Presentation #5 Kyle Peters - Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture

Kyle Peters
University of Chicago
Producing the Self-Itself
本発表では西田幾多郎の哲学を通じて芸術創作の理論を検討する。「個人作者」
と「作者の死」の言説に代わるものとして、芸術創作のオルタナティブな理論を提
出する。「作者」を歴史的、唯物的に形成されたものとする構造主義とポスト構造
主義の展開に伴い、多くのフェミニズムやポストコロニアリズムの研究者は主観的
主体（エージェンシー）の欠如や（ポスト）構造主義における芸術創作理論の客観
的条件の優先を問題視している。とりわけ、主体の存在を否定し客観性を優先する
言説において女性の主観や植民化された主観が軽視されるとして批判した。しかし、
この批判は近代の自主的、非歴史的、不変な「個人作者」という概念への回帰を求
めているわけではなく、主観と客観の相対的な関係によって形成された理論、すな
わち、均衡のとれた芸術創作理論を求めている。
これらの妥当性を踏まえた上で、本発表では、まず、西田の 1925 年の「表現作用」
の主客対立に内在する根本的な作用としての「自己自身」という概念を用いる。芸
術創作において自己自身の不定型的構造は主観と客観という区分を超え、多方面に
溶解し、拡大すると主張する。次に、西田の「行為的直感の立場」をはじめとして、
「論理と生命」や「歴史的形成作用としての芸術創作」などのプロセスの枠組みを
参照した上で、芸術作品とその創作過程における主体の多元的様相を結びつける。
歴史的世界による限定の中にありながらも、芸術品の創造を通して自己自身が新た
に創出される。なぜかというと、作品自体が自己限定を創造的に再構築し、再形成
し、再編成するからだ。
Reconceptualizing the Artist within an Ontology of Production
This presentation uses the work of Nishida Kitarō 1 (1870-1945) to articulate an account of artistic
agency that stands as an alternative to those discourses built around either the autonomy of the
“Individual” or the “death of the author” [la mort de l'auteur]. 2 With the ascension and subsequent
dominance of those structuralist and post-structuralist trends which situate the author as the
product of historically and materially determined conditions, many feminist and post-colonial
scholars have expressed concerns over the lack of subjective agency, and thus about the
unchallenged primacy granted to objective conditions in these accounts of artistic production. In
particular, they have questioned the incapacitation of both the female and the colonized subject in
these discourses. But rather than slipping back into the modern conception of the author as
1
All Nishida citations refer to the 2002 – 2009 release of The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō. Nishida,
Kitarō. Shinpan Nishida Kitarō Zenshū, (New NKZ), Vol. 1-24, (Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko, 2002-2009).
2
Barthes, Roland. “La Mort de l'auteur,” In Œuvres completes (Complete Works), Vol. 2, (Paris: Seuil, 19661973), pp.491-495. English: Barthes, Roland, “The Death of the Author,” In Image-Music-Text, Trans. Stephen
Heath, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). Written in 1967, but not published until 1968.
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 1
Individual, a notion which positions authorial output according to an autonomous, stable, and
historically invariant essence, these scholars have called for a more balanced account of artistic
production that is sensitive to the interrelationship between subjective and objective processes.
Recognizing the legitimacy of these concerns, this presentation uses the notion of the “self-itself”
[jiko jishin], as an act underlying the subject-object duality articulated in Nishida’s middle period
essay “Expressive Activity” [Hyōgen sayō], to argue that the fluidity of the self-itself melts into
manifold positions in artistic production, thereby decentering artistic agency across a multitude of
positions and diffusing artistic production across the continuum of subjectivity and objectivity. 3 Next,
using the processual framework articulated in his late-middle period essays “The Standpoint of
Active-Intuition” [Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba], “Logic and Life” [Ronri to seimei], and “Artistic
Production as a Historically Forming Activity” [Rekishiteki keiseisayō toshiteno geijutsuteki sōsaku], it
links the work of art to the manifold positions of the processual subject, claiming that the unfolding
of the self-itself is creatively produced through the novelty of the work of art as it reallocates,
reorganizes, and redeploys the present within the horizons delimited by the historical body.
