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THE LOGIC OF TIME VIS-À-VIS THE LOGIC OF SPACE: NISHIDA, TANABE AND WHITEHEAD IN COMPARISON
Makoto OZAKI1
ABSTRACT. What is the difference between Nishida's idea of Topos as Absolute Nothingness and Tanabe's one of negative conversion in action within the same ambit of the Kyoto School? While Nishida's idea of Topos stems from his own unconscious deep structure of consciousness rooted in the agricultural society based on the stable land, Tanabe's logic of negative conversion reflects the changing time in history. Nishida takes the position of intellectual intuition or contemplation, whereas Tanabe stands by action to transform the given actuality into a formative ideality in and through self-negation. Nishida's thought might be still static in character, despite his allegation of the formation of the historical world; on the contrary, Tanabe's is more dynamic due to the perpetually negating activity of conversion. This might correspond to the two different standpoints of one and the same Buddhist cannon, i.e., the Lotus Sutra, which is divided into two parts: one is the standpoint of contemplation of truth, and the other the perspective of the revelation of eternity. The former pertains to the historical horizon of shadowy appearance, and the latter to the original position of eternal essence. The logical method is alternative: either everything is embraced in space, or time reveals truth in process. Tanabe is akin to Hegel, Heidegger and Whitehead in the tendency towards time, in contrast to Nishida's propensity for space and Einstein's static view of the universe.
Keywords: Topos/Space, Time/History, Self-Identity in Opposition, Negative Conversion in Action, Self-Realizing Movement, Imagination
Contents
Introduction
1. Time
2. Causality
3. Topos
4. Entelecheia and Buddhahood
5. Immanent God
6. Non-Action
7. Imagination
Conclusion
1 Sanyo Gakuen University, Okayama, JAPAN.
ЛОГИКА ВРЕМЕНИ И ЛОГИКА ПРОСТРАНСТВА
- ДРУГ ПРОТИВ ДРУГА: НИСИДА, ТАНАБЭ И УАЙТХЕД В СРАВНЕНИИ
Макото ОЗАКИ
Резюме. В чем разница между идеей «Топоса» Нисиды как «Абсолютного Небытия» и идеей Танабе об отрицательной конверсии (превращении) в действии, в том же диапазоне целей Киотоской школы философии? Хотя идея Нисиды о Топосе проистекает из его собственной бессознательной глубинной структуры сознания, укорененного в менталитете общества, занятого сельскохозяйственным трудом, и основанного на стабильных условиях жизни; тогда как логика отрицательного превращения Танабе отражает изменение времени в истории. Нисида занимает позицию интеллектуальной интуиции или созерцания, тогда как Танабе выступает за действие, чтобы превратить данную действительность в формирующую (способную развиваться) идеальность, внутри процесса и через самоотрицание. Мысль Нисиды может быть неподвижной по своему характеру, несмотря на его утверждение об образовании исторического мира; но наоборот, Танабе более динамичен, в своем стремлении соотноситься с постоянной отрицательной активностью конверсии (преобразования). Это может соответствовать двум различным точкам зрения одного и того же Буддийского канона, то есть Сутры Лотоса, которая делится на две части: одна - точка зрения созерцания истины, а другая - перспектива раскрытия вечности. Первое относится к историческому горизонту теневого облика, а второе - к первоначальному положению вечной сущности. Логический метод альтернативен: либо все включается в пространстве; либо время раскрывает истину в процессе. Танабе сродни Гегелю, Хайдеггеру и Уайтхеду в тенденции соответствовать действию времени, в отличие от склонности Нисиды к космосу и статическому взгляду Эйнштейна на вселенную.
