International Symposium The Arts of Living with Nature

総合地球環境研究所 / Research Institute for Humanity and nature
Kyôto, March 7-11, 2022

Cosmophany :the living art of opening ambient worlds
by Augustin BERQUE

École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)
abilande@wanadoo.fr

Abstract – The word « art » is here understood in the double meaning of its Indo-European
root AR-, i.e. an idea of joint and an idea of arrangement. How do living beings arrange thejuncture between themselves and the environment ? The question will not be considered onlyin ecological (or biological) terms, but also in ontological and logical terms ; that is,
onto/logically as well. It implies the subjecthood of the living, as advocated by Uexküll(1864-1944) and later by Imanishi (1902-1992), including the human, as advocated by
Watsuji (1889-1960), in the epistemic frame of mesology (Umweltlehre, fûdoron 風土論 : thestudy of milieux, or ambient worlds), which implies not only an overcoming of modern
dualism and mechanicism, but also a sublation (Aufhebung) of two incompatible logics : theAristotelian logic of the identity of the subject, and the Nishidian logic of the identity of thepredicate, as represented by the concept of trajection (tsûtai 通態). Accordingly, the work of
art is seen as the trajection of the Earth into a certain world, i.e. a cosmophany.
*

Art und Weise (de) :fashion, manner, mode, way (uk)
仕方、やり方、流儀、風 (jp)Prolegomenon
The word « art », in Indo-European languages like English, has a root AR, inferring the double
meaning of joint and of arrangement. Then how do living beings arrange the juncture
between themselves and the environment ?
§ 1. From geography to Heidegger, or the reverse ?
About a score of years ago, begining to write Écoumène. Introduction à l’étude des milieux
humains (Ecumene. An introduction to the study of human milieux) 1 , I started from theacknowledgment that « ontology lacks a geography, and geography lacks an ontology » 2, andaccordingly undertook the task of bringing that missing ontology to geography. I did that in
the wake of mesology – the study of milieux, or ambient worlds – into which I had been
initiated by Watsuji Tetsurô’s 3 famous essay Fûdo. Ningengakuteki kôsatsu 風土 .人間学的考察 (Milieux. A study of the human interlink, 1935) 4. Watsuji himself called it fûdogaku 風
土学 or fûdoron 風土論, and defined it as a hermeneutic phenomenology of the environment ;in other words, a phenomenological geography.
Watsuji’s essay dating back to 1935, it may be considered as one of the first, if not thefirst manifestation of phenomenology in geography. However, Watsuji was not a geographer ;Paris : Belin, 2000. 中山元訳『風土学序説』 筑摩書房, 2002 年.
Op. cit., p. 9.
3
In this article, East Asian anthroponyms are given in their normal order, patronymic first.
4
There exists a very bad English translation. The Chinese translation also completely misses the point. Better
read the Spanish, German or French translations.
12

2
he was a philosopher, and the first reference which he invokes (though for criticizing it) is nota geographical one ; it is Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. His approach, in sum,was the reverse of that of Éric Dardel’s L’Homme et la Terre. Nature de la réalité
géographique (Man and the Earth. The nature of geographical reality, 1952) : not proceedingfrom geography to Heidegger, but from Heidegger to geography.
Formed as a geographer for my part, my approach was similar to that of Dardel ; and it
is via Watsuji’s mesology that I came to read Heidegger. Now, provided that one is concernedwith « the nature of geographical reality », as Dardel writes, I consider today that reading
Heidegger is essential in that respect ; and it is especially Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (The
Origin of the Work of Art) 5 which seems to suggest the ontology which, in my opinion,
geography cannot do without for understanding what produces this reality. I intend here toshow why.
Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes is certainly the most famous writing of Martin
Heidegger (1889-1976) on art. It is about a « dispute » (Streit) between « the Earth » (dieErde) et « the World » (die Welt), in those hieratic and sibylline terms which are Heidegger’s
usual trick and which, intentionally, make their interpretation necessarily uncertain. This
« intentionally » which I just wrote is not in the least pejorative ; I understand it, on thecontrary, as an invitation to thinking, off the beaten tracks ; that is, simply, to think ; because,
at least in philosophy, it is clear that « absolutely precise concepts would block thinking, anda conceptual development presupposes some ambiguity6 » – we will see later the reason for it.
The unbeaten track, as it happens, will be here an approach of the above text fromgeography, Japanese thinking, and in the wake of Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944)
Umweltlehre (mesology). The reason for it is triple : first, the Earth (with a capital E, since,
concretely, the matter is about planet Earth 7, which bears all the rest), as well as the world, aretraditionally the object of geography ; second, whatever Heidegger may have said or rather
not said, Japanese philosophy was one of the sources of his thought 8 ; and third, Uexküll’s
thought also deeply influenced him 9 in the years preceding the Origin of the Work of Art,
which, undoubtedly, bears the mark of it.
These three reasons will lead me to seeing, in the Origin of the Work of Art, a majestic
allegory of the trajection (tsûtai 通態) which, from that which Uexküll calls Umgebung (theraw environmental datum, the environment), opens out on the Earth that « human abode »which is the ecumene (from the Greek οἰκουμένη or οἰκουμένη γῆ, humanly inhabited earth) ;a process in which art plays the role of a scout, and which can be understood by referring tothe « predicate logic » (jutsugo ronri 述語論理) put forward by Nishida Kitarô (1870-1945).

