This article is transferred from | Union of Continental Ideas
In today's cloudy war, what can philosophy do?
This is a practical question, depending on the choice of the philosopher. Looking back on the history of the past 100 years, most philosophers have kept the bottom line before the name of righteousness, condemned the war acts of aggression and expansion, and advocated respect, friendship and peace between countries and people. But we are also sorry to see that a great philosopher like Heidegger was so indifferent in his political judgment that he was entangled with the Nazis. Coincidentally, the philosophers of the "Kyoto School," who are representatives of modern Japan philosophy, also fell into the path of waving the flag for militarism during Japan's war of aggression against China and the Pacific War.
Xu Yingjin's "Philosophy and War: A Sketch of the Six Philosophers of the Kyoto School" makes a detailed analysis of the core ideas of the Kyoto School, and at the same time critically examines the complex relationship between its philosophical views and political positions, and tries to use the Kyoto School's own philosophy to criticize the words and deeds of the members of the Kyoto School during World War II.
It is a book that contemplates history and confronts the present. As Xu Yingjin said:
"The philosophical critique of the wartime political words and deeds of the Kyoto School in Japan has a universal significance that transcends the region of Japan. It's like dissecting the body of a Japan patient who died of cancer: as doctors, we are not interested in the nationality of the deceased, but in the cancer itself. ”
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to the book, "From Heidegger to the Kyoto School."
From Heidegger, to the Kyoto School,
Why do philosophers repeatedly go astray into advocating war?
1.
On May 27, 1933, in a hall at the University of Freiburg, Germany, the great philosopher Martin · Heidegger, who had been promoted to president a month earlier, gave a lecture to the faculty and staff about how teachers and students should conduct labor and military training under the new state system dominated by the Nazi Party, and use knowledge to serve the country. It is difficult for the outside world to see his words and actions at the moment as a show under irresistible political pressure, because as early as May 10, he actively participated in the burning of books written by Jewish intellectuals, along with a large number of Marxist readings, in the square outside the university library. At the same time, Heidegger began to faithfully implement Hitler's other anti-Semitic policies on campus, such as forbidding Husserl, his academic mentor and the "head" of the phenomenological movement, to set foot on campus to borrow materials – simply because he was Jewish. Although Heidegger resigned as rector of the University of Freiburg in April 1934, he continued to wear Nazi brooches to private parties, and even wrote to the Nazi Ministry of Education suggesting that politically credible Nazi party members lead young students to training camps. Ironically, in the final phase of the war, Heidegger's incessant political loyalty did not earn him the treatment of "exemption from servitude" (intellectuals who received this treatment could not dig trenches). It was an opportunity for self-reflection, but he refused to apologize for his Nazi actions after the war – even though philosophers such as Marcuse, Derrida, and Sartre had clearly expressed their displeasure. Thus, one of the greatest mysteries in the history of modern Western philosophy emerges: why was Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, a hard-hearted Nazi? And a person who doesn't even want to say "I'm sorry"? In this context, does studying Heidegger's philosophy entail certain uncontrollable political risks? Is Heidegger's philosophy really "toxic"?
Now let's look at the other side of the coin. Despite Heidegger's astonishing performance during the Nazi period, few doubted the France philosopher Sartre's loyalty to the anti-fascist cause. He was captured by the Germans in 1940 after the Germany invasion of France, where he was a meteorologist and remained active on the cultural front after escaping. However, if one compares Sartre's masterpiece Being and Nothingness with Heidegger's masterpiece Being and Time, he will be surprised to find that the conceptual structure of the two books is so similar! Heidegger, for example, distinguishes between the "being" (i.e., the human individual) and the "being in general" (i.e., being such as animals and inorganic matter in general): the former is able to grasp the meaning of "being", while the latter is not. Similarly, Sartre also distinguishes between "self-existent" (i.e., an existence whose mode of existence can change freely at any time) and "self-existent" (i.e., a being whose mode of existence and fixed essence are bound to each other), and believes that the dignity of human beings lies in the fact that they are "self-existent". From this point of view, the pursuit of freedom has become a common theme of the two philosophers, Heidegger and Sartre. Specifically, "freedom" in Heidegger's terminology is "true being"—in this state of being, it is free from a certain state of "ordinary people" caused by the gossip of people, and can make its own life decisions in the existential consciousness of death; Correspondingly, in Sartre's version of the "true state", "self-being" is also expected to get rid of a certain "state of self-deception" instilled by others, and thus realize that he has the freedom of unlimited choices that others cannot delete.
