Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos

Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos The most important aspects of learning modern philosophy are post-structuralist relativism and metacognition. These are easy to learn. The concept in modern philosophy that is likely difficult to learn is structuralism. The priority for learning this may be lower than the former, but without understanding it, one cannot expect concreteness or practicality. Relativism and metacognition are like ideals or idealism, so their catchphrases are simple. For example, taking the French Revolution, people feel they understand concepts like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (and Patriotism)" just by hearing the words. However, implementing these requires a very high level of practical processing and a thorough knowledge of the system's limitations. To begin with, trying to realize liberty or equality involves not just a level of practical effort, but inherent contradictions and paradoxes that cause system errors. And since these contradictions and paradoxes are essential and cannot be removed, one must operate liberty and equality with that knowledge. Unfortunately, there are many people and cases where this is unknown, which tends to be a source of confusion in the world. As an activity to spread modern philosophy, I thought that understanding, accepting, and enlightening people about structuralism, which seems difficult to grasp, is the hardest but most necessary task. Another pillar is the dissemination of post-structuralist relativism, but this is easy. It is easy, but many people belong to ideological lineages that find it hard to accept. So, my mission is to have them know it even if they don't accept it, and to establish a common literacy in society as needed. This is the same as the Buddhist concepts of Emptiness (Sunyata) and the Middle Way, so it is also acceptable to propagate Buddhism not as a religion but as a philosophy. Furthermore, rigorous structuralism is best represented by modern mathematics, so this approach is also recommended for science-oriented people who like mathematical foundations. The learning approach of studying substantive structuralism in modern philosophy can be boring and repetitive. As with anything, if you want to learn something, it is definitely better to have various approaches. Even if you don't understand or feel rejection with one approach, you might learn the subject happily with another approach, or something that didn't click with other methods might click. However, it is better not only to study modern philosophy with this approach but also to view modern philosophy from many different perspectives. The contrast can be from any angle, aspect, viewpoint, or cross-section. It is good for modern philosophy to direct this attitude of being able to view and think in various ways, not only toward other subjects but also toward modern philosophy itself without exception. Therefore, here I will try to discuss the world by dividing it into "consistent things" and "non-consistent things" using modern philosophy. "Consistent" could be called "Logos-like" or "Rational," and there are many other ways to say it, but for now, I will try to explain a method of analyzing the world through modern philosophy using this perspective. Consistent Things and Non-Consistent Things "Non-consistent things" is a roundabout expression. A question might arise: "Why not just say 'contradictory things'?" That might be fine, but then it would feel like the world is closed within the category of "contradiction." By saying "non-consistent things," we can include contradictory things as well as various other unknown things that have nothing to do with contradiction or consistency. This is a world that does not easily accept the Law of Excluded Middle. For example, India in the time of the Buddha was what Jaspers called the Axial Age, where various thoughts bloomed in profusion, just like in Ancient Greece or China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. In India, too, there were the Hundred Schools of Thought and the Contention of a Hundred Schools, so various thoughts appeared. In that era, or in the era of Sectarian Buddhism after Buddhism split fundamentally and into branches, expressions like "neither-nor" or "double negation" appeared frequently. However, they can be evaluated in that they were conscious of and familiar with the characteristic of simplification by the Law of Excluded Middle. If the expressions "consistent things" and "non-consistent things" are unfamiliar or sound harsh, I will also use expressions like "Logos-like things" and "Non-Logos-like things (Rhetorical things)" in parallel. The Malady of Western Modernity: "Losing the Heart" When thinking about what Western modernity is or what modernization is, it might be good to look at societies in the process of modernization. Since we should use first-class materials, let's take Dostoevsky, a candidate for the world's greatest literature, and his literary works as examples. Dostoevsky's novels can be described in a word as the conflict between the modern and the non-modern. To understand this area, just reading Dostoevsky's novels directly is insufficient, so it is good to read commentaries on Dostoevsky's novels (for example, "Solving the Mystery of Crime and Punishment" or "Solving the Mystery of The Brothers Karamazov") published by various people. Bakhtin's theories on carnival and polyphony are also famous. In Dostoevsky's novels, people obsessed with ideologies appear. It could be Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment," Stavrogin in "Demons," Ivan in "The Brothers Karamazov," or even Prince Myshkin in "The Idiot." It is a theme of the modern era that humans stained by a certain kind of ideology become inhuman. Even now, there are politicians, critics, and commentators whose facial expressions have changed from before. They probably have various circumstances, but some may be people who have been possessed by ideology and lost their humanity, or something like a soft "heart." You often see people about whom you feel, "They weren't like this when they were young or before." I think there are some close to you as well. Difference between Japan and the Western Sphere as Civilization and Culture If we express the difference between Japanese culture and Western culture in one word, it is the difference between: "A culture that pushes the heart vs. A culture that suppresses the heart." Of course, it cannot be easily divided, nor should it be. Japanese culture has TPOs (Time, Place, Occasion) where the heart is suppressed, and Western culture has TPOs where the heart is pushed. But roughly speaking, these tendencies exist in the substratum. Japanese people do it somewhat unconsciously, so they are somewhat natural; Western culture does it consciously, so it is somewhat artificial. Japan is a culture that accepts and follows what is felt at the moment and the emotions that well up. Western culture is a culture where the consciousness and principles prohibiting that are always working at the base. If we simplify and create an image, the result is that the inner self of Japanese people is in a state filled with what they felt and emotions that welled up. On the other hand, in Western culture, even if one senses something or an emotion wells up, if it touches a prohibited matter, it becomes a culture of suppressing, silencing, or pretending it doesn't exist. This may not be at the level of OS or BIOS, but at the level of electronic circuit design, or possibly even at the hardware level. Assuming Japanese people have been isolated from the outside world on an island nation for about 2,000 years and have undergone genetic mutations and natural selection in a unique environment, there might be differences from the outside world at the brain level, or at the DNA level governing ontogeny of brain morphology, although perhaps not as much as between Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. Looking at animal domestication, domestication experiments, or selective breeding of living things, we know that changes appear in a relatively short period. Someone once stated an observation that in the past, children between white and black people left descendants, but children between white and Japanese people, or black and Japanese people, did not continue their lineage. Since this was a personal observation from decades ago, it might be different now. There Were Various Issues, and the Era When Japanese and Westerners Couldn't Blend Was Long Perhaps from after the Meiji Restoration until the 2020s, compared to the present in 2025, older Japanese people somewhat felt incompatible with people from the Western cultural sphere. Understanding and empathy might have deepened or spread at the grassroots level, but in terms of being widely realized socially or visualized, it was still lacking. However, from around after COVID, it seems that the acceptance of Japanese culture by the Western cultural sphere has exploded, even from the perspective of us dull older generations. At least for Japanese people born around the 1970s, many likely felt that Japan and Japanese people were solitary and unique in the world, and that it was difficult to understand outsiders or foreigners. Of course, there has never been a lack of interaction between both worlds. From the perspective of Western society's demand for Japan, there was Japonism and Art Nouveau at the end of the 19th century, the post-war Zen boom, the export of Japanese products during the Cold War, the export of Japanese anime, the export of games, and the export of otaku culture and underground internet culture. Looking at it that way, Japan has been exporting various things, but the current Japan boom is larger in scale than in the past, and as the biggest difference, the barriers of mentality seem to have lowered significantly. Japan has historically been treated separately and has been solitary, for better or worse: praised by missionaries, subject to the Yellow Peril, discriminated against, subject to theories of Japanese uniqueness, theories of Japan as Galapagos, or theories that Japan is the 8th civilization. However, recently, it seems that the world is actively understanding Japan. Why Is Acceptance Possible Even Though the Basic Design Philosophy Is Different? I emphasized earlier that the OS or DNA is different between the Western cultural sphere and Japan. Setting that aside, since there are also differences due to acquired cultural factors, the concept of Western Logocentrism, which was directly popular in modern thought, is helpful as a reference. Logos is "Logic" in English, but in other words, it can be called Symbol (Language) Centrism, or Ideology Centrism. Since it means logic, it seems to aim for truth/falsehood, correctness, or justice. However, recent logic does not necessarily deal only with truth/falsehood or non-contradiction, and strictly speaking, rigorous logic of truth/falsehood in the modern sense of symbolic logic has only existed for about 100 years. Moreover, except for experts, almost no one can use it. This means that in any era, the world is remarkably illogical; the world functions without the logic of truth/falsehood, non-contradiction, consistency, or coherence (though if one considers the Lost 30 Years or mass starvation in the communist bloc as problems, one could say it is hardly functioning well). If the Japanese heart is filled with fluffy things like momentary flashes, sensory sensibilities, welling emotions, and affects, the heart of a person in Western culture has ideologies like God and articles scattered about, and the gaps are a vacuum. It becomes a vacuum because internal and external systems are working to prohibit emotions such as empathy or a sense of presence toward objects other than thinking of the One God. This includes the prohibition of idolatry, the rule not to recognize gods other than the One God (one must not feel holiness or sanctity), and the idea that since God is the Creator and other things are creations, one must not hold special feelings toward creations. Besides religion, there used to be, and perhaps still is, a way of explaining this through the psychology of pastoralism and nomads. It is a prohibition against empathizing with livestock. Unlike pets, livestock are killed, sold, eaten, and parts of their corpses are used in daily life. If one did the same thing with pets or humans, it would be quite problematic in modern society, and even in the past when humanitarianism was thinner than today. One may pray to God, but imaging Him is metaphysical; even if done in the head, it is merely abstract representation or conceptualization—in short, mere imagination. It is disrespectful to think that oneself who thought or prayed approaches something holy just because one prayed to God or thought about God. God must be absolute and transcendent, and everything else, including oneself and humans, is just things and clods of earth. This distinction is an absolute rule. Otherwise, it violates the oneness and divinity of the One God. If one does this constantly in one's head or in society, the mind becomes materialistic. Setting aside thinking about God, one becomes a materialist regarding other things. Marx, whose grandfather was a Jewish rabbi but whose family converted around his father's generation during the history of modern Jewish liberation from the ghetto and assimilation into modernity, was not only materialistic, but fundamentalist Biblicalism also becomes materialistic. Sometimes, there is a hypothesis that even God is Deistic—a creator of the system but does not interfere with humans, leaving it to the system. There are likely many Westerners who, even if they are atheistic or indifferent to God, tentatively believe in God through Deistic thinking. Even without Marx bringing up materialism, Judaism and Protestantism are fundamentally materialistic. On the other hand, Catholicism allows idolatry and may have parts closer to Japanese people within the Biblical cultural sphere. Therefore, when Christians after the Reformation or Jews released from the ghetto after the civil revolutions have influence, they become very contrasting, or depending on the view, opposing to Japanese people. Western Culture Is Materialistic and Simultaneously Ideological Let's define logicized ideas as ideology. It is not necessarily verbalized or symbolized, nor is it strictly made into binary logic of truth and falsehood, but let's define ideology as a coherent set of ways of thinking created with that orientation. Defining it this way, ideology represents the content and type of Logos. There are various ideologies in the world. If ideology is Logos, it somewhat orients toward non-contradiction. It can be said that ideology forms the hard part of what we call humanity or sociality. Our world is constructed by various ideologies. Politics, law, institutions, religion, ethics, morality, science, technology, industry, art, fine arts, music, literature—anything is fine, but they often have suffixes like -system, -ism, -law, -rule, -teaching, -theory, or -logic. There may be opinions that literature and fine arts are not ideologies or Logos. This is because such things do not necessarily orient toward non-contradiction. If ideology orients toward non-contradiction and is a "consistent thing," then these might be called "non-consistent things." Researching non-consistent things is very difficult. Consistent things can use powerful tools like logic and mathematical foundations. Recently, there seems to be logic that deals with contradictory things. To list a few quickly: paraconsistent logic, dialetheism, relevance logic, many-valued logic, non-monotonic logic, paracomplete logic, knowledge-based extensions, fuzzy logic, etc. Science-oriented people and thinking are indeed amazing, but they deal with thinking that handles truth/falsehood or correctness, not sensibility, emotion, or volition. In that sense, thinking, and the consistent things it deals with, are easy to handle. Well, emotions and volition may have contradictions or conflicts, but let's put that aside. Here, we treat those things not as consistent things but as non-consistent things. The World Tends to Be Constituted with Non-Contradictory Things as Protagonists Both the human mind and the world tend to be constituted with non-contradictory things, or things orienting toward non-contradiction, as protagonists. Is it because they are close to truth and justice? The Bible also adopted Greek thought, and with the opening phrase of the Gospel of Luke, "In the beginning was the Word," it boldly declared, "God is Logos." This must feel very strange to Japanese people. Western civilization, which has the Bible and Classical Greece as its OS, tries to constitute or analyze the world with Logos. Since individual Logos is ideology, Logocentrism is also Ideology-centrism. Logos values consistency, coherence, and non-contradiction, so ideology is also something hard. It is truth, justice, and authority. Therefore, in Rabbinic Judaism, Biblical scholars like the Pharisees were powerful, and when Jesus spoke like "one having authority," he was bashed. This Logocentrism (Ideology-centrism) and Materialism are one feature of the Western cultural sphere seen from Japanese eyes. Why Heresy Became Mainstream in Japan I wrote that Western civilization has materialism and ideology-centrism in its framework, but of course, that is not all. There are also non-materialistic and non-ideological elements. In any case, both people and the human world consist of both consistent things and non-consistent things. Non-consistent things include contradictory things and various miscellaneous things that should not be viewed from the perspective of contradiction in the first place. There are scenes where fine arts, literature, and entertainment become protagonists, but the hard adult society is designed with ideology as its framework. Well, humans are not so clean or perfect, and being worldly-wise, there are various