Pathway to Japanese Literature

On Descartes' Philosophy

I.

Since Kantian philosophy emerged，Cartesian philosophy was abandoned.
It came to be regarded as dogmatic and metaphysical.
Philosophy was deemed critical and required an epistemological foundation.
The method of first investigating true reality’s nature and deriving all questions therefrom fell into disuse.
In his day，people took practice as their starting point.
No reality existed apart from practice.
What was merely conceptualized could not constitute reality.
Yet true practice had also to reside within true reality’s domain—otherwise，it remained mere illusion.
Even if one posited an “ought” preceding existence and elucidated morality’s form through so-called practical reason，true practice was never merely formally determined.
Here too，form devoid of content proved empty.
People might claim true reality lay beyond knowing.
Were that so，our very lives would merit classification as transient phantasms.
From such ground，no conviction risking life and death could arise.
Reality did not stand separate from our existential selves.
That said，even a world termed universal consciousness—constructed through subjective synthetic unity—persisted only as self-conceived cognitive territory.
Needless to say，no practical ought could emerge from such objective reality’s sphere.
One might doubt all reality，as Descartes did.
Yet doubting one’s own existence remained impossible.
For he who doubts was none other than the doubting self itself.

It is said that the self cannot know itself.
In such cases, people speak of "knowing" in the sense of objective cognition.
In such a sense, it goes without saying that the self cannot know itself.
The self cannot become an object to itself.
That which becomes an object of the self is not the self.
If that is so, is the self merely unknowable?
That which is merely unknowable has no distinction from nothingness.
Is the self mere nothingness?
What is it that declares the self unknowable?
The self that cannot be known objectively must be that which is most intimately known to itself.
On one hand, we think the self knows itself; what does it mean to know in such a sense?
In such a sense, this act of knowing must first become the problem.
Object cognition too presumably arises from there.
Those who depart from objective cognition's standpoint consider even the existence of the self itself by applying spatiotemporal forms in an objectified manner.
As psychological selves, our selves too can be considered in that way.
Yet that is a conceived self, not a conceiving self.
It is a self that could belong to anyone.
It is not the form of existence belonging to the self-aware self.

That knowing constitutes a fact may hold true, but conceived merely as a spatiotemporal fact, knowing cannot be grasped. The knower must exist within the spatiotemporal world while simultaneously transcending it. How does one reside within this world of time and space yet surpass it? This must be contemplated through expressive relations. The self expresses the world while serving as a foothold for the world's self-expression. Through this form of contradictory self-identity, the self-aware existence of our self becomes conceivable—being within the world yet perpetually transcending it. By means of this immanence-as-transcendence and transcendence-as-immanence, we arrive at the conception of the singular historical self: unique yet temporal. The self-aware self must possess historicity. Even time-space's forms become logically conceivable as formative patterns of this self-expressive world—a world temporal through multiplicity's self-negating unity and spatial through unity's self-negating multiplicity. To know means that which expresses becomes that which is expressed; in self-awareness, knower and known unite as one. Thus being becomes knowing and knowing becomes being—in self-awareness, existence constitutes essence and essence existence (essentia＝existentia). From such reality's standpoint emerges infinite moral imperative: the more uniquely individuated our self becomes, the more its self-limitation collides with absolute oughtness. Some might claim knowledge and existence of mere objects persist apart from our self-awareness—yet their foundation must ultimately derive from self-awareness itself, as Descartes endeavored through radical doubt.

The problem of philosophy does not begin with how pure mathematics or pure physics are made possible, nor does it begin merely with the existence of knowledge or how knowledge comes to be.
Science too has developed within the historical world.
When epistemologists speak of knowing, they have already confined it to objective cognition.
The knower itself has been excluded.
Yet knowing cannot be conceived without a knower.
Herein lies a profound contradiction—a fundamental problem.
Moreover, once adopting the standpoint of objective cognition, knowing in its fullest sense never enters one's field of view.
What we call reality consists solely of what conforms to cognitive forms.
It becomes that which is known, not that which knows.
Following ancient tradition, I maintain that philosophy constitutes the study of true reality.
This is ontology—the science of being qua being.
Here resides philosophy's essential nature.
From this standpoint, philosophy examines diverse problems.
To analyze knowledge constitutes epistemology; to examine morality forms moral philosophy.
Critical philosophy represents profound reflection upon knowledge itself.
Thus it qualifies as philosophy proper.
It embodies an existential confrontation between knowledge and true reality.
Yet true reality's problem was cast aside as the unknowable thing-in-itself.
While one might terminate inquiry at this point, we must acknowledge numerous unresolved issues persisting here.
Philosophy has devolved into subjectivism.

Of course, this is not to call it psychologistic; yet even what is termed the objectivity of knowledge stands upon the ought of the cognitive subject.
Those who discuss true reality have been dismissed as metaphysical.

