expounded by first-
generation Kyoto School philosophers—not only against Heidegger, but the modern
Western philosophical tradition in general—was aiming at: developing a notion of the
subject that would not have to rely on problematic presuppositions, like claims about
the self as substance, or the nature of the mind-world relation, but still could account
for the normativity of our epistemological, moral, and aesthetic practices. Watsuji’s
relational ethics is a case in point. His critical reading of Being and Time gives witness
not only to the anti-Cartesian animus of first-generation Kyoto-School philosophy, but
also to the difficulties inherent in any attempt to give an anti-Cartesian and yet norma-
tively robust account of being-in-the-world.
Keywords
Anti-Cartesianism – normativity – ningen – Dasein – betweenness – common practices
© Hans Peter Liederbach, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_019 - 978-90-04-68017-3

460 liederbach
1 Anti-Cartesianism East and West: the Problem
How are we to make sense of a philosophical disputation that took place almost
one hundred years ago? And what could it mean to add new voices from a dif-
ferent tradition to it? The complexity of our situation is obvious and requires
a reframing of the question that propelled the original debate: the question of
what it means to be human.
In the following, I shall treat the notion of anti-Cartesianism as the common
ground on which Watsuji Tetsurō and Martin Heidegger could enter into a dia-
logue on this very question. There are two reasons for proceeding in this way.
First, against the backdrop of the initial reception of Being and Time in Japan,
reframing the question of “the human” in anti-Cartesian terms suggests itself.
For there can be little doubt that one reason for the massive influence Heideg-
ger’s masterpiece exerted on most of the Kyoto School philosophers in the early
Shōwa period is to be found in its anti-Cartesian thrust. Tanabe, Miki, Kuki,
and (even though not belonging to the Kyoto School sensu stricto) Watsuji,
each in his own way, responded to Heidegger’s radical claim that accounting
for the possibility of meaning in the broadest possible sense requires us to
clarify the structure of human existence, for which it is necessary to take on
an anti-Cartesian, that is, anti-representationalist and anti-individualist, view-
point. However, while Heidegger’s readers in Kyoto shared his critique of early
modern epistemology and its ontological implications, they were not hesitant
to voice their dissatisfactions with the limitations of Heidegger’s project. Be
it Tanabe’s “dialectic of death,” Kuki’s notion of “absolute contingency,” Miki’s
“philosophy of history” and “anthropology,” or Watsuji’s “relational” ethics—
what Kyoto School philosophers were claiming was that, in Being and Time, for
all its productive novelty, Heidegger had failed to fully overcome the Cartesian
paradigm. Doing away with any Cartesian residue in Being and Time was one of
the key motivations for Kyoto School philosophers to enter into dialogue with
Heidegger.
As to the second reason, reframing the Davos-disputation in terms of anti-
Cartesianism reflects the epistemological turn from certainty to necessity in
the application of concepts, and the practical turn from descriptive to prescrip-
tive conceptions of intentionality, both of which originated in Kant,1 and which
have proven essential to the widely acknowledged achievements in recent
scholarship in Kant and post-Kantian philosophy.2 Within the context of this
1 Cf. Brandom, 1994, pp. 3–66.

2 Cf. inter alia Taylor, 1979; Pinkard, 1996; Pippin, 2011.
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anti-cartesianism east and west 461
paper, these developments merit attention, for the novel readings of Kant and
Hegel overlap to a large extent with what, as I claim, the anti-Cartesianism
expounded by first-generation Kyoto School philosophers—not only against
Heidegger, but the modern Western philosophical tradition in general—was
aiming at: developing a notion of the subject that would not have to rely on
problematic presuppositions, like claims about the self as substance, or the
nature of the mind-world relation, but still could account for the normativity
of our epistemological, moral, and aesthetic practices. The aim of this paper is
to substantiate this claim by offering a discussion of Watsuji’s anti-Cartesian
critique of Being and Time.
Watsuji’s case is of interest for two particular reasons. First, since it testi-
fies to the translatability of Heidegger’s anti-Cartesian thinking into another
natural language (i.e., Japanese), it exhibits the overcoming of Cartesianism as
a general problem that stretches beyond the intricacies of Heidegger’s effec-
tive history in Japan, and it might even be argued that Watsuji’s response
to Being and Time exemplifies particularly well the deep affinities between
Japanese philosophy (modern and pre-modern) and Western anti-Cartesian
thinking in the wake of Heidegger. Second, since Watsuji’s case brings to light
in an exemplary way the aporiai, Japanese anti-Cartesianism is prone to end
up with, it opens a novel, culturally inflected perspective on this general prob-
lem. That is, Watsuji’s case gives witness to the difficulties inherent in any
attempt to give an anti-Cartesian and yet normatively robust account of being-
in-the-world.3 Focussing on Watsuji’s cultural inflections will, therefore, not,
as one might expect, lead us to relativize the problem; rather, it helps us to
recognize its cross-cultural complexity. Finally, to add, for good measure, a
third point: Acknowledging these aporiai will most likely dampen the enthu-
siasm which so often goes along with the reception of Kyoto School philoso-
phers in the West. While it is futile to expect them to contribute to the “other
beginning” or the “overcoming of metaphysics,” inquiring into their culturally
inflected variations of anti-Cartesianism is helpful in that it allows for enter-
ing into a real dialogue that depends neither on claims about the alleged end
of Western philosophy nor on hypostasizing Japanese thought as a superior
“other.”4
3 It could be argued that Watsuji’s case is paradigmatic for Kyoto School anti-Cartesianism in
general. Particularly Kuki’s metaphysics of contingency and (one generation later) Nishitani’s
attempt to establish a Zen-inspired notion of I-Thou relation as the un-ground for any kind of
normatively binding ethics are cases in point; for Nishitani, cf. Liederbach, 2018; for Kuki
cf. Liederbach, 2017.
4 For what is involved here, cf. Liederbach, 2019.
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462 liederbach
While the philosophical language coined in modern Japan might be suited

for addressing the problem of Cartesianism, it does not per se embody the
means for overcoming it. As I will try to elucidate, this is particularly true for
Watsuji’s “relational” notion of human existence as ningen.5
Examining Watsuji’s appropriation of Being and Time will enable us to
address several shortcomings in its architecture, first and foremost the lack of a
normatively robust notion of sociality, on which the rendering entities intelligi-
ble would have to depend.6 As we will see below, Watsuji accuses Heidegger of
championing an existentialist version of individualism or atomism, and this is
the reason for him to bring into play the notion of ningen in contrast to Dasein.
At first glance, this notion is meant to ontologically justify a collectivist inter-
pretation of human existence,7 but on further inspection, it turns out that, as I
will claim, Watsuji uses it to address the problem of normativity. However, he
is hesitant to do so with regard to the problem of authorization. That is, while
his investigation into the structure of human agency reveals that ningen’s sig-
nificant dealings with entities are grounded in normative contexts which are
purposefully sustained, the source for the bindingness of norms and the inten-
tionality of purpose remains unclear; it can be doubted whether the notion of
ningen allows for accommodating such a source in the first place. (Pursuing this
line of inquiry requires an appreciation of the Hegelian elements in Watsuji’s
relational thinking. This is beyond the scope of this paper, the primary purpose
of which is to state the problem of normativity in Watsuji’s anti-Cartesianism
as clearly as possible.)
2 Watsuji’s Critique of Dasein
As Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis in Division One of Being and Time

convincingly shows, the intelligibility of the entities Dasein encounters in the
world and of the world as such, cannot be accounted for within the concep-
tual framework of Cartesianism; that is, by reducing their intelligibility to a
5 For the term “relational,” cf. Maraldo, 2019, pp. 16–40. More on ningen below. I am using
“existence” here in a loose sense. The term does not imply an existentialist reading neither of
Heidegger nor of Watsuji, but stresses the fact that the being of ningen, even more than that
of Dasein, is the result of a sense-making activity that, for its social nature, cannot be reduced
to representations or inferences taking place in an individual mind.
6 In this respect, Watsuji’s confrontation with Heidegger can be seen as a precursor of Neo-
Hegelian criticisms of Being and Time; cf. Pippin, 1997; Pippin, 2005. Much of what is devel-
oped in this paper draws from Pippin’s work.
7 Since Robert N. Bellah’s seminal paper on Watsuji, a strong lineage in Watsuji scholarship is
stressing this point; cf. Bellah, 1965, and inter alia Sakai, 1997; Koyasu, 2010.
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synthesizing activity, or the representation of mental states taking place in an

individual consciousness. For instance, the possibility of the meaning a sign or
an utterance has for us, is neither dependent on beliefs formed in our individ-
ual consciousness nor is it the result of inferences we make by drawing on the
content of beliefs in other consciousnesses. Similarly, being able to use a tool in
its appropriate way is not the result of successfully representing this tool and its
appropriate usage in our individual minds. Rather, the successful dealing with
entities, be it signs, utterances or tools, depends on what Heidegger calls the
“disclosure” of entities and the world wherein they are encountered. In other
words, to use a tool in its appropriate way, something must be understood, not
represented namely, the context wherein this tool is placed, which, in turn, is
possible only by Dasein’s being situated in this context, that is by Dasein’s par-
ticipating in the tasks and practices that are involved in using this specific tool.
While Watsuji is in accord with Heidegger that the significance of entities
can be accounted for only by spelling out the contexts within which these
entities are encountered and by describing the various ways in which human
beings engage these contexts as contexts, he has radically different views on
the method of this enterprise. As Watsuji maintains, it was Heidegger’s alle-
giance to a phenomenological method in an Husserlian vein that prevented
him from giving a truly anti-individualistic explanation for significant deal-
ings with entities.8 In contrast, the hermeneutical method Watsuji proposes
would not only reveal the phenomenon of being-with-others as constitutive
for any significant dealing, but also enable us to “translate” the common nor-
mative “grounds” (wake) of “practical understanding” into a philosophical lan-
guage (wtz 10, p. 37; Watsuji, 1996, pp. 34–35), and, thus, to account for the
normative horizon of ningen’s common practices. Although Watsuji’s view on
phenomenology could be challenged,9 his point that Heidegger’s refutation of
Cartesianism stopped short of acknowledging the positive function, the being-
with-others has for developing and sustaining significant dealings with entities
is well made.
Contrary to Heidegger, who claimed that the Dasein of others is disclosed in
and through Dasein’s engagement with tools (cf. sz, pp. 117–118; bt, pp. 114–115),
Watsuji maintains that “only in dealing with others, we discover tools” (wtz 10,
p. 185; Watsuji, 1996, p. 176; translation altered; cf. wtz 10, p. 32; Watsuji, 1996,
8 Cf. wtz 10, p. 72; Watsuji, 1996, p. 68: “Even in contemporary philosophy, whether it be phe-
nomenology or fundamental ontology, the central question is, in the final analysis, about the
consciousness of the ego”; translation altered. Similarly, cf. wtz 10, pp. 35–36; Watsuji, 1996,
p. 33; wtz 9, pp. 140–142; wtz 9, p. 392.
9 Cf. Johnson, 2019. Johnson has so far made the strongest case for a phenomenological re-
interpretation of Watsuji. For a critical appraisal, cf. Liederbach, 2021.
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464 liederbach
p. 30; wtz 9, p. 162). This is, of course, not to say that tools could be discovered
as something to make sense for being used in a significant way only when col-
laborating with others, or that the usage of a tool must always be directed to
another person, be it customer, client, apprentice, colleague, etc. For instance,
taking up a pen for writing a diary can be an entirely private matter, but still,
Watsuji maintains that picking up the pen presupposes that one is already situ-
ated in an “active relationship of human beings” and their normative demands;
for Watsuji, ningen’s practices are essentially common practices (wtz 10, p. 185;
Watsuji, 1996, p. 175).10
Before expanding on this issue, we must consider the importance of Wat-
suji’s culturally inflected anti-Cartesianism vis-à-vis the problem of being-with-
others. For Watsuji’s critique of Heidegger rests entirely on the notion of human
being as ningen, a term that is recorded in Buddhist and Confucian scriptures.
Watsuji spends a significant amount of labor to unearth beneath the various
layers of its traditional meaning its ontological implications that would enable
him to develop a truly anti-individualistic account of human existence. Wat-
suji’s digressions into the intricacies of the history of East Asian thought aside
(cf. Liederbach, 2001, pp. 96–104), for our purpose, it suffices to point out that
ningen, which can be rendered in English as “man-in-between,”11 signifies an
understanding of human existence that rejects any substantialist or naturalis-
tic definition. Ningen is neither an ontological “substance” nor an ontic “entity”
(wtz 10, p. 22; Watsuji, 1996, p. 19; translation altered) but a dynamic, relational
structure, a constant dialectical movement between the two poles of human
existence, that is individuality and totality.12 Ningen is an individual and at the
10 It is important to note that, in Rinrigaku, Watsuji defines human agency as the possibility
to act within the structure of betweenness, that is, as “interaction” (hataraki-ai). Watsuji’s
definition results directly from his notion of human existence as ningen. More on this
below. For now, it suffices to say that, while Watsuji does not wish to deny that individ-
uals could act intentionally outside inter-personal contexts, in his parlance, that would
be a mere bodily movement, not an action in the sense of “interaction” cf. wtz 10, p. 247;
Watsuji, 1996, p. 236.
11 The term is written with the graphemes for “human being” and “between” cf. Fujidō, 1978,
p. 44.
12 “On the one hand, the standpoint of an acting ‘individual’ comes to be established only
in some way as a negation of the totality of ningen. An individual who does not imply
the meaning of negation, that is, an essentially self-sufficient individual, is nothing but an
imaginative construction. On the other hand, the totality of ningen comes to be estab-
lished as the negation of individuality. A totality that does not include the individual
negatively, is also nothing but the product of the imagination. These two negations con-
stitute the dual character of a human being. And what is more, they constitute a single
movement. On the very ground that it is the negation of totality, the individual is, funda-
mentally speaking, none other than that totality. If this is true, then this negation is also the
self-awareness of that totality. Hence, when an individual realizes herself through nega-
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same time a social whole. Ningen is a “unity of self-other-not-two ( jita-funi)”

(wtz 9, p. 161). The latter term comprises Watsuji’s strongest claim for an anti-
Cartesian account that breaks with individualist notions of human existence.
Within the context of Western metaphysics, particularly the ontology of sub-
stance, the notion of aida equals roughly the category of “relation” (cf. Aristote-
les, 2006, pp. 19sqq.). However, within this ontology, a relatio can be thought
only with respect to its relata. Strictly speaking, the relation must “have a fun-
damentum in re” (Böhme, 1998, p. 235); it does not have a being on its own.13
Watsuji however inverts this relation. That is to say, the notion of ningen indi-
cates that, as far as the structure of human existence is concerned, the relatio
takes priority over the relata. Only by virtue of the “between” do the individ-
ual and the totality exist. This is not to say that there are neither individuals
nor social wholes; rather, since betweenness is “a contradictory unity” (wtz 10,
p. 61; Watsuji, 1996, p. 58; translation altered), Watsuji maintains that neither
the individual nor totality should be understood as being a substance and,
therefore, neither can function as ontological grounding for the other. As he
aptly puts it, “neither the one nor the other has ‘precedence’ ” (wtz 10, p. 107;
wtz 1996, p. 102).14 For this very reason, Watsuji can say that the existence of
ningen is “betweenness” (aidagara) (wtz 10, p. 25; Watsuji, 1996, p. 21), which
must be ontologically grasped as “emptiness” (kū) (wtz 10, p. 26; Watsuji, 1996,
p. 23). Hence, being-with-others is, ontologically, not an aggregation of other-
wise independent individuals who would practically disclose the significance
of entities, but the necessary condition for practices to be common practices,
and, therefore, to be significant at all.
While these sketchy remarks require further explication, it is already obvi-
ous that, for Watsuji, Heidegger’s Dasein cannot but appear as a dangerously
one-sided description of a more complex, dialectical phenomenon. That is, as
Watsuji holds, Heidegger was only able to grasp the individual aspect of the
essentially dual, individual-social structure of human existence. In Watsuji’s
perspective, Heidegger’s presupposition of Dasein’s “individualistic existence”
(wtz 10, p. 186; Watsuji, 1996, p. 176) gives witness to a Cartesian residue in
the architecture of Being and Time, which, for him, forecloses the possibility
tion, a path is opened for realizing a totality through the negation of that individual. The
individual’s acting is a movement of the restoration of totality itself. The negation moves
on to the negation of negation. That is the essential feature of the movement of negation.”
wtz 10, p. 27; Watsuji, 1996, p. 22; translation altered.
13 Accordingly, in his Categories, Aristotle closes chapter 7 with the remark that, “it should
be true to say that no substance is a relation” Aristoteles, 2006, p. 24.
14 The priority of the relatio over the relate is not to be understood in a temporal sense, since
the “reciprocal relationships [within a betweenness] are simultaneously established and
cannot be dealt with as a temporal sequential.” wtz 10, p. 59; Watsuji, 1996, p. 56.
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466 liederbach
of developing a notion of being-with-others on the basis of Dasein from the

beginning. As he puts it: “Although it is said [in Being and Time] that Dasein
is essentially ‘being-with-others,’ this is, ultimately, a side-by-side of atomistic
Dasein” (wtz 9, p. 161).
Going into the details of Watsuji’s often superficial reading of Being and Time
is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I shall simply follow Heidegger and
claim that Dasein denotes an neither atomistic existence nor a Husserlian tran-
scendental consciousness nor a Cartesian ego, and inquire into the bearing
Watsuji’s concept of ningen has on an anti-Cartesian explanation of the sig-
nificant dealing with entities that goes beyond what Heidegger had claimed to
achieve with introducing the notion of Dasein. More to the point, the question
is how the notion of ningen is to account for the normative horizon of shared
meaning, and what kind of desideratum in Being and Time it fulfills. I will pur-
sue these questions in section four; first we must understand in more detail
how Heidegger determines the possibility of Dasein’s significant dealings with
entities, not without keeping in mind Watsuji’s objections.
3 Normativity in Being and Time
As Heidegger famously claimed in Being and Time: “Dasein is its disclosedness,”

the “clearing” (Lichtung) where entities can show up as significant (sz, p. 133;
bt, p. 129). What he calls “circumspect heedfulness (umsichtiges Besorgen)” (sz,
p. 76; bt, p. 75), that is, the various ways, Dasein deals with entities, such as tools,
is possible only on the basis of an essentially unthematic disclosedness of the
world. Although Dasein is the site of disclosedness, the world as such as the
context of entities like tools, is for the most part concealed in its totality. Only
when Dasein’s dealing with entities fails in a specific way, namely when entities
show up in the “modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy” (sz,
p. 74, bt, p. 73), does the “world make itself known” (sz, p. 75; bt, p. 74). There-
fore, only “in a disruption of reference—in being unusable for …—the reference
becomes explicit” (sz, p. 74; bt, p. 74). As we will see below, this phenomenolog-
ical argument has great importance for Heidegger’s account of the normative
implications of Dasein’s meaningful dealing with entities.
For reframing Watsuji’s critical appropriation of Being and Time, the follow-
ing question is pertinent: Does Dasein, when using a tool appropriately and
potentially successfully, possess an awareness of the normative context that
makes possible its circumspect heedfulness? With regard to this question, Hei-
degger’s language is ambiguous. While he recognizes that the use of a tool is
not done arbitrarily, as if Dasein could determine individually how to use it, but
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that and so there are normative standards for getting it right, which are derived
from the context in which the tool is used (the “world”), he is careful not to enter
into a discussion of how these standards are brought into being, how they are
actualized and sustained.15 Hence, in Being and Time, expressions like Dasein’s
“heedful absorption in useful things at hand” (sz, p. 72; bt, p. 72) or “familiar-
ity” (sz, p. 76; bt, p. 75) with entities are predominant. As these expressions
and such phrases as “the sign applies to the circumspection of heedful deal-
ings” (sz, p. 79; bt, p. 78) (instead of, for instance, “the heedful dealing commits
itself to the appropriate usage of the sign”) indicate for Heidegger the appro-
priate use of a tool, getting it right, does not necessarily imply an awareness
of the normative context of this use. Only after a disruption of reference does
Dasein apprehend this context as a necessary condition for its dealings; only
then, after a failure and in retrospect, does it understand how it was possible
to get it right. I shall come back to Heidegger’s unusual understanding of nega-
tion as failure in section four. For now, we have to confirm a first desideratum
of Being and Time that has surfaced in the discussion above before we turn to
the problem of how Watsuji’s account contributes to its fulfillment.
It could be argued that, despite Heidegger’s evasive rhetoric, his argument
on the significance of entities does not allow for a purely pragmatist reading of
Dasein’s dealing with entities, such as “mindless coping” (Dreyfus’s phrase). As
could be demonstrated, Heidegger would have to admit that only on the basis
of an awareness of the normative horizon for Dasein’s circumspect heedful-
ness, phrases like “freeing entities for their involvements” or “letting something
be involved” could be phenomenologically substantiated. While the rejection
of Cartesianism does away with the need to develop (ultimately untenable)
theories of how mind and world are connected, or how a subject can know
of the mental content of other subjects, it raises the explanatory demands on
the descriptive level. Similar to speech acts, the significant use of a tool is to
a large extent modifiable. Using a hammer is not just “hammering,” but is to
be specified as “demonstrating,” “instructing,” “trying out,” “feigning,” etc., and
each of these modalities has its specific meaning within a corresponding nor-
mative context that must be understood by the hammerer in order to be able to
use her hammer appropriately; that is, “free” it “for its involvement.” This kind
of normative understanding goes beyond the understanding that would be at
work in an immersed and so pure and simple hammering (if there were such
a kind of hammering, that is). For giving a comprehensive account, there are
15 Therefore, Division One of Being and Time is open to pragmatist readings in the line of
Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Taylor, and Robert Brandom. Cf. Dreyfus, 1992; Dreyfus/Tay-
lor, 2015; Brandom, 2005.
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468 liederbach
also levels of practical awareness to be observed, which depend on the ham-

merer’s experience and expertise. A master artisan will use a hammer in a more
focused way than an apprentice, and even if she might be distracted from time
to time, and thus can, in fact, get it wrong. We would, however, expect that, even
if a master artisan can fail, she will have a higher level of awareness than the
apprentice for distinguishing between success and failure. Thus getting it right
depends on an understanding of the modalities each specific dealing allows
for, and of the normative contexts, within which it is possible to distinguish
between appropriate and inappropriate dealings, between success and failure
of a specific dealing carried out in a determinate mode. Succinctly put, getting
it right depends on a certain kind of practical mindedness, an “adverbial” (cf.
Pippin, 1989, p. 23) (in contrast to “predicative”) awareness of the normative
context of the world.
If these observations make sense, then Heidegger’s assertion that it is only
after a heedful dealing has failed, because a tool turned out to be not (or: no
longer) usable, that Dasein becomes aware of how it was possible to get it right,
must be qualified. That is, Heidegger would have to admit that, as Robert Pippin
puts it, “[a]n entity is dealt with significantly not only when it is used appro-
priately […], but when it is used in the light of such appropriateness, in an
oriented way, with implications for further activities” (Pippin, 1997, p. 382). In
other words, only by acknowledging Dasein’s practical mindedness, can Hei-
degger maintain the normatively binding significance the world is supposed
to possess for any kind of dealing with entities. And this implies, with respect
to the temporal structure of Dasein, that he would have to agree that the vari-
ous projects to which Dasein commits itself are based on an understanding of
“how one goes on.”16 For the possibility of such an understanding, failure is not
a necessary condition.
4 Normativity in Rinrigaku
We are now prepared to revisit Watsuji’s argument on the possibility of sig-

nificant dealing with entities. Explicating what it means to “get it right” and
the understanding of “how to go on” lies at the heart of Watsuji’s enterprise.
Like Heidegger, Watsuji maintains that every significant dealing with entities
16 Ibid. Of course, Heidegger would counter this claim by pointing at the phenomenon of
“falling” within the structure of “the They” in contrast to the possible wholeness of Dasein,
its authenticity, which, as he holds, can be realized only by transcending the normative
background of shared significance. I will come back to this point in section four.
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is based on a not necessarily explicit understanding of the possibilities, this

dealing opens for ningen (cf. wtz 10, pp. 37–38; Watsuji, 1996, pp. 34–35).17 Wat-
suji writes: “Before becoming conscious of it, we have already put ourselves
into action. Still, this activity is not at all blind, but is carried on towards the
formation of a determinate betweenness. In this sense, we hold the view that
common practices already contain practical understanding within themselves”
(wtz 10, p. 38; Watsuji, 1996, p. 35; translation altered).18 However, since ningen
denotes the dynamic relation of individual and totality in and as betweenness,
we can expect that the scope of what is to be understood for ningen will differ
from what comprises the possibilities of Dasein’s understanding.
Tools show up as something intelligible because they are situated within a
particular context of normatively determined agency that Watsuji calls “the
context of common practices” ( jissenteki-kōiteki renkan) (wtz 10, p. 38; Wat-
suji, 1996, p. 35 and passim.; translation altered).19 Within such a context,
the significance of entities such as tools is necessarily a shared significance
which is carrying the various practices of ningen while, at the same time, these
practices are the actualizations of that significance by which they sustain the
mutual understanding that makes possible any significant dealing with entities
within a shared, normatively determinate horizon. What is understood here,
are the “grounds” (wake) of common practices.20 There are good reasons to read
“grounds” as “normative back-grounds,” since it is the wake which accounts for
17 Watsuji renders this kind of understanding as “practical understanding” ( jissenteki ryō-

kai), which he distinguishes from “theoretical understanding” (rikai); cf. wtz 10, p. 39 and
passim. It should be noted that “theoretical understanding” denotes an explicit (or: reflex-
ive) understanding, exercised in the hermeneutical method, Watsuji develops in wtz 9,
pp. 130–185.
18 See also wtz 9, p. 141: “Agency […] is the movement in which the self-other-not-two, itself
being something that is separated into self and other, forms a betweenness.”
19 The English translation of Rinrigaku renders this as “practical interconnectedness of acts.”
This rather inelegant translation-term obscures more than it reveals. What Watsuji wants
to express here is that ningen’s practices are carried out within a shared normative con-
text, the understanding of which is of a non-objectifying, practical nature. Since carrying
out specific practices requires a commitment to this shared context, ningen’s practices
are essentially mutually acknowledged, common practices. More on this below. In the fol-
lowing, I shall render the phrase as “context of common practices,” or, depending on the
context, simply as “common practices.”
20 wtz 10, p. 37; Watsuji, 1996, p. 35: “Within the context of common practices, the grounds
[for entertaining these practices] are subject to a shared practical understanding ( jissente-
ki-ni ‘wake’ ga wakatte-iru);” translation altered. Here again, the cultural inflection of Wat-
suji’s anti-Cartesianism plays itself out. The term wake (grounds) derives from the verb
wakeru (to share, to divide), which is written with the same grapheme as wakaru (to under-
stand). It is evident that Watsuji employs these linguistic correspondences for making the
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470 liederbach
the commonality of common practices and which, in turn, is subject to a shared

understanding. When using a tool such as a pen for writing a diary, we follow
specific “forms” (kata), “ways” (shikata), and “manners” (sahō) (wtz 9, p. 164) of
writing that are normatively binding in that they not only determine the par-
ticular usage of the pen and the formal aspects for writing a particular diary
(here, too, modalities will apply) but also contribute to sustaining the general
practice of diary-writing. Thus to get a specific practice right, ningen relies on
a practical understanding and a shared normative background, within which
both practices and understanding are carried out.
For our discussion, the following aspects of ningen’s practical understanding
within the context of common practices are pertinent: First, practical under-
standing is unthematic but nevertheless possesses a determinate content (its
normative wake); second, it is shared understanding within betweenness; third,
by virtue of understanding, ningen’s activities are directed towards a purpose,
that is the formation of a determinate betweenness. Therefore, Watsuji would
reject any explanation that renders ningen’s significant dealings with entities
in terms of mindless coping; on the contrary, for him, these dealings are car-
ried by some kind of practical mindedness, which, since it is shared within
a determinate betweenness, is essentially like-mindedness. As we can put it,
Watsuji’s anti-Cartesianism rests on a form of intersubjectivity that is non-
substantial, and thus while this intersubjectivity emerges out of, and is shaped
by, a determinate betweenness, it is at the same time essential for sustaining
this betweenness; for the very purpose of ningen’s agency is, as we saw, the
formation of determinate betweenness. Therefore, in contrast to the “thrown
project” (geworfener Entwurf ) of Dasein, ningen’s agency is grounded, but not
in a substantial essence like a Cartesian cogito; rather, ningen’s agency is self-
grounding in and as betweenness.
Since, for Watsuji, these aspects are characteristics of the dual structure of
ningen, it is obvious for him that Heidegger, by having grasped only the individ-
ual side of human existence, was not able to account for the inter-subjective
structure of understanding and common practices, which, in turn, helps to
explain that an in-depth discussion on the possibilities of normative success
of Dasein’s dealings is absent in Being and Time. Now, we may assume that Hei-
degger had a good reason to not enter such a discussion; he might have feared
that, by doing so, he would have been forced to reintroduce a subjective activ-
ity similar to Cartesian representing and inferring (or, for that matter, similar
philosophical point that ningen’s understanding is essentially shared understanding. Cf.

