Globally Shared Common
Sense from the Philosophy of
Imagination
Bridging Eastern and Western
Perspectives
Edited by

MATSUI Nobuyuki

Asia-Japan Research Institute
Ritsumeikan University

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

AJI BOOKSGlobally Shared Common Sense from thePhilosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives
Editor
MATSUI Nobuyuki

Asia-Japan Research Institute
Ritsumeikan University
ISBN 978-4-910550-00-8 (Online)
ISBN 978-4-910550-01-5 (Print)iGlobally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of
Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

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Note:
Authors’ names in this publication are ordered according to their preference andtheir surnames are capitalized.

iiGlobally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Contents
Editor’s Preface
MATSUI Nobuyuki

iv

Contributors

vi

Chapter 1. The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose: Nondualism,
Distributed Cognition, and Imagination
Jonathan MCKINNEY

1

Chapter 2. Reading Miki Kiyoshi’s Anthropological Humanismin the Struggle against the Ecological Crisis
Dennis STROMBACK
15
Chapter 3. What is the Globality of the “Common Sense”?
Somatesthesia in the Age of Chaotic Capitalism
MATSUI Nobuyuki
46
Chapter 4. Common Sense, Myth and Technology in Miki
Kiyoshi
Fernando WIRTZ

63

Chapter 5. Primacy of Imagination and Sensus Communis: In
Considering a Transcultural Subjectivity
Tyler Tak-lap YEUNG

76

Editor’s Postscript
MATSUI Nobuyuki

86

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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Editor’s Preface
This compilation, entitled “Globally Shared Common Sense
from the Philosophy of Imagination: Bridging Eastern and Western
Perspectives,” brings together an international spectrum of young
researchers with a focus on Asian and Japanese philosophies ascompared to Western philosophy, each of whom has already written
stimulating works about Asian and Japanese philosophies from various
aspects. I would like to offer all of them my gratitude and appreciation
for their contributions.
Today, we in the global society are confronting extreme hardshipcaused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, retrospectively speaking,our global society has reached to a time in which the limitations of thepresent social economic system are appearing in serious problems suchas economic disparity, climate change, violent confrontations, extremist
politics, increasing mental disorders and so on and so forth.
There is an urgent need to confront these limitations. On theother hand, many people have started to elaborate a “new normal”
in which the socio-economic ways of our lives can co-exist with thevirus. However, many of the arguments over the “new normal” arequite impractical and short-sighted. They can be expressed as; “Oh,COVID-19 has come so let’s change the way of social life. It’s going to
be OK!” In this rush to adapt and get on with our imagined normal lives
there is a critical lack of curiosity about the profound questions which
underlay the superficial everyday normalities; “Where do we comefrom? What are we? Where are we going?”
Modern life does not assign people a time for such thought andreflection, but as philosophers we carry the responsibility to answer
these questions. We cannot leave our societies “lassez faire, laisser
passer.” Thus, in coining the title for this brief work, I have usediv

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

the terms “Globally Shared Common Sense” and “Imagination”
and “Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives” because I believe
philosophy can recover our sense of time, and gather the temporal
imagination of our pasts and futures to the present with its conceptual
activities from transregional perspectives. Furthermore, it is my hopethat the authors of these chapters will respond to our predicament, andprovide us with meaningful suggestions, and that together we can show
mankind a path to self-discovery and a meaningful social roadmap for asustainable future.
MATSUI NobuyukivGlobally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Contributors
Jonathan MCKINNEY
Chapter 1: The Philosopher ’s Path to San
Jose: Nondualism, Distributed Cognition, andImagination
Jonathan McKinney received his Ph.D. in
Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. He is
also currently completing his MA in Experimental
Psychology at the University of Cincinnati
through the Center for Cognition, Action, andPerception (CAP). He completed his MA in
Comparative Philosophy at the University of Hawaii with an emphasison Buddhist and Japanese Philosophies. His research focuses primarily
on Cross-Cultural Embodied Cognitive Science, Comparative Japanesephilosophy, and community-based inquiry. His current projects include
the development of tools for teaching engaging and communitybased classes online, exploring agent-world, agent-tool, and agentagent relationships, and establishing spaces for international andinterdisciplinary research.

viGlobally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Dennis STROMBACKC h a p t e r 2 : R e a d i n g M i k i K i y o s h i ’s
Anthropological Humanism in the Struggle
against the Ecological Crisis
Dennis Stromback did his undergraduate andmaster’s program in cultural anthropology at
the University of Minnesota and received his
Ph.D. from the Department of Religion in 2019at Temple University in Philadelphia. His pastand current research interests include the Kyoto
School philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Critical Theory as well
as a growing interest in bringing the first and second-generation Kyoto
School thinkers into conversation with Latin American philosophy(in particular, with Enrique Dussel) in the service of diversifying thephilosophical curriculum. His publications appear in academic journals
such as Buddhist-Christian Studies, European Journal of JapanesePhilosophy, and Philosophy East and West and Comparative andContinental Philosophy. He is one of the editors for the Journal ofJapanese Philosophy.

vii

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

MATSUI Nobuyuki
Chapter 3: What is the Globality of the “Common
Sense”? Somatesthesia in the Age of Chaotic
Capitalism
Nobuyuki Matsui is a visiting assistant professor
at the Asia-Japan Research Institute, Ritsumeikan
University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. inInternational Relations from Ritsumeikan
University, and he is mainly involved in a
research project on bridging contemporary
Japanese and Western philosophy on global and social transformations
through media technologies. Since his doctoral course, his researchconcern has been human pathos, the human body, and its historicity
based on the philosophy of Charles Taylor. His current research interest
extends to social transformation through ongoing relationships between
digitizing capitalism and the bio-politics based on “common sense,”rhythm, and ecology, especially through reinterpretations of Nakamura
Yūjirō. His recent publication is “‘Common Sense’ and Encountersafter the ‘Capital-Nation-State’ in the Digital Age: Nakamura Yūjirō vs.
Karatani Kōjin in their Philosophies of Imagination” (2021, Journal of
the Asia-Japan Research Institute of Ritsumeikan University, vol. 3).

viii

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Fernando WIRTZ
Chapter 4: Common Sense, Myth and Technology
in Miki Kiyoshi
Assistant Professor, University of Kyoto
Fernando Wirtz holds a Licentiate in Philosophy
from the University of Buenos Aires and a
Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Eberhard Karls
Universität Tübingen. During his Ph.D. studies
he spent one research semester at the Universityof Ritsumeikan and is a postdoc fellow at the University of Kyoto. His
postdoc project, funded by the Thyssen Foundation, is about the conceptof myth in the Japanese philosophy during the 1930s. Besides Japanesephilosophy, he also specializes in German idealism, interculturalphilosophy and philosophy of myth. He is also a board member of theGesellschaft für Interkulturelle Philosophie (http://www.int-gip.de).

ix

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Tyler Tak-lap YEUNG
Chapter 5: Primacy of Imagination and Sensus
Communis: In Considering a Transcultural
Subjectivity
Tyler Tak-lap Yeung was born in Hong Kong.
He received a Ph.D. from the Free University of
Berlin in 2020 and is presently a postdoctoralf e l l o w a t A c a d e m i a S i n i c a , Ta i w a n . H e
specializes in continental philosophy, focusing
on the philosophy Kantian and Heidegger andcomparative philosophy. His doctoral thesis seeks to explain Heidegger’s
interpretation of Kant’s philosophy through an exploration of the “powerof imagination,” which serves as the basis for a theory of imagination
with ontological-existential implications. His Master’s thesis focuses on
the theme of “hope” and attempts to formulate a “Kantian philosophyof hope” that emphasises the humanistic spirit in Kant’s philosophy,
countering the formalist or functionalist interpretations. In recent
years, he has dedicated himself to cross-disciplinary and cross-culturalcomparative philosophy. A selection of his works written in English,
German and Chinese regarding Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger,
Hannah Arendt, Mou Zongsan, Nishida Kitarō, etc., can be found on
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tak-Lap-Yeung/publications.

xChapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose:
Nondualism, Distributed Cognition, andImagination
Jonathan MCKINNEY
The title of this lecture, “The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose,nondualism, distributed cognition, and imagination” is designed to invite
readers to explore the fruitful fusion of embodied cognitive science,
linguistics, and modern Japanese philosophy. The goal of this projectis to tackle how we think about our world, both philosophically andin our everyday experiences. Importantly, I am not only talking about
how human beings think about their world, but also what “world” in“world philosophy” refers to. A key problem of interest is how Western
philosophy of mind and cognitive science focus almost exclusively on
an abstract conceptualization of reason, which stands over and above
our bodies and the natural world. This focus, as I will argue below,
fundamentally distorts our understanding of both the mind-environment
relationships in cognitive science and the history and philosophies ofour shared world. Thus, in order to correct our misunderstandings of theworld, we should view projects that challenge dogmatic views of themind and the history of Western philosophy together.
The barriers we face are often referred to as dualisms, whichconstruct and maintain boundaries between the mind and body, themind/other minds, the human/nature, as well as between countries andphilosophical traditions from different cultures. In cognitive science, thecomputational mind is taken as the control center of the body and the1

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

primary means for our perception, knowledge, and capacity for action.
In philosophy, this manifests in the borders between Western and nonWestern traditions that we reify in the abstract. In order to imagine theEast-West dualism differently, I will begin by developing ways that we
think about ourselves and our world, and draw connections with how wethink of the myriad philosophical traditions throughout history.
My project focuses on two paths that converge, or fuse, forming astrategy for engaging in productive cross-cultural research in cognitive
science. I will begin with a jovial example from John Haugeland titled“The Road to San Jose,” where he predicts and rejects the extended
mind hypothesis made famous by Clark and Chalmers (Haugeland
1993/1998; Clark and Chalmers 1998). In doing so, I hope to recoverHaugeland’s worldview that has been often overlooked. The second
is the approach to world philosophy developed by Nishida Kitarō,which I refer to as the “Philosopher’s Path” in reference to the famous
Tetsugaku-no-michi in Kyoto. It symbolizes his broad engagement withthe world in cross-cultural philosophy and his non-dualistic approachthat resonates with contemporary scientific worldviews. This lecture will
focus primarily on ideas in embodied cognitive science and linguistics
and will conclude with a reflection on Nishida’s work.

What is Fusion Philosophy?
This work is only a part of a larger project that involves a method
known as fusion philosophy, which is a form of cross-culturalphilosophy that goes beyond mere comparison in order to meaningfully
contribute to each side of the project. Fusion philosophy is widely
debated and has been developed most recently in Chakrabarti andWeber’s book Comparative Philosophy Without Borders. Unlike
East-West comparative projects, fusion philosophy aims to create2Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

something new that goes beyond dialogue or a bridge-building between
traditions. This deals with both problems of symmetry where common
generalizations of two traditions are taken equally, and asymmetry
where one tradition is taken to be superior to the other. It is considered
without borders, because it challenges the myths of supremacy andcontinuity of each cultural tradition without erasing them. Chakrabarti
and Weber provide a quote from Jay Garfield (2002) to elucidate this.
Philosophy is, however, a live enterprise, both in the West and in
the East, and if cross-cultural philosophy is to mean anything andto contribute anything to philosophical progress, it must do sowith a view towards ideas and their development…. The task is toprovide a common horizon that can be a background for genuine
collaboration and conversation in a joint philosophical venture.
The possibilities for such a venture are enormous. The enlargementof the world’s scholarly community and the range of texts andresources on which it can draw portends a greater philosophicaldepth and rate of progress (Garfield 2002; Chakrabarti and Weber
2015: 1–29).
Using this method, I explore how imagining the world differently
impacts both our understanding of the mind-world relationship in
cognitive science and our understanding of the history of world
philosophies. In order to engage in philosophy and cognitive science
responsibly, we must reimagine traditional notions of our world. Failingto do so risks creating and perpetuating misleading biases in philosophy,
science, and society. The convergence of these two paths is motivatedby the radical hypothesis that our mind is not contained “in the head,”but is distributed throughout our world. Reimagining our mind andworld in this way has major implications for our understanding of the3

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

interconnectedness of human beings now and throughout history.

Path 1: The Extended Mind vs. The Embedded Mind
Let’s begin with a pair of opposing ideas in contemporary Western
philosophy of mind and cognitive science. To best understand the debate,
we should view them side-by-side. The first comes from Haugeland(1993/1998) with his paper “Mind Embodied and Embedded” and thesecond comes from the famous Clark and Chalmers (1998) paper titled“The Extended Mind Hypothesis.” I would like to demonstrate that
Haugeland’s argument predicts Clark and Chalmers’ conclusions in a
profound way and its importance extends beyond mere debates about
the mind.
Haugeland writes,
I have postponed till last the most obvious externalization of human
intelligence — texts, images, maps, diagrams, programs, and thelike — not because I underestimate their importance, but because
they are so similar to what is traditionally supposed to be in themind. That poses two dangers. First, it distracts attention from theradicalness of the claim that intelligence abides in the meaningful
world: not just books and records, but roads and plows, offices,laboratories, and communities. Second, it makes it too easy fora traditionalist to think: “External representations are not reallyintegral to intelligence, but are merely devices for conveying or
restoring to intelligence proper — the inner mind — contents which
it might otherwise lack” (Haugeland 1993/1998: 236).
So, to contrast that with Clark and Chalmers in the paper that
follows Haugeland they say that it is possible to “extend” the mind on
4Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

rare occasions. They argue that;
While some mental states, such as experiences, may be determinedinternally, there are other cases in which external factors make asignificant contribution. In particular, we will argue that beliefs canbe constituted partly by features of the environment, when thosefeatures play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes. If
so, the mind extends into the world (Clark and Chalmers 1998: 12).
Then, they move to introduce the famous Inga and Otto example,
where Otto has Alzheimer’s or has some sort of mental deficiency, but
he can rely on his notebook that is ready to hand which helps him tostore his memories externally. In direct contrast with the incidental
extension proposed by Clark and Chalmers, Haugeland introduces his
famous example of how he travels to San Jose, “[l]et me tell you how
I get to San Jose, I pick the right road, Interstate 80 South, I stay on
it, and I get off at the end.” You can almost hear the jovial tone in his
writing. He continues;
Can we say that the road knows the way to San Jose, or perhaps thatthe road and I collaborate? I don’t think this is as crazy as it may
sound at first. The complexity of the road, its shape, is comparable
to that of the task, and highly specific thereto; moreover, staying
on the road requires constant high-bandwidth interaction with itsvery complexity. In other words, the internal guidance systems of
the road itself must be closely coupled, in part because much of that
information upon which the ability depends is encoded in the road
(Haugeland 1993/1998: 237).
He argues, therefore, that the mind is not incidentally, but intimately
5Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

embodied and intimately embedded in its world. This is in contrast to
the Clark and Chalmers case where they say that Otto can extend his
mind to the notebook, because he is especially familiar with using it.
In their view, it just so happens that the information lies beyond theskin. It’s just incidental. Haugeland predicts the many shortcomingsof the incidentally extended mind and presents a case that fits with
our embodied experiences of the world. This has many far-reachingconsequences, because it details a disagreement about the human’splace in relation to the world. For Haugeland, even though he’s justtalking about thinking in particular situations like juggling or going
to work, he is explaining that the world itself is filled to the brim withmeaning. Importantly, our environment is something that our bodies andour brains are suited to interact with. Taking this a step further, because
the coupling of the mind and environmental information is distributed,
rather than centralized in the head, things like values and meaning canbe seen as distributed.
Although Haugeland’s critique has been overlooked by some, there
is a parallel project in Ecolinguistics, which takes aim at the incidentallyextended mind and its place within the broad 4E (embodied, embedded,
extended, and enacted) Cognition movement.1 Ecolinguists like Sune
Vork Steffensen accept that the mind is not “in the head” but argue that
there are problems with the idea that the mind is merely extended fromthe head to things like notebooks on occasion. Steffensen (2011) issues
five challenges to the extended mind hypothesis and I will focus on
two of them. He argues that language “... functions metaphorically as
airborne synapses in distributed cognitive systems,” and “... provides anextended ecology within which human cognizers engage in languaging.”
1 However, Miki would criticize Bergson in the following moment for failingto dialectically unite intellect and instinct and instinct and collective habits. See
MKZ 8, 109–110.
6

Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

These moves are central to the idea that cognition and language
are distributed through the environment and the world around us.
Importantly, both human agents and the world are active parts of amutual process of shaping and being shaped by each other. Steffensen
articulates this with a profound series of comparisons (Steffensen 2011:
205).
Language gives us some of the same advantages that spiders,beavers and monkeys get from their webs, dams and calls: it has
ensured that each of us is equipped with an extended phenotype.
However, as argued above, language is not organism-centered.
Rather, the language-induced extension of the human mind andphenotype depends on a cultural meshwork that is constantly
renewed by the interaction and co-action of human beings. Like
the beavers’ dam, languaging has a history that is influenced bysituation-transcending third parties, just as what is left of our voices
will silently contribute to the interactions of our descendants.
Being the domain of third parties, our dam of language is heritable,variable and amenable to selection. The historically grounded,situation-transcending dimension of human cognition scatters its
distribution in time.
It’s difficult to grasp the implications of the distributed approach tolanguage and cognition. For our purposes, this move helps explain how
the peculiarity of language impacts how we think and imagine. If wethink of the development of ideas over time, given the idea that someideas linger and reshape our environment like a spider’s web, the historyof ideas and perspectives begins to take shape. While we are capableof engaging in conversations, human linguistic activities that change
history go far beyond the abstract concepts in a song or lecture because
7Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

they are materialized or preserved in our world. In a sense, the worldacts as Otto’s notebook for all of us. What’s especially interesting is that
we can then begin to discuss how misunderstandings can be understoodas forms of misinterpretations or mistranslations.
One result of this view is that the history of world philosophy has
been a collaborative world-involving project, where our view of history
has been painted by the narratives we spin over time. This is in contrast
with the views of science and philosophy in many history books, whichtell a monolithic story of Western ideas that begin in Greece, travel
through Europe, and end in America without any mention of the myriad
points of contact and influences from so-called non-Western traditions.
It makes sense why contemporary science and philosophy discard nonWestern ideas as non-scientific and non-philosophical because wehave deliberately spun narrative webs about the greatness of Western
civilization. One consequence of accepting the interconnected nature of
the mind and world is accepting the interconnected nature of culturesand histories.
In their most recent work, Steffensen and Cowley (2021) develop an
approach called Radical Embodied Ecolinguistics which aims to refocus
language and human living in terms of interconnectedness and ourworld. They argue that “radical embodied ecolinguistics connects smallscale actions, the extended ecology and bio-ecological transformations
based on social activity.” This demonstrates how one can constructcomplex and highly abstract ideas through our connection to our sharedworld. This includes the fact that human civilizations are defined bytheir interactions and connections with each other.
Instead of centering on individual persons, languaging is seen
as sustaining human living. For ecolinguists, special weight falls
on how its scientific extensions extend understanding beyond the8Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

human domain (Steffensen and Cowley 2021: 732).
I interpret this as a shift from individual language use to language
as a world-involving activity. This is deeply important because they
are developing a scientific research program that does not place therational human being above nature, which has been the standard ofWestern science for generations. Instead, they view the human being
as a relational process of human becoming that involves interaction
with each other and nature. Thus, I argue that in order to understand thelifecycle of ideas throughout human history, we have to think about theworld in these terms.
This kind of radical non-dualistic approach to languaging and our world
is easier to grasp with a concrete example. Consider the contemporary
debate in America regarding the removal of monuments to Confederate
generals from the American Civil War. This is an important example forthis framework because it helps illustrate how bias and political ideologies
emerge over time and how our environments shape them.
The United States has a long and complicated history with
racism, racist laws, and white supremacist ideology. There is a kindof misremembering of history that results from a reimagining of US
history which glorifies the Confederacy by covering up historicalinjustices and atrocities. At this moment, there are hundreds of statues
built of Confederate generals and soldiers. In the abstract, it is possible
to think of these as historical monuments designed to remind us of thedivisiveness of our history. In reality, the majority of these monuments
were commissioned decades after the Civil War in the 1920s in direct
response to political movements fighting for equal rights for non-WhiteAmericans. They were political tools designed to glorify powerful
symbols of cultural segregation and assert the power of white American
culture. These monuments are materialized narratives of white9

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

supremacy which persists today.
This has created problems today because as we start having real
conversations about taking these monuments down, there are people
who claim that this is an erasure of history. When you understand themind as something that is distributed throughout the environment, you
can start thinking about how brands, or statues, or signs are actually
external memories. If you create something like a statue and you leave it
there long enough, it will outlast your life and outlast the conversations
you have about it. Even if you know the history of a particularmonument, the next person who comes up is going to have to discoverthat for themselves.
Consider again how Steffensen likens the power of languaging
to a beaver’s dam. Each monument persists and shapes how others
think about, interact with, and view the area. Language empowers us
to change our environment in ways that will outlast any individual
conversation. Thinking about ideas this way necessarily involves
wrestling with how ideas, monuments, and works of art create cultural
histories and national identities. This is deeply significant. When you
think of things this way, there is a clear continuity between the problems
in both the philosophy of mind and world philosophy. It is my hopethat this shift in perspectives makes it more difficult to accept that
Western philosophy and culture emerged in isolation. Instead, our viewof a monolithic Western civilization is better understood as a series of
misunderstood monuments to a false narrative of the past.

Path 2: A Reflection on Nishida’s Worldview
Having explored ways to reimagine problems in Western cognitive
science and linguistics, I would now like to conclude with a pathforward toward cross-cultural cognitive science without borders. I
10Chapter 1
The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

have written extensively about the fruitfulness of fusion philosophy asa method and the mutual benefits of exploring Nishida’s nondualistic
philosophy in dialogue with the enactive and ecological approaches incognitive science (See McKinney 2020; McKinney et al. 2020). Now,
I would like to turn to a brief reflection on Nishida’s worldview andapproach to world philosophy. Yusa (2002) captures key insights into
Nishida’s life as he reflects upon his work.
Logic is not something separate from the historical world; rather,
it is the formula of the expressive self-formation of historical life
(rekishiteki-seimei). Even Aristotle’s logic was not a simple formal
logic; it was a historical and social logic of Greece that had Plato’s
philosophy in the background. As such, it was connected with themetaphysical world of the Greeks. But this does not mean that logic
is a product of each historical epoch, nor does it mean that there isno objective universality. Rather, each historical epoch is a uniqueproduct of concrete historical life, and as such, it has its own wayof looking at things and thinking about things. Each epoch may
be considered a particularized formulation of concrete logic. The
formulation of concrete logic has to be sought in the establishmentof historical life (Yusa 2002: 304).
He ends by reflecting on his own path to get to this realization. Hesays that;
I’m not suggesting that people take up the philosophical problems
that I took up. But I’d like to say this much: to simply switch the
topic of one’s philosophical inquiry is not synonymous with making
one’s thought anew. Also, that a philosophical problem touches on
concrete reality does not necessarily mean that the thinker’s thought
11

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

is “concrete”. In this present historical period, which requires us
to look back on the cultural heritage nurtured by our ancestors ina global perspective, I think it’s necessary we return to the mostfundamental mode of viewing and thinking of our philosophicalengagements (1939) (Yusa 2002: 304).
Nishida’s reflection encourages us to reimagine the world and our
foundational and seemingly universal beliefs about it. Even views thatare said to encompass all of reality, like Aristotelian logic, are situatedperspectives on the world. This directly relates to Nishida’s rejection ofGod’s eye views of objective reality and resonates with the embodied
perspectivism in ecological, enactive, and ecolinguistic approaches.
Importantly, Nishida motivates his approach to world philosophy byrejecting the narrative that all ideas are derivative of Western philosophy
and science. Instead, our worlds are social, cultural, and developed overtime. Nishida has been criticized for the conclusions he draws about
Japanese culture, which are worth exploring, but the key takeaway forthis project is the shared ground of each system. Regardless of whatperspective we take, when switching from one worldview to another
we are still thinking about the same world. This creates pathways forcomparing ideologies, even if they are supposed to be exclusive or
universal, because they arise in the same place and through the sameworld.
Instead of arguing for one worldview over all others, I hope toadopt Nishida’s motivation for engaging in world philosophy and theexchange of ideas. Every human being, and each culture and tradition,arise as parts of the same world. This creates a unique path forward
when trying to overcome ideological differences. I want to encourage
us to consider the history of the world without borders. To do so, weshould think about the world differently, both as embodied agents and in
12

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The Philosopher’s Path to San Jose

terms of how language can shape the possible narratives and imaginings
in the future.
Cross-cultural philosophy should not be seen as a subfield ofphilosophy. Philosophical traditions do not arise in isolation andexclusive narratives obscure the interconnectedness of human history.
The importance of this kind of argument can be found in debates about
the relationship between the mind and the world and in the rise innationalist narratives around the globe. Resolving the extended mind
debate will likely not impact ongoing debates about the importance ofcross-cultural philosophy, but it does provide us with a place to start.
Much like the road to San Jose, the path to overcoming the borders
between countries and traditions is before us. It’s up to us to follow it.

References

Chakrabarti, A., and Weber, R. (eds.). 2015. Comparative Philosophy
Without Borders. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Clark A., and Chalmers, D. 1998. The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1),pp. 7–19.
Garfield, J. L. 2002. Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and CrossCultural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haugeland, J. 1993. Mind Embodied and Embedded. In Yu-Houng, H.,
Houng, and J. Ho (eds.), Mind and Cognition: 1993 International
Symposium. Academica Sinica. pp. 233–267.
Haugeland, J. 1998. Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of
Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McKinney, J. 2020. Ecological-Enactivism Through the Lens ofJapanese Philosophy. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(1347).
McKinney, J., Sato, M., and Chemero, A. 2020. Habit, Ontology, andEmbodied Cognition Without Borders: James, Merleau-Ponty, and13

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

Nishida. In Caruana, F., and Testa, I. (eds.), Habits: Pragmatist
Approaches from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Social
Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steffensen, S. V., and Cowley, S. J. 2021. Thinking on Behalf of theWorld: Radical Embodied Ecolinguistics. In The Routledge
Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 723–
736.
Steffensen, S. V. 2011. Beyond Mind: An Extended Ecology ofLanguaging. In Cowley, S. J. (ed.), Distributed Language.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 185–210.
Ward, D., and Stapleton, M. 2012. Es are Good: Cognition as Enacted,
Embodied, Embedded, Affective and Extended. In Fabio Paglieri(ed.), Consciousness in Interaction: The Role of the Natural andSocial Context in Shaping Consciousness. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing, pp. 89–104.
Yusa, M. 2002. Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of
Nishida Kitarō. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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Chapter 2
Reading Miki Kiyoshi’s Anthropological Humanism in the Struggle against the
Ecological Crisis

Chapter 2
Reading Miki Kiyoshi’s Anthropological
Humanism in the Struggle against the
Ecological Crisis
Dennis STROMBACK
Cross-cultural philosophy should not be seen as a subfield ofphilosophy. Philosophical traditions do not arise in isolation andexclusive narratives obscure the interconnectedness of human history.
The importance of this kind of argument can be found in debates about
the relationship between the mind and the world and in the rise innationalist narratives around the globe. Resolving the extended mind
debate will likely not impact ongoing debates about the importance ofcross-cultural philosophy, but it does provide us with a place to start.
Much like the road to San Jose, the path to overcoming the borders
between countries and traditions is before us. It’s up to us to follow it.
What is most important in terms of addressing the current
ecological crisis is the role of our own behaviors. The implication ofthis view is that any approach we introduce philosophically must be
one that directly confronts our problem of anthropocentrism: the viewthat the natural environment was made for our own consumption. But
there is another task that must be pursued if we want to guarantee aworld of ecological sustainability: namely, this task of moving us fromanthropocentrism towards ecocentrism, where nature, including all of
its “non-sentient” objects, things, and forms are intrinsically honored,cherished, and respected independent of human existence. One way toapproach this has been through returning to those thinkers who seek to15

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

redefine the subject-object relationship on epistemological grounds. In
fact, it has been quite common for scholars to draw on the Kyoto School
thinkers, such as Nishida, Nishitani, or Watsuji, in the race to develop
an ecological discourse in the light of our ecological emergency (seeShinohara 2020; Johnson 2019; Wirth 2019).
What many of these pursuits have in common is their sharedclaim that the Kyoto School offers a path out of anthropocentrism byvirtue of their non-dualistic account of the self, nature, and the world.
The basic argument goes as follows: if the anthropocentric self can beeliminated within the subject’s dialectical relationship with the world,
then subjectivity will spontaneously unite with the objects of nature andthereby build a relationship based on playful reverence and harmony. One
common example of this approach is to investigate the work of Nishitani
Keiji, who claims that the mechanization of “man” and “nature” derived
from the reification of scientific rationality instantiates how subjectivity
has been stripped from the objects of the world, thus clearing the way forthe paradigm of infinite growth to reign dominance on a planet with finite
resources. If all objects and things are perceived as dead matter, readyto be conquered, dominated, and controlled at any whim or desire, thenno guilt can ever arise in our never-ending thirst for consumption andproduction. Without a curbing of human desires, the insatiable impulse
or drive to produce scientific technology in the service of plundering theearth will inevitably lead humanity to a dystopian future.
Such an approach to the looming ecological collapse certainly has
its critics. Historian Richard Reitan (2017), for example, calls thesetypes of approaches a “reactionary ecology,” because they reflect a“fascist desire to create or rely upon a nationalistic narrative of Japanesecultural uniqueness that conceals the excesses of capitalism and operates
to sustain the socio-economic order that is today generating ecologicalcatastrophe” (p. 1). Underpinning these discourses, Reitan maintains,
16Chapter 2
Reading Miki Kiyoshi’s Anthropological Humanism in the Struggle against the
Ecological Crisis

is the romanticized desire for an ethnic community that claims to standin contrast to some Western conceptions of nature. Similar to the viewsof Deep Ecology, such an imagined ethnic community promotes anaesthetic of harmonious “oneness,” which seeks to challenge the Western
viewpoint that nature is an object detached and separate from humanity,
existing as an object of domination and exploitation (p. 3). Reitan claims
that such reactionary views nonetheless embody oppressive power
because of their narrative potential to be coopted by the state toward
fascist ends — even if their intent were not aimed at being tyrannical(p. 8). As a response to Reitan, however, I want to suggest that there
is room for theoretical negotiation around deploying one strain of the
Kyoto School philosophy for the mining of an ecological discourse.
With the hope of having a productive conversation with the critics ofthe Kyoto School, the aim of this paper is not to defend scholars who
rehabilitate Nishida’s or Watsuji’s philosophy towards an environmental
ethics as such, but to look at how Miki Kiyoshi’s philosophy inparticular can provide us with a “half-way meeting point” or “middleway” between the idyllic, “idealized” motif of Watsuji’s and Nishida’ssocio-historical vision on the one hand and the “utopian” mythos of the
Marxist narrative structure (like Reitan for instance) on the other. In thispresentation, I will argue that Miki’s philosophy, although limited as tohow far we can extend it, offers a dialectic that sublates the Marxist andthe Kyoto School position in a way that presents a new way of thinking
about our relationship to the environment.1

1. Miki and the Subject-Environment Relationship
Miki Kiyoshi, like many of the early Kyoto School thinkers,
1 The longer version of this presentation was made into an article and acceptedfor publication in Environmental Philosophy.
17

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

redefines the subject-object relationships in a way that disrupts
many of the bifurcations formulated within Western intellectual
traditions. In response to one of these bifurcations, Miki claims thatthe epistemological subject cannot be thought of as a mere being whotheorizes outside of historical occurrences but must always be viewed
as the dialectical maker of the facts, objects, and forms of history in
pursuit of self-knowledge. The general principle of this viewpoint
was borrowed from his teacher, Nishida Kitarō, who maintainedthat Western modernity itself was problematically founded on an
epistemological dichotomy between subject and object, and that the
only way to overcome this gap is by collapsing the distinction between
them. Nishida’s first attempt at this was through his notion of “pureexperience” (junsui keiken 純粋経験), which was later deemed a failureon the grounds that it was a psychological reduction. But during his
middle years, Nishida would then logicize the problem by developing
a concept called basho (場所) that sought to capture a non-reifiable
place in which all categories of thought, including forms and nonforms, emerge and die. Eventually, Nishida’s logic of basho would
metamorphosize into what he called “absolute contradictory selfidentity” (zettai mujun-teki jiko dōitsu no ronri 絶対矛盾的自己同一の論理) to describe the creative formation of historical reality as one
where opposites always exist in dynamic tension, never to resolve ina kind of Hegelian synthesis. According to Nishida’s dialectics at thispoint, the formation of subjectivity corresponds to the formation of theworld historical identity along the lines of affirmation qua negation asa bilateral movement. That is to say, the more self-aware subjectivity
becomes, via self-negation, the more historically creative subjectivity
will be - and vice versa (NKZ 11: 447–448).
The dialectics Nishida developed to resolve the subject-object
duality set the stage for Miki’s approach to historical creativity as well.
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Ecological Crisis