Then, what sort of thing is true reality?
It must first be that which exists in itself, requiring nothing other than its own existence (Descartes' philosophical substance).
However, that which truly exists by itself must contain the other within itself and include self-negation.
It must be one while containing infinite multiplicity; that is, it must act of itself.
If this were not so, it could not be said to exist by itself.
That which moves by itself—that is, acts of itself—must contain absolute self-negation within itself.
If this were not so, it could not truly act of itself.
As long as something foundational is conceived in any sense, it does not act of itself.
It must await self-negation in the other.
That which endlessly contains self-negation within itself and operates through self-negation as a medium must operate by objectifying itself.
That which expresses is that which is expressed; that which works self-expressively—that is, works through knowing—may be said to truly contain infinite negation within itself, move of itself, and work of itself.

I think that from this point emerges a philosophical method through which true reality itself comes to be sought by us.
It was self-awareness through doubt—that is, meditari—just as Descartes once employed in his *Meditations* (Noda Matao’s *Descartes*).
It had to be a thorough negative analysis.
He stated in the Second Set of Objections of the *Meditations* that there were two ways of proof (*démontrer*).
One was analysis (*analyse ou résolution*), and the other was synthesis (*synthèse ou composition*).
Analysis was a method whereby things were systematically discovered and one observed how effects depended on causes.
If readers followed it carefully while attending to all that was contained within, they would find the method fully proven and understood as if they themselves had discovered it.
Synthesis—contrary to this—proved conclusions through processes such as definitions, postulates, and axioms; it was what we call the geometric method.
And he was said to have adopted solely the analytical method in his *Meditations*.
For in geometry—since its fundamental concepts aligned with sensory intuition—they were accepted by anyone; however, in metaphysical problems, it proved difficult to clearly and distinctly grasp the initial fundamental concepts.
By its inherent nature, it was something even clearer than what we find in geometry; yet it could only be understood by those who—with great care—strove to detach their minds as much as possible from what appeared incompatible with various preconceptions acquired through our senses since childhood.
If one were to insist solely on that approach, it was said that contrarians would readily deny it.
Descartes seemed primarily concerned with persuading others here—but thorough skeptical self-awareness and unrelenting negative analysis had to remain philosophy’s own intrinsic method: the very methodology proper to this discipline.
I consider philosophy’s method to be negative self-awareness and self-aware analysis.

True reality, which exists by itself requiring nothing other than its own existence, must be that which understands itself and maintains self-awareness.
Even when claiming it is understood through itself—as with Spinoza—reason and fact bifurcate, essence and existence stand opposed.
What is comprehended solely through itself constitutes an attribute; it does not attain substance.
God as the substratum of infinite attributes must serve as subject to both the world of compossibles and the realm of events.
That which truly exists through itself and comprehends through itself must be termed pure fact—events determining events themselves.
Even what we call pure act already occupies derivative status.
For such reality to clarify itself—nay, for such reality to achieve self-clarification—there exists no path save through absolute negative self-awareness.
Herein resides philosophy’s conduit to religion.
Beneath profound doubt dwells profound enlightenment—so runs the axiom.
From this vantage does philosophy apprehend knowledge’s foundational principles.
Thus philosophy’s supreme principle must assume contradictory self-identity.

Knowledge does not arise solely from the standpoint of formal logic.
Knowledge must include intuition in some sense.
Otherwise, it cannot be objective knowledge.
My intuition is a process where the end resides within the beginning.
Therefore, each individual process contains both commencement and conclusion.
Even in what we call teleological acts, this principle would hold true.
Yet in intuition, every point constitutes both origin and terminus.
This constitutes a creative process; hence it is self-aware.
It requires no temporal mediation—the flow of time itself emerges therefrom.
Thus intuition becomes an infinite process.
I term this the infinite process wherein self-existing reality mirrors itself within itself.
Intuition does not imply negating the process to glimpse final truth in an instant.
That would amount to profoundly naive mysticism.
Not even artistic intuition operates thus.
It remains fundamentally an infinite progression.
Even physics finds its foundation in the endless process of active intuition through our historically embodied senses.
Within intuitive processes—where each locus births both questions and resolutions—infinite inquiries well up from creative origins.
Nothing springs forth from negation alone.
From mere formal logic's perspective, any quandary may be posited.
Yet such posings never attain scholarly significance.

The problem arises from where our self becomes the process of true reality's self-expression.
The answer may be considered to reside within the locus of questioning itself.