also the usage of wakachi-au in wtz 10, p. 160; Watsuji, 1996, p. 152.
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to Kantian apperception), which would then have to be seen as responsible

for constituting the horizon of significance (the world), within which heedful
dealings were possible; and with such a move, Heidegger inevitably would have
not only weakened his anti-Cartesian position but also, and more importantly,
undermined his project of fundamental ontology. Watsuji does away with such
concerns by drawing on his culturally inflected determination of human exis-
tence. Not only does he believe (mistakenly, as one could hold) that his science
of ningen ought to provide the foundation for fundamental ontology (cf. wtz 9,
pp. 153sqq.); but more to the point he believes also that accounting for the pos-
sibility of sustaining common practices on the basis of the notion of ningen is
in accord with maintaining an anti-Cartesian position.
If these interpretations hold, we can conclude that by emphasizing the onto-
logical implications of the notion of ningen, Watsuji succeeds in fulfilling the
desideratum in Being and Time sketched out above. And yet, it is precisely the
cultural inflection of Watsuji’s anti-Cartesianism that makes his contribution
vulnerable to criticism that draws from Heidegger’s analysis of temporality.
That is to say, while Heidegger would have to agree with Watsuji that entities
are dealt with in a normative horizon of shared meaning, he would insist that,
in its everydayness, Dasein would necessarily conceal the clearing it is, that is its
very being, and fall into the mode of inauthenticity. For in all its dealings with
entities, Dasein is always at issue for itself.21 In short, Heidegger would press
Watsuji on addressing the problem of ningen’s possible wholeness in contrast
to the phenomena of falling and inauthenticity.
5 The Problem of Negativity between Heidegger and Watsuji
A second and perhaps more decisive reason for Heidegger avoiding a discussion
on inter-subjectivity and the possibility of normative success relates to Dasein’s
being as care is elucidated in Division Two of Being and Time, where Heidegger
describes the situation in which Dasein experiences care in its possible whole-
ness, as a groundless, contingent event. In the fundamental attunement of anx-
iety, by which Dasein is overwhelmed, Dasein understands that the projects it
cares about within the contexts of everyday common practices are fundamen-
21 An existentialist reading of Rinrigaku would point out that Watsuji describes ningen’s
existence solely in terms of falling; cf. inter alia Mine, 2002, p. 97; Yuasa, 1996, p. 352;
Furushō, 2006. However, as should have become obvious by now, I would hold that, to
make sense of Rinrigaku, the problem is not an insufficient amount of Heideggerian rad-
icalism, but rather that Watsuji didn’t break with Heidegger decisively enough.
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472 liederbach
tally void. That is, the “mineness” ( Jemeinigkeit) of Dasein can never be realized
within the contexts constituted and sustained by “the They” (das Man). In Hei-
degger’s words: “Care itself is in its essence thoroughly permeated with nullity”
(sz, p. 285; bt, p. 273). Facing the essential nullity of care, any attempt at cop-
ing with (that is, caring for) this nothingness must fail, for “[i]n anxiety Dasein
finds itself faced with the nothingness of the possible impossibility of its exis-
tence” (sz, p. 266; bt, p. 254). “Only the anticipation of death,” says Heidegger,
“drives every random and ‘preliminary’ possibility out” (sz, p. 384; bt, p. 365).
In anticipating death, care itself fails, which Heidegger thinks is the only pos-
sible way to realize Dasein’s mineness. Care (as pursued in everyday practices)
can never do justice to Dasein’s ownmost possibility. In understanding being
(care) in its possible totality, Dasein is aware that this understanding can never
be integrated into the everydayness of existence.
Put differently, Dasein is now aware that as “being the (null) ground of a nul-
lity […] Dasein is as such guilty” (sz, p. 285; bt, p. 274). However, since “being the
ground means never to gain power over one’s ownmost being from the ground
up” (sz, p. 284; bt, p. 273), Dasein cannot understand its projects genuinely
as its own. Similarly, Mitsein cannot genuinely respond to the essential “not-
being-at-home (Un-zuhause)” (sz, p. 189; bt, p. 183) that Dasein experiences
when it is radically individualized in anxiety. For care is, ultimately, nothing
but an evasion or fleeing from the nothing. The ever-anticipated death puts any
project into question. This means, in turn, that the possibility of being guilty
must respond to (1) the radical contingency which is experienced in anxiety
and death and (2) the necessity to maintain the context of the structure of care,
given that care is the only place where time is to be temporalized—even if this
response is nothing but a fleeing from Dasein’s utmost and ownmost possibil-
ity. Care, thoroughly permeated with nullity, can only succeed when it radically
fails, and therein lies its groundlessness.
Pursuing an anti-Cartesian account of being-in-the-world leads Heidegger
to the conclusion that Dasein’s significant dealings with entities and the vari-
ous forms of interaction with others cannot be accounted for in an affirmative
sense, but only by means of a radical, indeterminate negation. Only in experi-
encing a fundamental failure, the failure of care as such, can the possibility of
Dasein’s “getting it” right be disclosed. Accordingly, Dasein can realize its being
(care) in its authentic mode only in a complete negation of Dasein’s everyday
practices and the normative contexts of “the They.” However, this negation is
not brought about by some activity of Dasein; since the radical breakdown of
the world’s significance happens as contingently and unforeseeably as the tool’s
becoming unusable in Division One of Being and Time, it cannot be accounted
for as an achievement of Dasein itself.
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While within the framework of fundamental ontology, there is no room for

a notion of genuinely succeeding care, this is exactly what Watsuji’s ontolog-
ical ethics provides. For one thing, the notion of ningen neither allows for an
existential drama of radical individuation in anxiety and being-towards-death,
nor acknowledges the indeterminate negation of all normative contexts as suit-
able for explaining the possibility of significant dealings with entities and being
with others. What is more, as we have already seen, the success of care implies
more than getting it right in the sense of practical appropriateness. Since nin-
gen is not just acting within contexts of common practices but is also shaping
them, an understanding of the possibility to alter these contexts is already
implied in understanding the wake of a specific action. In other words, the suc-
cess of care is not to be confused with abiding by the demands of “the They.”
Therefore, when in Rinrigaku the death of ningen is exposed as an event that
is embedded in institutional contexts like burying rituals and memorial ser-
vices, and, when Watsuji claims that only in such contexts can the wholeness
of human existence be disclosed,22 this is not to be read as an advocation of
ningen’s falling in the Heideggerian sense. For while it is true that, like any sig-
nificant dealing with entities, death belongs to a shared context of common
practices, the decisive point is that death is realized through the movement
of dual negation, by which that context is not only actualized but also sus-
tained, which, as we have seen above, requires ningen’s active, understanding
commitment. Hence, when Watsuji maintains that “the individual dies, and
the between of individuals changes” (wtz 8, p. 16), he does not point at the
ontic fact that individuals are outlived by communal forms of existence; he
also does not argue that individuals simply have to conform to established
burial rites; rather, he wishes to highlight the “finite-infinite dual character of
ningen’s existence” (wtz 8, p. 16; cf. wtz 10, pp. 126–127; Watsuji, 1996, pp. 120–
121). “It is precisely in the infinite, that is in absolute negativity,” writes Watsuji,
“where [finite / hpl] ningen can be a whole” (wtz 10, p. 198; Watsuji, 1996,
p. 189). Death, understood in this way, is just one way of actualizing ningen’s
possible wholeness. That is, ningen’s possible wholeness is disclosed as “the
22 “With regard to human death, Heidegger himself was able to deal with only individual
death. Even though such events like one’s last moments, the deathwatch, the funeral, a
tomb, a Buddhist service held after forty-nine days in which a bereaved family, relatives,
and friends participate all belong to human death, he omits them. If so, then the totality
grasped through the medium of death is the totality of an individual being. The totality
of ningen’s existence has escaped his hands.” wtz 10, p. 253; Watsuji, 1996, pp. 219–220;
translation altered. Cf. wtz 10, p. 145, where Watsuji calls the “call of consciousness” the
“call to absolute negativity;” Watsuji, 1996, p. 137; translation altered.
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474 liederbach
movement in which absolute negativity returns back to itself through nega-

tion” (wtz 10, p. 125; Watsuji, 1996, p. 119), or, more to the point, as “the return
to the absolute” (wtz 10, p. 129; Watsuji, 1996, p. 123). Obviously, this phrase is
to be read as an ontological determination of the movement which is at work
in any form of ningen’s significant dealing and being with others, making its
genuine success possible. For, as Watsuji holds, the return to the absolute is pos-
sible only within a concrete betweenness (wtz 10, pp. 126–127; Watsuji, 1996,
p. 121); and since there is no existence possible outside a determinate aida-
gara, every single act of ningen counts as an instantiation of its return to the
absolute. Furthermore, if the notion of ningen implies that any return to the
absolute is in accord with ningen’s ontological structure and, therefore, counts
as realization of authentic existence, there is no possibility for deviation within
this structure. For it is only when the movement of dual negation “comes to a
standstill” (wtz 10, p. 142; Watsuji, 1996, p. 135) that ningen “falls into an inau-
thentic mode of existence” (wtz 10, p. 143; Watsuji, 1996, p. 135; translation
altered). Only when it ceases to exist, so it seems, can ningen become inau-
thentic.
On the other hand, maintaining the continuity of the movement means to
realize authenticity by fully actualizing the ontological structure of ningen—
all of which “is closely tied to the active and practical spheres of human beings”
(wtz 10, p. 126; Watsuji, 1996, p. 120). Accordingly, for Watsuji, “an action counts
as good because of its being directed to the return to its foundation” (wtz 10,
p. 141; Watsuji, 1996, p. 134; translation altered), that is, the absolute.
6 The Limits of Watsuji’s Anti-Cartesianism
Precisely at this point in the argument of Rinrigaku, the conceptual insufficien-

cies of Watsuji’s cultural inflected anti-Cartesianism come to light. To be sure,
for giving an anti-Cartesian account of significant dealings with entities, the
notion of ningen proved highly valuable; however, this value finds its limits at
the problem of authorization. As we saw, Watsuji is aware of the problem of
how ningen sustains the normatively binding contexts of common practices;
however, he fails to address the problem of how the normative bindingness of
these contexts is authorized. That is, by appealing to the groundless grounding
activity of ningen, Watsuji gave a convincing account of the function of prac-
tical understanding for any significant dealing with entities; therefore, he was
able to fulfill a crucial desideratum of Being and Time. However, the notion of
ningen does not provide the conceptual means for elaborating how the vari-
ous contexts of common practices ought to be authorized beyond appealing
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to their factual effectiveness. If ningen’s significant dealings with entities and

being with others are not to be mistaken as mindless coping, this problem can-
not be avoided.
The problem lies in the claim that ningen’s acts, qua being acts of ningen,
are instantiations of the return to the absolute via the movement of the nega-
tion of absolute negativity. That is, from Watsuji’s perspective, the ontological
structure of ningen is in itself normatively binding. He makes this point by
invoking quasi-legal terminology when maintaining that “the fundamental law
of human existence is the movement of the negation of absolute negativity”
and “this movement, understood as human action, signifies the sublation of
individuality, the realization of ethical ( jinrin-teki) unity, and the return to
one’s own foundation” (wtz 10, pp. 140–141; Watsuji, 1996, pp. 133–134; transla-
tion altered).23 Against the backdrop of Watsuji’s elaborations on authenticity,
the law of human existence is a law that cannot be violated as far as ningen
exists within the movement of dual negation. Hence, by appealing to this law,
Watsuji effectively exempts himself from addressing the problem of authoriza-
tion. There is no point in arguing about how ningen ought to sustain its “getting
it right,” when the movement of dual negation cannot but terminate in a return
to the absolute. For Watsuji, how ningen “goes on” is something to be taken for
granted.
With this move, Watsuji opens a new perspective on his Auseinandersetzung
with Being and Time. That is, although Watsuji’s objections against Heidegger’s
existential drama of anxiety and death are, by and large, convincing, he failed
to realize its wider significance. Heidegger has a point in maintaining that there
must be a possibility of negating the, in his view, ultimately futile attempts
at authorizing the normative contexts of Dasein’s significant dealings. Trans-
lated into Watsuji’s terminology, what Heidegger was aiming at is the possibility
of negating the normative bindingness of the contexts of common practices.
Watsuji is right not to adopt a Heideggerian course of argument; as we have
seen, Heidegger’s account of anxiety and death fails to provide for Dasein a
way back into everyday existence that would not immediately lead again into
the movement of falling.24 However, rejecting any possibility of violating the
23 As Iijima rightly points out, this is the only explicit normative claim in Rinrigaku; cf.
Iijima, 2019, p. 280. That is to say, Rinrigaku is not about normative ethics. I agree with
Johnson who maintains that “the larger philosophical point that Watsuji wishes to estab-
lish amounts to a claim about the human capacity to disclose the world;” cf. Johnson,
2019, p. 163. However, contra Johnson, I argue that to comprehensively develop Watsuji’s
philosophical point, one must make explicit the normative implications in that claim. So,
in my view, Rinrigaku is about normativity, but not in the sense of normative ethics.
24 Recent interpretations of Being and Time stress this point and argue for an alternative
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476 liederbach
fundamental law of human existence other than by bringing the movement of

dual negation to a standstill is not an appropriate response to this issue.
Watsuji’s evasion of addressing this issue arguable stems from his analysis
of the spatio-temporal structure of ningen. Ultimately, his objections against
the notion of Dasein amount to the claim that ningen’s possible wholeness
is grounded not in temporality alone, but in the equiprimordiality of tempo-
rality and spatiality. As it turns out, the constant movement of ningen’s sep-
arating and unifying is possible only on the basis of ningen’s spatio-temporal
extendedness, which “is not a uniform extendedness, but a dialectical one, in
which relations such as ‘far and near, wide and narrow’ are mutually trans-
formed into one another” (wtz 10, p. 164; Watsuji, 1996, p. 157). That is to say,
Watsuji introduces ningen’s spatio-temporal structure as the necessary condi-
tion for forming and sustaining the contexts of common practices. Since it is
always a determinate betweenness, where this structure is realized, the move-
ment of dual negation ends where it begins, with ningen’s determinate total-
ity:
The structure of ningen sonzai as betweenness thus consists in spatial-

ity, when viewed statically. Ningen sonzai spreads out subjectively as the
subjective realm in which entities manifest themselves. Now this spread-
ing out is the movement of negation through which authentic unity is
negated resulting in the opposition of self and other and through which
this latter negation is itself further negated to result in a nondual unity
between self and other. For this reason, when viewed dynamically, the
structure of ningen sonzai is a temporality that allows past authenticity
to arise non dually as the future, in and through present dualistic activi-
ties, and that consists of the self and other. Oppositions and unities that
are spatial, motivate time to arise. (wtz 10, p. 235; Watsuji, 1996, p. 223;
translation altered)
Therefore, when Watsuji claims that for ningen the possible wholeness of exis-
tence, that is the “nondual unity of self and other,” is achieved in accordance
with ningen’s spatio-temporal structure, he not only mirrors the movement
of dual negation into this structure, but also favors a certain reading of this
movement while he shuts out other possible readings. That is, by exhibiting
ningen’s spatio-temporal structure, he emphasizes a reading that narrows down
reading of how Dasein’s disclosedness, falling, and resoluteness are determined; cf. Figal,
2013, pp. 131–133.
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the range of ningen’s shaping and sustaining activity to simply conforming to

established norms. On this condition, totality “has precedence” over individu-
ality.
Therefore, the reading that the movement of dual negation is nothing that
simply happens to ningen but must be understood as an achievement, has to be
qualified. To be sure, Watsuji’s claim that ningen’s active commitment to its sig-
nificant dealings with entities is based on the understanding of specific forms,
ways, and manners, cannot be meant to say that an individual simply con-
forms to established norms, but that this sort of commitment requires “mutual
recognition” (wtz 10, p. 56: Watsuji, 1996, p. 53; translation altered) regarding
the authority of these norms, and yet, against the backdrop of ningen’s spatio-
temporal structure, it turns out that what Watsuji must have had in mind is not
so much a form of mutual recognition based on reason, but an agreement on
mores. In fact, Watsuji already suggested that much when he appealed to the
fundamental law of human existence, and yet, he also insisted on the “freedom”
of ningen to “form” and “develop” the contexts of common practices (wtz 8,
p. 12; cf. wtz 10, p. 38; Watsuji, 1996, p. 35). As one could hold, since ningen
denotes the individual and at the same time the social whole, mutual recog-
nition involves the commitment to established norms and, at the same time,
a forming activity that allows for the determinate negation, that is the trans-
formation of these norms that opens a possibility for “historical development
of betweenness” (wtz 10, p. 82; Watsuji, 1996, p. 77).25 However, for laying out
what is involved here, we would have to readjust central claims in Watsuji’s
anti-Cartesianism. In particular, one could doubt whether ningen’s dialectical
structure, which is crucial for making good of the recognition-claim, can be
aligned with Watsuji’s assertion of ningen’s nondual character. Pursuing this
question, however, requires an in-depth analysis of the Hegelian sources of
Watsuji’s thought and is beyond the scope of this paper.
7 Anti-Cartesianism East and West: Open Questions
To sum up: Reframing the original question of the Davos-disputation in anti-

Cartesian terms, and thus, examining the normative implications of the no-
25 Cf. wtz 10, p. 26; Watsuji, 1996, p. 23; wtz 10, p. 38; Watsuji, 1996, p. 35; wtz 8, p. 18. In all
these passages, Watsuji hints at the developmental character of the formation of aidagara.
In volume three of Rinrigaku, Watsuji even goes so far to maintain that the development of
aidagara must be understood within the context of a progressive view of history; wtz 11,
pp. 59–67.
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478 liederbach
tions of ningen and Dasein, has provided us with a culturally inflected per-
spective on the general problem of how to account for significant dealings
with entities; ningen has indeed the capacity to function as a Japanese “lens
on Greco-European thought” (Maraldo, 2017, p. 21). However, Watsuji’s case
also indicates the challenges, a non-dualist account of human existence has
to respond to.
By disclosing the possibility of genuine success of care, Watsuji addresses
an issue that is implied but not explicitly discussed in Being and Time; and
by revealing ningen’s structure of dual negation, he has provided the ontologi-
cal foundation for both his anti-Cartesian notion of human existence and the
bindingness of normative contexts. However, he fails to recognize a problem
that not only, at least tacitly, surfaces in Being and Time, but is also implied
in the conceptual framework of Rinrigaku, namely the problem of how the
normative contexts which make possible the success of care, are to be autho-
rized. If it is true that ningen’s dealings with entities are not to be under-
stood as mindless coping, but as an understanding commitment to a deter-
minate, normatively binding context of common practices, there must be a
yardstick by which the legitimacy of this bindingness could be measured; and
such a yardstick is all the more necessary with regard to ningen’s capacity
to transform the contexts of common practices. It is impossible to see how
this problem could be avoided without relapsing into a pragmatist reading
of Rinrigaku and, thereby, abandoning Watsuji’s insight into the structure of
ningen’s significant dealing with entities. Thus, Watsuji’s case exemplifies a gen-
eral problem, every anti-Cartesian position has to face: the problem of how to
account for both the practical like-mindedness that carries significant dealings
with entities, and the authorizing sources of the normatively binding contexts
of these dealings, without which like-mindedness would be incomprehensi-
ble.
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18
Miki and the Myth of Humanism
Fernando Wirtz
Abstract
In this article, I explore Miki Kiyoshi’s concept of humanism. For Miki, his time was
marked by the necessity for establishing a new humanism. It was necessary, for him, to
engage with the question of humanism and what humanity is. Nevertheless, the for-
mulation of this question was, for him, already a kind of humanist praxis, since he
interpreted humanity as being something open, and never as a closed, clearly lim-
ited essence. This is the main idea that guided Miki’s quest for a new human: the
myth of the human. For Miki, the concept of myth does not refer to the idea of
archaic myth, but to a certain emotional image (in Sorel’s sense) that generates a sense
of unity and belonging. In this sense, for Miki, myth is a historical fiction of great
power.
Keywords
Miki Kiyoshi – myth – humanism – cultural renaissance (bungei fukkō) – Nishida

Kitarō – realism – naturalism
1 Introduction1
Miki’s conceptualisation of humanism must be understood in the historical

context of Japan during the 1930s, since Miki uses it to quarrel with the liter-
ary and ideological tendencies of that time, such as realism, romanticism and
fascism. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 ushered in a new stage of
political drama and intellectual confrontation in Japan. After the consequences
of the financial crisis of 1927 and the conflicts within the Japanese communist
movement, new discourses emerged in the intellectual arena. Here, I want to
focus concretely on how the concepts of humanism and the disparate forms
1 This work was supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
© Fernando Wirtz, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_020 - 978-90-04-68017-3

482 wirtz
of realism discourses played an important role in the texts that Miki Kiyoshi
wrote during the 1930s.
It must also be pointed out that Miki’s use of the word “humanism”2 reflects
a philosophical turn in his career, characterised by an—at least rhetorical—
estrangement from the Marxist attitude that penetrated his writings before
1930, the year of his incarceration for presumably giving financial aid to the
communist party.3 This incident devastated Miki’s academic career, and he
started to be ever more active as a journalist. Philosophical systematicity was
replaced with a frantic thirst for actuality. Nevertheless, the spirit of journalism
also increased Miki’s commitment to topical debates and expanded his inter-
est beyond philosophy. For example, he mentions the concept of “humanism”
in many journalistic articles, and he presents it as being opposed to romanti-
cism and realism.
Miki was well informed about literary trends, and he had contact with some
of the most influential authors of his time.4 On different sides of the politi-
cal spectrum, the works of writers, philosophers and politicians were studded
with appeals for a spiritual and cultural renaissance, a so-called bungei fukkō
(文芸復興) (for a detailed discussion of this concept, see Campagnola 2016).
Aside from the common elements shared by humanists, romantics and com-
munists (as the critique against individualism), there were disparate tactics for
bringing about this renaissance. Some romantics stressed the role of the artist
(or Genie) as an intermediary between the ethnic values of the nation and the
people. Some members of the proletarian movement saw the use of realism as
a tool for mobilising the consciousness of the working class, although some of
them also disagreed about the role that ideology should play in the depiction of
social conditions. All these perspectives were not enough for Miki, who insisted
on the idea that the new humanism should incorporate both the dimensions
of the subject and of the object in equal quality.
Admittedly, the concept of humanism in the 1930s cannot be understood
without reference to the philosophical confrontation between Ernst Cassirer
2 Miki uses usually the katakana word ヒューマニズム, rarely opting for 人間主義. Other
variations include: 人文主義, 人本主義 and 人道主義 (actually “humanitarianism” in the
sense of philanthropy) (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, p. 136).
3 Curley wrote: “But for Miki, Marxism was humanism” (Curley, 2020, p. 448). I am not say-
ing here that Miki completely gave up his Marxist ideas. Nevertheless, it is also clear that his
preoccupation with the notion of humanism coincides with the dismissal of some Marxist
categories, such as “social class.” See also Stromback (2020).
4 Proof of this is the diverse roundtable discussions in which he participated, often as moder-
ator.
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miki and the myth of humanism 483
and Martin Heidegger. Broadly speaking, it can be said that this was also a con-
frontation about the essence of humans. As Peter Eli Gordon phrased it,
On this point, the contrast between Cassirer and Heidegger could hardly
have been more stark. For Heidegger, philosophical anthropology fur-
nished evidence for his own conception of the human being as gov-
erned by fundamental moods and situated within the totality of practi-
cal assignments he called the environment, or Umwelt. Cassirer, however,
found validation of his own philosophic belief that the human being may
begin in finitude but eventually breaks free of its limits to create a sym-
bolic order it then understands to be both an objective order and an
expression of its own spontaneous consciousness. (Gordon, 2010, p. 75)
This can be understood as the contrast between a conception of the human

being as finite and conditioned by its situationality versus the conception of
the human being as capable of accessing a nonsubjective zone of transrelative
symbolism in a certain way (see Gordon, 2010, p. 76). Stephen Lofts echoes this
reading and concludes that Miki’s philosophy offers a third way of escaping.
According to him, both Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s descriptions lack one side of
the picture:
Heidegger descends the Hegelian ladder into the existential ground of fac-
ticity on which the ladder rests, but as for the nature and being of the lad-
der on which he himself must stand, he can say nothing. Cassirer follows
the ladder up to its highest manifestation in ideas and thought and ulti-
mately to a philosophy of culture, but on what the ladder stands, it can say
nothing. A transcendental critique of culture is limited to determining the
logic of sense that forms the factum of culture, whereas existential phe-
nomenology is limited to the hermeneutics of facticity of Dasein. (Lofts,
2021, p. 149; see also Heidegger and Cassirer, 2010, p. 288)
In other words, while Heidegger explains the existential facticity of Dasein,

Cassirer explains the formation of culture. As claimed by Lofts, Miki’s philos-
ophy attempts to bridge the gap between the two, since his philosophy brings
a dialectical ontology into play. For Miki, reality is the constant interchange
between indeterminate pathos and formative logos, between situated exis-
tence and a nonprescriptive immanent ideality; finitude and infinitude find a
point of mediation in his philosophy. Given that the exchange between pathos
and logos occurs on the basis of an open ontology of nothingness, both direc-
tions are balanced.
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484 wirtz
The nothing allows Miki to move beyond all dualism, not just the dualism
between logos and pathos, but the dualism between form and existence.
Miki shows how historical forms are produced in and through the cre-
ative power of the imagination as the unity of logos—the intellectual
element of understanding—and pathos—affect, emotion, impulse, sen-
sibility. The logic of creative existence is the process by which historical
forms are produced. (Lofts, 2021, p. 159)
While Lofts concentrates mainly on Miki’s Logic of the Imagination, I will

attempt to approach his contribution from the perspective of his earlier texts
on humanism.
This paper aims to reconstruct Miki’s notion of humanism, which is to be
found dispersed in many of his articles written during the 1930’s. After pre-
senting the general context of the cultural renaissance debate (Section 1), I
will investigate Nishida Kitarō’s notion of human being, in dialogue with his
student, Miki (Section 2). Section 3 presents some critical reactions: on the
one side, Miki’s critique of Nishida; on the other, the comments of Tosaka Jun
and Miyamoto Yuriko, both authors whose political-left activism is well known.
According to these critics, what is seen in Miki’s humanism is a loosely defined
concept of humanism that blurs all references to class struggle and real oppres-
sion and turns, therefore, into something reactionary. In Section 4, I present
Miki’s theory of myth to show that it is possible to interpret the idea of a “new
human type” as a form of myth. I conclude that, while Miki defines the new
human as a being myth, he did this to safeguard humanity’s openness. By try-
ing to balance subjectivism and objectivism, romanticism and realism, pathos
and logos, Miki was trying to find a solution for the concrete problems that
Japan was striving to overcome during the interwar period.
2 Miki’s Concept of Humanism
Attention to the term, “humanism,” can be understood as a continuation of

