Abstract
Arguably, emotions figure prominently in contemporary philosophy, not only in the fields of aesthetics and philosophy of religion, but also in the study of morality and cognition. Expressions like “emotional intelligence” are now commonly used and there is even talk of an affective turn in the cognitive sciences. Twentieth-century philosophers paved the way with conceptual creations like “poietic thinking” (dichtende Denken), “sentient intelligence” (inteligencia sentiente) or “poetic reason” (razón poética). It is also widely acknowledged that our apparently rational thoughts, calculations and decisions are inextricably intertwined with our emotions, which even alter our mental judgement without making us aware of it. Thus, the clear contrast between reason and feelings―as separate and mutually exclusive―that runs through much of Western philosophical thought seems to be fading away. We could ask ourselves whether this has been the case in other philosophical traditions, or whether, far from it, this contrast has led them to privilege the rational over the affective. Moreover, in valuing these other traditions as philosophical, it is also worth considering the extent to which this opposition remains valid, perhaps behind the scenes.
「わが心深き底あり喜も憂の波もとどかじとおもふ」
(My heart is deep in the depths of my soul,
and I fear neither joy nor sorrow shall ever reach it)
(February 12, 1923, NKZ 17: 398)
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, see Heidegger (2003).
- 2.
Zubiri (1980).
- 3.
Zambrano (1996).
- 4.
Michael Finkenthal, for instance, argues logic and affectivity were in stark and seemingly irreducible opposition during the entire history of the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates to Hegel, and in this respect mentions Spinoza’s often quoted words: non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intellegere (not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand) (Nishida 1997: 2).
- 5.
Translated into Spanish as Pensamiento prefilosófico [Pre-philosophical Thought] (Frankfort and Frankfort 1954).
- 6.
Nishida scholars tend to distinguish three periods in his work, the first one is called psychologistic and voluntaristic (1911–1923), the second one is centered on logic and epistemology (1924–1930), and the third one is dominated by history and praxis (1930–1945).
- 7.
Nishida’s turn towards historicism in his later writings would have attenuated the dichotomy between interiority and exteriority, which he had maintained with a special emphasis on interiority (Cestari 1998: 191).
- 8.
Now included in Shisô to taiken, the first volume of his Collected Works.
- 9.
In the catalog of the books that Nishida had in his personal library, this work is found in Volume 2 of the German edition Werke by Wilhem Bölsche. Leipzig: Hesse und Becker, 1910? [934980; Nishida bunko: 71]
- 10.
As Aldo Tollini observes, in Japanese culture, furusato signifies the longing for a lost dimension: our own dimension, that is, our self. However, Buddhism sees the longing for furusato as an attachment, and therefore involves dissatisfaction: “kokoro is disturbed and does not find rest. (...) its quest must lead to the final abandonment of the idea of a self.” (Tollini 2020: 24). Of interest to our argument, the arts in medieval Japan were inspired by this Buddhist abandonment of the self and kokoro became “the spiritual state in which the perfection of art could grow.” (Id.).
- 11.
Regarding this link between nature, self and infinity, it is well known that the leading intellectuals and artists of Romanticism sought to reconnect humanity with feeling and spirituality, and some of them found that connection in nature. However, nature was not necessarily the subject of their works, rather the feeling they experienced in the presence of nature, the encounter with divinity or the sublime, that is, the power or force of beauty that is so great that it surpasses our ability to comprehend and we stand before its immensity in awe and terror. This aesthetic experience of the sublime is expressed in terms similar to how the phenomenologist of religion Rudolf Otto described the religious experience of the numinous as mysterium tremendum et fascinans in his work Das Heilige (1911). In fact, in some of these thinkers the idea of the sublime seems at times to replace the divine as found in nature or in themselves following Kant’s idea of the sublime as discoverable in us, in the mind, though it escapes our power of judgement.
- 12.
Maraldo (2020: 10) points out the role of infinite systems of the German mathematician Richard Dedekind (1831–1916). As in his early work, if reality was conceived of as a direct expansion of the present, it tended to reify infinity, since time seemed a repetition of the same and identity ignored the differences presented by life. Dedekind’s infinite systems led him to think of infinity as a set of relations in which the relation of the whole to the parts allows for difference between sets but maintains infinity.