Ключевые слова: Топос / Пространство, Время / История, Самосознание в оппозиции, Отрицательное преобразование в действии, Самореализующееся движение, Воображение
Содержание
Введение 1. Время
2. Причинность
3. Топос
4. Энтелехия и Буддовость
5. Имманентный Бог
6. Бездействие
7. Воображение Вывод
Introduction
On June 12, 2018, a monumental event of the summit talk took place between the two quite contrasted nations, U.S.A. and North Korea, at Singapore as the island state, to positively construct a new framework for world peace as the turning point of history. This epoch-making political action may contribute to transform the actually existing order of the present world, viewed from the perspective of the world historical evolution of humankind. Even though whether it can really change the existing world order or not depends on the ongoing negotiation between them, it might be evaluated from the standpoint of the historical reformation of the established world structure since the cold war age, and now shed a new light onto the future possible destiny of humankind facing the nuclear war crisis on the whole planet. This issue may be closely related to the view of history over the geopolitical international regional study.
There are two types of thoughts in the history of human ideas: one is the logic of space, and the other the logic of time. Nishida's thought is mainly elaborated from the projective geometrical perspective, and hence it is not accident for him to take his ultimate position of Absolute Nothingness as Topos. On the contrary, Tanabe views even mathematical truth not as eternally static but rather as the self-developing movement in the historical process in terms of the perpetually transformative change in the mediation of the past achievements through conversion in negation. Watsuji's ethics, too, exhibits the self-realizing movement of the fundamental principle of Absolute Negativity in history, likewise Hegel, in such a way that going to the future is coincident with returning to the past origin, i.e., the essential Self, in taking shapes of the individual existence and social totality in reciprocal negation, attaining the state existence and more in the last resort. Miki also attempts at constructing the logic of history as imagination with the help of the Marxist historical materialism, despite his common standpoint of experience to Nishida.
In contrast to Plato's eternal ideas as situated in the a-temporal transcendent dimension above the actual human world, there might be the evolutional biological model behind Aristotle's concept of entelecheia as a dynamic unity of potentiality and actuality in the self-realizing movement. This Aristotelian prototype of idea might also be behind Hegel's notion of history as God's self-manifestation and self-realizing movement.
Whilst Einstein and Nishida pertain to the geometrical logic of space, Tanabe, Watsuji, Miki, and modern eternal cyclic cosmology are subsumed under the temporal process of evolutional development of essence in appearance. Although Karl Barth's theology emphasizes the pre-existence of Jesus Christ in the eternal dimension above history, J. Moltmann and W. Pannenberg invert the vertical dimension of eternity into the historical horizon with the expectation of the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God towards the future together with the second coming of Christ from the Judeo-Christian traditional apocalyptic perspective. Heidegger's anticipation of the last God in the inauguration of a new era as the other beginning vis-à-vis the first beginning in the early Greek age of western metaphysical history might be a metaphysical disguise of the future advent of Christ. The most
comprehensive Mahayana text, the Lotus Sutra, is also divided into the two parts: the spatial viewpoint of truth of all phenomena and the eternal origin of the Buddha's life. With a view of the fact that even a remote point of space is no less than the distant past, i.e., the identity of space and time, as is disclosed by the relativity theory of the fourfold continuum of spacetime, both types of thoughts are not exclusive for each other but rather complementary to one another as the differentiated identity of ultimate reality in the final analysis.
Within the same school, the differentiated aspects of the same thing are presented by Nishida, Tanabe, Watsuji and Miki respectively, and this may be helpful to understand their differences and a further integrity of them in comparison to the Hegelian and Whiteheadian time-centered type of thinking.
1. Time
Whitehead's idea of 'objective immortality' of the past bears the resemblance to the Indo-Buddhist idea of karma which is the real potential for the present action. In contrast to Einstein's geometrical spatialization of the universe, Whitehead and Tanabe interpret relativity physics in terms of event or time, especially the latter attempting at a unification of relativity and quantum mechanics with the help of the imaginary number. According to the historical prototype of the Chinese way of thinking, the alternate change between the positive and the negative is comparable to Whitehead's idea of time as 'perpetual perishing' which is presupposed by perpetual arising in succession. The ontological principle that the end is identical with the beginning, or the end returns to the beginning, is not only peculiar to Christian eschatology but also to Classical Chinese thought as well as to the Buddhist view of history, according to which a new beginning, deeply concealed, of history occurs again after the decline and end of the old history: at the end is the hidden beginning as the originary origin to be fully disclosed, as Heidegger points out. Even Einstein still sticks to the static universe, as opposed to the enormously expanding universe begun with the big bang origin. Even so, however, the differences among them might lie in the emphasis on which side of space and time as the discontinuous continuum.
