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Article

# Articulating a Notion of Self-as-Mediation—Grounded from Science and Art Towards the Religious

Lauren Ana Walker

Centre Gilles Gaston Granger, Aix Marseille Université, 13621 Aix-en-Provence, France;
lauren.walker@etu.univ-amu.fr

**Abstract:** The intention of this paper is to develop an original notion of self-as-mediation, where a reimagining of the function of art as a phenomenological/epistemological praxis will be the methodological vehicle. The argument here will unfold over four moments. Firstly, I argue that through the elevation of art into a valid form of inquiry—one that engages our collective and individual being-in—a relation coupling art with science can be established. Secondly, by means of a further reflection on the linguistic aspects of the complementary domains of science and art—in part inspired by the standpoint of Carl Otto Apel—a unified transcendental-pragmatic interpretation of this art-science relationship will be determined. In the third moment, I make the argument that through a phenomenological reflection derived from the apodictic assertion of self-as-mediation, a trifold relation situating self-as-mediation is revealed as dynamically engaged in a continual exchange, or interchange, between what can be considered to be an “attitude” and a “doing”, referred to here as relation and action. Thus, the fourth moment is revealed as a weird dynamic relational movement, out of which a radical ethic may be developed. It is argued that along with an implied recasting of religious consciousness, a complementary and positive vision for humanity at this time of ecological and social tragedy may also be offered by this approach.

**Keywords:** phenomenology; Kyoto school; Nishida; Tanabe; Husserl; critical theory; deconstruction

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Academic Editors: Felix
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Received: 14 July 2024
Revised: 8 December 2024
Accepted: 21 January 2025
Published: 23 January 2025

**Citation:** Walker, Lauren Ana. 2025. Articulating a Notion of Self-as-Mediation—Grounded from Science and Art Towards the Religious. *Religions* 16: 118. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16020118

**Copyright:** © 2025 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## 1. Introduction

The central claim defended here is that an intersubjective agreement can be established concerning the admission of a fundamental conflict, or tension, found to exist between the social and personal epistemological realms. In other words, our subjective lived experiential knowledge and our socially constructed reflexive knowledge do not align, and, in some respects, their relation can be considered to be asymptotic or as an aporia. The arc of this argument will unfold over four moments which can be understood as to model the central notion of mediation that will be proposed.

First, in the place of a religious or theological reading of this fundamental opposition, as proposed by Tanabe Hajime or Nishida Kitarō, it is argued that art, considered to be a praxis, can, and in some cases already does, participate in mediation across this aporia. With the aim to solicit general recognition, an example of such an art praxis will be developed. If it can be agreed that the opposition, or aporia, at the center of the experience of the *natural attitude*¹, is structurally fundamental, then we can imagine a speculative step; such a move would constitute an understanding of the *self*—this “I”—as a phenomenon arising out from a continual attempt to mediate across, or through, this aporia. From a process perspective: in broad terms, where entities are seen to emerge out of dynamic process
relations,² it is not that “I” continually mediate through this aporia but rather, that this mediation determines me; the sense of an “I” qua identity is, thus, to be determined as the artifact of the *trace* in the memory of this continuous struggle of mediation. The notion of *trace* here is freely inspired by Jacques Derrida’s usage, where an ipseity—for Derrida, this is a sign—arises out of a historical process of relationships as a *trace*; thus, *trace* in memory can be understood as the historical accumulations of relationships inscribed by the body as memory, and identified as myself, my “I”.³ Of course, this raises the question of just what it means to mediate.

The second moment constitutes an initial response to this question; here the notions of communication, dialogue, and discourse from the transcendental-pragmatic standpoint of Karl Otto Apel will be engaged with. Through Apel’s application of the linguistic turn to Kant’s transcendental logic, the resulting hermeneutic movement can be understood as participating in the communication of meaning within discourse. This movement is facilitated by the conditions of possibility for “true” communication, implied in the transcendental notion of the ideal communication community.⁴ Thereby, through Apel, we are offered a horizon of valid communication that can, at least, be sought for; and somewhere among the modalities of this search, according to Apel, there is to be found the initial markers toward a possible ethic.

The third moment is structured by a phenomenological modification of Apel's proposal. Apel's general hermeneutical structure can, I argue, be transposed, out from the context of the philosophy of language, to be then mapped onto the mediation that I do—to be interpreted here as a phenomenology of communicative praxis (taken in broad terms). Apel's perspective is thus critiqued as being too restrictive to be applicable to this wider context. My task here is to find a way to extend Apel's transcendental-pragmatic method into the speculative realist phenomenological model proposed here. What might such a transposition then offer? By way of a response, I engage Martin Nitsche's topological interpretation of phenomenology; from this encounter, I argue that the structure of the mediation-that-I-am can be set into a constellation that is seen to articulate both art and science practice. This articulation has two principal moments; firstly, the mediation-that-I-am is determined from out of the conditions of possibility for an ideal or—to borrow the terminology of Hajime Tanabe—an "absolute mediation",⁵ whereby the dialogic praxis across the immanent and the socio-linguistic-collective horizons can tend toward just such an ideal. Secondly, an iterative circle of reflexive praxis can then become the method for an enactment toward just such an *absolute mediation*. To be clear, from this approach, the opposite of such an *absolute mediation* is considered to be the quasi-non-mediation of the separative Cartesian mode of the individual-collective oppositional consciousness that we find ourselves ensnared by within the *natural attitude*.

The fourth moment takes up a critique of Apel's transcendental-pragmatic program from Gert Biesta that engages a form of deconstruction of Apel (Biesta 2009). Staying with a phenomenological reading of Derrida, I argue that the mediation unfolding here, whether consciously enacted or abusively ignored, thus relates to two spheres: the communication community—to use Apel's terminology—and what I term the relation communion. Taken together, these two can be reframed as the mediation community. Thus, the mediation community can be understood as the combination of two intentional vectors: with the communication community, there is a dialogic vector that orients outward to a horizon of intersubjective agreement between the indefinite community of interpreters; with the relation communion, the vector dissolves inwardly, into the liminal felt sense and the question of the orientation to relation. Mediation is thereby to be understood as the continual inter-play of these two movements, and a mediation community is formed by those who consciously enact this play. Although the phenomenological structure being circum-
scribed appears as a bifold within an overarching triad, it is argued that a relationship to
Merleau-Ponty's *chiasm* can be meaningfully established. Nevertheless, it must also be ac-
knowledged that the structure of this mediation nexus remains profoundly *weird*,⁶ where
I will argue that this mediation unfurls at a level that should properly be understood as
*transdescendant*⁷ to the logos; despite this, at the social or even the planetary level, an ef-
fective mediation may also imply a new emergence. Ordinarily, and to the *natural attitude*,
social and political structures are seen as products of the logos—and this is certainly the
case within the context of enlightenment thinking—however, the claim advanced here is
that the “goings-on” underneath, behind, or before, the logos, can, and indeed do, have a
real impact upon the collective. Therefore, the logos can be understood in a bifold man-
ner: it is both derivative to the *flesh*⁸ and, within the context of a “truthful” mediation, it
is determined by the horizon of communion and communication that is yet to be realized.
Thus, such a realization becomes the horizon wherein the religious vision and the religious
teachings can now be more properly situated.