dirty parts and corruption, but those adult parts might be hard, yet perhaps we can put them into non-consistent things. It is a convenient trick when dividing into two cases: treating "things that are not X" collectively as a jumbled junk box. By the way, just because it is words does not mean Logos ≈ Logic. There is also something called Rhetoric (Rhetorike). Translated as the art of persuasion, oratory, or sophistry, it is the usage of words that does not question the means to guide the opponent to the objective, regardless of the truth or correctness of the content. This is also constructed with words. And words and symbols do not only deal with logic and rhetoric. For example, in grammar, there is Mood. For example, indicative mood, imperative mood, indirect mood (subjunctive, conjunctive), etc. Logic is described in declarative sentences of the indicative mood. Rhetoric might use all of them. However, words and symbols do not only deal with logic and rhetoric. They deal with dirty jokes, jokes, shouts, exclamations, groans, screams, babbling, and indescribably many other things. Among such things, there may be consistent things and non-consistent things, but there are many ways to use words and symbols that do not deal with logic or rhetoric. This means that the set of words includes not only Logos and Rhetoric but also various other things. Logos includes that meaning, but it is often expressed in words. It is called Écriture for written language and Discours for spoken language. Écriture and Discours include non-Logos things, so they do not overlap clearly. Words are symbols and signs. Recently, emojis have been codified just like characters. In the case of the alphabet, it used to be called ASCII code, but now it feels like emoji codes have been newly added to character codes. In that sense, Derrida calls it semiology or critique of metaphysics, Barthes calls it text theory, and Foucault calls it archaeology of knowledge or genealogy. Here, I will discuss symbols and language by roughly cutting them into consistent things and non-consistent things. Discourse and Others; Within Discourse, Ideology and Others Inside the human head, there are discursive things and other things. Lacan called discursive things the Symbolic. It is impossible that there are only words inside the human head. There are representations (images), sensory and sensible things, emotional things, volitional and desiderative things, and various things other than discourse. Also, within discourse, there are types of Logos like ideology, there is rhetoric, dirty jokes, jokes, shouts, exclamations, groans, screams, babbling—anything is fine, but symbols and words express various things. Among them, the protagonist in people and society is ideology, which we take as the representative of consistent things. And we lump together words other than ideology and things that form the spirit but are not words as non-consistent things, collecting all other miscellaneous things other than consistent things. Then, after all, the protagonist in people and the human world has long been ideology, and other miscellaneous things were supporting roles. However, in Japan, or even in the West, the ideology carried by authority and power reverses with the "others." There are cases where the miscellaneous things called "others" become the protagonist and ideology becomes the supporting role. Or rather, that becomes the dominant way of thinking in certain scenes in Japan. A characteristic of Japan is that Western heresy has become orthodoxy; for example, the core of Western thought, which is not to empathize with or project onto objects, is rather prioritized in Japan—projection onto objects, empathy, putting one's heart into things, and feeling are considered primary, whether in Japanese pathos, logos, or mute silence. This seems to be attracting attention worldwide recently. The worldview we feel is "Japanese" might be made up of "Signs/Presence (Non-Logos)" filling the gaps of Western "Construction (Logos)," or sometimes things that are Logos-like but considered absurd or heretical by the political orthodoxy of society. Roughly speaking, the world can be divided into "Logos-like things" and "Non-Logos-like things." Logos-like things are things that have names, have outlines, and are called "-ism," "-law," "-theory," or "-logic," such as laws, institutions, religious doctrines, scientific theories, and ideologies. They have various forms, but in a word, they can be said to have the suffix Logos (-logy). On the other hand, what fills the space between them is Non-Logos-like things. Things that have been called atmosphere, Ether, Tao (Way), Void, Mood, Field, etc. They are like a medium that fills, permeates, and occupies the "gaps" of Logos. Gestalt's Rubin's Vase consists of the schema: Figure = Logos (Institutions, Theories) Ground = Non-Logos (Field, Atmosphere) The successors of Biblical culture + Ancient Greek culture and Japan form a contrast: Visible things = Logos-like = Figure = West Invisible things = Non-Logos-like = Ground = Japan To give just two concrete examples: Example 1: Law/Contract vs. Atmosphere/Tacit Understanding Example 2: Logical Argument vs. "Field" created by Sentence-final particles, Onomatopoeia, Honorifics Logos-like Things and Non-Logos-like Things Filling the Gaps The world is divided into two. Logos-like things and Non-Logos-like things. Logos-like things have form, so they are easy to understand and stand out. The West, in the lineage of "Bible + Greek Philosophy," has thoroughly polished Logos = Figure. Theological systems, legal philosophy, modern science, contract theory... all are activities of "giving firm outlines with words." On the other hand, Japan can be said to be a cultural sphere that has thickly nurtured the side of "Non-Logos = Ground." "Atmosphere" rather than clear assertion, "Atmosphere of the place" rather than logic, "Breathing in unison (A-Un no Kokyu)" rather than contracts. Typical examples are sentence-final particles, onomatopoeia, and honorifics. These things, in terms of linguistic classification, include various things; for example, honorifics themselves include voice (active, passive, middle) and mood (direct, indirect (subjunctive, conjunctive), imperative), so if there are honorifics, one can omit the subject, the object of the subject, the speaker, the interlocutor, and the atmosphere of the place (by the way, in recent Japanese grammar in compulsory education, it is divided into respectful language, humble language, polite language, courteous language, and beautification language. Older generations might have read reference books explaining courteous language and beautification language as respectful-style honorifics). Sentence-final particles "ne, yo, sa, kana" adjust the temperature and distance of the place, not the information itself. Onomatopoeia expresses the fineness of the sensation filling the gaps of Logos, like "kachi (click)," "fuwatto (fluffy)," or "jinwari (gradually warm)." Honorifics are a device that launches a field of relationship regarding "who is treating whom and how," even if the subject or object is omitted. Seen this way, it can be said that the Japanese language and culture have long been handling the side of the "Ground" surrounding the Logos-like Figure—the Non-Logos layer—meticulously. Non-Logos-like things could be called atmosphere, Ether, Tao (Way), or Void in between. Like those, they are a medium filling the gaps, permeating and filling places where there is no Logos. In that sense, let's look at the world dualistically, or binarily, as a dualism without a vacuum. Dividing into two is the extreme of simplification, so it is easy to understand. The world is made of conspicuous things and things filling the space between conspicuous things, but since the things filling the space are full, they are conversely hard to be conscious of. However, a shift in viewpoint is possible. Like Rubin's Vase in Gestalt psychology, if you get used to it or train, you can invert Figure and Ground. Successors of Biblical Culture + Ancient Greek Culture and Japan There are cultures that ran wild with visible things, conspicuous things, Logos-like things, and things like the Figure in Gestalt psychology. This is Western thought rooted in Biblical culture + Ancient Greek culture. On the other hand, there are cultural spheres that continued to emphasize invisible things, inconspicuous things, Non-Logos-like things, and things like the Ground in Gestalt psychology. Roughly speaking, these are parts that can be called characteristics of Japan. Western thought is like the protagonist; it stands out and is recognized, so it is given proper names. Japanese culture is expressed by attaching negative words like "others in general" or "non-~," but there is no need to think badly just because negative prefixes or "non-" are attached to words. Rather, it can take all the rest. Also, this way of dividing is convenient in mathematical case analysis. Therefore, there is no need to have a bad image of "Non-~" or "Not ~." If you invert Figure and Ground like Rubin's Vase in Gestalt psychology and make this side the protagonist and that side the mob, you can acquire a completely different worldview. "From Periphery to Orthodoxy": This is like Christianity, which made the Ancient Roman Emperor sigh, "O Galilean, thou hast conquered," and in Japan, the largest sect of Buddhism is Pure Land Buddhism, which can be said to be a heresy from traditional orthodox Buddhism. This finances time; from the periphery called the past to the present, and in the future, it increases explosively in a compound, exponential manner. Is the World Beginning to Accept Japan? There are various ways to think about why the Japan boom is happening. However, one cause is likely that the inside of Japanese people's heads and the inside of people's heads in the Western cultural sphere have come much closer. As for what is happening, there are various analyses, but here I will try one explanation based on the context of this text. The inside of a Japanese person's head is filled with "heart." In this case, "heart" is not limited to empathy for humans but is a sensation felt toward non-human, non-biological things, sometimes not only objects but concepts, or emotional things welling up from the heart. Such things are often neither Logos, words, nor ideology. They are often not consistent things but rather non-consistent things, and many other miscellaneous things. Far from being non-contradictory, they do not even require consistency, coherence, invariance, singularity, uniqueness, identity, or homeostasis. They are not protagonists but things like air, environment, background, or field. In Quantum Field Theory, which is relatively advanced physics, the Field is omnipresent and is like a matrix from which elementary particles arise, like Ether filling spacetime universally. Seen from the Field, elementary particles are things that generate and annihilate from it or interact with other types of fields and elementary particles; if omnipresent things like the Field appear as background, then elementary particles are exactly the protagonists. In this case, elementary particles are ideologies, and the Field is other miscellaneous Non-Consistent things; far from standing out, their existence might not even be noticed, just as air, water, and safety are free and their existence is not consciously recognized. Economically speaking, far from having "scarcity," they exist infinitely. Infinity and Zero do not become protagonists but become somewhat special characters like scenery or singularities. Hasn't the Western cultural sphere stopped denying this Field, or Heart, that Japanese people cherished? As I wrote earlier, in pure Biblicalism of the Western cultural sphere or ways of thinking that inherited parts of the Ancient Greek tradition, it was a world of Materialism where putting one's heart into anything other than God was not allowed. I don't think such things have disappeared from the Western cultural sphere, and since it was a tradition that lasted for about 1,000 years, it won't disappear immediately. However, it can be said to be a tradition of only about 1,000 years, and pre-Christian Europe might have been a society that retained an ancient layer of culture with high affinity to current Japan. Regarding the relative view of Christianity, haven't people with a background in Western thought culture become able to view themselves relatively through novels like "Sophie's World," which became a global bestseller decades ago, and various other historical and transitional assumptions? On the other hand, Japan originally has ideological things too. Or rather, if there is a human group or society that is human, has culture, and has language, no matter how small, isn't it impossible for it not to have ideological things? It is the bone and acts like a skeleton. In this case, it is interesting that Western civilization is accepting Japanese culture not just as exoticism but with empathy. However, perhaps many on the Japanese side have also understood or acquired quite materialistic ways of thinking, respect for monotheistic things, and the exclusion rules of heart, or sensibility and emotion. During the post-war high economic growth period (or perhaps even before that, depending on the view), there was an aspect of converting Japanese-ness into money, and even in the subsequent Lost 30 Years, under the American unipolar hegemony, Neo-liberalism and Globalism (some call it International Financial Capitalism) were powerful. Those who survived and succeeded were often people in finance, consulting, ventures, startups, and management who had somewhat psychopathic traits capable of separating heart from thought/action. So, the old-fashioned Japanese heart and tradition have weakened considerably, and Japanese expressions and the mentality of Western people accepting them may have become closer. Also, as another aspect, the demand for Japan might be seen as the expansion of "Otaku culture," or a deep, bottomless swamp-like passion transcending monetary rationality, to general people, so it might be riding the wave of conservative reaction against Globalism and Neo-liberalism.

Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos

Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos The most important aspects of learning modern philosophy are post-structuralist relativism and metacognition. These are easy to learn. The concept in modern philosophy that is likely difficult to learn is structuralism. The priority for learning this may be lower than the former, but without understanding it, one cannot expect concreteness or practicality. Relativism and metacognition are like ideals or idealism, so their catchphrases are simple. For example, taking the French Revolution, people feel they understand concepts like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (and Patriotism)" just by hearing the words. However, implementing these requires a very high level of practical processing and a thorough knowledge of the system's limitations. To begin with, trying to realize liberty or equality involves not just a level of practical effort, but inherent contradictions and paradoxes that cause system errors. And since these contradictions and paradoxes are essential and cannot be removed, one must operate liberty and equality with that knowledge. Unfortunately, there are many people and cases where this is unknown, which tends to be a source of confusion in the world. As an activity to spread modern philosophy, I thought that understanding, accepting, and enlightening people about structuralism, which seems difficult to grasp, is the hardest but most necessary task. Another pillar is the dissemination of post-structuralist relativism, but this is easy. It is easy, but many people belong to ideological lineages that find it hard to accept. So, my mission is to have them know it even if they don't accept it, and to establish a common literacy in society as needed. This is the same as the Buddhist concepts of Emptiness (Sunyata) and the Middle Way, so it is also acceptable to propagate Buddhism not as a religion but as a philosophy. Furthermore, rigorous structuralism is best represented by modern mathematics, so this approach is also recommended for science-oriented people who like mathematical foundations. The learning approach of studying substantive structuralism in modern philosophy can be boring and repetitive. As with anything, if you want to learn something, it is definitely better to have various approaches. Even if you don't understand or feel rejection with one approach, you might learn the subject happily with another approach, or something that didn't click with other methods might click. However, it is better not only to study modern philosophy with this approach but also to view modern philosophy from many different perspectives. The contrast can be from any angle, aspect, viewpoint, or cross-section. It is good for modern philosophy to direct this attitude of being able to view and think in various ways, not only toward other subjects but also toward modern philosophy itself without exception. Therefore, here I will try to discuss the world by dividing it into "consistent things" and "non-consistent things" using modern philosophy. "Consistent" could be called "Logos-like" or "Rational," and there are many other ways to say it, but for now, I will try to explain a method of analyzing the world through modern philosophy using this perspective. Consistent Things and Non-Consistent Things "Non-consistent things" is a roundabout expression. A question might arise: "Why not just say 'contradictory things'?" That might be fine, but then it would feel like the world is closed within the category of "contradiction." By saying "non-consistent things," we can include contradictory things as well as various other unknown things that have nothing to do with contradiction or consistency. This is a world that does not easily accept the Law of Excluded Middle. For example, India in the time of