Hegel, too, asserts that subject and object are identical with each other beyond their difference. This is what is meant by his famous phrase of the identity of identity and non-identity. In other words, subject and object are superseded in and through negation, and are further sublated into a higher dimension of self-identity in a dialectical way. Hence, for Hegel, nature is the self-estranged or alienated form of spirit; the essence of nature is nothing but spirit. Nature and spirit are elevated into Absolute Spirit through negation. Nature is the self-externalization of Spirit in becoming other for itself: Spirit or Idea as the potential presupposed at the outset returns to itself as the self-realization in the end through the triadic process of self-negation in the form of nature as the self-estrangement or alienation; time is spirally cyclic. For Hegel, the whole of truth, i.e., Spirit, Reason, Idea or God, is the subject as the substance which is predicated by its self-manifesting developmental processive movement of history.
2. Causality
Even the basic Buddhist idea of co-dependent origination of phenomena, comparable to Whitehead's concrescence of a new actuality as a unity-in-diversity, has the dual connotation: on the one hand, the logical connection between ground and result in the dimension of space, as asserted by Tetsuro Watsuji from the Kantian epistemological viewpoint, and on the other, the temporal relationship of cause and effect in succession, as the traditional interpretation insists. This is the problem of causality in the temporal order and/or the spatial structure in the analysis of human existence entangled with suffering of life in the environmental situation. Concerning temporal causality vis-à-vis spatial causality, this might be another version of the opposition and unification between determinism (fatalism) and free will, placing the emphasis on the teleological importance beyond the mechanistic determinism. For Heidegger, while being already thrown into the given world, human existence at the same time projects itself towards the future to achieve its subjective purpose, though being not always successful. This existential scheme is also found in Whitehead's analysis of human experience in which the subjective act of becoming in the immediate present towards attaining the possible aim has already been determined by the past inherited being as the real potentiality. The Indo-Buddhist idea of karma (action and its potential influence) is related to the past being, the thrown situation in the actual world, and is still open to the future possibility of the self-realization of human essence, despite its hindrance and possible failure. This analytical structure articulates the subjective teleological significance of free will, transcending the past bondage and creating a new actuality mediated by the subjective aim in action, which is in harmony with the Aristotelian entelecheia as the dynamic unification of potentiality and actuality in the self-realizing movement of essence in phenomena in the end.
3. Topos
Nishida's idea of self-identity in absolute contradistinction is the very expression of binary unity of dialectical triadicity, and he deems the historical world as the creating the form under the conditioned circumstances as dynamic evolution of history, being influenced by Aristotle'spoiesis (making, building).
Behind Nishida's philosophy, there is eminently the Buddhist tradition. Buddhism is a historically developed thought comprising the Indian tendency of searching for transcendent eternity and the Chinese propensity for involving the actual world with the result of the dialectical unification of them, and hence it is beyond the dichotomy of alternative of either/or. There are both dimensions of eternal realm and immanent dynamics. This is also true for Nishida attempting at a synthesis of eastern and western thought, referring to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and so on; his main concept of the Topos or Place of Absolute Nothingness is not only influenced by Plato and Aristotle, but also, in my view, reflective of the agricultural society whereby land is regarded as the stable invariable substratum.