## 2. First Moment: A Secular Faith in the Praxis of Art

The first moment of my argument rests upon the premise that a religious philosophy—such as that articulated by the Kyoto school philosophers Tanabe Hajime and Nishida Kitarō—promotes a metaphysical absolute that is (i) unable to function as a constitutive element in experience, (ii) and which will always contaminate the relative domain that necessarily surrounds it; (iii) furthermore, I argue, moral prejudice results when that which must be understood as relative is taken as absolute and vice versa.⁹ Both Tanabe and Nishida develop standpoints that place religion and science in a complementary relationship and where a mediating role is claimed for their respective philosophies. Through the engagement with Pure Land Buddhist thought, Tanabe develops a view regarding the praxis of the scientific method as allied with the Buddhist understanding of the interplay of *ri* and *ji*. In Tanabe's usage *ri* stands for rational construction and *ji* for empirical fact.

> "The experimental method of natural science clearly displays its circularity as a reciprocal mediation between rational construction (*ri*) and factual verification (*ji*), but this is no mere repetition of formal identity".¹⁰

> "[T]he experimental method of natural science implies a "historicity-through-action" mediated by absolute critique, since the experimental method itself is based on the reciprocal mediation-through-action of *ri* and *ji*".¹¹

And Tanabe goes on to articulate the vision of a union of science and religion.

> "In the breakthrough of the self (metanoetics), reason arrives at a transrational emancipation by means of the reciprocal mediation of science, religion, philosophy, and ethics".¹²

Metanoetics for Tanabe can be understood as a philosophical praxis that enables a renouncing of reason, in the Cartesian mode, and submission through faith to *Other Power*, seen as transcendent to reason. According to John Maraldo:

> "Tanabe chose the term *metanoetics* as a critique of philosophy, a "going beyond" noesis or philosophy based upon reason and practiced as the discipline of reason. His absolute critique is a critique of reason that results in the transformation of reason". (Maraldo 2020)

Nishida, although critical of Tanabe's view, also places the religious discourse as cardinal; this time, however, it is placed within a nested relation. For Nishida, the direction of regard moves toward the intimate, where Zen is to be understood as the radical epistemological praxis for the self.
"The self exists as the absolute's own self-negation. We exists as the many through the self-negation of the One. Therefore the self has a radically self-contradictory existence. The very process of self-realization, in which the self knows itself, is self-contradictory. Hence we always possess ourselves in something that transcends ourselves in our own bottomless depths; we affirm ourselves through our own self-negation. Kenshō means to penetrate to the bottomless contradiction existence of one's own self". (Nishida 1993)

This fundamental paradox is “Zen’s principle of the absurd” and is “not merely irrational”, being seen by Nishida as comparable to Pure Land Buddhism with its idea of “taking non-reason as reason” (ibid.). For Nishida, this “has a structure no different from that of scientific cognition” (ibid.), and, indeed, Nishida understands science to be a form of culture.

"Mankind is scientific from that standpoint where it possesses itself in self-negation. In religious language, it is the fact that God sees himself through his own self-negation. In this sense the world of science may also be said to be religious". (ibid., p. 118)

Science is, thus, nested within the more extensive religious relation.

However, if, as established by the thought of Tanabe, mediation must be between the rational mind of logos and the religious mind of faith, then I find myself thrown into an extreme dialectic, where, for the most part, I see those religious narratives, in no way, aid me in such mediation. It seems the case that, if I look at the history of Christianity, religion seems overly charged with dogma in this respect, and considering other religious traditions, their respective metaphysical commitments also seem to set limits to a potential mediation. For example, the rebirth metaphysics of Buddhism and Hindu faiths distort the relationship with time, giving preference to the pathways toward a generalized liberation in a future eon; this weakens the sense of urgency in the face of immediate suffering. The "religious" pole of these relationships is, therefore, either too determined or not determined enough. Being entangled by such dilemmas, I find myself needing to find a "way out" to "seek safety", but there are no ready-to-hand tools to help me navigate and mediate this terrain, and the theological discourse is somewhat difficult to integrate with the appeal to a notion of the reason being attempted here. In a general sense, the theological/religious discourse must assume some form of faith; for theistic traditions, this is often an argument along the lines of, "if God.... then", and even in Buddhist traditions, one needs faith to walk the path, even if this be one of doubt.¹³ Admittedly, Nishida's church is a very broad one since God can be interpreted to be the immanent transcendence of Absolute Nothingness.¹⁴ However, whether it be with a theistic conception of God the creator or as the horizon of the realization of *Śūnyatā*,¹⁵ I argue that these religious standpoints act to "bind" both my thinking—and the human collective psyche in general—to a certain level of ontological description. And this binding appears to be in opposition to the spirit of liberation, freedom, and bliss that religious paths often claim to offer.¹⁶ It may, of course, be argued that a reflection of this sort is typical for one who is without faith; nevertheless, perhaps faith as traditionally conceived is miss-placed, where such an understanding of faith can too easily sublate into extreme beliefs. Having faith implies the relinquishment of some aspect of one's responsibility: "I place my faith in such and such". Certainly, an act of this kind can be seen to be a liberation of sorts, yet this act also binds my response. Henceforth I am associated, bound up, with that which I have put my faith in; this means that I am no longer free in my response-ability. Therefore, the prejudice of faith contorts my response toward the *other*. By way of contrast, Nishida's view of faith does seem more palatable.
"Religious faith involves precisely this dimension wherein the self discovers itself as a bottomlessly contradictory identity. Subjectively, this discovery takes the form of "realizing peace of mind," and objectively, of experiencing "salvation"." (Nishida 1993, p. 85)

When Nishida points out that this salvation "is salvation from the self's own bottomless depths", he appears to echo Levinas' vision of the "il y a", yet this is a "salvation from the desiring self and from the rational self" (ibid., p. 86). So, even for Nishida, the notion is eschatological: I am caught somehow, and so I need faith to escape. As it seems generally the case in religious logic, the central sin(sic) of this construction is the a priori of a very negative condition—be this “original sin” or “suffering” (dukkha)—that underwrites an assumed presence of “evil” as the projection of the initial “fallen” or “ignorant” condition.

To circumvent this “trap” of faith, I propose, here, a small interpretive step or translation; firstly, in considering the Latin root “religio” (to bind),¹⁷ the setting aside, or suspending, of the religious perspective can offer a more speculative interpretation: that of the essential and ineluctable entanglement with relation. Then, in resituating the possibility of being “truly” religious beyond the limits of what is currently realizable in our present epoch, a space left by the resulting vacancy may be revealed, and thus, a new question can come into view. When religious discourse, in this way, can no longer “speak” to our present condition, what discourse-praxis might fill the space that is left? I would argue that art is ready-to-hand here. In art, there is no creed detailing a required belief; the creative ritual envisaged here, of an articulation of relation through artistic enactment, allows for any relationship to be experimented with—there is a “playfulness in art”.¹⁸ Furthermore, I see no limits to how “deep” one might travel in this form of praxis; Heidegger considers that “in its essence, art is an origin: a distinctive way in which truth comes into being, becomes, that is, historical” (Heidegger 2002, p. 49), perhaps even the possibility of touching the “divine” is not precluded. And art can also have, alongside religious consciousness, the quality of attempting a whole grasp of its subject through its epistemological praxis, as there are “no separated “problems”, no opposing paths, no partial “solutions”, no cumulative progress, no irretrievable options”.¹⁹ And the artists’ “research is always total even when it seems partial”.²⁰ Nevertheless, art never claims this grasp as achieved or even achievable. Speaking of painting, Merleau-Ponty notes that the “idea of a universal painting, a totalising painting, a painting fully realised is without any sense”.²¹

So, by way of a thought experiment, I will give to art the role of filling the space left vacant by my critique of the religion-science relationship, thus opening the way for the possibility of another interpretation of the positions of Nishida and Tanabe. The notion of art intended here, however, must be more generalized than that of a specialist production and a selling of artifacts. To highlight this distinction, I suggest a certain regard toward the seminal British “land artist”, Richard Long, who can give us just such an example.