the Buddha was what Jaspers called the Axial Age, where various thoughts bloomed in profusion, just like in Ancient Greece or China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. In India, too, there were the Hundred Schools of Thought and the Contention of a Hundred Schools, so various thoughts appeared. In that era, or in the era of Sectarian Buddhism after Buddhism split fundamentally and into branches, expressions like "neither-nor" or "double negation" appeared frequently. However, they can be evaluated in that they were conscious of and familiar with the characteristic of simplification by the Law of Excluded Middle. If the expressions "consistent things" and "non-consistent things" are unfamiliar or sound harsh, I will also use expressions like "Logos-like things" and "Non-Logos-like things (Rhetorical things)" in parallel. The Malady of Western Modernity: "Losing the Heart" When thinking about what Western modernity is or what modernization is, it might be good to look at societies in the process of modernization. Since we should use first-class materials, let's take Dostoevsky, a candidate for the world's greatest literature, and his literary works as examples. Dostoevsky's novels can be described in a word as the conflict between the modern and the non-modern. To understand this area, just reading Dostoevsky's novels directly is insufficient, so it is good to read commentaries on Dostoevsky's novels (for example, "Solving the Mystery of Crime and Punishment" or "Solving the Mystery of The Brothers Karamazov") published by various people. Bakhtin's theories on carnival and polyphony are also famous. In Dostoevsky's novels, people obsessed with ideologies appear. It could be Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment," Stavrogin in "Demons," Ivan in "The Brothers Karamazov," or even Prince Myshkin in "The Idiot." It is a theme of the modern era that humans stained by a certain kind of ideology become inhuman. Even now, there are politicians, critics, and commentators whose facial expressions have changed from before. They probably have various circumstances, but some may be people who have been possessed by ideology and lost their humanity, or something like a soft "heart." You often see people about whom you feel, "They weren't like this when they were young or before." I think there are some close to you as well. Difference between Japan and the Western Sphere as Civilization and Culture If we express the difference between Japanese culture and Western culture in one word, it is the difference between: "A culture that pushes the heart vs. A culture that suppresses the heart." Of course, it cannot be easily divided, nor should it be. Japanese culture has TPOs (Time, Place, Occasion) where the heart is suppressed, and Western culture has TPOs where the heart is pushed. But roughly speaking, these tendencies exist in the substratum. Japanese people do it somewhat unconsciously, so they are somewhat natural; Western culture does it consciously, so it is somewhat artificial. Japan is a culture that accepts and follows what is felt at the moment and the emotions that well up. Western culture is a culture where the consciousness and principles prohibiting that are always working at the base. If we simplify and create an image, the result is that the inner self of Japanese people is in a state filled with what they felt and emotions that welled up. On the other hand, in Western culture, even if one senses something or an emotion wells up, if it touches a prohibited matter, it becomes a culture of suppressing, silencing, or pretending it doesn't exist. This may not be at the level of OS or BIOS, but at the level of electronic circuit design, or possibly even at the hardware level. Assuming Japanese people have been isolated from the outside world on an island nation for about 2,000 years and have undergone genetic mutations and natural selection in a unique environment, there might be differences from the outside world at the brain level, or at the DNA level governing ontogeny of brain morphology, although perhaps not as much as between Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. Looking at animal domestication, domestication experiments, or selective breeding of living things, we know that changes appear in a relatively short period. Someone once stated an observation that in the past, children between white and black people left descendants, but children between white and Japanese people, or black and Japanese people, did not continue their lineage. Since this was a personal observation from decades ago, it might be different now. There Were Various Issues, and the Era When Japanese and Westerners Couldn't Blend Was Long Perhaps from after the Meiji Restoration until the 2020s, compared to the present in 2025, older Japanese people somewhat felt incompatible with people from the Western cultural sphere. Understanding and empathy might have deepened or spread at the grassroots level, but in terms of being widely realized socially or visualized, it was still lacking. However, from around after COVID, it seems that the acceptance of Japanese culture by the Western cultural sphere has exploded, even from the perspective of us dull older generations. At least for Japanese people born around the 1970s, many likely felt that Japan and Japanese people were solitary and unique in the world, and that it was difficult to understand outsiders or foreigners. Of course, there has never been a lack of interaction between both worlds. From the perspective of Western society's demand for Japan, there was Japonism and Art Nouveau at the end of the 19th century, the post-war Zen boom, the export of Japanese products during the Cold War, the export of Japanese anime, the export of games, and the export of otaku culture and underground internet culture. Looking at it that way, Japan has been exporting various things, but the current Japan boom is larger in scale than in the past, and as the biggest difference, the barriers of mentality seem to have lowered significantly. Japan has historically been treated separately and has been solitary, for better or worse: praised by missionaries, subject to the Yellow Peril, discriminated against, subject to theories of Japanese uniqueness, theories of Japan as Galapagos, or theories that Japan is the 8th civilization. However, recently, it seems that the world is actively understanding Japan. Why Is Acceptance Possible Even Though the Basic Design Philosophy Is Different? I emphasized earlier that the OS or DNA is different between the Western cultural sphere and Japan. Setting that aside, since there are also differences due to acquired cultural factors, the concept of Western Logocentrism, which was directly popular in modern thought, is helpful as a reference. Logos is "Logic" in English, but in other words, it can be called Symbol (Language) Centrism, or Ideology Centrism. Since it means logic, it seems to aim for truth/falsehood, correctness, or justice. However, recent logic does not necessarily deal only with truth/falsehood or non-contradiction, and strictly speaking, rigorous logic of truth/falsehood in the modern sense of symbolic logic has only existed for about 100 years. Moreover, except for experts, almost no one can use it. This means that in any era, the world is remarkably illogical; the world functions without the logic of truth/falsehood, non-contradiction, consistency, or coherence (though if one considers the Lost 30 Years or mass starvation in the communist bloc as problems, one could say it is hardly functioning well). If the Japanese heart is filled with fluffy things like momentary flashes, sensory sensibilities, welling emotions, and affects, the heart of a person in Western culture has ideologies like God and articles scattered about, and the gaps are a vacuum. It becomes a vacuum because internal and external systems are working to prohibit emotions such as empathy or a sense of presence toward objects other than thinking of the One God. This includes the prohibition of idolatry, the rule not to recognize gods other than the One God (one must not feel holiness or sanctity), and the idea that since God is the Creator and other things are creations, one must not hold special feelings toward creations. Besides religion, there used to be, and perhaps still is, a way of explaining this through the psychology of pastoralism and nomads. It is a prohibition against empathizing with livestock. Unlike pets, livestock are killed, sold, eaten, and parts of their corpses are used in daily life. If one did the same thing with pets or humans, it would be quite problematic in modern society, and even in the past when humanitarianism was thinner than today. One may pray to God, but imaging Him is metaphysical; even if done in the head, it is merely abstract representation or conceptualization—in short, mere imagination. It is disrespectful to think that oneself who thought or prayed approaches something holy just because one prayed to God or thought about God. God must be absolute and transcendent, and everything else, including oneself and humans, is just things and clods of earth. This distinction is an absolute rule. Otherwise, it violates the oneness and divinity of the One God. If one does this constantly in one's head or in society, the mind becomes materialistic. Setting aside thinking about God, one becomes a materialist regarding other things. Marx, whose grandfather was a Jewish rabbi but whose family converted around his father's generation during the history of modern Jewish liberation from the ghetto and assimilation into modernity, was not only materialistic, but fundamentalist Biblicalism also becomes materialistic. Sometimes, there is a hypothesis that even God is Deistic—a creator of the system but does not interfere with humans, leaving it to the system. There are likely many Westerners who, even if they are atheistic or indifferent to God, tentatively believe in God through Deistic thinking. Even without Marx bringing up materialism, Judaism and Protestantism are fundamentally materialistic. On the other hand, Catholicism allows idolatry and may have parts closer to Japanese people within the Biblical cultural sphere. Therefore, when Christians after the Reformation or Jews released from the ghetto after the civil revolutions have influence, they become very contrasting, or depending on the view, opposing to Japanese people. Western Culture Is Materialistic and Simultaneously Ideological Let's define logicized ideas as ideology. It is not necessarily verbalized or symbolized, nor is it strictly made into binary logic of truth and falsehood, but let's define ideology as a coherent set of ways of thinking created with that orientation. Defining it this way, ideology represents the content and type of Logos. There are various ideologies in the world. If ideology is Logos, it somewhat orients toward non-contradiction. It can be said that ideology forms the hard part of what we call humanity or sociality. Our world is constructed by various ideologies. Politics, law, institutions, religion, ethics, morality, science, technology, industry, art, fine arts, music, literature—anything is fine, but they often have suffixes like -system, -ism, -law, -rule, -teaching, -theory, or -logic. There may be opinions that literature and fine arts are not ideologies or Logos. This is because such things do not necessarily orient toward non-contradiction. If ideology orients toward non-contradiction and is a "consistent thing," then these might be called "non-consistent things." Researching non-consistent things is very difficult. Consistent things can use powerful tools like logic and mathematical foundations. Recently, there seems to be logic that deals with contradictory things. To list a few quickly: paraconsistent logic, dialetheism, relevance logic, many-valued logic, non-monotonic logic, paracomplete logic, knowledge-based extensions, fuzzy logic, etc. Science-oriented people and thinking are indeed amazing, but they deal with thinking that handles truth/falsehood or correctness, not sensibility, emotion, or volition. In that sense, thinking, and the consistent things it deals with, are easy to handle. Well, emotions and volition may have contradictions or conflicts, but let's put that aside. Here, we treat those things not as consistent things but as non-consistent things. The World Tends to Be Constituted with Non-Contradictory Things as Protagonists Both the human mind and the world tend to be constituted with non-contradictory things, or things orienting toward non-contradiction, as protagonists. Is it because they are close to truth and justice? The Bible also adopted Greek thought, and with the opening phrase of the Gospel of Luke, "In the beginning was the Word," it boldly declared, "God is Logos." This must feel very strange to Japanese people. Western civilization, which has the Bible and Classical Greece as its OS, tries to constitute or analyze the world with Logos. Since individual Logos is ideology, Logocentrism is also Ideology-centrism. Logos values consistency, coherence, and non-contradiction, so ideology is also something hard. It is truth, justice, and authority. Therefore, in Rabbinic Judaism, Biblical scholars like the Pharisees were powerful, and when Jesus spoke like "one having authority," he was bashed. This Logocentrism (Ideology-centrism) and Materialism are one feature of the Western cultural sphere seen from Japanese eyes. Why Heresy Became Mainstream in Japan I wrote that Western civilization has materialism and ideology-centrism in its framework, but of course, that is not all. There are also non-materialistic and non-ideological elements. In any case, both people and the human world consist of both consistent things and non-consistent things. Non-consistent things include contradictory things and various miscellaneous things that should not be viewed from the perspective of contradiction in the first place. There are scenes where fine arts, literature, and entertainment become protagonists, but the hard adult society is designed with ideology as its framework. Well, humans are not so clean or perfect, and being worldly-wise, there are various dirty parts and corruption, but those adult parts might be hard, yet perhaps we can put them into non-consistent things. It is a convenient trick when dividing into two cases: treating "things that are not X" collectively as a jumbled junk box. By the way, just because it is words does not mean Logos ≈ Logic. There is also something called Rhetoric (Rhetorike). Translated as the art of persuasion, oratory, or sophistry, it is the usage of words that does not question the means to guide the opponent to the objective, regardless of the truth or correctness of the content. This is also constructed with words. And words and symbols do not only deal with logic and rhetoric. For example, in grammar, there is Mood. For example, indicative mood, imperative mood, indirect mood (subjunctive, conjunctive), etc. Logic is described in declarative sentences of the indicative mood. Rhetoric might use all of them. However, words and symbols do not only deal with logic and rhetoric. They deal with dirty jokes, jokes, shouts, exclamations, groans, screams, babbling, and indescribably many other things. Among such things, there may be consistent things and non-consistent things, but there are many ways to use words and symbols that do not deal with logic or rhetoric. This means that the set of words includes not only Logos and Rhetoric but also various other things. Logos includes that meaning, but it is often expressed in words. It is called Écriture for written language and Discours for spoken language. Écriture and Discours include non-Logos things, so they do not overlap clearly. Words are symbols and signs. Recently, emojis have been codified just like characters. In the case of the alphabet, it used to be called ASCII code, but now it feels like emoji codes have been newly added to character codes. In that sense, Derrida calls it semiology or critique of metaphysics, Barthes calls it text theory, and Foucault calls it archaeology of knowledge or genealogy. Here, I will discuss symbols and language by roughly cutting them into consistent things and non-consistent things. Discourse and Others; Within Discourse, Ideology and Others Inside the human head, there are discursive things and other things. Lacan called discursive things the Symbolic. It is impossible that there are only words inside the human head. There are representations (images), sensory and sensible things, emotional things, volitional and desiderative things, and various things other than discourse. Also, within discourse, there are types of Logos like ideology, there is rhetoric, dirty jokes, jokes, shouts, exclamations, groans, screams, babbling—anything is fine, but symbols and words express various things. Among them, the protagonist in people and society is ideology, which we take as the representative of consistent things. And we lump together words other than ideology and things that form the spirit but are not words as non-consistent things, collecting all other miscellaneous things other than consistent things. Then, after all, the protagonist in people and the human world has long been ideology, and other miscellaneous things were supporting roles. However, in Japan, or even in the West, the ideology carried by authority and power reverses with the "others." There are cases where the miscellaneous things called "others" become the protagonist and ideology becomes the supporting role. Or rather, that becomes the dominant way of thinking in certain scenes in Japan. A characteristic of Japan is that Western heresy has become orthodoxy; for example, the core of Western thought, which is not to empathize with or project onto objects, is rather prioritized in Japan—projection onto objects, empathy, putting one's heart into things, and feeling are considered primary, whether in Japanese pathos, logos, or mute silence. This seems to be attracting attention worldwide