In this regard, Nishida himself expresses the abstract principle of the mutual
determination in negation between the human subjects and environment in opposition in the formation of the historical world. Therefore, it is obvious that his way of thinking is determined by his own specific setting of the geo-surrounding environment. For him, the individual self is a self-projective point of the Absolute as a copy of the world in the form of a creative element of the creative world in getting touch upon the transcendent One. This would signify the implicit influence of the specific geographic and socio-historical background, instead of the world in general, on the human consciousness of subjective activity of thinking. Creation of a new world means the sublation of the infinite past in the present towards the future from the determined object in the past to the making subject in the present as the acting subject in self-negation. This may correspond to the Whiteheadian analysis of the subjective immediacy of becoming in the present through the mediation of the objective being in the past with the irreversible vector of accumulation of objective immortality of the past in the direction of ever advancing into novelty in the changing process of appearance of essence. This may also resemble to Hegel's historical process in which the self-realization of Reason or Spirit is developed step by step reaching the final stage of the state existence as the attainment of the eternal idea of the Kingdom of God on earth, though perpetuating and rationalizing the already existing actuality as the direct affirmation of status quo without self-negation within itself, as R. Bhaskar points out.
For both Nishida and Tanabe mathematics and physics are very important elements for thinking, though biology is not so a big background as the trend of the time. Hence, there might be a shortage of biological influences due to the limitation of the age. Although infinite cyclic recurrence in the biological sense is not so explicit, their ideas are chiefly focused upon the eternal now, the absolute present, in which eternity and history, transcendence and immanence are crossed and unified in action as a dialectical unity of the opposed in the historical movement. Recent advanced biology should contribute to constructing a new phase of their thought, instead of mere reiteration of the previous intellectual achievements. It may be our task to succeed in establishing the appropriate construction of thought for the present era of the highly developed sciences such as biology and cosmology unknown to them at that time.
4. Entelecheia and Buddhahood
The self-realization of the essence in the phenomena is relevant to activate the innate nature of Buddhahood inwardly contained in every human being in the actual form of concrete personal existence. The Buddha means the person who has already realized his own innate original essential nature as the actual event or entity.
The ancient Chinese idea of change, i.e., yin and yang, is received into Buddhism; according to Tendai, even Upanishad, Confucianism, Lao -tzu and others are regarded as the introductory preparations for Buddhism as the constituting moments of the historical development of Buddhism as a whole. The biological figurations of seed, maturity and harvest are incorporated into the last and highest theory of Buddha's saving activity as the gradual developing process arriving at the
ultimate enlightenment as the self-realization of the essence of human beings in the actual event.
The Buddhist notion of Emptiness is not always the same as the Tao. In the early period of the Chinese import of Buddhism Buddhist Emptiness is explained by Lao -tzu's Nothingness as ultimate reality from which all phenomena arise through Being, but later they are distinguished from each other due to the former's non-substantiality as the reverse of co-dependent origination of phenomena. While Nishida's Absolute Nothingness is compromised by both, Tanabe's is the authentic Buddhist one, though Nishida's idea of self-identity in absolute contradistinction is another expression of the Buddhist logic of non-duality as well as duality based upon Buddhist Emptiness. Nishida inherits the complex tradition in which Confucianism, Lao-tzu, and Buddhism, including Upanishad, are amalgamated consciously as well as unconsciously.
W. Windelband's definition of entelecheia as the self-realization of the essence in the phenomena may be appropriate for a dynamic unity of potentiality and actuality in the moving process rather than complete reality which may be vague and static in meaning. Windelband's may correspond to the Buddhist doctrine of Buddhahood in that although everyone has the Buddhahood in a position of pure potentiality as the principle possibility, it is quite difficult to actualize the Buddhahood as its original essence on the level of factual possibility; there arises a series of different stages to the final attainment in practice. In pure potentiality human beings are situated in natural inactivity with symmetry, whereas in the process of activity of attaining Buddhahood the symmetry is broken in the direction towards the self-realization of the latent essence in the space-time existence of personality. To become a Buddha is the self-realizing process of movement in virtue of practical activity of the Bodhisattva. The underlying principle is Absolute Emptiness or Nothingness of self-transformation or change between potentiality and actuality in a dynamic movement of the individual action to realize its own original essence towards the future. Hereby it might be analogous to the so-called Higgs field which has the two kinds of vacuums: one is inoperative and symmetric without difference, and the other is operative with the asymmetric difference.