Miki’s previous approach to the concept of “anthropology” in some of his pre-
vious writings, particularly in The Study of Human Being in Pascal 『パスカル
に於ける人間の研究』 (1926) and Historical Materialism and the Present-day
Consciousness 『唯物史観と現代の意識』 (1928). In both cases, Miki argues
that the true object of philosophy should be the concrete human being and
its concrete experience. However, when Miki refers to humanism, he is not
so much concerned with defining “human nature” or what human beings are.
Rather, he uses this term to discuss what he considers to be an urgent task: the
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renewal of ningen (人間, human). That is, he takes this word as an opportu-
nity to criticise what human beings are not and to open the discussion of what
they can or should be. In this sense, the problem of humanism is, for him, the
problem of the new human (ningen), which he also refers to as a “new ningen
type.”
The Peace Preservation Law was enacted in 1925 and was revised three years
later when the March 15 Incident sentenced the Japanese Communist Party
to a process of decay. A period of massive persecutions to the members of
the political-left, along with the rise of ultranationalism (exemplified with the
May 15 Incident and the Japan-Manchukuo Protocol in 1932), signalled the end
of communism in Japan as a hegemonic ideology that was supposed to lead the
people towards a better society. However, innovative ideas did not disappear.
As a counter-reaction to the rise of Nazism, fascism and ultranationalism, dif-
ferent intents to build progressive alliances were ensuing, such as the Interna-
tional Congress for the Defense of Culture, in Paris (1935), which accompanied
the convergence of the Popular Front (Miki Vol. 12, 1966–1968, pp. 365–367).
These events encouraged work towards the internationalisation of culture that,
at some point, received the name of “humanism.”
Humanism is generally understood as the position that vindicates certain
rational, universal characteristics that make humanity an end in itself and
serves to reclaim the value and dignity of all human individuals and their dif-
ferent cultures. In fact, humanism is a philosophy of culture, where humanity is
expressed precisely in the making of culture.5 This is revealed in the extended
idea that viewed the European Renaissance as a kind of modernisation process
through culture. It was a “civilisational model” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 13).
To illustrate this, it is useful to quote a passage from Burkhardt’s book The
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860):
In the Middle Ages, both sides of human consciousness—that which was

turned within and that which was turned without—lay as though dream-
ing or half-awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith,
illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and his-
tory were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as
a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation—only through
some general category. It is in Italy that this veil dissolved first; there arose
an objective treatment and consideration of the State and of all the things
5 The Japanese term bunka (文化) was borrowed from Chinese to translate the German con-
cept of Kultur in the Meiji era. During the interwar Shōwa period, the term became loaded
with a certain ethnic content. For a brief history of this evolution see Tai 2003.
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486 wirtz
of this world, and at the same time the subjective side asserted itself with
corresponding emphasis. Man became a spiritual individual and recog-
nised himself as such. (Burckhardt, 1961, p. 88)
Burkhardt, whose esteem of the Middle Age was not lessened by his fascination
with the Renaissance, nevertheless reproduces the extended view that iden-
tified Renaissance as the birth of individualism. The Renaissance’s spiritual
individualism simultaneously accelerated the spread of independent knowl-
edge, universities, and therefore, culture. It was an ideology of emancipation
against the shackles of the theocratic Middle Ages and also all constraints of
human intellect. For the cultural renaissance in Japan (bungei fukkō), the value
of culture was also central. Culture expressed the universality of the human in
its multiplicity. Consequently, Miki considers it important to separate human-
ism from culturalism (文化主義).
Unlike other discourses of the time, culturalism did not operate as an organic
movement. Some authors associated with culturalism were Tsuchida Kyōson,
Kuwaki Gen’yoku, and Sōda Kiichirō; they shared in the conviction that culture
is important as an autonomous sphere for cosmopolitanism (Workman, 2015,
p. 6).6
In this sense, as Workman writes:
Because human life and individual conduct taken as empirical objects

appear too dispersed and differentiated, the philosophy of human life
must turn to the transcendental if it proposes to arrive at a unity that
could be properly called “culture” in the global sense. (Workman, 2015,
p. 35)
In this regard, Miki perceived a certain formalism in the ideas of these authors.
While culturalism, according to Miki, acts just for the sake of culture, human-
ism should act for the sake of humanity (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, p. 278). So, for
Miki, humanism is not just about culture (Miki Vol. 5, 1966–1968, p. 176). Histori-
cally speaking, Miki distinguishes two different phenomena that have received
the name of “humanism”: the Italian Renaissance, and the German romanti-
cism. Here, he is following Konrad Burdach and his idea that the main core of
these movements was the pursuit of an “ideal type of humanity.” According to
Burdach, it would be naïve to pretend that during the Middle Ages, there was
no interest in classical culture. Rather, what defines the Renaissance attitude
6 For a brief review of culturalism in English, see Piovesana (2013, pp. 159–196).
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towards Greece and Rome was the search for a holistic, prototypical style (Bur-
dach, 1918, pp. 105–106).
It could also be maintained that every epoch and culture has its respective
human types. Montagne’s gentilhomme, Pascal’s honnête homme, or Balzac’s
homme social, were replaced during the first half of the twentieth century,
according to Miki, by the homme inquiétant of modern society’s anxiety (Miki
Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 225). But did these authors merely discover their respec-
tive societal types, or did they rather create them? It seems to be that they did
not limit themselves to conceive of the human as an object for the understand-
ing. Art can transform life. For this reason, Miki seems to have lost his faith in
the concept of philosophical anthropology, which occupied the centrality of
his work in 1928. The creation of a new human type cannot be a matter purely
of anthropology or philosophy, but a task for literature.
As noted above, for Miki, the role of culture cannot be reduced to a “purism”
of l’art pour l’art. Art is born from humans, and humans are born from art (Miki
Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 226). These transformative interpretations of art also reveal
one of the main features of humanism’s new conception. According to the new
humanism: first, human beings are historical and change together with social
transformations; second, this historical conception of humanism should be
grounded in the Eastern idea of nothingness. The artist is the one who “creates
from nothing.”
Miki quotes Nietzsche. As Nietzsche said regarding the death of God, hu-
mans have sacrificed God for the sake of nothingness (無) (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–
1968, p. 228; Nietzsche, 1999, p. 74). Nevertheless, this nothingness is not to be
confused with “Eastern nothingness.” While the former is something general
(一般的), the latter is “pathological” (パトロギー的); it is nothingness with
“character” (性格) (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 229). The crisis of values con-
fronts human beings with angst and nihilism. Certainly, Miki sees nothingness
as a pre-condition for creation. However, a new type of human cannot arise
exclusively out of abstract nothingness. Rather, it requires a kind of situated
nothingness; a nothingness that is the source of all possibilities.
If there are no universal values, no eternal God, the road to creation is open.
However, artists always have one foot in nothingness and the other in their
historical reality. The fiction that they create is myth. Out of the “pathos of noth-
ingness” comes myth into being. Nietzsche’s Übermensch (overman) is nothing
but a myth, same as the Sorelian proletariat (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 231).7
7 For Georges Sorel, myths were images of will that could mobilize political action and more
powerful, in this task, that mere logical rhetoric. See Wirtz (2020).
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488 wirtz
The new type of human is not just “invented” but is also “discovered,” moulded,
through logos. The concept of “invention” in Miki refers to the moment of abso-
lutely free and infinite creation, while the concept of “discovery” or “finding”
refers to the moment of feedback in which the creative process must negotiate
with the given material and historical conditions. This reveals that, for Miki, the
“new ningen” is not an essential type of human being but is rather something
in which existence is created “out of nothing,” an openness of being.
It seems appropriate to scrutinise Miki’s notion of myth. The text, “The Prob-
lem of Neohumanism and Literature,” which I have been discussing here, starts
with Miki’s claim that the idea of bungei fukkō is a myth (ミュトス). Nietzsche’s
“overman,” or Sorel’s “proletariat,” are in this sense also two myths of their era.
As a myth, Miki says, the “cultural renaissance” or bungei fukkō is not an objec-
tive fact. However, as a myth, it is also not pure nonsense.
Myth does not represent an objective thing as it is, but it is neither just a
nonsensical thing. When a new human history begins, it seems that some
kind of myth is always being conceived. But a myth is always a myth. Myth
must be formed. It must be accompanied by cognition. (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–
1968, pp. 215–216)
That is why Miki writes: “This nothingness is where myth is constantly born”
(Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 228). The nothingness is not something overcome
by being; it is something that remains as the foundation of creation. However,
Miki’s notion of nothingness, as stated before, is not about pure substantial
emptiness but about a “pathetic” nothingness. There is no myth without the
demonic power of pathos. Pathos is a recurrent concept of Miki that refers to
the embodied and emotional facticity that constitutes our individual and social
existence.8 This is our passivity. Myth does not emerge from “out of nothing” as
something abstract, but “out of nothing” in the sense of a purely open and cre-
ative elaboration of the pathetic elements of a given situation. Miki, by stating
that the origin of humanism is pathetic, also implies that humanism emerges
as the result of mythopoiesis.
8 In Logic of the Imagination, Miki calls the pathos “the body in subjectivity [主体性におけ
る身体]” (Miki Vol. 8, 1966–1968, p. 15). Miki also refers to the pathos as “Sehnsucht,” as long-
ing, pure desire: “In other words, while it itself [that is, the pathos] remains undetermined as
pathos, it contains itself a demand for determination difficult to resist” (Miki Vol. 8, 1966–
1968, p. 72). In this sense, for Miki, pathos is always something expressive. The body is not
mere inert body, but embodiment tending towards expression and action.
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3 The Human in Nishida
To dig deeper into Miki’s idea of humanism, Nishida’s philosophy should be

studied as one of Miki’s main sources. The roundtable discussions held by Miki
with Nishida, reported in the Yomiuri Shimbun on June 6, 1936, reveal that both
master and student shared similar views regarding the problem of human-
ism. In this conversation, Miki asks Nishida about his thoughts concerning the
recent humanist trend.
Nishida tells Miki that the task of the new humanism should be the “discov-
ery” (発見) of the new human (Miki Vol. 17, 1966–1968, p. 493). While European
humanism had stressed the importance of freedom and individuality, new
humanism, according to Nishida, should take the perspective of the historical
world. The idea of an innate human nature disregards the fact that humans are
also constituted dialectically in their transcendental relation with the histori-
cal world. Nishida considered this a misconception, the philosophical hybris of
Western humanism. On the contrary, the Eastern tradition lacked such a strong
valuation of individuality, prioritising the whole and the impersonal. The way
to draw humanism out of that state of constant individual anxiety and impo-
tency is, therefore, according to Nishida, to incorporate the elements of Eastern
thought (Miki Vol. 17, 1966–1968, pp. 497–498).
Even if it is said that humanism, until now, has come to a standstill and
that something Eastern will appear, this should not mean a return to the
East. Even from the thought that new humans must be born, there should
be a new logic. “The logic of nothingness” is the logic of creation, which is
dialectical and does not negate actual sensations. (Miki Vol. 17, 1966–1968,
pp. 499–500)
It should be remembered that 1936 was also the year of Nishida’s book Logic
and Life 『論理と生命』. This book could also be read in light of Nishida’s pre-
occupation with humanism, or at least with the question of the human. He
writes: “While the human being has been regarded as zoon politikon or zoon
logon echon or as sensible or rational, we are rather—as [Benjamin] Franklin
stated—tool-making animals” (Nishida 2012a, p. 105; Nishida Vol. 8, 1947–1953,
p. 276). Precisely, in the aforementioned interview between Miki and Nishida,
the latter states that Eastern humanism contemplates the human from the per-
spective of the self-formative historical world (Miki Vol. 17, 1966–1968, p. 500).
That is, humans are something creative and productive. In the case of Nishida
and Miki, self-formation does not need a form or an essence. It is an infinite
unsubstantial process that has the absolute nothingness as its (non-)foun-
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490 wirtz
dation. In Logic and Life, toolmaking accounts for a constitutive difference

between human beings and animals. Other animals certainly use tools, but
only humans possess tools; that is, only humans can understand tools as tools,
substitute them, and conceive them as something objectified. Nevertheless, for
Nishida, tools seem to have not only an anthropological function but also a
world-formative one. In the historical world, every element can be regarded as
a tool or medium for something. That humans are creative means for Nishida
that the world is self-formative. For this reason, this Nishidean “humanism”
does not reproduce the anthropocentric Western notion of humanism.
Nishida maintains the same position in his text, Human Being 「人間的存
在」(1938). From his perspective, the insistence in pointing out human exis-
tence as an instantiation of the world’s self-formation is grounded in the neces-
sity for recognising that human beings are not autonomous “atoms” but are
intertwined, self-contradictory elements of the historical world.
Without speaking of production, there is nothing to call the world of his-

torical actuality. The world of historical actuality must be thought of from
the fact of production. And this is a standpoint one can reach neither from
the standpoint of the cognition of objects nor from the standpoint of the
activity of introspective contemplation. Therefore, a person is frequently
thought to be uncreated, unmediated—a miracle. But even the activity of
the intellect must, as intentional action in the historical world, be medi-
ated by the historical world. (Nishida, 2012b, 145; Nishida Vol. 9, 1947–1953,
pp. 10–11)
Nishida understands the historical world as the world in which individuals find
themselves in a reciprocal relation of negation and affirmation. That is, the self
of one individual negates the self of another individual and vice versa. This is a
relation of mutual determination that also applies to the intercourse between
humans and their environment. Since everything is mutually transforming,
Nishida argues that there is no such thing as an isolated ego. If this is trans-
polated to the idea of humanity, it could be said that there is no autonomous
human.
As Nishida writes:
Therefore, the world of man, as the apex of the movement from the
made to the making, and centred on an idiosyncratic constitution, can
be thought of as the conjunction of the utterly mutually opposed aspects
of the seen thing and activity. (Nishida, 2012b, p. 173; Nishida Vol. 9, 1947–
1953, p. 51)
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There seems to still be a priority of the human world, at least as the “centre”
of the productive cosmical contradiction of the dialectic logic of nothingness.
There is, nevertheless, no “essence” of human besides nothingness itself, the
foundation of production. Because everything is simultaneously self-formative
and the result of other forces, there is no closed essence of humanness. On the
contrary, humanness is continually transforming. This is, I argue, why Nishida
puts so much importance on the idea of homo faber.9
Nishida repeats the same idea in another conversation with Miki: “Life and
Philosophy of Life”「人生及び人生哲学」 (October 1936). When talking about
the “position of the human in the cosmos” (a reference to Scheler’s book from
1928), Nishida says, “When thinking about the position of humans in the uni-
verse, normally we think of humans and the universe as oppositional” (Miki
Vol. 2, 2008, p. 157). Again, Nishida’s counter-point is that the true world should
be thought of as “the historical world” (歴史的世界), an idea according to
which “world and human are not opposed to things” (Miki Vol. 2, 2008–2013,
p. 158). It is evident that for Nishida, defining the concept of human as some-
thing isolated from the world of nature is an error. Nevertheless, he is also far
from being an anti-humanist or a post-humanist. For Nishida, the human is still
the vertex where the contradictory forces of the historical world encounter. In
this sense, humanism is not to be equated with anthropocentrism.
The anthropocentric humanism by which man divorced himself from

religious authority and rediscovered himself at the beginning of the early-
modern period, as the development of new historical life, formed the
great culture of the early-modern period. However, the development of
anthropocentrism itself necessarily progressed in the direction of hu-
manism and individualism. (Nishida, 2012b, p. 180; Nishida Vol. 9, 1947–
1953, p. 61)
The mistake of the modern conception of humanity seems to be an abstraction

that isolates humans from the world. By contrast, we see that Miki and Nishida
assert the role of the “concrete” human, that is, the human that exists in the
historical world as a producing qua-produced force. This means that “From the
perspective of historical productive humanism, something that is transcenden-
9 “To speak of moving from the immanent anthropocentrism of the early-modern-period to

the objectivism of historical man is not to speak of reverting to the religious mysticism of the
Middle Ages. It is to take the standpoint of active intuition, where seeing is entirely based on
acting and acting on seeing; it is to assume the standpoint of homo faber” (Nishida, 2012b,
p. 181; Nishida Vol. 9, 1947–1953, p. 63).
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492 wirtz
tally subjective, such as the universal of consciousness or the absolute ego, does
not become the centre” (Nishida 2012b, 182; Nishida Vol. 9, 1947–1953, p. 64).
Actually, in the topology of nothingness, there is nothing that can be assumed
as the centre position. The middle point of the opposition between humans
and nature is nothingness; however, insofar as this nothingness is dynamic, it
requires the relation between both poles (individual and world) to be produc-
tive. It is at the core of this process of production that Nishidean humanism
should be considered.
4 Critical Points: Naturalism and Realism
In this section, I contextualise the notion of humanism and compare it with the
problem of realism. If the new humanism should move beyond the opposition
between humans and nature, humans and nature should be thought of as inter-
dependent. Nature is not the absolute other of humans. Yet, nature and humans
are mutually, dialectically, related. This might be a reason for why, during Miki’s
time, the question of humanism sprung up together with the questions of nat-
uralism and realism.
Considering Miki’s writings, he warns against the new trend that infiltrated
literature: realism (リアリズム or, less common, 現実主義). Realism, under its
disparate forms, is based on the principle that the world should be represented
objectively. In this sense, it is closely related to the term “naturalism.” Broadly
speaking, naturalism puts natural reality at the centre of its discourse. How
Miki employs the words “naturalism” and “realism” is extremely ambiguous,
especially because these terms also could refer to the literary movements that
are known under these names. Indubitably, Miki was aware of this, as he often
includes the question of literature in the context of the debate about human-
ism. But the ambiguity also goes hand in hand with the fact that Japanese
naturalism differs from its European counterpart. As Kato writes: “The French
word [naturalisme] refers to nature as viewed by natural science; the Japanese
to nature as opposed to artifice or […] a natural universe viewed pantheistically
and distinct from the urban and cultivated” (Kato, 1983, p. 164). Naturalism, in
Europe, was inspired by scientific observation of facts. It also tried to project
certain deterministic relations between characters and their environment. In
the case of Japan, naturalism defended the “clarity, directness, and immedi-
acy” of colloquial written language (Lippit, 2002, p. 30). It was a naturalism
of everyday life. This is why Miki talks about “Eastern naturalism” (東洋的自
然主義). Admittedly, by this term, Miki refers not only to the literary move-
ment, but also to a certain Eastern worldview related to a resignation stemming
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from Buddhism. Both Eastern naturalism and humanism are an opposing reac-
tion to “ethnic-traditionalism” (民族主義伝統主義) (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968,
p. 282), in that both try to be affected by reality outside of established con-
ventions. But while Western humanism emerged as a plea for the autonomy
of reason, in the East, the forces of pathos and nature were stronger.
In a text from 1936, Critique of the Eastern Human 「東洋的人間の批判」,
Miki attests that the risk of the Japanese worldview is that humanism should
not be reduced to a pure indifferentism between humans and nature:
A feature of Japanese thought is a pattern of thinking, which is expressed

by the term, soku [即]10 as is found in the [expression] subjective soku
objective, motion soku stillness,11 in which I see an essence of this [so-
called Eastern] naturalism. Therefore, insofar as it is soku, it is not of pro-
cess and temporal in its meaning, and, consequently, it is not historical.
Even in Nishida’s philosophy, which is the very first philosophy to infuse
humanism with Eastern philosophy, what is still lacking is the process and
a temporal, historical perspective.12
This opposing critique of Nishida might be unjustified;13 however, Miki’s point

is that the logic of soku, by being able to incorporate all contradictions into
its orbit, ends up suppressing all distinctions. In such a philosophy, a scientific
worldview in modern terms becomes impossible since “objectivism” requires
the condition of abstracting the different aspects of a phenomenon. In another
text, Miki adds to this idea: “The Japanese intellect swallows up everything as
it is, and this is a terrifying realism [現実主義]” (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, cited
in Nagatomo, 1995, p. 83; Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, p. 356).
It could be said that, in fact, “Eastern naturalism,” which Miki mentions in
relation to Nishida, and literary Japanese naturalism share a concept of nature
that rejects the idea of nature as being opposed to the subject. With this in
mind, Nishida’s position could be defined as a non-dualist naturalism. In terms
10 This term appears in expressions such as soku-hi (is and is not) and is largely associated
with philosophers such as Nishida and Nishitani Keiji. It refers here to the Nishidean logic
of contradictory self-identity according to which all elements are self-negating regarding
the world and, at the same time, self-formative.
11 A possible Latinisation of this term would be “subjective qua objective,” “motion qua still-
ness,” etc.
12 I slightly modified the translation of this passage, offered in Nagatomo (1995, pp. 19–20;
Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, p. 274).
13 Nishida seems, in fact, to consider historicity of central importance for the conception of
the human.
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494 wirtz
of literature, Miki certainly does not refer to the first generation of Japanese
naturalists—Kosugi Tengai, Tayama Katai, Takayama Chogyū, (Sibley 1968; Hill
2020)—but to a new kind of romantically inspired naturalism (just to name
two: Katagami Noburu and Hayashi Fusao).14 This naturalism shared some
features with the so-called Japanese romantic school, which was against the
realist dismissal of subjectivism and they were also critics of realism (Doak,
1994, p. xxxiv). Nevertheless, romantics were also against the idea of revisiting
the culture of humanism, which associated with Western civilisation. Yasuda
Yojūrō, one of the main representatives of romanticism, writes:
The birth of the contradictions of modernity in our country, Japan—

which became a modern state having skipped over a cultural renais-
sance—forced us to graft ourselves onto the European spirit, which
emerged from the Renaissance, neglecting its own lineage of medieval
culture. (Yasuda, Tansman, 2008, p. 268)
Proletarian realism, another important discourse of that time, on the contrary

of romanticism, introduced a political standpoint to mediate the “neutrality”
of naturalism, emphasising the complexity of people’s social reality (Lippit,
1992, p. 70). An additional ingredient that does not belong exclusively to pro-
letarian literature but also other forms of realism is the depiction of raw and
marginal living conditions. In any case, both naturalism and realism, in their
diverse forms, were opposed to subjectivism and sensualism. However, if East-
ern naturalism ends up swallowing everything in the abstruse logic of the soku,
realism also misses the point by reducing the overall real to one single reality.
For Miki, “realism” is a problematic concept since, as Aristotle said, “being is
said in many ways.” What is “real”? The understanding of reality changes along
with history, and dissimilar authors such as Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Ihara Saikaku,
and the Araragi School, could be labelled as “realists” (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968,
p. 235). Miki also refers to the romantic-inspired “realism of nothingness” (無
のリアイリズム) (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 228), probably referring to romantic
writers such as Hayashi Fusao (named above). Hence, Miki argues that real-
ism is grounded on the world-view (in the sense of Weltanschauung, 世界観)
14 This generation of naturalist writers was closely related to Japanese romanticism. At first
sight, this association between naturalism and romanticism may sound surprising, since
these terms were opposed during the nineteenth century in France. In the case of Japan,
both schools of thought interacted together. See Suzuki (2009) and Henshall (2010).
For more about the differences between French and Japanese naturalism, see Kato (1983,
pp. 158–170).
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of a particular time and place, and it is not truly objective as its pretensions.
According to Miki, even Weltanschauung is produced from pathos (Miki Vol. 11,
1966–1968, p. 236). In other words, so-called objectivism is always a result of the
embodied facticity of being in the world. If reality is defined strictly in terms of
objectivity, then it should be inferred that subjectivism in literature presents us
not with reality per se but with the possibility of another reality. That is, objec-
tive reality (insofar as it separates subject and object) is only one dimension
of “true reality.” Subjectivity, by allowing to represent the possibility of another
reality, can be considered as a “subjective reality.” “True reality,” then, accord-
ing to Miki, should consist of the dialectical synthesis of these two realities (二
つのリアリティ) (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 240). To achieve this, Miki says that
humanism should exhort the new generation of writers to pursue theory pas-
sionately (i.e., to unify objectivism and subjectivism) (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968,
p. 240). If humanism ends up exalting subjectivity, this is just to counter what
Miki calls “bad realism” and “bad objectivism.”15
But at the antipodes of this semantic bundle of content, there stands Tosaka
Jun and Yuriko Miyamoto, who criticised Miki’s justification of humanism. The
systematic fragility of Miki’s texts is also to be understood in the context of a
more journalistic rather than academic production. Yet, Miki never explains
clearly what his “new ningen type” really is. In this sense, it is not difficult to
concede to many of the critical points mentioned by Tosaka and Miyamoto.
Tosaka, in his book Japan as a Part of the World 『世界の一環としての日本』
(1937), dedicates one chapter to his resemblances of Miki and one chapter to
humanism.16 Although both shared a similar intellectual environment, Tosaka
became an increasingly harsh critic of his older colleague Miki’s political short-
comings as a regular liberal. He describes Miki as unoriginal and moderate,
even if he briefly wonders if Miki’s philosophical popularity could harbour the
spark of a philosophy for the masses. The fact that Miki goes from advocat-
ing for a Marxist form of anthropology to demanding a new type of humanism
looks quite suspicious to Tosaka. “Taking seriously the topic of humanity should
be different from putting away all problems by making the concept of humanity
the centre” (Tosaka Vol. 5, 1966–1967, p. 124). The concept of humanism appears
in the eyes of Tosaka as an alibi to, through a banal messianic dream, put the
claims of the working class out of the immediate political scope.
15 There are many other texts where Miki deals with the problem of realism, many contained
in volume 11 of his complete works such as Problems of Ethics and Literature Today 「今日
の倫理の問題と文学」 (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, pp. 178–202).
16 “Miki Kiyoshi and his Philosophy” 「三木清氏と三木哲学」 (1936) and “Humanism and
Materialism in Today’s Japan” 「現代日本のヒューマニズムと唯物論」 (1937).
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496 wirtz
It is said that there is no humanism in Japanese cultural tradition (at

least before naturalist literature). In this sense, the view that Eastern nat-
uralism remains in contrast to humanism is something outstanding (e.g.,
Miki Kiyoshi). However, humanism, which is said to not exist in this case,
means nothing but an element of Renaissance humanism. As for human-
ism as another element, it is common sense that rather a characteristic
Eastern or Japanese humanism can be thought of. In the East and in Japan,
human nature in the sense of competing with nature is not important
(this is a phenomenon that occurs with the establishment of a bourgeois
society). On the contrary, from the beginning, it is said that nature is
human nature and human nature is nature. Intuition and Anschauung
in Japanese culture are [also related to] this [point]. (Tosaka Vol. 5, 1966–
1967, p. 118)
Here, Tosaka also refers to the idea of an Eastern naturalism in which nature
and humans are not opposed. According to Tosaka, Miki’s blindness towards
other forms of humanism, such as Eastern naturalism, was what impeded him
from understanding the phenomenon in its deep complexity.
In Miyamoto Yuriko’s essay, “Outline of Today’s Literature” 「今日の文学の展
望」 (1937), she reconstructs precisely the above-mentioned intellectual debates
between humanism and realism. According to Miyamoto, Miki’s question was
justified; he was expecting to find a new morality that can protect the concept
of humanity from the fascist menace within the young intellectual milieu of
that time. Nevertheless, Miki’s critique against pretentious objectivism fails to
address the problem philosophically.
Miyamoto writes:
[Miki] advocates an “elevation of subjectivity” as a humanistic counter-