Like Nishida and Hegel, Miki develops a dialectic that unifies the
subjective and the objective, that points towards a new chapter of social
history; but unlike Nishida and Hegel, such a chapter of social history
would include a new material formation where feudalism and capitalism
are superseded by a system of cooperatives (kyōdō shugi 共同主義) thatwill define the divisions of labor and thereby replace the duties ascribedwithin the capitalist class structure. This particular distinction between
Nishida (and Hegel) on one side and Miki on the other is quite important
here, in that due to Miki’s early interest in hermeneutical Marxism,
formulating the subject and the material world into a dialectical unity
was central to overcoming the many bifurcations left unresolved by
Hegel, Marx, and Nishida (and many others in the Western canon).
While Nishida himself would embark in this direction of unifying
subjectivity and material objects as well, instantiated by his logic ofpoiesis, Miki’s engagement with materiality was more in the spirit ofdeveloping a praxis that avoided any reduction of historical change tothe singular intuitive agent à la Nishida (Stromback 2020: 114–116).
The logic of poiesis is not just a creative circle moving back and forthfrom subject and object, but also a creative engagement with historicalforms (rekishi-teki na katachi 歴史的な形), in particular with institutions(seido 制度), that mediate, transform, and galvanize subjectivity inthe direction of what we may dub as a “self-realization qua social
realization.” But note that Miki was not fully Marxist either, because of
his commitment to securing a view of the historical actor, an actor that
refuses to be buried within the relations of production. There is a true
subjectivity in Miki’s worldview, one that is driven by pathos, whichrefers to the unconscious affective dimension of the subjective interior,
to unite with logos — reason and language — to create ideal material
formations appropriate for the historical era. In this regard, subjectivity
cannot be reduced to an epiphenomenon of material production. In the
19

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

end, Miki believes in a dialectics that joins together the Nishidian, theHegelian, and the Marxist view of the world.
Critics maintain that Nishida was never really able to get out ofthe problem of anthropocentrism (e.g., see Heisig 2001: 263–269). In
Nishida’s discussion of the (self-forming) historical world qua dialecticalworld (benshōhō-teki sekai 弁証法的世界), which set up a co-determining
relationship between the embodied actor and the environment, there
is a sustained distinction between the biological sphere of life andthe historical body (rekishi-teki shintai 歴史的身体). For Nishida, thehistorical body referred to the creative intentionality of the lived bodyto move beyond ideality and into the domain of making the surrounding
environment qua creators of the historical world (Krummel 2015: 88–89).
The implication is that the historical body has a degree of independence
from the environment and therefore represents an articulated domain ofreality that is truly creative, because it is not dependent on the environment
like the biological body. Miki inherits this general framework from
Nishida, but then modifies it. In the essay “The Human Being and theEnvironment” (Ningen to Kankyō「人間と環境」), Miki discusses the Kyoto
School truism of how subjectivity creates the environment and inversely
how the environment creates subjectivity, but then warns us against
thinking about these relationships as an abstract correlation, because such
would downplay how the various structures and activities of social history
are built into these dialectical relationships. Miki writes:…both relationships as just correlative are insufficient. For me, I
myself cannot be conceived of as things of the environment, andconversely, for me, what is the environment cannot be conceived
as something for me. The subject does not come out of the object
and the object does not come out of the subject, [and yet] boththoroughly oppose each other. (MKZ 7: 12)
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Reading Miki Kiyoshi’s Anthropological Humanism in the Struggle against the
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Miki would then develop this thesis even further in the second andthird chapters of the Logic of Imagination (Kōsōryoku no Ronri『構想力の論理』), where the subject and the environment are formulated as adialectical unity that becomes expressed as the technical production ofhistorical forms. For Miki here, the environment is not merely madeup of material or physical objects, but also social institutions (such as
language, morality, law, art, politics, customs, habits, and so forth) thatco-mingle with the creative imagination lying within the subjective
interior. Miki suggests as such, when he says:
The logic of imagination is not a logic of mere images but
instead would have to be a logic of forms. And what are initiallyconceivable as objective historical forms in this way are institutions.
Therein we must advance to investigate the relationship between
institutions and the imagination. (MKZ 8: 98; Miki 2016: 65)
The distinction between Miki and Nishida within the subjectenvironment relationships become more glaringly visible in the “dualtranscendence” (nijū no chōetsu; 二重の超越) that emerges as oneof the defining characteristics of Miki’s stance on self-awareness.
While both thinkers are concerned with uniting the subject and theenvironment into a “dialectical unity,” Miki’s “dual transcendence”
includes an interior transcendence within subjectivity that moves
beyond its ego consciousness, deeper into its interior as well as anexterior transcendence that moves towards the world of matter, bygoing beyond the interior and out towards the exterior (MKZ 19: 582).
Keep in mind that Miki’s notion of self-awareness is mediated in boththe subjective and objective sense, with all actions externalizing thehistorical forms that have been internalized. While this particular view
21

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectivesof the subject-object relationships can be found in Nishida’s dialectics
as well, Miki’s position here is a little more nuanced: Miki’s internalexternal stance imbricating a “dual transcendence” is one where theinteriority of subjectivity seeps into the everyday consciousness andthereby dialectically threads the subjective interior into the material
forms unfolding as historical time. Here, we can see that Miki’s
interweaving of the material dimension within a self-awareness that issocially mediated begins to collide with Nishida’s grounding of history
from within a standpoint of action-intuition, where it becomes difficult
to conceptualize how distinct historical forms (e.g., political, social,and economic institutions or class-based systems) emerge from thecollective actions of the subjective interior and in turn are shaped by it.
Further formulated within Miki’s critique of Nishida’s dialectics, which
he elaborates on in “On the Character of Nishida’s Philosophy” (Nishida
Tetsugaku no Seikaku ni tsuite「西田哲学の性格について」), is the failure
to develop an account of sociohistorical forms that bears practicalsignificance and relevance to the present and everydayness of humanlife (MKZ 10: 433–444). Placed in contrast with Miki’s dialectics then,Nishida’s view of social history appears rather reductionistic or “empty”
and therefore devoid of any meaningful emancipatory praxis.
Within Miki’s account of the subject-environment relationship, theplace where activity occurs in the environment is subjectivity itself. In
other words, subjectivity shapes itself as a result of its own actions andtinkering with the environment (and vice versa). Miki writes:
That is to say, speaking of the human being and the environment,
the human is made from the environment, and contrastively, it is arelationship where humans create the environment. This relationshipis not only between the human being and the environment, but alsosimilarly exists between the human being and society. Society exerts
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Ecological Crisis

itself on us and transforms us along with it while we exert ourselves
on society and transform it. (MKZ 7: 10)
While the human being must be thought of as a somatic form
that always works on the environment and creates meaning therein,at the same time, however, is that within the subject’s relationshipwith the environment is the active determination of subjectivity fromthe side of the environment. This is all to say that there is a bilateral
movement in the activities between subject and object leading to botha subjectification of the object as well as an objectivization of thesubject (MKZ 18: 164). Or to put it another way, there is an exchange ofcreative engagements between subject and object qua human being visa-vis environment, with each particular form existing as both subject andobject that are both simultaneously passive and active. Therefore, thehuman being is not just an objectified expression of the world, but also
its own unique subjective particular existing within and against society.
But within this particular frame, Miki also appears to be distancing
himself from the cruder forms of Marxism, because if we are to thinkof subjectivity as mere subjectivized objects placed in an environment,
then the tendency is to reduce the interiority of subjectivity to that ofmere conscious objects that are products of their own effects on thematerial environment.
1.1. Materiality and Subjective AwarenessMiki’s take on materiality is quite different from both Nishida
and Marx. According to Miki, material substances have a particularreality within subjectivity, which generates the “dual transcendence”
structuring the development of self-awareness. This is because theformless “inner substance” (or what he occasionally calls “inner body”)
that lies deep within the subjective interiority is the fuel for artistic and23

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

literary expression (Fujita 2011). But, as Miki explains, such “innersubstances,” which he likens to Descartes’s notion of animal spirits(dōbutsu seiki 動物精気), cannot be thought of as part of the external
body, because they are part of the pathos that drives subjectivity topraxis (MKZ 11: 208). Miki explains:
The subjective interior cannot be viewed externally, but [from]the so-called absconditus cordis homo (an invisible human being
hidden in the heart). As a human being, this inner body is also notsomething like a pure spirit, but [rather] must be physical. In thismanner, due to subjectivity transcending consciousness heading
towards the interior, consciousness, insofar as it is determined, ispathos. Pathos is not said to be a copy of the subjective interior,
but to express it. The problem of creativity is like this problem ofpathos placed at the foundation. (MKZ 11: 208).
This relationship between the subjective interior and the material
world in the production of social history develops even further in Miki’s
dialectics of logos and pathos in the Logic of Imagination where hediscusses how historical forms are produced through the creative powerof the imagination. According to Miki, the historical world is createdout of nothing, out of the formless, by virtue of the creative force of
pathos within subjectivity, but then given form and meaning through its
unity with logos. Miki writes: “Historical forms are not simply of logos,
but rather the unity of things in terms of logos and pathos. The logic ofimagination thus stands upon the unity of logos and pathos” (MKZ 8:
19; Miki 2016: 28).
1.2. From Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism?
But what can we make of Miki’s discussion of the subject24

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Ecological Crisis

environment relationship? In other words, does Miki’s thought
expunge the traces of anthropocentrism inherited from Nishida?
Miki’s longing for a new human being that is indeed the centerpieceof much of his philosophy does not initially look like a clear path outof anthropocentrism in the way the critics thought of it. This is due
in part to the fact that the human being itself is still celebrated as aunique, creative being that can move beyond the biological sphereof life. After all, Miki does argue that the human being, from a stateof estrangement, reconstructs the environment through technics in a
way that suits its existence. Therefore, at this juncture, it seems as if
the critics of humanism, who have been quite vocal about this very
problematic tendency to build an entire philosophy around the creative
essence of subjectivity, may have the last word. But in defense of
Miki’s anthropological humanism, I want to suggest that the charge ofanthropocentrism is not so simple. As we can see from the discussion
thus far, which also will be elaborated in the next section when we
discuss his theory of technical production, Miki tends to avoid thenaïve trap of assuming the material environment is bereft of any
creative agency. Miki claims that since all the various activities of life
can be thought of as “technical,” then the natural environment — thebiological sphere of existence — must be deemed as part of the processof technical production as well. Later in the Logic of Imagination,
Miki would argue that the logic of the creative imagination is also
operative within nature itself, and that human history and natural history
unite on the grounds that both are expressions of trans-formation. As
Miki argues, humans act as nature does by inheriting, modeling, andimitating what already occurs in nature (MKZ 8; 424). Therefore,
human technics are an extension or continuation of the technics ofnature and not a unique feature of what it means to be human as such.
More importantly, by designating the natural environment as technical25

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

and form-creating, materiality gets brought into the discussion in a waythat Nishida even failed to develop theoretically. In Nishida’s dialectics,
all historical reality becomes merely reduced to the creative movement
among empty vessels within a present temporality, with a culminating
point of subjectivity realizing its own historical self-awareness via
self-negation, but in Miki’s dialectics, the technical production ofmaterial forms (e.g., the system of cooperatives or social institutions)that furthers the creative development of self-awareness becomes thevery unity needed for that historical moment. In Miki’s worldview, tobecome truly self-aware means to be socially and historically aware, as
well as environmentally aware. In other words, materiality is only partof the creative exchange within Nishida’s dialectics, whereas for Miki,materiality is baked within the culminating points of the dialectic itself
when subjectivity realizes its own face as not only a creative being in
the physical world but as a manual laborer (nikutai rōdōsha 肉体労働者)
confronting the problem of capitalism as a system of class domination— a point that will be further discussed in Section Three.

2. Miki’s Theory of Technics and the Production of(Ideal) Historical Forms
Miki’s theory of “technics” or “technology” (gijutsu 技術) refers
to the logic elucidating the trans-formation of social history. Whatcan be read as a critical response to Nishida, who leaves us with anunderdeveloped account of how history moves from one period to thenext, the Logic of Imagination seeks to illuminate how the creationand formation of institutions are linked to the interiority of subjectivity
by means of the imagination, whereby the elements of logos andpathos are one. Throughout this discussion, Miki draws on Immanuel
Kant’s account of the synthetic function of the imagination and Henri
26

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Ecological Crisis

Bergson’s discussion of the creative intuition in order to make sense of
how the power of the imagination can produce both physical and sociocultural forms through technical actions. For Miki, since historicalforms are produced by the creative imagination, social, cultural, andpolitical institutions can be thought of as inventions or fictions thatprovide meaning to human life, but since institutions have a structurethat possesses materiality, they have a particular social body that is bothspiritual and somatic, or subjective and objective, thus functioning as
if they have their own independent or autonomous life form. In thisregard, Miki’s view is such that “institutions are not just the actions of
the human, but on the contrary, as one of its meanings the environment
opposes the actions of humans” (MKZ 8: 160).
This tells us quite a bit about the dynamic relationship between
humans and the environment, which we can interpret as Miki’s attempt
to move from anthropocentrism towards ecocentrism. According toMiki, institutions are adapted to and shaped in accordance with theever-changing environment and can therefore never be viewed as
fixed, and whenever humans create new environments, institutions
will emerge or die as a result of human actions and responses to theenvironment. What Miki is pointing out here is the unpredictability ofthe environment and the human openness to the influxes of change.
But there is also a rationality to the structure of institutions that “isalso essentially required because of the relationships of human actions
towards the environment” (MKZ 8: 164). This rationality is indicativeof the cooperation between organisms and the environment, exemplified
in the form of habits, which speaks to how “technics signifies the unityof subject and object, the human being and the environment,” and thus
how “habit requires the support of the environment, and therefore,
also of society” (MKZ 8: 165). But what Miki is theorizing here more
broadly is the creative intertwinement humans have with the institutions
27

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectivesof social history, where there is a dialectical relationship between
subjectivity and institutions (in the form of myth or traditions) calling to
produce institutions appropriate for the historical present, a sort that will
move subjectivity towards a more creative society (sōzō-teki shakai 創造的社会). Miki suggests as such in the following passage:
The creative society in particular is the true transcendental subject.
Due to becoming one with that creative society, the inventive
individual can thereby be truly inventive. …In such cases at the rootof institutional society, we must think of the creative society. The
relationship between creative society and institutional society issomething like the so-called relation between nature qua producing(natura naturans) and nature qua product (natura naturata).
Similar to how the subject and object cannot be separated abstractly,
institutional society and creative society cannot be separated
abstractly. (MKZ 8: 184).
But what is the driving force of technical production? While thedriving force for material production within the Marxist tradition are therelations of productions that make up the economic activity of society,
Miki, on the other hand, traces the driving force behind the process of
production even further back by examining the deeper, unconscious
forces of human nature and history. Miki claims that the root source fortechnical production (which includes the relations of production) begins
with the desire to gain mastery and ownership over oneself in the world,which he seeks to capture in the category of pathos. As previously
mentioned, Miki posits that the interiority of subjectivity is inextricably
linked to the production of historical forms through a unity of logos andpathos at the base of imagination, and so “the logic of imagination…
does not belong to the mere activities of consciousness, but rather is28