5. Immanent God
For Nishida, the word "God" does not mean transcendent being beyond the human world but rather the infinitely diverse modes of changes in the universe, the manifoldness of changeable phenomena in the cosmos, as the principle of immanence which is in line with the Book of Change. In the background of Nishida's thinking Confucianism, Lao-tzu, Buddhism are compounded as the past traditional heritage in the position of functional efficient cause evoking a new synthesis with western thoughts in a creative way for the future self-development of history. In Tanabe's view, however, Nishida is conceived of being still confined to the standpoint of contemplation without the socio-historical extension of practice in the full sense. Tanabe extends his scope to the social entity such as the state existence in terms of the triadic logic of the individual, species (particular) and the genus (universal) based
upon the constant activity of negative mediation of Absolute Nothingness. Even so, however, Tanabe's conceptual logical speculation, devoid of any imagination, seems to be not favorite of the majority opting for intuitional imaginary intelligence.
Nishida's God is immanent in the world throughout as panentheism in the case of Whitehead, and God goes down to even the level of demon in the guise of doing evil as the unification of the opposed. To recycle or reset/revert to the original position might be the same as the eternal return of the same which is not so explicitly expressed for Nishida emphasizing the historical formation in which the eternal ideas are touched upon at the absolute present. Tanabe's triadic logic has the bearing on the individual's free subjective action by which eternity and history are negatively unified at each present in the direction of forming history towards the future, being not static but dynamic in character.
Nishida regards the historical world as primary, beyond the natural biological dimension, in the direction of moving from the present to the following present as the absolute present in which eternal ideas are touched upon in the subjective act of making things from the things made as objects. This is also true for Tanabe with the special emphasis on the moving origin, comparable to Heidegger's Ereignis, i.e., event of Being, as the absolute present in which transcendent eternity and immanent history are mediated in negation to each other through the individual action of freedom. Nishida's position is immanent transcendence in which our selves are to be getting in touch with the absolute One and united with the beginning and end of the world in the eschatological situation. Absolute Nothingness/Emptiness is essentially neither inward nor outward but non-dual beyond a dualistic dichotomy as well as both in appearance. For Nishida, God as the absolute self-negation contains self-negation within Himself, appearing in the different forms to save people in the expedient world, which might be the indirect and implicit influence of the Lotus Sutra, according to his last days important writing on the Topological Logic and the Religious World View.
Both Nishida and Tanabe never exclude the twin moments of transcendence and immanence, without being entangled with a kind of dualistic dichotomy of the alternative. The examples of self-negation are God's incarnation in the human form of Jesus and the eternal Buddha's transfigurations in the historical Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. For Nishida, our selves are immanent as well as transcendent as the self-identity in contradiction in the socio-historical actuality as the elliptical closed space of history in the formation of history in the manner of the self-determination at the absolute present of the world whereby the individual self operates as the self-projection of the Absolute in reverse. For Nishida, the past is never ascribed to pure nothingness but in the mode of nothingness qua being, comparable to Whitehead's past as remaining stubborn fact, still actual in the efficient cause on the status of objective immortality exercising its real potential power for the succeeding actuality.
Tanabe is critical of Aristotle's logic of self-identical being, which is current throughout the entire history of western metaphysics, even for Hegel and Heidegger, without the conversion in and through negation in quality, remaining merely a difference in degree. In fact, Tanabe declares his own position as following and
further advancing the later Plato's dialectic in which eternal ideas are to be realized in the actual world as a unity of ideality and reality, i.e., absolute actuality.
Aristotle's topos and Plato's khola are just the hints to Nishida's topological logic in which the notion of coincidentia oppositorum presented by Nicholas of Cusa is also influential to the self-identity in absolute contradistinction as another variant of the Buddhist logic of non-duality and duality in the integrative totality. Nishida and Tanabe have the integralist tendency to make up the complex systems of thought in confrontation with western thought in the longstanding tradition of Japanese intellectuality which is all inclusive of various elements in a higher dimension, as shown in the Buddhist texts such as the Lotus Sutra.
Even the sun is the phenomenon of the transformation of hydrogen into helium as the self-negation in conversion with the result of emitting huge light and heat in nature. Emptiness or Absolute Nothingness is neither being nor nothingness in the relative sense but also converts itself in negation into them, and this is what is meant by self-identity in absolute contradistinction as the variant expression of the same.