part to the false objectivism and a “passion for theory” as an antidote
against popular everyday-ism [日常主義]. However, the subjectivity he
referred to was limited to an emphasis on the active nature of subjectivity
as opposed to vulgar doctrine of the Other-power [他力主義],17 and the
content of subjectivity could not be fully understood. The same was true
of “passion for theory.” It was only natural that humanism, which sought
a way that is based on this idea, could not be a guideline for action as a
17 This unusual expression refers to the Buddhist notion of tariki (他力) or Other-power,
central to the Pure Land doctrine that influenced also Tanabe Hajime, as well as Miki.
Here, Minamoto seems to oppose this “Otherism” to certain individual subjectivism.
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way of life due to the human nature of ordinary citizens who are forced to
work or work unwillingly on a daily basis. (Miyamoto Vol. 13, 2001–2004,
p. 304)
Both Tosaka and Miyamoto agree that the concept of humanism does not
directly address the problems of modern society. By postulating a blurry con-
cept of “humanity,” literature is left in front of an empty messianism that noth-
ing has to do with the reality of the working class. Naturalism, realism and
romanticism were co-existing and sometimes closely interwoven notions. Miki
distances himself from those currents without elaborating in a clear, systematic
counter-propose. In this sense, the myth that he was trying to create could be
seen, by some leftists, as a mere reformist fantasy.
5 Humanism as a Myth
As it has been shown, Miki constructs his concept of humanism in contraposi-

tion with other trends of early Shōwa Era. On the one hand, he writes against a
sterile realism that is trapped in its limits of everyday naturalism. On the other
hand, he reproves the romantic excess of subjectivism.
In an article titled, “The Rise of Romanticism” 「浪漫主義の擡頭」 (1934),
Miki specifically criticises this point. For Japanese romantics,18 the new litera-
ture should be built on a “dream,” on the power of the Einbildungskraft. That
is, against realism, they emphasise the importance of imagination and fantasy
(which is a hint of the influence that German romanticism had on them). This
is also the motto of the inaugural issue of the journal, Nihon romanha 『日本浪
漫派』 (published between 1935 and 1938):
We have taken up the lofty tune of the youth of our age and, rejecting fad-
dish and vulgar literature, step forward without regret in the declaration
of the noble and liberating action of the artist. We have already heard that
poetry lies at the origin, and, at the origin of language, it serves to build
dreams of spirit in the void. (Quoted in Doak, 1994, p. xxxvii)
Miki undoubtedly recognises the importance of imagination. However, he crit-

icises the romantic concept of a “dream” for being an individual one: the free-
18 Miki has probably in mind Kamei Katsuichirō and Yasuda Yojūrō, both editors of the
famous romantic journal Nihon romanha (日本浪漫派). About the relation between
Miki and the romantic school see Sugawara (2013, pp. 110–156).
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498 wirtz
dom of the artist. Against this, Miki writes: “However, a myth is not an individ-
ual dream, it is something authentically social; according to us, it has impor-
tance as a social myth” (Miki Vol. 13, 1966–1968, p. 165). Be this as it may, Miki
seems to share one important conviction with the romantic spirit: Literature
has the task of delineating the new type of human being (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–
1968, p. 225).
The words of Toyoshima Yoshio, quoted by Miki, vividly summarise the
philosopher’s position (I quote here the full paragraph, even if Miki only refers
to a fragment of it):
To make literature truly grow and fulfil its duties as literature, it is neces-
sary to break away from the “party” power principle. We must recognise
the desires, dreams and demands of human diversity, recognise diverse
lives, and recognise diverse characters [性格]. And for the first time, liter-
ary realism [リアリズム] could target not only events and scenes but also
human character. For the first time, various characters come to life in lit-
erature. When we read a work and discover a human being there, or when
we meet a human being and find a person in the work, we feel deep joy.
When the type [タイプ] is new, we find a reason to live. Starting from this
type, we can discuss culture and modern and future societies. The emer-
gence of one such type promotes the evolution of society in more than a
one-hundred thousand advertisements [宣伝]. (Toyoshima, 1967, p. 207;
Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 244)
For Toyoshima, as well as for Miki, realism cannot truly be “realist” if it does
not pay attention to the character, to the human spirit. The character is what
arises from the pathetic reality and is not a subjective illusion. This is because
the humanity that is reclaimed by Miki is not the external appearance of the
human species but rather its dialectic reality, as material beings and as subjects.
While describing the concrete features of this new type of human, Miki’s
attitude is evasive. This is because there are no essential properties that consti-
tute human nature. Anyway, Miki repeatedly stresses human beings’ openness.
The “being” of human beings is constantly forming itself. For such a reason,
Miki seems to suggest that the new type of human is also a kind of myth; it is
a convention. The task of philosophy and art is not to define what humans are,
but to create them as an infinite task.
In “The Philosophical Foundation of Humanism”「ヒューマニズムの哲学
的基礎」 (1936), Miki explicitly defines a human being as “open to the world”
(weltoffen) and, using an idea from Helmuth Plessner, asserts that humans exist
simultaneously as centred and peripherical beings, that is in and outside of
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themselves and their environment (Miki Vol. 5, 1966–1968, p. 165; Plessner, 1975,
p. 203). Because humans are “eccentric” (離心的), they can transcend the per-
spective of world-immanence and adopt the position of “nihilism” (虚無主義)
(Miki Vol. 5, 1966–1968, p. 167), where they are not limited by anything. But
again, for Miki, to remain exclusively at this level would be nothing but a one-
dimensional and limited answer. Humans can transcend the world, but they
exist in the world. This is the central dialectic of Miki’s humanism: humans
are contextual and trans-contextual beings; ontic and ontological (Miki Vol. 5,
1966–1968, p. 165); logical and pathetic (Miki Vol. 5, 1966–1968, p. 170).
Miki’s humanism can only be a myth, but this is not a weakness. For Miki,
being a myth means being something that is constantly being renewed. This
can be illustrated with the text from 1934 “Historical Consciousness and Myth-
ical Consciousness”「歴史的意識と神話的意識」. Myth is like tradition. A tra-
dition consists of many conventions transmitted through time. To explain the
interaction between myth and temporality, Miki focuses on the phenomenon
of “renaissance” or “revival” (復興), the same word that is found in the expres-
sion bungei fukkō (Miki Vol. 10, 1966–1968, p. 329). From the beginning, tradition
changes, but the stories and rituals that are transmitted and belong to a cer-
tain period eventually become obsolete and no longer transmitted. However,
Miki notes that among those things that are submerged in the sea of oblivion
are some that, while being practically unnoticed, can be reborn with renewed
forces.
What is known as regeneration or rebirth has become an important aspect
of history. One phenomenon of this kind is the European Renaissance (as a
renewal of classical culture). Also, Marxism, as a revival of Hegelianism, or Neo-
Kantianism as a revival of Kantianism. All of these are not merely “repeated”
(繰り返す) from the past but are “attracted” (手繰り寄せる) from the present
(Miki Vol. 10, 1966–1968, p. 329). This is what Miki terms “pathetic.” It is from
our concrete situatedness that we re-actualise past events. According to what
the development of the present demands, history is resurrected, and the his-
tory of the past becomes present. This possibility of actualising past events is a
myth.
If we compare this text from 1934 with “The Problem of Neohumanism”
(1933) or “The Philosophical Foundation of Humanism” (1936), it is possible
to conclude that humanism, the renewal of the human being, is also a myth:
it is the re-actualisation of the past and a creative attitude. That humanism
is a myth means that it is fiction. It is something that needs to be continually
re-elaborated. In this sense, fiction is something that is grounded in nothing-
ness (it is not something substantial). However, this nothingness has its own
“character,” its own historical situatedness. This is, I would argue, the “Eastern
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500 wirtz
nature” of Miki’s humanism. Certainly, this does not mean that humanism is
an irrational myth in the sense of romanticism. For Miki, myth is always some-
thing that has to be mediated by logos, not something purely pathetic.
6 Conclusion
Miki’s concept of humanism is to be understood against realism and romanti-

cism, against the reductive forms of objectivism and subjectivism. Philosoph-
ically, Miki’s human being emulates Nishida’s understanding of humans. For
Nishida, human beings are productive. This means that humans transform the
world dialectically while being transformed by the world. For both Nishida and
Miki, humans have no fixed essence. Nonetheless, while for Nishida this open-
ness is grounded on the notion of absolute nothingness and its principle of
self-contradictory self-identity, Miki criticises this kind of “Eastern naturalism”
that lacks a historical consciousness of dialectics. Miki’s logic seems to rectify
this lack with the notion of myth: history is creation, and creation is based on
nothingness, but this creation is never actualised in an abstract void but rather
in a situated context.
If we return to the question of the human in the context of Davos (and,
more broadly, of what Davos represents), it is possible to discover a new facet
of Miki’s contribution. If we can agree with Lofts that “the gulf between form
and existence, sense and facticity, at the heart of the Davos debate is a false
dichotomy, an empty abstraction that is a logical consequence of an ontol-
ogy of self-identity” (Lofts, 2021, p. 159), then it is necessary to indicate where
Miki offers an answer. When Miki claims, as quoted above, that nothingness
“is where myth is constantly born” (Miki Vol. 11, 1966–1968, p. 228), it is pos-
sible to see how the facticity of the situated nothingness is the condition for
the symbolic world. In that sense, Miki would agree with Cassirer that “[…]
man does not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate
needs and desires. He lives rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes
and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his phantasies and dreams” (Cas-
sirer, 1944, p. 25). In this quote, Cassirer seems to (inadvertently) provide a
perfect definition of what Miki means by pathos. Living in a symbolic and
meaningful world is what differentiates human beings from animals; this is
the distance that allows them not only to react to their environment but also
to transform it historically. “Signals and symbols belong to two different uni-
verses of discourse: a signal is a part of the physical world of being; a symbol
is a part of the human world of meaning” (Cassirer, 1944, p. 32). This is also
true for Miki; the difference is that for the Japanese philosopher, the relation
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between pathos and logos, fact and being, is one of continuity-discontinuity

and not merely the development of a given human nature. Even if Cassirer
expressed some suspicion about the concept of human nature (see Cassirer,
1944, p. 26), it is true that his definition of the human being as a symbolic ani-
mal aims to show a certain essentiality. In Miki, such essentiality is absent.
From the outset, the dialectical void of nothingness replaces any possible pre-
scription. If the human being is a symbolic being, this implies for Miki that
the human being himself is a myth. This myth is both the result and the
cause of the world of meaning. While it is true that it is not possible to estab-
lish a fair comparison between Miki, Heidegger and Cassirer, we can certainly
use the tension between the two Germans to understand the importance of
Miki. Miki is arguing in a different historical and geographical context that
allows him to critique the concept of humanism itself as limited by a partic-
ular cultural tradition (i.e. the European one). At the same time, in searching
for an equivalent of humanism in the East, Miki finds an “emptiness” that is
at the same time a condition of possibility. Thus, instead of remaining com-
fortably attached to the idea of Eastern naturalism or realism (proletarian
or romantic), Miki affirms the myth of the human as a humanist act of self-
creation. His “new ningen type” is his attempt to embrace the pathetic facticity
of human situatedness to expand into the imaginary world of expansive ratio-
nality.
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19
Hineingehalten in das Nichts: Die Metaphysik und
das Andere des Seins
Emanuel Seitz
Abstract
Nothingness is a touchstone for genuine philosophy: only a thinking that can deal with
nothingness integrates the finiteness of existence into its own philosophy and does not
try to reflect itself out of the world with the idea of supertemporal laws and entities. As I
discuss using Heidegger, Cassirer, Nishida, and Aristotle as examples, nothingness over-
comes the basic ontotheological structure of Western metaphysics. Where the West
sets the One Being as the origin, the not-so-distant East sets nothingness as the origin
of everything. It is itself a principle of thought and arises from the basic question of all
metaphysics: Is there rather nothing than something? Or both at the same time? The
sense of nothingness is manifold; it means chaos, chance, indetermination, diversity,
the untrue, possibility and otherness. There is a mood of nothingness (the fear), a place
of nothingness (the absurd) and an event of nothingness (the world). Nothingness is
the condition of the possibility of being at all.
Keywords
Nature of Nothingness – Angst – Ontotheology – Metaphysics – Being-in-the-World –

Heidegger – Kitaro Nishida – Aristotle – Cassirer – Zen
1 Davos und die Frage nach der Angst
Martin Heidegger stellt in der Davoser Disputation an Ernst Cassirer die Frage:
„Wie weit hat die Philosophie die Aufgabe, frei werden zu lassen von der Angst?
Oder hat sie nicht die Aufgabe, den Menschen gerade radikal der Angst auszu-
liefern?“ (Heidegger, 2010, p. 286). Die Frage ist geschickt gestellt: Sie zwingt
zu einer Entscheidung. Sie fordert Entschlossenheit und eine Parteinahme für
eine der beiden Seiten, sie akzeptiert keine Unbestimmtheit und kein Offenlas-
sen. Die Strenge der Frage lässt kein Ausweichen, keine Ausflüchte und keine
© Emanuel Seitz, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004680173_021 - 978-90-04-68017-3

hineingehalten in das nichts 505
taktischen Manöver mehr zu. Wenn sich Cassirer jetzt vor einer Antwort drü-
cken wollte, wäre es für alle Zuhörer offensichtlich.
Cassirer zögert – er umkreist mit einigen Worten erst seinen Gedanken,
bevor er sich zu einem Bekenntnis entschließt und erläutert, wie seiner Mei-
nung nach die Philosophie mit dem Gefühl der Angst umgehen sollte. Er lobt
die Idealisten und ihren Begriff von Freiheit. Eine solche Philosophie wäre
fähig, den Menschen allein durch die Macht des Geistigen, des Höheren und
des Ewig-Währenden zu erlösen. Die Erdlinge könnten sich, dank der Welt des
Geistes, über ihre irdische Existenz erheben und ein Reich der Unendlichkeit
erschaffen, eine Region der reinen Form, in der die Angst vor allem Irdischen
von ihnen fällt (Heidegger, 2010, p. 286). Am Ende des Idealismus steht eine
Philosophie der Hoffnung, des Zutrauens und der Furchtlosigkeit (Heidegger,
2010, p. 287).
Cassirer entwirft da sicherlich ein nobles Programm. Auf den ersten Blick
scheint die Antwort, die er gibt, die beste Antwort zu sein, die man geben
könnte. Wer kann schon allen Ernstes behaupten, die Aufgabe der Philoso-
phie bestehe in der Absicht, den Leuten Angst zu machen? Angst ist doch ein
unheimliches, ein negatives Gefühl, etwas Schlechtes, das es zu vermeiden gilt.
Muss nicht eine gute Philosophie auch gute Absichten haben – die bestmögli-
chen sogar? Und unterstreicht sie nicht ihre allerbesten Absichten und ihren
besten Willen durch ein solches Bekenntnis, dass sie die Ängstlichen, soweit es
möglich ist, von ihren Ängsten befreien will? Ist der Idealismus nicht gerade
deswegen ein gelungener Entwurf des Ganzen dieser Welt, weil er als Thera-
peutikum positive und freundliche Wirkungen entfaltet? Gerade diese Grund-
stimmung, dieses lebensfreundliche Streben mit einer Vertikalspannung ins
Unendliche, scheint doch das Lobenswerte dieser Philosophie zu sein – kein
Zweifel, meint man zunächst.
Wäre dem so, könnte man sich zurücklehnen und den Blick ins Unendli-
che genießen. Doch Heideggers Frage ist eine Falle. Sie ist listig gestellt und
lockt aus Cassirer etwas hervor, das sie gar nicht zu erfragen scheint. Die Frage
nach der Angst ist keine Frage nach persönlichen Gefühlen und Bekennt-
nissen; sie ist vielmehr eine ontologische Frage, eine Frage nach der Meta-
physik Cassirers. Indem Cassirer zugibt, dass eine idealistische Philosophie
vom Irdischen und Endlichen befreien könnte, gibt er eine Abwendung sei-
ner Philosophie von der Faktizität des Dasein zu erkennen. Indem Cassirer
die Angst als eine bloße Befindlichkeit abtut und von ihr spricht, als könne
man sich von ihr lossagen, beweist er seine Unkenntnis dessen, was Heideg-
ger eine Grundstimmung nennt. In solchen Stimmungen offenbart sich die
Welt als Ganzes (Heidegger, 1986, p. 137). Die Angst ist jene unbestimmte und
unheimliche Stimmung, wenn einem Menschen die Welt entgleitet und sich
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506 seitz
das Nichtige der Existenz ins Bewusstsein schleicht. Wenn sich Heidegger also
nach der Angst erkundigt, fragt er eigentlich: „Sag, wie hältst Du’s mit dem
Nichts?“
Cassirers Antwort offenbart, dass er mit dem Nichts nichts anfangen kann.
Er will vom Nichts nichts wissen, es tangiert ihn nicht. In seiner Philosophie
bleibt kein letzter Rest von Nichtigkeit und Endlichkeit übrig. Er ängstigt sich
nicht, weil es für ihn das Nichts nicht gibt. Diese Grundverfassung seiner Phi-
losophie unterscheidet sich in keiner Weise von der ontotheologischen Grund-
verfassung der abendländischen Metaphysik. Nicht Heidegger ist der Metaphy-
siker; der Metaphysiker ist Cassirer. Der angebliche Kritiker der Metaphysik
und Substanzphilosophie hängt der Vorstellung an, es könne eine Befreiung
von allem Endlichen durch ein Unendliches geben – und eine solche Vorstel-
lung ist metaphysisch, unabhängig davon, ob sie nun eine kulturphilosophi-
sche Tarnkappe trägt oder nicht.
Heidegger will mit seiner Philosophie von der Angst nicht frei machen. Statt-
dessen sucht er die Freiheit in der Angst. Es wäre auch gar nicht möglich, sich
von solchen Grundstimmungen zu befreien, in denen sich die Welt als Ganzes
erschließt. Die Frage nach der Angst betrifft nämlich keine Hypochonder und
ist keine psychologische Frage, keine persönliche Stimmung und keine subjek-
tive Befindlichkeit. Die Angst gehört zum Dasein selbst, weil das Dasein end-
lich ist. Von dieser Endlichkeit kann kein Mensch irgendwo, irgendwann oder
irgendwie befreit werden. Diese Angst vor der eigenen Endlichkeit, vor dem
Nichts, das uns erwartet, lässt sich nicht durch die Hoffnung auf ein Unendli-
ches überwinden. Man kann die Angst höchstens aushalten und sich ihr stellen
– oder man ignoriert sie, im Modus der Uneigentlichkeit, und schiebt sie bei-
seite und lenkt sich ab. Echte Freiheit heißt bei Heidegger „frei zu werden für
die Endlichkeit des Daseins“ (Heidegger, 2010, p. 289). Philosophie führt den
Menschen nicht aus dieser Endlichkeit heraus, sie führt ihn dort hinein; sie setzt
ihn dieser Angst aus.
Ein Mensch, der seinen Blick nur in die Höhen des Unendlichen richtet,
gewinnt keine Freiheit, sondern Torheit. Es ist leichtsinnig, etwas überwinden
zu wollen, was kein Mensch überwinden kann. Die Transzendenz von Hin-
terwelten mag die Angst und das Unheimliche, das vom Nichtsein ausgeht,
besänftigen, doch nur zum Preis eines systematischen Irrtums mit lauter fal-
schen Transzendenzen und verfehlten Absolutheiten.
Echte Freiheit und Transzendenz ist innerlich – sie wirft den Menschen
zurück auf sich selbst, auf die Härte seines Schicksals, auf die Nichtigkeit sei-
nes Daseins. Sie stößt ihn in den Abgrund, der zu seinem Wesen wesentlich
gehört, insofern er Dasein ist. Wenn dieser Widerstand gegen den Abgrund
fehlt, gemildert oder abgetragen wird, beginnt laut Heidegger „der faule Aspekt
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eines Menschen, der bloß die Werke des Geistes benutzt“ (Heidegger, 2010,
p. 291) und sie nicht zu gebrauchen weiß.
Cassirer versagt mit seiner optimistischen Antwort in der Wesensbestim-
mung des Menschen. Seine Therapeutik gegen die Angst zielt auf eine Bequem-
lichkeit und die Ausweichbewegung eines metaphysischen Denkens, das an
den Tod und das Nichtsein keinen Gedanken verschwendet. Es erschöpft sich
im Unwesentlichen ohne Angst vor dem Nichts.
2 Die Frage nach dem Nichts ist eine Grundfrage aller Philosophie
Heidegger und Cassirer bleiben unvereinbar, in Davos und generell. Eine Wis-
senschaft, die weder das Wesen noch das Nichts zu denken fähig ist, kommt gar
nicht in die Grundfrage aller Anthropologie hinein. Sie verfehlt ein Charakte-
ristikum der menschlichen Existenz: Was ist der Mensch? Ein Endliches. Und
was ist das Endliche? Etwas, das zu Nichts werden wird, und das Nichts gewe-
sen ist. Um das Wesen des Menschen zu begreifen, muss man auch das Wesen
des Nichts begreifen.
Erst mit dieser Frage nach dem Nichts wird aus einer anthropologischen
Wissenschaft – dem Projekt Cassirers – eine allgemeine Philosophie vom Men-
schen, die eine Grundlage sein kann nicht bloß für Wissenschaft, sondern auch
für alle anderen Arten des Tätigseins und der Verwirklichung des Menschen-
tums in der Welt.
In Wahrheit ist diese Frage nach dem Nichts, die der Provinzfürst aus Mess-
kirch stellte, internationaler und interkultureller als der Symbolismus des welt-
gewandten Großbürgers aus Hamburg. Sie ist eine der Grundfragen der Philo-
sophie selbst – und zwar jeder Philosophie, unabhängig davon, an welchen Ort
oder in welcher Zeit sie betrieben wird. Das Denken selbst fordert hier eine Ent-
scheidung. Sobald die Existenz in Frage steht, sie also bedacht wird und nicht
gedankenlos gelebt wird, stellt sich die Frage: Sein oder Nichtsein? Sie gehört zu
den ursprünglichen Fragen, ohne die man eine Welt als Welt gar nicht denken
kann.
Heidegger erweist sich hier als der Weltphilosoph des zwanzigsten Jahrhun-
derts. Er hat einen unbestrittenen Rang, wo man das Denken von der Politik
noch zu trennen weiß. In Japan etwa genießt er so viel Ehre, Achtung und
Anerkennung wie kaum ein anderer Philosoph Europas. Seine Gesamtausgabe
erscheint bis heute parallel auf Deutsch und auf Japanisch, sodass die Welt
mehr Heidegger auf Japanisch lesen kann als auf Englisch. Die wichtigsten
Köpfe der Kyoto-Schule seiner Zeit – Koichi Tsujimura, Hajime Tanabe und
Keiji Nishitani – suchten den Kontakt zu Heidegger und wurden seine Schü-
ler (vgl. Buchner 1989).
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508 seitz
Diese Anerkennung hat er nicht trotz, sondern gerade wegen seiner streng
eurozentrischen Frage nach dem Nichts in der Philosophie des Abendlandes.
Gerade weil er sich darauf beschränkte, nur die eigene Philosophie in ihrer
Tradition zu durchdenken, weil er ihre Ausweglosigkeiten kannte, sie lehrte
und ihre Probleme von der Sache her in der Tradition und über sie hinausge-
hend zu lösen versuchte, konnte er für die Philosophie außerhalb Europas zu
einem Gesprächspartner werden. Es war nicht ein Lippenbekenntnis für das
Internationale, Komplexe und Weltoffene, was Heidegger für die japanischen
Philosophen bis heute interessant macht, sondern im Gegenteil, seine Boden-
ständigkeit, sein fast schon bornierter Wille, nur die Philosophie seiner eigenen
Kultur auf den Begriff zu bringen.
Die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein führt ihn – von der Sache getrieben – zu
einer der größten Ratlosigkeiten der Philosophie des Abendlandes: zur Frage
nach dem Verhältnis von Sein und Nichtsein. Aus dieser Frage ergibt sich auf
eine natürliche Weise eine thematische Überschneidung zur Philosophie des
Fernen Ostens.
In Asien ist das Nichts nämlich der Grundbegriff der Philosophie schlecht-
hin. Grob gesagt, lehrt der Westen das Sein und der Osten das Nichtsein als
den Ursprung oder das Höchste dieser Welt. Der Westen redet vom Leben,
der Osten vom Tod (Nishida, 1940, p. 9). Es geht beiden Traditionen um eine
Frage nach dem Äußersten: Was ist das Höchste, was das Ursprünglichste die-
ser Welt? Wo liegt der Anfang? Im Sein oder im Nichts?
3 Das Nichts und die Stimmung
Ein Grundproblem in der Erörterung des Nichts ist seine mangelhafte Zugäng-
lichkeit mit den Mitteln des Verstandes. Eine gemeinsame These von Heidegger
und der Kyoto-Schule lautet: Wir erkennen nicht das Nichts; es offenbart sich
uns in einer Stimmung.
Wir befinden uns in der Welt und sind in unserem Dasein immer schon
irgendwie gestimmt. Diese Stimmungen sind nur beiläufig Gefühlslagen, im
Wesentlichen aber ein Modus, in dem wir uns die Welt als Ganzes erschließen
(Heidegger, 1986, p. 187). Entgleitet uns dieses Ganze, bekommen wir Angst.
Diese Angst ist keine Furcht, die einen Gegenstand hat, keine Furcht vor dem
Tod, die von Zeit zu Zeit die Lebenden überfällt, keine Furcht vor dem Absturz,
wenn der Mensch vom Leben Abstand nimmt und ihm entsagt; diese Angst ist
seltsam, unbestimmt und unheimlich.
Unheimlich ist sie, weil die offene Gefahr fehlt. Auch wenn der Tod der
ständige Begleiter ist, eines jeden Daseins, folgt er den Menschen nicht wie
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ein Unhold in schwarzer Kutte, der hinter den Menschen herrennt und seine
frisch geschliffene Sense schwingt. Ein solcher grimmiger Gevatter wäre nicht
unheimlich – er wäre gefährlich. Unheimlich wird es erst, wenn dieser Sensen-
mann nicht zu sehen ist und man weiß, dass er da ist, irgendwo, nur gerade
nicht fassbar. Das Unheimliche entsteht aus der stetigen, nicht aus der plötzli-
chen Gefahr.
Das Unheimliche entsteht aus dem Wesen des Daseins selbst. Wo etwas da
ist, war vorher nichts und wird bald weg sein, weg gewesen sein. Nicht-mehr
und Noch-nicht umgrenzen jedes Dasein als einen Moment des In-der-Welt-
Seins. Jedes In-der-Welt-Sein verweist immer schon auf sein Anderes, auf sein
Aus-der-Welt-fallen. Es fehlt das Bleibende, Verlässliche und Beständige, ohne
das ein Mensch in der Welt nicht völlig heimisch werden kann.
Im Zen-Buddhismus ist es nicht die Angst, sondern der ‚Große Zweifel‘,
der mit dem Nichts in Verbindung steht. Auch dort gibt es keine Ausflüchte,
keine Rettung, kein faules Sich-weg-Stehlen in ewige Ideale oder womöglich
noch in ein ewiges Leben, das die Menschen niemals richtig sterben lässt. Die
Todesmeditationen vergegenwärtigen den Abgrund der Endlichkeit, der Angst
macht und verzweifeln lässt. In der Konzentration auf das Andere des Seins
werden sich die Übenden des Soseins der Welt und des eigenen Selbst (als Nie-
mand) gewahr. Sie sehen ein und nehmen an, wie die Welt weltet, wie sie west
in ihrem Was und ihrem Wie. Am Ende stellt sich eine völlig andere Stimmung
ein – eine Erleichterung, die keine Angst mehr hat, eine Unbefangenheit des
erlösten Subjekts (Hisamatsu, 1975, p. 47).
Angst und Erleichterung schließen sich aus und stehen im Widerstreit. Der
Widerstreit beweist nicht die Unsinnigkeit der Rede von einer Stimmung,
die das Nichts bewirkt, im Gegenteil. In Heideggers Philosophie soll sich ein
Dasein seines Seinkönnens nur bewusst werden und eine Angst davor, dass der
Mensch in seinem Dasein auch ein Nichtiges, ein Niemand, ein bloß dem Man
Verfallendes sein könnte. Heideggers Ziel ist dagegen die Erziehung zur Eigent-
lichkeit. Die Zen-Buddhisten aber wollen Niemand werden und empfehlen den
Weg des Nicht-Selbst (Han, 2002, pp. 62–82). Sie wollen ein trickloser Odysseus
sein, der mit vollem Stolz kein Ich mehr ist. Bei einem solchen Übungsziel kann
das sich offenbarende Nichts nur eine positive Stimmung hervorrufen.
Welches nun richtige Stimmung ist, in die man versetzt wird, wenn sich das
Nichts offenbart, ist eine Frage der Erfahrung. Man muss es versuchen und
kann es nicht aus dem Wesen des Nichts ableiten, ohne dass dieses Wesen
anwesend ist.
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510 seitz
4 Das Nichts als Ort
Die Stimmung ist bloß das Ontische und Faktische, das sich aber in einer
bestimmten Weise einstellen muss aufgrund des Wesens des Daseins. Ein
Dasein bedeutet seinem Wesen nach, verkündet Heidegger in seiner Freibur-
ger Antrittsvorlesung, „Hineingehaltenheit in das Nichts“ (Heidegger, 1976a,
p. 115).
Hineingehalten in das Nichts – ich denke bei diesem Bild sofort an eine
Lampe, die in eine Nacht hereinleuchtet. Das Bild scheint erhellend und evi-
dent zu sein. Doch so verführerisch es ist, so sehr müssen wir versuchen, ihm
nicht zu verfallen, sondern seine Bedeutung streng zu durchdenken. Was heißt
hier Halten? Gibt es jemanden, der hält, einen haltenden Halter? Und wieso
heißt es „hinein“? Wie kann das Dasein irgendwo drin sein, an einem Ort,
womöglich im Nichts? Kann das Nichts ein Ort sein? Wie lässt sich das Orthafte
des Nichts denken? Ist der Ort hier wirklich ein Begriff oder nur eine Metapher?
Der Frage nach der Ortshaftigkeit des Nichts hat sich Heidegger meines
Wissens nie gestellt. Machen wir deswegen einen Umweg über Japan! Nishida
Kitarō entwickelte für seine Theorie des Nichts die so genannte Logik des Ortes
(場所, bashō).
Generell unterscheidet er zwei Arten von Nichts: Das gegensätzliche Nichts
meint ein bestimmtes Nichtsein, ein relatives Nichts. Wenn dieses-da kein Löwe
ist, dann ist da etwas, etwas Bestimmtes, aber dieses-da ist nicht das, als was
es bestimmt wurde. Dieses bestimmte Nichts, das griechische μὴ ὄν (mē on),
kann allerdings nicht die ursprüngliche und wesentliche Form von Nichts sein,
denn dieses Nichtseiende ist schließlich immer noch ein Seiendes und bleibt
ontisch. Das wirklich Andere zum Sein, das ontologische Nichts, nennt Nishida
das absolute Nichts (絶対無, zettai mu) und meint damit ein unbestimmtes und
unbedingtes Jenseits aller Bestimmungen (Nishida, 1999, pp. 81–83).
Aus diesen beiden Arten von Nichts lässt sich bereits das Wesen des Nichts
erahnen: Wenn das Nichts wirkt, bedeutet es ein Sich-Ereignen des Anderen.
Das relative Nichts negiert eine, das absolute Nichts jede Bestimmung. Wo sich
das bestimmte Nichts ereignet, entsteht ein bestimmtes Anderes; wo sich das
absolute Nichts ereignet, entsteht ein Jenseits zu aller Bestimmheit, das Andere
zum Sein.
Wie können diese Nichtse jetzt ein Ort sein, wohinein das Sein gehalten
wird? Ein Ort gehört eigentlich zum Seienden und ist eine der obersten Kate-
gorien. Aristoteles unterschied in seiner Metaphysik zehn γένη τοῦ ὄντος (genē
tou ontos), die zehn Genera des Seienden, die unter dem Namen Kategorien
bekannt sind: das Wesen, das Wieviel, das Wie der Beschaffenheit, das Worauf
der Beziehung, das Wo, das Wann, das Wie der Lage, sowie das Haben, Machen
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und Erleiden. Gattungen des Seienden, und zwar erste und oberste Gattungen,
seien diese zehn Kategorien, weil jede von ihnen nicht auf eine andere zurück-
geführt werden kann, weil also nichts vom Wesen im Ort oder in der Beziehung
vorhanden ist. Was etwas ist, hat nichts mit den Beziehungen zu tun, in die es
eingebettet ist. Das Sein selbst ist nämlich keine Gattung zu den Kategorien
(Heidegger, 2012, pp. 394–400; Heidegger, 1993, § 56.).
Wenn Nishida jetzt aber behauptet, das Nichts sei der Ort, worin sich alles
Seiende befände, so scheint es zunächst, als ob das Nichts dem ποῦ entspre-
chen würde, der Kategorie des Ortes. Der Ort wäre dann die erstrangige aller
Kategorien – und nicht mehr das Wesen wie bei Aristoteles. Der Ort wäre sozu-
sagen die „Substanz“, worin sich alles befände, worauf sich alles zurückführen
ließe und worunter alles subsumiert werden müsste. Am Ort würde sich alles
akzidentiell ereignen. Wenn dieser Ort aber selbst kein Seiendes, sondern ein
Nichts sein soll, wird der Gedanke offensichtlich absurd. Wenn ich frage „Wo
liegt der Löwe?“ und die Antwortet lautet „Dort, im Schatten.“, dann ist doch
dieses Dort ganz und gar ein Seiendes. Wenn nicht, bräuchte ich keine Furcht
zu haben. Das Nichts lässt sich als Ort im Sinn der Kategorien nicht denken.
Tatsächlich meint Nishida auch nicht die aristotelische Kategorie, sondern
eine Art von Über-Raum. Er schreibt:
Allerdings ist das, was eine Beziehung zwischen physikalischen Räumen