Primacy of the Objective
Following the emergence of structural linguistics in the mid-1950s, the status of the subject vis-àvis knowledge was radically altered, and the new goal of the human sciences was “not to constitute
man, but to dissolve him.” 4 Accompanying notions came under increased scrutiny, and by the late
1960s the author had been pronounced dead and their regulative role in circulating discourses of
power had been made clear. While Roland Barthes first made such a pronouncement in 1968 with
“The Death of the Author” [La Mort de l'auteur], two works published soon after by Michel Foucault,
“What is an Author?” [Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?] and “The Discourse on Language” [L 'Ordre du
discours], provide a more nuanced interpretation of the relationship between language, discourse,
and thought. Although the first of these two essays restricts itself to the singular relationship
between author and text, the second deals more numerously with those internal and external
constraints which function to restrict the horizons structuring discourse. In both works, Foucault
replies to criticisms that The Order of Things [Les Mots et les choses] sublated complex authorial
differences between Buffon, Linnaeus, Darwin, and Ricardo into an uncritically broad èpistême. He
responds by functionalizing the figure of the author.
Foucault claims that the author works alongside commentary and discipline as an internal
constraint, governing the circulation of discourse, and thereby functioning as a disciplinary power
which serves to delimit and define the organization of knowledge therein. Foucault cites 18th century
copyright-law as a central moment in the figuration of the author, in the process articulating the way
in which the modern author is radically different from their operation as an “index of truthfulness”
in earlier times. 5 Owing to such a process, the modern author is imbued with juridical powers,
standing as the unified principle at the origin of the text, and thus as the ultimate and final index.
Through their juridical status, the figure of the author ideologically functions to shape, limit, prohibit,
and constitute the horizon of signification, thus impeding free(r) circulation of discourse and
3
Hall, Stuart. “Who Needs Identity?,” in Questions Concerning Cultural Identity, (Londong: Sage, 1996), p.4.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966).
5
Krauss, Rosalind. “Who Comes After the Subject?” In The Life & the Work: Art and Biography. (Los Angeles,
2007).
4
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proliferation of meaning. 6 Foucault: “The author’s name manifests the appearance of a certain
discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture... it is located in
the break that founds a certain discursive construct and its very particular mode of being.” 7
This means that the author function is neither uniform nor constant. 8 It follows that while certain
discourses are endowed with the author function, other discourses are not constrained in this
manner. Foucault makes it clear, however, that the author-figure is particularly authoritative in the
secondary discourse surrounding the literary arts, where they operate as the final principle
governing classification, interpretation, and commentary. 9 Establishing a cause and effect
relationship between author and the text, literary commentators are forced to submit the text, and
their interpretations thereof, to the life of the author, forcing the latter to serve as the legislator of
the text’s significance and meaning. Such a view extends to the visual arts as well, where Foucault
cites the radically different demands imposed on the artist in the commentaries of the Renaissance
and those of modernity. While Giorgio Vasari and other art historians of the Renaissance demand
that the artist in some respects assert their unicity from the larger population, commentaries of the
modern era require the biography to authenticate the truthfulness of the artwork. 10
Dismissing the idea that discourse will be liberated from any system of constraint with the
disappearance of the author figure, Foucault stresses that that this figure operates as a historically
variable function, and thus that texts can be organized and arranged according to other modes of
governance. In envisioning the disappearance (or death) of the Individuality of the authorial figure,
Foucault, like Barthes, shifts the author to the fringes of discourse in the effort to minimize their
textual occlusion. 11 With the author restricted to this liminal space, the writing essentially acts as a
conduit by which discourse organizes and constitutes itself, largely free of any form of subjective
intervention. 12 Here, textual interpretation focuses on the modes, uses, and circulation of discourse,
as well as the subjects that it makes possible. 13
Following Foucault, the secondary discourses in philosophy, literary criticism, and to a lesser
extent 14 art history have called into question the primacy of the author as either the origin of a text
or the locus out of which an utterly original work emerged. As such, these discourses have worked to
distance scholarship from the construction of the author, and its intimate correspondence with the
unicity and individuality of their style. In doing so, they treat the text as an assemblage of
significations from which they can elicit those disciplinary forms that govern the organization and
circulation of discourse. It is this shift that has worried certain feminist and post-colonial scholars,
expressing concerns over the lack of subjective agency, and thus about the unchallenged primacy
6
Foucalt, Michel. “Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?,” Bulletin de la Sociètè Française de philosohie 63 (JulySeptember, 1969); English: “What is an Author?,” In Michel Foucault: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology,
ed. James Faubion, (New York: The New Press, 1998), p.221. It was originally delivered as a lecture to the
Sociètè Française de philosohie in 1969, with a modified form given in the United States the following year.