Our knowledge arises neither from the mere world of things nor from the mere world of the self.
In conventional terms, it arises from the mutual determination of subject and object.
And this is nothing other than our self becoming a foothold for true reality's self-expression through the process of that which limits itself by itself.
Therefore, the more our self becomes truly real as true reality's self-determination—that is, the more truly individual it becomes—the more our self seeks truth.
True practice also emerges from there.
Truth is neither relative as relativists claim nor definitively determined in a single instance as intuitionists assert.
A problem contains infinite solutions, and a solution contains infinite problems.
That I previously stated the historical world has self-identity in its tasks will now be comprehensible from this.
Given this state of affairs, all our pursuit of truth may be called negative analysis and skeptical self-awareness.
Science is neither mere judgmental negation nor analysis.
Scientific negation must be the negation of our self's conventional preconceptions and dogmas from active intuition's standpoint.
Analysis must follow Descartes' sense of analysis.
Negation for negation's sake and analysis for analysis's sake differ not at all from doubt for doubt's sake.
Therefore, scientific knowledge's establishment first requires active intuition's standpoint.

In the aforementioned sense, philosophy—as the process of self-expression of fundamental reality that truly exists by itself and determines itself through itself—must remain to the very end negative self-awareness and self-aware analysis.
And it must be—as the foundation of all reality and the study of reality’s reality—a standpoint of seeing without a seer; a standpoint where the world reflects itself.
There must be nothing objective in any sense—no, nothing substratum-like—in that place.
There must be nothing that is sought through inference.
Those who seek proof of themselves in others are not those who exist by themselves.
Even if something becomes a subject without becoming a predicate, that does not mean it self-certifies.
The object of philosophy must be that which self-certifies itself—an object without an object.
What Kant rejected as metaphysics is the metaphysics that seeks reality externally through inference.
In such a case, philosophy degenerates into science.
And as long as it departs from active intuitive experience merely inferentially, it cannot possess any objectivity.
Philosophy is nothing more than fantasy.
Philosophy must be the study of an object without an object; the study of self-certification.
Therein lies the raison d’être of philosophy itself, distinct from science.
Science is established when the self-expressive world expresses itself through active intuition.
The world of science is a world where form limits itself.
At its foundation, there must be seeing without a seer—the world reflecting itself.
The reason philosophy must serve as the foundation of science lies precisely here.
Therefore, the method of science is active intuition.
The method of philosophy is self-awareness.
And both are infinite processes.

As I stated above, my active intuition is an infinite process.
Negative self-awareness, too, is an infinite process.
As Alain states, skeptical self-awareness must be repeated many times.

The standpoint of philosophy, as a standpoint of seeing without a seer and thinking without a thinker, grasps the self-aware principle that limits itself there.
It must be grasped conceptually, deeply and thoroughly, as the principle of true reality that self-determines through itself.
When this is reified, it ceases to be; it becomes nothing more than a dead concept.
I think that since ancient times, philosophy has begun in such a standpoint and has developed within such a standpoint up to the present day.
Socrates’ philosophy too began from the standpoint of skeptical self-awareness in the Greek era, and the principle of reality that limits itself was grasped in Plato’s Idea.
However, in the era of the Greek polis world, there was not yet what could be called true personal self-awareness.
It was not a world of active agents.
It was a world of logocentric reality—a world of that which is seen.
Augustine’s philosophy of self-awareness might be considered to have grasped Christian reality—that is, historical reality—but medieval philosophy remained religious philosophy.
It did not take reality itself as its problem.
The conception of reality never transcended the Greek framework.
One could say that medieval philosophy’s reality remained both Christian and Greek.
When the medieval world reached an impasse and entered early modern science’s era, the self-expressive world of historical reality returned to itself and sought a new philosophical starting point.
The world of historical reality that had become personally self-aware in the Middle Ages might also be said to have sought natural self-awareness further.
Our self, returning deeply to its own foundation there, sought to grasp new reality.
This became Descartes’ philosophical task.
Descartes’ world belonged to early modern science.
Yet even from Descartes through Leibniz, his philosophy still carried medieval elements behind it.
In its treatment of God’s relationship with the self, it remained fundamentally incomplete.
I believe Kant’s philosophy marked our entry into pure scientific philosophy.

Kant’s philosophy was the philosophy of scientific self-awareness.
Yet the realm of mere science was not one of true reality existing through itself and determining itself—it was not the world of genuine concrete reality.
As I had initially stated, Kant had merely disposed of this problem.
Even when speaking of practice, only formal norms could be derived therefrom.
Kant’s practical philosophy formed the foundation of civic morality in modern society.
I did not by any means disregard Kant’s moral precepts, but today’s historical world demanded a new philosophical starting point and fresh principles of praxis.
We had to return once more to Descartes’ point of departure and reexamine it.