zustande kommen lässt [es: also das πρός τι im ποῦ] nicht wieder ein phy-
sikalischer Raum, sondern vielmehr müsste es einen Ort-Worin geben, in
dem sich der physikalische Raum befindet. (Nishida, 1999, p. 73)
Dieser Ort-Worin befindet sich jenseits des physikalischen Raumes, des seien-
den Raumes, und soll sich zum Sein verhalten wie die Gattung zur Art. „So wie
die Species in der Gattung enthalten ist,“ schreibt Nishida, „befindet sich das
Sein im Nichts“ (Nishida, 1999, p. 119).
Den Bereich der einfachen Prädikationen haben wir also bereits verlassen,
wenn wir über dieses Nichts sprechen, worin sich der Ort der Kategorien und
das Sein befinden sollen. Art und Gattung sind nämlich Begriffe der Dialek-
tik – man findet sie nicht in der Kategorienschrift des Aristoteles, sondern in
der Topik. Der Ort, von dem Nishida spricht, ist kein Ort im Sinn der Katego-
rien, sondern ein Ort im Sinn eines Topos der Dialektik; Ort-Logik bedeutet
Topo-Logie. Mit dieser Topologie ist nicht die mathematische Lehre von der
Lage geometrischer Körper gemeint, sondern der Logos über die verschiede-
nen Topoi im Sinn der Dialektik: In welches dialektische Verhältnis, in welchen
τόπος gehören das Sein, das Nichts oder die Qualitäten? Das ist die Frage, die
Nishida in seiner Ortslogik stellt.
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512 seitz
Die topologische Bestimmung nun lautet: Das bestimmte Nichts soll sich
zum bestimmten Sein verhalten wie das Genus zur Art. Damit kommt Nishida
aber in Schwierigkeiten.
Das Privative ist nämlich nicht das Gleiche wie das Allgemeine der Identität.
Das Wesen des bestimmten Nichts besteht in der Absage und Lossage, in der
Privation von einer Bestimmung. Ein bestimmtes Nichts zu sein, heißt etwa:
Dieses da ist nicht ein Löwe. Dieses Nicht-Löwen-Sein ist nicht das Gleiche wie
das Raubkatzen-Sein. Zwar umfasst die Raubkatze, als Einheit gedacht, sowohl
Löwe als auch Nicht-Löwe in sich, doch für sich genommen, scheint die Raub-
katze doch ein Seiendes zu sein und nicht Nichts. Das bestimmte Nichts, der
Nicht-Löwe, befindet sich also in einem Seiendem, das auch das Verschiedene
umfasst, das nur der Gattung nach das Gleiche ist. Und in der Gattung ist das
Andere enthalten als das je bestimmte Nichts, das zu den verschiedenen Arten
führt.
Nun ließe sich einwenden, in der Welt gebe es nur Löwen, Panther und
Tiger, aber keine Raubkatzen. Niemand hat je eine Raubkatze gesehen, nie-
mand könnte diesen Allgemeinbegriff auch nur zeichnen. In Wahrheit hat aber
auch nie jemand einen Löwen gesehen, sondern immer nur diesen Löwen oder
diese Löwin. Die Erkenntnis, dass das Anwesende ein Löwe war, ergreift nur das
jeweilige Dasein in seinem seienden Wesen.
Der allgemeine Begriff bestimmt das Mögliche dieses Wesens gegen das ihm
Unmögliche. Wesen gleicher Gattung haben in gewisser Hinsicht das gleiche
Können und unterscheiden sich darin zu den Wesen anderer Gattung. Löwen
und Pumas können Kühe fressen, Steine nicht. Ergo: Steine und Raubtiere sind
nicht dasselbe – sie gehören einer anderen Seinsart an und sind nicht dieselben
Wesen.
Die Selbigkeit zwischen Art und Gattung lässt sich nicht vergleichen mit
dem Dasein des Anderen im wirksamen Nichtsein. Für Aristoteles wäre eine
solche Meinung ἄτοπος (atopos) – ein Unort. Das A-topische fällt aus der Logik
der Örter heraus und setzt das Andere in eine Gattung, in die es nicht gehört.
Daraus entsteht das Absurde und Nichtige – Steine, die Kühe fressen.
Steine, die Kühe fressen, sind absurd, weil es nichts gibt, dass die Steine als
Wesen mit der Tätigkeit des Essens verbindet. Zwischen anderen Genera des
Seienden gibt es nämlich einfach – Nichts. Und weil es da Nichts gibt, zwi-
schen den Genera des Seienden, entsteht aus diesem Nichts, wenn es empor-
kommt, ein ἄτοπος, ein Unort, ein Nicht-Ort, das Gegenteil zu jeder Ortshaftig-
keit.
Ohne das gleiche Wesen zu sein oder eine Gleichheit der Art oder der Gat-
tung nach aufzuweisen, waltet zwischen den Seienden, die anders sind, das
Nichts in der Welt. Dort gibt sich das Nichts. Wo sich Nichts gibt, herrscht
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gerade die Abwesenheit des Ortes. Das Nichts mit einem Ort zu identifizieren,
scheitert, auch im Sinne eines Topos der Dialektik.
5 Das Nichts als Un-Ort
Das bestimmte Sein befindet sich also nicht in einem Nichts, auch nicht in
einem bestimmten Nichtsein – vielmehr kommt es aus dem Nichts.
Diese Herkunft entstammt nicht einem gemeinsamen Sein, wie es in der
Gattung geschieht. Die Herkunft aus dem Nichts verliert gerade den verbin-
denden Grund eines gemeinsamen Könnens, aus dem sich das jeweils Verschie-
dene entwickelt. Eine Entstehung aus dem Nichts ist nicht vorstellbar; die Idee
einer Entwicklung fehlt. Der Übergang von Nichts zu Sein geschieht in einem
Umschlag, einem Sprung ins Dasein hinein. Woher der Sprung kommt, ist
Nichts, die reine Ortslosigkeit. Was durch den Sprung entsteht, ist ein Absprung
des Entsprungenen, das Seiende. Dieses Seiende ist nicht mehr in seinem
Ursprung, dem es entsprungen ist, im Nichts, sondern im Hier und Jetzt. Ein
solches Dasein hält sich als Entsprungenes aus dem Nichts heraus und zwar
solange, bis es wieder in das Nichts zurückfällt und sich vernichtet. Sprung und
Fall, und dazwischen die Haltung unter Anderem, das ist alles, was es gibt. Das
Nichts ist also nicht der Ort, worin das Dasein ist, sondern der Unort, woraus das
Dasein entsprang.
Das Orthafte des Nichts besteht also gerade in seiner Ortlosigkeit. Das Para-
dox muss bestehen bleiben, wenn sich das Nichts nicht sofort in ein Seiendes
auflösen soll. Der Weg, der zuerst gangbar erschien, hat sich als Irrweg erwie-
sen. Wir brauchen ihn darum aber nicht fallen zu lassen, sondern können ein-
fach genauer nachfragen: Was macht diesen Unort des Nichts aus? Aus was hält
sich das Sein heraus?
Auch hier hilft Nishida Kitarōs Theorie vorerst noch als Irrweg, der auf die
richtige Spur bringt. Er schreibt: Dem Nichts, dem bestimmten Nichts, „geht
wohl überdies ein Unbestimmtes voraus, in dem Sein und Nichts in einer
gegensätzlichen Beziehung stehen“ (Nishida, 1999, p. 119). Wenn also Sein das
Bestimmte meint und Nichts die Negation zu dieser Bestimmtheit, so geht
allem Bestimmen, jeder Affirmation und Negation, ein Zustand voraus, der
noch nicht bestimmt ist. Dieses Unbestimmte soll laut Nishida das wahre und
absolute Nichts sein. Es übersteigt das bestimmte Sein und das bestimmte
Nichts gleichermaßen. Es sei ein „Akt des Aktes, in dem sich sowohl Sein als
auch Nichts befinden“ (Nishida, 1999, p. 119).
Was dieser Akt des Aktes genau sein soll, bleibt dunkel und unklar. Jeden-
falls meint er den Akt einer Setzung, den Umschlag von Unbestimmtheit in
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Bestimmtheit. Man würde ihn außerdem als die Setzung einer Einheit von
Sein und Nichts beschreiben – doch das ist ungereimt. Positive und negative
Bestimmtheit haben nichts Unbestimmtes miteinander gemeinsam. Umge-
kehrt wird es wahr: Beide, das bestimmte Sein und das bestimmte Nichtsein
enthalten sich gleichermaßen der Unbestimmtheit. Das Unbestimmte ist ein
Chaos; Sein und Nichtsein sind dagegen Teile einer Ordnung.1 Der Unort des
absoluten Nichts meint ein Jenseits der Ordnung.
Analog zur ontologischen Differenz ergibt sich eine me-ontologische Diffe-
renz. Die ontologische Differenz meint den Unterschied zwischen Sein und Sei-
endem. Was damit gemeint ist, lässt sich am besten mit einem Befehl beschrei-
ben: Abstrahiere so lange von allen Bestimmungen des Seienden, bis nur noch
das reine Sein übrig bleibt, ein Sein ohne Inhalt, die nackte Form! Diese nackte
Form ist eine nicht mehr bestimmte Bestimmtheit. Das bloße Sein ist sei-
nem Was beraubt und verharrt im Dass-es-ist. Dieses Ereignis ist durch Nichts
bewirkt und dem Nichts entsprungen.
Me-ontologisch geschieht das Gleiche: Abstrahiere so lange von allen Be-
stimmungen, die etwas nicht ist, von jedem konkreten Nichtseienden und
jedem Anderen, bis nur noch eine formlose Masse zurückbleibt, die reine
Unbestimmtheit. Das absolute Nichts muss unbestimmbar bleiben, sonst wäre
es kein reines Nichtsein. Von jedem Was-es-anderes-ist befreit, bleibt nur noch
übrig, dass es Anderes überhaupt gibt. Dieses Dass des Anderen ist die Mög-
lichkeit zur Differenz, das ungeordnete, zu ordnende Chaos.
6 Nichts und Ereignis: Das Unmögliche
Mit dieser Unterscheidung und Analogie können wir uns dem Wesen des nicht-
orthaften Nichts zuwenden und seinem Zusammenhang zum Sein. Das Wesen
des Seins bedeutet ein Ereignis in der Welt, als ein Etwas, das unterschieden
ist zu anderem. Das Wesen von Sein, das Heidegger mit Ypsilon schreibt, hat
also zwei Merkmale: das Ereignis und den Unterschied. Im Ereignis liegt die
Existenz, im Unterschied das Was des jeweils Seienden verborgen (Heidegger,
1976b, p. 306).
Woher kommt jetzt dieser Unterschied? Auch er kommt aus dem Nichts. Er
entspringt nicht dem Nichts und enthält sich nicht dem Nichts, stattdessen ist
das Nichts anwesend im Unterschied. Wenn das Nichts nichtet, entsteht ein
1 Undeutlich kommt das Chaos auch bei Nishida vor (Nishida, 1999, p. 125).
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Ausweis dessen, was etwas nicht ist. Mit diesem Ausweis von etwas wird das
jeweils Seiende von etwas Anderem unterschieden.
Ein Unterschied kann nur dort existieren, wo es das Andere gibt, das unmög-
lich das Unterschiedene sein kann. Gäbe es dieses Andere nicht, gäbe es kein
Sein. Ohne den Abgrund des Seins im Anderen gäbe es nur eine undifferen-
zierte Allheit, die sich in nichts vom Nichts unterscheiden würde. Damit etwas
sein kann, damit Sein überhaupt möglich ist, muss es das Unmögliche geben,
von dem das Sein in seinem Sein begrenzt ist. Im Unmöglichen ereignet sich
das Andere zum Sein, das Nichts beim Nichten.
Das Unmögliche und Unbestimmbare umgibt jedes Sein und gewährt ihm
die Möglichkeit, ein Bestimmtes zu sein und nicht etwas anderes. Es ist kein
Ort, aber die Bedingung für jede Verortung, das Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein.
Das absolute Nichts ist ein Drittes, das sich Sein und Nichtsein entgegensetzt.
Dieses Entgegengesetzte bedeutet nun aber nicht eine Einheit von Sein und
Nichtsein, sondern die Bedingung für deren Unterschiedenheit. Das bestimmte
Sein und das bestimmte Nichtsein haben keinen Anteil an der Unbestimmtheit
und an der Unmöglichkeit. Die Behauptung einer μέθεξις (methexis) wäre völlig
ungereimt. Das absolute Nichts – als präsenter Unort – verhindert gerade, dass
sich Sein und Nichtsein vereinen lassen. Es erhält das Zwischen und schafft die
Möglichkeit zu einer freien Beziehung.
Die Philosophie des Westens hat ein solches Drittes eher im Sinn einer über-
geordneten Einheit verstanden. Nishida Kitarō vergleicht seinen Begriff des
absoluten Nichts dagegen mit der χώρα (chōra) in Platons Timaios 49a und
verweist damit auf die Zeitlichkeit (Nishida, 1999, p. 73). Bei Platon suchen
die Gesprächsteilnehmer nach einer ὑποδοχή (hypodochē) des Werdens, nach
einem Aufnehmenden, worin der Wechsel von Sein und Nichtsein stattfin-
den kann, wohinein das Dasein springt und gehalten wird. Das Aufnehmende
kann Ziel oder Anfang sein, von woher oder wohin sich das Werden entwickelt.
Wo sich etwas aus etwas heraushält oder hineinhält, muss es auch ein solches
Aufnehmendes geben, wo heraus sich das Gehaltene hält, um wieder dorthin
zurückzukehren. Der Unort des absoluten Nichts soll derart das Aufnehmende
der Rückkunft des Entsprungenen sein.
Dieses Aufnehmende bestimmt Platon als die Amme (τιθήνη, tithēnē) oder
die Mutter des Werdens.2 Eine Mutter ist das Zeugende, eine Amme das Pfle-
gende und Nährende des Kindes. Wenn wir nun der Gleichsetzung Nishidas
folgen und das Nichts als jenen Unort betrachten, der das Sein aufnimmt, so
2 πάσης εἶναι γενέσεως ὑποδοχὴν αὐτὴν οἷον τιθήνην, (Platon, Timaios, 1991, p. 49a). Als Ausgabe
verwende ich: Platon (1991). Die platonische χώρα entspricht bei Heidegger dem Begriff der
Gegend (Heidegger, 2012, pp. 156–157).
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müssen wir diesen Hinweis dergestalt verstehen, dass sich dieses aufnehmende
Nichts auch wie eine Mutter oder Amme verhält – nicht zum Sein, aber zum
Werden.
Das Nichts ist das Zeugende und Säugende des Werdens. Denn das Ergebnis
einer Nichtung ist entweder die Aufhebung des Seins in Nichts, wenn die Nich-
tung dem Sein entspringt, oder eine Aufhebung des Nichts in Dasein, wenn die
Nichtung dem Nichts entspringt. Nicht das Sein des Seins, sondern das Nichten
des Nichts sorgt erst für eine Bewegung, für einen Wechsel zwischen Sein und
Nichtsein, für das Werden in der Welt. Ohne das Nichts gäbe es kein Ereignis.
7 Das Nichts und die Überwindung der Ontotheologie
Das In-der-Welt-Sein eines Unortes, des Unbestimmten, Unbestimmbaren und