Along with Hamish Fulton, the work of Richard Long exemplifies the essential elements of an art praxis that could enact a relational role with depth. Long's practice can be read through the lens of contradictory or paradoxical logic, and this implies that his work engages at a depth that might be considered spiritual. Long is noted for the enacting of "walks" as performance art, the documentary trace of which is, sometimes, simply lines of text—such as in Figure 1.
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** (Long and Tufnell 2007, p. 110).</figcaption></figure>

In other, more materialized, land art interventions—such as those where a line is traced by the act of repeatedly walking up and down a trajectory—the document is often the photographic trace; Figure 2 represents a personal exemplar of this mode of performance. It could be said of Long’s “walks” that they are works of art that are, simultaneously, also not works of art; the ascription, by the artist, of the act as art—where evidence exists solely through the artist’s testimony of having made the performative act—I argue, advances a contradictory identity: it is art, and yet, not art; or more formally, it is art and it is not art, it is art and not art, it is neither art nor not art;²² thus, presence and absence become entangled here.

By considering artistic enactment, such as Long’s, as a contradictory, or paradoxical, logic that is encountered in the *flesh*, so to speak, the artist is seen to articulate such paradoxes from within her praxis. So, to borrow Nishida’s concept, art is a mode of seeing by becoming—where seeing is to be interpreted here as understanding. In and through art, we manifest another way of “holding” this contradiction, or “paradoxical structure”; it is one that, according to Nishida, Suzuki Daisetsu calls spirituality (Nishida 1993, p. 85)—and I take this “other way” to be a mode of mediation. Thus, it is in the very praxis of art that the artist, through her performance, mediates the paradoxical relationship with reality that is relation and action. For Richard Long, that which is enacted is a relationship to a landscape and with the biosphere—a trace is made, be it through the repetition of footprints in the walking of “a line” or perhaps, simply the ephemeral trace of the body that moves through a territory, so imposing its presence. Like listening and speaking, these two—relation and action—always remain in contradiction, yet both also necessitate the other; thus, mediation is seen to constitute the intra-action and the intra-relational dialogue. Art speaks in its moment of performativity, and art listens in the moment of spaciousness
where the artist is before the subject of her concern, just as the whole movement of her praxis art enacts a mediation.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Line made by walking, Arnside, August 2012 (by the author).</figcaption></figure>

Given the above interpretation, this notion of art, I argue, can fulfill much of the role of religion, casting the latter onto a further, more liminal, horizon.²³ Thus, Nishida’s claim for religion can now be transposed:

> "I hold that even scientific cognition is grounded in this structure of spirituality [art]. Scientific knowledge cannot be grounded in the standpoint of the merely abstract conscious self. As I have said in another place, it rather derives from the standpoint of the embodied self's own self-awareness. And therefore, as a fundamental fact of human life, the religious [artistic] form of life is not the exclusive possession of special individuals. The religious [artistic] mind is present in everyone. One who does not notice this cannot be a philosopher". (Nishida 1993, p. 85)

The artistic mind is present in everyone. With this modified understanding of art, the "objects" of art (artifacts) are now seen as the *trace* that is left by the artist—the marks left by her self-as-mediation within art praxis. From a cultural perspective, we tend to venerate the *trace*, as embodied by the "object", while overlooking the determining process that is the mediation. The *self*, I argue, falls into the same error through a fixation upon, or grasping of, its own historical *trace* of mediation as an identity; in this manner, the self becomes "frozen", uncreative, and is found living at a "dead end".²⁴ By way of a counterpoint to this morbid vision, the praxis of art can offer us a positive metaphor for being alive, it is the way we can liberate our creative play within a respecting of relation and action.

Despite the claims from both Tanabe and Nishida that religion and science are mutually linked, I would argue that the relationship between art and science holds the advantage of greater symmetry. The relationship to the "Absolute" — of the "Alpha" and
"Omega" — can be more fully and humbly respected as presently resting beyond our imaging; thus, ethics and morality grounded upon the possibility of attaining union with the Absolute must fall silent. Assigning art a central role in the play of communication and communion at the spiritual level represents freedom to again enter into the imaginative depths of play and respectful dialogue, and, in a general sense, the praxis of art is, thus, to be understood as being open for all. The domain of this art activity can be framed as the field of a discourse that the practitioner enacts with relation. It must be highlighted, however, that there is something fundamentally liminal to this structure; so, a question imposes itself: this is a relation with what? In the asking, the question seems to create a resistance here; this is a relation with a "so and so", with an "X" perhaps, yet even with these types of responses, something seems to break. Relation will always go beyond or step outside any possible relata because the idea of relata already signifies the objectivity of the particulars that are in a relation—as particulars that form the moments of any conceptual cognition arising out from a whole field.²⁵ Yet the whole must remain intact in any such cognitive process, just as relation must remain, always and already, an integral and dynamic moment in the mediation-that-I-am. The whole, then, can be understood provisionally as the whole situated context in which I find myself and out from which I enact the cognition where elements become profiled as particular objects.²⁶ But the whole must also be understood by the ubiquitousness of relation, where relation is to the whole as action is to the particular. Therefore, through the praxis of art, I can again place relation before me as a whole, and, with a hospitable²⁷ attitude, I can invite relation to move me in expression, mediation, and listening. I understand this praxis as a dialogic unfolding, wherein it is informed by a languaged relationship with the world in general. The goings-on of this praxis is such that ordinary language is, or can be seen as, a limiting case within a subject-object coded narrative domain. Art praxis is thereby understood as the enfolding domain—in just the same sense that Nishida depicts his *basho* insight (Nishida 2012); in this *basho* of art-as-mediation, art, and ritual art become the project that languages the human-sive-other-than-human intersubjective encounters.²⁸ Thus, the enfolding domain of art shares its depth with the animal that I am, the arational, the transpersonal. Moving in this direction and through such praxis, we extend the scope of language through art in our approach to both transcendent and transdescendant horizons.