recently. The worldview we feel is "Japanese" might be made up of "Signs/Presence (Non-Logos)" filling the gaps of Western "Construction (Logos)," or sometimes things that are Logos-like but considered absurd or heretical by the political orthodoxy of society. Roughly speaking, the world can be divided into "Logos-like things" and "Non-Logos-like things." Logos-like things are things that have names, have outlines, and are called "-ism," "-law," "-theory," or "-logic," such as laws, institutions, religious doctrines, scientific theories, and ideologies. They have various forms, but in a word, they can be said to have the suffix Logos (-logy). On the other hand, what fills the space between them is Non-Logos-like things. Things that have been called atmosphere, Ether, Tao (Way), Void, Mood, Field, etc. They are like a medium that fills, permeates, and occupies the "gaps" of Logos. Gestalt's Rubin's Vase consists of the schema: Figure = Logos (Institutions, Theories) Ground = Non-Logos (Field, Atmosphere) The successors of Biblical culture + Ancient Greek culture and Japan form a contrast: Visible things = Logos-like = Figure = West Invisible things = Non-Logos-like = Ground = Japan To give just two concrete examples: Example 1: Law/Contract vs. Atmosphere/Tacit Understanding Example 2: Logical Argument vs. "Field" created by Sentence-final particles, Onomatopoeia, Honorifics Logos-like Things and Non-Logos-like Things Filling the Gaps The world is divided into two. Logos-like things and Non-Logos-like things. Logos-like things have form, so they are easy to understand and stand out. The West, in the lineage of "Bible + Greek Philosophy," has thoroughly polished Logos = Figure. Theological systems, legal philosophy, modern science, contract theory... all are activities of "giving firm outlines with words." On the other hand, Japan can be said to be a cultural sphere that has thickly nurtured the side of "Non-Logos = Ground." "Atmosphere" rather than clear assertion, "Atmosphere of the place" rather than logic, "Breathing in unison (A-Un no Kokyu)" rather than contracts. Typical examples are sentence-final particles, onomatopoeia, and honorifics. These things, in terms of linguistic classification, include various things; for example, honorifics themselves include voice (active, passive, middle) and mood (direct, indirect (subjunctive, conjunctive), imperative), so if there are honorifics, one can omit the subject, the object of the subject, the speaker, the interlocutor, and the atmosphere of the place (by the way, in recent Japanese grammar in compulsory education, it is divided into respectful language, humble language, polite language, courteous language, and beautification language. Older generations might have read reference books explaining courteous language and beautification language as respectful-style honorifics). Sentence-final particles "ne, yo, sa, kana" adjust the temperature and distance of the place, not the information itself. Onomatopoeia expresses the fineness of the sensation filling the gaps of Logos, like "kachi (click)," "fuwatto (fluffy)," or "jinwari (gradually warm)." Honorifics are a device that launches a field of relationship regarding "who is treating whom and how," even if the subject or object is omitted. Seen this way, it can be said that the Japanese language and culture have long been handling the side of the "Ground" surrounding the Logos-like Figure—the Non-Logos layer—meticulously. Non-Logos-like things could be called atmosphere, Ether, Tao (Way), or Void in between. Like those, they are a medium filling the gaps, permeating and filling places where there is no Logos. In that sense, let's look at the world dualistically, or binarily, as a dualism without a vacuum. Dividing into two is the extreme of simplification, so it is easy to understand. The world is made of conspicuous things and things filling the space between conspicuous things, but since the things filling the space are full, they are conversely hard to be conscious of. However, a shift in viewpoint is possible. Like Rubin's Vase in Gestalt psychology, if you get used to it or train, you can invert Figure and Ground. Successors of Biblical Culture + Ancient Greek Culture and Japan There are cultures that ran wild with visible things, conspicuous things, Logos-like things, and things like the Figure in Gestalt psychology. This is Western thought rooted in Biblical culture + Ancient Greek culture. On the other hand, there are cultural spheres that continued to emphasize invisible things, inconspicuous things, Non-Logos-like things, and things like the Ground in Gestalt psychology. Roughly speaking, these are parts that can be called characteristics of Japan. Western thought is like the protagonist; it stands out and is recognized, so it is given proper names. Japanese culture is expressed by attaching negative words like "others in general" or "non-~," but there is no need to think badly just because negative prefixes or "non-" are attached to words. Rather, it can take all the rest. Also, this way of dividing is convenient in mathematical case analysis. Therefore, there is no need to have a bad image of "Non-~" or "Not ~." If you invert Figure and Ground like Rubin's Vase in Gestalt psychology and make this side the protagonist and that side the mob, you can acquire a completely different worldview. "From Periphery to Orthodoxy": This is like Christianity, which made the Ancient Roman Emperor sigh, "O Galilean, thou hast conquered," and in Japan, the largest sect of Buddhism is Pure Land Buddhism, which can be said to be a heresy from traditional orthodox Buddhism. This finances time; from the periphery called the past to the present, and in the future, it increases explosively in a compound, exponential manner. Is the World Beginning to Accept Japan? There are various ways to think about why the Japan boom is happening. However, one cause is likely that the inside of Japanese people's heads and the inside of people's heads in the Western cultural sphere have come much closer. As for what is happening, there are various analyses, but here I will try one explanation based on the context of this text. The inside of a Japanese person's head is filled with "heart." In this case, "heart" is not limited to empathy for humans but is a sensation felt toward non-human, non-biological things, sometimes not only objects but concepts, or emotional things welling up from the heart. Such things are often neither Logos, words, nor ideology. They are often not consistent things but rather non-consistent things, and many other miscellaneous things. Far from being non-contradictory, they do not even require consistency, coherence, invariance, singularity, uniqueness, identity, or homeostasis. They are not protagonists but things like air, environment, background, or field. In Quantum Field Theory, which is relatively advanced physics, the Field is omnipresent and is like a matrix from which elementary particles arise, like Ether filling spacetime universally. Seen from the Field, elementary particles are things that generate and annihilate from it or interact with other types of fields and elementary particles; if omnipresent things like the Field appear as background, then elementary particles are exactly the protagonists. In this case, elementary particles are ideologies, and the Field is other miscellaneous Non-Consistent things; far from standing out, their existence might not even be noticed, just as air, water, and safety are free and their existence is not consciously recognized. Economically speaking, far from having "scarcity," they exist infinitely. Infinity and Zero do not become protagonists but become somewhat special characters like scenery or singularities. Hasn't the Western cultural sphere stopped denying this Field, or Heart, that Japanese people cherished? As I wrote earlier, in pure Biblicalism of the Western cultural sphere or ways of thinking that inherited parts of the Ancient Greek tradition, it was a world of Materialism where putting one's heart into anything other than God was not allowed. I don't think such things have disappeared from the Western cultural sphere, and since it was a tradition that lasted for about 1,000 years, it won't disappear immediately. However, it can be said to be a tradition of only about 1,000 years, and pre-Christian Europe might have been a society that retained an ancient layer of culture with high affinity to current Japan. Regarding the relative view of Christianity, haven't people with a background in Western thought culture become able to view themselves relatively through novels like "Sophie's World," which became a global bestseller decades ago, and various other historical and transitional assumptions? On the other hand, Japan originally has ideological things too. Or rather, if there is a human group or society that is human, has culture, and has language, no matter how small, isn't it impossible for it not to have ideological things? It is the bone and acts like a skeleton. In this case, it is interesting that Western civilization is accepting Japanese culture not just as exoticism but with empathy. However, perhaps many on the Japanese side have also understood or acquired quite materialistic ways of thinking, respect for monotheistic things, and the exclusion rules of heart, or sensibility and emotion. During the post-war high economic growth period (or perhaps even before that, depending on the view), there was an aspect of converting Japanese-ness into money, and even in the subsequent Lost 30 Years, under the American unipolar hegemony, Neo-liberalism and Globalism (some call it International Financial Capitalism) were powerful. Those who survived and succeeded were often people in finance, consulting, ventures, startups, and management who had somewhat psychopathic traits capable of separating heart from thought/action. So, the old-fashioned Japanese heart and tradition have weakened considerably, and Japanese expressions and the mentality of Western people accepting them may have become closer. Also, as another aspect, the demand for Japan might be seen as the expansion of "Otaku culture," or a deep, bottomless swamp-like passion transcending monetary rationality, to general people, so it might be riding the wave of conservative reaction against Globalism and Neo-liberalism.

Learning Contemporary Philosophy from Another Angle Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Contemporary Philosophy through a Japan–West Cultural Contrast — Neo-Japonism / Neo-Art Nouveau “Ki” and “Aether” that seep into and fill the gaps of heart, spirit, and sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos —

Learning Contemporary Philosophy from Another Angle Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Contemporary Philosophy through a Japan–West Cultural Contrast — Neo-Japonism / Neo-Art Nouveau “Ki” and “Aether” that seep into and fill the gaps of heart, spirit, and sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos — Introduction: An Alternative Route into Contemporary Philosophy As an entry point into contemporary philosophy, the most important things are post-structuralist relativism and meta-cognition. These are conceptually simple and not too hard to learn. For many people, the real tough nut is structuralism. If you don’t understand structuralism, contemporary philosophy remains at the level of abstract slogans and doesn’t easily connect to concrete analysis or practice. Conversely, once structuralism “clicks,” your way of seeing the world changes dramatically. That said, learning structuralism head-on from textbooks tends to be dry and feels a bit like “ascetic training.” So in this essay I’d like to approach contemporary philosophy from a slightly different route. The theme is simple: Let’s divide the world into “consistent things” and “non-consistent things” and see what we learn. “Consistent things” can be rephrased as logos-like or rational things. “Non-consistent things” are not just contradictions in the strict logical sense, but also everything that does not fit neatly into the yardstick of consistency/contradiction in the first place. Using this simple two-way split, I’ll try to look again at contemporary philosophy—especially structuralism and post-structuralism—through the lens of the cultural differences between Japan and the West. 1. “Consistent Things” and “Non-Consistent Things” The phrase “non-consistent things” sounds roundabout. One might ask: “Why not just say ‘contradictory things’?” We could say that—but then the entire world gets trapped inside the single category of “contradiction.” By saying “non-consistent,” I want to include: Things that are literally contradictory, and Things for which the framework of “consistency vs. contradiction” itself is not the right lens. In other words, “consistent things” form one cluster, and “non-consistent things” means: everything else. This attitude—refusing to too easily accept the Law of the Excluded Middle and the comfort of neat binary partitions—was already present in ancient India in the Buddha’s time (the so-called “Axial Age” in Karl Jaspers’ sense, when many kinds of thought blossomed in India, China, and ancient Greece). Early Buddhist schools, for example, often used expressions like “non-non-X” or “non-non-existence,” consciously playing at the edge of logical simplification. In this essay I will often use the parallel pair: Logos-like things vs. Non-logos-like things (rhetorical, affective, atmospheric, etc.) as a more intuitive label set for “consistent / non-consistent.” 2. Western Modernity’s Chronic Disease: “Losing the Heart” To see what “modernity” is, it’s useful to look at societies that are in the middle of becoming modern. One of the best lenses is Dostoevsky—both the man and his novels. Dostoevsky’s works can be summed up in one phrase: The conflict between the modern and the non-modern. To read him properly, it helps to read good commentaries (for example, books that “decode” Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov), as well as Mikhail Bakhtin’s famous ideas of the carnival and polyphony. In Dostoevsky’s novels, we repeatedly meet people possessed by ideology: Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment Stavrogin in Demons Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov Or even Prince Myshkin in The Idiot People who have been swallowed by a certain ideology become, in a sense, inhuman. This is one of the great themes of modern and contemporary history. Even today, we can see politicians, commentators, and pundits whose faces look somehow different from how they used to. There are many reasons, of course, but some of them may be people whose humanity—the soft part we might simply call “heart”—has been hollowed out by an ideology that has taken over. You may also have people around you of whom you quietly think: “You weren’t like this when you were younger…” 3. Japan and the West as Civilizations: “Heart-Oriented” vs “Heart-Suppressing” Very roughly, we can draw a contrast between Japanese and Western cultures: A culture that pushes the heart vs. A culture that suppresses the heart Of course, things are not that simple, nor should we oversimplify them. Japanese culture has many TPOs where emotions must be controlled; Western culture also has scenes where the heart is expressed and valued. But at a deep level, there is such a tendency in the cultural “base layer.” In Japan, there is a tendency to accept and follow what is felt in the moment—the feeling that wells up. In Western culture, there is an underlying principle: when what you feel conflicts with a rule or principle, you must suppress or negate it. If we radically simplify the image: The inside of a Japanese person is full of feelings, fleeting impressions, and emotional movements. The inside of a typical Western person is full of God and rules/texts (ideology). Everything else is, so to speak, vacuum. Why vacuum? Because various systems—religious, social, psychological—work to forbid emotional immersion in anything other than the one God: The ban on idolatry The rule that nothing other than the one God may be regarded as sacred The strict separation between the Creator and the created world: you must not treat created things as sacred There is also a more “pastoral” explanation: the psychology of pastoralists and herders. You cannot afford deep emotional attachment to livestock when you must: Sell them Kill them Eat them Use their bodies as material for daily life If you reacted to livestock as you do to pets or fellow humans, life would become impossible. So emotional restraint in relation to “things” becomes a survival tactic—and then a culture. In any case, constantly running this kind of distinction in everyday life makes one’s inner world materialistic in a certain sense. From this perspective: Marx, whose grandfather was a rabbi and who grew up in the trajectory of Jewish emancipation and modernization, did not have to invent materialism from scratch. The strongly text-centered, rule-centered forms of Judaism and Protestantism are already deeply materialistic in how they treat the world. By contrast, Catholicism permits icons and saints, and in some respects it is closer to Japanese sensibility among the Christian traditions. So, when Protestantism, rationalized Christianity, and modernized Judaism start to exert influence, their worldview can feel sharply opposed to Japanese sensibilities. 