The general understanding of pictorial representation as constructed through the viewpoint of the artist outside the picture space is mediated through our present-day familiarity with geometric perspective and photography. This presumes the existence of an external viewpoint. This understanding of painting has become common sense. In this way a 'historical product' has been taken as an 'a-historical essence' of our understanding. Even now, many theories on painting seem to remain caught in such a essentialist thinking. In this paper I discuss (...) the problem of essentialist thinking, basing my views on the philosophy of Kiyoshi Miki, one of the important philosophers of the 'Kyoto School', and then reexamine the belief in the existence of viewpoints outside of painting. (shrink)

Članek je razdeljen na dva dela. V prvem delu je obravnavan aktivni značaj gledanja. Ta je tako aktiven, da angažira naše celotno bitje v izkustvenem polju. V drugem delu je nasprotno poudarjena aktivna moč sveta: neprosojni pojav, ki poseduje to močno privlačnost, se imenuje v japonščini »oko« – ravno tako kot organ vida. Po teh analizah je obravnavana specifičnost vida med petimi čutili.

Il s’agit ici de mettre en évidence une propriété de la beauté, à la fois subtile et évidente, mais largement ignorée de l’esthétique occidentale : la capacité du beau à embellir ce qui l’entoure. L’analyse s’appuie sur le commentaire d’un waka d’Akiko Yosano et étudie les proximités et les différences de cette beauté embellissante et de concepts philosophiques européens qui s’en rapprochent : l’éclat selon Platon, l’aura selon W. Benjamin, et le cérémonial, selon H. Kuhn.

LTP is thought to be an experimental model for studying the cellular mechanism of learning and memory. Shors & Matzel review some contradictory data concerning the linkage between LTP and memory and suggest that LTP does not underlie learning and memory. LTP is a cellular and synaptic process and cannot be a memory mechanism. In fact, it is a cellular information storage mechanism.

This article looks at the past, present, and future of the study of aesthetics. The early modern period, during which aesthetics came into being, was a great historical turning point for civilization. So, too, is our own day. Looked at this way, aesthetics should show a different face than the one we are used to. Aesthetics is generally considered to be the philosophy of art, yet, with art regarded as an autonomous cultural field, aesthetics commonly gives the impression of being (...) isolated from philosophy in general. This article explores a completely different aesthetics. When it was coming into existence, aesthetics was charged with the real and urgent philosophical problem of its time: how to construct a new world. (shrink)

“How is society possible?” posed by Georg Simmel has been one of the fundamental problems in sociology. Although various attempts have been made to solve it, I conceive that “society” in the problem remains to be articulated. Simmel provides us with two concepts of society—“society as interaction” and “society as unity”—to be distinguished. Some research traditions in sociology have been concerned with the former, others have dealt with the latter. On the other hand, Simmel maintains continuity between them. In this (...) sense, his concept of “society” has “ambiguous” characteristics. It seems to me that in the ambiguous style Simmel had intended to reveal the secret of “society,” but in the end could not have got to it. In my opinion, in order to unveil the secret, it is required that, drawing on Schutzian phenomenologically oriented sociology, sociologists or social scientists make a differentiation between the society which is realized or brought about by partners with no need of an observer, “the social,” and the society which an observer recognizes by use of the concept. In this article, from a Schutzian point of view, I wish to articulate “society” and to indicate four phases of “society.” These investigations lead to a reformulation of the problem of “how is society possible?” and sociology (or the social sciences) which makes possible the deeper understanding of society. (shrink)

This paper describes the situation of philosophy in Japan with respect to the question of internationalism. For more than a hundred years, Japan took Western culture as its model and European philosophy as the authentic philosophy. This tendency was paradoxically strengthened by the post‐war humanism. It gave us Japanese philosophers a clear discipline to work in but cut us off from our own native culture, history, and philosophical traditions. In wishing to recover this loss, I argue that it is necessary (...) to distinguish between two forms of internationalism: humanistic and merely fashionable. The latter in fact derives from domestic reasons. (shrink)

「西欧」と「近代」を相対化し、今、エスニックの次元から『日本哲学』を創始すること=「われわれの問題に発して思索する」スタイルを提唱。.

0 From Sansui to Keshiki My subject here is the nature of landscape. The word “landscape” is to be understood in what follows in the aesthetic sense: I wish to clarify what we experience in landscape as a typical scene of natural beauty. For most people, the nature of this experience may be so transparent that its analysis is superfluous. I don’t, however, find the matter so straightforward. The fact that “a landscape” can also signify a landscape painting would seem (...) to indicate that landscap... (shrink)