Although the above philosophical description is very abstract, the theoretical implications are obviously incompatible with totalitarian teachings. When both philosophers asked the individual to suspend the judgment of others and plan the path of life according to their own hearts, how could they allow the individual to accept Goebbels' brainwashing and willingly provide ideological lubrication for the operation of the fascist military machine? From this point of view, the relationship between Sartre's philosophy and his political choices is coherent, while the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and his actual political choices is confusing. At the same time, the following politically conflicting behaviors resulting from the abstraction of philosophical language can be regarded as the practice of Heidegger's philosophy:
(1) It is precisely because Heidegger asks us to suspend the opinions of "ordinary people" that we need to suspend the voices of "ordinary people" such as "abiding by the Treaty of Versailles" and actively prepare for the rearmament of Germany (as advocated by the Nazi propaganda machine).
(2) It is precisely because Heidegger asks us to suspend the opinions of "ordinary people" that we need to suspend the voices of "ordinary people" such as "soldiers must unconditionally obey the orders of their superiors", and secretly prepare to assassinate Hitler like Count Stauffenberg.
So, what kind of interpretation is in line with Heidegger's original intention?
My opinion on this subject may surprise some readers: if we limit ourselves to being a student of philosophy rather than a student of the history of ideas, what we are suspending here is precisely the impulse to ascertain Heidegger's original intentions. Rather, the truth is this: once a philosophical work is completed, there is an interesting phenomenon of "alienation", because the rationale of the text itself is to a considerable extent beyond the subjective control of the author. Even if philosophers add "private goods" to their works, these "private goods" will inevitably be constrained by the logic of the text itself, and will be slowly marginalized in the subsequent logical evolution of the text.
According to the above line of thought, even if Heidegger stuffed hatred of the modern techno-capital complex represented by United States civilization into his text and focused this hatred on the Jews, it would not logically be deduced that he should support the Nazis. Rather, Nazism encompassed much more than mere anti-Semitism, especially in the worldwide quest for military supremacy, which in turn was based on powerful industry. Thus, Nazi Germany's own military-industrial complex itself was another techno-capital complex, only on a smaller scale than its United States counterpart. From this point of view, since Heidegger did not explicitly support the Nazis in his mainstream philosophical literature, and this support would lead to incoherence within his ideological system, then Heidegger's philosophy is not a Nazi philosophy from the perspective of philosophical texts. Nor should Heidegger's performance in political life be the primary basis for judging the direction of his philosophy, just as Schopenhauer's meanness in his private life is not enough to make us doubt the compassionate sentiments expressed in his philosophical texts.
However, it is indeed sad that a great philosopher such as Heidegger is so absurd in his political judgment, because it is so inconsistent with the public's expectations of humanistic intellectuals - not to mention our expectations of humanistic intellectuals' "ethical bottom line", they should at least have "common sense". But is this expectation reasonable? Is it really "he who thinks greatly, he who goes astray"?
Coincidentally, while Heidegger tried to persuade the Nazi top brass to accept his own philosophical interpretation of the Nazi movement in the spirit of "hot face and cold buttocks", on the other side of the world, the cooperation between Japan philosophers, mainly represented by the "Kyoto School", and the fascist regime in Japan went further in level and scale.
Now invite the reader to imagine a globe in mind, and then take Luoyang, Henan Province, as the center, and shift it eastward about a time zone while keeping the latitude roughly the same—this is roughly where Kyoto, Japan is located (by the way, in ancient Japan, Kyoto was also considered a copy version of Luojing). Now we are going to leave the University of Freiburg, where Heidegger is located, and go to Kyoto University, which is much closer to us.
2.
So, what is the "Kyoto School"?
Roughly speaking, the Kyoto School is a philosophical school centered on Kyoto University that attempts to combine the discursive structure of continental philosophy with the spiritual essence of Buddhism. The core figures are Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Moto, and the others have been more or less influenced by them, and although their positions are different, they have developed and even criticized Nishida and Tanabe's ideas in their own forms, so they can be regarded as a whole with blurred boundaries. The significance of the Kyoto School is that, on the one hand, as a representative of modern Japan philosophy, it has made original contributions to the development of world philosophy with its ideological stance of "absolute nothingness", which is very different from Western philosophy, and has been increasingly valued by the international academic community. On the other hand, some members of the Kyoto School were in academic flourishing at a time when Japan was on the road of no return to militarism, and their pro-war rhetoric before and during World War II had a negative impact at the time and caused a long controversy after the war. It can be said that how to understand and view the Kyoto School is not only a question of intellectual history, but also a practical one.