### 3. Second Moment: An Initial Regard Toward Apel's Transcendental-Pragmatic Philosophy of Language

If art praxis can be seen as a form of languaging with the world and with relation, the question of language itself then comes into view, and the perspectives of a philosophy of language find relevance to the reflection here. Karl Otto Apel situates his thinking firmly within the linguistic turn of philosophy. From this standpoint, the physical sciences are seen to subsume all metaphysical questions, and from the analytic perspective, the functioning of truth statements and value statements can be analyzed through the context of language games (Wittgenstein) or the semantic field (Trier)²⁹ that they operate within. As Apel states, the "*analysis of language* in a broad sense makes up the methodological vantage point of modern philosophy" (Apel 1994b, p. 83). Apel's major contribution is to integrate a notion of hermeneutics—as inspired by Heidegger and Gadamer—with the application of a transcendental-pragmatic transformation to the notion of meaning within a semantic field. Apel's standpoint rests on five foundations that span the analytic philosophy of language and the so-called "continental" tradition. These are: (1) Wittgensteinian language games are understood as forms of life; (2) the adoption of a generalized version of Gadamer's hermeneutical interpretation from Heidegger; (3) a pragmatic account of meaning with reference to experience (and so experiment), largely derived from the work
of C. S. Peirce; (4), a transcendental logic applied to semiotics and (5), a critical appraisal of analytic philosophy of language along with a proposition for a revised architecture in the light of 1–4.

Apel's claim for his philosophy of language as First Philosophy is appealing to the extent that communicative relationships that go beyond traditional human language forms are not implicitly excluded—although Apel himself does not extend his thinking in this direction. As regards art, for Apel, it “seems to fulfill the task, especially in our day, of making the phenomena appeal as a fascinating challenge to our sense of perception, instead of seeing them through the cliches of conventional experience, which are, however, necessary for practical life” (Apel 1994a, p. 38). This claim represents only a partial admission of the deviant role of art through its ability to transcend normative modes of discourse; this is, however, a long way from Nishida's transcendent vision of art—seen as the articulation within the *basho of relative nothingness* of affect as grounded in reality. As regards the status of feeling—as prior and more fundamental than subject-object cognition—Nishida's vision appears to coincide more with a Whiteheadian position; however, both of these standpoints also entrain a metaphysical discourse in their wake that, in general, philosophy of language struggles to engage with. So, the question arising would be where one is to situate the discourse of Tanabe and Nishida in relationship to Apel. Even if a certain sort of consciousness qua self is structured around language games, there is enough evidence of pre-cognitive states of awareness—from the phenomenon of meditation and from phenomenological research—to suggest that, at least, an a-lingual awareness qua self offers another mode of access to reality. In support of this position, I take up Martin Nitsche's transitive-topological phenomenology.³⁰

**4. Third Moment: Nitsche's Transitive-Topological Interpretation of Phenomenology**

Martin Nitsche engages an original reading of Husserl's early phenomenology to arrive at what he calls a Transitive-topological interpretation; more precisely, Nitsche articulates a bifold movement that he reads in Husserl's notion of the interpretation of phenomena that Nitsche names as *scopic-topological*; the definition given is as follows: "topological, when the locations (the places) in transitional areas are addressed, and scopic, when the scope of these areas is in focus" (Nitsche 2018, p. 14). Nitsche argues that, for Husserl, interpretation is a process that goes beyond the Aristotelian notion of the possible; there is seen to be an earlier stage where phenomena "are interpreted by the acts of apperception (or consciousness)". This represents a "wider scope" (hence *scopic*) which is greater than simply the locus of possible interpretations; thus, it contains a real "apperceptive surplus" which is creative, and this means that "we can experience more faces of an appearing object not simply at once, but in the (temporal) unity of our consciousness" (ibid., p. 24). This wider framework, Nitsche provisionally names the "sphere of interpretation", before he goes on to develop the notion of this locus as the *transitional area*.

In Nitsche's reading of *Logical Investigations I*, the *scopic-topological* interpretation goes some ways to translate a notion of meaning conferral—which Husserl articulates as transfer—away from that of the purely eidetic translation of qualities and into a notion of meaning that implies an embodied, en-world-ed, paradigm.

> "I am convinced that Husserl apprehends the interpretation not only as a transformation in a qualitative sense, but literally as a re-localization in the scopic-topological sense (i.e., with an attention to the places and spheres of the transfer)." (ibid., p. 28)

Thus, Nitsche coins the term *re-localization*, which, for him, represents the transfer (or shift) from one mode/place to that of the phenomenological mode/place, achieved via
a form of reduction. Understanding this shift of mode as a topological transformation effects a dimensional displacement, thus enabling a greater clarity of analysis in the deeper phenomenological domain.

"Interpretation as transition, to expound it preliminarily, interconnects re-localization with transformation in a way that is analogical to a topological transformation".

*(ibid., p. 29)*

Nitsche then goes on to develop the following specification of Husserl's sphere of interpretation. (1) Through an early form of phenomenological reduction, a methodological restriction suspends the distinction between the inner and the outer within experience, where the resulting phenomenological field is identified as a sphere of interpretation.

(2) Via this restriction, the interpretation itself is generalized into "a third-space of meaning". In other words, Husserl's move has placed a level of interpretation before, or underneath, the distinction between inner and outer, which is now seen as consequent on such interpretation, as is the distinction between external "reality (i.e., the domain of external, real or objective meaning) and the mind (as the domain of representation, internal or subjective meaning)". Thus, this third space is necessarily an in-between or indefinite space where the sphere of interpretation is given "a medial status, i.e., a status of a transitional in-between". This seems to resemble Nishida's *basho of relative nothingness*, which enfolds within it the subject-object (including inner-outer) discriminations of the *basho of judgment*. However, if one imposed Nishida's structure here, strictly speaking, Nitsche's third locus would no longer be an in-between; Nishida's *basho of relative nothingness* and its co-relative *universal of self-awareness* is always already the condition of possibility for there to be a subject-object relation and so the exterior-interior division. However, in Nishida's overall structure, *the basho of relative nothingness* is already positioned in between his *basho of Absolute Nothingness* and the *basho of judgment*. One can, perhaps, also interpret Nishida's place or locus as also infusing up as an "in-between" when experienced from the perspective of judgment consciousness. Thereby, Nitsche can be read as highlighting where Husserl may have sensed the presence of an enfolding locus, interpreting it as a liminal "in-between".³¹

Introducing the notion of self-as-mediation here may bring into alignment Nitsche's interpretation of Husserl with Nishida's *basho* structure. An understanding of self-as-mediation as between the *basho of relative nothingness* and the resultant cognitive perception in the subject-object (inner-outer) experience/judgment would then imply these two to be held to be in a mediated, co-dependent relation. In consequence, Nishida's *basho of relative nothingness* is understood to be more relative than the transitional space of Nitsche's conception, and yet simultaneously, it reveals itself as more fundamental. Interpreted as a lobe of self-as-mediation, this locus is, in principle, enactive and (non)localized, being determined through the praxis of judgment (the other lobe) and the co-relative suspension (of judgment) that resolves into the art-sive-science mediate axis.

(3) The scopic aspect of the sphere of interpretation implies that this "third, medial, domain of meaning" is broader than the possible meanings that can be subsequently attributed to "reality and its representation"; there is then a "surplus" in this third domain. Again, I see the scopic aspect as correlating with the enfolding nature of Nishida's *basho of relative nothingness*. This also corresponds to a privileging of the creative and imaginal, so to a deeper understanding of the sphere of art, and, thus, giving to art its remit to engage meaningfully with relation.

