Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation

Notes

215 NOTES Introduction 1. “At the same time, however, The Aesthetics of Discontent reminded me again and again that much of our scholarly work—especially work on very old literature and authors—is itself a form of fiction: fiction in which dreams of universal humanity, Japanese uniqueness, moral righteousness, hard-nosed practicalness, or theoretical rigor marshal a few facts into more or less plausible but still largely imagined configurations. No experiment can confirm our findings, since the truth vanished long ago.” Royall Tyler, “Review of The Aesthetics of Discontent,” Journal of Japanese Studies 18, no. 2 (1992): 615. 2. I have addressed this issue in a lecture that I gave in Kyoto on April 15, 1997, at the Japan Foundation. The text is published as “Yowaki Shii: Kaishakugaku no Mirai wo Minagara” (Weak Thought: A Look at the Future of Hermeneutics), 95th Nichibunken Forum (December 1997), pp. 1–39. See also my articles “The New as Violence and the Hermeneutics of Slimness,” Proceedings of the Midwest Association for Japanese Literary Studies 4 (summer 1998): 83–102, and “Japan’s Missing Alternative: Weak Thought and the Hermeneutics of Slimness,” Versus: Recon figuring Cultural Semiotics (1999). I have tried to remedy the situation by addressing the notion of Japanese aesthetics, which I consider an important footnote in the Japanese history of interpretation, in my Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), and A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001). 3. Gianni Vattimo, Oltre l’Interpretazione: Il Significato dell’Ermeneutica per la Filosofia (Bari: Laterza, 1994), p. 3. 4. Gianni Vattimo, La Fine della Modernità (Milan: Garzanti, 1985), p. 163. Chapter 1: Method, Hermeneutics, Truth 1. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 320 –321. 2. Published later in Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959). 3. Rorty, pp. 320 –321. 4. Truth and Method (Tübingen: Mohr, 1950). 5. In Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1950). 6. The review remained unpublished until 1976, when, shortly before he died, Heidegger included it in the third edition of Wegmarken (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976). Chapter 2: Poetics of Intransitivity 1. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3,” translated with an introduction and notes by R. J. Holingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 102–103. 2. I want to mention a few papers of mine as indices showing how deeply this way of thinking —which, as will be clarified later, is far from being my personal thought but is something imposed on me by the Japanese language—has been rooted in me. With regard to the theory of creation, “Ethique Propre à l’Artiste,” JTLA 6 (1982), originally published in Japanese in 1962; “Beyond the Analogia Creationis—Structure of Artistic Creation” (in Japanese, 1981); “Acte et Connaissance dans l’Art—Retour de Poiétique à Herméneutique,” JTLA 5 (1981); and “RhétoriqueCommeArsInveniendi—UnePhilosophiedesFigures,”JTLA13(1989),firstpublished in Japanese in 1983. See also articles in my Dictionary of Aesthetics (in Japanese) (Tokyo: University Tokyo Press, 1995). The idea that “something truly valuable (or beautiful) is not made by man, but given to man” concerns not only the theory of creation but also “aesthetics” as the theory of appreciation. The Western idea that our peculiar, so-called aesthetic (or “disinterested”) attitude makes the object aesthetic (beautiful or beautiful-like) is diametrically opposed view to the view of intransitivity I present in this chapter. In fact, a critical stance against the concept of the aesthetic and modern Western aesthetics has always been the leading idea of my studies in aesthetics. See my “Puissance du Beau, Impuissance de l’Esthétique—Considération sur l’Essence du Beau Naturel ,” JTLA 2 (1978); and “L’Esthétique de l’Intérêt—de d’Aubignac à Sulzer,” JTLA 10 (1986). The first is related to one of the basic ideas developed in my recent publication, Aesthetics on Non-Western Principles, version 0.5 (Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Akademie, 1998). The second essay constitutes the basis of my doctorate thesis, “Studies of the History of Aesthetics in Eighteenth Century France” (in Japanese, 1997). 3. Grammatically, the middle voice in some Western languages represents the intransitive concept. For example, Greek—in which the middle voice is distinguished morphologically from the active voice—is quite similar to the verbal system of Japanese, as I will explain. I am sure that it is this similarity that makes many Japanese scholars willing to speak “in the...