II

The problem of philosophy existed by itself and was the problem of true reality that determined itself; its method had to be thoroughly radical skeptical self-awareness—to elaborate, it had to be absolute negative self-awareness and analytical self-awareness.
The practice in which we could truly stake our lives also arose from this.
In this sense, I expressed agreement with Descartes’ problem and method.
To those embarking on philosophy, I would recommend thorough study of his *Meditations*.
However, I considered that he ultimately failed to thoroughly pursue his purpose and method.
He did not break free from Aristotelian logic.
He sought reality thoroughly as something subject-oriented and fundamental.
From there, he fell into what was called dogmatic metaphysics.
This was why he had to be rejected by Kant.

That which truly exists by itself and determines itself must not only exist in itself and be understood through itself but must also be that which understands itself—that which is self-aware.
If not, it becomes merely something opposed to our self—an objective being existing apart from us.
When he posited a substantial basis external to this by invoking *cogito ergo sum*, I believe Descartes had already strayed from the path of negative self-awareness and departed from the method of self-aware analysis.
Of course, even if we take it as Spinoza does—as a single proposition *sum cogitans*—the problem must lie precisely in this *sum*.
If we consider our own self as a substance in Descartes' sense, then even what are called clear and distinct truths—as internal facts within this substance—cannot escape being merely subjective.
Descartes himself was acutely aware of this dilemma.
He even entertained the notion that mathematical truths themselves might be diabolical fabrications.
Ultimately he sought the objectivity of knowledge in God's perfection and divine veracity.
Whether we consider Descartes' reasoning here or Leibniz's pre-established harmony—though characteristic of their era—these notions seem unworthy of such incisive intellects.
When we posit our self as an independent substance à la Descartes, we inevitably generate contradictions with God's existence.
Descartes addressed God's existence in his Third Meditation.
This approach is termed proof through consequences.
One line of argument begins by considering the cause of our idea of God; another seeks the cause of our own existence.
Nothing arises from nothingness.
Moreover, we cannot locate within our finite selves the cause for an infinite God's conception.
Nor can we find within our present self the cause for its continuation into subsequent moments.
Herein must operate a creative force transcending ourselves.
As such a cause, we are compelled to acknowledge God's existence.
Yet when we reason thusly, our self ceases to be reality existing through itself.
Reality existing through itself can only be God.
Thereby our self's independence is forfeited, and our self-awareness must be extinguished.

And God could not escape being a mysterious cause to our self. In essence, within Descartes' philosophy, what was termed "cause"—that which exists through itself and determines itself through itself—I consider to be akin to Spinoza's *causa sui*. It had to signify the foundational principle where essence is existence and existence is essence. To achieve this, first, the relationship between essence and existence needed thorough investigation.

Descartes touched on the problem of God’s existence again in the “Fifth Meditation.” There it became epistemological. That which was clear and distinct was true. The existence of God was certain to him to at least the same degree that mathematical truths were certain. Just as the fact that the sum of a triangle’s three angles equals two right angles could not be separated from the triangle’s essence, God’s existence could not be separated from God’s essence. To conceive of a Supreme Perfect Being lacking existence became as self-contradictory as imagining a mountain without a valley. Therefore, God existed. And thus, an utterly perfect God did not deceive. From there, we established the objectivity of clear and distinct knowledge within our self. The proof that God’s existence was contained in the idea of Him as the Supreme Perfect Being should not have been summarily dismissed through analogies such as “the idea of 100 yen is not a 100-yen coin.” It was not that God existed in reality through the forms of Kantian philosophy. When one logically pursued the foundation of reality to its ultimate conclusion, I believed the reasoning that “the Supreme Perfect Being exists” also emerged (Leibniz, “Quod Ens Perfectissimum existit.”). However, such an approach of grounding the objectivity of knowledge in God’s veracity had lacked any logicality. This demonstrated the breakdown of subject-oriented logic. That which was clear and distinct had to truly exist as something understood by itself—as adequate knowledge. God was that which expressed itself. Our ideas were clear and distinct and adequate insofar as they had God as their cause. In short, Descartes’ philosophy that had set out from *cogito ergo sum* had to arrive at Spinoza. It reached its culmination in arriving at the statement: “All things are in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived” (*Ethica*. Prop. 15 p. 1). Spinoza’s philosophy could be said to have set out from Descartes’ substance and reached the extremity of subject-oriented logic.

At this point, the uniqueness of our self was completely lost, and we became modes of substance.
We cogitate as modes of God.
As long as our ideas are in God, we know.
Thus, as our self-awareness was negated, God too lost the quality of being the foundation of our self-awareness as an objective being.
The God who should be most concrete became the most abstract caput mortuum.

Descartes doubted all things.
He pondered whether in this world there might be nothing—no heaven nor earth, no mind nor matter—not even a self.
Of course, I who think thus exist.
But might there not be some grand deceiver perpetually deluding me?
Could even a true God be nonexistent?
Yet even through such radical doubt persists an I who is deceived.
However much this deceiver may beguile me—so long as I think—here stands my existence; thus we reach the proposition *cogito ergo sum*.
And from this foundation did Cartesian philosophy arise.

