Abstract
In Asia, illusion is tolerated and sometimes praised as a component of experience and reality. In contrast, the Western idealist tradition has attempted to expunge illusion through thinking in accordance with first principles. However, with Kant’s Critical philosophy, we now know that transcendental illusion is a necessary feature of experience generated by principled thinking itself With thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, tranditional ideals such as clarity and light are suffused with the indigo tones of minesis and epoche. Only by embracing the transitory shadow-world of time can one come to a decision (Lichtung) about the origin and authority of metaphysical principles.
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References
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, tr. Edward G. Seidensticker, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1976), Ch. 38, “The Bell Cricket,” 672.
The success of the Greeks in the Iliad also depends on a deception, but the ruse of the Trojan Horse, rather than a desecration of warrior virtues, merely establishes the right of cunning intelligence to lead blind courage.
Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Sh6raku and Namiki Senryû, Chûshingura, tr. Donald Keene, ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1971 ), 131–132.
Tanizaki Junichiro, In Praise of Shadows, tr. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, ( Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1988 ), 15.
Ibid., 30.
Ibid., 9.
All Aristotle citations are from The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, (New York: Random House, 1968 ).
All Plato citations are from The Dialogues of Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett, (New York: Random House, 1937 ).
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, tr. Francis Golffing, ( New York: Doubleday, 1956 ), 109.
Ibid., 94.
Sigmund Freud, L’avenir d’une illusion (1927), tr. M. Bonaparte, ( Paris: P.U.F., 1971 ), 44–45.
Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932), (Paris: P.U.F., 1946 ), 111–113, 124.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Journals (1872). tr. A.K. Marietti, (Paris: Éditions Aubier-Montaigne, 1969 ), 67.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 109.
The faculties have two senses. First, they are derived from the possible relations of subject and object; thus, knowledge is the agreement of subject and object, desire is the causation of an object by a subject, and feeling is the affection of a subject by an object. Second, faculty means the source of these relations; thus, imagination as the source of immediate representations (intuitions), understanding as the source of mediate representations (concepts), and reason as the source of transcendent representations (ideas). Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, ( London: Athlone Press, 1984 ), 1–11.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith, (New York: Macmillan, 1929 ). All references will be cited within the text following the usual practice of providing the pagination of Kant’s first and second editions.
Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, tr. Lewis White Beck, (New York: BobbsMerrill, 1956), 116–121, where Kant compares the confusion of the two orders of the pleasant with an optical illusion.
For example, optical illusions may be bothersome to astronomers or moral illusions to magistrates, but for most people such cases are anomalous, marginal incidents. It is for this very reason that decisions about such cases are deferred to those who have expertise in these fields.
Simplicius, Physica, 150, 24, cited in John Manley Robinson, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy, ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968 ), 25.
The section titled `The Discipline of Reason’ in The Critique of Pure Reason provides a liberal revision of the educational program outlined in Plato’s Republic. Compare, for example, Kant’s rejection of mathematics (A713–738/B741–766) or dialectic disputation (A739–769/B767–797); also, whereas Plato’s guardian class were to be hostile to foreigners, Kant’s `weapons of war’ (hypothetical arguments) are to be directed at reason itself (A777/B805).
Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstadter, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988 ). All references to this text are abbreviated as GA 24; page references are from the German edition: Die Grundprobleme der Phenomenologie. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Band 24, ed. Petra Jaeger, ( Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967 ).
Kant’s advance over his predecessors consists in sustaining the fictive moment of the `as if’ n the speculative interest of reason, whereas Descartes’ fiction of an `evil genius’ or Pascal’s `wager’ are transitory moments in a proof of God’s existence.
Cf. Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987 ), Part III, CH. VII.
For the ordinary understanding, time is divided into present, past and future; philosophically thought, the essence of time is composed of duration, succession and simultaneity. Circular motion measures time because: (1) the ecstatic `from/to’ structure is a continuous duration, (2) the kinetic `before/after’ structure is a simultaneous reciprocity of agent and patient, and (3) the temporal ‘earlier/later’ structure is a successive determination of units.
This definition occurs in a catalogue of similar adverbial determinations of time relative to the `now’, including terms such as `at some time’, `presently’, `recently’, etc.
The ecstatic dimension of time is a release from immanence, the transcendence by which things come into being and pass away.
This is admittedly a tortured condensation of pity (eleos) and fear (phobos), but the standard translation and misinterpretations of these terms have the disadvantage of obscuring the initiation of reflective thought intended by Aristotle. Briefly, we pity in another what we fear for ourselves (Rhetoric 1386a26–27). These emotions are two sides of the same feeling. It is not likely that one would be imminently concerned with murdering one’s father and wedding one’s mother; rather, the fact of Oedipus’ case occasions a recognition of a similar discord of faculties in oneself, which could lead to an equally disastrous turn of events.
Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 58–61.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Tine, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, (London: Blackwell, 1962). All references to this text are abbreviated as `SZ’; page references are from the later German editions: Sein und Zeit, (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer).
Cf. David Krell, Intimations of Mortality, ( University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1986 ), 59–60.
Aid., 100–101.
Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens, ( Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969 ), 61.
Ibid., 72.
Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, ( Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1950 ), 43.
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Lazarin, M. (1993). Coming to a Decision About Metaphysical Principles. In: Blosser, P., Shimomissé, E., Embree, L., Kojima, H. (eds) Japanese and Western Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8218-6_20
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