Unmöglichen, ist also die Voraussetzung und das Vorgängige zum Sein selbst.
In diesem Sinn meldet das absolute Nichts einen Anspruch auf einen Vorrang
vor dem absoluten Sein an.
Dieser Anspruch steckt in Heideggers Formulierung, „Dasein heißt: Hinein-
gehaltenheit in das Nichts.“ Sie bedeutet nichts weniger als einen Wink zu
einer von Heidegger selbst nur unvollkommen ausgeführten Überwindung der
abendländischen Metaphysik in ihrer ontotheologischen Grundstruktur (Hei-
degger, 2006, pp. 51–81). Alle Entwürfe dieser alten Metaphysik des Westens
waren Versuche, die Welt als ein einheitliches Ganzes zu denken. Für Aristote-
les war diese Einheit sogar die Bedingung zur Möglichkeit seiner ersten Philo-
sophie: εἰ ὡς ὅλον τι τὸ πᾶν, ἡ οὐσία πρῶτον μέρος – „wenn die Welt ein Ganzes ist,
dann ist das Seiende, das Wesen, der erste und ursprünglichste Teil“ (Aristote-
les, 1933; 2003, p. 1069a 19).3 Das Gesamte (τὸ πᾶν, to pan) aller verschiedenen
Kräfte und Wirkungen, aller Ideen und Gedanken, aller vorhandenen und nicht
mehr vorhandenen Wesen muss auf eine bestimmte Art Eines sein und sich zu
einem Ganzen im Werden fügen, sonst ist das Sein nicht der erste Teil der Phi-
losophie.
Diese Bedingung durchherrscht die gesamte Metaphysik des Abendlandes
in ihren vielfältigen und vielgestaltigen Versuchen, „die Welt als Welt zu den-
ken“ (Gabriel, 2006, p. 7). Das Seiende ist, wenn die Welt ein Ganzes und Eines
ist, das Allgemeinste und Erste (κοινότατον, koinotaton), aber auch das Höchste
und Letzte dieser Welt (τιμιώτατον, timiōtaton). Die Allgemeinheit des Seins
3 Altgriechisch gebe ich immer in eigener Übersetzung wieder. Als Ausgabe verwende Aris-
toteles (1933). Als deutsche Übersetzung verweise ich auf Aristoteles (2003).
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heißt: das Sein kommt allem zu, auch dem Nichtseienden. Das Nichts (μὴ ὄν,
mē on) ist unter dieser Voraussetzung selbst ein Seiendes, auf dreifache Weise
(Aristoteles, 1933; 2003, pp. 1089a 27–32):
1. Das Nichts zu allen Kategorien erweist sich als ein Anders-Sein, entweder
im Hinblick auf dasjenige, wer oder was etwas ist, oder im Hinblick auf
das Wie seiner Beschaffenheit. Nicht-Sokrates ist nicht Nichts, sondern
jemand anderes als Sokrates. Nicht-blau ist andersfarbig oder farblos.
2. Das Nichts des Unwahren (ὡς ψεῦδος, hōs pseudos) meint die Anwesen-
heit eines Uneigentlichen: ein Uneigentlich- und Unwesentlich-Sein, eine
Verstellung.
3. Das Nichts des Unverwirklichten und Untätigen meint in Wahrheit ein In-
Möglichkeit-Sein, ein Können oder Noch-Nicht-Sein (δυνάμει ὄν, dynamei
on), das nicht Nichts ist.
Durch die Bestimmung der Möglichkeit als Sein (und nicht als Nicht-Sein)
braucht Aristoteles kein Nichts mehr, um den Begriff des Werdens zu bestim-
men. Was auch immer entsteht oder vergeht, verwirklicht nur eine innere Mög-
lichkeit dessen, woraus es geworden ist. Ich will hier die Möglichkeit als Begriff
gar nicht weiter zum Problem machen, entscheidend ist nur die Wirkung die-
ser Setzung auf das Denken von Bewegung, Tätigkeit, Entstehen und Vergehen:
Ein Etwas kann sich streng genommen nie völlig annihilieren. Ein jedes Sein
geht im Werden nur in ein anderes Sein über, das in seiner Möglichkeit lag.
Alles, was entsteht, hat durch das In-Möglichkeit-Sein des Vorangegangenen
einen Grund in der Vergangenheit. Nichts ist ohne Grund und alles hat einen
Grund im Sein des Gewesenen. Der Satz von Grund gehört unabdingbar in die
ontotheologische Struktur der westlichen Metaphysik.
Die Welt gibt sich allerdings nicht als ein Sein, sondern als eine Bewegung.
Ontotheologisch wird daraus ein Sein in Bewegung. Eine ontotheologische
Metaphysik vermeidet, die Bewegung als das Einzige in dieser Welt zu den-
ken, das ewig und beständig ist, denn eine Bewegtheit ad infinitum wäre in
sich grundlos und widerspräche dem Satz vom Grund. Aristoteles schreibt:
οὐδὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔτυχε κινεῖται, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τι ἀεὶ ὑπάρχειν, ὥσπερ νῦν φύσει μὲν ὡδί,
βίᾳ δὲ ἢ ὑπὸ νοῦ ἢ ἄλλου ὡδί (Aristoteles, 1933, pp. 1071b 34–37). Übersetzt:
„Nichts bewegt sich nämlich einfach zufällig, sondern es muss immer ein Etwas
zugrunde liegen, wie etwa: aufgrund des Selbstseins (φύσει) jetzt so, aufgrund
von Gewalt oder Denken oder anderem jetzt anders.“ Das Grundlose ist ausge-
schlossen.
Eine ontotheologische Metaphysik bedeutet den Verlust des grundlosen
Zufalls. Für alles gibt es innere Gründe und Entwicklungen, die von selbst
geschehen und nur dadurch zu erklären sind, dass ein Wesen sich so entwickelt,
wie es ihm zukommt, weil es ist, was es ist – daneben gibt es äußere Gründe wie
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etwa den Zwang oder jene Irrtümer, die durch die Freiheit des Geistes (ὑπὸ νοῦ,
hypo nou) entstehen; aber es gibt keine wirkliche Grundlosigkeit, keinen ech-
ten Zufall.
Den Ausschluss des Zufalls hat Aristoteles bereits in seiner Physik (Buch ii,
Kap. 5) geleistet und greift in seiner Metaphysik nur noch darauf zurück. Dort
heißt es: Δῆλον ἄρα, ὅτι ἡ τύχη αἰτία κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς, ἐν τοῖς κατὰ προαίρεσιν
τῶν ἕνεκά του. Διὸ περὶ τὸ αὐτὸ διάνοια καὶ τύχη. ἡ γὰρ προαίρεσις οὐκ ἄνευ δια-
νοίας (Aristoteles, 1987, pp. 197a 5–8).4 „Klar ist also, dass der Zufall ein Neben-
grund ist, für das, was aus dem Entschiedensein auf ein bestimmtes Ende hin
erfolgt. Denn Überlegung und Zufall beziehen sich auf das Gleiche. Ohne Über-
legung gibt es keinen Entscheidung.“ Sowohl der Zufall als auch die Überlegung
beziehen sich auf eine Erwartung, auf einen Zweck oder ein Worumwillen, das
am Ende der Handlung stehen sollen. Der Zufall verstößt gegen diese Erwar-
tung, die im Vorhinein angedacht war. Gründe der Akzidenz entstehen aus den
Begleitumständen, die immer wieder andere sind, am jeweiligen Dasein hän-
gen und notwendigerweise sich dem einheitlichen Begriff entziehen. Sie sind
ein Nichts als Grund, vielfältig und unbestimmbar (ἀόριστα, aorista). Aristote-
les folgert: Ἔστιν μὲν γὰρ ὡς γίγνεται ἀπὸ τύχης. κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς γὰρ γίγνεται, καὶ
ἔστιν αἴτιον ὡς συμβεβηκὸς ἡ τύχη. ὡς δ' ἁπλῶς οὐδενός (Aristoteles, 1987, pp. 197a
12–14). „Dass etwas aus Zufall geschieht, gibt es schon. Was nämlich beiläufig
geschieht, ist der Zufall als ein uneigentlicher Grund. An sich (ἁπλῶς, haplōs)
ist er aber für nichts ein Grund.“ Für nichts, das meint: er ist kein Grund für
Eines.
Der Zufall ist für eine ontotheologische Metaphysik kein selbstständiger
Grund – das ist das Entscheidende. Er kann nicht alleine stehen und definiert
sich immer im Hinblick auf ein Wesen, das aufgrund seines Seins Erwartun-
gen zulässt und auf ein Erwartbares hinstrebt. Der Zufall ist dann nichts weiter
als eine durchkreuzte Erwartung, eine äußerliche Nebenwirkung, eine Enttäu-
schung, die aber immer im Bereich des Möglichen lag. Zufall ohne Erwartung
des von sich aus Möglichen ist widersinnig.
Dieses Unerwartbare und Unbestimmbare des Zufalls, diese Form des
Nichts, bleibt aus einer ontotheologisch verfassten Metaphysik ausgeschlos-
sen. Wenn die Welt ein Ganzes ist, lassen sich alle Bewegungen in der Welt
bestimmen und begründen, der Möglichkeit nach, und keine Bewegung ist
grundlos, zufällig und damit eigentlich Nichts. Eine solche Verfassung des Den-
kens über die Welt als Welt erfordert zwingend einen ersten und letzten Grund.
Er bewahrt die Welt vor einer Endlosigkeit, die in Nichts mündet.
4 Als Ausgabe verwende ich Aristoteles (1987).
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8 Das Nichts, Gott und die Einheit der Welt
Das Nichts hat zwei weitere Bedeutungen, die im Altgriechischen mit zwei
Wörtern bezeichnet werden: das bestimmte Nicht-Seiende (μὴ ὄν, mē on) und
das Nicht-Eine (οὐδ-ἕν, oud‘hen). Ohne das Eine als letzten bestimmenden
Grund zerfiele die Welt in Vieles und wäre unganz und unfertig. Ohne das
Eine käme die Welt aus Nacht und Chaos, aus Unordnung und Unbestimmt-
heit (χάος ἢ νύξ, chaos ē nyx; Aristoteles, 1933, pp. 1072a 8). Da aber eine Ordnung
vorhanden ist, zumindest eine periodische Wiederkehr, kann eine solche Erklä-
rung nicht hinreichend sein. Es braucht einen letzten bestimmenden Grund,
einen Grund der Gründe in einer bestimmbaren und begründbaren Welt, einen
„Anfang, dessen Wesen Tätigkeit ist“, wie Aristoteles sagt (Aristoteles, 1933,
p. 1070b 20). Der Name für dieses Wesen, das reine Tätigkeit, Leben und Den-
ken ist, lautet: Gott. Der Gott der Metaphysik ist natürlich kein Gott, an dem
man glauben kann, kein Gott der Kirche.
Eine Onto-Theologie gründet keine Religion, sondern ist eine bestimmte
Art und Weise, die Welt als Welt zu denken. Onto-logisch ist sie, weil sie das
Nichts aus der Welt schafft und die Gesamtheit – τὸ πᾶν (to pan) – als Seiendes,
Eines und Ganzes denkt. Theologisch ist sie, weil der Ausschluss des Chaos,
des Zufalls und des Unbestimmten zu einem Weltbild führt, das einen letzten
Grund benötigt.
Beiläufig gesagt: Auch die Mystik und die negative Theologie des Mittelalters
haben in ihrer Art, die Welt als Welt zu denken, die ontotheologische Verfas-
sung der abendländischen Metaphysik nicht entscheidend verändert. Sie sagen
zwar: „Gott ist Nichts“ und führen das Nichts als letzten Grund an, aber die Welt
wird trotzdem weiterhin als Eines und Ganzes und von einem (Über-)Wesen
her gedacht (Ueda, 1990, pp. 486–487). Die christliche Metaphysik behandelt
die Welt als eine Schöpfung, die aus dem Nichts kommt. Eine jede Schöpfung ist
ein Werk, das einen Schöpfer hat, und dieser Schöpfer ist wiederum der letzte
Grund für die Welt als Welt. Erst wenn dieser letzte Grund fehlt oder unplausi-
bel wird, stirbt Gott als Gedanke aus.
Mit unserem Rückgriff auf Aristoteles lassen sich die Bedeutungen des
Nichts vollständiger umreißen. Es meint:
1) das Unganze, das Chaos;
2) den Ungrund, das heißt den Zufall;
3) das Unbestimmte und Unbestimmbare;
4) das Nicht-Eine, die Vielheit und Vielfalt; zudem meint das Nichts als ein
bestimmtes Nicht-Sein:
5) das Unwahre;
6) das unverwirklicht Mögliche;
7) das Andere und Verschiedene, den Unterschied.
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All diese sieben Nichtse hat die alteuropäische Metaphysik in Seiendes trans-
formiert, damit ihre Art, die Welt als Welt zu denken, gelingen kann.
9 Das Nichts und der Satz vom Widerspruch
Der eigentliche Ursprung des ontotheologischen Versuches, die Welt als Gan-
zes zu denken, liegt im Satz vom Widerspruch. Aristoteles spricht sogar vom
sichersten aller möglichen Anfänge des Denkens, vom strengsten aller Prin-
zipien. Der Satz vom Widerspruch lautet: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ ἅμα ὑπάρχειν τε καὶ μὴ
ὑπάρχειν ἀδύνατον τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ κατὰ τὸ αὐτό (Aristoteles, 1933, pp. 1005b 24–25).
„Dass dasselbe am selben in Hinsicht auf dasselbe zugleich vorliegt und nicht
vorliegt, ist unmöglich am selben in Hinsicht auf dasselbe.“ In Hinsicht auf ein
wesentlich Seiendes kann, insofern es wesentlich seiend ist, nichts Kontradik-
torisches ausgesagt werden. Der Löwe kann nicht zugleich Nicht-Löwe sein. Bei
den Akzidenzien ist Kontradiktorisches hingegen möglich.
Der Satz vom Widerspruch kann auch positiv gewendet werden, um das
Unmögliche und Paradoxe zu bestimmen (Priest, 2006, pp. 7–43). Das Unmög-
liche liegt vor, wenn dasselbe am selben in Hinsicht auf dasselbe ist und nicht
ist. Was wäre schon etwas, das zugleich Löwe und Nicht-Löwe ist? Nichts, weder
das eine noch das andere? Oder doch irgendwie beides? Ein Mischwesen? Eine
Sphinx? Wirrwarr, Durcheinander und chaotische Zustände sind eben keine
Wesen. Wenn man sie als Eines anspricht, meint man eigentlich ein Konglome-
rat aus verschiedenen Wesen, eine Gesamtheit, die sich nicht zu einem Ganzen
vereinen lässt. Ein Konglomerat aus verschiedenen wirkenden Seinsarten ver-
weigert sich einer einheitlichen Erwartung.
Hier ist der Kerngedanke eines ontotheologischen Versuches, die Welt als
Welt zu denken: Die Welt ist keine Gesamtheit, kein Mischwesen, sondern eins
und ganz, und damit seiend. Kontradiktorisches darf nicht selbstständig sein,
sonst fehlt die höhere Einheit und der Satz vom Widerspruch gerät in Bedräng-
nis, weil man ein Drittes neben Sein und Nichtsein zulassen müsste.
Es gibt eigentlich nur zwei relevante Denker, die versucht haben, diese onto-
theologische Struktur der Metaphysik des Westens über ein anderes Verständ-
nis des Satzes vom Widerspruch aufzubrechen: Nietzsche und Heidegger (Hei-
degger, 1966, pp. 532–555; Heidegger, 2012, pp. 394–395). Bei beiden entsteht
eine Zwiefalt: Bei Nietzsche der Wille zur Macht im Widerstreit des Willens
zum Nichts, bei Heidegger lautet der Grundsatz: „Dasein heißt: Hineingehal-
tenheit in das Nichts.“ Die Metaphysik des Ostens und die buddhistische Logik
beruhten dagegen nie auf dem Satz vom Widerspruch. Das Nirvana oder das
Nichts des Zen bedeutet gerade jenes Nichts, das weder ist noch nicht ist. Der
mittlere Weg hält sich in der Mitte der Unmöglichkeit auf.
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Nagarjuna hat für die östliche Tradition der Metaphysik einen ähnlichen
Rang als Gründer wie Aristoteles im Westen. Auch er versucht, die Welt als Welt
zu denken, jedoch gerade nicht als Ganzes, sondern als eine Gesamtheit, die
sich einer letzten Einheit entzieht. Die Welt ist im Letzten Nichts.
Lutz Geldsetzer (2010)5 hat die These vertreten, Nagarjuna müsse die Lehre
des Aristoteles direkt gekannt haben. Ob das historisch haltbar ist, tut hier
nichts zur Sache; entscheidend ist nur, dass mit dieser These ein Vergleich
dieser beiden Lehren ein ganz anderes Gewicht bekommt. Er ist nicht bloß his-
torisch, ethnologisch oder kulturwissenschaftlich interessant, sondern in der
Sache selbst, für die Aufgabe, die Welt als Welt zu denken. Nagarjuna ist in sei-
ner Struktur nicht theologisch. Er ist Ontologie ohne Theologie.
Sein mittlerer Weg kennt ein Höchstes und Letztes, den Buddha. Doch was
ist Buddha? Kein Gott, kein seiendes Wesen, sondern die Beschaffenheit eines
Wesens, das erwacht und einsichtig geworden ist. Ein erwachter Mensch hat
Einsicht in das Wesen der Welt, in die Welt als Welt, und erlöst sich von dem
Leiden, den Zwang in der Welt als eine Nötigung zu empfinden. Eine solche
Freiheit erlangt ein Erwachter durch eine lange Übung der Verneinung. Bud-
dha ist eine Meisterschaft in einem Tun, dem Nichts-Tun und dem spontanen
Von-selbst-Tun – und gerade kein letztes seiendes Wesen, das die Welt als letz-
ter Grund in Bewegung hält. Im Osten fehlt sichtbar der eine Gott im Werden
der Welt.
Das sogenannte Urteilsvierkant (चतु�कोिट catuṣkoṭi) des Nagarjuna ist ein
Tetralemma aus vier möglichen Arten, etwas von etwas auszusagen. Neben den
bekannten Arten von Sein und Nichtsein lässt Nagarjuna auch die paralogi-
schen Werte ‚sowohl-als auch‘ und ‚weder-noch‘ zu (zur Geschichte vgl. Priest,
2018, pp. 3–44). Solche Widersprüche sind ein Mittel auf dem Weg zur Wahr-
heit. Der Weg des Zen bewegt sich zum Unmöglichen hin, zum Unbestimmten
und Unbestimmbaren, zum Nichts. Die Rätsel der Koans stellen absurde Fra-
gen und Aufgaben: Wie klingt das Klatschen mit einer Hand (Reps, 1979, no. 21)?
Es ist gerade der Selbstwiderspruch, das Kontradiktorische und das Unverein-
bare mit der Definition des Wesens, das auf dem Weg zur Erleuchtung helfen
soll. Auf die Frage „Was ist …?“ reagiert ein Zen-Meister mit Stockschlägen
(Han, 2002, p. 7).
Für weniger erleuchtete Menschen oder solche, die Wissenschaft betrei-
ben möchten, sind diese dialektischen und verunklärenden Manöver des Zen-
Buddhismus immer wieder ein Ärgernis. Wo immer es geht, wird das Verlangen
5 Geldsetzer druckt nur die chinesische Version ab. Der Sanskrit-Text ist online verfügbar:
http://www.nyx.net/~dbachman/sanskrit/mula.pdf.
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522 seitz
nach einem einheitlichen Begriff vernichtet und negiert. Für das Nichts des Zen
gilt: „entscheidend ist sein Charakter der völligen Unbestimmbarkeit“ (Hisa-
matsu, 1975, p. 25). Eine solche Verweigerung hat in der östlichen Metaphysik
nichts Trotziges, sondern ist ein folgerichtiges Verhalten aufgrund ihrer Art, die
Welt als Welt zu denken. Nur der Unbegriff des Weder-Noch hat die Macht, alle
Versuche einer Ontotheologie außer Kraft zu setzen.
10 Das Nichts und der Anfang der Welt
Die östliche Metaphysik ist sehr präzise in ihrer Wahl eines anderen Anfangs
und letzten Grundes der Welt: Nichts ist der Anfang. Das kann sowohl bedeu-
ten, dass es keinen Anfang gibt, als auch, dass das Nichts der Anfang ist. Alles
in der Welt (τὸ πᾶν, to pan) ist also kein Ganzes und nicht Eines. Und weil die
Welt kein Ganzes ist, kann auch nicht ein Wesen ihr erster Teil sein. Natürlich
drängt sich dann die Frage auf: Als was gibt sich die Welt denn dann, wenn sie
nicht Eines und nicht ein Ganzes ist? Klar und deutlich gesagt: Das Nicht-Eine
ist nicht Null, das Nicht-Eine ist mindestens Zwei.
Es wäre philosophischer Leichtsinn zu glauben, die Nichtigkeit des Nichts
könne nicht alles aufheben und alles, ohne Ausnahme, für eine Nullität erklä-
ren. Auch die radikalste Skepsis und der vollendete Nihilismus kommen am
Postulat einer Wahrheit nicht vorbei, selbst wenn diese Wahrheit nie erkannt
werden kann. Die Behauptung, alles sei fiktiv und nichts wirklich, ist gleich-
wertig zu der Behauptung, nichts sei fiktiv und alles wirklich. Als Allaussage
machen beide Grundsätze überhaupt keinen Unterschied und sind wertloses,
leeres Gerede. Erst wenn das Nichtseiende und Scheinbare auf sein Gegenteil
bezogen wird, auf ein Seiendes und Wahres, wird aus einem besserwisseri-
schen Gerede ein philosophischer Grundsatz und eine belastbare Stellung, wie
man die Welt als Welt denkt. Im Übrigen leugnet auch die Skepsis nicht die
Wahrheit, ihr fehlt nur ein Kriterium für die Wahrheit oder der allgemein ver-
bindliche Zugriff auf dieses Kriterium (Sextus Empiricus, 1968, pp. 156–158).6
Der Verlust der Einheit und Ganzheit bedeutet also nicht den Verlust von
allem, vielmehr gewinnt die östliche Metaphysik eine Gesamtheit, die nicht
eines ist. Die Welt besteht dann aus etwas und etwas anderem, aus einem Selbst
und einem Nicht-Selbst – und jeder Versuch, dieses Nicht-Vereinbare zu verei-
nen, endet in Nichts. Die Welt, so wie sie erscheint, ist eine Zweifalt und Vielfalt
– mit Nichts dahinter, keinem Gott und keinem ersten Beweger. Grund aller
6 Für den Originaltext: Sextus Empiricus, 1997.
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Gründe, wenn die Welt kein Ganzes ist, und keine Einheit, ist kein Wesen, ist
Nichts. Genauer gesagt: Es ist unmöglich, einen solchen letzten Grund zu den-
ken, wenn sich die Welt als eine unvereinbare Vielfalt gibt. Das Nichts ist ihr
erster und ursprünglichster Teil, der Anfang von allem, in Gestalt des absolu-
ten Nichts.
11 Das Nichts und die Weisheit
Metaphysik, welcher Art auch immer, führt zu Weisheit. Die Kenntnis der
Gründe und Anfänge der Welt unter der Voraussetzung, dass sie Eines ist, und
die Einsicht, wie alles Seiende auf Eines hin ausgesagt wird, verleihen dem
Metaphysiker eine Überlegenheit zu jedem Wissenschaftler, der sich nur auf
die Grundsätze seines eigenen Gebietes berufen kann, wenn er eine Erkennt-
nis hat. Es mag sogar sein, dass ein Wissenschaftler nicht recht weiß, warum
die Sache so funktioniert, wie sie funktioniert, aber die Kenntnis der Methode
verschafft ihm eine Gewissheit in der Praxis. Die Weisheit einer westlichen
Metaphysik muss in solchen Fällen besser begründen und auf Eines hinführen
und zusammenfassen können, als es je ein enzyklopädisches oder funktionales
Wissen erreichen könnte.
Eine Kenntnis der Ungründe und des fehlenden Anfangs, ein Wissen um die
Unmöglichkeiten und Kategoriensprünge, ein behänder Umgang mit Gesamt-
heiten, die Eines scheinen, ohne Eins zu sein, die Fähigkeit, Zwecke und jede
Teleologie ins Absurde zu treiben – all das macht die Weisheit der Osten aus.
Ihrer Weisheit letzter Schluss lautet: Die Welt kommt aus dem Nichts und ist
für Nichts da.
Beide Arten, die Welt als Welt zu denken, überwinden die Beschränktheit
des Fachmännischen, das in den Unterschieden des eigenen Bezirkes stecken
bleibt. Die Metaphysik, als erste Philosophie, beginnt mit den philosophischs-
ten aller Fragen: Gibt es eher Sein oder Nichts? Was ist der wahrscheinlichste
Anfang von allem?
Selbst die Skepsis muss sich hier entscheiden. Die bloße Unentschiedenheit,
die sich dem Urteil enthält, operiert faktisch mit einem Vorrang des Nichts und
kommt in schwierige Lagen, wenn das Leben von ihnen eine Entscheidung ein-
fordert. Dann muss auch sie sich für einen Anfang entscheiden und sich in der
Frage nach dem Vorrang von Sein oder Nichtsein in eine Stellung bringen.
Die Ontotheologie hebt diese Unentschiedenheit auf, indem sie ein tran-
szendentes Wesen als letzten aller Gründe postuliert. Dieses letzte und erste
aller Wesen kann mit dem Leben, dem Denken oder sogar mit dem Nichts
gleichgesetzt werden, das ist strukturell belanglos. Bei all diesen Gleichsetzun-
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524 seitz
gen bleiben das Sein vorrangig und die Substanz der leitende Gedanke. Das
Letzte und Höchste soll ein Überseiendes sein, unabhängig davon, ob dieses
Über erkannt werden kann oder nicht.
Die meontologische und atheistische Aufhebung des Zen-Buddhismus for-
dert den Vorrang des absoluten Nichts und vertreibt mit diesem Nichts jede
Skepsis, die im Zweifel stecken bleibt. Ein entschiedenes Nein ist im Leben der
unentschiedenen Enthaltung entschieden überlegen. Wenn es keine Substan-
zen, kein verborgenes eigentliches Sein hinter all den Erscheinungen geben
soll, kein Wesen, das stabil und beständig sich aller Veränderung widersetzt,
wenn in der Welt alles nur Erscheinung und nichts Sein sein soll, schlägt
die vermeintliche absolute Nichtigkeit von Allem um in eine absolute Imma-
nenz (Han, 2002, pp. 18–20). Wenn jede Erscheinung kein Wesen hat, sind alle
Erscheinungen bloß Ereignisse ohne zureichenden Grund und alles ist genauso
akzidentiell wie jedes andere Ereignis. Wenn diese Nichtigkeit nun entschie-
denermaßen die eigentliche Wahrheit der Welt als Welt ist – und nicht nur
ein Erkenntnisproblem – dann verwandelt sich das Nichts ist eine freundliche
Leere, die alle Erscheinungen in sich aufnimmt.
Die beiden Arten, die Welt als Welt zu denken, gehen existenziell auf Ganze
der eigenen Existenz: Gibt es einen Grund aller Gründe – oder ist dieser Grund
eigentlich ein Ungrund, eine Leere, ein Nichts? Ist dieses Erste und Letzte ein
Ort, worin sich Wesen aufhalten – oder fehlt im Absoluten der Ort und es gibt
nur ein in sich widersprüchliches tertium? Die Überwindung des klassischen
metaphysischen Denkens bei Heidegger und die zen-buddhistische Annähe-
rung Nishidas an dieses Denken, vor allem in Auseinandersetzung mit den
Neukantianern, begreifen den Grund und den Anfang der Welt letztlich in
einer sehr ähnlichen Weise: Das Sein wird nicht mehr in analoger oder univo-
ker Weise auf Eines hin ausgesagt, wie es bei den Nachfolgern des Aristoteles
geschah, sondern auf Nichts hin. Das πρὸς ἕν (pros hen) verwandelt sich in ein
πρὸς οὐδένα (pros oudena).7 Das Jenseits löst sich auf.
12 Das Nichts in der Praxis
Der Unterschied dieser beiden Arten von Weisheit zeigt sich vor allem im Prak-
tischen. Die buddhistische Weisheit schaltet nach der Erkenntnis des Nichts
noch zwei weitere Erkenntnisstufen bis zur Erleuchtung ein. In der Zen-Ge-
7 Das πρὸς ἕν ist gehört zur ontotheologischen Grundstellung der westlichen Metaphysik: τὸ δὲ
ὂν λέγεται μὲν πολλαχῶς, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἓν καὶ μίαν τινὰ φύσιν καὶ οὐχ ὁμωνύμως (Aristoteles, 1933,
p. 1003 a33).
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schichte Der Ochs und sein Hirte folgt der Erkenntnis der reinen Leere, des
Nichts, zunächst ein Art des rein beschauenden Modus der Weltbetrachtung.
Die Welt wird in ihrem Sosein wahrgenommen: „Grenzenlos fließt der Fluss,
wie er fließt. Rot blüht die Blume, wie sie blüht“ (Ohtsu, 1958, p. 45). Das Sosein
und Dasein ist grundlos, ihm fehlt jede Hinterwelt. Das Ewige ist kein letzter
Grund, sondern das fortwährende Geschehen von sich aus. Im Selbstsein – und
in nichts weiter – ereignet sich die Welt.
In dieser Übersetzung verraten sich zwei Heidegger-Schüler, Hartmut Buch-
ner und Koichi Tsujimura. Der Vers gleicht kaum zufällig den Worten des Ange-
lus Silesius: „Die Ros’ ist ohn’ Warum; sie blühet, weil sie blühet“ (Silesius, 1980,
p. 83). Auch hier geht es um eine Unbegründbarkeit, die sich einer Letztbe-
gründung entzieht. Die Rose lebt durch Gründe, aber nicht aus Gründen. Hei-
degger zitiert diese Verse in seiner Vorlesung über den Satz vom Grund, um die
Grenzen des Verrechenbaren und Begründbaren aufzuzeigen (Heidegger, 1997,
pp. 53–73).
Der Satz vom Grund lautet schulmäßig nihil est sine ratione „Nichts ist
ohne Grund“.8 Dieser Satz gilt nur für Seiendes, insofern es Seiendes ist. Die
Suche nach einem letzten Grund macht das Seiende im Ganzen verfügbar,
technisch verfügbar im Sinne eines Systems, mit dem alles verrechnet werden
kann. Ontotheologische Metaphysik und neuzeitliche Wissenschaft und Tech-
nik gehören in diesem Sinn zusammen.
Doch der Satz vom Grund sagt selbst nichts über den Grund aus, weil er ein
ontologischer Satz ist, ein Satz über Seiendes. Nur was ist dann das Wesen und
der Grund des Grundes? Heidegger sagt es klar und deutlich in seinem Vortrag
Vom Wesen des Grundes: „Die Freiheit ist der Grund des Grundes“ (Heidegger,
1976c, p. 174). Diese Freiheit beruht auf einem nihil originarium, das die Welt
selbst ist. Die Welt ist nichts Seiendes, ein „Nichts, das sich ursprünglich zei-
tigt“ (Heidegger, 2007, p. 272). In-der-Welt-Sein heißt also gar nichts anderes
als ein In-das-Nichts-gehalten-Sein. Höchste Einsicht ist, auch bei Heidegger,
die Einsicht in die Grundlosigkeit allen Geschehens.
Das pragmatische Ziel dieser erleuchtenden Erkenntnis der letzthinnigen
Grundlosigkeit ist in den beiden Arten, die Welt als Welt zu denken, ein völ-
lig anderes. Im Zen-Buddhismus ist der Weise ein Niemand, im Westen ein
Jemand. Das letzte Bild der Ochsen-Geschichte zeigt einen sorglosen Men-
schen, der in den Weinstuben verkehrt wie jeder andere (Ohtsu, 1958, p. 49).
8 Der Satz geht auf Leibniz zurück und lautet in der Monadologie (Nr. 32): auqun fait ne sauroit
se trouver vray ou existant, aucune Enontiation veritable, sans qu’ il y ait une raison suffisante,
pourquoy il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement (Leibniz, 2013a, p. 452 f.). Die lateinische Fas-
sung geht auf den Leibniz-Schüler Wolff zurück (Wolff, 2005, § 74).
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526 seitz
Seine Erleuchtung ist unsichtbar. Er hat eine Spontaneität gewonnen wie die
Rose, die blüht, weil sie blüht, ohne Warum und ohne tieferen Grund. Was er
tut, ist regellos und widerspricht sich. Er ist seinem Selbst begegnet und hat
es für sich doch nicht auf einen Begriff gebracht. Er wandert und ist ortlos
geworden, er lacht und ist erleichtert. Nishida Kitarōs Lehre von einer abso-
lut widersprüchlichen Selbstidentität ist ein recht schwacher Abglanz dieser
erleuchteten Leichtigkeit.
Bei Heidegger folgt aus der Einsicht in das Nichts aber keine Sorglosigkeit,
sondern das genaue Gegenteil: ein Ruf zur Sorge, das Sich-Kümmern um seine
eigene Eigentlichkeit. Wer als Dasein in das Nichts gehalten ist und in die Welt
geworfen wurde, kann entweder dem Nichts verfallen – oder dieser Mensch
entwirft sich selbst einen Horizont des eigentlichen Selbstseins, um dessent-
willen er alles tut, was er tut (Heidegger, 1986, §41, §§ 54–60). Auch ein entwer-
fender und zeitlich relativer Charakter des Wesens fordert aber weiterhin auf
einem Vorrang des Seins vor dem Nichts, zumindest in Hinsicht auf die prak-
tische Philosophie. Hier macht Heidegger sich das Leben vielleicht schwerer,
als es ist, und weicht der Leichtigkeit aus, die das Nichts verspricht. Leibniz
schrieb: Pourquoy il ya plustôt quelque chose que rien? Car le rien est plus simple
et plus facile que quelque chose (Leibniz, 2013b, no. 7).
Die Leichtigkeit, die jenseits des Seins zu erreichen ist, gehorcht weniger den
strengen Maximen der Klugheit als der kindischen Weisheit ohne Regel. Nietz-
sche lachte.
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Index of Names
Althusser, Louis 396 Meister Eckhart 371n14, 401
Anaxagoras 401, 437, 446, 447 Endres, Tobias 11n10, 27, 95n4, 98n10, 128,
Angelus Silesius 525 135, 139, 146n16, 150, 155n21, 346, 375n26
Aquinas 145n12
Arendt, Hanna 72, 76, 77, 86 Faraday, Michel 235
Aristotle 31, 79, 133, 134, 201n17, 254, 298, Feyerabend, Paul 155
301, 328, 399, 400, 408, 432, 446, 447, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 22, 296, 304,
465n13, 494, 504 304n15, 307, 440–442, 442n17, 443,
Augustine 145n12, 401, 401n3, 401n4, 408 444, 447
Foucault, Michel 395
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 132, 355, Friedman, Michael 5, 9, 12, 13, 17n18, 21, 26,
357, 360, 452 74, 155, 190n2, 191n4, 214, 215, 215n1, 243,
Bergson, Henri 12, 40, 104n19, 284, 285, 307, 266, 310
347, 347n1, 348, 354, 433
Bernays, Paul 229 Garfield, Jay 133–135, 182, 183
Bernet, Rudolf 288n7 Gerhardt, Volker 75
Biran, Maine de 315, 316 Ghilardi, Marcello 236
Blumenberg, Hans 75 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 5, 14, 205,
Bollnow, Otto 5, 75, 99n11, 103, 141, 283, 284 216, 229, 231, 231n28, 232, 232n29,
233, 234, 239n38, 282, 291, 302–305,
Cantor, Georg 219 306
Carnap, Rudolf 8, 9, 13, 21, 74, 191, 191n4, 214, Gordon, Peter E. 5, 17, 17n18, 18, 38n1, 73, 74,
215, 215n1, 243 89, 190, 190n2, 193, 197, 269, 386, 390,
Carter, Robert E. 401 426, 483
Cohen, Hermann 11, 12, 259, 261, 283n2, 298, Gorgias 285
299, 299n12, 346, 347, 348 Greco, Francesca 28, 198n16
Cusanus, Nicolaus 218–220, 220n7, 220n9, Gründer, Karl 73, 141, 521
221, 221n10, 222
Habermas, Jürgen 136, 363, 365n1, 367n3
Dalissier, Michel 27, 37, 42, 42n10, 49, 51n25, Haverkamp, Anselm 75
194n8, 201n17, 346 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6, 16, 130,
Darwin, Charles 144, 147, 148, 149 134, 146, 147, 155, 237, 260, 297, 307,
Davis, Bret 327n8, 398 315–318, 325, 328, 328n11, 329, 336, 384,
Dedekind, Richard 218, 219, 221, 221n11, 386, 392–394, 396, 399, 403, 407–412,
221n13, 222–224, 224n15, 227 459, 461
Desargues, Gérard 224 Heise, Jens 154, 156, 178
Descartes, René 6, 132, 307, 309, 326, Held, Klaus 305n16
373n19, 379, 438n14 Heraclitus 45, 134
Descola, Philippe 95n4, 120, 121, 129, 145n11 Herzt, Heinrich 223
Dewey, John 307 Higaki, Tatsuya 30, 31n24, 38
Dilthey, Wilhelm 10n9, 15, 16, 302, 306, 307, Hilbert, David 218, 223, 224, 224n15, 225–
450 227, 227n22, 227n23, 228, 229, 231
Diogenes Laertius 130 Hüsch, Sebastian 180, 181, 371, 375n25,
Dōgen 134, 180, 320, 376, 377n29 380n34
Dos Reis Martins, Lucas 194n10 Hiromatsu Wataru 337, 338
Du Bois-Reymonds, Emil 138 Hofner, Lara 192n7, 243n1
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530 index of names
Hogan, Linda 110–112, 112n27, 113, 116, 120, Lask, Emil 29, 242–245, 245n2, 245n3, 246,
153n20 246n4, 246n5, 247, 247n6, 248, 249,
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 174, 285, 302, 387 249n10, 250, 250n11, 251–254, 254n17,
Hume, David 354, 355 254n18, 255–260, 261
Husserl, Edmund 11n11, 11n13, 12, 13, 44, 130, Lawrence, Elizabeth 108
138, 243, 245, 246, 246n4, 251, 252, 257, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 11, 218, 225, 226,
259, 271, 282, 288n7, 307, 309 226n20, 226n21, 228, 229, 231–234, 237,
238, 308, 525n8, 526
James, William 167, 307, 317, 318, 338n17, Levinas, Emmanuel 52, 65, 384, 385
348 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 102, 347, 354
Jaspers, Karl 10n8, 130, 131 Liederbach, Hans Peter 30, 192n7, 194n8,
Johnson, Mark 176–178, 181, 182, 463n9, 198n16, 204n20, 206n21, 243n1, 346,
475n23 459, 461n3, 461n4, 463n9, 464
Lofts, Steve 30, 98n10, 102n15, 156n23,
Kagame, Alexis 130 157n23, 261n21, 281n1, 283n4, 288n7,
Kant, Immanuel 6, 9, 18, 21–24, 29–31, 307, 310n18, 384, 410, 483, 484, 500
39–41, 43, 46–48, 52, 54–58, 58n32, Lorentz, Hendrik 235
59–63, 63n37, 73, 74, 78, 80, 81, 83, Lotze, Hermann 12, 246–248, 248n7, 250
84, 86–88, 132, 134, 140, 141n7, 144, Lucian of Samosata 130
145, 163–165, 167–175, 183, 190, 190n3, Luft, Sebastian 155, 246n5
191, 191n5, 192n7, 193, 194, 196, 196n14, Lukács, György 246
196n15, 198, 199, 202, 202n19, 204, 211, Lupacchini, Rossella 28, 29, 47n18, 61n35,
215–219, 223, 227–229, 229n24, 230– 95n3, 153n20, 214, 243n1
234, 234n31, 236, 237, 242, 243, 245, Luther, Martin 108, 284, 286, 287
246, 259, 265–278, 280–282, 283n2, Lynch, Dennis A. 38n1, 74
288n7, 289, 293, 293n9, 295, 297–299,
299n12, 302, 307, 309, 315, 316, 328, Machiavelli, Niccolò 408
335, 335n16, 336, 337, 345–355, 357– Mann, Thomas 73
361, 385–387, 391, 399, 404n5, 407, Mannheim, Ralf 393
410, 411, 439–441, 451, 452, 459, 460, Maraldo, John C. 27, 39n6, 41n10, 48n19,
461 51n26, 60, 65, 92, 96n6, 97n8, 103n17,
Kierkegaard, Søren 18, 30, 180, 284, 363– 104n20, 105n21, 121n37, 145n11, 149n18,
367, 367n3, 368, 368n4, 369n7, 370, 152n20, 153n20, 154n20, 211, 211n26,
370n10, 371–374, 374n20, 375n25, 217n5, 225n17, 226n19, 243n1, 346, 379,
377, 377n30, 377n31, 378, 380, 381, 462n5, 478
403 Marx, Karl 308, 309, 323, 333, 392, 393, 411,
Kinzel, Katherina 155n22 412
Klages, Ludwig 284 Matherne, Samantha 155n22
Kreis, Guido 136 Maxwell, J.C. 235
Krois, John Michael 75, 155, 165, 172, 190n2, McGinn, Bernard 401
238, 302n14 Meland, Ingmar 26, 29, 75, 280, 306n17
Kronecker, Leopold 227 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 39, 51n25, 52, 65,
Krummel 29, 245n2, 260, 262n22, 325, 392 392
Krüger, Hans-Peter 73, 74 Miki Kiyoshi 19, 19n19, 20, 30, 31, 157n23,
Kuki Shūzō 30, 244, 345, 347, 347n1, 352, 180, 181, 244, 314, 316, 320, 321, 321n5,
361, 431, 454n49, 456, 457, 460, 461n3 322, 322n6, 323, 324, 324n7, 328,
328n10, 332–335, 335n15, 335n16, 337–
Lakoff, George 176, 177, 178 339, 345–347, 354–360, 360n2, 361,
Laozi 134 384–386, 392–397, 398n2, 399–406,
- 978-90-04-68017-3
index of names 531
Miki Kiyoshi (cont.) 406n7, 407, 407n8, Plessner, Helmuth 73, 82n4, 301, 498, 499
408, 409, 411–414, 431–433, 433n5, Plotinus 348, 401
434–438, 438n14, 439, 439n15, 440– Pos, Hendrik J. 4, 77, 78, 80, 203, 292–294,
442, 442n17, 443–445, 448–451, 451n37, 297
451n40, 452, 452n41, 452n42, 453, 454,
454n49, 455, 456, 456n53, 457, 460, 481, Raetz, Markus 195n11
482, 482n2, 482n3, 483–488, 488n8, Recki, Birgit 75
489, 491–493, 493n12, 494, 495, 495n15, Rickert, Heinrich 12, 250, 259, 261, 284, 392,
495n16, 496, 496n17, 497, 497n18, 498– 393
500, 501 Riemann, Bernhard 235
Minkowski, Hermann 229, 230 Riezler, Kurt 89
Misch, Georg 73 Rorty, Richard 138, 367n3
Montaigne, Michel de 287 Russel, Bertrand 307, 317
Mörchen, Hermann 141, 283n2 Ryckman, Thomas 230n27, 231
Moss, Gregory 155, 156, 192, 201n17, 243n1
Motzkin, Glenn 75 Safina, Carl 95n4, 115, 116, 121n37, 145n11
Mou Zongsan 29, 265–267, 270, 274–277, Scheler, Max 1–3, 18–20, 73, 139, 140, 245,
278 246, 284, 287, 289, 393, 431, 433, 438,
Muireartaigh, Rossa Ó 30 439, 491
Müller, Ralf 8, 26n22, 26n23 Schelling, Friedrich 153n20, 394
Schiller, Friedrich 18, 237, 287, 292
Nagarjuna 521 Schneider, Domenico 28, 243n1, 368n4
Nakai Masakazu 408, 408n9, 415 Schopenhauer, Arthur 307
Newton, Isaac 232, 237 Schwemmer, Oswald 12, 74, 75, 165
Nietzsche, Friedrich 18, 134, 135, 292n8, 319, Scotus, John Duns 251
326, 326n8, 327, 327n8, 327n9, 368, Seitz, Emanuel 31, 46, 372
368n5, 379, 487, 488, 520, 526 Sellars, Wilfrid 154, 155, 155n21
Nishitani Keiji 30, 128, 180, 244, 314, 316, Simmel, Georg 143, 143n9, 284, 321n5
319–323, 326, 327, 327n8, 328, 330, Skidelsky, Edward 75
330n13, 331, 332, 332n14, 335, 337, Snow, Charles Percy 129
339n18, 363–365, 368, 368n4, 372–374, Socrates 287, 307
374n22, 375, 375n25, 375n26, 376, 378, Staudt, K.G.C. von 223, 224, 224n16, 225
378n31, 379, 379n32, 380, 418, 461n3, Steineck, Raji C. 154, 157
493n10, 507 Stenger, Georg 129, 132, 183, 184
Strassheim, Jan 194n9, 195n12, 243n1
Odagiri, Takushi 30, 346, 452n42 Strauss, Leo 89
Oele, Marjolein 149n18 Stromback, Dennis 29, 339n18, 482n3
Suzuki D.T. 8, 30, 153n20, 260, 318n4,
Paetzold, Heinz 283n2 373n19, 376, 376n28, 377n29, 377n30,
Pappus 224, 224n16 381n36, 381n37, 381n38, 382n38, 417–
Parmenides 134 420, 420n1, 421–423, 423n3, 425–428,
Pasch, Moritz 223 428n6, 429, 494n14
Pedersen, Esther O. 27, 71, 129, 141n7, 194n8,
195, 211, 243n1 Taft, Richard 292n8, 299n12, 300n13
Peirce, Charles S. 178, 302, 302n14 Tanabe Hajime 7, 10, 30, 31, 128, 244, 345,
Pico 387 347–357, 359, 361, 417–419, 423, 424,
Pinkard, Terry 459, 460n2 424n5, 425, 426, 428, 429, 460, 496n17,
Pippin, Robert B. 459, 460n2, 462n6, 468 507
Plato 7, 14, 76, 79, 286, 287, 298, 401, 453 Tarde, Gabriel 354
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532 index of names
Taylor, Charles 459, 460n2, 467n15 463n9, 464, 464n10, 465, 465n12,
Taylor, Edward 235n33, 236 465n14, 466–469, 469n17, 469n19,
Tedlock, Barbara 107, 113, 114 469n20, 470, 470n20, 471, 471n21, 473,
Tempels, Placide 130 473n22, 474, 475, 475n23, 476, 477,
Truwant, Simon 17n18, 24, 25, 155n22, 216n2, 477n25, 478
217n2 Weidtmann, Niels 129, 131, 132, 183, 184
Weiss, Helene 141, 283n2
Ueda Shizuteru 262n22, 397, 398, 435, 519 Weyl, Hermann 237, 237n36
Uexküll, Jakob Johann Freiherr von 144, 284 Wheeler, J.A. 235n33, 236
Windelband, Wilhelm 347
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 106, 106n22, Wirtz, Fernando 31, 180, 181, 328, 334,
117, 117n32, 118, 118n34, 119, 120, 122n38 375n25, 487n7
Watsuji Tetsurō 30, 134, 181–183, 244, 346, Yeung Tak-Lap 29, 59, 65, 209n24, 265, 267,
431, 456, 457, 459–461, 461n3, 462, 378n31
462n5, 462n6, 462n7, 463, 463n8,
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Index of Subjects
a priori 81, 142, 168, 215–217, 219, 219n6, 223, 109, 109n25, 110, 110n26, 111, 112, 112n27,
225, 227, 228, 233, 236, 237, 249, 252, 113, 114, 114n29, 115–121, 121n37, 122, 123,
254, 258, 272, 276, 288n7, 298, 309, 315, 144, 145, 145n11, 147, 149, 149n18, 151, 152,
350, 387 152n20, 153n20, 154n20, 211n26, 284,
absolute 28, 42, 45, 47, 50, 53, 55, 135, 157, 301, 317, 404, 434, 435, 435n7, 436–438,
189, 204, 208, 208n23, 209, 210, 210n25, 443, 446, 446n26, 447, 447n27, 450,
220, 221, 225, 226, 230, 236, 237, 251n13, 452, 455, 489, 490, 500
315, 317–319, 325, 329, 330, 349, 374, 375, animal symbolicum 40, 40n7, 42, 94, 301,
378, 378n31, 379, 380, 396, 401–403, 450, 452
409, 410, 417, 421, 422, 424n5, 425, 429, anthropocene 94, 95, 109, 110, 118, 182, 289,
447, 460, 473, 473n22, 474, 475, 492, 524 297, 301, 302, 371, 379, 385, 415, 490, 491
absolute contradictory self-identity 309 anthropocentrism 94, 95, 95n3, 96, 97n8,
absolute infinity 219, 221 119, 153n20, 210, 297, 301, 337, 338, 491,
absolute mediation 349 491n9
absolute nothingness (zettai mu) 24, 221, anthropology, anthropological 2–4, 9, 16–
236–238, 255, 259, 274, 277, 348, 401, 18, 20, 27, 30, 56, 57n30, 63, 64, 78, 96,
412, 413, 424n5, 489, 500, 510, 513–516, 101, 102, 105, 107, 117, 118, 120, 127–129,
523, 524 129n3, 136, 137, 139–144, 145n12, 146, 147,
absolute other (絶対他) 205, 207, 208, 429, 149, 151, 152n20, 153, 153n20, 154, 158,
492 163, 172, 180, 190n1, 192n7, 193, 227, 302,
absolutely contradictory existence [絶対に 311, 314–316, 328, 333–336, 338, 352, 355,
自己矛盾的存在] 207, 211, 318 363, 365, 365n2, 367, 373, 393, 405–408,
absoluteness (絶対者) 137, 157, 208, 209, 414, 431, 434, 438, 438n14, 439, 440, 443,
211 452, 454n49, 455–457, 460, 484, 487,
absorption (Hingabe) 250n11, 258 490, 495
Achuar people 120 Anti-Cartesianism 30, 31, 459–461, 461n3,
acting intuition 356, 357 462, 464, 469n20, 470, 471, 474, 477
active intuition 207, 236, 281, 308, 311, 491n9 anticipatory resoluteness 42, 46n17, 406,
African philosophy 130 411, 414, 504
agency 121, 121n37, 172, 323, 409, 451, 462, Aristotelianism 246
464n10, 469, 469n18, 470 artistic intuition 233
Akzidenz 511, 518, 524 Asian philosophy 182, 265, 266
analytic geometry 223–225, 225n17, 226, 237 assujetti 395, 411
analytic philosophy 74, 133, 134, 136, 158, authentic (eigentlich) 3, 15, 16, 93, 95n4,
266 96, 97, 101, 105, 107, 127, 128, 130–132,
Anders-Sein (otherness) 112, 220, 220n9, 153n20, 154, 156, 158, 181–183, 294, 311,
221, 389, 413, 417, 421, 424, 425, 429, 504, 315, 336, 386, 409, 485, 509, 526
517 authenticity/inauthenticity 206n21, 286,
Angst 292, 320, 323, 346, 372, 372n18, 365n1, 367n3, 409, 468n16, 471, 474, 475,
373n18, 487, 504–508, 509 476, 506, 509, 526
animal 4, 27, 39, 39n6, 41, 41n10, 41n9, 42, autonomy 79, 80, 84, 155, 265, 268, 269, 277,
42n10, 48, 48n19, 51, 51n25, 51n26, 493
66, 82n4, 92, 93, 93n1, 94, 95, 95n4,
95n5, 96, 97, 97n8, 97n9, 98, 98n10, basho (place) 20, 22, 23, 191, 198n16, 217n4,
98n9, 99, 99n12, 100–103, 103n18, 104, 218, 225n17, 229, 236–238, 244, 245, 253,
104n18, 104n19, 105–107, 107n23, 108, 254, 316, 336, 510
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534 index of subjects
basic experience 157n23, 314, 333, 334, 394, 325, 326, 333, 334, 338, 349, 350, 359,
405–407, 407n8, 408, 414 407, 465, 465n13, 485
basis phenomena (Basisphänomene) 29, category mistake 101, 144
280, 281, 300–302, 306, 306n17, 307, causa efficiens, finalis, formalis, materialis
309, 311 293n10
battle 73, 193, 286 chaos 504, 514, 514n1, 519
being-(t)here (Dasein) 39, 39n4, 39n5, 42– clearing (Lichtung) 244, 260, 282, 287, 301,
46, 48, 50, 51, 51n26, 57, 59, 60, 63–65, 405, 466, 471
65n38, 66, 78–81, 84, 94n2, 97n8, 99n11, co-responding 395, 413
101, 102n16, 103, 109, 110, 110n26, 117, 146, cogito 184, 395, 401, 438n14, 470
146n13, 146n14, 165, 170, 196, 197, 205, configuration 38, 41, 42, 50, 152, 171, 262,
206, 210, 215, 216, 252, 257, 282, 287, 334, 389
289–292, 294–299, 303, 326, 346, 354, consciousness 22, 23, 44, 46, 49, 55, 62,
363, 365n1, 387–391, 394, 395, 399, 400, 62n36, 79, 85, 100–103, 106, 109, 110n26,
404, 406, 407n8, 409–412, 414, 462, 121, 135, 146–148, 152, 168, 197, 217n3,
462n5, 463, 465–468, 468n16, 469–472, 219, 226, 237, 238, 251–256, 270–272,
475, 476, 476n24, 478, 483, 505, 506, 274, 276–278, 282, 293, 293n9, 294,
508–510, 512, 513, 515, 516, 518, 520, 525, 298, 303, 317, 317n3, 318, 320, 324, 325,
526 327n8, 329–331, 335, 338, 351, 364, 368,
being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) 51, 369, 378n31, 396, 399n2, 407, 407n8,
51n26, 80, 101, 146, 146n14, 182, 253, 417, 421, 423–427, 429, 430, 432, 436,
257, 287, 293, 456, 459, 461, 464n10, 441, 442, 442n18, 448, 454, 456n53, 457,
465, 465n14, 469, 469n18, 470, 472, 463, 463n8, 466, 473n22, 483, 492, 499,
474, 476, 477, 504, 509, 511, 515, 516, 500
525 continental philosophy 21, 74, 127, 128, 158,
body 23, 51n25, 64–66, 92, 94, 94n2, 97, 266, 310, 456
99n11, 111, 113, 115, 174–176, 178, 183, 234, contradiction 24, 128, 132, 143, 154, 155, 200,
236, 237, 294, 308, 322, 323, 325, 326, 201, 201n17, 208, 227n22, 329, 337, 391,
333, 334, 400, 404, 406–408, 410, 421, 408, 429, 491
422, 435, 436, 440, 442, 442n18, 443– contradiction, self-contradiction, absolutely
446, 446n26, 447–449, 454, 455, 488n8, contradictory self-identity (矛盾的自己
511 同一) 143, 155, 191, 201n17, 208, 260, 307,
boundaries (極限) 208, 210 392
bourgeoisie 407 contradictory identity 28, 30, 120, 189, 191,
Buddhist 10, 17, 26, 132, 135, 318–320, 322, 192, 192n7, 195, 195n12, 196n15, 199, 200,
326, 327n9, 338, 338n17, 365, 365n2, 204, 207–210, 210n25, 211, 222, 251,
370n9, 373, 374, 374n22, 375n25, 376, 256, 273, 316, 318, 321, 325, 326, 329,
376n29, 378, 380, 381n38, 400, 425, 464, 330, 335, 336, 399, 401, 403, 409, 431,
473n22, 496n17 434, 441, 442, 442n18, 443, 445, 447,
452, 455, 465, 486, 490, 491, 493n10,
care 94n2, 183, 253, 293, 369n6, 409, 471– 500
473, 478 creative nihilism 319, 326, 327n8
Cassirer-renaissance 128 creative society 333, 408, 413, 414
categorical imperative 38, 52, 53, 203, 289, cultural anthropology 129, 152n20
290 cultural renaissance 482, 484, 486, 488, 494
categories 12, 95, 100, 106, 116, 119, 120, 133, cultural studies 128, 129, 137, 158
156, 157n23, 158, 167, 172, 201, 243–246, culturally other 61, 137, 156, 167, 179, 184,
246n5, 247–249, 249n10, 250n11, 251, 386, 403, 414, 461, 464, 471, 478
251n13, 252–257, 271, 273, 298, 302, 306, custom 115, 137, 150, 156, 397
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index of subjects 535
Daoism 262, 275, 276 domain category (Gebietskategorie) 248,