I maintain that Descartes’ philosophy reveals an incompleteness at this very point.
Even should God deceive Himself, there remains a self that is deceived; if I were to doubt my own existence, it is I who doubt.
The act of doubting itself proves the existence of the self.
The principle of reality apprehended through such immediate evidence must take the form of contradictory self-identity rather than subject-oriented reality.
The *sum cogitans* self comes to be understood as a self-contradictory existence.
The self resides precisely where it ceaselessly negates itself.
Moreover, this cannot be mere negation but must constitute absolute negation-as-affirmation.
It must be a reality conceived through subject-oriented logic’s own self-negation.

Descartes denied everything from the standpoint of self-awareness.
Yet he failed to reach true negative self-awareness in the aforementioned sense.
When one speaks of self-evident facts, people immediately regard them as internal.
To depart from them is considered departing from within.
That we must depart from indubitable truths amounts to nothing beyond this.
But even here I discerned the presupposition of subject-oriented logic's dogmatism.
The indubitable fact persisting through doubt consists precisely in reality's contradictory self-identity—the unity of self and object, inner and outer.
To posit a preexisting self that contains such facts constitutes inferential reasoning; our very selves emerge from these facts.
Rather than being an internally evident fact within the self, this must instead be reframed as the fact of self-constitution.
The act of thinking itself already embodies this fact.
Even doubt originates from such contradictory self-identity.
Naturally I reject empiricism's external derivation of knowledge.
Equally I disavow purely internal origins.
The perception of logical departure as subjective stems from conceiving the self substantively and treating thought as its operation.
Yet logic does not belong to the self—rather we proceed from logic toward the self.
The self must be conceived as individual self-determination within contradictory self-identical logic.
Otherwise what we call logic reduces merely to associative operations of ideas—as certain British psychologists once asserted.

What became the target of Kant’s critical philosophy was the dogmatism of this subject-oriented reality.
To conceive of reality through inferential reasoning divorced from intuitive forms meant falling into the falsehood of transcendental dialectics.
This revealed the inherent self-contradiction of subject-oriented logic itself.
Thus reality itself had to undergo a fundamental transformation in its significance.
What we call objective reality emerged through the synthetic unity imposed by the cognitive subject.
Our self came to perceive itself through self-negation.
The grounding of reality was now sought in the self-awareness of this transcendental ego.
In this sense, I regard Kantian methodology itself as embodying negative self-awareness.
Critical philosophy represented a mode of negative self-awareness directed at science itself.
Yet did Kantian thought truly and thoroughly embody such negative self-awareness?
While Kant denied transcendent reality along subject-oriented lines, we may interpret him as having sought reality’s foundation through predicate-oriented transcendence.
Kant’s conscious self differed from Descartes’ substantial cogito; rather than being self-subsistent, it manifested as that which accompanies all my representations.
Our judgmental knowledge achieved its coherence through this synthetic unity.
The substratum—which served as grammatical subject but never predicate—inverted this relationship, enveloping subject-like elements predicatively to become a determining ground that established all judgments as acts of self-limitation.
Naturally, such claims would invite numerous objections from Kantian scholars.
I shall refrain here from engaging these disputes.
At its core, Kantian philosophy retained an unresolved opposition between subject and object—evident from its foundational premise in transcendental aesthetics that our self is externally moved—remaining trapped within subject-oriented logic.
Hence arose that notorious dilemma: the problem of das Ding an sich.
This impasse persisted even when recasting subject-object opposition as form-content or form-matter dualism.
Fichte famously sought resolution by radicalizing this trajectory—substantializing the cognitive subject itself.

The predicative subject became a metaphysical entity that determines itself.
That was Fichte’s transcendental ego.
I consider that in Fichte emerged a new concept of reality.
In Descartes’ philosophy, the substance existing through itself had been conceived through transcendence in the subject-oriented direction; in Fichte’s case, one might say it was conceived through transcendence in the predicate-oriented direction.

The thoroughgoing direction from Kant to Fichte paralleled that from Descartes to Spinoza.
Yet these constituted diametrically opposed orientations.
From the standpoint of self-awareness inherent in our contradictory self-identical being, the latter progression moved outward while the former turned inward.
Though both are termed metaphysical, Fichtean and Cartesian philosophies stood at antipodal extremes.
Returning to the standpoint of self-awareness within our actual contradictory self-identity—that is, to absolute negative self-awareness—we found it necessary to critique both Descartes’ philosophy and Fichte’s philosophy anew.
No—Kant’s critical philosophy itself demanded re-examination too.
The foundation of Kant’s critical philosophy had never fully shed the dogmatism of the subjective self.
This compelled me to insist we must return profoundly to Descartes’ standpoint of negative self-awareness—his method of self-aware analysis—and fundamentally re-evaluate our approach.
In our present age—this era demanding foundational critique of intellectual traditions, much like Descartes’ time—we were obliged to revisit the problem Descartes posed.
The essential question could no longer be Kant’s inquiry into how objective knowledge becomes possible; rather, it had to address what constitutes true reality that exists through itself while determining itself.
Scholarship too stood as a product of the historical world.
Kant’s age had conceived the world through science’s lens.
Now science itself required conception from within the world.