4. Western Culture: Materialist and Ideological Let’s call an idea that has been made as logical and explicit as possible an ideology. Not everything is rigorously formalized as in modern symbolic logic. But ideology is a cluster of thought that aspires to consistency and clear articulation. Seen that way, ideology is about the content and types of logos. Our world is built out of many ideologies: Politics, law, institutions Religion, ethics, morality Science, technology, industry And even many forms of art and cultural theory These often appear with suffixes like “-ism”, “-ism/-ization”, “-law”, “-principle”, “-doctrine”, “-theory”, “-logic” and so on. Where ideologies function as logos, they tend to aim at consistency. They are the “hard” parts of what we call human nature and society. Ideology = representative of the consistent layer Everything else in the mental and social world = non-consistent layer Research on consistent things can rely on powerful tools like logic and foundational mathematics. In recent decades, however, logic itself has developed systems that explicitly deal with inconsistency: Paraconsistent logic Dialetheic logic Relevance logic Many-valued logic Non-monotonic logic Paracomplete logics Knowledge-base-oriented extensions Fuzzy logic, etc. From this angle, we could say: Logic handles the consistent layer. These non-standard logics are attempts to touch the non-consistent layer within the realm of thought. But even then, what is handled is still thought, not emotion or desire. In that sense, thinking—especially the kind that pursues consistency—is easier to handle than affectivity. Everything that doesn’t fit neatly into this consistent layer—feelings, affects, impulses, atmospheres—gets pushed into the “non-consistent” side. 5. The World Is Built Around the “Consistent” as Protagonist The human mind and human society are both constructed around non-contradictory things—or at least things that aspire to be non-contradictory. Perhaps that is because we instinctively want to put “truth” and “justice” in that role. The Bible, taking over the Greek philosophical tradition, boldly declares at the beginning of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos).” In other words: God is Logos. For Japanese people, this line can feel deeply alien. Western civilization, with the Bible and Greek philosophy as its OS, tries to construct and analyze the world with logos. Individual pieces of logos are ideologies; thus logocentrism is also ideology-centrism. Logos values consistency, coherence, and non-contradiction. Ideology inherits this hardness. It becomes: Truth Justice Authority This is why, in rabbinic Judaism, Pharisees—professional interpreters of scripture—were so powerful, and why Jesus, who spoke “with authority,” was such a scandal. Logos-centrism + materialism is one way to describe Western modernity from a Japanese vantage point. 6. When “Heretics” Become the Mainstream: Japan’s Peculiarity Of course, Western civilization is not only materialist and ideology-centric. It also has rich non-logos layers. Likewise, no human society exists without ideology. Any group with language and culture will develop some kind of hard structure—its “bones.” What is striking about Japan, however, is this: That which is heretical in the West often becomes orthodox in Japan. For example, in the Western tradition, there is a very strong tabu against projecting feelings into objects—against treating anything other than God as sacred. In Japan, by contrast, projecting feelings into things, empathizing with things, infusing them with heart is given primary value. This applies to people, nature, tools, and sometimes even concepts. In other words, what Western modernity labeled as “superstition,” “idolatry,” or “irrationality” is treated in Japan as: Primary Foundational Desirable This is precisely what is now drawing the world’s attention. The world that we feel to be “so Japanese” may be made up of the “feel” (non-logos) that fills the gaps between Western structures (logos) —along with various forms of “authorized non-sense” that were historically marginalized or deemed heretical in the West. 7. Logos and the Non-Logos That Fills Its Gaps The world can be roughly divided into: Logos-like things, and Non-logos-like things. Logos-like things have clear shape and are easy to see. They are: Laws, systems, religious doctrines Scientific theories Ideologies with “-ism”, “-law”, “-principle”, “-doctrine”, “-theory” attached Non-logos-like things are the media that fill the gaps: Air Aether Dao (Tao) Emptiness (śūnyatā) Mood Ba (場, “the field” or “situation”) They seep into spaces where logos is absent and quietly fill them. In this sense, the world has no vacuum: wherever logos is not, some kind of non-logos is already present. If we look through the lens of Gestalt psychology’s Rubin vase: Figure = Logos (systems, rules, theories) Ground = Non-logos (field, air, mood) —training yourself to reverse figure and ground allows you to acquire a completely different worldview. 8. Logos-Centered West, Non-Logos-Rich Japan The heirs of biblical and ancient Greek culture—today’s Western civilization—have relentlessly developed the figure side: theology, law, political philosophy, modern science, contract theory. All of these are attempts to give the world sharp contours through words. Japan, on the other hand, has thickened the ground side: Less “explicit assertion,” more “air.” Less “logical debate,” more “atmosphere of the situation.” Less “contract document,” more “unspoken mutual understanding.” Typical examples are: Sentence-final particles like ne, yo, sa, kana They don’t add new information; they adjust the temperature and distance in the conversation. Onomatopoeia like kachi-, fuwatto, jinwari They fill the gaps of logos with exceedingly fine-grained sensibility. Honorifics/keigo Even when subject and object are omitted, keigo can still conjure up who is treating whom how and what kind of field/ba is present. From a linguistics viewpoint, Japanese honorifics overlap with: Voice (active, passive, middle) Mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive/irrealis, etc.) In older grammar books, some of what are now called “humble/exalted” or “deferential/polite/beautifying” forms were lumped together under labels like “respectful-style honorifics.” In newer frameworks, we explicitly distinguish: Respect language Humble language Polite language Deferential language Beautifying language That is, beyond “speaker” and “hearer,” “subject” and “object,” there is also something like a field/ba that is being tuned. Some honorific forms do not so much raise or lower persons as polish the atmosphere itself. All this suggests: Japanese language and culture have long specialized in handling the non-logos, field-like layer that surrounds explicit logos. 9. Why Is the World Now “Accepting” Japan? Why the current “Japan boom”? There are many factors, but one big reason may be this: The inner worlds of Japanese people and people in Western cultures have moved much closer together. In our earlier terms: The Japanese inner world is filled with heart in a broad sense. Not only empathy for humans, but also affect toward non-human and even non-living things—sometimes even toward abstract entities. These are not logos, not “words” or “ideology.” They are: Non-consistent, Or things we don’t usually evaluate in terms of consistency at all, Or the miscellaneous “everything else” that fills our mental life. They do not need consistency, coherence, stability, uniqueness, or identity. They are not protagonists, but rather air, background, environment, field. In quantum field theory, a “field” is something that pervades spacetime, from which particles appear and disappear. If we map this onto our theme: Particles = ideologies (hard logos) Field = non-logos, the atmospheric “everything else” Because the field is everywhere, it is rarely noticed. It has no “scarcity,” so economics wouldn’t count it. It is, as with air and safety, something we only notice when it is missing. What seems to be happening now is: Western culture has stopped so rigidly denying this field-like, “heart” layer. Pure, doctrinaire strands of scriptural monotheism demanded a kind of materialist inner life: nothing but God is sacred, everything else is “just stuff.” That tradition will not vanish overnight. But it was only about a thousand years of history; before Christianity, pre-Christian Europe might actually have had a deep layer of culture quite compatible with today’s Japanese sensibility. Books like Sophie's World, and many other histories and introductions to Western thought, have given Western readers tools to look at their own tradition more relativistically. They can now see Christianity and their own logos-centrism from the outside. On the Japanese side, we have also internalized a great deal of Western logos: Materialism Monotheism-like respect for a single principle A willingness to separate “heart/affect” from “thinking/acting” During the high-growth era, we sometimes “monetized” Japanese-ness and Japanese tradition. During the “lost decades,” under US-led globalization and neoliberalism, those who survived and thrived often had “psychopathic” traits in the neutral sense: the ability to separate affect from decision-making. In that process, the mentality of Japanese elites grew closer to Western patterns. At the same time, the global appetite for “otaku culture” can be seen as a reaction against globalism and neoliberalism: A hunger for expressions driven by deep, non-rational passion and obsession, which do not fit into simple monetary rationality. In that climate, Japanese cultural exports—anime, games, subcultures, and the peculiar mixture of logos and non-logos that underlies them—are being welcomed not only as “exotic” goods but with genuine empathy. 10. Contemporary Philosophy as a Tool to Read This Situation If we summarize this whole story in the language of contemporary philosophy: The Western tradition is logos-centric, Ideology-centric, Materialist in its everyday spiritual hygiene. Japanese culture has cultivated the non-logos field, The atmospheric, The affective and relational “everything else”. We live in an age when: The Western side is beginning to relativize its own logos-centrism, and The Japanese side has taken in a great deal of logos/ideology as well. The result is a strange and fertile in-between zone: The consistent and the non-consistent, Logos and non-logos, Ideology and field, Heart-suppressing systems and heart-pushing sensibilities are now forced to co-exist inside each of us. To navigate this, we need exactly what contemporary philosophy offers: Structuralism: tools for analyzing and mapping the hard skeletons of ideology and logos. Post-structuralism and Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā): tools for relativizing, loosening, and re-placing those structures. And above all, meta-cognition: the habit of watching how our own mind flips between figure and ground. In this essay, I have proposed one extremely simple device: Look at the world as made of “consistent things” and “non-consistent things,” and notice which side you have been unconsciously privileging. Once you do that, Japanese culture and Western culture no longer appear as opposites or curiosities, but as: Two different ways of tuning the ratio between logos and non-logos, between ideology and field. And from there, a more supple, 21st-century version of “Neo-Japonism” and “Neo-Art Nouveau” may begin—not as a design trend, but as a way of living that lets logos and non-logos breathe together.

Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos

Learning Modern Philosophy from a Different Angle: Comparing the Consistent and the Non-Consistent — Modern Philosophy Learned Through a Comparison of Japanese and Western Cultures: Neo-Japonism, Neo-Art Nouveau, and the Qi and Ether Filling the Gaps of Heart, Spirit, and Sensibility — From the Opposition of Logos and Non-Logos Introduction: A Cinematic Experience and an Entryway to Philosophy The other day, my daughter took me to see the movie Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. The colors of Taisho Romanticism, the invisible power of "Breathing," and the swordsmen fighting against unreasonable demons (Logos-like violence). Since the runtime was long, I found myself immersed in philosophical contemplation. I wondered if that worldview, which we feel is distinctly "Japanese," is made up of the "Signs (Non-Logos)" that fill the gaps of the Western "Construction (Logos)." In learning modern philosophy, the most difficult concept is "Structuralism." Conversely, concepts like "Post-structuralist Relativism" and "Metacognition" are easier to understand as ideas. Ideals like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" are catchy, but when we try to implement them, system errors (contradictions) inevitably occur. How to deal with these "ineliminable contradictions" is the core of modern philosophy and a theme that connects to the Buddhist concepts of "Emptiness" (Sunyata) and the "Middle Way." In this essay, rather than a standard explanation of Structuralism, I would like to propose a new way of learning modern philosophy through a cultural comparison between Japan and the West, centered on the binary opposition of "Consistent Things (Logos)" and "Non-Consistent Things (Non-Logos)." Chapter 1: Logos-like Things and the Non-Logos-like Things That Fill the Gaps 1. The Perspective of "Vacuum-less Dualism" The world can be roughly divided into two categories: Logos-like Things: Things that have form, are easy to understand, and stand out. They are constructed by words, such as "-isms," "Laws," and "Theories." Non-Logos-like Things: Things that fill the spaces between Logos-like things. A medium that permeates the gaps, called by names such as Atmosphere (Kuuki), Ether, The Way (Tao), or Void. Dividing the world in two like this is the extreme of simplification, but it is very easy to understand. The important point is that the place where there is no Logos is not a "vacuum," but rather "filled" with something Non-Logos-like. 2. Inverting Rubin's Vase Are you familiar with "Rubin's Vase" in Gestalt psychology? When you look at the vase (Figure), you cannot see the faces (Ground), and when you look at the faces, you cannot see the vase. However, with training, you can consciously invert them. Figure (Logos): Politics, Law, Science and Technology, Écriture (written language). Ground (Non-Logos): Emotion, Intuition, the Atmosphere of a place, the surplus of Discours (spoken language). Western modernity is a culture that has thoroughly polished this "Figure (Logos)." On the other hand, Japan has traditionally nurtured the side of the "Ground (Non-Logos)." By inverting this Figure and Ground, a completely different worldview comes into sight. Chapter 2: The Malady of Western Modernity and the Contrast with Japanese Sensibility 1. What it Means to "Lose the Heart" Dostoevsky's novels (Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov) are masterpieces depicting the conflict between the modern and the non-modern. Characters like Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, who become possessed by a certain kind of ideology (Logos), lose their humanity and their soft "hearts." This is a universal theme of the modern era that also applies to contemporary politicians and commentators. 2. A Culture that Pushes the Heart vs. A Culture that Suppresses the Heart If we were to express the difference between Japan and the West in one phrase, it would be: Japan: A culture that pushes the heart (welling emotions and intuition). Somewhat natural and unconscious. The West: A culture that suppresses and manages the heart (emotions and affects). Artificial and conscious. This difference goes beyond cultural software and may extend to the level of the brain's hardware (OS, BIOS, or perhaps DNA). In the West (especially in the Protestant tradition), empathizing with objects other than God is forbidden as "idolatry." If one were to empathize with livestock as if they were pets, the livestock industry would not function. This training of "viewing objects materialistically (detaching oneself)" developed Western science and logical thinking (Logocentrism), but at the same time, it turned the gaps of the heart into a vacuum. Chapter 3: An Era Where the Japanese "Heresy" Becomes Mainstream 1. From Periphery to Orthodoxy The "Japanese-ness" that has been treated as "other in general" or "non-rational." However, just as it is convenient in mathematics to divide cases into "A" and "Not-A," this category of "Other (Non-Logos)" is a vast territory that can encompass everything other than Logos. Just as Christianity, which was once a heresy in the Roman Empire, became orthodox, or as Pure Land Buddhism, which was a heresy in traditional Japanese Buddhism, became the largest sect, history shows phenomena where what was on the "Periphery" inverts to become "Orthodoxy." 2. Why the World is Accepting Japan A global Japan boom is happening now. This is not mere exoticism. It is because people in the Western cultural sphere are feeling the limits of their own "Logocentrism (Materialism)" and are beginning to resonate with the Non-Logos values that Japanese people have cherished, such as "Field (Ba)," "Signs/Presence (Kehai)," and "Empathy" — a Neo-Japonism or Neo-Art Nouveau. In "Quantum Field Theory" in physics, elementary particles (Logos) are born from the Field (Non-Logos) and return to the Field. The Field is the essence and the Matrix. The world has begun to realize that the "Field (Heart/Peace of Mind)," which was thought to be infinite and free like air and water, is actually scarce and important. 3. Changes in Japanese People and a New Fusion On the other hand, Japanese people themselves are changing. Amidst high economic growth, the bursting of the bubble, and the wave of neoliberalism, the traditional Japanese sentiment has faded, and more people have acquired Western rationality (a psychopathic pragmatism). However, precisely because of this, paradoxically, "Otaku culture" and "Oshi-katsu" (fandom activities supporting one's favorite) — a "bottomless swamp of passion" that transcends monetary rationality — are becoming generalized. This can be seen as a result of Japan and the West approaching each other, lowering the mental barriers between them. In the modern age, which has reached a dead end by trying to construct the world solely with "Logos (Consistent Things)," adopting the Japanese "Non-Logos (Harmony containing contradictions)" is crucial. Using modern philosophy as a "practical tool" in this way may be the key to surviving this complex world.