As mentioned earlier, Heidegger's proximity to the Nazis was largely a personal act of his own, not the product of some kind of organizational guidance. In contrast, the "organizational factor" in the behavior pattern of Japan is more obvious, and the cooperation between the Kyoto School and the Japanese government often relies on some kind of organization as an intermediary. For example, in 1933, Japan established a think tank called the Showa Research Association, which was actually a staff group of Fumiro Konoe, who had served as prime minister three times. This organization has vigorously advocated the establishment of the so-called "East Asian Synergy Theory" to whitewash Japan's aggressive activities in Asia. Kiyoshi Miki, who had always been regarded as the left wing of the Kyoto School, was also involved in related activities for a time. The chief philosopher of the Kyoto School, Nishida Kitaro, maintained a special personal relationship with Fumiro Konoe (the latter had attended the former's philosophy class), and Nishida himself even gave Emperor Hirohito a "lecture on imperial philosophy" about the role that Japan had to play in the course of world history. Gen Tanabe, the second figure of the Kyoto School, used the philosophical resources provided by his self-created "logic of species" to argue the "rationality" of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", and became an extremely active philosopher during the war. The more right-leaning Masaaki Takasaka, Iwao Takayama, Naritaka Suzuki, Yasumasa Oshima, and others, as well as Keiji Nishitani, who seemed to be light and talked about the "problem of nihilism," had a tacit understanding with Mitsumasa Yonechi and Soyoshi Takagi of the Japan Navy, and became the Navy's hardcore allies in the humanities. The only philosopher in the Kyoto School who completely dissociated himself from fascism was Jun Tosaka, who, because of his Marxist status, was always regarded as a peripheral of the Kyoto School, and even the harshest contemporary critic of the mainstream thinkers of the Kyoto School.
The core rhetoric used by the mainstream of the Kyoto School to defend fascism revolves around the key word "modern supergram" (modern の超克). The core proposition of the so-called "modern super-gram" is to overcome the shortcomings of Western cultural mechanism and individualism through a cultural-institutional innovation that integrates the essence of Eastern and Western cultures, thus opening a new chapter in human history. At first glance, this argument is attractive, especially for East Asian intellectuals. There are three reasons for this:
First, as a relatively passive party in the course of world history, East Asian intellectuals are in a very delicate situation: on the one hand, the pressure brought by Western culture, and on the other hand, the inertia brought about by their own traditions, how to balance the left and right sources and the beauty of the two can be described as challenging. In this context, the proposal to use the word "supergram" to try to synthesize the essence of Eastern and Western cultures would seem tempting. At the same time, since the object of "super-gram" is some important feature of Western culture, and the subject of "super-gram" is tacitly East Asian culture, this will also greatly increase the national self-esteem of the commentator.
Second, the invasion of Asia by Western culture was accompanied by colonial activities, and the ethical rationality of colonial activities has always been criticized. Therefore, the exploration of a global cultural transmission method that is different from colonialism has naturally become the object of consideration of East Asian intellectuals, and this exploration certainly has the meaning of "modern super-gram".
Third, the transmission path of Western culture is highly overlapping with the transmission path of capitalism, so the problems of class differentiation and human degradation brought about by capitalism have also led to the formation of "super-restraint" psychology to a considerable extent.
Although the concept of "modern super-gram" is not unreasonable from a purely theoretical point of view, in real history, the promotion of this concept by the Kyoto School of Japan has played a bad role in providing academic cover for the aggressive activities of Japan imperialism. As Japan Marxist Shibu Hiromatsu pointed out in his book "On the "Transcendence of Modern Times," the scholars of the Kyoto School who participated in the round table organized by Japan during the wartime have forgotten one basic fact when criticizing the West: The mode of capital expansion of Japan imperialism is no different from that of Western imperialism, and even exceeds it in terms of "eating appearance." Therefore, from the perspective of historical materialism, Japan's militarist actions have not "surpassed" Western imperialism at all, but rather clumsily imitated some of the tricks that Western imperialism has played long ago. However, the mainstream of the Kyoto School, dominated by great vanity, made the mistake of "double standards" in evaluating historical materials: when talking about Western imperialism, it focused on its metaphysical parts, while when talking about Japan, it was willing to talk only about its metaphysical parts, as if this purely subjective discourse could cover up the basic fact that "the logic of capital eats both Japan and the United States."