Initialy written in 1935, and slightly reworked thereafter. I refer here to the 2012 edition, Frankfurt am Main :Vittorio Klostermann.
6
Paul FEYERABEND, La Tyrannie de la science, Paris : Seuil, 2014 (Ambiguità e armonia : lezioni trentine,2011), p. 145.
7
True, Heidegger writes (Der Ursprung…, op. cit., p. 28) : « From what this word [die Erde] says here, we must
dismiss the image of a material mass laid in strata as well as that, astronomical, of a planet. Earth is the womb inwhich the coming out takes back, as such, all that which comes out. In all that which comes out, the Earth ispresent as that which puts in safety (Die Erde ist das, wohin das Aufgehen alles Aufgehende und zwar als ein
solches zurückbirgt. Im Aufgehenden west die Erde als das Bergende) » (my transl.) ; but I hope to show that thisallegory, contrary to an ἀ-λήθεια, veils (λήθει) deliberately that which, concretely, is indeed the Earth both as ourplanet, the environment (Umgebung), the ground (Boden) and the subject (subjectum, ὑποκείμενον, S) founding
any human world.
8This theme has been developed by Reinhard MAY, Ex oriente lux. Heideggers Werk unter ostasiatischem
Einfluss, Stuttgart : F. Steiner Verlag, 1989 ; which Graham Parkes translated under the title Heidegger’s hidden
Sources. East Asian Influences on his Work, London : Routledge, 1996.
9
This fact was stressed, among others, by Giorgio AGAMBEN, L'aperto. L'uomo e l'animale (The Open. The
human and the animal), Torino : Bollati Boringhieri, 2002.
5

3
To begin with, let us define the meaning which the two terms ecumene and trajection
have in mesology 10. Ecumene, in the French écoumène, is traditionally a masculine word in
geography, but it is feminine in mesology, since it is the gender of οἰκουμένη in Greek as wellas that of the maternality of Γῆ or Γαῖα, Mother Earth. In mesology, it is the relationship ofhumankind with the Earth ; in other words, the whole of human milieux (Umwelten), each ofwhich is the particular relationship of a certain society with the environment (theenvironmental datum, Umgebung). A milieu corresponds indeed to what Uexküll calls
Umwelt, and which he distinguishes categorically from the Umgebung 11. It is singular, proper
to a certain species or a certain human society, whereas the environment is universal, given to
all just as it is. And in the same way, at another scale, the ecumene is proper to humankind ; itis not the biosphere, which is universal. The reason for it is that the ecumene is eco-technosymbolical, whereas the biosphere is only ecological (schematically said, since other living
beings do not totally ignore technology and, to some degree, do have their propersemiospheres).
As for trajection, it is the evolving process in which the environment is anthropized bytechnology and humanized by symbol, which makes of it a human milieu, and in which,simultaneously, by effect in return (a feedback), this milieu or ambient world conditions thehumans themselves, making them indefinitely more human ; and so on. In a word, trajection
is a cosmosomatization : eco-techno-symbolically, it makes our body our world, and ourworld our body. For instance, technology allows us, via a robot, to extend our hand to a comet
millions of kilometers away, take a piece of it and bring it back here in order to examine it
more closely ; while all this operation is physiologically alive as our body in the form ofneuronal connections. Without conceptualizing trajection as such, André Leroi-Gourhan(1911-1986) has demonstrated the essence of it regarding the emergence of Homo sapiens.
One can summarize his thesis as the correlation between hominization, humanization andanthropization. 12 Mutatis mutandis, regarding the living in general, Imanishi Kinji (19021992) expressed the same idea with a formula which runs through his entire works« subjectivation of the environnement, environnementalization of the subject » (kankyô no
shutaika, shutai no kankyôka 環境の主体化、主体の環境化) 13.
In sum, the reality of milieux is neither properly objective (since it supposes aninterpretation of the environment), nor properly subjective (since it presupposes theenvironment) ; it is trajective.
Now, this process, trajection, is analogous to what in logic is a predication, in which,in this instance, the environmental datum (the Umgebung) is in the position of the logicalsubject S : that which the matter is about, and which, here, is seized as something(concaptum : conceived of as a certain predicate P) by our senses, action, mind and words,
which make it the trajective reality (S/P) of a certain milieu.
Knowing besides that, in the history of European thought, « substance & accidents inmetaphysics correspond to subject and predicate in logic »14, let us now see what trajectivity
For more details, see Augustin BERQUE, La mésologie, pourquoi et pour quoi faire ? (Mesology, why andwhat for ?), Nanterre La Défense : Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2014 (木岡伸夫訳『風土学はなぜ、何のために』関西大学出版部、2019 年) ; and Glossaire de mésologie (A Glossary of Mesology), Bastia :Éoliennes, 2018. I have introduced the concept of trajection in Le Sauvage et l’artifice. Les Japonais devant lanature, Paris : Gallimard, 1986 (transl. by Ros Schwartz Japan. Nature, artifice and Japanese culture, Yelvertoft
Manor : Pilkington, 1997 ; 篠田勝英訳 『風土の日本. 自然と文化の通態』、筑摩書房、1988 年).
11Jakob von UEXKÜLL, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (Raids into Animal and
Human Milieux), Hamburg : Rowohlt, 1956 (1934).
12
André LEROI-GOURHAN, Le Geste et la parole (Gesture and Word), Paris : Albin Michel, 1964, 2 vol.
13
This formula can be seen in his first book (Seibutsu no sekai [The World of the Living], 1941) as well as inone of the last ones (Shutaisei no shinkaron [Subjecthood in Evolution], 1980).
14
As reminds us The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Fifth Edition, headword « substance ».
10