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rooted in our psychophysical existence” (MKZ 8: 35; Miki 2016: 36).
Materiality, therefore, exists prior to the forms or ideals that become
expressed in the world, but even prior to materiality, on the other hand,is the place of nothing, where the production of forms from the formless
involves a movement from darkness to light, nothing to being (MKZ 11:473). All reality, in this sense, is fundamentally a creation ex nihilo (MKZ
8: 245). Drawing from Plessner and Jasper, Miki further explains thispoint by telling us that when the subject faces the nothing deep within
itself, it is driven by a “demonic” urge to create a new historical world
by giving order, form, and determination to the formlessness of reality.
Deep within our existence is alienation and loneliness, where we areforever faced with the danger of falling into anxiety, generating the “hopeor fear, love or hatred, desire, passion, impulse and so forth” (MKZ 8:49) that make up the source for creating the cosmos out of the chaos.
Inferred from all of this is that human action or praxis can be defined
as an activity that builds images from the unformed material existing
as the “inner substance” of subjectivity prior to any social conditions.
While the trans-formation of pathos into something objective is due tothe power of the imagination, we have to resist thinking that pathos is
a distinct or special faculty of the mind, because the concretization ofnothing into something also involves the physical body as the site where
pathos intermingles with reason. At the same time, however, Miki tells
us that even pathos is inherently connected to the body, so we also
have to resist thinking that the body is a mere material object within the
dialectical play of logos and pathos. This is because the body is moreof an object endowed with “heart and mind” or encased with “spirit” ora “soul” as it interacts with the objective world by means of imitation.
Nevertheless, Miki holds that history begins with human desire, and thematerial world becomes the articulation of historical forms derived fromhuman actions involving a unity between logos and pathos, because
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while pathos, which is both a passive and active state of existence,
initially urges us to create the historical world with our bodies, logos,
which is the intellectual consciousness that comes into being bytranscending pathos, brings the human being into a more universal place
where the limits of the established reality can be examined by a metalogos that envelops both logos and pathos — meaning, a secondary
logos conditioned by society and history (MKZ 18: 157–160). The
creation of a new type or new form will be born out of the self-reflection
constitutive of the secondary logos.
While it seems at this point that Miki might be smuggling in the“man-nature” bifurcation by virtue of locating the dialectics leading
to a creative transcendence mostly within the powers of the humanbeing, such is not entirely the case. In his standpoint of action, forinstance, Miki emphasizes how the body is the basis of all humanexistence, and that without a body, there can be no human activity. And
the body itself, as Miki asserts, is closely related to lived nature, not as
an objectified nature, but rather as an incarnate-subjective nature. The
human body is, as Miki writes, “…a parted-body of the Great Mother,and its expression” (MKZ 18: 153),2 and as such, can be thought of as
an instantiation of the creative expression of nature, and not as a puresubjectivity transcending natural history. Furthermore, if the impulse forour creative actions is issued forth from unformed material qua nothing,then humans themselves are always, already intimately connected to
the fount of creativity that is the evolution of nature itself. In fact, in
chapter two of The Logic of Imagination, Miki discusses Bergson in
the service of this view of creative evolution — that is, how mind andmatter are bridged through the image, thus demonstrating how material
forms continuously develop through the creative impulses of technical
2 The translation here was borrowed from Nagatomo Shigenori’s monographon Miki Kiyoshi. See (Shigenori 1995: 62).
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activities.3 By grounding the human within the same logic of technics
found in the natural environment, Miki is able to elevate all life forms
and physical objects to the logic of creativity that is often taken to be thehallmark feature of what it means to be human.
But does Miki’s theory of technics fully move us into the terrain of
ecocentrism? In the crudest version of anthropocentrism, non-humanlife forms have only instrumental value, serving only as a means to an
end instead of ends in themselves. There is no intrinsic value assigned
to the non-human because the needs and rights of humans are prioritized
above all. In Miki’s theory of technics, however, we can see the inherent
subjectivity bestowed to nature, which the human being is merely an
instantiation of; therefore, Miki’s lens here provides us with someinsight into theorizing personhood status to the natural environment.
Furthermore, if we read deeper into Miki’s theory of technics, we cansee that by granting “the human being,” “nature,” “institutions,” andother historical forms an inherent subjectivity, the human being, in orderto realize itself as a historically self-aware individual, has to come tovalue the non-human on these same grounds as well. Miki’s dialectics
is a uniting of the subject and object in the production of historicalforms, which means that both other human and non-human subjects
must be valued within the self-determination of historical forms qua
self-awareness, because insofar as human life is said to be technical, theobjective elements of the world must be incorporated within subjectivity
and expressed into concrete forms reflective of the Huayan logic of“one is many and many is one.” The shared basis for developing thisrelationship, as Miki maintains, is located in pathos, prior to its unity
with logos. Miki writes:
3 However, Miki would criticize Bergson in the following moment for failingto dialectically unite intellect and instinct and instinct and collective habits. See(MKZ 8, 109–110).
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But how does a single unified form thread together from suchan intersection? …The condition for imitation is sympathy —namely, to share pathos. In order for such sympathy to be possible,
there must exist a certain pathos that is universal at the root of theindividual person. Something like the ethnos [ethnicity] would
be such a thing. But the individual person’s independence would
be inconceivable if we merely foundationalized the Dionysian as[that element of] pathos. We probably would have to conceive
the combination of the countless independent individuals andthat which is universal like the ethnos on the basis of the logic ofimagination that is intellectual and at the same time emotive. …
If nature follows the logic of imitation as Pascal also thought, that
logic would have to be a logic where one is many and many is one.
In developing this logic, we would also have to conceive the ethnos
as well as the world. (MKZ 8: 127–128).
But how does the transition from a state of extrinsic valuation
to a state of intrinsic valuation occur through the forms of technicalproduction? Miki mentions the limits of adaptation: “As the criticalspirit increases, it eventually destroys that institution, but people
immediately sense the misfortune and come to build a new institution
once again” (MKZ 8: 182). But now the question is: what sort ofinstitutions will human subjectivity need to destroy and rebuild in thecontemporary era of the impending ecological collapse?

3. The Dialectics of Social Responsibility
In his unfinished manuscript of Philosophical Anthropology, Mikiwould capture the essence of his dialectics in the words “physical32

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existence and spiritual existence is societal along with being individual”(MKZ 18: 160). For an individual, as a corporeal and spiritual being,
to be truly self-aware, it must realize itself as a socially aware agent ofhistory. Having taken cues from Wilhelm Dilthey, Miki would begin
his anthropological humanism from the study of history, because suchan approach can be a guide or teacher on what life is and what life
can be (Townsend 2009: 155–157). After all, possibilities, for Miki,
are the fundamental basis of real existence. But since humans live inthe present, and history can only be written from the perspective of
the present, all critical thought must be focused on the present and theeveryday experience in a way that can be directed towards the future. In
search of this historicity, Miki believed that while Marxism was one ofmany ideologies produced at that time, it was also the most relevant andpractical in terms of responding to the particular demands of the era. In
what Miki calls “the proletarian basic experience” (musansha-teki kiso
keiken 無産者的基礎経験) is his attempt to define the raw, pre-reflective
consciousness comprising the everyday experience of the proletariat
that emerged during the Meiji period. Miki writes “One completely
new basic experience was developed. This was the proletarian basic
experience” (MKZ 3: 29), but then adds:
When I say proletarian basic experience, I’m not saying in particular
the experiences of the proletariat or the consciousness that can beexperientially acquired by the proletariat; on the contrary, I am
pointing out the existence of reality itself that is the structure of thatwhich becomes the particularities due to it. (MKZ 3: 44)
But given Miki’s anti-dogmatic approach to historical knowledge,
the relationship Marxism should have to the historical age should not
be that of a fixed doctrine where its narrative structure is accepted as an
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unquestioned theory of the stages of historical development but rather
treated as an ideological tool that can be used to transform the everyday
experience. In other words, Marxism is interpreted only for the purposeof social reform instead of being deployed as a bible for revolutionary
political action.
In fact, in all of Miki’s earlier work on Marxism, the historicalpresent and everyday experience were joined together in the theorizationof the proto logic expressing the trans-formation of subjectivity. Miki’s
notion of “basic experience” (kiso keiken 基礎経験), in particular, would
play a significant role in the self-determination of the self-aware agentof history by virtue of its negotiations with logos: anthropology (quaself-understanding) and ideology (MKZ 3: 5–19). For Miki then, thehistoricity of the human being can be characterized as the moment
when anthropological self-understanding and ideology come together tomove subjectivity beyond the arena of the everyday — in other words,
the historical point of reality where the ideology of the public spherebecomes the present everyday consciousness. Such a progression,
however, depends on the basic experience of the proletariat to naturally
discover its own true nature within the historical present, not by
authoritarian means, but by developing a logos that reflects and reveals
the basic experience back to itself. The purpose of logos then is toincrementally guide the basic experience in its process of self-reflectionin order to change the existing material conditions; therefore, logos must
emerge from a socio-economic experience because basic experienceand ideology must be dialectically united in a manner where eachmutually shapes the other (MKZ 3: 39–41). While this general task ofsocial reform has to be undertaken by the intellectual class from Miki’s
perspective, as one can see here, this process of knowledge transmission
must be done without imposing an abstract or ahistorical ideal. Onlyat that juncture is it possible for the proletariat to assume the role of a34

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critic in society.
As a hermeneuticist, Miki would borrow from Marxist terminology,
but never sublate his own language into the orthodox narrative. The
concepts of “labor,” “sensuousness,” and “proletariat” were often
employed, but re-interpreted in a way that positioned the individual
and the social dialectically. For instance, Miki defines labor as theexperiential structure of the proletariat while characterizing theproletariat as existing in relation to its sensuous praxis throughnegotiation (MKZ 3: 25–26), both of which set the stage for Miki’s
reading and engagement with Marx. On the whole, Miki was determined
to resolve the dilemmas put forth by the early Marx, agreeing that thehuman being was alienated from its own essence and labor by virtueof being another impersonal commodity sold in the marketplace. Of
course, the human being can influence its own nature through its ownlabor practices, but it relies on the role of intellectuals nonetheless to demystify the social relations and reveal to them for what they are at that
historical moment and thereby move the proletariat to an emancipatory
praxis. This is because, while the proletariat subject can negotiate its
own existence by sensing it directly, it does not necessarily understandits real existence abstractly. It is at this point where we see the role ofideology and its relationship to Marx’s theory of commodities in Miki’s
writings.
According to Miki, the problem of commodities represents the entire
problem of capitalistic society because it is the mode of objectificationof social existence, that which conceals the structures of relations
within capitalism (MKZ 3: 61). As taken from Marx, Miki holds that
we assume there is a natural social relationship to one another, but theobjectification of logos creates a gap between ideology and the realexperience of the worker, because the specter of commodification masks
the real socio-economic relationship between people in the assumption
35

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectivesof what is thought to be the natural social conditions of life. This isbecause the very belief that commodities have a value of their own
means to have belief in their phantasmagorical structure itself. Mikithen adds:
In the process of capitalism, the structure of commodification
constantly enters into the consciousness of humans in all the more
depth, all the more fatefully, and all the more structurally. All logos,
which is under the universal and decisive control of the categoryof commodification, is transformed into an ideology in the badsense, where it becomes abstracted from human beings and thereby
separated from the existence of reality. (MKZ 3: 65–66)
Here, the Marxist theory of commodities moves from being
inherent to the economic relations of capitalism towards the domain of
subjectivized consciousness, because commodification functions as themystification of the social nature of life that informs basic experience(see Wirtz 2020: 121). For Miki, while all members of society sufferfrom this fetishization, it is only the experience of the proletariat thatis negated in this process. Since ideology has the potential to become auseful framework by which to analyze and criticize the commodificationof social-economic knowledge, Marxist ideology can therefore be usedin defense of the proletarian experience in the unification of theory andpraxis.
While the more explicit Marxist terminology would eventuallyfade in Miki’s later writings, the dialectical unity of subject and object
oriented towards the development of ideal historical forms would
remain a priority. In what we may call his “post-Marxist years,” Mikiwould argue that if humans transform the world through a unity oflogos and pathos, then subjectivity will realize its specie-being in a36

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system of “egalitarian” cooperatives (kyōdō shugi 共同主義), where theone is many and the many are one while each particular preserves its
own subjectivity. The system of cooperatives Miki promotes cannot
be thought of in the likes of a state-run communist order, because liketotalitarianism, such would reduce the particularities of existence.
Conversely, the system of cooperatives should be thought of as a kindof liberal-communitarianism derived from both Eastern and Western
intellectual traditions. In fact, Miki was concerned that without a strict
unity of logos and pathos, an overflow of either one would eventually
direct history to a violent end. When pathos exceeds logos, for instance,
the irrational dimension of human existence will thereby be activated,thus propelling the nationalist and totalitarian fervor of society towards
fascism. For Miki, fascism, which has its origins in romantic thought,
is nothing other than irrationalism in the most concentrated form (MKZ
10: 377–380).4 On the other end, when logos exceeds pathos, universal
reason will become objectified in history, leading to the (re)formationsof capitalism, individualism, or classical liberalism.5 Nonetheless, theserational orders all embody the same fundamental logic for Miki, because
they all place individual interests above the interests of the collectivity
which in the end reproduces the class structure of capitalism. Rather, theprinciple of kyōdō shugi is somewhere in between all of them, because it
simultaneously resolves the problem of human existence, class struggle,
and the growing “bureaucratization” around the world.
Theorized in a manner similar to Watsuji’s view of ethics, Mikiargues that the system of cooperation is an ethical relationship basedon meeting the needs of the individual and the social at the same time,
4 In fact, Miki criticized his German tutor, Marin Heidegger, in 1933 for
succumbing to the emotional forces of fascist nationalism.
5 Miki called classical liberalism “bourgeois liberalism.” See “After
Liberalism” (jiyū shugi igo 自由主義以後) (MKZ 13: 168–175).
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because individual cooperation towards the public interests of society
allows for each person’s individuality and freedom to be realized within
and through the social relationships themselves. If one’s own personal
interests are prioritized over social interests, for instance, then eachindividual ego will conflict with the other and thus impede any further
development of individual creativity. Miki writes:
Individualism in the form of egotism must be negated as far as cooperatives are concerned. It goes without saying that individualism,
which always places one’s [self-interest] above society and ignores
the whole [society] while attaching itself to the self, is an incorrect[form of] individualism. (MKZ 17: 524)
The central point behind the cooperative is that it is for the mutual
benefit of all its members because it produces a system that is stronger
than its individual parts by virtue of everyone working together tosolve problems. Although there is a need to preserve the autonomy andcreative power of the individual, when contrasted with individualism
however, Miki’s principle of cooperativism takes social interests
first and the individual interests second, but not at the expense of
reducing the individual to the social. “Freedom is responsibility, andresponsibility is twofold,” Miki writes, because “responsibility towards
oneself and responsibility toward society is bound into one” (MKZ 17:574). Miki describes the logical basis for this ethical relationship asfollows:
The human being is made from society, and oppositely, it is said thatthe human being creates society, and like how there is a dialectical
relationship between the individual and society, there stands a
relationship where there is a dialectical unity and opposition
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between social ethics and individual ethics. (MKZ 18: 453)
The culminating point that is reached in Miki’s thought here is that
individual creativity is not only protected but empowered through its
service to the cooperative body because in the end “there is a dialecticalunity and opposition between social ethics and individual ethics.”
In order to make the co-operative system a successful alternative
to the “abstract cosmopolitanism” found in the West however, Mikibelieves there must be an intellectual class that can mobilize and guidethe actions of the individuals. Of course, such a leader cannot act likea dictator, which will force the particularities of the individual into thesocial, but rather like an educational leader that respects the spontaneityof the individual. Championing progressive thought and criticism isfundamental to the system of co-operatives because, “if criticism isprohibited, then it is impossible for the intelligentsia to cooperate fromits own standpoint” (MKZ 15: 262) in order to convey the truth of thetime. Embedded within the structure of cooperativism is the principleof democratic participation, not necessarily in the form of Westernparliamentary systems, but in the form of intellectual pluralism, where
criticism of the status quo is prized for the sake of continuous andimmediate social reform. Otherwise, as Miki says, “it is not possible totruly mobilize intellectuals if they are deterred from forming groups”(MKZ 15: 262–263). The system of cooperatives is set to replace theclass structures of capitalism.
But is Miki’s critique of capitalism and vision of cooperatives
sufficient in terms of providing the infrastructure for maintaining an
ecocentrism? At this point, it is hard to give an affirmative answer, but I
want to suggest that there are kernels of wisdom within Miki’s work thatwill provide us with some hope for the future, nonetheless. Although
Miki has a lot in common with Watsuji, Nishida, and Nishitani in terms
39

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectivesof the subject-environment relationship. Unlike these thinkers, however,Miki engages the Marxist critique to a much deeper extent, making
Reitan’s criticism of the Kyoto School for failing to address the limitsof capitalism moot. What can we extract from Miki’s hermeneutical
Marxism and theory of cooperatives that can ease the anxiety of
the critics like Reitan then? For one, Miki’s triadic account of basic
experience-anthropology-ideology provides us with the much-needed
flexibility in handling our interventions with the natural environment.
The impact of our well-intended meddling is often unpredictable simply
because animals, plants, and other non-sentient objects are all agents aswell, all of which are active in responding to our own interference. Miki
avoids any robust set of guidelines for the management of crises, and so
the negotiation we conduct with ourselves and the world forces us awayfrom always trying to control the natural environment.
Secondly, we see a rise of climate deniers, not just within the ranksof the property class, but among the proletariat as well. Such cannot
be thought of as a mere product of well-funded bourgeois propaganda:
denying the science on climate change for instance has taken on its own
internal momentum among the working class, where radical skepticism
directed towards the authoritarian tendencies of the scientific enterpriseis perceived as “edgy” and liberatory. Trending on social media arememes and fake news articles that unabashedly conflate the intellectual
elite and its supporters with techniques of fascist and communist
control. Anti-intellectualism is the critical spirit among many within
the proletariat today, which represents a patho-logical take-over of thelogos of neo-liberalism;6 and without restoring a proletarian confidence
in the intellectual class, then I argue that it is impossible to empower theproletariat to become active in addressing their own as well as others’
6 The assumption within this pathos is that everyone is rational and already has
full access to perfect information.
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participation in the production of those institutions responsible for thecrisis faced today. The fetish of capital motorizing the despoliation of theearth is one of these fundamental institutions that need to be uprooted.
The task of the times then should not be one of a direct imposition of
ecological discourses directed by the intellectual classes, which will only
fuel further intellectual resistance among climate deniers, but to exploit
the fundamental creativity lying at the base of the imagination (e.g.,pathos) by encouraging the proletariat to become active in producing
knowledge that is local and relevant to their own ecological situation —to transform the basic experience of the proletariat, as it were, by meansof realizing the logos of our historical age.