7
Ibid. p.211
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid. p.212
10
Foucault, Michel. Le gouvernement de soi et des autres: le courage de la vèritè (1984), (Unpublished
Transcript, prepared by Michael Behrent, Feb. 29), p.60.
11
Foucault. “What is an Author?,” p.207.
12
cf. Burke, Seán. The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault, and
Derrida, (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p.9.
13
Foucault. “What is an Author?,” p.222.
14
Sousloff, Catherine. The Absolute Artist, (University of Minessota Press, 1997), p.142.
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 3
granted to objective conditions in these accounts of artistic production. In line with these concerns,
we should investigate whether the absolute primacy of the objective is the necessary correlation of
the author’s death.
Beyond Primacy: Artistic Production and the Act
But rather than simply ignoring the death of the author, this presentation recognizes the
legitimacy of the Foucauldian concerns regarding the privileging of authorship. This means that,
rather than returning to a concept of authorship based on the modern conception of an autonomous,
ahistorical, and invariant conception of the Individual, it seeks a third approach, one which takes into
account the concerns voiced on both sides of the debate. That is, insofar as the primacy of either
subjectivity or objectivity provides less than suitable explanatory alternatives, this presentation
works to develop a theory formed in the inter-relationship between subjective and objective.
One effective way to do this is to challenge the bifurcation establishing the opposition between
these two terms. In Nishida’s middle-period works, both the standpoint of the conscious self and
that of the objective mind, as well as their attending divisions between knower and known,
subjective and objective, are born out of a more primordial, holistic act which stands as the one true
reality. On a theoretical level, Nishida presents this conception of the act in contradistinction to
change, which he claims, following the Aristotelian notion of substance, requires that there is
something self-identical that persists. On the definitional level, the act is differentiated from change
insofar as it can change of itself [mizukara henka suru mono], with the act standing as a subset of
change, distinct inasmuch as it has an intentional structure and an underlying connection between
cause and effect. But going beyond theory, Nishida’s middle-period work provides a quasiphenomenological formulation of these notions of act and change, claiming that in order for a thing
to act or change, there must be a more fundamental “knowing of knowing” [shiru koto o shiru] at its
base. This is the first-step of an important shift away from, or rather beneath and beyond, the egocentricity of the Cartesian cogito and the Kantian transcendental subject. Inasmuch as it is tacitly
aware of its first-order directedness, the content of this knowing of knowing noetically transcends
the object of knowing, and thus goes to a more primordial dimension of experience that lies beneath
judgmental knowledge. This knowing of knowing is therefore a second-order reflexive activity
accompanying a first-order intentional act, and thus contains additional content excluded in the
first-order directedness of the conscious self.