- 13.
The German art theorist Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895) is known for his theory of pure visibility, and the productive moment of artistic activity was the focus of his research. Together with the artists Adolf von Hildebrand and Hans von Marées, he formed the first formalist circle, whose influence was crucial for modern art theory and art history. Fiedler recognizes the autonomy of the artistic and explains the universal value of works of art by the fact that in them the artist dispenses with his particular interests and the external determinations of artistic activity to give life to the images themselves. In turn, these representations determine our perception of the world and constitute it.
- 14.
The essay entitled Kanjō 感情follows the one called Kankaku 感覚 in Ishiki no mondai 意識の問題 (Problems of consciousness). Depending on the context, the first, kankaku can be translated as “sense”, “sensation”, “feeling” and “intuition”. In their partial translation of the essay into English, David Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo (Nishida 1978) translate Kanjō 感情 as “affective feeling.” However, there is another Japanese term that could be employed to translate “affect,” that is, jōi情意, which also appears occasionally in other essays in the same work.
- 15.
The English Word “feeling” is derived from the Old Saxon folian and the Old High German fühlen.
- 16.
The poem Voyelles (Vowels) is a sonnet in alexandrines by Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) written in 1871 but first published in 1883.
- 17.
The sonnet of “Correspondences” is part of the work Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire.
- 18.
Pathos, which derives, via the Latin passio, from the verb patior (pati, passus sum), “to suffer, endure, resign oneself to, allow”—is one of the possible translations of the Greek pathos [πάθος], from paschein [πάσχειν], “to receive an impression or sensation, to undergo treatment, to be punished.” (Sissa 2014: 745).
- 19.
Although Lipps is remembered as the father of the first scientific theory of Einfühlung (“feeling into,” “empathy”), it seems that the term had been coined earlier by Robert Vischer in 1873. Lipps’s theory is said to have inspired philosophers such as Husserl, Dilthey, Weber, and Edith Stein, and we may add, Nishida. Jacinto Zavala (1992: 11) mentions Lipps and Vischer together with Hildebrand, Konrad von Lange, Max Klinger, Karl Groos, Hermann Lotze, Lessing, Liebermann, Tolstoy and Volkelt as the authors who influenced the aesthetic theory that Nishida develops in Art and morality (Geijutsu to dotoku, 1923).
- 20.
K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst (1896); L. Coellen, Die neue Malerei: der Impressionismus, Van Gogh und Cézanne; die Romantik der neuen Malerei, Hodler, Gauguin und Matisse; Picasso und der Kubismus; die Expressionisten (1912).
- 21.
The lecture was published in the journal Mujintō 24 also in 1919 and now it is included in Volume 14 of Nishida’s Complete writings. For an English translation, see Nishida (1997).
- 22.
Cf. Caruana and Viola (2018: 111–16).
- 23.
It is well known that “emptiness” (Sanskrit śūnyatā; Japanese kū 空) is a key notion in Mahayana Buddhist thought as absolute reality or unground, and Nishida was familiar with it. Yet, he prefers to speak of “absolute nothingness” (zettai mu 絶対無) for instance, as the ultimate and all-encompassing basho.
- 24.
It would be hardly surprising because Heisig claims Nishida does not to have overcome Hegel’s sublation of opposites as thoroughly as he wanted to. He argues Nishida devaluates the experience of the relation as it would be seen in his description of self-consciousness as “an absolutely contradictory self-identity,” in which identity only preserves contradictions by devaluing them.
- 25.
Cf. Nishitani’s idea of “emptiness in sentiment” (jōi no uchi no kū 情意の内の空) in “Emptiness and Identity” (『空と即』 [Kū to soku], 1982 (Nishitani 1986–1995).
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Bouso, R. (2024). The Blue Flower in the Mirror of True Emptiness: An Approach to Nishida’s Active Feeling. In: Atsushi, K., Keiichi, N., Wing Keung, L. (eds) Tetsugaku Companion to Feeling. Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42186-0_2
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