4. Conclusion: Responding to Miki’s Critics
What I showed in this brief chapter is how to read Miki’s anthropologicalhumanism as a theoretical resource for understanding ourselves and theworld in the age of ecological crisis. In conclusion, however, I wantto suggest that there are indeed limits to reading Miki towards thisend. For example, Marxist philosopher Hiromatsu Wataru was quite
critical of Miki’s hermeneutical Marxism, which he deemed a failurein terms of addressing the problem of reification (Nakajima 2011: 119).
That is, in Lukác’s theory of reification (Verdinglichung),7 which is anevolution of both Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism and theoryof alienation, subjectivity is turned into a passive object that does not
behave in any sort of human way but rather in ways that reproduce themarket system itself. In other words, subjectivity is transformed into
the objects and things that represent the relations of production within acapitalist society. To break through the reification of consciousness then7 Even though Miki went to study with Lukács, it seems apparent that he did
not adopt his account of reification.
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is not a matter of recognizing one’s own misrecognition (via intellectual
guidance and persuasion), as implied in Miki’s subjectivizationof economic relations, but through constantly renewed efforts at
becoming conscious of the immanent contradictions within the actionsof subjectivity marked for the total development of society. Thus, thebreakdown of the market occurring from a shift in social praxis itself
is what generates the breakthrough in the reification of consciousness.
If we take Hiromatsu’s deployment of Lukács’s point seriously, thenreification represents the very ensemble of social relations that go
beyond the individual subject, therefore demanding a far deeper praxis
than what Miki can offer.
Another criticism Hiromatsu raises is Miki’s over-emphasis on theindividual, where it becomes difficult to see how the individual and thesocial are inherently connected, thus posing a challenge for us on how
to conceptualize the move from the individual toward a proper social
practice (Nakajima 2011: 119). This is not a particularly fair reading ofMiki’s philosophy, however. In fact, it is rather clear that individuals
are inherently connected socially by means of pathos lying at the baseof the subjective interior. As Miki writes: “Society holds the sense of a
substratic nature towards humans, and humans within the logical self
are denied this, [and so] humans are unified pathologically. Society as
a whole is a pathological unity” (MKZ 18: 159). Of course, this is notwhere it ends for Miki. On the next page, he would then write, “Alongwith being a unity of pathos, society is a unity of logos” (MKZ 18: 160).
Therefore, the question of how to move from the individual towards asocial practice fundamentally mistakes Miki’s account of sociality for a
new brand of social liberalism,8 but again, from Miki’s standpoint, there
is no atomized individual prior to the development of the social. “Man8 I have opted to think of Miki’s brand of “new liberalism” as a kind of “liberalcommunitarianism.”
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is not an isolated existence,” Miki writes, “but shares his existence
together with human beings” (MKZ 1: 26). The individual and the social
exist coterminously and hence dialectically. What is prior to the social iswhat lies at the base of the social: pathos.
Finally, Hiromatsu contends that Miki’s ontological foundation is
not a truly relational system of thought, but rather a “substance-based
doctrine” that allows for the reification of the nation-state and thereby
centers the East Asian co-operative arrangement within wartime Japan.
Even though Miki’s philosophical account seeks to transcend the Eastand West binary by liberating subjectivity and the rest of East Asia from
capitalistic and colonial domination, the political implications of his
wartime writings show tacit support for the colonial invasion enacted by
the Japanese state. The theoretical reasons for this blunder, as suggested
in a previous article I wrote on Miki, were perhaps due to Miki’s quasiidealist account of social history, stemming from a substantification of
the imagination that would set in motion the recuperation of Japanesenationalism under the guise of economic, political, and colonial
liberation. To correct the problems associated with Miki’s quasiidealism, I recommended a return to Nishida’s concept of “absolutecontradictory of self-identity” (zettai mujun-teki jiko dōitsu no ronri 絶
対矛盾的自己同一の論理), Tosaka Jun’s concept of the “people” (minshū民衆), and Takeuchi Yoshimi’s concept of resistance as articulated in
his essay “Asia as a method” (see Stromback 2020: 136–137). The
colonial implications of Miki’s wartime writings should not be treatedlightly and ultimately reflects a failure on three accounts: to incorporatea stronger account of reification, to develop a robust view of (subaltern)
resistance, and to resolve the aporia of resisting colonialism without
secretly asserting a new one.
Criticisms aside, it should be re-iterated that there is real value toreading Miki’s anthropological humanism as a way to reflect on our
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relationship with the current ecological crisis. The threat of extinction ofmany life forms, including our civilization as we know it today, speaks
to the urgency of investigating viewpoints that are neither beholden to
the romanticized ethos of Deep Ecology nor to the totalizing narrativeof scientific Marxism. Miki’s “middle way” approach not only serves as
this practical alternative, but it also introduces a new pathway towards
overcoming the dichotomy between the Kyoto School and Marxism.
By sublating Nishida’s philosophy and Marxism into a “third” position,
Miki’s dialectics not only present us with a narrative that is counterposedto the anthropocentrism quilted to the capitalist project, but alsowith an opportunity to improve or re-interpret Miki’s philosophy bycorrecting what he failed to see or develop. Therefore, it is in the spiritof Miki’s philosophy, as I tried to argue in this presentation, that wewill find a critical trajectory that has the raw materials for furthering ourunderstanding of our relationship to the ecological crisis today.

References

Fujita Masakatsu. 2011. Logos and Pathos: Miki Kiyoshi’s Logic of
Imagination (Bret Davis with Moritsu Ryū and Takehana Yōsuke
Trans.). In Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason Wirth (ed.),Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the
Kyoto School. Bloomington: Indian University Press, pp. 305–318.
Heisig, James W. 2001. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the
Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Johnson, David W. 2019. Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in
the Wake of Heidegger. Evanston: Northwestern University.
Krummel, John. 2015. Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Placeof Dialectic, Dialectic of Place. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
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Ecological Crisis

Shinohara, Masatake, 2002. Rethinking the Human Condition in the
Ecological Collapse. The New Centennial Review, 20(2), pp. 177–
204.
Miki, Kiyoshi. 1978. Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū 20 『( 三木清全集 20』[The
Complete Works of Miki Kiyoshi 20]), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
———. 2016. Myth (John Krummel Trans.). Social Imaginaries, 2(1),pp. 25–69.
Nagatomo, Shigenori. 1995. A Philosophical Foundation for Miki
Kiyoshi’s Humanism. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.
Nakajima, Takahiro. 2011. ‘Asia’ as a ‘Relational’ Concept fromthe Perspective of Japanese Marxist Philosophers: Hiromatsu
Wataru, Miki Kiyoshi, and Tosaka Jun. Practicing Philosophy
between China and Japan. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Center for
Philosophy, pp. 115–130.
Nishida Kitarō. 1965. Nishida Kitarō Zenshū 19 『( 西田幾多郎全集19』[The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō]), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Reitan, Richard. 2017. Ecology and Japanese History: Reactionary
Environmentalism’s Troubled Relationship with the Past. The AsiaPacific Journal, 15(3), pp. 1–18.
Stromback, Dennis. 2020. Miki Kiyoshi and the Overcoming ofGerman and Japanese Philosophy. European Journal of JapanesePhilosophy, 5, pp.103–143.
Townsend, Susan. 2009. Miki Kiyoshi, 1897–1945: Japan’s Itinerant
Philosopher. Leiden: Brill.
Wirth, Jason W. 2019. How Soon is Now? Nishitani Keiji and theEcological Emergency. Paper presented at Why the Kyoto School
Today?, London, Canada, March 21–24.
Wirtz, Fernando. 2020. Myth and Ideology in Miki Kiyoshi. European
Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 5, pp. 75–102.

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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
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Chapter 3
What is the Globality of the “Common
Sense”? Somatesthesia in the Age of Chaotic
Capitalism
MATSUI Nobuyuki
Introduction
We live in the age of “common sense” in the way that digital
devices live our lives based on “common sense” instead of ourselves.
This paper attempts to understand successive relationships between
Nishida Kitarō’s philosophy of the “place of nothingness” andNakamura Yūjirō’s philosophy of “common sense” in terms ofdigitalization through the concept of the predicate. In doing so, I would
like to show what fundamental “common sense” is for human physicallife and the significance of thinking of physical “common sense” toholistically capture our way of life in contemporary capitalism based on
digitalization. In the first part of my paper, I examine how Nakamura’s
philosophy of “common sense” reformulated Nishida’s philosophyof the “place of nothingness.” In the second part, I introduce thephilosophy of digitalization in terms of Nishida’s philosophy and try
to connect this argument with Nakamura’s argument. Through these
discussions, I will make a concluding remark about an implication of
the philosophy of “common sense” for contemporary capitalism that has
an invisible but destructive effect on human lives based on “common
sense.”

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What is the Globality of the “Common Sense”? Somatesthesia in the Age of
Chaotic Capitalism

1. Nishida Kitarō and Nakamura Yūjirō

Figure 1. Nakamura Yūjirō
Source: https://www.asahi.com/articles/DA3S13171093.html
If I try to sum up what Nakamura’s philosophy is, it is that thehuman being and its conscious acts, as only a partial effect of the“general system” of the cosmos, has the ability to embody operationsof the “general system” inside his or her body. Extended from Nishida
Kitarō’s philosophy, he reformulated the “place of nothingness” as aconsciousness in Nishida’s argument into “common sense.” It meansthat Nakamura embodies the core of Nishida’s philosophy. In mystudy, I aim to reveal the exact meaning of this transformation, I mean,
the significance of embodying the “place of nothingness” in terms of“common sense.”
The “general system” here means what Nishida said in his
philosophy of self-awareness based on Hegel. That is, “[j]udgments
mean that the universal [das Allgemeine] differentiates and develops
itself as Hegel said […]” (Nishida 1950: 48). Nishida reformulates
Hegelian dialectics between the particular and the general into thescheme that the universal limits itself in the form of the particular,
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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
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which is conceptualized as the “self-limitation of the universal.”Moreover, in Nishida’s philosophy, this process of the “self-limitation of
the universal” is the never-ending process against Hegel’s idea.
As for the “place of nothingness,” this view was developed fromthe above view. In other words, the “self-limitation of the universal”
evolves in the way that the generality of predicates limits the substance(subject) that is the consciousness as the “place.” As Nishida says, “[i]ngeneral, the ‘I’ is thought as the subjective integration (…), and yet, ‘I’ought to be the predicative integration. It’s not a dot, but a circle. It’s nota thing, but a place.” (Nishida 1960: 496).
The world of beings“I” as the “place” of the predicate

Figure 2. The Image of the Predicative Integration(Made by the author based on Nishida’s argument in “Basho”)
In western metaphysics, it has been thought that logic can capture
the order of being in propositions such as A is B. Here, this logic has
its priority to ground what the subject (substance) actually is. On thecontrary, Nishida’s philosophy tried to overturn the Aristotelian formal
logics that is based on “what becomes a subject, not a predicate.” In
his philosophy of the “place of nothingness,” the subject is recaptured
from the predicative logic which means that the subject cannot begrounded because the consciousness as the basis of logical acts is the“place” constituted by only predicates. He called this the “predicativetranscendence” compared with “transcendental subject” in Kant’s
philosophy (Nishida 1960: 327).
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Chaotic Capitalism

A is BA

Place of Being

Nothingness

B

Figure 3. The Order of Being (left) and the Circular Structure of the“Place of Nothingness” (right) (Made by author)
The reason for the nothingness of the “place of nothingness”
can be put in the following way: When we judge that “A is B,” thisA needs to be placed in an exact place. Thus, we can stipulate thequalities or meanings (predicates) in this “place of being.” However,the placeness of this “place” is “nothing” in itself. Therefore, the “placeof nothingness” is composed only of predicates and “mirrors” themon itself, and in this sense, the subject (“I” or this “conscious” being istypical here) is signified by predicates, if I use a Saussurian term, and is
the “place of nothingness” in itself. If we see this logic of the “predicativetranscendence” from the viewpoint of the “transcendental subject,” thephilosophical issue of the “proper name” and the “definite description”
are spawned. Socrates is human, a philosopher in ancient Greece, thin(actually fat), an animal and so on. While we can increase generalpredicates to define Socrates, we cannot reach to the ultimate definitionof Socrates himself.
Now, how did Nakamura critically reformulate Nishida’s
philosophy? Among works in English, we can find John Krummel’s
finely concise introduction to Nakamura’s philosophy. He sums up
Nakamura’s philosophy over the view of Nishida’s philosophy and“common sense” in the following way: Firstly, “common sense” is“the horizon of self-evidence that shapes a certain layer of thought
and behavior within a given time, society, culture, etc.,” but secondly,
it is a sense that would be strongly affected by the destabilization ofa social order and its self-evidence caused by social transformations,49

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

hence “common sense” is potentially exposed to the “extraordinary”(Krummel 2015: 78–79; Nakamura 1979=2000: 280–282; italic added).
In this sense, focusing on “common sense” is suggested as theappropriate argument for the postmodern era in which social integration
was dismantled. Consequently, human beings need to rethink theirown framework of existence in order to understand and experience
our collective social life in terms of a “common sense” (Nakamura
1979=2000: 280). What is more, this “common sense” is mediatedby various communicational devices and the context constituted bythem, because “common sense” is not only concerned with living insocially common contexts, but also living with each concrete body. Ina word, Nakamura shows us the view that our bodily lives and social
imaginations are surrounded by collective frameworks and technologicalconditions. In other words, his philosophy based on a “common sense”
captures human communality under the dyadic view between physicaland sensual levels, and the shared significances behind our social lives.
“Common sense” in Nakamura’s philosophy means sensible actions
that differentiate and integrate each perceptive action, traditionallyamong five senses. For example, when we look at sugar, while we canrespectively discern the white color, sweet taste and sand-like touch,
we can comprehensively perceive them as sugar as it is. This ability
to discern and connect sensual actions is called “common sense.” Thisdefinition has been philosophically employed since Aristoteles, and in
the early modern period, Descartes gave a specific place in the brain,
the pineal organ, to the action of the common sense and defined it as a“seat of imagination.” However, through western history, the concept
of common sense based on the physical terms became peripheral to thedominant understanding of common sense as contextually healthy andprudent judgments that were opposed to scientific and rational ways.
Among various sensual actions, Nakamura’s unique contribution
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What is the Globality of the “Common Sense”? Somatesthesia in the Age of
Chaotic Capitalism

to the issue of “common sense” is that he hypothesized that “common
sense” can be found in the coenesthesia. As for the term coenesthesia,
it is composed of “coen (communis)” and “esthesia (sensus). Therefore,
coenesthesia literally means “common sense”, and it includes the senseof touch, pressure sensation, warm sensation, cold sensation, pain
sensation, and kinesthesia (Nakamura 1979=2000: 114–115). Moreover,coenesthesia includes the sense of skin in the superficial level of ourbody and the sense of muscles and organs in the deeper level. Thus,
coenesthesia has both external accesses and internally deep accesses(Nakamura 1979=2000: 118–119).
Depending on the arguments of Husserl, Bergson, and MerleauPonty about the human body and its motion, Nakamura argues thatcoenesthesia mediates the touching and the touched and it makes sensesof our world. Hence, coenesthesia works as a ground for making our“world horizon.” In this sense, the “world horizon” is constituted byphysically predicative integration (Nakamura 1979=2000: 122–123).
According to Nakamura, it should be assumed that the coenesthesia
always works even when humans recognize objects based on the“visual-centric” perception, because the essence of the coenesthesia is
the sense that human beings direct to move and touch objects. The visual
understanding has to premise these invisible, but constantly-working
physical integrations of the world. If someone loses this coenesthesia
and succumbs to a psychopathology such as depersonalization, he or she
loses the sense of physical integration and senses that his or her bodyfalls apart (Nakamura 1979=2000: 114).
From the above discussion, we can say that Nakamura’s philosophyof “common sense” embodied the “place of nothingness.” However, it
does not mean that human body is literally the “place of nothingness.”
Rather, interactions between the world and the mediated roles ofcoenesthesia are captured as the “place of nothingness.” In other words,
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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

both the world and the body are implicated with each other. Through thisinsight, Nakamura tried to embody the “place of nothingness” as a “place
where a fundamental event arises” and a “dynamic and complicatedsystem” that “appears to be nothingness because of its transparency
made by its abundancy of possibilities” (Nakamura 1998: 29). From thisview, it can be said that “common sense” enables us to live limited lives
with an incessant openness to the chaotic complexity and limitations ofit, which are backed by the human body and its internal sensual order.