Insofar as this primordial dimension of experience is more robust in terms of content, it lacks the
delineated and defined structure that marks judgmental acts of knowledge. That is, in contrast to
the unadulterated, rich unity of this fundamental dimension of experience, higher-order judgments
are more refined, and thus marked by a clearer noetic-noematic structure. Nishida uses several
different terms to refer to this more primordial dimension of experience, with the self-itself and the
“supraconscious self” [chōishikitekijiko] standing as two notable examples used to elucidate and
differentiate this more fundamental realm from other conceptions of self.
Regardless of which lexicon he employs, Nishida’s middle-period work claims that this more basic
dimension is presented through “intuition” [chokkan]. Intuition “negates the self” [jiki hitei] such
that the details of the world are vividly presented to the self-itself, without it being demarcated into
the conscious self [ishiki jiko], something like an isolated cogito. As such, he posits a supraconscious
realm beneath the subject-object bifurcation structuring the conscious self, articulating this
primordial level as an experiential base out of which the ego of the conscious self, judgment, and
4 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself
other higher-order thinking develops. It is not that judgmental knowledge of objects merely drops
out of experience in this lower level, but rather that this dimension is proto-judgmental, thus lacking
the subject-object duality marking higher-order thinking. In this more fundamental order of
experience the self has both proto-judgmental knowledge of objects and intuitive knowledge of
itself as intentional, as directed toward objects. Neither the conscious self nor the object completely
drops from experience in this more basic level; instead the co-constitution of self and object comes
to the fore. Our intuition of this more fundamental dimension of experience where there is no
division between knower and known, perceiver and perceived, is deemed “self-awareness” [jikaku]
by Nishida. It follows that in self-awareness there is no distinction between subjective and the
objective, and there is thus a supraconscious unified act at the base of our self-awareness upon
which the conscious self is established.
Nishida connects these more primordial dimensions of experience to artistic production, claiming
that creativity is born out of the act, as the latter is neither created nor creates. In other words, the
act is the substrate out of which creative activity emerges. 15Artistic creation, it follows, cannot be a
subjective function by which ideas, emotions, and sentiments are manifested from the standpoint of
the conscious self. 16 Nishida challenges the everyday assumption that there exists a causal relation
between the intention of the artist, the meaning of the work of art, and the emotion that it incites in
the spectator. Neither can artistic creation be an objective function by which one creatively operates
from the standpoint of the unchanging objective mind [kyakkanteki seishin], an idea that he
associates with certain German idealist thinkers. 17 For Nishida, both the standpoints of the conscious
self and the objective mind are born out of a more fundamental act which stands as the one true
reality. This one true reality is the source of creativity, and thus it is the source of artistic production.
In creating a work of art, the artist transcends both the subjective position of our conscious self and
the objective position of the objective mind thereby operating from the more primordial standpoint
of the supraconscious act. Nishida:
In expressive activity, the center of consciousness transitions from the conscious self to the
supraconscious self, and so-called conscious activity, on the other hand, becomes a shadowy
image reflected onto the body. If we are able to think of language in the above manner, then
we should probably say that art is an expression in its most complete sense…the artist does
not create insofar as he possesses eyes and hands, but rather they create because they take
part in the concept. Inasmuch as the artist submerges the subjectivity of the self within
objectivity, they intentionally act. 18
From the standpoint of this supraconscious unified act, Nishida claims that the subject does not
bear the content of the work of art, but rather the objective presences itself, and thus subjectivity is
submerged into objectivity in artistic production. This is not an endorsement of the objective mind
discussed above, but rather it is the recognition that when subjectivity is born, the objective is
objectified as objective for that subjectivity. Nishida often refers to the “objective qua subjective”
[kyakkan soku shukan] and the “subjective qua objective” [shukan soku kyakkan], arguing that
without the subjective there is no objective. His point is that when one submerges the subjective self
15
Nishida. “Hyōgen sayō,” New NKZ, Vol.3, pp.371-372. Originally published in 1925.
Ibid. p.377.
17
Ibid. p.378.
18
Ibid. p.377.
