Abstract
A hen takes her mirror image for one of her family. A Japanese monkey, lowest ranking species in the monkey group, turns his back on his mirror image in order to be mounted. For them, the mirror image, or more precisely the object seen in the mirror, has the same reality as the “real one.” Contrary to this, a human baby, even prior to one year of age, can differentiate the “unreal” object of a mirror image from the reality of the object immediately perceived. The baby who mistakes his mirror image for a real one would think that the alleged “real image” in a mirror suddenly disappears when the mirror before him is taken away. The baby in this period (around six months old) seems to “think” that when a toy is covered with a cloth, it disappears and would not try to remove the cloth in order to find the toy.1 The baby is, so to speak, in a magic garden.
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Reference
Cf. Charlotte Bühler, “Die Ersten Soziale Verhaltensweisen des Kindes,” in Quellen und Studien zur Jugende (Jena: Helfte 5, 1927). According to Bühler, an eight month old baby takes the cloth away.
Cf. Henri Wallon, Les origines du caractère chez l’enfant - Les préludes dit sentiment du personnalité (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 1949 ), II, 4c.
Self-production here means to always and newly drag and stand oneself before oneself, i.e., to bear oneself. The ego is the paradigm of substantial being in the traditional sense, and, above all, the self-reflecting-ego in German Idealism. Such an interpretation of being originates from the empirical (ontisch) understanding of time and being in terms of time that streams, and being stands hypostatically, i.e., all the time, constantly in this stream of time. Such an interpretation of being and time, however, leaves unresolved the question of how time can manifest itself as a stream. Be that as it may, the concept of being as idea, matter, spirit, ego or God, etc., is the product of this productivistic interpretation of being. Cf. Shin-ichi Yuasa, Ai to kachi no genshogaku (Phenomenology of Love and Value - On the Productivistic Ontology) ( Tokyo: Taiyoshuppan, 1979 ).
Augustine, De civitate Dei, XI, 26.
Cf. De libero arbitrio, II, 21.
Thomas Aquinas, De veritate. 6, 5 ad 2.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. I. qu. 27 et 28. ‘John Evang. 8, 42.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. I. qu. 33 art. 3.
Ibid., I. qu. 16 art. 6.
Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis. Prolegomena, §§ 11.
René Descartes, Principes de la philosophie, I, 51, OEvres IX-2. L.P. Vrin. p. 46. This concept comes from Plato, cf. Sophist, 259b.
René Descartes, Principes. I. 11.
Ibid., I. 51.
It would be interesting to research Descartes’ gnostic background, which was probably influenced by the Rosicrucians.
See Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 65; “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” (Vittorio Klostermann, 1971), p. 19. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), p. 8; Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomeno¬logischen Philosophie ( Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 ), p. 66.
René Descartes, Des passions de l’ame. I, art. 2 et 25ff. Œvr. XI.p. 328, 355ff.
Aristotle, De anima, 430a 13ff, 431b 20f. “René Descartes, Principes. I. 5. individual peculiarities of experience.
See Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant ( Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1948 ), p. 315.
Immanuel Kant, Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demon¬stration des Daseins Gottes, Erste Abt. 1 und 2. Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Hrsg. von der königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Bd. II. p. 73.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, op. cit., p. 75.
Ibid.
Here I think of J.G. Fichte’s concept of the ego. According to Fichte, the ego is not only “ein sich-Setzendes,” but also “ein sich-Setzen-als-setzen.” Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797/1798), Sämtliche Werke, Hrsg. v. J. H. Fichte, I, p. 528. Fichte’s absolute ego posits itself as determined by the non-ego, i.e., the world. It is therefore a worldly being. But the determinedness of the ego is the essence of the absolute ego, not only because it knows its determinedness, but also because this knowledge is founded in the non-ego, i.e., drive and feeling. This founding of the non-ego means that it is not reducible to the ego. In connection with this, it must be asked whether Husserl should have emphasized more the founding (Fundierung) of the hyletic sphere prior to the constitution of the ego.
Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore. 48. Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, nouva Ristampa Editione Nazionale, Firenze, G. Barbera Editore, 1968. V I.
Ibid.
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, p. 24.
Ibid., p. 29, 43ff, and Beilage III.
Ibid., Beilage III, p. 383.
Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, op. cit., p. 139.
Ibid., p. 146.
Ibid., p. 137.
As a bodily being, I am not the center of all perspectives in the world (Husserl), but am always dispersed here and there, in terms of the ambiguous crossing-overs between my “I” and the other. In this connection, the concept of ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty is noteworthy. According to Merleau-Ponty, the mode of givenness of objects is ambiguous because the body which “takes” them is neither “pure material” nor “pure idea ” (La structure du comportment [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942] Chap. II, 2–1). Science is not situated in the real world, but has its ground in “the perceptive experience,” i.e., “the lived perception” which constructs the world of science (Ibid., Chap. IV). The meaning of “the perceptive experience” is close to that of “the life-world” by Husserl. This perceptive experience has according to Merleau-Ponty an ambiguous structure which is only perspectively given (Ibid). And the ability to accept the ambiguity of one’s own world is a part of human nature (Les rélations avec autrui chez l’enfant, Les cours de Sorbonne, Centre de documentation universitaire. 1962. Chapt. I.), connected with the “ability to determine the direction to the possible and the indirect” (Ibid., Chap. III, 2). Merleau-Ponty rejects the Cartesian dualism, but he doesn’t accept any clear monism. According to Merleau-Ponty, the first ground of ambiguity exists in the ambiguity of regional ontology. Its second ground exists in the epistemological uncertainty of perception, which as the ground of cognition is given only perspectively. A pure ego, which one-sidedly constitutes the world, is here unthinkable. The self lives in the world, accepts the world and determines itself only in this limited horizon. This thought of Merleau-Ponty resembles the conclusion of our standpoint, but differs with respect to how it is arrived at. This is the case because he introduces a third being, the “body” (corps) or the “flesh” (chair) which, just like Bergson’s “image” (Matière et mémoir), is neither mental nor material, and remains therefore still inside a regional ontology.
While Buddhism does emphasize genuine, certain sight and knowledge, it does so for neither the total insurance of human being, nor for obtaining the transcendental standpoint, but only for the dispersion into nothingness.
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Yuasa, Si. (1998). Certainty, the Fictitious Essence of Philosophy. In: Hopkins, B.C. (eds) Phenomenology: Japanese and American Perspectives. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2610-8_5
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