In addition, proponents of the "modern super-restraint" theory ignore another important fact: while Japan launched a war of aggression, Western imperialism was transforming to a less bloody mode of plunder—that is, precisely because the expansion of the capitalist production system required a relatively peaceful international environment, the United States, Britain, France and other countries began to actively explore international mechanisms to prevent the outbreak of a new world war after World War I. The so-called "League of Nations", "Wilson System" and "Washington Conference" were all the fruits of such efforts. Judging from the general trend of the development of human civilization, the humanitarian implications of this transformation should certainly be affirmed - and the diplomatic space left by the "Washington Conference" also gave China, which was weak at that time, a precious time for development. However, the common sense that "peace is always better than war" seemed to be unaware of the mainstream of the Kyoto School at that time. They tend to talk about the war in a romantic way, as if the fans were talking about the World Cup.
Why this quirky situation? I think there are three general factors:
First, Japan's traditional culture lacks the theoretical resources to respect individual life, but "sacrificing one's life for righteousness" has become the default ethical norm. Especially since the Meiji era, the emperor has been deified, the traditional belief in Shinto has been established as the state religion, and bushido has evolved from a feudal samurai moral code to a spiritual creed of absolute loyalty to the emperor, and has become the spiritual pillar of militarism. In such a political and cultural atmosphere, it is difficult to develop a pacifist ideology based on respect for individual life.
Second, before the full-scale outbreak of Japan's war of aggression against China, Japan lacked the painful memories of World War I similar to Britain and France, and the terrible memories of the Russo-Japanese War have been slowly forgotten by the people at this moment, and the Japanese at that time naturally lacked the ideological tendency of the mainstream Western people (especially Britain and France) to favor peace.
Third, most members of the Kyoto School lacked actual military service experience, and they lacked an emotional understanding of the cruelty and inmanuability of war. Ironically, Jun Tosaka, the only artillery officer in the Kyoto School, was a staunch anti-war Marxist fighter, and Miki Kiyoshi, who had participated in the right-wing organization "Showa Research Association," was "dispatched" by the military department to serve as an army in the Japanese-occupied Philippines, and his thinking quickly turned to the Communist Party of Japan, which was still underground at that time. From this point of view, the formation of the mainstream Romantic view of war in the Kyoto School has a certain historical accident, and this view of war may be substantially revised in another "possible world" in which they participated in actual wars.
The last sentence of the previous paragraph contains two implications: from a negative point of view, at least in the real world, the mainstream of the Kyoto School does lack a sense of the horrors of modern warfare, and at the same time lacks a rational understanding of the actual diplomatic mechanisms that prevent the outbreak of war. This illustrates the lack of necessary resources in its philosophical system to systematically justify the need for peace mechanisms. On the positive side, however, the resilience of the core philosophical views of the Kyoto School's mainstream should not be underestimated, and we must not hastily assume that such errors are necessarily related to their core philosophical arguments because of errors in their specific political statements. We might be able to hypothesize whether it would be possible to dismantle the erroneous political views that these philosophers once held, without drastically revising the core philosophical theories of the Kyoto School. Just like puffer fish, after being detoxified, it can still be served as a delicacy.
There are many members of the Kyoto School, and in the limited space of this book, six people are mainly mentioned: Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Moto, Miki Kiyoshi, Kuki Shuzo, Tetsuro Watsuji, and Jun Tosaka. Although these six people are on the left and right sides of the political spectrum, they all have very profound and original philosophical achievements, and the Western research materials for them are also relatively rich. Personally, I think they are all world-class philosophers on the same level as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (as to whether this private opinion is reasonable, readers are left to judge for themselves after reading the whole book). Therefore, if we want to discuss in detail the connection between the core philosophical views of the Kyoto School and its political statements, these six thinkers are more suitable sources. In contrast, due to the relative estrangement of the Kuki and Watsuji from the Japanese military (the Kuki did not even live until the outbreak of the Pacific War), books on the same subject treat both thinkers with contempt – not to mention Tosaka, who was imprisoned for spreading Marxism. By the way, apart from the above six, Takasaka Masaaki, Takayama Iwao, Suzuki Naritaka, and Oshima Yasumasa, who are also members of the Kyoto School, are not included in the scope of this book because they lack the same level of original metaphysical and epistemological contributions as the above six people, and the premise of this book is to try to contrast the Kyoto School with Heidegger, who is a first-class philosopher. Keiharu Nishitani, who has both an international philosophical reputation and an active participant in the wartime talks related to "modern Chaoke", does not enter the scope of this book's reconstruction, because his core philosophical work was completed after the war. By the same standard, the work of Shinichi Hisamatsu, Kanteru Ueda, and others, who had little to do with the war, is also not the focus of this book. Of course, a larger book on Japan philosophy should naturally include the work of these philosophers.
3.
