Raquel Bouso –Art and Beauty in Japanese Aesthetics On the Free Play of Disimagination and Sentiment
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 2020-02-18

Raquel Bouso – "Art and Beauty in Japanese Aesthetics On the Free Play of Disimagination and Sentiment"

Keynote Speech delivered at the 5th ENOJP Conference in Nagoya 2019
#ENOJP5 #ENOJP2019

Abstract:
The lecture focuses on the relation between imagination (構想力) and emptiness (空) in the thought of Nishitani Keiji. Imagination is discussed as a source of knowledge and the ontology of the images in light of notions as form and beauty in Japanese aesthetics and Neoplatonic categories of abstraction (aphairesis) and negation (apophasis). It is argued that Nishitani’s standpoint lies in between the Eckhartian spiri- tual process of disimagination (Entbildung) and postfoundational meta-physics.
Watsuji Tetsurō argues that the movement of the Nō player’s body breathes “life” into the Nō mask and lets it show various emotions of a living person, and Watsuji calls this personhood “persona” (「面とペル ソナ」). Persona does not require self-consciousness or rationality. We can interpret it from the animistic point of view. Ōmori Shōzō thinks that the way we see “the other mind” inside the other person or a robot should be called “animism” (『流れとよどみ』). An animistic persona is not a mere projection of our inner mental states. I illustrate how those authors thought about the mode of existence of deceased persons and/ or non-existing persons which appear vividly in this world. In the last part of my presentation, I propose the concept of “animistic/animated
persona” in the form of “voice without sound,” and compare it with some Western philosophical ideas.

Raquel Bouso is associate professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. She has published El zen (Catalan, 2008; Spanish, 2012), coedited vol. 6 of “Frontiers in Japanese Philosophy,” Cross-Currents and Confluences (2009), and La filosofía japonesa en sus textos, with J. W. Heisig, T. P. Kasulis, and J. C. Maraldo (2016). Her research interests include intercultural philosophy, aesthetics and mysticism and Japa- nese religions and thought.

For more informations:
http://enojp.org/
http://chisokudopublications.com/

Art Direction:
Tim Graf
https://vimeo.com/timgraf