From the very beginning, if one conceives of oppositions such as inner and outer, subject and object, immanence and transcendence, then thinking from the outer to the inner is dogmatic—but thinking from the inner to the outer cannot avoid being dogmatic as well.
“Ought precedes being”—it is said that ought does not arise from being.
Then what is it that you think?
Is there nothing to think about?
If there is no thinking being, there can be no ought.
If saying this is an error, then there must be a self that errs.
If one says there is none, then there must be a self that says “you.”
Descartes stated *Cogito ergo sum* and departed from the self.
However, before that, he even doubted his own existence.
And there he grasped the contradictory self-identical truth of the subject-oriented substance—that which thinks is that which is thought.
In contrast to this, I consider that a new logic and a new concept of reality had to emerge from there.
However, he did not transcend Aristotelian logic and the conception of reality.
The logic that considers the reality of our own self must be the logic of the general that includes our self as its extension (what I call place-logic).
Kant’s logic of object cognition is a logic that denied such reality from the very beginning.
That the thinking self cannot think objectively goes without saying.
However, Aristotle’s logic does not encompass the self, but the *hypokeimenon*—that which becomes the subject but not the predicate—can be said to possess a broader meaning than Kant’s object of cognition.
When I think, that “I” can be said to possess subject-oriented significance.
Of course, when I say “broad” here, it is merely in the sense of being indeterminate.
Therefore, when I once sought a new logical standpoint beyond Kantian philosophy, I returned to consider Aristotle’s *hypokeimenon* standpoint.
As people today think, logic is not our subjective form.

The standpoint of logic had to transcend the opposition between subject and object—a position from which even this opposition and mutual relations could be conceived.
Even when our self thought about itself, it did so through logical forms.
When we rejected the dogmatism of Kant’s philosophy and attempted to depart from the new standpoint of self-awareness, that standpoint had to remain thoroughly logical.
And there had to be a profound self-reflection of logic.
Yet those who casually departed from the standpoint of conventional logic considered anything beyond conventional frameworks to be entirely mystical.

After Kant, it was Hegel who denied the standpoint of the subjective self and took position upon a purely logical ground.
Whereas Fichte set out from the standpoint of Ich-Ich ("I-I"),
Hegel conversely departed from Being (Encyklopädie I §86).
Hegel's philosophy constituted a philosophy of logical reality that exists through itself and is understood through itself.
Here I discern a point of connection with Descartes.
Yet unlike Descartes, Hegel apprehended within this new principles of reality and logic.
This constitutes Hegelian dialectic.
Through Hegel we may say that for the first time was grasped the philosophical principle of true reality—that which exists through itself and determines itself.
When our self stands unflinchingly within negative self-awareness,
it must inevitably confront the principle of absolute contradictory self-identity where immanence is transcendence and transcendence immanence.
Whether one conceives the self externally or reflects upon it internally,
no genuine self-awareness arises.
Self-awareness must found itself through self-awareness.
When one speaks of self-awareness as internal,
the self has already externalized itself.

The pure egoistic subjectivism that took Kant as its starting point could be said to have been provisionally surpassed by Hegel.
In Fichte, the pure ego as cognitive subject transformed into a dialectical self through performative acts; as Fichte's practical self, I recognize that a new dimension of reality had already unfolded there.
What was conceived in Kant as the world of moral obligation for the practical self became actualized reality in Fichte.
Through Schelling—who adopted absolute *Indifferenz* or *Identität*—it momentarily assumed Spinozist characteristics; but with Hegel casting off this subjective husk, it evolved into a world of logical-dialectical reality.
The world became one where objective reason developed autonomously.
Yet audacious though it may sound—even in Hegel—I maintain that he never reached the standpoint of absolute negative self-awareness.
He still had not fully discarded that subjective husk.
Hegel's universal fails to encompass true individuality.
[It] excludes our volitional and practical selves.
Hegel's reason stands opposed to the personal volitional self.
Thus it remains subjective.
This cannot constitute reality's principle as apprehended through our volitional self's self-awareness.
One might perhaps regard it as governing our intellectually conscious selves.
But it does not form the foundational principle for our authentic practical self—our historically active being.
Hegel's realm of reality is not the soil from which our selves emerge.
No principle concerning our existence's life-and-death duality could spring from such ground.
To speak of volitional selves conjures only abstract wills belonging to conscious entities.
Yet this does not constitute genuine practical being.
Each practice must itself become historical creation.
Through every practical decision, our selves stand poised at life-and-death's precipice—confronting existential crisis.