(4) The sphere of interpretation is not strictly an in-between locus, so this does not simply act as a "passageway of meaning" between reality and mind or visa-versa.
"Interpretation neither removes sense-data from perception, nor does it convey them (through the medial sphere of interpretation) to expressions within the realm of language. Interpretation, rather, proceeds as a re-localization (with the emphasis on localization); though it captures the data given by perception, it does not transport them to an entirely different "world". (Nitsche 2018, p. 31)

(5) The topological significance of the sphere of interpretation is that the sphere "gives place to meanings while it localizes human experience within a meaningful environment". The "transitive places" thus localized can, I think, now be clearly understood as a form of *basho* in the Nishidian sense.

(6) Thus, Nitsche’s notion of “scopic-topological” is this combination of the notion of the “surplus” of meaning within the sphere of interpretation”, along with the “medial transitional nature of this sphere as it is expressed in the notion of transitive places”. For Nitsche the notion of a layering of experience is delimited here, thus producing “a meaningful layer of “my actual” world”. In summary, therefore,

> "the phenomenological methodical attitude allows us to conceptualise a medium (or a medial domain) as a layer of real environment. Whereas the usual understanding of medial domains suggests that mediation means arbitration or interposition, phenomenology comprehends it rather as layering and re-localization".

>(ibid., p. 34)

In applying the interpretational frame of self-as-mediation, the two notions of medi-
ation implied here in no way need be opposed: the self is re-localized as a *basho* of relative
*nothingness*—in the aspect of the *universal* (domain) of *self-awareness* and, simultaneously,
through the continual unfolding activity of the self—in the most general terms—mediation
is enacted as relation-*sive*—action in between this *basho* and that of judgment/cognition. In
this bifold regard toward mediation as a liminal/transitive and enactive space,³² the notion
of enaction must be preserved.

4.1. *Deepening Nitsche’s Topology*

Applying a notion of mediation—thus far articulated as the fundamental process
engaged—implies that interpretation, together in the cognitive and linguistic sense, must
be translated as just one mode of mediation; by this move, Nitsche’s notion of transition
and topological transformation can be enlarged. But what advantage does this translation
then give to the phenomenological model that Nitsche puts forward? The limited case of
interpretation must always imply an epistemological “slant” toward a relation of ‘correct-
ness’, or ‘correspondence’, to an assumed ‘out there’ truth, that is to be found in the reality
of things. Understanding such a limit case as a complete, or fulfilled, interpretation im-
plies, in turn, the adoption of the architectonic logo-centrism of science. In adopting this
view, perhaps we can arrive at a notion of the ‘best’ regard—which, for Husserl, would be
based upon the phenomenological attitude—where, through this ‘“best” regard, we could
arrive at a non-naïve scientific methodology that can offer a horizon of a “true”, or perhaps,
a most appropriate, interpretation. To put this another way, meaning is arrived at via in-
terpretation, and so it can be creatively accumulated, thus building towards the full est)
meaning of (an) experience. The Derridean critic of Husserl, however, undercuts such a
project from the direction of language; Derrida’s aim is toward the (phenomenological)
event, even if only in the negative register.³³ As Rudolphe Gasché claims, “whether dis-
cussing Hegel, Husserl, or Heidegger, Derrida is primarily engaged in a debate with the
main philosophical question regarding the ultimate foundation of what is” (Gasché 1986,
p. 7). Thus, when Derrida demonstrates that all conditions of possibility for meaning si-
multaneously must also be the condition for the impossibility of meaning (cf. ibid., p. 267),
by way of a response, the adoption of a wider notion of mediation can be seen as the syn-
cretic move. Therefore, that which is mediated, and that which is at the root of experience, is to be understood here to be of the order of a Derridean aporia: interpretation is always necessary and yet always already misses its target—making sense entwined with the impossibility to (fully) make sense; “This im-possible therefore, is not an *idea* (of regulation) nor an *ideal* (regulator). It is that which is most undeniably real. And sensitive. As the other. As the irreducible and non-re-appropriable différence of the other” (Derrida 2003, p. 123). Derrida’s aporia here, as the im-possible non-passage, may seem at odds with the notion of Nitsche’s transitive locus or with the *chiasm* of Merleau-Ponty that Nitsche associates with his insight.³⁴ But Merleau-Ponty himself describes his interlacing notion as involving an abyss and non-passage.

“between the two “sides” of our body, the body as sensible and the body as sentient (what in the past we called objective body and phenomenal body), rather than a spread, there is the abyss that separates the In Itself from the For Itself”. (Merleau-Ponty 1968, pp. 136–37)

And Gasché also reads the “double science or a double staging” of deconstruction as a “chiasmatic doubling or crossing” (Gasché 1986, pp. 172–73), citing Derrida’s stated interest in the *chiasm*. This speaks to me then of a very weird junction, a membrane where the “thickness of flesh between seer and the thing is constitutive for the thing of its visibility as for the seer of his corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication” (ibid., p. 135). This crisscrossing rather than an X perhaps can be imagined as the asymptote ∝. And, just as the im-possibility is constitutive for Derrida in that it must be read as non-negative.

“The real is this non negative im-possible, this im-possible arrival or intervention of the event whose thought is not an onto-phenomenology. It is the thought of the event (singularity of the other, in its un-anticipateable arrival, here and now) that resists its reappropriation by an ontology or a phenomenology of presence as such”.³⁵

This transitive locus—this crossing point—in my reading, is at once a place of incommensurability, a place of non-passage, and the opening for the surplus that always exceeds expectations coming from a horizon of anticipation.

It must also be noted that Husserl also admits to interpretation never arriving at fullness, yet he maintains the assumption of a horizon of progression towards such completeness. The notion of mediation proposed here, however, always assumes an inexhaustible horizon, just as mediation must also assume the intractability of the mediated relationship. Nevertheless, the spirit (or quality) of mediation itself can be regarded as the only ideal horizon possible; the “how of mediation” qua “quality of mediation” remains open, whereas the fact of mediation—in that mediation is always already in enaction—is understood here to be apodictic. This implies that mediation will unfold with a quality variable from a maximal to the limit of “nearly not at all”, where even a non-mediation will always constitute some form of mediation.³⁶ Therefore, it is this “quality range” vis-a-vis mediation that can be considered to be a horizon; there can always be an intention to maximize or minimize the mediation that unfolds. This particular form of horizon is, however, not to be understood as the best possible interpretation. Rather, it must be considered to be that of the ideal relative mediate action qua praxis possible in each moment or, from a topological perspective, the horizon of the ideal transitive space qua locus in each moment that would engender such mediation.
## 4.2. Critique of the Articulation of Ego Qua Self

Husserl's interpretation of the ego as subjectum acts to fix his phenomenological interpretation. So, the "inevitable" question that Nitsche poses as to "how the ego unites the transitional area" (cf. Nitsche 2018, p. 39) is, I argue, already a bias that deflects any response away from a more liminal field of concern, namely one that deals with experience and self. According to Nitsche's reading of Husserl, the transitional area of the sphere of interpretation is "not only a sphere of the ego but of the experiential unity of the ego". And where this "unification stems primarily from experiencing (Erleben), rather than from the individual identity, or in this sense, the subjectivity of an ego" (ibid., p. 43). As related by Nitsche, Husserl's conception of ego seems relatively static and passive—and this despite the notion of the stream of consciousness being evoked—where the ego is seen to enact a unity of change within the flux of consciousness.