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方 無矛盾なものと「無矛盾でないもの」の比較で学ぶ ― 日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学 ネオジャポニズム／ネオ・アールヌーヴォー 心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める「気」とエーテル ― ロゴスと非ロゴス的なものの対置から ―

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方 無矛盾なものと「無矛盾でないもの」の比較で学ぶ ― 日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学 ネオジャポニズム／ネオ・アールヌーヴォー 心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める「気」とエーテル ― ロゴスと非ロゴス的なものの対置から ― 1. 現代哲学をどう学ぶか ― 相対主義と構造主義 現代哲学を学ぶうえで、いちばん手前に見えてくるのは ポスト構造主義的な 相対主義 そしてそれを支える メタ認知 です。これは、キャッチコピーとしては比較的わかりやすい。 「どんな立場も絶対ではない」「自分の立場も一つの構造にすぎない」といった態度ですね。 ただし、これだけだとどうしても「きれいな理想論」で終わりがちです。 相対主義は“言うのは簡単だが、運用するのは難しい”思想です。 一方で、現代哲学の中で学ぶのが難しいけれど、実践性と具体性の土台になるのが 構造主義 です。 構造主義なしでは、「じゃあ実際に社会や心の動きをどう分析するのか」がつかみにくい。 相対主義・メタ認知 … スローガンは簡単、実装が難しい 構造主義 … 学ぶのは少し骨が折れるが、現実に手が届く道具になる 本稿では、構造主義やポスト構造主義そのものを直接解説するのではなく、 「無矛盾なもの」と「無矛盾でないもの」 という切り口から、 日本と西洋文化の比較を通して、現代哲学への別ルートを用意してみたいと思います。 2. 「無矛盾なもの」と「無矛盾でないもの」 ここで、少し変な日本語を押し通してみます。 無矛盾なもの 無矛盾でないもの 普通は「矛盾したもの」と言えばよさそうですが、あえて 「無矛盾ではない（が、必ずしも“矛盾している”とも限らない）もの」 という、ゆるい言葉を使ってみます。 なぜこんなまわりくどい言い方をするかというと、 矛盾／非矛盾の二値だけで世界を切り分けてしまうと、こぼれ落ちるものが多すぎる からです。 はっきりした論理・制度・法則 → 無矛盾を志向する「ロゴス的なもの」 それに入りきらない感情・雰囲気・場のムード → 「無矛盾とは言えないが、単純に矛盾とも言えないもの」 仏教の古い文献でも、「非非〜」「無無〜」といった、排中律に抵抗するような表現がよく出てきます。 「ある／ない」の二項対立だけではつかまえきれない領域を、どうにか表現しようとした苦心の跡です。 ここでは、整理のために： 無矛盾なもの = ロゴス的なもの 無矛盾でないもの = 非ロゴス的なもの（レトリック的・感性的なものを含む広い領域） と、大づかみに呼んでみましょう。 3. 西洋近代の宿痾：「心をなくす」方向への圧力 西洋近代とは何か。 その過程を観察するには、近代化途上の社会 を描いた文学が格好の材料になります。 たとえば、ドストエフスキー。 『罪と罰』『悪霊』『カラマーゾフの兄弟』『白痴』…… 一言で言えば、近代と非近代の葛藤 の物語です。 そこに頻繁に登場するのが、 イデオロギーに憑依された人間 「正しさ」の名のもとに、人間的な柔らかさ＝心を失っていく人物像 です。 現代を見回しても、ある種の政治家や評論家、コメンテーターの顔つき・言葉遣いが 「昔と違うな」と感じることがあります。 かつてはもっと柔らかい人だったのに いつのまにか、イデオロギーの代弁者になってしまったように見える こうした変化は、 人間の内側を、無矛盾なロゴス（イデオロギー）で埋め尽くそうとする圧力 として理解することもできます。 西洋近代は、「心」を抑え、「原則」「条文」「教義」を前面に押し出す方向に動いてきた、と。 4. 日本と西洋 ― 「心を推す文化」と「心を抑圧する文化」 大ざっぱに言えば、日本文化と西洋文化の違いは 「心を推す文化」と「心を抑圧する文化」 の違いとして見られます（もちろん、現実はもっと複雑ですが）。 日本 その場で湧いてきた感情や感覚を、そのまま受け入れてよしとする傾向 無意識に「感じたまま」を大事にする、やや天然な側面 西洋 感じたものや湧き上がる感情に対して、「それは許されるか？」という検閲の原則が働く 心を抑え、ルールや信条を優先させる、やや人工的な側面 もちろん日本にも心を抑える場面はあるし、西洋にも心を推す場面はあります。 ただ、基盤にどちらの傾きが強く埋め込まれているか という話です。 ここで重要なのは： 西洋 … ロゴス的なもの（原理・教義・法則） を前景化 日本 … 非ロゴス的なもの（場・空気・気配・心） を厚く育てた という 設計思想の違い です。 5. ロゴス中心主義とイデオロギー 西洋近代を支えてきたのは、聖書と古代ギリシア思想の連合体です。 ヨハネ福音書は「初めに言葉（ロゴス）があった」と宣言し、 ある意味では「神 = ロゴス」とまで言ってしまいました。 ここから、 ロゴス中心主義 = イデオロギー中心主義 が強化されていきます。 ロゴス … なるべく無矛盾で、一貫した説明を目指す イデオロギー … ロゴスで練り上げた世界観・価値観のパッケージ 法学・神学・経済学・科学理論などは、このロゴス中心主義の典型です。 「正しさ」「整合性」「一貫性」「真偽」を追い求める領域ですね。 現代の論理学は、実は矛盾を扱うロジック（パラコンシステント論理など）も生み出していますが、 それでも対象は、基本的に「命題」「理論」「知識」といった ロゴス側の材料 に限られます。 感情・感性・意欲・場のムードは、原理的にロジックの外側に置かれてしまいます。 つまり、無矛盾なものは強力な道具で扱えるが、無矛盾でないものは扱いが難しい。 この非対称性が、現代哲学を学ぶときの一つのポイントになります。 6. 言説とそれ以外 ― 象徴界と「その他もろもろ」 人間の心の中には、大きく分けて 言説的なもの（言葉・記号・イデオロギー） 非言説的なもの（イメージ・感覚・感情・欲望など） が同居しています。ラカンは前者を「象徴界」と呼びました。 さらに、言説の中にも 無矛盾を志向する イデオロギー（ロゴス） 説得・扇動・冗談・下ネタなどを含む レトリック 感嘆・掛け声・終助詞・オノマトペのような、論理にも修辞にも回収されない表現 など、さまざまな層があります。 ここで、 イデオロギー = 無矛盾なものの代表 それ以外の言葉・イメージ・感情・欲望 ＝ 大雑把に 「無矛盾でないもの」 と見なしてみると、世の中は長いあいだ 無矛盾なイデオロギーが主役 その他もろもろは脇役 として扱われがちだった、と言えるでしょう。 7. 日本 ― 「異端が正統になった」文化として ところが、日本には少し奇妙なねじれがあります。 西洋ではしばしば「異端」とされた要素が、日本ではむしろ 正統・中心 に座ってしまうのです。 たとえば、 対象への感情移入・投影 物や場所に「心」を見る感性 場の空気・気配を最優先する態度 などは、西洋的な禁欲的ユダヤ・プロテスタント文化からすれば、 「偶像崇拝的」「感情移入しすぎ」と見なされがちな要素です。 しかし日本では、 対象に心をこめる・投影する・感じること ＝ 人間のロゴスであれパトスであれ、最優先で肯定されるべきこと として受け取られてきました。 ここで言う「心」とは、 人間に対する共感だけでなく、非人間的なもの・無生物・概念にまで及ぶ感覚です。 桜に心を感じる 使い込んだ道具に「魂」を見る アニメキャラや架空の存在に本気で感情移入する こうしたあり方は、西洋的なロゴス中心主義から見ると「周辺」だったかもしれませんが、 日本では 周辺がそのまま中心を乗っ取ってしまった ようなところがあります。 これを少し気取って言えば、 「周辺から正統へ」 日本とは、西洋の異端が標準装備になった文明圏である という見方もできるでしょう。 8. ロゴス／非ロゴスで見る日本ブーム では、なぜいま世界で日本文化への関心が高まっているのか。 理由はいろいろ考えられますが、この文章の文脈に沿ってあえて一つだけ言うなら、 西洋側が、「非ロゴス的なもの」の価値を否定しきれなくなってきたから と説明できます。 長いあいだ、西洋は「神と条文」とイデオロギーで世界を組み立ててきた その結果、豊かさの一方で、味気なさ・疲労感・メンタルヘルスの問題も噴き出した そこで、「場」「空気」「気配」「推し」「オタク的情念」といった 非ロゴス側のソフトウェアを厚く持つ日本文化が、 一種の「もうひとつのOS」として魅力を帯び始めた と見ることができます。 一方で、日本側もまた、戦後の高度経済成長やグローバル化を通じて、 西洋的なロゴス（法・契約・合理性・市場原理）をかなりインストールしてきました。 その結果、 西洋側 … 非ロゴス（場・気配）の重要性を再発見しつつある 日本側 … ロゴス（法・契約・論理）の重要性を痛い目に遭いながら学んできた という形で、両者のメンタリティが以前より接近している のかもしれません。 9. 現代哲学をこの視点で学ぶために ― 小さな実践 ここまでの話を、現代哲学の学び方に引き戻してみましょう。 9-1. 世界を二つのレイヤーで見る 日常のニュースやSNS、文学作品、人間関係を眺めるときに、 これは ロゴス的なもの（無矛盾を志向するもの） か？ それとも 無矛盾でないもの（感情・場・気配・雑多なもろもろ） か？ という二つのレイヤーに分けてみる。 法律・政策・イデオロギー・「正しさ」を語る文章は、概ねロゴス側。 そこにまとわりつく終助詞、オノマトペ、空気感、場のムードは非ロゴス側。 どちらか一方だけを真とし、他方を無視するのではなく、 両方が絡み合って世界を形作っている という感覚を持つことが、構造主義的な見方の良い入口になります。 9-2. 図と地を入れ替える訓練 ゲシュタルト心理学のルビンの壺のように、 普段は「図（ロゴス）」として見ている部分を地に引き下げる 逆に「地（非ロゴス）」だった空気・場・心の動きを主役にして眺めてみる という 視点の反転 を意識的にやってみると、 「構造が見える感覚」が少しずつ育っていきます。 9-3. 日本文化を「非ロゴスの高度な実験場」として読む 和歌・俳句・マンガ・アニメ・ネットスラング・オノマトペ・敬語…… これらを単なる“日本的おもしろ文化”として消費するのではなく、 「非ロゴス的なものをここまで高度に扱っている例」として読む と、現代哲学への距離がぐっと縮まります。 10. 結び ― 無矛盾でない世界を抱えたまま生きる 現代哲学の最前線では、矛盾を含んだままの世界をどう生きるか、 という問いがさまざまなかたちで繰り返し問われています。 無矛盾なロゴスだけで世界を埋め尽くすことはできない だからといって、ロゴスを全部捨てて感情だけで生きるわけにもいかない このあいだを行ったり来たりしながら、 矛盾や揺らぎを抱えたまま、生きていく技術 を少しずつ磨いていく。 その際、日本という「非ロゴスの実験場」から学べることは、実はとても多いのではないか――。 そんな仮説のもとに、本稿の「別ルートからの現代哲学入門」を終えたいと思います。

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方、無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものの比較で学ぶ ―日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学、ネオジャポニズム ネオアールヌーボー 心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める気とエーテル －ロゴス、非ロゴス的なものの対置から－

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方、無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものの比較で学ぶ ―日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学、ネオジャポニズム　ネオアールヌーボー　心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める気とエーテル　－ロゴス、非ロゴス的なものの対置から－ 序：ある日の映画体験と、哲学への入り口 先日、娘に連れられて『鬼滅の刃』の映画を観てきました。 大正ロマンの色彩、呼吸という目に見えない力、そして理不尽な鬼（ロゴス的な暴力）と戦う剣士たち。 上映時間が長かったので、その間、ふと哲学的な思考に耽っていました。私たちが「日本的」だと感じるあの世界観は、西洋的な「構築（ロゴス）」の隙間を埋める「気配（非ロゴス）」でできているのではないか、と。 現代哲学を学ぶ上で、最も難解なのは「構造主義」です。逆に、「ポスト構造主義的な相対主義」や「メタ認知」は、概念としては理解しやすい。 「自由、平等、博愛」といった理念はキャッチーですが、それを実装しようとすると、システムエラー（矛盾）が必ず生じます。この「除去不能な矛盾」をどう扱うか。それが現代哲学の核心であり、仏教の「空」や「中道」にも通じるテーマです。 今回は、あえて正攻法の構造主義解説ではなく、「無矛盾なもの（ロゴス）」と「無矛盾でないもの（非ロゴス）」という二項対立を軸に、日本と西洋の文化比較を通じて、現代哲学の新しい学び方を提案してみたいと思います。 第1章：ロゴス的なものと、その間を満たす非ロゴス的なもの 1. 「真空のない二元論」という視座 世界はざっくりと2つに分けられます。 ロゴス的なもの: 形態を持ち、分かりやすく、目立つもの。「～主義」「～法」「～理論」など言葉で構築されるもの。 非ロゴス的なもの: ロゴス的なものの間を埋めるもの。空気、エーテル、道（タオ）、虚などと呼ばれる、隙間に浸透するメディア。 世界をこのように二分することは単純化の極地ですが、非常に分かりやすい。 重要なのは、ロゴスがない場所は「真空」なのではなく、非ロゴス的な何かが「満ちている」という視点です。 2. ルビンの壺を反転させる ゲシュタルト心理学の「ルビンの壺」をご存知でしょうか。壺（図）を見ている時は顔（地）が見えず、顔を見ている時は壺が見えなくなる。しかし、訓練すれば意識的に反転させることができます。 図（ロゴス）: 政治、法、科学技術、エクリチュール（書き言葉）。 地（非ロゴス）: 感情、直感、場の空気、ディスクール（話し言葉）の余剰部分。 西洋近代は、この「図（ロゴス）」を徹底的に磨き上げてきた文化です。一方、日本は伝統的に「地（非ロゴス）」の側を豊かに育んできました。この図と地を反転させることで、全く違う世界観が見えてきます。 第2章：西洋近代の宿痾と、日本的感性の対比 1. 「心をなくす」ということ ドストエフスキーの小説（『罪と罰』『悪霊』『カラマーゾフの兄弟』）は、近代と非近代の葛藤を描いた傑作です。 ラスコーリニコフやイワン・カラマーゾフのように、ある種のイデオロギー（ロゴス）に取り憑かれた人間は、人間性や柔らかい「心」を失っていきます。これは現代の政治家やコメンテーターにも通じる、近現代の普遍的なテーマです。 2. 心を推す文化 vs 心を抑圧する文化 日本と西洋の違いを一言で表すなら、こうなるでしょう。 日本: 心（湧き上がる感情・直感）を推す文化。やや天然で、無意識的。 西洋: 心（感情・情動）を抑圧・管理する文化。人工的で、意識的。 これは文化というソフトウェアの違いを超えて、もしかすると脳のハードウェアレベル（OSやBIOS、あるいはDNA）の違いにまで及ぶかもしれません。 西洋（特にプロテスタント的伝統）では、神以外の対象に感情移入することは「偶像崇拝」として禁じられます。家畜にペットのように感情移入しては、畜産は成り立ちません。 この「対象を唯物的に見る（突き放す）」という訓練が、西洋の科学や論理的思考（ロゴス中心主義）を発達させましたが、同時に心の隙間を真空にしてしまいました。 第3章：日本という「異端」が主流になる時代 1. 周辺から正統へ 「その他全般」「～ではない（非合理）」として扱われてきた日本的なるもの。 しかし、数学の場合分けにおいて「A」と「A以外（非A）」に分けるのが便利なように、この「その他（非ロゴス）」というカテゴリーは、ロゴス以外のすべてを総取りできる広大な領域です。 かつてローマ帝国で異端だったキリスト教が正統になったように、あるいは日本仏教で異端だった浄土系が最大宗派になったように、「周辺」にあったものが「正統」へと反転する現象が歴史にはあります。 2. 世界が日本を受け入れつつある理由 今、世界的な日本ブームが起きています。これは単なるエキゾチズムではありません。 西洋文化圏の人々が、自らの「ロゴス中心主義（唯物論）」の限界を感じ、日本人が大切にしてきた「場」「気配」「感情移入」といった非ロゴス的な価値観（ネオ・ジャポニズム、ネオ・アール・ヌーヴォー）に共鳴し始めているからです。 物理学における「場の量子論」では、素粒子（ロゴス）は場（非ロゴス）から生まれ、場に還ります。場こそが本質であり、マトリックスです。 空気や水のように「タダ」で無限にあると思われていた「場（心・安心）」が、実は希少で重要なものだと、世界が気づき始めたのです。 3. 日本人の変化と、新たな融合 一方で、日本人自身も変化しています。高度経済成長やバブル崩壊、新自由主義の波の中で、かつての日本的な情緒は薄れ、西洋的な合理性（サイコパス的な割り切り）を身につけた人も増えました。 しかし、だからこそ今、逆説的に「オタク文化」や「推し活」のような、金銭的合理性を超えた「底なし沼のような情念」が一般化しています。 これは、日本と西洋がお互いに歩み寄り、メンタリティの垣根が低くなった結果とも言えます。 「ロゴス（無矛盾なもの）」だけで世界を構築しようとして行き詰まった現代において、日本的な「非ロゴス（矛盾を含んだままの調和）」を取り入れること。 それこそが、現代哲学を「実用ツール」として使いこなし、この複雑な世界を生き抜くための鍵になるのではないでしょうか。