Culture is the product of human activity by which natural matter is transformed into the human purposes in conformity with the inherent forms or transcendent ideas along with the advance of scientific technology and social institutions. Today's astrophysical ideas are highly hypothetical beyond the experimental facts without which the advance of science would be unfeasible. Culture, including science, is the historical accumulated outcome of human imagination and intelligence, the historically mediated result of human efforts to attain the ideal in the form of reality. For Nishida, although religion and culture are opposed to each other, nevertheless, they are to be mutually unified; culture is grounded by religion.
Surely Nishida's writing style is rather complex and vague with the neo-theological bent, and his thought is more eastern in character than Tanabe in connection with the traditional practice of meditation which is his source of experience, reflecting the turning period of modernization and westernization of Japanese culture.
6. Non-Action
Lao-tzu's inactivity, action without action, i.e., naturalness as what things are originally, is the common ground of the Japanese Buddhist idea of the threefold Buddha-body with inactive activity as the original naturalness of things to which Nishida and Tanabe also refer fragmentarily.
The Buddhist idea of inactive activity, action without action, does not mean to retreat to the level of animal but to advance into the highest level of self-realization of human original essence as actuality.
Nishida does not exclude the demonic moment within God and Tanabe also retains the radical evil inherently lurking in the ground of human beings, without resulting in a kind of monism of goodness as in the case of Platonic Christian dogmatic in which evil, temporal devoid of good, is overcome by good in the end as mere appearance without its own reality.
What is at issue in respect of inactivity is why Tao or God cannot prevent human
beings from suffering of evils or disasters. The matter might seem to be not a reduction of human affairs to the natural biological horizon in accordance with the cosmic rhythm but rather a positively ethical practical construction of value systems appropriate for the highly advanced human intelligence in the historical formation of morally-culturally oriented teleology, in contrast to animals merely endowed with natural feeling.
Even if Tao includes binarity and triadicity, its logic is obscure with respect to their relationship in the poetic language. Even Whitehead explains the aesthetic synthesis of experience as contrast in identity or identity in contrast, not as either/or dichotomy. Tanabe criticizes Aristotle's unity of potentiality and actuality for being still involved in the analytical formal logic of self-identical being of the developing movement of life without breaking out of the immanent principle. This might be true for Taoist immanent naturalism. Tanabe is critical of the western type of thinking in terms of Being within which Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger are confined, in his view. Taoism is one stream among others even in ancient China. Lao-tzu's Nothingness is indefinite reality but not always identical with the Buddhist Emptiness or Absolute Nothingness entailing perpetual self-negating activity. Human intelligence is also the element by which evil, disaster, conflict, war could be avoided on their own efforts.
Tanabe criticizes the entire western thinking as centered on the self-identical Being of life vis-à-vis his dynamic structure of thought supported by the principle of Absolute Nothingness beyond relative nothingness. Even though Tanabe is critical of both of Plato and Aristotle, he does not totally deny their truths but aims to synthesize them in a higher dimension.
7. Imagination
Generally, mythology is the peculiar way of thinking and expression of the ancient people in both east and west and contains truth, as Eliade suggests. Religion is not the same as science in origination, but even science is progressed by human imagination. Imagination is the driving forth for art which expresses more truth than nature, as Heidegger and Tanabe hold. Human history has been formed by imagination, as the Japanese Kyoto Marxist philosopher Kiyoshi Miki articulates in his grand work "the Logic of Imagination" in which mythology, technology and social institution are mentioned as the three component elements of history. Even modern technology has been developed from the ancient magic as the historical fact. Today's astrophysicist S. Hawking's idea of imaginary time, connected with imaginary number which is the mathematical construct in contrast to real number but is necessary for quantum mechanics, is hypothesis; such recent theories as multiverse, endless universe, cyclic cosmology, the extra-dimensions of space, etc., are not yet experimentally evidenced but remain merely hypothetical as the products of physicist Imagination, bearing the resemblance with the ancient notion of the eternal return of the same. The Christian Trinity is also expressed by the images of father and son as the symbols but not as the abstract rational concept, as Hegel asserts. For Nietzsche, too, culture is progressed by art as the imaginary element of creative history.