4corresponds to in onto/logical (both ontological and logical) terms. The subject, as well as
substance, is that which « lies beneath » (ὑποκείμενον, subjectum), the « standing beneath »(ὑπόστασις, substantia). The predicate is « what is said » (dicatum) « in front of » (prae), i.e.
in front of the subject, and the accident is « what falls » (cadere) « thereon » (ad), i.e. on thesubstance. Let us add that, for Nishida as well as for Aristotle 15, the subject is substantial (u有), whereas the predicate is unsubstantial (mu 無) ; and that moreover, for Nishida, the worldis predicative 16 – it is a « predicate-world », jutsugo sekai 述語世界 –, and we shall then havethe principal ingredients of the following hypothesis : the dispute between the Earth and theWorld, in The Origin of the Work of Art, is nothing else than the relation between substanceand accident, subject and predicate in the trajection of reality in general, as well as those ofgeography in particular.
This is what we shall now have to argue.
§ 2. The as of reality
If Nishida manages to pose that the world is predicative and unsubstantial, it is in aperspective derived from Buddhism, which will not concern us here. Let us rather conceive of
the world like in geography, that is, as that which makes the earthly datum appear as acomplex of resources, constraints, risks and amenities which the diverse societies, in thecourse of history, arrange in configurations which depend on their respective cultures, andtherefore are not universal but casual and contingent. This contingency is that which the
French school of human geography – that of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918) and his
disciples – have put forward in what historian Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) qualified as
possibilism ; which means that, would the environmental datum be the same, it will be useddifferently according to the diverse societies 17. So, there is no determinism – the environment
does not determine the forms of civilization –, but diverse actualizations (ἐνέργειαι) of ageneral potency (δύναμις), the relation between the two terms (environment and civilization)
being contingent. It is not mechanical, but historico-medial, as life itself is.
Carrying on with this idea, but in a different form, I later argued that the object ofgeography should be the ecumene, that is « the Earth inasmuch as it is humanized » and thatthe geographer’s distinctive feature should then be « to pose the question of this ‘inasmuch as’(en tant que), where the physical and the social only hold in relation to each other », thus
generating « affordances (prises), which are the resources, constraints, risks and amenities
constitutive of the ecumene » 18 ; in other words, that which makes geographical reality appear(φαίνειν) as such, in a certain order (κόσμος). That is the cosmophany of our world (κόσμος).
The said affordances being trajective, they do not exist in themselves (an sich, en soi), but assomething (als etwas, en tant que quelque chose). For instance (schematizing to excess), oil(petroleum) is a resource as fuel only inasmuch as you have invented the combustion engine ;otherwise, it is nothing else than a geological datum – the raw datum of the Umgebung, whichin itself is not a resource, and ultimately does not exist for the concerned society. For example,
oil in the Arctic, for millenia, did not exist for the Inuit, though it was there lying