das Man 389, 402, 407n8, 409, 411, 412, 472 249, 254, 257
Dasein (being-(t)here) 39, 39n4, 39n5, dual negation 208, 464n12, 473–477, 478
42–46, 48, 50, 51, 51n26, 57, 59, 60, 63– dual transcendence 30, 157n23, 384, 394–
65, 65n38, 66, 78–81, 84, 94n2, 97n8, 396, 398, 404, 408, 412, 413
99n11, 101, 102n16, 103, 109, 110, 110n26, dualism 21, 22, 29, 56, 146n13, 194, 195n11,
146, 146n13, 146n14, 165, 170, 196, 197, 202, 206, 216, 218, 237, 242, 243, 248,
205, 206, 210, 215, 216, 252, 282, 287, 250n11, 256, 268, 278, 281, 282, 288n7,
289–292, 294–299, 326, 346, 354, 363, 307, 440, 444, 450, 456, 457, 484
365n1, 387–391, 394, 395, 399, 400, 404,
406, 407n8, 409–412, 414, 462, 462n5, Einbildungskraft 30, 40, 165, 168, 170, 171,
463, 465–468, 468n16, 469–472, 475, 173, 335, 345–351, 353–360, 360n2, 361,
476, 476n24, 478, 483, 505, 506, 508– 396, 401, 497
510, 512, 513, 515, 516, 518, 520, 525, embodiment 64, 65, 137, 163, 164, 175–177,
526 184, 192, 260, 286, 315, 325, 326, 393,
Davos debate 2, 3, 17, 25, 27–30, 71–75, 394, 400, 403, 404, 437, 437n12, 441,
77, 87–89, 92, 93, 100, 108, 141n7, 163, 442, 442n17, 443, 445–447, 449, 450,
182, 190, 191, 196n14, 202, 203, 211, 488, 488n8, 495
216n2, 238, 265, 266, 270, 280, 281, 310, empirical 40n7, 45n16, 47, 53–56, 60, 61,
345, 348, 351, 353, 361, 362, 364, 379, 63, 82, 83, 94, 95, 100, 102, 104, 108, 109,
384–386, 390, 391, 404, 414, 418, 426, 109n25, 114, 123, 138, 157, 171, 226, 229–
500 231, 272, 273, 297, 298, 315, 432, 457,
death 8, 10, 25, 26n21, 84, 85, 93, 94n2, 102, 486
102n16, 171, 253, 283, 284, 286–288, 295, enactive self (kōiteki jiko) 104, 104n18,
319, 327n8, 327n9, 331, 348, 361, 364, 149n18, 260
366, 367n3, 399, 400, 412, 460, 472, 473, equivalence 96, 99, 99n13, 100, 107, 108, 113–
473n22, 475, 487 115, 117–119, 121, 122, 236, 351
debate, controversy 10n7, 95, 138, 193, Es-Geben (being-there, it-gives) 252
269 essentialism 129
decolonization 130 eternal now 324, 352, 419, 425
dialectic 20, 48, 83, 101, 142, 147, 155, 200, ethnology 100n14, 102n16, 129
202n19, 222, 235, 236, 260, 273, 308, 315, ethnophilosophy 130
316, 318, 320–324, 326, 328n11, 329, 332– eudaemonistic impulse 110n26, 321, 323,
334, 347, 348, 350, 386, 392–394, 396, 331, 505–507, 514, 524
398, 400, 403, 408, 412, 414, 435, 440– existential 16, 24, 25, 30, 44, 46, 57, 80, 84,
442, 445, 446, 446n26, 447–450, 460, 94n2, 102n16, 169, 191n4, 258, 265, 277,
464, 465, 476, 477, 483, 489, 491, 492, 324, 330, 331, 346, 353, 361, 363–365,
495, 498–500, 501 367, 370–372, 378n31, 380, 385, 386,
discontinuous continuity (非連続の連続) 388, 390, 391, 393, 399, 407n8, 409, 414,
104, 206, 206n21, 221, 222 429, 473, 475, 483
disputation 2, 5, 17n18, 22, 27, 29–31, 37–40, exterior human 408
42, 45, 48–50, 52, 53, 57, 61, 63–65, 97,
100, 103, 137, 139–141, 163–165, 169, 172, facticity 25n20, 46, 247, 253, 387, 388, 390–
189, 190, 191n6, 196, 202, 206n21, 214, 393, 404, 406, 406n7, 483, 488, 495,
215, 310, 431, 438, 439, 456, 459, 460, 500, 501, 505
477, 504 fate 58, 84, 296, 387, 414
domain (Gebiet) 21, 113, 134, 221, 221n12, fiction 153n20, 334, 396–398, 481, 487, 499
227, 248, 254–257, 275, 285, 314, 331, field of consciousness (ishiki no ba) 255,
396 271, 427
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finiteness 18, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, 43, historical form 324, 334, 394, 398, 399, 402,
45, 46, 46n17, 47, 50, 50n22, 51n26, 53– 404, 412, 448
59, 62, 79, 87, 93, 97, 169, 171, 173, 189, historiography 26, 128, 130, 132
190n1, 192, 196n15, 203, 204, 204n20, (European) history of philosophy 5, 27, 58,
205–208, 216, 217n2, 237, 268, 274, 275, 71, 72, 79, 85, 87–89, 129, 131, 132, 135,
277, 287, 290, 291, 294, 296, 346, 352, 141n7, 199, 211, 364
354, 363, 364, 366, 367, 369, 369n6, human knowledge 28, 189, 192, 193, 203,
373n18, 380, 386–389, 391, 392, 394, 204, 265, 271, 277
399, 400, 404, 409, 410, 411n10, 414, humanism 5, 6, 17–19, 19n19, 20, 31, 181, 323,
426, 438–440, 457, 483, 504, 506, 328, 328n10, 337, 338, 384, 385, 393, 412,
509 438, 481, 482, 482n3, 484–495, 495n16,
formation 38, 44, 45, 49, 83, 84, 129, 143, 148, 496–500, 501
169–171, 174, 191n6, 218, 222, 233, 252,
256, 318, 332, 389, 394, 396, 401, 409, I-phenomenon (Ich-Phänomen) 306, 307
411, 469, 470, 477, 477n25, 483 I-Thou Relationship 324, 379n32, 424
formless form 14, 237, 394, 401, 402, 412, 413, identity 30, 62n36, 71, 102n15, 114–116,
414 122, 132, 169, 200–202, 207, 208, 210,
free thinking 27, 71, 72 226, 251, 260, 325, 326, 336, 391, 396,
freedom 6, 18–20, 38n1, 42, 45, 56, 57, 63, 403, 404, 411, 418, 422, 429, 493n10,
79, 80, 84, 103, 129, 146n15, 147, 153n20, 500
155, 177, 190n1, 202n18, 204, 232, 265, ideology 19, 108, 136, 314, 333–335, 335n15,
267–269, 276, 277, 282, 289–292, 337–339, 407, 408, 423n3, 482, 485, 486
294–296, 304n15, 311, 323, 324, 327, idle talk (Gerede) 286, 411, 522
327n8, 329–331, 366, 384, 386, 391, 392, image 40, 41, 45, 102, 102n15, 110n26, 145n12,
409–413, 423, 427–430, 477, 489, 497, 146n12, 151, 164, 170, 171, 176–178, 217,
498 218, 233, 327, 385, 393, 396, 399, 399n2,
fūdo 181, 182, 183 401, 402, 404n5, 407, 408, 414, 419, 425,
function 39n4, 42, 42n10, 43, 45, 47, 50, 57, 432–434, 481
102n15, 106, 140, 142, 144, 153n20, 170, image-world 148, 404
179, 205, 218, 220, 222, 230, 232, 251, imagination 27, 28, 30, 37–41, 48, 50, 56,
282, 285, 288n7, 291, 301, 310, 321, 334, 63, 78, 81, 109, 157n23, 165, 166, 168–
336, 346, 354, 395, 402, 421, 463, 474, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 182, 190n1,
490 203, 204, 216, 220n7, 226, 233, 282, 309,
324, 328, 332, 334, 335, 345–351, 353–
genealogy 135, 357 360, 360n2, 361, 384, 386, 392, 392n1,
genius 402, 413 393, 394, 396, 398, 398n2, 399–404,
geometric intuition 221, 222 404n5, 405, 408, 411, 414, 431, 439, 449–
geometry 218, 223, 224, 224n15, 225–227, 451, 451n37, 452, 464n12, 484, 488n8,
227n23, 228, 232, 234, 236, 238 497
Geworfenheit 51, 51n26, 101, 169, 387 imago 145n12, 396, 397
godhead 401 immanence 53, 190n1, 208, 260, 291, 324,
Goethe’s morphology 229 365n1, 366, 368, 369n7, 372, 388, 389,
gravitational theory 223, 229 499
gravity 233–235, 236 inauthentic (uneigentlich) 46, 46n17, 294,
363, 375, 377, 377n31, 378, 411, 412, 474,
heart-mind 265, 275–277, 400, 408 517
hermeneutic 182, 217n2, 288n7, 393, 438, indigenous 4, 27, 92, 96, 98n10, 99–101, 103–
438n14 106, 113, 117, 118n33, 119, 121, 122, 122n38,
Hilbert’s formalism 226, 229, 231 123
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infinite, infinity 18, 28, 45, 47, 49, 50, 50n22, Kantian schematism 28, 163, 168, 182
50n23, 57, 82, 84, 87, 93, 93n1, 98, Kantianism 242, 245, 261, 499
153n20, 189, 190, 190n1, 192, 193, 195, Kategorie 511
196, 196n15, 203–208, 210, 210n25, Kegon 260
211, 216, 217n2, 220, 221, 225, 230, kinship 92, 108, 111, 117
233, 234, 237, 274, 275, 287, 290–292, kū 465
317, 327, 327n8, 329, 346, 354, 363, Kyoto in Davos 26, 127, 152n20, 156n23, 190,
364, 366, 367, 378n31, 402, 409, 419, 194n10, 194n8, 194n9, 204n20, 209n24,
422, 425–427, 440, 473, 488, 489, 211, 211n26, 214, 218, 243n1, 310, 455
498 Kyoto School 7, 9, 28, 29, 163, 191n6, 242–
infinitesimal 403, 413, 442n18 244, 261, 266, 272, 280, 281, 309, 314,
infinitude 43, 47, 195, 203–205, 238, 265, 315, 315n1, 316, 316n2, 317, 321, 322, 324,
274, 275, 277, 290, 291, 483 327, 329, 335–339, 345, 346, 361, 372,
institution 397, 402, 451, 451n40 392, 393, 417, 419, 431, 459–461, 461n3
institutional society 99, 106, 107, 113, 114n29,
118n33, 122, 123, 367, 402, 413, 498 language 40, 42n12, 43, 48, 58, 82, 83, 85,
intellectual intuition 265, 270, 272, 273, 87, 95, 95n5, 102, 102n15, 103, 105, 108,
275–278, 433, 437 109, 112, 112n27, 119, 129, 133, 134, 139,
intellectus ectypus 87 142, 148, 149, 149n18, 150–152, 152n20,
intelligible world (eichiteki sekai) 11, 11n13, 153n20, 155, 156, 164, 173–179, 183, 184,
17, 18, 23, 43, 54, 56, 56n29, 60n34, 203, 204, 206, 228, 250, 258, 282–288,
105, 145, 150, 190, 216, 218, 248, 252, 292, 294, 297–302, 308, 309, 320, 334,
254, 255, 257, 258, 269, 271–274, 277, 346, 354, 368, 369, 390, 400, 401, 403,
329, 336, 367, 386, 388, 389, 443, 462, 404, 410, 428n6, 448, 461–463, 466, 492,
469 497
intercultural 3, 6, 15, 27, 28, 38, 71, 72, 87, law of human existence 475, 476, 477
127–129, 131, 134–136, 154, 157n23, 164, Lebensphilosophie 15, 243, 307, 345, 391,
166, 179–183, 190, 192n7, 211 393
intercultural philosophizing 163, 166, 179– Leibniz’s monadology 229, 234, 237
184, 372n17 life-philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) 6, 12,
intercultural philosophy 28, 29, 72, 93, 105, 14, 15, 25, 26, 139, 140, 143, 243, 250n11,
105n21, 127–130, 132, 133, 139, 153, 154, 283, 284, 288, 307, 345, 391, 393
156–158, 163, 166, 176, 179, 181, 183, 192, lifeworld (Lebenswelt) 184, 380
192n7, 280, 281, 310 limits, limitedness 19, 25, 26, 54, 87, 93,
interdisciplinary research 158 103n18, 115, 146n16, 166, 192, 203, 205–
interior human 408 207, 210, 210n25, 219, 220n8, 222, 225,
intuition 39n3, 100, 101, 104, 104n18, 142, 144, 225n17, 243, 247, 255–257, 271, 275,
215–217, 219, 223, 225, 228, 231, 233, 236, 284, 287, 303, 329, 338, 391, 423, 474,
237, 246, 273, 285n5, 307, 317, 323, 325, 483
326, 349, 350, 356, 357, 407, 433, 433n4, lived body 403, 404, 407n8
434–437, 438n14, 442, 445–447, 453n44, lived experience (Erleben) 23, 43, 49, 237,
496 242, 249, 250n11, 251, 254, 254n18, 255–
involvement (Bewandtnis) 239, 247, 248, 257, 285, 307, 393
251–253, 257, 260, 261, 467 logic of imagination 157n23, 332, 334, 335,
398, 439, 439n15, 449, 450, 450n36, 451,
judgment 81, 106, 108, 114, 117, 121, 152n20, 451n40
168, 245, 247–250, 250n11, 251, 251n13, logic of species 30, 345, 348, 349, 361
254, 256–258, 261, 268, 271, 272, 287, logos and pathos 181, 314, 322–324, 332–334,
347, 359–361, 367n3 355, 484
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Mahāyāna Buddhism 260 Nachlass 140, 141, 141n7, 145n12, 150, 284,
Marxism 322, 323, 335n15, 338, 339, 393, 391
408, 412, 482n3, 499 naturalism 28, 94, 127, 129, 136–139, 144, 147,
materialism 103, 136, 138, 330, 337, 393, 408, 148, 148n17, 154, 158, 301, 302, 492–494,
412, 495n16 494n14, 496, 497, 500, 501
meaning of being (Sinn des Seins) 244, 259, natureculture 95n4, 145n11
281, 282, 293, 295, 298 negation, self-negation (自己否定) 47, 48,
mediation 19, 38, 45–48, 48n19, 51n25, 66, 143, 153n20, 199–202, 208, 208n23, 209,
128, 191n4, 273, 334, 347, 348, 356, 407, 210n25, 274, 276, 318, 325–327, 327n9,
419, 424n5, 440, 483 329–331, 336, 349, 350, 378n31, 409, 410,
meta-level 189, 191, 192, 203, 211 429, 440, 442–445, 446n26, 447, 449,
metanoetics 361, 418, 419, 423, 429 452, 454, 454n49, 455, 464n12, 465n12,
metaphor 166, 174, 176, 184, 421 467, 472–477, 490, 513
metaphysics 2, 12, 14, 18, 20, 23, 29, 31, 39, negativity 63, 471, 473, 473n22, 474, 475
41, 46, 58, 58n32, 78–81, 83–87, 100n14, neo-Hegelian 393, 462n6
140–143, 146, 164, 170, 172, 190n1, 197, neo-Kantianism 5, 6, 12, 14, 18, 29, 128, 193,
198, 215, 234, 267, 280–282, 283n2, 288, 236, 242, 243, 245, 258, 261, 300, 345–
293–295, 298, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 347, 350, 362, 393, 499
345, 346, 350, 357, 361, 365n1, 367n3, New Confucianism 266, 274
379n33, 387, 391, 411n10, 439, 461, 461n3, Nichtdasein 409, 412
465, 504 Nichts 31, 181, 257, 372n18, 504, 506–525, 526
methexis 515 nihil originarium 525
method 21, 135, 138, 142, 182, 194, 227, nihilism 26, 311, 314, 319, 326, 327n8, 328,
230, 258, 259, 271, 277, 288, 298, 299, 331, 332, 487, 499
299n12, 300, 300n13, 329, 373n19, 463, ningen 181, 386, 392, 393, 400, 405, 407, 408,
469n17 462, 462n5, 463, 464, 464n10, 464n12,
methodology 10n9, 105 465, 466, 469, 469n19, 470, 470n20, 471,
mineness 409, 472 471n21, 473, 473n22, 474–478, 485, 488,
monad 226, 233, 234, 234n31, 303, 308, 311, 495, 501
413 norm (Norm) 246
moral law 38, 52–55, 61, 268, 441, 456n53 nothing (mu) 19, 20, 24, 25, 51n25, 79,
multicultural philosophy 7, 9, 30, 72, 74, 104, 132, 138, 180, 181, 205, 221, 221n10,
76, 87–89, 109, 121n37, 131, 156, 180– 223, 227, 228, 231, 238, 239n38, 254–
182, 196, 198, 231, 261, 287, 290, 292, 295, 257, 260, 265, 273, 276, 277, 290, 316,
300, 307, 354, 363, 387, 392, 408, 417, 319, 327n9, 334, 373n19, 374, 376, 396,
423, 498, 500 397, 400–402, 412, 413, 420, 449, 472,
Myokonin 422, 425, 427 477, 484, 487, 488, 490, 492, 496, 499,
myth 6, 31, 39n4, 41, 42n12, 43, 50, 83, 100– 504
102, 102n15, 106, 107, 109, 109n24, nothingness 17–20, 24, 31, 132, 181, 215,
110n26, 114, 130, 136, 142, 143, 151, 154– 239n38, 245n2, 255, 295, 296, 327,
157, 183, 218, 284, 288, 294, 299, 328n10, 327n8, 364, 373, 375n25, 377, 394,
334, 387, 404, 428n6, 449, 451, 451n40, 396, 397, 400–402, 404, 408, 410,
452, 481, 484, 487, 488, 497–500, 412, 413, 428, 429, 442, 442n18, 472,
501 483, 487–489, 491, 492, 494, 499–501,
mythical thought 40, 50, 64, 66, 100, 101, 504
103, 105, 109, 114
mythology 328, 348, 354, 355, 360, 361, object-logic 328, 330
362 object-paradigm (gegenständliches Urbild)
243, 249, 255
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objective / objectivity 13, 18, 22, 43, 44, 49, philosophia perennis 130, 131, 133
53, 54, 58n32, 62, 81–83, 85, 100, 107, philosophical anthropology 2, 17, 18, 29,
132, 136, 139, 142, 146, 148, 149, 149n18, 63, 73, 82, 105, 135, 138–141, 143, 144,
155, 156, 204–206, 210, 217–219, 219n6, 147, 150, 153, 154, 191n4, 192n7, 283, 284,
223, 225, 228, 229, 231, 232, 237, 242, 288, 289, 295, 301, 310, 314–317, 324,
244, 250, 251, 253, 285, 291, 297, 298, 328, 335–339, 394, 395, 407, 408, 411,
300, 305, 309, 316–319, 328n11, 330, 338, 414, 431, 432, 433n5, 434–436, 438–440,
351, 355, 387, 389, 390, 392, 394, 395, 442–445, 448, 449, 454n49, 455, 456,
398, 400, 404, 405, 409, 412, 413, 435, 456n53, 457, 483, 487
436, 442, 442n17, 444, 445, 448, 451, philosophy of culture 14–16, 28, 85, 110,
451n40, 452, 452n41, 493, 493n11, 495 127–129, 136, 137, 139, 154–156, 156n23,
objective spirit (objektiver Geist) 15, 16, 157, 157n23, 158, 215, 281, 287, 290, 293,
293n9, 297, 309, 389, 404 294, 300, 311, 388, 390, 394, 410, 483,
ontological difference (ontologische Dif- 485
ferenz) 51, 52, 61, 249n9, 252, 257, 514 physical geometry 229, 235, 237
ontological turn 129 Piro people 117, 118
ontology 30, 42, 50, 56, 61, 63, 78, 80, 83– place (basho) 257, 259
87, 92, 101, 118, 120, 140, 142, 170, 190n1, place of nothing (mu no basho) 244, 255,
191n4, 202n19, 203, 258, 275, 276, 281, 257, 316, 319
282, 308, 311, 324, 346, 350–355, 361, playful Samādhi 327
391–393, 399, 401, 404, 406n7, 431, 440, poiesis 305, 307, 308, 323, 325, 432, 433,
449, 455, 456, 456n53, 457, 463n8, 465, 433n4, 434, 436–438, 438n14, 440, 442,
471, 473, 483, 500 445, 449, 454, 455, 457
ontotheologie 516, 522, 523 practical understanding 463, 469, 469n17,
oppositionless object (gegensatzloser Gegen- 469n20, 470, 474
stand; tairitsunaki taishō) 255 praxis 31, 305–307, 324, 325, 334, 397, 400,
oppositions 143, 191, 192, 198n16, 199, 201n17, 403, 406, 432, 433, 438n14, 481, 523, 524
203, 208, 209, 211, 249, 256, 270, 330, pregnant’ emptiness 401
476 presentation, the function of (Darstellungs-
originary phenomena/primal phenomena funktion) 285
(Urphänomen) 282, 285, 287–289, 297, prima materia 400, 401
300, 301 prima philosophia 129
ought (Sollen, tōi) 56, 57, 57n30, 216, 251, primary logos 334, 406
252, 254, 255, 262, 474, 475, 511 principle of general covariance 230, 232,
overcoming modernity 336 236
ownness 409 principle of relativity 235
productive seeing 233, 236, 238
pathos 320–323, 328, 332, 334, 393, 394, 396, progressive atheism 330, 331, 332
397, 400–404, 408, 414, 438, 438n14, projective geometry 225
483, 484, 487, 488, 488n8, 493, 495, 500, pure experience (junsui keiken) 12, 191, 236,
501 258, 270–273, 277, 281, 308, 311, 317, 318,
perception 47, 61, 107, 109n24, 118n33, 142, 325, 333, 348, 354
148, 149n18, 150, 152, 164, 167, 169, 172, pure intuition 43, 172, 226, 229, 230, 406
174, 176, 220, 231, 233, 273, 282, 288n7, pure land 320, 322, 417, 419–423, 423n3, 424,
305, 357, 358, 375n24, 407n8 425, 427, 428, 496n17
phenomenology 7, 8n3, 10, 21, 22, 29, 43, Pure Land Buddhism 261, 417–420, 422
44n15, 49, 128, 182, 242–246, 271, 288n7, pure philosophy 24, 27, 71, 72, 76, 77, 80,
302, 307–310, 345, 363, 388, 390, 391, 141n7
393, 394, 407, 409, 442, 463, 463n8, 483 pure possibility 401
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quid facti 135, 144 signification, the function of (Bedeutung,