In the preface of the Logic of Imagination, Miki implicitly criticizes Tanabe's
logicism, without explicitly mentioning the name. The reason why Nishida's philosophy is more attractive and popular than Tanabe's is its appealing to intuitive image, contrary to the latter's rigidly conceptual logical thinking. Miki is in line with Nishida's intuitive intellectual heritage.
For Miki, movement is primary, and form is the motif of his logic of imagination as the formative principle of history. The idea of causality arises from the imaginative habit of experience, according to Miki's interpretation of Hume, and for his interpretation of Kant concepts are based upon the transcendental imagination as the synthetic unity of experience. Anyway, Miki's standpoint is based upon human experience.
Miki says that the Marxist notion of social revolution is the contemporary myth, and his idea is first of all based upon Nishida's earliest idea of pure experience in which subject and object have not yet been separated, analyzing Hume's concept of experience in relation to causality and teleology and Kant's judgment as imagination which is prior to the experiential truth as the synthesis of manifold experience with reference to the intuition of space and time as the original exhibition of productive imagination.
In fact, Miki refers to Aristotle's metaphysics and this motivated him to attempt at writing the Logic of Imagination which is the original ground of reason and the unity of logos and pathos as the logic of form, transformation of history in action, saying that the unity of causality and teleology is attained by creative technique in the imagination of a new form acquired for the world. His logic of imagination as the origin of dialectic is divided into four sections of mythology, social institution, technology and experience, though language remains merely plan.
Aristotle says that spirit never thinks without image (De anima). The power of imagination is the principle of the formation of history, according to Miki who attempts at a further development of Nishida's philosophy. But his brilliant work has not been sufficiently reflected so far, despite its historical significance.
Jaspers certainly expects a new second axial age to begin with the end of the first one represented by Socrates, Confucius, Sakyamuni, and Jesus in the present time, suggesting a paradigm shift relating to Mahayana Buddhism, which may also correspond to Heideggerian other beginning vis-à-vis the first one as another version of the second coming of Christ. There might be widely the nostalgia for the lost utopia, one of whose variant might be Heidegger's quest for the other beginning as well. The authentic Aristotelian significance might be now the dawn of a new age of enlightenment with the opening of 21 century.
Conclusion
Although the distinction of eastern and western philosophy has been so far laid upon that of either Being or Nothingness, nonetheless, even within the eastern group, particularly the Kyoto School, the divergence emerges, when viewed from another angle of the distinctiveness of space and time. For example, Nishida's thinking way is centered on space or place from the geometrical perspective, whilst Tanabe's is intensively focused upon time owing to its dynamic movement of active mediation of
eternity in history, though both stand on the same idea of Absolute Nothingness as the eastern traditional intellect. Even though Tanabe is critical of western philosophy based upon and searching for Being as ultimate reality, he is still bound up with Hegel, Heidegger and Whitehead with respect to the dynamic structure of temporal process of history. Even if so, however, there is no absolute line of the difference between the space-oriented style of thinking and time-involving manner of thinking, but the difference is regarded as entailed by the angle and emphasis taken by each philosopher, in viewing the fact that space and time are identical with each other as a discontinuous continuity of one and the same reality, as is revealed by Einstein's theory of relativity and current highly developed astrophysics.
In addition, with reference to the formation of the historical world, the human ability of imagination plays a great deal of role in the creatively extending construction of human ideas appropriate for the present and future world. The power of imagination does not stick to the past bondage but rather go beyond it towards an attainable ideality in the actual course of history, as suggested by such political enterprise as recently occurred as a transforming action of the closed systems of the engaging world with a future hope of breakthrough.
In sum, it would be urgently necessary in the global historical context to further develop a possible synthesis of Nishida, Tanabe and Whitehead in view of establishing the stable world in our cosmic era from the Neo-Aristotelian bio-cosmological perspective.
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