Shūzō Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre: Influence and Counter-Influence in the Early History of Existential Phenomenology. Including the Notebook "Monsieur Sartre" and Other Parisian Writings of Shūzō Kuki (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 323 rejecting the possibility of synthetic a priori propositions. To be sure this is a view that is closer to Hume than to Kant, but to insist that the story ends there is to ignore deeper similarities between Wittgenstein and Kant which are related to the constitutive role of language (logic in Kant) in human thought and experience and the peculiar way in which the pseudo-problems of philosophy arise, not from mere ignorance or superstition (i.e., "empirically"), but out of the ways in which language itself tempts us to think about its own relation to the world (i.e., "transcendentally"). This has more to do with Kant than Hailer is willing to admit. It would be churlish of me to protest that my own views are not always precisely recounted here were it not for the fact that in one case, that of Haller's polemic with Newton Garver with respect to the notion of "form of life" in Wittgenstein's Investigations , I explicitly distanced myself from the view of the matter in Wittgenstein'sVienna, which Hailer continues to attribute to me despite the fact that my view of the matter was published in Haller's very series in my Essayson Wittgensteinand Weiningerin 1985 . Be that as it may, Haller's clear and provocative essays are a welcome corrective to the stereotyped view of the Vienna Circle that we so often encounter----even if they do not absolve the interested reader from an encounter with John Passmore's Hundred YearsofPhilosophy. ALLAN JANIK UniversitiitInnsbruck Stephen Light. Shftz6 Kuki and Jean-Paul Sartre. Influence and Counter-Influence in the EarlyHistoryofExistentialPhenomenology.Including theNotebook"MonsieurSartre"and Other Parisian Writings of Shftz6 Kuki, edited and translated by Stephen Light. Journal of the Histo~ ofPhilosophyMonographs. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Pp. xiv + a57. Paper, NP. The Japanese philosopher ShQz6 Kuki (1888-x94 l) traveled to Europe in 19~4 to study French and German philosophy. From his return to Japan in a929 until his death he taught at Kyoto University, lecturing primarily on French philosophy. Kuki studied with several important European philosophers, but hitherto only his relationship with Heidegger has been widely known, owing to its having been memorialized in Heidegger's "Aus einem Gespr~ich vonder Sprache. ''1 Few have been aware that for two and a half months in 1928 Kuki studied French philosophy with a young graduate student by the name of Jean-Paul Sartre. Stephen Light, aided by his discovery among Kuki's papers of a notebook labeled "Monsieur Sartre," set out to explore the nature of Kuki's studies with Sartre and to determine whether either philosopher influenced the other. In a very carefully researched and documented essay, Light presents the results of these inquiries and offers a helpful introduction to Kuki's career and thought. This is followed by a selection of Kuki's Parisian writings---twelve short essays on Japanese ' In Martin Heidegger, UnterwegszurSprache(Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 83-155. Translated by Peter D. Hertz in OntheWaytoLanguage(New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 1-54. 394 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:2 APRIL ~989 culture and its relation to Western thought. The volume also contains a photographic reproduction of the forty pages of notes Kuki took during his conversations with Sartre, including a few lines penned by Sartre himself. Light claims that Kuki was both "one of the outstanding talents in modern Japanese philosophy" (23) and a "consummate master of... French culture" (lo); one might therefore expect from his writings a substantial contribution to East-West understanding . If the writings of Kuki translated here are too brief to confirm fully Light's high estimate of Kuki's philosophical importance, it is nonetheless clear that the KukiSartre sessions were an encounter between two significant minds, so that the question of "influence and counter-influence" probed by Light becomes intriguing. However, the central piece of evidence, the "Monsieur Sartre" notebook, does not really answer the question. Consisting of lists of names of French philosophers and secondary sources on them, occasional quotations, and lists of types of philosophy, the notebook is litde more than an aide-m~moire. It suggests that Sartre and Kuki discussed the main figures...