I have been preparing this book for several years, and during that time I have published many essays on Japan philosophy in both English and Chinese, and I wanted to accumulate it for a few more years before writing it—however, something that has happened in the world recently that makes me sleepless forced me to write immediately. War is not far away, and the use of humanistic "knowledge" spliced together by the chauvinistic "scissorhands" of great power chauvinism to advocate for war is still not extinct. At that time, the deceptive slogans of "the same culture, the same species", "oppose the white colonization of Asia", "Asia is the Asia of Asians", and "Get out of the Western Pacific" gave birth to escalating regional expansion policies such as "East Asian Synergy", "Japan, Manchuria, and China", and "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". It is frustrating that, as Hegel said, the only lesson that humanity can learn from history is that it never learns any historical lessons, and there are still many cases of countries taking similar scripts and annexing the lands of neighboring countries in other parts of the planet. From this point of view, the purpose of writing this book is by no means to criticize Japan culture—rather, it is aimed at some kind of "fascist virus" that can mutate and reappear at any time. The virus can infect Japan at one time and anyone else at another – as long as the latter has not been vaccinated against all aggressive expansion.
And what is wrapped in the warp and weft of this book is such an ideological vaccine. I certainly wasn't so narcissistic as to think that this book would serve to dissuade all future aggression, but the publication of this book would certainly give some comfort to my troubled conscience at the moment. No matter how bad the world becomes, no matter how insignificant one's voice may become, philosophers must choose between the righteous and the trampling on it. At the same time, I will show readers with the utmost sincerity that after the removal of those hateful viruses, Japan philosophy is so beautiful as it is, just as Japan's own national art form shows a state of freedom that is completely different from the uniform fascist aesthetic. And the existence of a free state of mind, even if humble enough to whisper a haiku, is in itself a rebellion against all totalitarian tyranny, because the non-rhyming form of the haiku itself implies disdain for attempts at collective discipline. From this perspective, when the Kyoto School philosophers defended the war, they betrayed both the central arguments of their own philosophy and the obscuration of key elements of Japan's cultural tradition. What this book is to use the Kyoto School's own philosophy to criticize the pro-war words and deeds of the members of the Kyoto School.
"Philosophy and War: Sketches of the Thought of the Six Philosophers of the Kyoto School", Xu Yingjin, Casting and Engraving Culture, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2024.6
The Kyoto School is a philosophical school centered on Kyoto University that attempts to combine the discursive structure of European philosophy with the spiritual essence of Buddhism. Its core characters are Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Moto. On the one hand, as a representative of modern Japan philosophy, the Kyoto School has made original contributions to world philosophy with its ideological stance of "absolute nothingness", which is very different from Western philosophy. On the other hand, some members of the Kyoto School were at a time when Japan was on the road of no return to militarism, and their pro-war rhetoric before and during World War II had a negative impact at the time and caused a long controversy after the war. How to understand and view the Kyoto School is not only a question of intellectual history, but also a practical one.
This book introduces in detail the philosophical ideas of the core members of the Kyoto School, and through cross-cultural comparisons, puts their theories into the broad context of world philosophy, thereby demonstrating the characteristics of Japan philosophy. In this sense, this book can be regarded as an "introduction to 20th-century Japan philosophy." At the same time, this book makes a case-by-case and nuanced analysis of the relationship between the different philosophical views of different members of the Kyoto School and their political statements, trying to prove that the core philosophical views of the mainstream of the Kyoto School are not necessarily logically related to their political statements, but their pursuit of the state of subject-object integration may indeed lead to the loss of a sense of boundaries and a contempt for the international order of "equality between countries" under the Westphalian system.
A critical examination of the complex relationship between the philosophical and political positions of the Kyoto School during World War II highlights the intellectual sincerity and moral courage of the authors of this book at a time when the clouds of war linger. This book will not prevent the world from repeating the mistakes of the past, but it will at least help us to recognize the rhyme of history in the midst of all the noise.
——Zhou Lian [Professor, School of Philosophy, Renmin University of Chinese]
It is a book that refuses to explore the philosophy of the Kyoto School in an academic vacuum, abstract way. Starting from the history of ideas and the history of cultural exchanges between the East and the West, this book explains the philosophy of the philosophers of the Kyoto School and the subtle relationship between this philosophy and war from a psychological perspective. The content of the author's analysis is nuanced and philosophical. This book is a great way to provoke people to think about the possibilities of new philosophy, and it is worth reading for all those who like philosophical speculation.
——Liao Qinbin [Professor, Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University]
A refreshing "History of Japan Philosophy in the 20th Century" based on the changes of the "Kyoto School" is also a masterpiece of cultural criticism from a philosophical perspective with a political perspective and social concern.
——Sha Qingqing [Expert on Japan culture and history]