quid iuris 135 Bedeutungsfunktion) 60, 246, 247, 285
soku-hi 318, 318n4, 422, 493n10
reality (Wirklichkeit) 12, 13, 19, 23, 42n12, spatial intuition 225, 233
54, 55n28, 56, 56n29, 60n34, 62, 75, 94, specieally other 415
106, 106n22, 108, 110n26, 114, 118, 121, speech 105, 147, 155, 174, 178, 179, 283, 284,
137–139, 206, 209n24, 217–219, 225, 231– 286, 288, 301, 303, 410, 467
233, 235–237, 248, 251, 256, 273, 276, spirit 10, 12, 13, 15, 40, 41, 42n12, 55, 64, 77,
277, 285, 308, 314, 315n1, 319–323, 325, 83–85, 93, 94, 94n2, 99n11, 100, 106n22,
328, 328n11, 332n14, 334–336, 338, 348, 111, 114, 135, 139–144, 145n12, 146–148,
350, 353, 356, 361, 367, 374, 375, 375n23, 183, 204, 218, 233, 252, 283, 284, 284n4,
376, 377, 381n37, 389, 394, 396, 402, 287, 288, 292, 293n9, 294, 296, 318, 323–
404–407, 418, 419, 421, 423, 428, 428n6, 325, 329, 333, 336, 366, 388, 389, 393,
430, 437, 437n12, 442, 442n17, 443– 394, 402, 403, 411, 413, 423, 427, 482,
445, 448–450, 453, 483, 492–495, 497, 494, 497, 498
498 Stimmung 505, 506, 508, 509, 510
relative nothingness (sōtai mu) 255, 331 stories 92, 99, 100, 102, 104–107, 107n23, 108,
religion 13, 15, 16, 42n12, 43, 73, 83, 136– 109, 113–123, 334, 420, 499
138, 143, 154–156, 156n23, 157n23, 183, subject-object relationship 315, 316
218, 245n2, 273, 278, 317, 318, 320–322, symbiosis 406
322n6, 323, 325, 328, 329, 329n12, 330, symbol 40, 85, 117, 141, 142, 152n20, 156, 220,
331, 332n14, 364, 365, 367, 368, 368n4, 228, 280, 310, 388, 404, 404n5, 405, 449,
369, 370, 370n11, 370n8, 370n9, 371, 450, 500
371n14, 373, 376n27, 378n31, 379, 380, symbolic ideation 40, 284, 285, 287, 289
422, 519 symbolic pregnance 285, 285n5, 288n7, 309
representation 49, 54, 59, 98, 98n10, 132, syntax 43n13, 95, 95n5, 112, 112n27, 153n20,
143, 152n20, 153n20, 156, 171, 179, 193, 183, 184
194, 227, 288, 352, 357, 358, 450, 463,
467 ta-riki 他力 420, 496n17
salon of the soul 408, 414 technology 95, 137, 143, 144, 154, 156, 183, 331,
San (bushman) 115, 115n30, 116, 120, 122 332, 348, 354, 356, 360, 361, 446, 449–
Satz vom Grund 517, 525 452, 452n41, 452n42, 453, 454, 454n49,
schematism 28, 163–165, 167–176, 215, 347, 455, 456
349, 351–353, 355, 359–361, 407 temporality 21, 43, 44, 170, 171, 174, 176, 216,
school concept of philosophy 86, 87, 141n7 242, 243, 282, 289, 293, 295, 316, 346,
secondary logos 407 350, 351, 353, 357, 358, 360, 390, 409,
Seinverständnis 389 428, 471, 476, 499
self-awareness (jikaku) 217, 217n3, 217n4, terminus a quo 77–80, 82–84, 86, 141,
222, 225, 226, 236, 259, 314–321, 323– 146n14, 281, 293, 293n10, 294, 295, 297,
325, 328–330, 332, 334, 336, 337, 346, 300, 307, 311, 390
422, 423, 438n14, 464n12 terminus ad quem 77–79, 141, 290, 293,
self-identity of absolute contradictories 293n10, 293n11, 307, 390
(mujunteki jikodōitsu) 10, 247, 248, 260, the new human 19, 386, 409, 484, 485, 489
429, 508, 511, 515, 516, 525 theoria 307
sensory imagination 233 (t)here (da) 46n17, 52, 102n16, 171, 244, 252,
sensus communis 81, 87, 88 253, 257, 258, 260, 282, 287, 292, 293,
shake hands 397 296, 388, 505, 509, 510, 512, 523
sheer possibility 401, 402, 405, 410, 414 thought experiment 127, 191
Shinran 322, 322n6, 420n1, 422, 423n3 time-space (Zeit-Raum) 260
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topos 422, 511, 513 Umwelt 97, 97n8, 251, 389, 409–411, 483
totem 114, 114n29, 406 un/ground (Abgrund) 78, 259, 373n18, 394,
trans-subjectivity 196, 206 506, 509, 515, 519, 524
transcendence 47, 52–54, 80, 118n33, 143, universalism 118, 131, 157
170, 190n1, 207, 208, 256, 258, 260, 287, universality 53, 85, 131, 157, 204, 229, 254,
289, 291, 294, 319, 350, 366, 367n3, 368, 290, 329, 403, 404, 486
369n7, 370–373, 374n22, 376, 376n29, unmoved mover 400, 402
379, 388, 389, 393, 395, 402, 409, 410,
412, 413, 421 validity (Geltung) 9, 22, 60, 83, 107, 117n32,
transcendental 21, 22, 29, 44, 47, 55, 63, 132, 135, 144, 155–157, 220, 230, 243,
82–84, 135, 137, 147, 157, 167, 168, 173, 245–251, 254, 255, 257, 258, 390
202n19, 215, 216, 229, 231, 233, 236,
242, 245–247, 250–252, 256, 258, 259, Welt (sekai, 世界) 1, 42n10, 42n11, 98n9,
259n19, 260, 260n20, 261, 271, 272, 274, 209, 244, 297, 336, 348, 349, 351, 352,
276, 277, 287, 291, 299, 299n12, 300, 505–509, 512, 514, 516–525, 526
300n13, 307, 309, 320, 346, 349, 350, Welt-Schema 30, 345, 347–351, 353, 354,
358, 359, 374n22, 376n29, 386, 387, 390, 356, 361
391, 399, 401, 404, 413, 442, 447, 466, Weltgeist 403
483, 489 Weltverständnis 389, 390
transcendental imagination 21, 39, 49, 216 work-phenomenon (Werk-Phänomen) 305
transcendental knowledge 246, 258, 259 world concept of philosophy 27, 71, 72, 86,
transcendental predicate (chōetsuteki jut- 87, 90
sugo) 259, 319 world of worlds 415
translation 7, 7n3, 11, 11n13, 38, 43n13, 77,
99n11, 103n18, 104n19, 105, 107, 118n33, zange 419, 423, 424
132, 164, 166, 178, 182, 197, 204, 254n18, Zeitgeist 402, 403
292, 292n8, 293, 294, 296, 299n12, Zen 12, 14, 17, 258, 261, 262, 270, 320, 325,
469n19, 475, 476, 477 365, 365n2, 372n18, 373, 375n25, 376,
tribe 102n15, 406 376n28, 377n30, 378, 380, 381, 381n38,
truth 15, 18, 25n20, 39n6, 96, 98, 98n10, 103, 418–420, 420n1, 421, 421n1, 423, 425,
106n22, 134, 135, 153n20, 155, 183, 190n1, 427, 429, 461n3, 504, 509, 520–522, 524,
196, 204, 205, 206n21, 207, 216, 220, 525
244, 247, 249, 256, 257, 259, 288, 288n7, Zen Buddhism 320, 322, 328, 331, 372n17,
330, 331, 332n14, 338, 380, 387, 391, 400, 373n19, 374n22, 378, 381, 418, 429
420, 453 Zufall 518, 519
two cultures 128 Zuni 107, 113, 114, 120, 121, 123
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Endres, T., Müller, R., & Schneider, D. - Kyoto in Davos. Intercultural Readings of The Cassirer-Heidegger Debate (2024)

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Heruntergeladen von Brill.com 01/28/2024 07:51:57PM

Henk Oosterling (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Gulf University for Science and Technology Kuwait)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/siip

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Joris Theo 龍男 (*2013)

Kaspar Gilles Robert (*2020)

Edin Darius (*2023)

[Today, however, Western-style humanism is at an impasse. The

1 Revisiting the Debate between Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos:

4 Anthropology as an Intercultural Philosophy of Culture 127

5 Heidegger and Cassirer on Schematism: Reflections on an Intercultural

6 Absolute Self-Contradictory Human Existence: Nishida in Davos 189

7 Cassirer and Nishida: Mathematical Crosscurrents in Their

8 Lask, Heidegger, and Nishida: From Meaning as Object to Horizon and

10 From the Problem of Meaning via Basic Phenomena to the Question of

11 The Self-Aware Individual and the Kyoto School’s Quest for a

12 The Davos Debate and Japanese Philosophy: Welt-Schema and

13 From Despair to Authentic Existence: Kierkegaard’s Anthropology of

14 Cassirer, Heidegger, and Miki: The Logic of the Dual Transcendence of

16 On Homo Faber: Nishida and Miki 431

17 Anti-Cartesianism East and West: Watsuji and Heidegger on the

18 Miki and the Myth of Humanism 481

19 Hineingehalten in das Nichts: Die Metaphysik und das Andere des

Index of Names 529

Tobias, Ralf, and Domenico in July 2023

PhD student at the University of Hildesheim in the field of intercultural phi-

John W.M. Krummel

Hans Peter Liederbach

2009 he held the Roche Chair in Interreligious Research at Nanzan University

Esther Oluffa Pedersen

1 Why Davos Today?

1.1 Questioning the Davos Debate

1.2 From a Global Perspective

2 Restaging the Davos Disputation Interculturally

2.1 German-Japanese Confluences

Japanism, Philosopherism and Personalism were a search for a philoso-

Reflecting on and overcoming the conditions of Davos from an external per-

academic philosophy in Japan followed the lead of German-speaking philoso-

inaugural lecture on Was ist Metaphysik? was translated, as Keijijōgaku to ha

2.2 Against the “Japan and Heidegger” Bias

Heidegger is not worth your time.

We shall see, in particular, how the relatively less familiar philosophical

2.2.1 Meeting Points between Ernst Cassirer and Nishida Kitarō

5 Cf. thz 4, p. 34.

10 For more details, see Endres, 2021, p. 289.

2.2.2 Systematic Convergences between Nishida Kitarō and Ernst

2.2.2.1 Locating Nishida Kitarō in Relation to His German Speaking

2.2.2.3 Culture and Philosophy

2.3 »Kyōto in Davos«

An anthropology that has philosophical meaning must be a historical

15 『人間学』 nkz 7, p. 225: 「哲学的意義を有する人間学は歴史的人間学でなければ

16 Nishida, 1958, p. 141: 『叡智的世界』 nkz 4, pp. 148–149: 「私は徹底的批評主義の立

humanity” (Gordon, 2010, p. 6) a dispute “between thrownness and spontane-

Today, however, Western-style humanism is at an impasse. The imper-

To see without the nothingness [無にして見るといふ事なくしては] would

There are those such as Scheler who speak of it [nothingness] as impo-

There, we must discover a new meaning of humanity. When we say this,

faculty to the fundamentally spontaneous character of reason. These different

Modern epistemology begins with the opposition between that which