On this question, see Robert BLANCHÉ et Jacques DUBUCS, La Logique et son histoire (Logic and its
history), Paris : Armand Colin, 1996 (1970), chap. II.
16
See NISHIDA Kitarô, Basho (Place, 1926), in Nishida Kitarô zenshû (Nishida’s Complete Works), Tokyo :Iwanami, 1966, vol. IV.
17
Lucien FEBVRE, La Terre et l’évolution humaine. Introduction géographique à l’histoire (The Earth andHuman Evolution. A Geographical Introduction to History), Paris : Albin Michel, 1922.
18
Augustin BERQUE, « Espace, milieu, paysage, environnement (Space, milieu, landscape, environment) », p.
352-369 in Antoine BAILLY, Robert FERRAS, Denise PUMAIN (ed.) Encyclopédie de géographie, Paris:
Economica, 1992, p. 367 and 368.
155(ὑποκείμενον) under their feet. It had not yet been trajected out (actualized). In sum, it wasthere for nothing.
At the time, not having read Uexküll yet, I did not know that I would find again thesame idea in his writings, almost to the letter, yet about animals, and professed half a century
earlier. My concept of « prise » (hold) had rather been inspired by that of affordance in James
Gibson (1904-1979) 19, who, however, did not speak of « as ». His purpose did not concern
hermeneutic phenomenology, whereas for my part, by reading Watsuji, I had discovered thelink with the problem of ecumene.
In his essay Fûdo, Watsuji introduces the concept of fûdosei 風土性, which he defines
in the first line of the book as « the structural moment of human existence » (ningen sonzai nokôzô keiki 人間存在の構造契機). The expression kôzô keiki (structural moment) translates
the German Strukturmoment, a familiar notion in German philosophy, among others in
Heidegger. It means here the dynamic coupling of the two sides of human beings : theindividual (hito 人) and its relational milieu (aida 間), a coupling which produces the humanin its plenary unity (ningen 人間, a current term in the sense of « human being », but which,in Watsuji, comes to take the particular meaning of « human interlink »). Watsuji criticizes
Heidegger for having ignored this coupling, a lack which eventually makes the Dasein a merehito, not a genuine ningen 20. For rendering this Strukturmoment, I accordingly have translatedfûdosei with « médiance » (mediance), from the latin medietas, which means « half ». The
human in its plenitude is indeed composed with two complementary and indissociable« halves » : the individual and its milieu, which, in the case of the ecumene (not to be reduced
to the biosphere) is eco-techno-symbolical.
Now, Watsuji acompanies this concept of mediance (the individual/medial synthesis)
with the affirmation that the milieu (fûdo 風土) must not be confused with the naturalenvironment (shizen kankyô 自然環境). The environment is indeed an object (that of thescience of ecology), whereas the milieu exists only inasmuch it is lived by a subject –individual or collective –, whose subjecthood (shutaisei 主体性) is therefore the prerequisiteof mediance, that « concrete ground » (gutaiteki jiban 具体的地盤) of human existence ;whereas the environment, as an object of science, has been abstracted from it.
Watsuji’s position differs in this way from the scientific point of view (which indeed,in principle, is not a point of view, but a look from nowhere). It invokes, on the contrary, thestandpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology, the principle of which is the art of interpreting(ἑρμηνεύειν) how reality appears (φαίνει) to a certain being. Yet, the fact is probably that thisconception of mediance was inspired to Watsuji by the natural sciences, in this instanceUexküll’s mesology (Umweltlehre), which he may have heard of during his stay in Germany
in 1927-1928. If not so, it is difficult to explain the perfect homology of the principles whichfound his mesology (fûdoron 風土論) as well as that of Uexküll (Umweltlehre), the only
difference being that the former is only about human milieux (the ecumene), wheras the latter
is about animal milieux (one can say about the milieux of living beings in general). Indeed,
James GIBSON, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, Houghton & Mifflin, 1979. I havecommented this source in Médiance, de milieux en paysages (Mediance, from milieux to landscapes), Paris,
Belin/RECLUS, 1990, 三宅京子訳『風土としての地球』筑摩書房、1994 年 ; and in Écoumène, op. cit.
20
One of the proofs of this fact being that the Dasein, though professed as a Mitsein (being-with), is after all
abstracted as a « being toward death » (Sein zum Tode), whereas the concrete human (ningen 人間) is for
Watsuji a « being toward life » (sei e no sonzai 生への存在), whose social and medial existence goes on after
the individual’s biological death. I have shown in Poétique de la Terre. Histoire naturelle et histoire humaine,
essai de mésologie, Paris, Belin, 2014 (transl. by Anne-Marie Feenberg, Poetics of the Earth. Natural History
and Human History, London : Routledge, 2019), that there is in that matter an internal contradiction in
Heidegger’s thesis, and that it is Watsuji who is consistent.
196
Uexküll too postulates that the animal is not an object but a subject – it is a « driver »(Maschinist), not a machine –, and for that reason, the Umwelt (milieu) must not be confused
witth the Umgebung, or objective environment. (One should be aware that Uexküll has
criticized the French word « milieu » for being deterministic, which it indeed was before
Vidal de la Blache. On the contrary, throughout the present paper, I understand this word in
the post-Vidalian acceptation, which corresponds to Uexküll’s Umwelt and Watsuji’s fûdo 風土).
It is true that Uexküll did not create a concept integrating these principles, such as thatof mediance. On the other hand, he created a rich terminology which one can correlate withthe ecumenal as (l’en-tant-que écouménal), and thus with trajection – mediance being thestate produced by the process of trajection. He shows indeed, by using the experimental
method of modern science, that the environmental datum does never exist in itself for theconcerned animal, but always as something specific to that animal, proper to its species but
not to another one. That « something », therefore, is never a mere object – « an animal cannever get in touch with an object (mit einem Gegenstand in Beziehung treten) 21 »–, if not as a
« holder of significance » (Bedeutungsträger), a « role » (Rolle) which the animal subject
confers to such or such feature of the environment, making it exist according to a certain« tone » (Ton). Consequently, according to the species concerned, the objective features ofthe environment never have the same role – never exist as the same reality – in animal milieux(Umwelten). Though an object is one and the same, it exists as different things. For example,
the same grass will exist as food (Esston) for a cow, as an obstacle (Hinderniston) for an ant,
as a beverage (Trinkton) for a cicada larva, as a shelter (Schutzton) for a beetle, etc..
Basing on one and the same Umgebung, this « making exist as » – the casting of rolesin the respective theaters of the different Umwelten – is called by Uexküll « tonation »(Tönung). That is nothing else than a trajection, in other words a predication of theenvironmental datum (which is here in the position of a logical subject S) as the role (which ishere in the position of a certain predicate P) which the animal confers to that datum. This canbe summed up with a formula : reality (r) is S as P , or r = S/P. This principle holds for any
reality, among others for geographical realities. However, Uexküll not being particularly alogician nor a metaphysician, he did not develop his mesology in that direction. Heidegger, on
the other hand, has operatively understood that as (als) as both a logical and an ontologicalproblem – an onto/logical problem.
§ 3. From Uexküllian Tönung to Heideggerian als
This Tönung, which from a mesological point of view is a trajection, has so profoundly
marked Heidegger’s ontology that he dedicated to it a good part of his 1929-1930 seminar, thetext of which was published after his death under the title The Fundamental Concepts ofMetaphysics (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik) 22. True, by a subtle shift, the question thereis that of Grundstimmung (basic mood) rather than that of Ton and Tönung ; but the idea
remains the same, except that Heidegger precises the matter. For example, the Uexküllian
demonstration according to which« All the richness of the world surrounding the tick (die Zecke umgebende Welt) shrinks(schnurrt zusammen) and is transformed into a poor pattern (ein ärmliches Gebilde), essentiallycomposed with only three sensible signs (Merkmalen) and three agible signs (Wirkmalen) : it is
its milieu (ihre Umwelt). However, the poorness (Ärmlichkeit) of the milieu conditions thecertainty of the activity, and certainty is more important than richness » 23.
Streifzüge…, op. cit. p. 94.
Frankfurt am Main : Klostermann, 1983.
23
Streifzüge…, op. cit. p. 29. My transl.
21
22