Our practical decisions do not arise from within the abstract conscious self.
Such thinking stems from the dogmatism of subject-oriented logic.
I have expounded upon this at length.

Our true self resides in the historical practical self.
There exists no practice apart from historical action.
Even our act of thinking constitutes historical action.
Through being shaped and shaping, we awaken to self-awareness.
Hence our self is historico-corporeal.
Otherwise it remains merely a conceptualized self—to cling to such is delusion.
The identity of absolute negation and affirmation cannot be articulated from the standpoint of the judging self.
It must emerge within the perspective of the historical self that both creates and is created—the standpoint of the existential self confronting life and death.
Dōgen teaches that to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be authenticated by all phenomena.
It is through negating the abstract conscious self and reaching mind-body nonduality that we apprehend the true self.
Now we must reconsider conventional philosophy from this awakened standpoint of the authentic practical self—the self of integrated mind and body.
This constitutes my rationale for advocating a return to Descartes' position.
Yet let it be clear: the logic inherent in this standpoint must differ both from Descartes' subject-oriented logic and Hegelian dialectics.
Though termed dialectical, Hegel's logic remains trapped within Aristotelian subject-centrism.
It represents the logic of objective spirit, not that of formative historical power within the realm of historical praxis.

We must return to the roots of logical consciousness arising in the world of historical praxis and grasp the logic of self-formation within that world of historical praxis.
This would stand diametrically opposed to Hegel’s idealist dialectic.
In the historical world’s self-formation, form and matter endlessly oppose one another while—as a contradictory self-identity—shifting between form and matter, thereby allowing form to limit itself.
Therein lies true unity where reality becomes ought and ought becomes reality—a state of internal-external oneness.

The relationship between God and the self as Descartes posited in his Third Meditation concerning the proof of God’s existence—wherein the individual expressing the whole becomes the whole’s self-expression, and the world arises from matter limiting itself through the contradictory self-identity of the one and the many—could be directly understood through this logic of contradictory self-identity: that the beginning of the self was the beginning of the world, and the beginning of the world was the beginning of the self. The opposition and interrelation between these two had to be considered as dual moments within the historical world that formed itself.
At both ends of finite and infinite as contradictory self-identity existed the self and God.
And as the instantaneous self-determination of absolute present, our self was made to exist by God in the next instant.
My absolute present was none other than the form of absolute contradictory self-identity of the many and the one.
Furthermore, in the Fifth Meditation, while Descartes grounded the objectivity of our knowledge inversely from the premise that God’s concept included self-existence and that God did not deceive, what we called clear and distinct intuitive knowledge was knowledge in which our self became attested by things through self-negation.
There, our self saw actively-intuitively as the process of the world’s self-expression.
To think that mediation by a transcendent God was necessary stemmed from remaining trapped in subject-oriented logic’s form.
That amounted to nothing other than explaining what was not understood by means of what was even less understood.
A perfect being had to exist through itself and determine itself.
It was that which expressed being that which was expressed, existing as that which expressed itself.
In such a mode of existence, something had to be that which proved itself, and that which proved itself had to be something.
In this sense, as with Spinoza, one could say God existed through Itself and was understood through Itself—that all things were in God, and without God, nothing could exist or be understood.

On a certain winter night, Descartes sat by the hearth and began to think.
He, as a historical and actual self, began to think within historical reality.
He doubted and doubted.
He doubted even the existence of the self.
Yet the blade of his doubt did not turn toward logic itself.
He did not attain true self-negating awareness.
His self remained an abstract self devoid of body.

Spinoza's God—who "exists in Itself and is understood through Itself," of whom it is said that "all things that are, are in God, and without God nothing can exist or be understood"—must be what we call the absolute present or absolute space that determines Itself through absolute contradictory self-identity.
This should be considered as the foundationless foundation, the substrate of the historical world.
Thus can we breathe new life into Spinoza's philosophy.
Spinoza advanced thoroughly along the subject-oriented path from Descartes' philosophy.
Therein, the conscious independence of our self is effaced, becoming but a mode of God.
God became thoroughly a negatively determined reality.
As absolute present, God is spatial in the direction from reflected to reflector—progressing from past to future—and conversely temporal and conscious in the direction from reflector to reflected—regressing from future to past.
God is spatial as *res extensa* on one aspect and conscious as *res cogitans* on another.
Thus two attributes may be conceived.
Modality is none other than the form through which absolute present, as self-determination, limits itself—thoroughly spatial on one aspect, thoroughly conscious on another.
One may state that "ordo et connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo et connexio rerum" (Prop. 7, p. 2).