2. Materialization of “Common Sense” through Chaotic
Capitalism and Digitalization and Beyond it
In this section, I would like to apply Nakamura’s idea of “common
sense” in the actual context of the contemporary society. I used theterm “chaotic capitalism” in the subtitle of this paper. I chose this term,
because I want to highlight the opposite features between “common
sense” and contemporary capitalism. On the one hand, as I argued,“common sense” works as the mediating body and ecology and forms
the “world horizon” for each of us. There, a huge variety of perceptions
is interrelated and mediated, from which our semiotic activities become
possible. This process is to give an order to the originally ecologicalchaos, as I argued in the last part.
On the other hand, we can find that a main feature of contemporary
capitalism is that it does not need, or worse, it excludes actions of“common sense” and keeps reproducing chaotic decontextualization
day by day, in which people are forced without any option to adapt tothe chaos. As Mark Fisher argues in his Capitalism Realism, “capitalism
realism requires us to subordinate the reality that is infinitely everchanging in its forms in every moment” (Fisher 2009=2018:136). In
this situation, “to forget becomes an adaptive strategy” for everyday
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Chaotic Capitalism

life (Fisher 2009=2018: 142). He also argues that this situation
generates a kind of a memory disorder where “creating new memories
is impossible” (Fisher 2009=2018: 150). Therefore, the main issue ofcontemporary capitalism here is concerned with creating memories,
rather than retaining past memories.
About the issue of memory, Nakamura argues that “common sense”
is deeply tied to the history of the argument over “topos” (place). Henri
Bergson shows that human beings have two kinds of memories; one is
the habitual memory that is attained through physical repetitions, and theother is the “pure memory” or “recalled memory” that is concerned withretaining the past memory in represented forms (Bergson 1896=2012:
227–228). Here, “topos” means the “place” where past memories are
retained in certain orders so that one can appropriately recall each ofthem in an exact moment. According to Nakamura, recalling somememories becomes possible through the actions of the imagination thatmakes a sensual impression sustainable, and consequently, through theimagination, we can make a certain context based on pasts (Nakamura
1979=2000: 244–245). As already pointed out, “common sense” is the“seat of imagination”, and hence, inscribing sensual impressions at a
certain moment into “topos” transforms “common sense” into “common
sense” in the sense of shared understanding among certain members. In
other words, retaining and creating a common ground requires incessant
inscribing and recollection of sensual impressions through expressions.
In this sense, the “topos” is the “depository for various meanings (ideas)”(Nakamura 1979=2000: 296) and close to the “place of nothingness”
from which the “predicative” activities evolve.
From the view of the “topos,” we can regard what Fisher said about
the demise of conditions to create new memories as the demise of “common
sense” or “topos.” Otherwise put, the problem of “chaotic capitalism”
is not merely the demise of a shared culture based on traditions, trusts,
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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

reasons or whatever, but, more importantly, the disorder of roles ofphysical “common sense.” This is the problem of the chaotic capitalismthat requires us to adapt to the chaos without recollective ability.
However, the above discussion is not enough to figure out thepredicament of “common sense” today, because a more serious issue
can be found in the fact that the “common sense” as the “place ofnothingness” is being replaced by digital technologies. What is meantby this is that this replacement will totally change the way of living in
the “predicative” world, as Nishida and Nakamura assumed. I would
like to point out this issue subsequently in two processes. The firstis that digitalization means that the “predicative” activities for eachof us are computed through digital devices that replicate exactly thematerialization of the “place of nothingness.” The second is that the
replacement of the “predicative” activities can mean that living energies
can be lost from our lives.
Firstly, physical or affective issues caused by digitalization havebeen much debated. Roughly speaking, three forms of issues over thedigitalized society can be categorized here; (1) its destructive effects
on the human brain, which trigger distractions, and its impact onliteracy cultures based on written things (Wolf 2000; Hansen 2020),(2) its political results of acute oppositions caused by affective ways offorming political opinions through social media (Ahmed 2004; Stiegler
2004; Gibbs 2008; Haidt 2012; Kahneman 2012; Feinberg et al. 2014;
Anderson 2016; Richardson 2017; Till 2021), and (3) transformationsof modes of “bio-power” through digitalization (Deleuze 1990=2008;
Dean 2002; 2009; Stiegler 2004; Rouvroy et Burns 2013; Ito 2019).
Let me skip detailed discussions about each issue here, because of thelimited length of this article.
Despite these varieties of arguments over digitalization, what I
would like to emphasize here is the connection between digitalization
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Chapter 3
What is the Globality of the “Common Sense”? Somatesthesia in the Age of
Chaotic Capitalismand “common sense.” It means that we can find the issue of thepredicate in the sense of Nishida and Nakamura in digitalization. For
this, it is quite meaningful to refer to Ishida Hidetaka, who is a Japanesephilosopher centered on Michel Foucault, semiology, media theory andso on. He wrote, “Where is the ‘Place of Sign’: Reading Nishida Kitarōfrom the Neo-semiotic” in 2020, and he argues in it that Steve Jobs also
invented Mac devices after his enlightened experience of the “place ofnothingness” through Zen meditation.

Figure 4. Steve Jobs, “Mac on Lap Classic,” 1984
Source: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/norman-seeff-stevejobs-mac-on-lap-classic (Access: 2020/11/08)
According to Ishida’s insight, Figure 4. named “Mac on Lap
Classic” symbolizes this connection in the Mac on his meditation
posture. In fact, the connection between Macintosh or iPhone and his
experience of Zen is pointed out in some studies (Isaacson 2011; Ishida
2020: 204–207; Yanagita 2020). Jobs had been influenced by Hippie
culture and Hindu culture since the 1950s, and after that, he started tocommit to the Zen practice taught by Otokawa Kōbun in San Francisco.
55

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

It is pointed out that his Zen meditation facilitated his creativity, which
resulted in the simple design of Apple products (Kumagai 2015: 169).
Ishida concluded in his article that:
More than 60 chips were neatly set out on the motherboard of
the Apple I, which were standing by to deploy the “system of theuniversal” through the universal network to come (…). Besides,(…) the young Jobs “bloomed his intuition”, sitting in padmasana(meditation posture), or meditating on the “place of nothingness” interms of Nishida Kitarō. (Ishida 2020: 208)
Subsequently, in what sense can we find a philosophical relationshipbetween Jobs and Nishida? In his article, Ishida redefines Nishida’s
philosophy based on the predicates from the semiological perspective
based on Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce stipulates human semiologicalprocesses as being constituted by processes of index, icon, and symbol(Peirce 1867=1960; Ishida 2020:185–186). Actually, while in Peircean
semiology, the order of semiosis is in the order of (1) icon, (2) index, and(3) symbol, Daniel Bougnoux who is one of the media theorists in France
recalibrated it into (1) index, (2) icon, and (3) symbol (Bougnoux 2001;
Ishida and Azuma 2019: 257–261). Through modeling this semiologicalprocess that leads to logical judgments, he aimed to incorporate thelogics into the embodied semiology (Ishida 2020:186–187).
Now, according to Ishida, this Peirce’s semiological scheme
can be correlated with Nishida’s philosophy centered on the logic ofpredicates. As I argued before, the “logic of the predicates” depicts therelationships between the subject and the predicates in that the latter, “thegeneral,” envelops the former, the particular. From Peirce’s semiology,
these relationships are equivalent to the infinite semiosis (semiologicalprocesses) over a “dynamic object,” although Peirce did not assume56

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Chaotic Capitalism

the intuition of the “place of nothingness” as Nishida did, because
this semiosis is entirely mediated by signs and one cannot intuitively
grasp the “place” itself in this semiosis (Ishida 2020: 189). However,according to Ishida, if we focus on the fundamental moment in which an
object is indexed, imagined, and symbolized, a work of the “place” onwhich the object appears in the way of the “being-in-place” is uncovered(Ishida 2020: 189–192). This fundamental feature of objects on the“being-in-place” is implicitly expressed in Japanese predication, -de-aru(~である). Terminologically speaking, de (で) has the original meaningof -ni-oite (~において),and aru (ある) literally means the status of being(aru, 有る) (Ishida 2020: 194). Therefore, in Japanese expression, thepredicates cannot be regarded as being equivalent with be or is as the
copula, rather it has a close structure to the French expression; il y a (ydepicts the meaning of the place “there”). In this sense, Ishida calls this“being-in-place” feature of the predicate the “supplement of copula”(Ishida 2020: 192–194, 197).
In short, the semiosis in the Peircean sense can be reformulated
into processes that are evolved in the “place” of the predicates, andgiven that his semiological idea of the human mind that always forms
judgments and propositions of objects influenced the contemporary
Artificial Intelligence (AI), the cyber space and its materialization into
digital devices can be regarded as the materialization of the “place ofnothingness.” At least, we can interpret Jobs’ “intuition” in this way.
It means that not only the Macintosh but also contemporary digital
devices like iPhone or iPad are material appearances of the “place ofnothingness.” This view enables us to think about the contemporary
digitalization and globalization closely connected with the process
in terms of the expansion of the predicative logic as the “place ofnothingness.”
Nonetheless, the problem here is that this materialization of the57

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives“place of nothingness” did not accomplish the “place of nothingness”
in our lives, and rather it is tantamount to the dis-embedding
materialization of “common sense” through digitalization. Thismeans that the logic of the “place of nothingness” that is embedded inJapanese language and cultural context, at least as Nishida envisagedit, drives quite the opposite process now. While digital devices form
global communicative connections, they compute and provide eachuser with subtly customized information, service, and products as thepredicative signs that constantly describe our personal features as data.
In a word, digital devices live our predicative lives instead of us in the
chaotic situation of capitalism in the way that they provide us withcustomized information, as if this information represents the “beingin-place.” What you know through your digital device appears fromthe Big Data field and hence it defines the place of de-aru ahead ofyour expression. We can say that this situation is a supplement of thepredicative by digitalization. Furthermore, under the chaotic capitalism,
we are required to adjust to the “ever-changing” situation in every
moment, which undermines our basis of memorization, as I argued
with Nakamura and Fisher. In this sense, while the chaotic capitalism
undermines the human ability of “common sense” based on the “beingin-place,” digital devices substitute the predicative logic. We now livein this alienated dialogue between capitalism and digital devices, which
is a novel situation in the history of philosophy, if the dialectic processmeans the process of self-realization.

3. Conclusion
I would like to wrap up my argument by pointing out a direction that
we can explore in the future. In the global expansion of dependence on
digital devices, human society has to think of ways to coexist with them.
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Chaotic Capitalism

However, given that digitalization is a material replacement of the “placeof nothingness” or “common sense,” we need to consider the possible
ways of re-embodying them for ourselves. One thing I can point out
here is that while “common sense” is based on the coenesthesia, thematerialization of it dispenses with this and mainly provides us with
sensual stimuli to the senses of vision and hearing. Even if these devices
can provide users with images of bodily movements, it is meaningless ifthese images are limited to physical images provided by advertisements
like the healthy body, “instagrammability” and disciplined behaviors
driven by digitalized scores. According to Nakamura, “common sense”
implies a fundamental potentiality of the human body that is porous to
the natural world and cultural world. Nakamura says:
The fact of the distinction between morning and afternoon and theunits of days presupposes natural circulations. Moreover, it is not
only that these kinds of natural time do not exist outside us humans,
but also that we as a part of nature, especially as a living organism,
also have intrinsic circulations and rhythms inside the self, that is,
the natural time. However, the time lived by us is not limited to thiskind of the natural time, but social and cultural time beyond it. The
natural time becomes the social and cultural time with mediationsof conscious and unconscious institutions. (Nakamura 1979=2000:
270; italic added)
Digitalization depicts the movement of this world based on“common sense.” However, it occupies and replaces it. For re-living andreformulating “common sense,” we also need to think of the nature of“common sense” that provides us with the possibility of newly forming
the entire “rhythm” of our natural and cultural lives, which can beassumed more freely, slowly, and energetically driven by the vitalization
59

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectivesof “common sense.” If we can elaborate on the study of the globallyshared “common sense” today, it will be a philosophically criticalinvestigation of the global capitalization of human predicative life
accompanied by digitalization from the perspective of the universally
physical level complicated by the natural and socio-cultural becomingof humans.

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Chapter 4
Common Sense, Myth and Technology in Miki Kiyoshi

Chapter 4
Common Sense, Myth and Technology in Miki
Kiyoshi
Fernando WIRTZ
1. Introduction

Figure 1. Miki Kiyoshi
Source: (MKZ 1)
In this chapter, I want to look at what Miki concretely says aboutcommon sense. I start by talking about the concept of common sense in1932 in a text from Miki, then I move to the latest Miki in 1941. I willcompare Miki’s concept with Tosaka’s in Analysis of Common Sense,
and then I will give a little reflection on a possible relation between
common sense and technology.
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Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

2. Doxa as a Form of Social Knowledge
Miki’s concept of common sense is not centered on thesystematicity of self-evident propositions, but rather on its essentialsociality and pragmatism. The work Shakaikagaku Gairon 『( 社会科学概論』[Introduction to Social Science]) (1932) was published in the series
Philosophy by Iwanami Shoten.
This book is strongly influenced by the sociological work of Max
Weber and Karl Manheim, the latter of whom was Miki’s tutor during
his time at Heidelberg University. The term “social knowledge” that
Miki employs throughout the book does not refer simply to knowledge
about how our society works, but also to the forms of knowledge thatcirculate in a society.
This is also the object of what Mannheim calls “a sociology ofthought.” The thesis of Mannheim’s most famous book, Ideology andUtopia (1929) which certainly served as an inspiration for Miki, is thatsome modes of thought can only be understood by analyzing their social
origins. This accounts, for example, for what he terms “prescientificknowledge”:
Hence, it is not to be regarded as one of the anomalies of our time,that those methods of thought by means of which we arrive at ourmost crucial decisions, and through which we seek to diagnose andguide our political and social destiny, have remained unrecognized
and therefore inaccessible to intellectual control and self-criticism.
The significance of social knowledge grows proportionately with
the increasing necessity of regulatory intervention in the social
process. This so called pre-scientific inexact mode of thought
64Chapter 4
Common Sense, Myth and Technology in Miki Kiyoshi

however, (which, paradoxically the logicians and philosophers
also use when they have to make practical decisions), is not to beunderstood solely by the use of logical analysis. (Mannheim 1979:
1–2)
Ironically then, even sociology, by trying to provide a rational
explanation of society, has to admit that some social processes do not
rely on a pure “rational” understanding of facts or decision-making. This
point seems especially important for Miki. He is interested in the more
fundamental forms of thought that are disseminated in a social context.
In this direction. He writes:
For example, common sense is often seen as just pre-scientificknowledge, and is not always the subject of special interest ofphilosophers, but common sense is a special existence that can neverbe seen merely as a prescientific stage. The form of knowledge ofcommon sense will be of almost incomparable importance to thecase of knowledge about nature, especially in relation to social
knowledge. (MKZ 6: 292)
In the course of his description, Miki points to two basic formsof social knowledge: doxa and mythos. Far from dismissing these
forms as pre-scientific (in the sense of “a-scientific”), Miki insiststhat they should be regarded as proper scientific objects of study andsources of cognition. While the latter refers to the form of knowledge
that proliferates in a period of political anxiety, the doxa refers to the“normal” state of a society, and Miki explicitly includes common sense
as a component of doxa.
Doxa expresses a givenness, what is “already” (sude ni 既に) given
in a society as knowledge. It is a mere immediate assertion. For this65

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reason, argues Miki, the doxa provides no value of truth or falsehood. It
does not provide truth (shin 真); it establishes correctness (tadashisa 正しさ). Of course, this does not hinder a “correct” doxa from being true,
but truth and doxa belong fundamentally to different “modes” of being.
This is because a doxa could be different; it is not eternal in the senseof ideal truth. The contingency of doxa is historical and contextual.
Nevertheless, the doxa is not to be understood as an individual opinion
but, rather, as something social, which is where Miki finds its politicalrelevance.
The condition for doxa to exist as social knowledge is what Miki
calls a society in a “normal state” (jōtai 常態), in which there is atendency toward an equilibrium that is able to maintain a certain social
stability. This is what distinguishes an organic historical period from a
critical one. Common knowledge is necessary for the reproduction ofsociety, and it operates through the repetition of customs and practices.
However, this is not its only function. It is also the field for the social
communication of science. In this sense, Miki’s doxa is not opposed toscience. “What is necessary for the social praxis is not the knowledge
that is formative, but rather the knowledge that is a conclusion” [MKZ 6:302]. This is what Miki calls the “making of common sense” (jōshikika
常識化), which speaks to knowledge that can be appropriated through theform of a “slogan” (surōgan スローガン) (MKZ 6: 302).
Now, as science can become doxa, there is also the possibility fordoxa to become science. Nevertheless, in this case, the doxa becomesa dogma; it ceases to naturally incorporate new elements and begins
to operate teleologically in order to maintain social cohesiveness. In
science, there is an element of pursuit that keeps a field perennially open
to new theories. When common sense becomes fixated, it becomes adogma because the limit that it sets “is not inherent in the essence of
science.” As such, dogma is not real science, because it is sealed from66

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new discoveries and paradigm shifts.
As mentioned earlier, doxa is only to be thought of with its
counterpart: myth. Later in his text, Miki says that since humanconsciousness mediates between the subject and the object, the fact(jijitsu 事実) and the being (sonzai 存在), doxa and myth offer two ways
in which to relate to this dialectic: while myth is the consciousness ofthe transcendental discontinuity between fact and being, doxa posits
within the awareness of its internal continuity (for the role of myth andideology in Miki see also Stromback 2020; Wirtz 2020).