7

This statement unfurls, in Heidegger, into the famous thesis that the stone is « worldless »(weltlos), the animal « worldpoor » (weltarm), and the human « worldforming »(weltbildend). 24 One shall not fail to notice, besides, that, in Uexküll, speaking of the« poorness » of the tick’s world is contradictory, since it is only relatively to the Umgebung(i.e. the Umwelt of our science) that this world can be judged to be poor and reduced to asimple pattern. From the point of view of the tick, on the other hand, its Umwelt is just ascomplete and real as Plato, from his human point of view, judged the kosmos (that is, his
Umwelt) to be, in the last few lines of the Timaeus 25. As for Heidegger, from a bluntly
anthropocentric (and, more precisely said, logocentric) standpoint, he sees « worldpoorness asa lack of world » (Weltarmut als Entbehren von Welt) 26.
Yet Heidegger certainly innovates in considering that matter from an onto/logicalpoint of view. He writes that
« Statement, judgment, in ancient philosophy, was called λόγος. Now, λόγος – that is the main
theme of logic. (…) The question about the essence of the world (dem Wesen der Welt) is afundamental question of Metaphysics. The problem of world (das Weltproblem) as afundamentaal problem of metaphysics is led back to logic. Logic is thus the actual basis ofmetaphysics » 27.

Then, commenting the enunciative clause in Aristotle, he shows that the Stagirite, whentalking of σύνθεσις,« (…) wants to say what we call the structure of ‘as’ (die ˃als˂Struktur). He wants to say that,without freely and explicitly forging ahead in the dimension of that problem. The structure of‘as’, the primarily unifying perception (vorgängige einheitbildende Vernehmen) of something as
something (etwas als etwas), is the condition of the possibility of truth or falseness of theλόγος » 28.

Heidegger assimilates 29 this « primarily unifying perception » with the predication of« a as b », which makes that « a is b ». It is the « structural moment of the openness »(Strukturmoment der Offenbarkeit) by dint of which the things appear as something. It is theas of the essent as such (das Seiende als solches), in sum the qua of the ens qua ens, the ᾗ ofthe ὄν ᾗ ὄν.
In Heidegger’s purpose, « this quite elementary ‘as’ (…) is that which is forbidden to
the animal » (dem Tiere versagt ist) 30. Such a statement is obviously logocentric, and here is
the point where Heidegger diverges from Uexküll. Indeed, for Heidegger, while admitting thata lizard, differing fom the rock on which it is basking in the sun, is not simply matter,« When we say that the lizard lies on the rock, we should cross out the word ‘rock’, in order toindicate that that on which it lies is certainly given to it in some way (irgendwie gegeben), but
not as rock (nicht als Felsplatte). The crossing out does not only mean : something else, and

Die Grundbegriffe…, § 42.
Where, in the last few lines, it is said that the kosmos is « very big, very good, very beautiful and very
perfect » (μέγιστος καὶ ἄριστος κάλλιστός τε καὶ τελεώτατος).
26
Die Grundbegriffe…, § 46.
27
Op. cit., p. 418. My transl.
28
Op. cit., p. 456. Heidegger’s italics. My transl.
29
I summarize hereafter the content of § 69.
30
Op. cit., p. 416.
24
25

8
taken as somthing else, but : not accessible at all as essent (überhaupt nicht als Seiendes
zugänglich) » 31.