"The unity of change reveals that the continuance involves transitivity, the way in which moments and pieces of experienced contents overlap and coincide, i.e., "pass continuously into one another"". (ibid., p. 48)

Thus, Husserl appears to overlook the enactive participation of the self within the stream as mediation; in terms of Husserl's hyletic stream, I understand the self as being part of the stream, and its stability is the continuum of mediation as a process. From out of the trace of past mediate activity, the ego, then, is constituted as an identity or empirical ego, which, while not itself a stable object, continually acts to repaint itself to be "just so" in the guise of a narratively based object. Husserl, by contrast, does not take this step (cf. ibid.); in his objectification of the ego, Husserl, de facto, removes agency from it, and without agency, there can be no responsibility. And Nitsche continues to follow Husserl here:

"In other words, every content of consciousness is interpreted (since consciousness always interprets what it contains), and thus the transition in continuity of contents further expands into the transitivity of transfer". (ibid., p. 49)

The assumption of interpretation as made by the "pure" ego here—which establishes the stability of interpretation—is, I believe, founded upon the "ordinary" experience of the natural attitude; as such, I would claim that this assumption tautologically validates the ipseity of self qua ego.

The difficulty with this view is in the adoption of a horizon of interpretation as episteme, along with the objectification process as an ontology. It is clear that every content of consciousness is "normally" interpreted or "filtered" in order to accord with a stabilizing ego, yet this activity—as it is an activity—must have, in its turn, a motivation. Buddhist phenomenology refers to this motivation as *Tanhā* (thirst or grasping), whereas Heidegger, I believe, interprets this as *Verfallen* (falling) (cf. Heidegger 2010, pp. 123–64). From the Husserlian standpoint, the empirical ego and the reduced transcendental "pure" ego will remain a function of a higher mode of interpretation and epistemic grasping from the logo-centric perspective, where the other side of this would be a being-already-fully-in-the-thick-of-it. These two contradicting poles then constitute the bifold aporia of being-fully-stuck-in-the-world-*sive*—always-striving-for-an-interpretation; it is this continually self-separating from that impenetrable and incommensurable fullness in each movement of interpretation qua ego. It can be said of these two poles that they remain in a complementary superposition, and it is the mediation of this entangled aporia which, I argue, is always already enacted as self-as-mediation within relation and action. The term adopted here as a "bifold aporia" I understand Nitsche to render as "the two aspects of transitivity [that] then coincide to weave the fabric of consciousness" (Nitsche 2018, p. 50). This "transitivity of continuity" and the "re-localization of phenomena" I interpret as an
aspect of mediation against a more static approach to consciousness; consciousness is thus to be taken as the trace in memory of mediation, where such mediation takes place or has topology and where the mediation is always in-between the two, or more, aspects—where one such pair can be said to be Nitsche’s transitivity of continuity and the re-localization of phenomena. In other words, mediation takes place within the topology of the socio-linguistic historical narrative and my implicit situatedness; or, to reframe this, mediation is my (en)action-in-the-world³⁷ and relation. Nitsche also seems to apply an interpretative shift in his reading of Husserl that appears to go a similar direction:

> "Husserl claims (although not explicitly) that consciousness equals [...] "the inter-weaving of psychic experiences". My reading, by laying emphasis on the transitivity of experience, shifts the meaning of this utterance to a more dynamic concept: experiencing (or even 'conscious life') interweaves the consciousness". (ibid., p. 50)

This shift is also evident when Nitsche cites Merleau-Ponty's notion of *chiasm* (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1968, pp. 130–55) as regards the action of the stream of consciousness.

> "I decided (in contrast to the translator of Logical Investigations) to advance "in-tertwining", because I want to accentuate the similarity of Husserl's conception with Merleau-Ponty's late notion of the chiasm". (Nitsche 2018, p. 51)

Husserl's stream of consciousness is understood, by Nitsche, to have been established by the time of the second edition of Logical Investigations as to be not only "a transitional, but also transitional-topological concept" (ibid., p. 56). Nitsche argues that,

> "the ego must be primarily understood as a regard; and more precisely, not as a regard which leaves from a certain point of view (i.e., from the ego as sub-iectum), but as a regard directed towards something (the flow, specifically)". (ibid., p. 61)

With this notion of ego as regard, I understand Nitsche to be taking another step closer to the notion of self-as-mediation since regard must always be considered to be enactive and thus an integral moment in any mediation—remembering that the fundamental form of mediation proposed here is Relation-sive-(en)action.³⁸ The ego may be framed as regard in adopting a limited context, but in a fuller sense it must be considered to be mediation. The ego thus becomes de-objectified, taking on the aspect of activity and movement rather than the ipseity and being in the passive sense.³⁹ Nitsche articulates “two types of regard” as an interpretation of two modes of re-localization. Interpretation is taken to be the regard-through the flow, where the regard-at (lengthways), in its intersecting with the regard-through, means that it “must be somehow related to the transitional area” (Nitsche 2018, p. 61). These considerations give Nitsche the basis for the hypothesis that a re-localization of the ego, so the phenomenological understanding of the ego “is related with the regard-at time-flow” (ibid., p. 62). Considering my notion of the trace of mediation as discussed earlier and its coalescence into identity through narrative, interpretive, and socio-linguistic loops, a consideration of ego as related to regard-at time-flow seems to be coincident here (ibid., p. 61). In adopting Husserl's ego-centric perspective, Nitsche, I think, weakens the enactive aspect of perception and experience, overly focusing on the ipseity of an entity: the “pure” or empirical ego. An “experiential unity” is something that must always be arrived at. When one considers the process of the transitional zone as an activity, I believe we can arrive at a notion of mediation—indeed, I interpret Nitsche’s transitional area as just such a zone of mediation. This mediation can result in the experience of a unitary ego, but I would argue that this unitary experience also requires a historical narrative qua interpretation of its trace in memory. This grasping for a singular identity can, in turn, be subject to a phenomenological reduction, which would then disclose the
activity of mediation as fundamental. When this process is rendered (or interpreted) as the need—or requirement—for stability, the ego’s own unity of action is implied. Thus, ego, in this sense, then translates into a certain mode of self-as-mediation.

**5. Fourth Moment: Towards a Deeper Notion of Mediation**

**5.1. Art as an Extension of Language**

Nitsche’s research, I think, can also support the Whiteheadian distinction between the causal (feeling) and the lingo-cognitive dimensions of experience, where art praxis can engage with the relationship between these two dimensions in an attempt to bring to awareness/consciousness an articulation of this relation within a simultaneous movement that may be labeled “art awareness”—whether this be with the viewer or the practitioner.⁴⁰ Whereas, in religious discourse—such as in ritual or hermeneutic reflection—metaphysical referents can contaminate the discourse, for an art praxis, a broader discourse can succeed in activating the same (transdescendant/transcendent-to-language) transition in a “concrete” fashion; art is fundamentally “empirical” in its materiality.⁴¹ For a philosophy of language to be, as Apel claims, a First Philosophy, it would need to account for the a-linguistic ground that must be the condition of possibility for any language, and it is with this a-linguistic condition of possibility that the hermeneutic possibility of intercultural—and maybe even interspecies communication—is offered; I argue, art is best placed to enact this (a-linguistic/causal)—sive-lingo-cognitive dialogue. As Paul Ricœur states:

> "Even if it is true that every experience has a "linguistic dimension", and that this Sprachlichkeit permeates every experience, it is not however with the Sprachlichkeit that a hermeneutical philosophy must begin. It is first necessary to say what is brought to language. This is why philosophy begins with the experience of art, which is not necessarily linguistic; Furthermore, in this experience, the more ontological aspects of the game (Spiel)—in the playful as well as the theatrical sense—are preferred". (Ricoeur 1975, p. 98)

We are, therefore, faced with two choices: either we extend the notions of language and the language community, or we insulate ourselves within our anthropic frame, thus projecting our idea of causal determinism onto those who are found to be beyond the borders of what we deem are capable of a responsive, intelligent, relationship. The choice posed here is obviously the leading one. Choosing the first option and extending our concept of language and communication is the speculative path; pragmatically, from the point of view of information, it is also richer. The notion of Apel’s communication community can, in this way, be extended, where art is then to be understood as effecting this transition. Merleau-Ponty, through his association of the *flesh* of the body with the *flesh of the world*, along with Francisco Varela’s embodied cognition, points to another layer of meaning that is structured into life itself, one that is always already transcendent to the subject-object grammatical forms. The regard that looks between the praxis of art as discourse and the mathematical, or social-science, technical discourse, in this much wider sense, I think, reveals two fundamental modalities. These two modalities can be metaphorically related to the figure-ground relationship, and this fundamental relation seems to coalesce around a weird kind of complementary paradox: we can feel a general diffuse sense of a whole, or de-scribe a specific, fragmented detail—each mode being the complementary incompleteness of the other. Despite the improbability of a generative embrace of this paradox (aporia), or perhaps because of it, if mediated, information and meaning can be seen to flow out of, or across, this aporic relation. Tanabe’s and Nishida’s respective vision, that interpret religion and science as an integral whole process, is now transposed into the more concrete proposal: art and science are seen as an integral whole process, where the
art of science and the science of art dialogically embrace; and where the notion of dialogue here transcends the limited socio-linguistic frame, taken up as a relevant metaphor for the wider dialogue that is mediation. An interpretation of art praxis as a form of languaging that can reach beyond the frame of logo-centric reason then enriches Apel's horizon of the possible communication community and becomes itself a praxis that works to keep open the current language games for the creative play of inspiration and expiration; art then can help put play back into the game of meaning.⁴² To follow Apel all the way is already to be agreed on what stands for reasonable discourse, that is, to assume a normative pragmatic materialist view that frames reflection in a material dialectic. Considering language in this manner already assumes an answer to the question of what language is for.

In the translational move to self-as-mediation, the premise adopted is that this process of mediation is the ground; language then becomes an effect of mediation. Self-as-mediation also requires language, and such language must have two poles that correspond to the two poles mediated; these two can, in broad terms, be defined as the exteriority of socially mediated cognition and the intimate, immanent, awareness of existential embodied cognition—in simple terms, feeling and (subject-object) perception. Clearly, most spoken and written forms of language participate in socially mediated cognition, whereas, I argue, art, potentially, can participate in existential awareness; art then must also be considered in terms of language, and one whose condition of possibility is more directly self-as-mediation.

## 5.2. *Deconstructing Apel and the Inversion of Transcendental Reasoning*

Following Gert Biesta's deconstruction of Apel (cf. Biesta 2009, pp. 81–95), I think we can evoke Apel's hope for an improving discourse in the sciences, along with the Derridean critique that such a possibility for an ideal discourse is also its impossibility. The other of rational language can, therefore, be re-localized as art, which, from a Nishidian standpoint, makes art and science contradictory identities, or, in the hands of Derrida, a creative (non-negative) aporia. Both art and rational language share a performative dimension, where the performative aspect of language could be said to be the most essential layer, and so too, in the performance works of Richard Long or Hamish Fulton, art is distilled to its most essential character—displaying in the clearest terms, the role of action in these cognitive activities of language–art mediated cognition.

The proposition here, then, is for an inverse transcendental logic that does not seek the conditions of possibility but rather, the horizon of possibility for the mediation that is always already unfolding in any particular/historical manifold through the bifold praxis of art-sive-science. The movement and structure of this inversion could also have echoes in Lévi-Strauss and his canonical formula of the myth (cf. Lévi-Strauss 1955, pp. 428–44), but this does not necessarily imply that the reflection here is limited to a philosophy of language.⁴³ Notwithstanding, following Derrida, I consider the logic of this mediation to always exceed any possible formulation. So, any formulation or conception will fail to touch the event. The mediation of relation and action may be lived (enacted) but never fully grasped. The question then to be posed, in a quasi-transcendental manner⁴⁴ is: what is the possibility of such a relational system, and what constraints appear that limit such possibilities? The mediation of art-sive-science partakes in two complementary modes of experience: Relation and action and their respective participation orients with a mutually inverse symmetry. In brief, art has a focal lobe that is centered on relation, yet its dominant mode manifests through action; conversely, with science, the focus is on action via technology—where even pure science opens horizons of possibilities for action—yet the principle mode is understood to be the definition of relationships. The reflexive quality of self-as-mediation, as an articulation, implies an inseparability of science and art, and this
means that their mutual mediation must resonate with the mediation that is their funda-
mental condition of possibility. What, then, would be the potential of this meta-language
game, which would be a mediation of art–sive–science? A priori an answer may be im-
possible to know; however, I think we could follow Apel loosely here and inquire as to
what it would mean to enact (play) this game well. Since this game is always to be enacted
as individual–sive–collective, and since, culturally, we are presently in a techno-scientific
dominated culture, the full potential of this mediation cannot yet be glimpsed until a shift
at the level of culture has begun. The argument here, then, represents a kind of quasi-
pragmatic-transcendental/transcendent (speculative) reasoning, though its proposition is
grounded upon the reasonable possibility: that an embrace of self-as-mediation, and so of
art and science, through this interpretive lens will open up rather than close down epis-
temic possibilities, and, I believe, open in us a greater sensitivity towards the (biospheric)
other. Ultimately, the proposal for such a praxis needs to be intersubjectively adopted as
apodictic and the conversation began. Communication necessarily orients this way, a call
always must assume the possibility of a response—the faith that a listener is able to hear—
thus, we play the game in good faith from the start. Indeed, is it not faith in the possibility
of being understood that guides all our attempts at communication?