3. Common Sense and Philosophy
In 1940, Miki published his Tetsugaku Nyūmon (『哲学入門』[Introduction to Philosophy]), a product of a series of lectures that
he gave in 1938. As the title indicates, this book is not directed at
specialists, but at a general audience. There, he assigns an entire
section to the notion of common sense, where he shares the following
definition:
Common sense is the accumulation of social experience, and manyof our actions are carried out according to common sense.
Common sense is, first of all, active (kōi-teki 行為的) knowledge.
Common sense is said to be practical, but practical means empiricaland active. Actions, as actions in the environment, are technical(gijutsu-teki 技術的), and common sense is always technicalknowledge. Practical means also everyday-like (nichijō-teki 日常的),
and common sense is related to daily life, and its characteristic isthat it is everyday-like. (MKZ 7: 33)
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is never merely passive. Therefore, this “accumulation of social
experience” does not refer to an imposed sedimentation of habits, butinstead, to an active self-construction of traditions. In this light, common
sense is “active.” This is also observed in the “negative resistance”
in which common sense sometimes manifests. The pragmaticism ofcommon sense reminds us of Miki’s concept of doxa. Here, he also
defines common sense in nature as simply assertive and organic. Thisis the condition for maintaining social spatial cohesion, although it mayvary from place to place. What is clear is that while the common senseof one society can be in contradiction with the common sense of anothersociety, within one society, common sense functions harmonically.
“In a certain society, one common sense does not collide with anothercommon sense, and if it collides, it is not called common sense” (MKZ 7:
36).
While there are many similarities, it can also be observed that
Miki seems to exclude the disruptive element of myth from this new
formulation. In this sense, he seems to emphasize social homogeneity
at the cost of diminishing the revolutionary potential. However, this is
only partially accurate. Even if it is true that Miki seems to relegate his
notion of myth, he also employs the term “critical spirit” (hihan-tekiseishin 批判的精神) to refer to the internal tendency toward change thatarises in a society and pushes common sense to its limits, destroying it.
Nevertheless, common sense always reinvents itself, as old conventions
are replaced by new ones.
Now, science, under the impulse of the critical spirit, transcends
common sense as it elevates to a logical, theoretical, and abstract pointof view. However, as mentioned before, common sense cannot be
eliminated. Here, Miki explains that cultural progress is the result of thescientification of common sense. It is here that technology comes into
play:
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As science becomes technology and enters into the everyday life, it
enters into the common sense. Electricity becomes common sensewhen electric lights and trains are made, and it becomes a lackof common sense not to know about electricity. This is because
common sense is originally knowledge from the position of action,and science is also actually transferred to the position of action in[the case of] technology. The fact that common sense and scienceare different does not mean that it is impossible or meaningless tomake science common sense. It is important for the progress ofcommon sense and the development of science to make science
common sense, but it requires a special method. It is a lack ofcommon sense to not respect science just because it is different, and
it is also unscientific to think that common sense can be completely
replaced by science. (MKZ 7: 42)

4. Tosaka’s Analysis and Everydayness
Another author who was actively engaged during this time with theconcept of common sense was Tosaka Jun, Miki’s younger colleague[see Goto 2008]. In 1935, Tosaka published what is now his best-known
work, Nihon Ideorogī Ron 『( 日本イデオロギー論』[Japanese Ideology]).
Included was the text “Jōshiki” no Bunseki 「(〈常識〉の分析」[Analysis of“Common Sense”]), an essential text to understand Tosaka’s articulationof his theory of ideology.
Common sense has two contradictory aspects when contemplatedcommonsensically (jōshiki-teki 常識的). On the one hand, it meansnon- (or anti-) scientific, non- (or anti-) philosophical, non- (oranti-) literary, etc., negative or anti- knowledge. On the other hand,69

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it means, on the contrary, established, normal, socially applicable,
practical, sound and common knowledge. (TJZ 2: 251)
So, what Tosaka finds irritating in the traditional concept of common
sense is that it implies the idea of an average kind of knowledge.
To put it in very simple terms, if such a thing were possible, itwould not be the same to sum up all the knowledge that each individual
has as to calculate the average amount of knowledge of the totality. In asimilar sense, if, in a given group of people, a minority acquires a higher
level of knowledge (for example, by studying), this does not mean per
se that the common sense of the whole group improves. Moreover,even if common sense is understood as “average common sense,” thisdoes not explain how real common sense works. As a consequence,
Tosaka draws attention to the ideal aspect of common sense, that is, toits function as an ideal or goal. Similar to bourgeois electoral systems,
argues Tosaka, public opinion (seron 世論) does not reflect the realinterests of the majority but, instead, works as a norm that pushes
opinion in a certain direction. As a result, we can affirm that the two
confronting sides of the concept of common sense reveal their source inthe social tension between aristocratic and bourgeois understandings ofthe term.
To surpass the limitations of this commodified concept of common
sense, Tosaka’s proposal is to rethink it from the perspective of what
he calls “everydayness” (nichijōsei 日常性), a central notion of his
philosophy. “When it comes to where the regulations of common sense
go beyond the regulations of quantitative averageness and majority,
it comes down to what can be called the principle of everydayness
that I first mentioned before.” In his text from 1930, The Principle ofEverydayness and Historical Time, he points out that history should bethought of from the concrete actuality of daily activities and practices.
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This perspective is exemplified through the worker’s temporality. For
workers, work has to be finished “today,” and they are not allowed tothink in a wide and ideal historical time. Their locus of praxis is the
everyday.
Nonetheless, how does everydayness translate itself into the debate
surrounding common sense? For Tosaka, it is clear that journalism
should play a central role in this regard. He writes: “This journalistic
function of the newspaper, which opposes the academic function, isthe most accessible proof of the principle of everydayness.” Thus, it ispossible to assert that, for Tosaka, the true manifestation of common
sense is to be found in the activity of critical journalism. This is not
the journalism that reproduces the views of the dominant class; it is thecritical journalism that evaluates reality from the quotidian perspectiveof the working class. Journalism is, therefore, not something imposed
to be consumed; it is a necessity of the masses themselves who areembedded in the temporarily of the daily occurrence of facts.

5. Technology and Everydayness
It is not my goal here to evaluate Miki’s political collaborationism
or to defend it. It is quite clear that some aspects of his later thought,
especially after 1935, can be read as a justification of Japaneseimperialism (see Kim 2007; Harrington 2009). His concept of common
sense somehow echoes this political development. While in 1932,
in Introduction to Social Science, the concept of doxa was still in adialectical relation with the transformative concept of myth, in his
Introduction to Philosophy, a much more homogeneous notion seems totake hold. Unlike Tosaka, Miki is not interested in the internal tensionsof common sense, because he grasps the concept as a holistic social
phenomenon. Nevertheless, I would like to focus instead on Miki’s
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constant emphasis on reappraising common sense as an element withinculture, technology, and even philosophy. For him, philosophy itself
should be grounded in common sense’s pragmatic modality.
Miki opposes a narrow understanding of technology that separates
culture (bunka 文化) from civilization (bunmei 文明), where the former
is “spiritual” and the latter “material” (MKZ 13: 464–474). Such anunderstanding of technology as opposed to culture privileges the view ofWestern supremacy. For Miki, no technical innovation should be madewithout consulting common sense. It is true that many elements of hisreflections on common sense can be described as populist: his rejectionof “politics,” his indistinct notion of people (or masses), and the ideathat a good leader is one who carefully listens to and interprets people’s
demands. However, there are some aspects that go beyond populism,
such as his highlighting of the inevitability of common sense as afunction in every society, its pragmaticism, activeness, and technicity.
These elements are compatible with an understanding of everydayness
as a field of active innovation.
However, can we think of global common sense in relation totechnology? When Miki writes that electricity becomes common sense,
he probably does not mean that people necessarily have the same
specialized knowledge of electricity as that of a physicist or an engineer.
In a similar way, our practical contact with computers, cellphones,
vehicles, or medical implements is not based on a direct understandingof scientific knowledge, which does not prevent us from using them.
This “parallel” lower system of knowledge that treats high-tech froma low-tech pragmatic perspective, precisely because it does not belong
to academic institutional networks and their restrained norms, is able
to introduce technical innovations for itself. Thus, even if common
sense cannot structurally change a certain technology, it can modify
its use or create small-scale variations. Arguably, this implies, rather,72

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a broad notion of technology, but this would be precisely one of theachievements of grassroots innovation to re-signify and expand ourunderstanding of technology. These innovations can adopt different
forms, from using an online platform in a totally unforeseen way to local
sustainable gardening. Improvements in farming and its tools and new
ways of cooking or drying food should also be included here. Empiricalevidence largely supports the fact that technological innovation does
not require direct contact with academic institutions (For more detailed
information about “grassroots innovations,” (see, for example, Seyfang
and Smith 2007; Ross et al. 2012; Singh et al. 2020; Khalil et al. 2020).
For this reason, disregarding the doxa of a society from the pointof view of philosophical narratives would insinuate an unnecessary
epistemological reduction. In this respect, as the Argentinean philosopher
Rodolfo Kusch (1976) once wrote, “In Europe, ‘doxa’ and ‘noesis’ arecloser. They have a cultural continuity. And our problem is that we live
far from Western noesis and we do not know anything about our doxa,
because we segregate it. But it turns out that living is doxa, that is,opinion, and culture.” In a global geopolitical scenario, many doxas are
replaced by the logic of capitalist realism in view of the fact that they areunable to generate large-scale technological profit. However, the same
way that Miki does not understand ideology as false consciousness, doxa
is also an active process rather than a passive one. Thus, intertwined
cognitive, social, economic, institutional, and technological processes
emerge in the middle of common sense and enable us to understand thecirculation of social knowledge in a dynamic way.

References

Abbreviations:
MKZ. 1978. Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū 20 『( 三木清全集 20』[The Complete
Works of Miki Kiyoshi 20]), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten
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Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

TJZ. 1967. Tosaka Jun Zenshū 5 『( 戸坂潤全集 5』[The Complete Works of
Tosaka Jun]). Tokyo: Keisō Shobō.
Other sources:
Goto, Y. 2008. Tosaka Jun no Jōshiki gainen to Miki Kiyoshi 「( 戸坂潤の常識概念と，三木清 」[The Concept of Common Sense in Tosaka Jun
and Miki Kiyoshi]). Toshokan Jōhou Media Kenkyū 『( 図書館情報メディア研究』[Library, Information and Media Studies, University ofTsukuba]), 5(2), pp.57–87.
Harrington, L. E. 2009. Miki Kiyoshi and the Shōwa Kenkyūkai: The
Failure of World History. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique,17(1), pp. 43–72.
Khalil, M. B., Jacobs, B. C., McKenna, K. and Kuruppu, N. 2020.
Female Contribution to Grassroots Innovation for Climate Change
Adaptation in Bangladesh. Climate and Development, 12(7), pp.
664–676.
Kim, J. N. 2007. The Temporality of Empire: The Imperial
Cosmopolitanism of Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime. In
Sven Saaler (ed.), Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History:
Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders. London/ New York:
Routledge, pp. 151–167.
Kusch, R. 1976. Geocultura del hombre americano. Buenos Aires: F.
García Cambeiro.
Mannheim, Karl. 1979. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to theSociology of Knowledge. (Louis Wirth and Edward Shils trans.).
London: Routledge.
Ross, Tracy, Mitchell, Valerie A., and May, Andrew J. 2012. Bottomup Grassroots Innovation in Transport: Motivations, Barriers andEnablers. Transportation Planning and Technology 35(4), pp.
469–489.
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Seyfang, Gill, and Smith, Adrian. 2007. Grassroots Innovations for
Sustainable Development: Towards a New Research and Policy
Agenda. Environmental Politics 16(4), pp. 584–603.
Singh, Sonal H., Bhowmick, B., Sindhav, B., and Eesley, D. 2020.
Determinants of Grassroots Innovation: An Empirical Study in the
Indian Context. Innovation 22(3), pp. 270–289.
Stromback, Dennis. 2020. Miki Kiyoshi and the Overcoming ofGerman and Japanese Philosophy. European Journal of JapanesePhilosophy, 5, pp. 103–143.
Wirtz, Fernando. 2020. Myth and Ideology in Miki Kiyoshi. European
Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 5, pp. 75–102.

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Chapter 5
Primacy of Imagination and Sensus
Communis : In Considering a Transcultural
Subjectivity
Tyler Tak-lap YEUNGThe question of how human beings create the environment in which
they dwell is a common philosophical concern for many philosophersfrom the Kyoto school. For example, both Miki Kiyoshi and Nishida
Kitarō have thought about how the embodied subjects or agents (shutai主体) make history (Curley, 2020: 448). In Miki’s eyes, Marx offereda theory of history in which the development of history was identicalto the development of the human being towards a total forcing of thehuman capacity for creation. Thus, for Miki, Marxism was humanism(Curley, 2020: 448). According to such views on human history
and development, it is not hard to understand why Miki had shifted
his concern to the logic of imagination (kōsōryoku 構想力) which isunderstood as the foundation of “the creation of the new culture” (Cf.
Curley, 2020: 449). With these insights in mind, I want to renew thediscussion about the significance of imagination and sensus communis
in considering the constitution of a transcultural subjectivity concerning
our digitalized global situation.
In this philosophical workshop, let’s consider which cognitive
power has the primacy in the construction of transcultural subjectivity.
In order to respond to this question and the title I made for thispresentation, some concepts have to be clarified at the outset: What ismeant by “transcultural subjectivity,” “[power of] imagination” and76

Chapter 5
Primacy of Imagination and Sensus Communis“sensus communis”? What is the meaning of having primacy in theconstruction of a transcultural subjectivity?

1. What I Consider When I Talk about the Constructionof a “Transcultural Subjectivity”?
When I talk about the construction of transcultural subjectivity,
I do not mean the constructions of transcultural identity, which
is somehow empirical, social, and historical. To define subject
or subjectivity in the traditional way, thinkers tend to outline thedifferences among identities, the particular out of the universal,
and the essential character of something is the result. The classicaldefinition of human beings made by Aristotle, “zoon logon echon (Menare rational animals),” is the typical example of an essentialism. On
the other hand, relationism focuses on the relationship among things in
defining a particular. It’s emphasized that we can only know somethingamong certain relations in a contextual whole. Things are neither selfstanding nor infinitely differentiable entities. Both views are wrong,
because they presuppose what they are looking for. In other words,
to avoid infinite regress, they presuppose an absolute proposition as
the goal of the thought for which they are searching. In combining
the above ways of thinking, when I consider the constructions oftranscultural subjectivity, I do not aim at an argument for an essential
character or entity, but the faculty that enables us to construct thesocial-historical relations. Through these relations, the subject reveals
what it needs in considering its empirical identity. However, whatenables this possibility lies essentially in the transcendental condition,
namely the transcultural subjectivity.