Thus, the animal is « excluded out of the openness of the essent » (ausgeschlossen aus
der Offenbarkeit vom Seiendem) 32 , which on the other hand is indissociable from humansaying and acting, and through which the environmental datum is specified (one should here
remember Vidalian possibilism, or even Augustinian free will). The animal, for its part, isunable to distantiate itself from its milieu, since it is « beholden » (benommen) to the very
hold it has on it ; and thus, its behaviour (benehmen) is impulsively dictated to it by its
milieu 33.
In the lack of hindsight of this « beholdenness » (Benommenheit), there cannot be,properly said, any opening of a world ; there is only what Heidegger calls « aperture inbeholdenness » (das Offensein in der Benommenheit). To come back to Uexküll, thiscorresponds with what he calls Umwelt, but which Heideger is keen to distinguish from Welt,
i.e. world properly said, because, in sum, the world cannot really open itself, by opening theessent as such, if not by dint of the symbolical (the saying) and the technical (the acting)systems proper to humankind.
The Grundbegriffe thus come to the thesis – analogous to the emergence of theecumene out of the biosphere – of « world forming as that which goes on fundamentally in the
Dasein » (Weltbildung als Grundgeschehen im Dasein) and of « essence as the reign of theworld » (das Wesen als das Walten der Welt). And, to come back this time to the Nishidian
idea that the world is predicative, this is to say that, in what is for us reality (r = S/P), theessence of things is dictated to us by the predicate ; in other words, by the manner (Art inGerman) – i.e. P – we have to take S – i.e. the raw datum of the environment, or the « initself » (an sich) of the Earth (the most fundamental ὑποκείμενον : S par excellence).
It is now time to come more directly to The Origin of the Work of Art.
§ 4. The work of art as the trajection of the Earth into a certain world
Though « origin » does indeed translate Ursprung, English here does not evoke the image
which the German word expresses ; viz, the prime (ur) springing (Sprung) of somethingwhich is going to exist – ek-sist (stand out) – by springing out of something else. To go
directly to the conclusion which I intend to draw here, it is the birth of reality (S/P) out of
Mother Earth (S) by dint of the mundane ‘as’ put into enaction (ἐνέργεια) by art – a certainway (P, Art) of seizing S. It is the Earth seized as a world, and the work of art is in that ‘as’.
Is that really what Heidegger wants to say ? The intended obscurity of his prose allows
indeed to discuss about it indefinitely, but what we have just seen (§1-§3) nevertheles obliges
us to frame the matter in a certain sense. The author who expresses himself in The Origin of
the Work of Art is not another man than the one who, five years earlier, wrote much more
explicitly the Grundbegriffe (the basic concepts), and he has not, as by mutation, got rid of theGrundstimmung (the basic mood) which he professes there ; he has not quitted his ground(Grund). Moreover, this not only a presumption, and it is not only about the sole Heidegger.
Then, when he writes the hieratic lines« The temple-work, standing there, opens a world and establishes it back on the earth, whichitself, in such a way (dergestalt), first appears as a home ground (heimatlicher Grund). But
Op. cit., p. 291-292. My transl.
Op. cit., p. 358.
33
As can be seen, Heidegger plays here (op. cit., § 46) on the relation betwween benommen (« dazed, stupid »),but also past participle of benehmen : behave, act) and benehmen (« behaviour », but also « take, take away,
deprive »), both deriving from nehmen (take) with the be, which transitivates in order to make such and such. Insum, for Heidegger, the animal is prisoner of its own milieu.
31
32

9
humans and animals, plants and things are never given and known as unchanging objects(unveränderliche Gegenstände) (…). It is the temple which, in its standing there (Dastehen),first gives to things their aspect (Gesicht) and to humans the prospect (Aussicht) on
themselves » 34,

one must not forget that, before him, Uexküll had already shown that an animal can never get
in touch with a mere object (see above § 2), since it is not with the abstract objects (S) of theenvironment (Umgebung), but with the concrete things (S/P) of its milieu (Umwelt) that it isin relation with.
Now, if these things exist concretely, it is by dint of their growing-together – theircum-crescere (past participle concretus) – with what Plato would have called the γένεσις ofthe animal itself in the sensible world (κόσμος αἰσθητός), that is, in its proper milieu (χώρα).
In the concrete reality (r = S/P) of that Umwelt, indeed, the diverse things and beings growand go together because living beings have the potency (δύναμις) to seize the objects of theenvironment (Umgebung) in a certain way (Art in German) and, in such a way (dergestalt) toactualize (ἐνεργεῖν) them as certain concrete things, in a trajective adequation with their own
existence, that is, with their own prospect on themselves (which they lose when they die).
This, of course, is not Uexküll’s vocabulary, but it is what he shows when he speaks ofa « counterpoint as motif of morphogenesis » (Kontrapunkt als Motiv der Formbildung) 35 in
the living world, and when he poses that
« The fundamental technical rule, which comes to expression in the flowerness(Blumenhaftigkeit) of the bee and in the beeness (Bienenhaftigkeit) of the flower, can also be
applied to the other examples introduced. It is sure that the spider’s web is formed flyly(fliegenhaft), since the spider itself is flyly. Being flyly means that the spider, in its constitution,
has taken up certain elements of the fly. Not from a determined fly, but from the archetype(Urbild) of the fly. Better said, the flyness (Fliegenhaftigkeit) of the spider means that it has
taken up in its bodily composition (Körpercomposition) certain motifs from the fly-melody(Fliegenmelodie) » 36.
Indeed, for Uexküll, the « technology of nature » (die Naturtechnik) functions as asymphony, the diverse elements of which are in « contrapuntal relationships »(kontrapunktischen Beziehungen) 37 . By forming itself, each element forms the other ones.
This is to say that the « as » through which a milieu opens up, out of the environment,
modifies the environment itself. In sum, it fulfils not only a cosmogenetic, but also an
ontogenetic function.
Now, in a human world, it is human work which fulfils this function, yet especiallythrough technology and symbol, acting and saying. Accordingly, in the instance chosen by
Heidegger, it is the temple which makes the things all around exist as what they are in thatmilieu :« Standing there, the construction [i.e. the temple] rests on the rock. This resting-on of the workon the rock raises outward out of the rock the dark of its unstructured and yet pressed towardnothing support. Standing there, the construction holds against the storm passing over it, thus
showing first the storm itself in its violence. The gleam and the light of its stones, which seemto receive them only from the mercy of the sun, yet first bring to appearance the light of the day,the width of the sky, the darkness of the night » 38.
Der Ursprung…, op. cit., p. 28-29. My transl.
Streifzüge…, op. cit., p. 145.
36
Op. cit., p. 145. My transl.
37
Op. cit., p. 142.
38
Der Ursprung…, op. cit., p. 28. My transl.
34
35