Spinoza’s causes should all be considered to have the significance of *causa sui*.
It refers to that which contains existence within its essence and whose essence can only be understood as existence.
That which exists as the self-determination of the absolute present must all possess such a property of being that which expresses as that which is expressed.
Phenomena are none other than principle; principle is none other than phenomena.
Spinoza’s adequate knowledge must mean self-aware intuition that sees itself through absolute self-negation.
Where the self is attested by the myriad dharmas, our knowledge becomes adequate.
Spinoza states that our possession of adequate and complete thought is nothing other than God possessing adequate and complete thought insofar as God constitutes the human mind (Prop. 34, p. 2).
Therein, through absolute contradictory self-identity, we see God in the self and see the self in God.
In such a standpoint, our self is religious at its very foundation, and philosophical knowledge is grounded herein.
Therefore, the method of philosophy is negative self-awareness, and the object of philosophy is an object without an object—existing within itself, it is true reality understood through itself.
Spinoza also states that adequate thought means the true—that which agrees with the object—insofar as it is considered in itself without relation to an object (Def. 4, p. 2).
There, that which thinks and that which is thought must be one.
Spinoza’s famous intellectual love, *amor Dei intellectualis*, is also grounded in this.
As long as we possess adequate knowledge, we are potent; we are blessed.
This must differ in orientation from scientific knowledge that recognizes objects.
Spinoza also states that regarding external things, our mind possesses only inadequate knowledge.
Adequacy and inadequacy must differ in nature, not merely in degree.
There must be a difference in standpoint there.

Since Descartes, when speaking of adequate knowledge, it was explained using the example of mathematical knowledge.
Spinoza’s adequate knowledge too was often interpreted in this manner.
However, if one considers it thus, Spinoza’s philosophy can only degenerate into mathematical rationalism.
And is today’s mathematics of consistency truly as adequate as was considered then?
In Spinoza’s philosophy, I believe the reason such differences in standpoint were not clarified lies in its subject-oriented logic.
There must be a conversion of logical standpoint (see “Pre-established Harmony as a Guide to Religious Philosophy”).
Yet while I advocate clarifying the distinction between science and philosophy as above, I do not simply consider them unrelated like certain scholars.
Philosophy respects science and uses it as material, while science must be grounded in philosophy.
It has been said Descartes’ purpose in criticizing Galileo as building without foundation lay in establishing metaphysical groundwork for new natural philosophy.
However, this does not mean conflating their positions by inserting philosophy into science.
One cannot help but feel philosophy became science’s handmaiden since its ascendancy.
In recent times, it turned merely epistemological and further pragmatist.
It seems philosophy had lost its own fundamental problems.

I am not saying we should return to Descartes' philosophy.
I am merely urging that we return once more to Descartes' problems and method to reconsider them.
Descartes' philosophy was overturned by Kant's Copernican turn.
Yet must we not now subject Kant's very philosophical position itself to renewed critique?
Kant's philosophical method is not *the* philosophical method.
The method of philosophy must remain Cartesian through and through.
It is thoroughly negative self-awareness and self-aware analysis.
For this reason, philosophy cannot be termed individualistic or liberal.
Philosophy learns to negate the self and forget the self.
At this great turning point in world history, we must dig ever deeper into Japanese culture's foundations; our thought must be built upon a base both profound and vast.
For true action to occur - as Descartes too observed - reflection and cognition must become our central concerns.

As I have already stated philosophy departs from our self’s self-contradictoriness.
It is doubt itself that becomes problematic.
I maintain that from our self’s self-contradictoriness we may proceed along two opposing paths.
One represents self-affirmation’s direction; the other embodies self-negation’s course.
Western culture has pursued the former path while Eastern culture demonstrates strength in pursuing the latter.
Yet now we must return to self-contradiction’s primordial roots and depart from true contradictory self-identity’s standpoint.
Therein lies Eastern and Western cultural fusion’s pathway.
Within Japanese culture’s spirit—developed from Eastern culture—I discern reality functioning as absolute contradictory self-identity through absolute present’s self-determination.
People deem Western culture logical while dismissing Eastern culture as merely experiential.
Yet if Eastern culture were purely experiential experiential elements equally undergird Western culture’s foundations.
From true self-awareness of our contradictory self-identity object cognition’s direction holds no logical inevitability.
Herein lurks Western peoples’ subjective disposition.
However Eastern culture’s self-negating trajectory prevented its intrinsic logic’s development.
Now confronting Western culture we must forge our own logic.
Otherwise we face battle without aircraft—an untenable choice.
I affirm logic’s presence within Eastern culture’s foundations.
This logic moreover converges with modern science’s basis.
As noted in my treatise Logic and Mathematics syllogistic forms must constitute true contradictory self-identity logic’s essential structure.
Has not classificatory logic’s framework—evolved from Greek logic—traditionally dominated all?