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方、無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものの比較で学ぶ ―日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学、ネオジャポニズム ネオアールヌーボー 心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める気とエーテル －ロゴス、非ロゴス的なものの対置から－

現代哲学の別の角度からの学び方、無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものの比較で学ぶ ―日本と西洋文化比較で学ぶ現代哲学、ネオジャポニズム　ネオアールヌーボー　心と意気と感性の隙間に浸透して埋める気とエーテル　－ロゴス、非ロゴス的なものの対置から－ 　現代哲学の学び方として一番大切なのはポスト構造主義的な相対主義とメタ認知です。 　これは学習が簡単です。 　現代哲学で多分学習が難しい概念は構造主義になります。 　これは現代哲学を学ぶ優先順位は前者より下がるかもしれませんがこれが分からないと具体性や実践性が期待できません。 　相対主義やメタ認知は理念や理想主義みたいなものでキャッチコピーは簡単です。 　例えばフランス革命を例にすると「自由、平等、博愛、（愛国心）」みたいなのはぱっと言葉を挙げられただけで聞く人は分かったつもりになります。 　ただこれらを実装するのは非常に高度な実務処理やシステムの限界を熟知する必要があります。 　そもそも自由にせよ平等にせよ実現しようとすると現実的に手間がかかるというレベルでなく内的な矛盾やパラドクスを内包しておりシステムエラーを起こします。 　そしてその矛盾やパラドクスは本質的なものなので除去不能なのでそういうのを知ったうえで自由や平等を運用しなければいけませんが不幸なことにそれを知らない人や場合が多いので世の中の混乱の元になりがちです。 現代哲学を広める活動としては理解が難しいと思われる構造主義の理解と納得と啓発が一番難しいけどやらなきゃいけないことだと思っていました。 もう一本の柱はポスト構造主義の相対主義の普及ですがこれは簡単です。 簡単ですが受け入れがたいという思想系列に属している人も多いので受け入れないながらも知ってもらって必要に応じては共通のリテラシーを世の中に確立するのが使命です。 これと同じものは仏教の空と中道の思想と同じなので宗教としてではなく哲学として仏教を普及するのでもいいです。 更に厳格な構造主義は現代数学がぴか一ですが理系の人で数学基礎論好きの人はこのアプローチもおすすめです。 　実質構造主義を学ぶという現代哲学の学習アプローチは退屈でマンネリでもあります。 　なんでもそうですが何か学びたければいろいろなアプローチ法があった方がいいに決まっています。 　あるアプローチでは分からなかったり拒絶感を持ってしまったりしても別のアプローチをすれば学習対象を楽しく学べるかもしれませんし、他の方法ではピンとこなかったものがピンとくることもあるかもしれません。 ただこのアプローチで現代哲学を勉強するだけでなくもっといろんな見方で現代哲学を眺められるのがいいでしょう。 対照はいろんな角度、側面、視点、切り口、何でもいいですがいろんな見方・考え方ができるのが現代哲学が他の対象に向ける姿勢としてではなく現代哲学が現代哲学自分自身に対する態度としても例外なく向けていくのがいいでしょう。 なのでここでは世界を現代哲学を使って無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものに分けて論じてみようと思います。 無矛盾というのはロゴス的と言ってもいいかもしれませんし理性的と言ってもいいですし別の言い方もたくさんありますがとりあえずこの切り口で現代哲学で世の中を分析する方法を説明してみようと思います。 ・無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないもの 　「無矛盾でないもの」というのは持って回った表現です。 　「「単に矛盾したもの」と言ったらいいのではないか？」という疑問がわくのではないでしょうか。 　それでもいいのかもしれませんがそれだと世界が「矛盾」というカテゴリーだけで閉じた感じになります。 　「無矛盾的なもの」とすれば矛盾したものを含んだ、矛盾とか無矛盾とかとは関係ないその他のよく分からないいろいろな物を含ませることができます。 　こういうのは排中律を簡単には受け入れない世界、例えばお釈迦様時代のインドはヤスパースのいう枢軸時代というもので古代ギリシアや春秋戦国の中国みたいに様々な思想が百花繚乱花開きました。 　インドでも諸子百家、百家争鳴みたいになっていたのでいろいろな思想が現れますが、その時代、あるいは仏教が根本分裂、枝葉分裂して部派仏教だった時代にはやたらと非非なんとかとか、無無なんとかという表現が出てきますが排中律による単純化という特性を意識し熟知しているという点では評価できます。 　「無矛盾的なもの」と「無矛盾的でないもの」という表現では慣れないし耳障りが悪いというのであれば「ロゴス的なもの」「非ロゴス的なもの（レートリケー（レトリック）的なもの）」という表現も並行して使います。 ・西洋近代の宿痾、「心をなくす」 　西洋近代とは何か近代化とは何かを考える際には近代化途上の社会を見てみるのがいいかもしれません。 　せっかくだから一流の物を使いたいので文学世界一候補の一角であるドストエフスキー自身とその文学作品を例にとっていましょう。 　ドストエフスキーの小説は一言で言ってしまえば近代と非近代の葛藤です。 　ここら辺を来会するにはドストエフスキーの小説をじかに読むだけでは不十分なのでドストエフスキーの小説の解説集（例えば『謎解き罪と罰』『謎解きカラマーゾフの兄弟』）などがいろんな人が出しているので読んでみるのもいいですし、バフチンのカーニバル論やポリフォニー論も有名です。 　ドストエフスキーの小説の中ではイデオロギーに取りつかれた人が出てきます。 　「罪と罰」のラスコーリニコフでもいいですし「悪霊」のスタヴローギンでもいいですし「カラマーゾフ」のイワンでもいいしなんなら「白痴」のムイシュキン侯爵でもいいです。 　ある種のイデオロギーに染まった人間が非人間的になるというのは近現代のテーマです。 　今でもある種の政治家や評論家やコメンテーターの顔つきが以前と変わってしまっている人がいます。 　いろいろ事情があるのでしょうが一部はイデオロギーに憑依されてしまって人間性というか柔らかい「心」みたいなものを失ってしまった人たちなのかもしれません。 　「若い時とか以前はこうじゃなかったのになあ」と感じる人はよく見かけるでしょう。 　身近にもいると思います。 　 ・文明、文化としてみた場合の日本と西洋圏の違い 　日本文化と西洋文化の違いを一言で表すと 「心を推す文化と心を抑圧する文化」 の違いになります。 　もちろん簡単に分けられるものではなく分けるべきものでもありません。 　日本文化にも心を抑圧するTPOがありますし西洋文化にも心を推すTPOがあります。 　でも大雑把な基層にはこういう傾向があります。 　日本人は無意識的にやっているところがあるのでやや天然、西洋文化は意識してやっているところがあるのでやや人工的です。 　日本はその時感じたもの、湧いてきた感情を受け入れて従う文化です。 　西洋文化にはそれを禁止する意識と原則が基底に常に働いている文化です。 　ぐっと単純化してイメージ付けを行えば結果として日本人の内面は感じたものやわいてきた感情で満ちている状態になります。 他方で西洋文化では感覚的に何かを感じたり、何かの感情がわいてもそれが禁止事項に振れれば抑圧したり、封殺したり、ないことにしてしまう文化になります。 　これは場合によってはOSとかBIOSとかレベルではなく電子回路の設計レベル、というかハードレベルで違う可能性すらあります。 　仮に日本人が2000年くらい島国で海外から隔離されて独自な環境で遺伝子の突然変異や自然淘汰を重ねてきたとするとそもそもネアンデルタール人と現生人類のホモサピエンスほどではないかもしれませんが外の世界との違いが脳のレベル、脳の形態は個体発生をつかさどるDNAレベルで存在しているのかもしれません。 　動物の家畜化や家畜化実験、あるいは生き物の品種改良を見ていると結構短い期間で変化が出ることが分かっています。 　むかし白人と黒人の間の子供は子孫を残すが白人と日本人、黒人と日本人の子供は子孫が続かないという観察を述べた人がいました。 　数十年前の個人的観察なので現在では違っているかもしれませんが。 　 ・いろいろあってなかなか日本人と西欧人は溶け込めない時代が長かった 　多分明治維新後2020年代くらいまでは2025年現在と比べるとなんとなく古い日本人は西洋文化圏の人々と相いれない感じを持っていたのではないでしょうか。 　草の根で理解と共感は深まったり広がっていたのかもしれませんが大きく社会的に実感されたり可視化されたりしたものとしてはまだまだだったのではないでしょうか。 　ところがコロナ後くらいから鈍い我々年配層から見ても日本文化の西洋文化圏に対する受容が爆発的に起こっているように見えるようになりました。 　少なくとも1970年代生まれくらいの日本人は世界の中で日本と日本人はぼっちで特殊でよその人というか外人・外国人とは理解しあうのが困難感を持っていた人が多かったのではないでしょうか。 　もちろん両方の世界には昔から交流がなかったことはありません。 　西洋社会の日本の需要の点からみると19世紀末のジャポニズムとアールヌーヴォー、戦後の禅ブーム、冷戦期の日本製品の輸出、日本アニメの輸出、ゲームの輸出、オタク文化やアングラなネット文化の輸出見たいなものがあります。 　そういう目で見ると日本もいろいろ輸出しているなとなりますが今回の日本ブームは昔より規模が大きいのと、最も大きな違いとしてメンタリティの垣根がだいぶ低くなっているように見えます。 　日本は昔から宣教師に褒められたり、黄禍論を言われたり、差別されたり、日本特殊論があったり、日本ガラパゴス論があったり、日本は第８の文明である論があったりと良くも悪くも別枠扱いされてぼっちでした。 　ただ最近はなんとなく世界が日本を積極的に理解してくれているように見えます。 ・そもそも土台の設計思想が違うのになぜ受け入れ可能になっているのか 　先ほど西洋文化圏と日本ではOSやらDNAやらが違うと強調しました。 　それはともかく後天的に文化的なもので違う部分もあると思うのでその際に参考になるのが現代思想の直にはやった西洋のロゴス中心主義という考え方です。 　ロゴスは英語ではロジックですが別の言葉では記号（言語）中心主義とも言えますし、イデオロギー中心主義とも言えます。 　一応ロジックの意味なので真偽とか正しさや正義を目指しそうですが最近の論理学はロジック必ずしも真偽や無矛盾だけを扱いませんし、そもそも人間が現代的な意味で記号論理学的な厳密な真偽の論理学があったのもこの100年程度にすぎません。 　しかも専門家を除いてほとんど使えません。 　という事はいつの時代でも世の中いかに論理的でないか、真偽や無矛盾や一貫性や整合性の論理がなくても世の中は成り立ってしまうわけです（ただ失われた30年だの共産圏の大量飢餓死などを問題とするならばなんとかなっているとはとても言えないとも言えますが）。 　日本人の心が一瞬のひらめきや感覚的感性や湧き上がる感情や情動みたいなふわふわしたもので満たされているとすれば、西洋文化の人の心の中には神と条文みたいなイデオロギーが散在しその隙間は真空です。 　真空になってしまうのは唯一神を思う以外の対象には感情移入や臨在感を感じるなどの感情を禁止するための内外のシステムが働いているからです。 　いわゆる偶像崇拝禁止がそうですし、唯一神以外には神を認めない（神聖さや聖性を感じてはいけない）というルールもそうですし、神は創造者でその他の物は被造物なので被造物に特別な感情を持ってはいけないというものもあります。 　宗教以外にも牧畜や遊牧民の心理で説明する考え方も昔はあり今でもあるかもしれません。 　家畜に感情移入してしまう事への禁止です。 　ペットと違って家畜は殺したり、売ったり、食べたり、死体の部位を生活に利用します。 　ペットや人間で同じことをしたら現代社会では、そして人道主義が現在より薄い昔でもかなりやばかったのではないでしょうか。 　神に対しては祈ってもいいのですがイメージする場合は形而上学的なものとして、と言っても頭の中で行うのは観念的な表象とか概念化で要するに単なる想像です。 　神に祈ったり神の事を考えたからと言って考えたり祈った自分が聖なるものに近づくと考えるのは不敬です。 　神は絶対で超越していなければならず、それ以外は自分も人間も含めてただの物で土くれです。 　この区別は絶対的なルールです。 　出ないと唯一神の唯一性と神性を犯すことになります。 　このようなことを頭の中や社会の中で常時やっていると頭の中が唯物的になります。 　神様を考えるのは別としてその他の物に対しては唯物主義になります。 　おじいさんがユダヤ教のラビでしたが近代ユダヤ人のゲットーからの解放史と近代への同化の中でお父さんの代くらいで改宗したマルクスが唯物的だっただけでなく、原理主義的な聖書主義は唯物的になります。 　時に神さえも理神論でシステムの作り手ではあるが人間にはかかわらずシステムにお任せ仮説もあります。 　無神論的だったり無視神論というか神に興味が薄い人だったりしても理神論的な考え方で神を一応信じている西洋人は多いのではないでしょうか。 　マルクスが唯物論を持ち出すまでもなくそもそもユダヤ教やプロテスタントは唯物論的です。 　他方でカトリックは偶像崇拝も許しているし聖書文化圏の中でも日本人に近い部分があるのではないでしょうか。 　ですから宗教改革後のクリスチャンや市民革命後のゲットーから解放されたユダヤ人が影響を持つと日本人と非常に対照的、味方によっては対立的になります。 ・西洋文化は唯物論的であると同時にイデオロギー的 　ロジック化されているアイデアはイデオロギーとしましょう。 　必ずしも言語化や記号化されているわけではなく、真偽の二値論理学化が厳密になされているものではありませんがそういうものを志向して作られている考え方のひとまとまりをイデオロギーとしましょう。 　そう定義するとイデオロギーはロゴスの内容と種類を表すものになります。 　世の中にはいろんなイデオロギーがあります。 　イデオロギーがロゴスであれば何となく無矛盾性を志向します。 　