Having moved away from religious discourse, it may seem strange to end this article
with a notion of faith; however, to go beyond the known and the past, is not a form of faith
also implied? And do not the efforts to share our standpoint in the medium of a language
also imply some faith in the shareability of mind? To enact a pragmatic “truth” implies the
faith that such an enactment will move the process engaged toward an ameliorated mode
of unfolding. I put faith in a reasonable plan via my faith in the reasons; a scientist will have
some level of faith that the experiment she invests her time in constructing will return an
intelligible result (response). And so, too, an artist, standing at the point of commencement,
may have absolutely no idea of where this might take her, yet she opens herself to the
adventure in the making of the first mark or in taking the first step. To engage in the
conscious praxis of self-as-mediation, is, as I have argued, part of an artistic and scientific
whole movement. If enacted in its fullness, both at the individual and collective levels, it
may enter into the spiritual and religious domain. Although space precludes elaboration
here, I would argue that some traditional religious teachings can be interpreted to support
just such a claim as is made here.⁴⁵

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Data Availability Statement:** No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

Notes

<footnote n="1">1 In reference here to Husserl's distinction between the natural attitude and phenomenological attitude.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 cf. Whitehead (1978). Although, I interpret a process perspective in broader terms than does Whitehead. For a process perspec-
tive that is more in alignment with my view, see also Benjamin (2015).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 cf. Bouton (2020, pp. 381–85). Bouton gives a good summary of trace here. I must insist that my phenomenological reading of Derrida considers Derrida to be working from within a philosophy of language against a philosophy of language (*logocentrism*).</footnote>

<footnote>I interpret “true” here to be that in the pragmatic sense of the word.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 Tanabe, in turn, engages with Hegel’s lexicon.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ I borrow this adjective from Timothy Morton. cf. Morton (2016, p. 5).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ The notion of *Transdescedance* is taken from the work of Corine Pelluchon. cf. Pelluchon (2018, pp. 95–102).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 To borrow Merleau-Ponty's metaphor here, *Flesh* and *Flesh of the world* appear in Merleau-Ponty's work after the Phenomenology of Perception. The *flesh* is the entangling and the place of entangling of sense and sensation. "Everything depends, that is, upon</footnote>
the fact that our glances are not "acts of consciousness," each of which claims an invariable priority, but openings of our flesh which are immediately filled by the universal flesh of the world" (Merleau-Ponty 1964a, p. 16).

I follow the fundamental distinction between relative and absolute used by Nishida Kitarō from his distinction between *relative nothingness* and *absolute nothingness* (cf. Abe 1995, pp. 167–74).

Tanabe (2016, p. 120). Tanabe draws heavily on Hegel's speculative standpoint.

Ibid., p. 121.

Ibid., p. 122.

Tanabe is most explicit in referring to faith, with his compound notion of action-faith-witness, derived from the *Other Power* of Shin (pure land) Buddhism. Even with more epistemologically focused Buddhist traditions, the concept of refuge and reliance must also be associated with a notion of faith.

Where Nishida's notion of the absolute maybe, I think, can be compared with the "God" of Whitehead.

Buswell and Lopez (2014, pp. 871–72). “śūnyatā. (T. stong pa nyid; C. kong; J. kū; K. kong 空). In Sanskrit, “emptiness”; the term has a number of denotations, but is most commonly associated with the perfection of wisdom (PRAJÑĀPĀRAMITĀ) sūtras and the MADHYAMAKA school of Mahāyāna philosophy”.

My argument here may be compared with that of Nietzsche. Whereas Nietzsche argues against the religious elevation of the weak as a form of servitude, my critique is not against an understanding of the human condition as being “weak”, but rather against the false modesty of being bound within a “strong” religious faith (cf. Leiter 2024).

It is likely that religio was already somewhat polysemic in the later Roman period (cf. Saler 1987, pp. 395–99).

Ihde (2012, p. 108). Ihde continues, “deeply related to phenomenological playfulness, and it is possible to see the practice of the artist as latently phenomenological from the outset”.

Merleau-Ponty (1964b, p. 88, my translation). The complete sentence reads, “Parce que profondeur, couleur, forme, ligne, mouvement, contour, physionomie sont des rameaux de l’Être, et que chacun d’eux peut ramener toute la touffe, il n’y a pas en peinture de «problèmes» séparés, ni de chemins vraiment opposés, ni de « solutions » partielles, ni de progrès par accumulation, ni d'options sans retour”.

Ibid. (p. 89, my translation), “Même quand elle a l’air d’être partielle, sa recherche est toujours totale”.

Ibid. (p. 90, my translation), “L’idée d’une peinture universelle, d’une totalisation de la peinture, d’une peinture toute réalisée est dépourvue de sens”.

Following here is the *Catuskoti* logic of the tetralemma (cf. Priest 2018).

In this speculative exercise, I am not proposing to abolish religious discourse. Simply I suggest we push its referent out beyond the horizon of a presently possible relation. To use a religious metaphor, in some ways, I am adopting a radical view of the “fall”—or that of the “degenerate times” from the Buddhist discourse. The premise would then be that we are not yet fully worthy of engaging in “true Religion”.

I make reference here to Stephen Batchelor's usage of the concept of "dead end" within his secular Buddhist interpretation (cf. Batchelor 2015).

Andrew Benjamin makes a similar claim with his notion of fundamental relationality (cf. Benjamin 2015).

I adopt the notion of enactive cognition thanks to the work of Francisco Varela et al. (cf. Varela et al. 2016).

I make reference with this italisation to Derrida's notion of *Hospitalité*.

I adopt the use of "sive" here, such an expression from Tanabe, who uses this formulation in his essay *The Third Stage of Ontology* to represent the mediated, dialectical relationship between the two terms. As the translators of this essay (Urai Satoshi and Sova Cerda) describe, "it marks a "dialectical state of affairs," a relationship which it is Tanabe's task in this essay to convince us has a "concreteness" that can only be understood at the third stage of ontology" (Tanabe 2022, p. 370).

Also traced to W. Humboldt. cf. Thipa (1979, p. 82).

For a neuroscientific, phenomenological hybrid approach that defends the view of an a-lingual awareness, cf. McGilchrist (2009).

The Zen Buddhist “reduction” that, I assume, Nishida was familiar with is arché radical with respect to the methodology of Husserl, who determines to stay within the subject–object domain as grounding from the subjectum of, what was to become, the Transcendental Pure Ego.

And one which also corresponds to that of a spaciousness (or *espacement*).

And even though one might read Derrida solely as a philosopher of language, I take Derrida as always working from inside language in a direction that moves out toward the limit. (I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to further clarify my approach to Derridean thought here.)

See below.

Derrida (2001, p. 315, my translation): “Le réel, c’est cet im-possible non négatif, cette venue ou cette invention im-possible de l’événement dont la pensée n’est pas une onto-phénoménologie. Il s’agit là d’une pensée de l’événement (singularité de l’autre, dans sa venue inanticipable, hic et nunc) qui résiste à sa réappropriation par une ontologie ou une phénoménologie de la présence comme telle”.
36 That there cannot be a non-*mediation* suggests *mediation* as a candidate for a minimal ontological *being*.

37 Or, to adopt a Buddhist metaphor, my “swimming in the stream”.

38 Following here is the standpoint of cognitive enactivism (cf. Varela et al. 2016).

39 I believe an understanding of the active side of *being* in the Heideggerian sense can be seen as relevant here.

40 I think this distinction between viewer and practitioner can be compared with that established by Nitsche between perception qua process and perceiver qua process.

41 It could be argued that Religious Icons are also empirical, yet they are also art.

42 This is not to claim that only art can affect a playful attitude. Certainly, spiritual and religious praxis can also inspire play. However, art is by nature playful, and religious praxis also has another more somber aspect.

43 Sándor Darányi et al. speculate on the application of the canonical formula to the interpretation of quantum interaction (cf. Darányi et al. 2014, pp. 47–58).

44 Following Gashé here.

45 Most notably, and following the thought of Stephen Batchelor, I would argue that the most promising for such a hermeneutic exercise would be the cardinal Buddhist teaching of the *Four Noble Truths* (cf. Batchelor 2015).

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