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2. What Does It Mean When I Employ the Term
“Transcultural Subjectivity”?
After the age of imperialism and colonialism, together with theunbound and cross-border experience in the digital age, a globalized
world forces us to accept the fact that there is no pure and unbounded
Western or Eastern culture in the strict sense. You may object to theinvasion of global capital led by the so-called “multinational” enterpriseand practice a kind of rebellion on a personal basis, but you cannot
single-handedly change this reality. We are living in the age of hybrid
identities. Cultural difference is only a matter of degrees rather thansubstance. In other words, we all possess a transcultural identity, nomatter whether we are conscious or unconscious of this fact. I’musing the term “transcultural” subjectivity instead of, for example,“multicultural,” “intercultural,” or “cross-cultural,” because:1.) “Multicultural” refers to a state that a subject contains multiple
cultural or ethical origins. A multicultural person possesses
different cultural resources. However, it does not mean thatthe different cultural characters necessarily have engaging
interactions with each other.
2.) “Cross-cultural” emphasizes the action of comparison between
two or more different cultures or cultural areas. The key pointof such comparison lies simply in creating the action acrossdifferent cultural entities. The starting point and subjectiveorientation of the comparison are not important as such.
3.) The word “intercultural” denotes a status of “in-betweenness.”
An intercultural person could live in a so-called “international”
environment very well, because such an environment must
be a decentralized cultural environment, which can becopied and rebuilt everywhere on this planet. However, such
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Chapter 5
Primacy of Imagination and Sensus Communisintercultural characteristics are in another perspective a kindof monopolization of the definitions of “international” and“intercultural.” Eventually, the “international” means, basically,for example, the employment of English, a capitalist lifestyleor the adoption of American standards, etc. So, to me, theconcept “transcultural” presupposes a “rooted cosmopolitanism”
representing a cultural tendency that appreciates cosmopolitan
values without losing one’s cultural originality and gratitude.
Persons, who possess transcultural experience, construct theiridentities by cultural shock and consecutive comparisons with theircultural origins. It is a dynamic and hermeneutical process that
presupposes the horizons of subjective time, which ontologicallypresuppose “the zero point of perspective (der Nullpunkt einer
Perspektive)” as the starting point. Since we are in advance being
thrown into a particular culture and historical background, it isinevitable that we must start to gain cross-cultural, intercultural andtranscultural experience from a solid cultural origin, which is mainly
and closely related to the native language. Thus except for those whogrow up in a multilingual and multicultural environment, most of us
construct our subjectivity in a transcultural way. First, we own first “our”
culture, and then we start integrating other cultures into cultures withour cultural origins, dynamically, and hermeneutically.

3. Which Cognitive Faculties Have Primacy in theConstruction of a Transcultural Subjectivity?
3.1. Imagined Communities and Imaginary Elements of Transcultural
Subjectivity
I have mentioned that I am concerned mainly about the transcendental
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conditions of the construction of a transcultural subjectivity. First, I am
going to enquire about the essential conditions of having a transculturalsubjectivity, then I will argue for the primacy of these conditions. The
essential conditions of a transcultural subjectivity are our imaginationand common sense (sensus communis). On the necessity of imagination,
we may take Benedict Anderson’s ideas as a reference. He says in
Imagined Communities (1976/2006): “In an anthropological spirit,
then, I propose the following definitions of the nation; it is an imaginedpolitical community - and imagined as both inherently limited andsovereign” (Anderson 2006: 5–6).
Although Anderson’s research lies mainly in the definition of
the national identity and nationalism, instead of subjectivity, his
consideration is still inspiring and suitable for our topic. He points outthat understanding of one’s political and national identity is by nature
imagination, “because the members of even a small nation will neverknow most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,
yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson
2006: 6).
The sense of unity is basically built on an imagined unity that isinvented and created within a community that shares similar concept
constituting factors. Imagination is not a “fabrication,” but a necessary
cognitive process for the formation of any community. Thus, the term
“imagined community” does not refer to false consciousness, but toa social psychological fact of society. In other words, imagination isthe epistemological precondition of the constitution of identity andcommunal sense.
A transcultural subjectivity shares similar constituting factors,
because the field and the boundary of a cultural entity are also
imaginary. To me, the core of a cultural entity is built on some basic
beliefs and normative concepts which are rooted in its language.
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However, the boundary of a cultural entity is open, flexible, andextendable in the dimension of time. It is an organic whole that canadapt to the changes caused by the surroundings and transform itself bybalancing the basic beliefs and the challenges.
Since we are living in the digital age, our subjectivity is inevitably atranscultural one and it must be developed through the collisions among
different cultural entities. The difference between the so-called Easternand Western cultures remains a reality, but the transcultural formationof one’s identity and subjectivity becomes more and more common andessential.
We can expect that this formation relies a lot on the imaginary
understanding of the cultural Self and cultural Others, through which we
can engage in the dynamics of transcultural conditions of a developing
Self. In other words, a transcultural subjectivity is unmistakably
involves transcultural imaginary elements in its constructing process.
3.2. The Primacy of Imagination and Sensus Communis in Constructionof a Transcultural Subjectivity
With the above ideas in mind, I propose that (the power of)imagination (Einbildungskraft) and sensus communis have the necessary
cognitive precondition in the construction of a transcultural subjectivity.
In the Lectures of Kant’s Political Philosophy, Hannah Arendt
points out that sensus communis and (power of) imagination are twomain mental operations in judgment. In my paper, I have reconstructed
Arendt’s arguments on Kant’s political philosophy and shed light on
the implication of the priority of imagination in respect of (power of)judgement in general (Urteilskraft überhaupt) (see Yeung 2017). I
argue that imagination and sensus communis are the preconditions of
judgment, because imagination can provide a representation of an object
which is absent. According to Arendt’s interpretation, imagination plays
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an additional role in turning the objects from our outward sense into ourinner sense, namely, the time (die Zeit).
On the one hand, the implication of this interpretation lies in the
indoctrination of temporal character in the functions of imagination, bywhich the objects-to-be-judged in the present will be transcendentallyconnected with the objects recollected from the past or the projectedin the future. On the other hand, sensus communis is responsible forproviding the a priori standard for judgment, through which we areable to judge something as if we have the consensus from everyone in
the community. Arendt traced the meanings of sensus communis fromchapters 39–40 of Kant’s Critique of Judgment and determined two
major topics: first, the criterion of the approbation or disapprobation iscommunicability. Second, sensus communis provides the standard of thejudgment (Cf. Arendt 1992: 69–72, 131–132).
Another prominent interpretation by Hannah Arendt is the imageforming functions of imagination. The image-forming function is the
key to understanding the significance of imagination in her theory of
judgment. Without the image forming function, we cannot even present
the object which is absent for the judging subject, and it entails theinability to judge no matter whether it is about the past, the present,or the future (Cf. Yeung 2017: 356). Moreover, the image-forming
process is not a value-free process. It involves the pre-given taste andunderstanding of something which is encoded in the cultural historicalbackgrounds of the subject. Through the pre-selection by imagination,
the judging subjects direct themselves to the thought-objects thatare suitable for the activity of deliberation. Indeed, imagination is“discriminatory,” which pre-embeds the taste and choice in the “representation.” Thus, imagination gains not only cognitive but also
normative necessity and priority in the case of judgment (Cf. Yeung
2017: 354–355).
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We may further ask: what and where is the source of the pre-given
taste for imagination? The answer is sensus communis. As I mentioned,
sensus communis is the standard for judgment. It is actually the groundfor a hermeneutic process of understanding. Arendt translates the term as“community sense,” instead of adopting the generally accepted translation
as “common sense,” because she wants to elaborate the preconditionsof having a ground for a particular judgment. A community sense exists
before an individual receives it as the foundation of his own judging.
Thus, it is the transcendental condition of one’s own judgment.
The ancient wise man teaches us that “the whole is greater than thesum of the individual parts 1.” Also, the community is not the sum of
individuals. On the contrary, an individual becomes an individual due tothe nurturing of the community. Hence, the community is ontologically
preceding the individual. Sensus communis, both for Kant and Hannah
Arendt is a transcendental ground for reflective judgment, and more
importantly, it cooperates with imaginations as two main mental
operations in supporting the power of judgment. Through judgment, asubject is able to express and understand reflectively their own identity.
Therefore, judgment is the representation of one’s subjectivity. Thus, as
the transcendental condition of judgment, imagination and consensus
communis have their primacy when we consider the problems of theconstitution of a transcultural subjectivity.

Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, the construction of a transcultural identity relies on
the reflective understanding of oneself. In other words, the reflective
judgment about the relations of the self and a socio-historical surrounding
world plays a crucial role in constructing a transcultural identity. Thus, if
1 This phrase often attributed to Aristotle, see Metaphysics, book VIII, 1045a.
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Hannah Arendt’s interpretation that imaginations and sensus communis
really play a key role in considering the construction of transculturalsubjectivity is right, we may further ask upon this basis: how importantis it to cultivate people’s imagination and sensus communis, given that
we want to encourage the communities who possess and will further
develop a transcultural identity and subjectivity?
The concern about the “dehumanization brought by digital
globalized sensations” (see Chapter 3 in this booklet) directs us to thecontemplation of the dark side of digital globalization. However, I am
pretty optimistic about the phenomenon of digital globalization. As I
have mentioned, we are already in the age of transcultural subjectivity
due to the omnipresence of digital usage. We are already connected!
Furthermore, we keep defining ourselves for each given situation.
In a word, we are continuously redefining our humanity under thedigital globalized situation. The understanding and shared imagination
between so-called Eastern and Western people will come closer andcloser in the world of the digital nomad. This phenomenon is based on
the plurality that arises from a kind of “rooted cosmopolitanism.” Every
digital nomad shares their understanding and shares their imagination,according to their cultural origin for different digital media. So long as
the digital world is open (although we know that there are still a lot ofplaces that do not share this premise), the construction of transculturalsubjectivity will continue.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on theOrigin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London and
New York: Verso.
Arendt, Hannah. 1992. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Ronald
Beiner ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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Primacy of Imagination and Sensus Communis

Curley, Melissa Anne-Marie. 2020. Miki Kiyoshi, Marxism, Humanism,and the Power of Imagination. In Bret W. Davis (ed.), The Oxford
Handbook of Japanese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University
Press, pp. 447–463.
Yeung, Tak-Lap. 2017. The Priority of Imagination in Judgment: Hannah
Arendt’s Interpretation of Kant and its Problems. Journal of
Philosophical Ideas, Special issue, pp. 345–363.

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Editor’s Postscript
MATSUI Nobuyuki
This booklet is a record of the International Workshop held on
February 6, 2021, which took place online in the midst of the pandemic.
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, I had been concerned about how toreconsider the “common sense” of human beings in the era of the global
spread of digital capitalism. In this age of “hyper-industrialization”(Bernard Stiegler), “we” had nothing to “share” and we felt that we wereentering a phase where we had to revisit what “share” means in its own
right in the highly connected environment brought by digitalization.
Also, in the enforced situation of tele-working during the pandemic,
while “we” experienced this common plight, outcomes were seemingly
differentiated, depending on each one’s economic condition. It wasunder these circumstances that this workshop was realized by inviting
young researchers from several countries to develop our philosophicalviewpoints on “common sense.”
The theme of “common sense” was chosen with reference mainly
to “On Common Sense” (Kyōtsū Kankaku Ron『共通感覚論』) written
by Nakamura Yūjirō (see Chap. 3 in this booklet), which was mymain research theme. However, this theme has enjoyed a long history
in philosophy since Aristotle. Furthermore, speaking from a muchwider perspective, “collective learning” (David Christian) enabled thesocialization of Homo Sapiens in its course of evolution through thesharing of social imaginations through the expansion of the brain andthe use of language, and we can see “common sense” as the core factor
for the evolutionary process of Homo Sapiens beyond the East/Westdichotomy. The purpose of this workshop was to show that this concept,“common sense,” should be rediscovered at a global level beyond
86Editor’s Postscript

the age of a nation-state and in terms of a deeper sense of history andsociety. The participants, Jonathan McKinney, Dennis Stromback,Fernand Wirtz, and Tyler Tak-Lap Yeung readily agreed to my proposal.
First of all, as for the themes presented by each of them, it was
surprising to see through this workshop that considerations of thephilosophies of the Kyoto School have abundantly expanded to a muchbroader extent. In addition, various philosophical views on Japanesephilosophy encouraged me as an editor, because I could share anawareness of the common issue such as: the attempt to reread Japanesephilosophy under the development of ecology and cognitive science(McKinney, Chap. 1), the philosophical viewpoint of post-capitalism
based on post-anthropocentrism drawn from the philosophy of Nishida
Kitarō and Miki Kiyoshi (Stromback, Chap. 2), the reinterpretationof the philosophy of Nakamura Yūjirō, who succeeded Nishida andMiki, in this digitalizing era (Matsui, Chap. 3), the critical and positive
significances in the technical environment of “common sense,”
revisiting “common sense” and the concept of “myth” in Miki Kiyoshi(Wirtz, Chap. 4), and the subjective ability and intercultural condition
which is ontologically incorporated in “common sense” (Yeung, Chap.
5). All of them have the potential insight to transcend the boundaries
between East and West through reading Japanese philosophy and in thelight of Western philosophy and vice-versa.
Secondly, it was a unique fulfilling opportunity to discuss “common
sense” from various perspectives, linking it with ecology, language, andthe self, as well as overcoming contemporary issues such as climatechange, anthropocentrism, and ethnocentrism. However, in the Q&A
session of this workshop, the fundamental question was posed to me,“What does the global common sense mean?”. At that moment I could
not clearly answer this question at the time, even though it was one of
the main themes of this workshop. Needless to say, I have given it some87

Globally Shared Common Sense from the Philosophy of Imagination:
Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

thought, and responding to it here and now, I would say that “common
sense” is related with the sensibility that opens ourselves to the abovementioned concepts and contemporary issues. The issues such as
climate change, anthropocentrism, and ethnocentrism while problematicin themselves, appear random and unrelated from the outside. However,
if human beings were not open to their own surroundings, these
phenomena would not be recognized as risks.
Since “common sense” is the concept that points out the physicalcondition of human ability to be connected with the surrounding
environment, others, and social contexts, we can regard it as the senseof connection itself. Otherwise put, the sense of connection itself isequivalent to the human status of being thrown into contact with thewhole. The concrete ways of connecting things are derived from thissense of connection itself. It is similar with the “Angst” (anxiety) as
the “Stimmung” (mood) in the Heideggerian sense in the Being andTime (§29). The “Angst” is the fundamental mood or sensibility;
Befindlichkeit (hard to translate, but “the sense of being disposedto things through our own minds”). Human beings are always andalready “being-in-the-world” and thrown into the world of connections
consisting of things. However, Heidegger argues this “Angst” is closely
connected with fear, but while fear needs a certain object to be scaredof, “angst” does not have this object. Moreover, if human beings cannot
make or fail to make a connection with things, they compensate forthis failed connection with things that human beings fear — the earth,others, systems, etc.
The “Angst,” in this sense, is the condition of ontological openness
to the world. However, when it comes to “common sense,” we canrecognize our connections with things beyond the Heidegger’s
insight of “Angst” and fear. That is to say, “common sense” as thesense of connectivity itself enables us to stretch our fear back to the88Editor’s Postscript

encountering point where human openness and ecological openness toconnectivity are overlapped in potentia. While Heidegger described itas the fundamental “angst,” we might also be able to describe it as thesource of conviviality, festivity, or pleasure. With the term “global,”philosophical thinking can revisit the sense of “angst” and connectivity
itself, which re-opens the “world” to us beyond fear. Therefore, I would
like to imply that the term “global common sense” is not merely theshared sense of the universe, but rather, the suggestion of how we canuse the “common sense” to open the world to this connectivity in theage of global fear. At least, if we show conviviality to others, it is tocalm the fear.
In retrospect, this workshop was planned after the suddencancelation of my visits to Germany and France in March 2019 due
to a COVID-19 outbreak. I have to express my deepest gratitude andapologies to the host researchers and colleagues of the Institute who
helped me with the preparations and introduced the host researchers.
Professor Yasushi Kosugi, the director of the Asia-Japan ResearchInstitute, encouraged me to use the budget that I inherited from 2019 forthis project of an international philosophical workshop after the above
cancelation. Thanks to his encouragement and support, I could realize
this philosophical collaboration beyond my anxiety caused by the global
pandemic. Also, this project would not have been possible without
the assistance of Professor Anthony Brewer of the same Asia-Japan
Institute, who gave his full support to this project, which was started
from scratch, in the selection of participants, communicating with them,and checking the English drafts included this booklet. In addition, thisworkshop would not have been possible without the support of theofficers and my colleagues of the Institute. Moreover, I must express my
deep appreciation for the generosity of the presenters Dave McKinney
and Dennis Stromback from the United States, and Tyler in Germany,89

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Bridging Eastern and Western Perspectives

who participated in this workshop at the most inconvenient times dueto the considerable time differences. It was also quite fortunate that I
could meet Fernando Wirtz personally in Kyoto. In the beginning, while
I had thought that he was in Germany, he was actually living in Kyoto
city, as I was. As a result, we could meet several times and continue our
discussion (at the prescribed social distance, of course).
The publication of this booklet marks the successful culmination ofa workshop conducted under the restraints of a COVID-19 lockdown.
Hopefully, we can continue our talks and make new connections tothink of the meaning of “being-in-the-world-together.” The meaningsof “being,” “in-the-world,” and “together” sound quite self-evident.
However, how fully do we really understand their respective meanings?
It is my hope that we will continue our collaboration and transcend theboundaries of East and West through a fusion of ideas based on this firstinternational workshop.

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ONLINE ISBN 978-4-910550-00-8
PRINT ISBN 978-4-910550-01-5
Asia-Japan Research Institute, Ritsumeikan University