イデオロギーが我々が人間性や社会性と呼ぶものの中でも硬い部分を形成しているといえます。 　我々の世界はいろいろなイデオロギーで構築されています。 　政治、法、制度、宗教、倫理、道徳、科学、技術、産業、美術、芸術、音楽、文学、何でもいいですが～制とか～主義とか～法とか～則とか～教とか～理論とか～理とか語尾につくことが多いです。 　文学や美術はイデオロギーではないのではないかとかロゴスではないのかという意見もあるでしょう。 　そういうものは必ずしも無矛盾性を志向しないからです。 　イデオロギーが無矛盾を志向して無矛盾的なものであるとすればこういったものは「無矛盾でないもの」と言えるかもしれません。 　無矛盾でないものの研究というのは大変難しいです。 　無矛盾なものは論理や数学基礎論みたいな強力なものが使えます。 　これらは最近では矛盾なものを取り扱う論理学があるようです。 　パッと上げるとパラコンシステント論理、ダイアレティカル論理、関連論理、多値論理、非単調論理、パラコンプリート論理、知識ベース型拡張、ファジー論理などです。 　理系の人や思考はやっぱりすごいのですが扱うのが真偽や正しさを扱う思考であって感性や感情や意欲は扱いません。 　そういう意味では思考、そしてそれが扱う無矛盾なものは扱いやすいです。 　まあ感情も意欲も矛盾というか葛藤とかはあるかもしれませんがそういうのは置いときます。 　そういうものを扱うのはここでは無矛盾なものではなく無矛盾ではないものとして扱います。 ・世の中は矛盾のないものを主役に構成されがち 　人の心も世の中も矛盾のないもの、あるいは無矛盾を志向するものを主人公にして構成されがちです。 　それは真理であり正義に近いしいものだからでしょうか。 　聖書もギリシア思想を取り入れて「初めに言葉があった」というルカ福音書の冒頭の文句で大胆にも「神はロゴス」と宣言してしまっています。 　これは日本人には違和感たっぷりでしょう。 　聖書と古典ギリシアをOSとする西洋文明はロゴスで世界を構成したり分析しようとします。 　個々のロゴスはイデオロギーなのでロゴス中心主義はイデオロギー中心主義でもあります。 　ロゴスは整合性と一貫性、無矛盾性を大切にしますのでイデオロギーもやっぱり硬質なものです。 　真理であり正義であり権威です。 　ですからラビユダヤ教ではファリサイ人のような聖書学者が強くイエスのように「権威あるもの」のように語るとバッシングを受けました。 　このロゴス（イデオロギー）中心主義と唯物論が日本人から見た西洋文化圏の一つの特徴です。 ・なぜか日本では異端が主流になった 　西洋文明が唯物論とイデオロギー中心主義が骨格にあると書きましたがもちろんそれだけではありません。 　別に非唯物論的、非イデオロギー的な要素もあります。 　何にせよ人も人の世も無矛盾的なものと無矛盾的でないものの両方で成り立っています。 　無矛盾的でないものは矛盾したものとそもそも矛盾という観点で見るべきではない様々な雑多なものを含んでいます。 　美術や文学やエンタメなどそういうものが主役になる場面もあるのでしょうが、硬い大人の社会はイデオロギーを骨格に設計されています。 　まあ人間はそんなにきれいでも全でもないので海千山千でいろいろ汚いところや腐敗もあるものですがそういう大人の部分も硬いかもしれませんが非無矛盾的なものに入れとけばいいかもしれません。 　場合分けで2つに分ける場合の便利技で～でないものを何でもごった煮の吹き溜めのガラクタ箱として一括処理できる便利さがあります。 　ちなみに言葉だからといってロゴス≒論理とは限りません。 　レートリケー（レトリック）というものもあります。 　説得術、弁論術、詭弁術などと訳され内容の真や正しさに関わらず相手を目的に誘導するための手段を問わない言葉の使い方です。 　これも言葉で構築されています。 　かつ言葉や記号はロジックやレトリックを扱うものだけではありません。 　例えば文法では法（mood）というのがあります。 　例えば直説法、命令法、関節法（仮定法、接続法）などがあります。 　ロジックは直説法の平叙文で記述されます。 　レトリックは全部使うかもしれません。 　ただ言葉や記号はロジックやレトリックを扱うだけではありません。 　下ネタも扱いますし冗談も扱いますし掛け声も扱いますし感嘆も扱うしうめき声も悲鳴も喃語も扱いますし言い尽くせないくらいいろんなものを扱います。 　そういうものは無矛盾なものもあれば無矛盾ではないものもあるでしょうが論理や修辞を扱わない言葉や記号の使い方はたくさんあります。 　言葉の集合はロゴスとレートリケーだけでなくその他の多様なものを含むということです。 ロゴスもその意味を含みますが多くは言葉で表現されることが多いです。 書き言葉ならエクリチュール、話し言葉ならディスクールと言ったりします。 　エクリチュールとディスクールは非ロゴス的なものを含むのではっきり重なるわけではありませんが。 　言葉は記号であり象徴です。 　最近は絵文字が文字と同じようにコード化されました。 　アルファベットの場合は昔はアスキーコードと言いましたが文字コードの中に絵文字コードというものが新たに加わったという感じでしょうか。 　そういう意味でデリダは記号学や形而上学批判、バルトはテキスト論、フーコーは知の考古学や系譜学と呼んだりします。 　ここでは記号とか言語を無矛盾なものと無矛盾でないものでざっくり切って論じます。 ・言説とそれ以外、言説の中でもイデオロギーとそれ以外のもの 　人間の頭の中には言説的なものとそれ以外のものがあります。 　言説的なものをラカンは象徴界と呼びました。 　人間の頭の中には言葉だけがあるわけがありません。 　表象（イメージ）もあるし感覚、感性的なものもあるし、感情的なものもあるし、意志や欲求的なものもありますし、言説以外のいろいろなものがあります。 　また言説の中にもイデオロギーみたいなロゴスの種類もあればレトリックもありますし、下ネタ、冗談、掛け声、感嘆、うめき声、悲鳴、喃語何でもいいですが記号や言葉というのはいろいろなものを表現します。 　その中で人や社会での主役になるのはイデオロギーであり無矛盾なものの代表とします。 　そしてイデオロギー以外の言葉も言葉でない精神を形成するものをひっくるめて無矛盾でないものとして無矛盾なもの以外のその他の雑多なもろもろを全部集めたものとします。 　そうするとやはり人も人の世も長らく主役はイデオロギーでその他の雑多なもろもろは脇役でした。 　ただ日本では西洋や日本でも権威や権力が担うイデオロギーがその他と逆転します。 　その他という雑多なものが主役になりイデオロギーが脇役になる場合があります。 　というかそれが日本のある場面における支配的な考え方になったりします。 　日本の特徴は西洋の異端が正統になっていること、例えば対象に感情移入や投影を行わないという西洋思想の中核がむしろ日本では対象に対する投影や感情移入、心を籠めること、感じることが日本人のパトスにせよロゴスにせよミュートせよ最優先、プライマリーなものとされているということです。 　これが最近世界で注目されているようです。 私たちが「日本的」だと感じるあの世界観は、西洋的な「構築（ロゴス）」の隙間を埋める「気配（非ロゴス）」あるいは時にロゴス的ではあるが社会の政党では不条理とされたり異端とされていたりするものでできているのではないか、と。 世界は、ざっくり言えば「ロゴス的なもの」と「非ロゴス的なもの」に分けられます。 ロゴス的なものは、法律・制度・宗教教義・科学理論・イデオロギーなど、名前がつき、輪郭を持ち、「～主義」「～法」「～論」「～理」と呼ばれるものたちです。 　いろんな形をしていますが一言でいうならロゴス（～ロジー）という接辞がつくと言っていいかもしれません。 　一方で、そのあいだを満たしているのが非ロゴス的なものです。空気、エーテル、タオ（道）、虚、ムード、場、といった名前で呼ばれてきたもの。ロゴスの「すき間」を埋め、浸透し、満たしている媒体のようなものです。 ゲシュタルト・ルビンの壺は · 図＝ロゴス（制度・理論） · 地＝非ロゴス（場・空気） という図式からなします。 　聖書文化＋古代ギリシア文化の後継者たちと日本は 目に見えるもの＝ロゴス的＝図＝西洋 目に見えないもの＝非ロゴス的＝地＝日本 という対照をなします。 具体例を２つだけ入れると • 例①：法律／契約 vs. 空気／暗黙の了解 • 例②：論理的主張 vs. 終助詞・オノマトペ・敬語がつくる「場」 という感じになります。 ・ロゴス的なものとその間を満たす非ロゴス的なもの 　世界は2つに分けられます。 　ロゴス的なものと非ロゴス的なものです。 　ロゴス的なものは形態を持つので分かりやすく目立ちます。 西洋は、「聖書＋ギリシア哲学」の系譜のなかで、ロゴス＝図を徹底的に磨き上げてきました。神学体系、法哲学、近代科学、契約理論……どれも「言葉でかっちり輪郭を与える」営みです。 日本はその一方で、「非ロゴス＝地」の側を厚く育ててきた文化圏だと言えるかもしれません。はっきりした主張よりも「空気」、論理よりも「場の雰囲気」、契約書よりも「阿吽の呼吸」。 典型的なのが、終助詞・オノマトペ・敬語です。 　こういったものは言語学の分類でいえば例えば敬語自体が態（能動、受動、中動）や法（直接、間接（仮定、接続）、命令）など様々なものを含むので敬語があれば主語や主語の対象、話者や対者、そして場の雰囲気などを省くこともできます（ちなみに最近の日本語文法の義務教育では尊敬語、謙譲語、丁寧語、丁重語、美化語にわかれています。丁重語や美化語は　　古い世代は尊重体敬語とか説明されていた参考書を読んだことがあるかもしれません）。 • 終助詞「ね・よ・さ・かな」は、情報そのものではなく、場の温度と距離感を調整します。 • オノマトペは、「カチッ」「ふわっと」「じんわり」のように、ロゴスのすき間を埋める感覚のきめ細かさを表します。 • 敬語は、主語や目的語を省略しても、「誰が誰をどう扱っているか」という関係の場を立ち上げてしまう装置です。 こうして見ると、日本語・日本文化は、ロゴス的な図そのものよりも、そのまわりを取り巻く「地」の側――非ロゴス的な層――をずっと前から緻密に扱ってきた、とも言えるでしょう。 　非ロゴス的なものはその間に空気とかエーテルとか道（タオ）とか虚とか言えばいいでしょうか。 それらのように隙間を満たすメディアというかロゴスがない所に浸透して埋めていきます。 そういう意味では真空のない二元論というか二項的に世の中を見ていきましょう。 ２つにわけることは単純化の極地なので分かりやすいでしょう。 世界は目立つものと目だ経つその間を埋めているもので出来ていますが、間を埋めているものは満ちているので逆に意識されにくい場合があります。 但し視点の転換は可能です。 ゲシュタルト心理学のルビンの壺のように慣れれば、あるいは訓練すれば図と地を反転させることができます。 ・聖書文化＋古代ギリシア文化の後継者たちと日本 　目に見えるもの、目立つもの、ロゴス的なもの、ゲシュタルト心理学の図的なもので突っ走った文化があります。 　聖書文化＋古代ギリシア文化を根っこに持つ西洋思想です。 　他方で目に見えないもの、目立たないもの、非ロゴス的なもの、ゲシュタルト心理学の地的なものを重視し続けた文化圏もあります。 　大雑把に日本の特徴ともいえる部分だったりします。 　西洋思想は主役みたいなもので目立ちますし認識されるので名前がきちんと与えられます。 　日本文化はその他全般とか～ではないという否定的な言葉をつけて表されていますが言葉にネガティブとか否定的な接辞がつくからと言って悪く考える必要もありません。 　むしろその他を躁取りできます。 　また数学の場合分けではこの分け方が便利です。 ですから「非～」とか「～でない」とかで悪いイメージを持つ必要はありません。 ゲシュタルト心理学のルビンの壺のように図と地を反転させてこちらを主役であちらをモブにした場合には全く違う世界観を習得することができます。 「周辺から正統へ」これは「キリスト教よ、汝は勝ったのだ」と古代ローマ皇帝を嘆息させたキリスト教のようなものでもありますし、日本でも仏教の最大宗派は伝統的な正統仏教からは異端ともいえる浄土系仏教です。 　こういうのが時間をファイナンスする、過去という周辺から現在、そして未来では複利的、指数関数的に爆発的に増大します。 ・世界が日本を受け入れつつある？ 　なぜ日本ブームが起こっているかというといろいろ考え方があるでしょう。 　ただ日本人の頭の中と西洋文化圏の人の頭の中がぐっと近づいたというのが一つの原因としてあるでしょう。 　何が起こっているのか、というとやはりこれまたいろいろな分析はあると思いますがここではこの文章の文脈に基づいて一つの説明を行ってみます。 　日本人の頭の中は心に満ちています。 　この場合心とは人間に対する共感に限らず非人間的で非生物的なもの、時には物だけではなく概念的に対して感じる感覚であり、あるいは心から湧き上がる感情的なものだったりします。 　そういったものではロゴスでも言葉でもイデオロギーでもなかったりします。 　無矛盾的なものでもなくむしろ無矛盾的でないものであることも多いですし、その他多くの雑多なもろもろだったりします。 　それらは無樹淳どころか整合性や一貫性や不変性、単一性、唯一性、同一性や恒常性すら必要ありません。 　主役でもなく空気のような環境のような背景のような場のようなものだったりします。 　場は比較的進んだ物理学である量子場理論では偏在してそこから素粒子が生じるマトリックスみたいなものであり、遍く時空に満ちるエーテルみたいなものです。 　場から見れば素粒子はそこから生成したり消滅したり他の種類の場や素粒子と相互作用するもので、場のような偏在するものが背景みたいなものと見えるのであれば素粒子はまさに主役です。 　この場合は素粒子はイデオロギーで場はその他の雑多な非無矛盾的なもので目立たないどころかあたかも空気と水と安全がタダで存在が意識されないものであるように存在することすら気づかれないことがあります。 　経済学的に言えば「希少性」がないどころか無限大に存在します。 　無限大とゼロは主役になりませんし光景とか特異点のようなちょっと特殊なキャラクターになります。 　この日本人の大切にしていた場というか心を西洋文化圏が否定しなくなってきたのではないでしょうか。 　先ほど書いたように西洋文化圏の純粋な聖書主義とか古代ギリシアの一部の伝統を引き継いだ考え方では神以外は心を籠めることは許されない唯物論の世界でした。 　西洋文化圏からそういったものが消えたとは思いませんし1000年くらいは続いた伝統だったのですぐには消えないでしょう。 　しかしたかだか1000年くらいの伝統とも言えてキリスト教以前のヨーロッパはむしろ現在の日本と親和性が高い古層の文化を残した社会だったかもしれません。 　キリスト教を相対的に見る見方は数十年前に世界的ベストセラーになった「ソフィーの世界」みたいな小説やその他いろいろな歴史と経過の仮定の中で西洋思想文化圏の背景を持っている人でも自分自身を相対的に見ることができるようになってきたのではないでしょうか。 　他方で日本にももともとイデオロギー的なものがあります。 　というか人間であって文化があって言語がある人間集団というか社会がどんなに小さくてもあればイデオロギー的なものがないことはないのではないでしょうか。 　それは骨であり骨格のようなところもあります。 　今回の場合は西洋文明が日本文化を受容してくれている形でかつ駅ぞ地図むだけでなく共感を持ってむかえられているのがおもしろい所ですが、日本側もかなり唯物的な考え方や唯一神的なものの尊重、心というか感性と感情の排他ルールを理解したり身に着けたりした人も多いのかもしれません。 　戦後の高度経済成長時代に（見方によってはもっと前かもしれませんが）日本らしさや日本人らしさをお金に換えてしまったようなところがありましたし、その後の失われた30年でもアメリカ一極覇権の中で新自由主義やグローバリズム（人によっては国際金融資本主義という）が強力で生き残りかつ成功した人たちは金融やコンサルやベンチャー、スタートアップ、経営者などのやや心と思考・行動を切り離せるサイコパスっぽい所がある人が多かったのでだいぶ昔風の日本人の心や伝統というものも弱くなってしまい、日本人の表現も受け入れる側の西洋文化系の人のメンタリティも近くなってきた部分があるのかもしれません。 　また別の側面として結局日本需要はオタク文化というか金銭合理性みたいなものを超越した深い底なし沼のような情念の一般の人に対する拡大という風にも見えるのでアンチグローバリズムやアンチ新自由主義の保守反動の流れに乗っているのかもしれません。