10

And what means that mysterious « pressed toward nothing » (zu nichts gedrängten) ? It

comes to light if one remembers that Uexküll had shown that what, in the Umgebung, does
not partake of the Umwelt of such or such animal, does not exist for that animal. What exists
for an animal is only what enters in the « functional circle » (Funktionskreis) between its« agible world » (Wirkwelt) and its « sensible world » (Merkwelt) 39 ; because « as many
performances (Leistungen) an animal is able accomplish, as many objects (Gegenstände) it isable to distinguish in its milieu »40 ; but as for the rest of the environmental datum, the animal
does’nt care of it, and it is literally there for nothing. In other words, it is not trajected as
something – just like petroleum, formerly, did not exist for the Inuit, as we have seen above (§2).
This raw support which is there for nothing – viz that which, in the Umgebung, is notdiscovered, opened up as something – is the lying-beneath (ὑποκείμενον) which remains
entrapped within the in-itself (an sich) of a mere object (S) 41 , identical to itself andinacessible as long as it has not been trajected within a certain world (P) to become a certain
thing (S/P). Yet even that which, by dint of a certain agent, has been discovered in the guiseof a certain predicate (P) and, in that way, has become something real (S/P), neverthelesskeeps on being an object in itself (S). This raw material is that which, at the same time, opens
up into a world as something and retires into the object it still is in itself. In other words,« That toward which the work retires, and that which it makes come out in this retirement, wehave named it the Earth (die Erde). It is the coming forth-hiding (das HervorkommendBergende). The Earth is the pressed toward nothing effortless-tireless (das…MüheloseUnermüdliche). On the Earth and in it, the historial human founds its abode in the world. In thatthe work sets up a world, it sets the Earth forth (Indem das Werk eine Welt aufstellt, stellt es die
Erde her). This setting-forth must here be thought of in the strict sense. The work moves the
Earth over and maintains it in the open of a world. The work lets the Earth be an earth (Das
Werk läßt die Erde eine Erde sein,) » 42.

Then, in mesological terms, out of what does the ‘as’ (the work, the ἐνέργεια) set the
Earth forth ? Out of the fetters of the identity of S, in order to make it the reality of a concrete
place in the ecumene (S/P). True, Heidegger says that « this setting-forth must be here thoughtof in the strict sense » (das Herstellen ist hier im strengen Sinne des Worts zu denken), but hewould not have lived up to his destiny of « magus of the Black Forest » 43 if he had clarified
the said sense, by bringing it closer to the ˃als˂Struktur his own Grundbegriffe, a few years
before, explicitly talked about ; that is to say the assumption of S as P, which produces (stellther) the reality S/P.
What, on the other hand, is explicitly said in the Ursprung is that, for Heidegger, thisassumption is the un-veiling (ἀ-λήθεια) of truth (ἀλήθεια), out of the darkness of its raw
support, the Earth. This operation (ἐνέργεια) is clearly that in which S, dis-covered andopened out as P, becomes S/P : a certain reality in the ecumene ; but it is not simple, because« Unconceilment of the essent (Unverborgenheit des Seiendes), that is not a state only preexisting (vorhandener Zustand), but an event (Geschehnis). Unconceilment (truth) is neither aquality of the thing in the sense of the essent, nor of the statement. (…) (…) As unconceilment,
See fig. 3 in Streifzüge…, op. cit., p. 27.
Streifzüge…, op. cit., p. 68.
41
Remind that the logician’s subject (S : what the matter is about) corresponds to the physicist’s object (S : what
one observes and measures).
42
Der Ursprung…, op. cit., p. 32. My transl.
43
Jean-Claude Beaune’s expression.
39
40

11
belongs to the essence of truth this disavowal (Verweigern) in the mode of the double
concealment (in der Weise des zwiefachen Verbergens). Truth in its essence is un-truth » 44.

That truth should be un-truth, this looks remarkably zen-like ; yet it is clear thatinsamuch truth is the « as » of the ἀ-λήθεια, it is neither the in-itself of S, nor the for-oneselfof P (what S exists as– ek-sists, ur-springt [prime-springs out] – for a certain being). « In themode of the double concealment », it is neither one nor the other, neither S nor P but, inbetween,
S as P –, and therefore belongs to a meso-logic, a logic of the included middle, which isneither a logic of the identity of the subject (that of Aristotle, which founded scientificrationalism on the absolutization of S) 45, nor a logic of the identity of the predicate (that of
Nishida, jutsugo ronri 述語論理, which is of religious essence with its absolutization of P)46.
In other words, it is that which is enacted precisely in the « dispute » (Streit) between the
Earth (S) and the world (P).
Then, would the truth in question belong rather to art than to science ? That is indeed
what Heidegger says :« Art lets truth originate (Die Kunst läßt die Wahrheit entspringen). Art lets spring forth(erspringt) as founding the probation of truth in the work. Let something spring forth, let itcome into being in a founding spring (im stiftenden Sprung) out of the origin of the essence (ausder Wesensherkunft), that is what means the word Ursprung (origin) » 47,

whereas« On the contrary, science is not a prime-springing event (ursprüngliches Geschehen) of truth,
but always the exploitation (Ausbau) of an already opened region of truth » 48,

which leads Heidegger to this conclusion :« The essence of art is the poem (Das Wesen der Kunst ist die Dichtung). The essence of thepoem is the foundation of the truth (die Stiftung der Warheit) » 49.

