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NINE The Calonology of Imamichi Tomonobu Imamichi Tomonobu (b. 1922), professor of aesthetics at the University of Tokyo from 1968 until his retirement in 1983, has distinguished himself as an original thinker and the author of a metaphysics of beauty known as “calonology,” in which he argues for the privileged status of the senses (aisthesis ). Imamichi addresses the problem of the subordinate position in which the senses were kept in the Aesthetics (1750) of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762), where they were described as an “inferior form of knowledge” (ratio inferior) analogous to the superior intellect (analogon rationis ).1 “Calonology” is meant to be a process of ascent from the work of art, as being, to beauty—from the ontic world to metaontological transcendence— in which beauty (kalon) is prior to being (on) and both require the mediating presence of the intellect (nous). “Calonology,” therefore, as the combination of the four Greek words “kalon,” “on,” “nous,” and “logos” attests, is the discourse on the logos of beauty, being, and mind. The study of “calonology,” then, is an inquiry into the realms of beauty, existence, reason, and science.2 Imamichi first introduced this word in 1956, during the Third International Conference of Aesthetics held in Venice, Italy, where he gave his definition of aesthetics as the science that must clarify intellectually the existence known as beauty. But, he continued, beauty is not simply existence but is prior to it and goes beyond it. Imamichi distinguishes different kinds of beauty according to what he calls “the subjective vectors of intentionality .” If the vector goes from the specificity and dispersion of the present to the unity of concentration, we are faced with natural beauty. If the intention proceeds from this unified necessity to the specific target of use, we have the beauty of technology. The beauty of art is the result of an intention that goes 218 1. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetica (Frankfurt: Johann Christian Kleyb, 1750). 2. Imamichi Tomonobu, “Karonorojia,” in Imamichi Tomonobu, ed., Kōza Bigaku, vol. 3: Bigaku no Hōhō (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 1984), pp. 313–334. from unified necessity to liberty and free decision. If the vector turns from that liberty to devotion and pure love, we are faced with moral beauty.3 Imamichi has also produced several studies on comparative aesthetics in which he focuses on the formation of Eastern and Western subjectivities with reference to issues of ethics and aesthetics. As for the former, Imamichi argues that whereas ancient Far Eastern cultures addressed the idea of responsibility as a kind of intersubjectivity governing human relationships, while ignoring the notion of “personhood,” the West tackled the same problem in an inverted order. Until the eighteenth century Western thought developed philosophies of “personhood” while ignoring the issue of responsibility . Imamichi’s conclusion is an invitation to take notice of the complementary nature of Eastern and Western humanisms.4 With regard to the latter, the reader is referred to the essay “Expression and Its Logical Foundation,” which is translated here. In this essay Imamichi argues about the absence of the notion of “expression” in ancient Western aesthetics, which instead developed the ideas of “representation” and “imitation” or mimesis, allegedly because of the Western dichotomy between subject and object. In the East, Imamichi continues, the situation was reversed in favor of a strong expressive presence, due to the “rhythm of the live spirit of the universe” that informs everything in the world, standing against the division of spirit and matter, body and soul, immanence and transcendence. In this essay, therefore, Imamichi seems to perpetuate “the myth of Otherness” that grew out of a need for the creation of an independent state during the Meiji period—a myth that still plays a role today, although in a minor tone, as part of the strong ideology of Japanese uniqueness. Imamichi’s dedication to the study of the relationships between ethics and aesthetics is at the core of the system that he called “eco-ethica”—“a new ethics inter homines and ethics ad res” in the technologically systematized environment.5 As a result of the infringement of technology upon the temporality of human consciousness, whose time duration is continuously challenged by the mechanization of the world, the process of dehumanization and loss of spirituality has reached a speed that is threatening human survival if measures are not taken to counterbalance the process. In Imamichi’s opinion, art can help to recover this loss of temporality. The The Calonology of Imamichi Tomonobu...

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