Japanese philosophy study group
10:00am - 10:45am (l'heure au Japon 17h-17h45) Paper followed by half-hour discussion
Ameline GARNIER (M2 Inalco)
"Questioning philosophical language : reflections around Mori Arimasa (1911-1976)"
11:20am-12:05pm (Japan time 6:20pm-7:05pm) followed by half-hour discussion
IKEGAMI Kôsuke (PhD student, University of Tôkyô)
"A reflection on the political thought of Nakae Chômin (1847-1901): the foundation of Political Dialogues between Three Drunks"
12:40pm: end of session
For Zoom link, please contact: takako.saito@inalco.fr from May 22, 2024
10:00 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. (Japanese time 5:00 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.) Lecture followed by half-hour discussion
Ameline GARNIER (M2 Inalco)
"Questioning philosophical language: reflections on Mori Arimasa (1911-1976)".
11h20-12h05 (Japanese time 18h20-19h05) followed by half-hour discussion
IKEGAMI Kôsuke (Doctoral student, University of Tokyo)
"A reflection on the political thought of Nakae Chômin (1847-1901): the founding of Political Dialogues between Three Drunkards"
12:40pm: end of session
For the Zoom link, please contact: takako.saito@inalco.fr from May 22, 2024
e-mail contact: takako.saito@inalco.fr, akinobukuroda@gmail.com, arthur.mitteau@univ-amu.fr, simon.ebersolt@gmail.com, yukiko.kuwayama@inalco.fr
Summary / Summary
Ameline Garnier, "Questioning philosophical language: reflections around Mori Arimasa"
What can philosophical language do? The question of language is fundamentally linked to the philosophical gesture. Mori Arimasa (1911-1976), more than any other philosopher, necessarily elaborated his own style and language in the course of forming his own system of thought, proposing a philosophical prose that was unique in the Japanese philosophical landscape of his time. Abandoning academic writing, he chose the Montaignian essay as the model for his quest for true experience. Having painfully experienced the difficulty of expressing himself in a foreign language, and thus the gap between words and reality, Mori thematizes the anguish born of this ordeal and attributes to it an existential function, making it the condition for the advent of individuality. In this way, it is through the crisis of language that we are enabled to think for the first time about our individuality in the world. This anguish is followed by the revelation of the possibility of a return to the true experience of reality. Once this experience has taken place, the difficulty lies in proposing an appropriate language that can convey this spiritual adventure, without falling into the trap of what Mori presents as a superficial language based on a falsely collective experience, shared by all but experienced by none. Mori's writing thus constitutes a proposal in the search for this ideal language, and is distinguished by its performative character. In staging his intimacy, Mori realizes and presents the path towards this experience, which, in the form of a pathos, constitutes a knowledge of the state of things and is grasped by sensation in its purest aspect. A fundamental tension then arises in this link between experience and language: if true experience transcends institutionalized language and logic, how can it be grasped other than in the immediacy of sensible perception, and can it only be restored subsequent to the moment of revelation? Is this not to announce the failure or at least the limitation of language's claims?
In reading Mori Arimasa's considerations on a language that always seems to oscillate
between the risk of superficiality and the impasse of silence, we propose to reflect on the form and ambitions of philosophical language.
IKEGAMI Kôsuke
"A Reflection on the Political Thought of Nakae Chômin: The Foundation of Political Dialogues Between Three Drunks"
Nakae Chômin (1847-1901) was a thinker of the Meiji period and is known as the "Rousseau of the East". This nickname derives from the fact that he actually translated Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du contrat social into Japanese and then into classical Chinese. He was the person of his time who most deeply understood Rousseau's thought. Nevertheless, Chômin's philosophy cannot be summed up simply as Rousseauist, as his appreciation of Mencius, his approach to Taoism and his neo-Confucian way of thinking illustrate the major role played by the Chinese classics in his intellectual formation. While there is already a great deal of research on his subject in Japan, such as the works of Ida Shinya井田進也, Matsunaga Shôzô松永昌三 and Miyamura Haruo宮村治雄, there is little research on him in the French language, apart from the work of Eddy Dufourmont. Similarly, Chômin's main work, the Political Dialogues Between Three Drunkards, Sansuijin keirin mondô三酔人経綸問答, has not yet been sufficiently analyzed, although it has recently been translated into French.
With this status quo in mind, our aim in this presentation will be to discuss his thought, highlighting the relationship between his Dialogues and French thought. Then, we will relate this work to other writings by the author, notably the Du contrat social, in Japanese Minyaku yakkai民約訳解, which he translated, the Kakumeimae furansu niseikiji革命前法朗西二世紀事, a book on French history before the revolution which he edited in 1886, or the Rigaku kôgen理学鉤玄, a treatise on philosophy which he published the same year. Paying attention to such fertile thought, we will then analyze the relationship between the Dialogues and these works. Then, finally, we'll clarify the extent to which the Dialogues reflect his knowledge and understanding of Western and Chinese thought.