Now, from the point of view of mesology, the assumption of S as P is reality (r = S/P)
rather than truth, which in principle is the adequation of P to S (P = S). This, at least, is truthin the sense of science – but this sense is ideal and abstract, since the very fact of attaining S
is to predicate it as some P ; in other words, concretely, make it exist as something, and thus,
in fact, unveiling a new reality (S/P). In the end, the two truths would meet halfway – somewherein the middle (μέσον, milieu) –, yet from an opposite approach, because, whereas the poem (art) lets
Op. cit., p. 41. My transl.
Once again, remind that the logician’s subject (S : what the matter is about) corresponds to the physicist’s
object (S : what one observes and measures).
46
On this theme, see my La mésologie…, op. cit., and more specifically « La logique du lieu dépasse-t-elle lamodernité ? (Does the logic of place overcome modernity?) », p. 41-52, and « Du prédicat sans base : entre
mundus et baburu, la modernité » (Of the predicate without a basis : between mundus and bubble, modernity), p.
53-62 in Livia MONNET (ed.) Approches critiques de la pensée japonaise au XXe siècle, Montréal : Presses del'Université de Montréal, 2002. NB : Nishida speeks indifferently of « logic of the predicate » and of « logic ofplace » (basho no ronri 場所の論理). On the « meso-logic » of mesology, see my articles « Mesology (風土論)in the light of Yamauchi Tokuryû’s Logos and lemma », APF Series 1, Philosophizing in Asia, UTCP (The
University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy), Uehiro Booklet 3, 2013, p. 9-25, and on the weebpage
https://ecoumene.blogspot.com/ « La méso-logique des milieux / 環世界と風土の中論的論理 (The meso-logic
of milieux) » (december 2013).
47
Ursprung…, op. cit., p. 65-66.
48
Op. cit., p. 49. My transl.
49
Op. cit., p. 84.
44
45

12
the Earth free out of its self-identity in order to open it into new worlds, science dissects the world

in order to find the Earth back. In that way happens, in an indefinitely resumed dispute, in an
ourobore or rather in a spiral, moving and always to be born (natura) anew, the reality ofhuman milieux. That is actually truth, which, concretely if not abstractly, is neither S nor P,
but S as P : the arrangement (κόσμος) of the Earth as a certain world (κόσμος). In sum : thecosmophany of the Earth, in that trajection due to our senses, action, mind and words.
In their onto/logical principle, that is indeed the un-veiling of geographical realities –the resources, constraints, risks and amenities of the ecumene – ; and besides, such also is
what a physicist like Bernard d’Espagnat meant when he spoke of « réel voilé » (veiled real)50– a quasi Heideggerian, and anyhow a mesological expression, since « the real » is S, whichis always « veiled » as P when it becomes reality (S/P) ; except that the Art und Weise ofscience is indeed the opposite of that of art, since d’Espagnat speaks of veilment whereas
Heidegger speaks of un-veilment (ἀ-λήθεια)!
In which way (in welcher Art, dô iu fû ni どういう風に) do we eventually interpretthe Earth (die Erde, do 土) ? That is indeed the question of milieu (fûdo 風土 – do 土
determined in a certain fû 風) – : the question of what, for us, is reality51.
Palaiseau, 6 March 2016.

Biographical sketch – Augustin BERQUE (1942-), a geographer and orientalist, is a retired director ofstudies in mesology at the EHESS. A member of the Academia europaea, he was in 2009 the first
Westerner to receive the Fukuoka Grand Prize for Asian cultures, and in 2018 was awarded theInternational Cosmos Prize. Latest books : Recouvrance. Retour à la terre et cosmicité en Asie
orientale (Éoliennes, 2022) ; Entendre la Terre. À l’écoute des milieux humains (Le Pommier, 2022) ;Dryades et ptérodactyles de la Haute Lande. Dessins et légendes (Non-Agir, 2021). Webpage :https://ecoumene.blogspot.com/

Bernard d’ESPAGNAT, À la recherche du réel. Le regard d’un physicien (In quest of the real. The look of aphysicist), Paris, Dunod, 2015 (1979) ; Le réel voilé : analyse des concepts quantiques (The veiled real. An
analysis of quantic concepts), Paris, Fayard, 1994 ; Traité de physique et de philosophie (A Treatise of physics
and philosophy), Paris, Fayard, 2002.
51
A shorter, less elaborated version of this paper was published as « La cosmophanie des réalités
géographiques » (The cosmophany of geographical realities), Cahiers de géographie du Québec, 2017, vol. 60,
n° 171, p. 517-530. I had formerly used for the first time the concept of cosmophany in « Cosmophanie ou
paysage » (Cosmophany or landscape), p. 741-744 in Dominique GUILLAUD, Maorie SEYSSET, Annie
WALTER (eds.) Le Voyage inachevé… À Joël Bonnemaison, Paris : ORSTOM/PRODIG, 1998.
50