16
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 5
into the objective, both subjectivity and objectivity drop and they create from the supraconscious
self, the one true reality as action.
But a concern presents itself: has Nishida really rejected the primacy of objective conditions? And
this concern is followed by another one: has Nishida simply substituted the notion of the act for
objectivity? Combining the two concerns: has Nishida merely replaced one hegemonic determining
force with another, once again thwarting artistic agency and individual expression? If so, the artist
does not create in Nishida, but rather the act creates through the artist, reducing the artist to a tool
without volition, a mere means for expression. To properly consider this point, however, it becomes
necessary to clarify our conception of artistic agency. For, as mentioned above, we should not
equate our conception of agency with that of Individuality, and thus we should not require Nishida
to provide us with an ahistorical, invariant, and utterly autonomous conception of agency. To do so
would be to dismiss the Foucauldian concerns discussed above and, moreover, to place an unfair
burden upon Nishida.
In the above textual excerpt, Nishida clarifies that the “so-called self” [iwayuru jiko] becomes a
shadowy image cast upon the body in artistic expression, and thus stresses that the self-itself is not
to be identified with the self as it appears in higher-order, intentionally directed experience. For
Nishida, it is a mistake to equate higher-order judgment with the self because, in fact, this is not our
primordial mode of functioning in the world. The so-called self is a highly abstract dimension of
experience, which, insofar as it is highly structured, lacks the unadulterated bounty of original
experience. To limit agency to higher-order judgment would be to make the reification fallacy, and
thus to mistake those abstract dimensions of experience as the most concrete and primordial. In the
lexicon of Nishida’s earlier work, it would be to ignore the fundamentality of “pure experience”
[jun’sui keiken] and posit those higher-order dimensions of experience as more basic. Insofar as the
self-itself exists at the more primordial level of the act, and thus prior to the subject-object split, we
should locate agency prior to the emergence of the subject, in the supraconscious level of the selfitself. In this more primordial state, the notions of autonomous subjectivity and hegemonic
objectivity are deconstructed, articulating both a less autonomous and less determined conception
of artistic agency. This allows for a more dynamic conception of the artist, free from both hegemonic
objectivity and autonomous subjectivity. Here, the fluidity of this supraconscious realm allows the
self-itself to create art from manifold positions beyond that which is entailed in the subjectivity of
Individuality. As such, artistic agency is decentered across a multitude of practices and positions, and
artistic production is always diffused across the continuum of subjectivity and objectivity.
But at this point our creeping concern once again arises: has Nishida’s account of the self-itself
really taken into account the objective dimensions structuring artistic production? And further: has
the Foucauldian notion of discursive events dropped in our discussion, leading to a largely ahistorical
account of objective forces? Synthesizing in the question: is Nishida’s account of artistic agency
ahistorical?
Beyond Primacy: Artistic Production and Active-Intuition
In order to adequately deal with these concerns, we must refer to Nishida’s late-period works,
those essays published after the second volume of Fundamental Problems of Philosophy: The
Dialectical World [Tetsugaku no konpon mondai (Benshōhōteki sekai)] in late 1934. In these works,
Nishida employs an explicitly historical framework in his discussions of creativity, working to strike a
balance between subjectivity, agency, the historical world, and what is now called discourse through
6 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself
his concept of “negation” [hitei], or rather, through “negation qua affirmation” [hitei soku kōtei] and
“affirmation qua negation” [kōtei soku hitei]. This deeply historical yet creative account structures
his formulation of aesthetics, and thus he emphasizes the fundamentality of the historical ground in
his discussions of the artistic subject at the same time that he emphasizes the importance of the
creative subject in his discussions of art historical trends.
The investigation into the nature of subjectivity, as seen above in “Expressive Activity,”
functioned prominently in nearly all of Nishida’s work since an Inquiry into the Good [Zen no kenkyū].
Nishida’s later works continue this investigation from a historical standpoint, and as Itabashi Yujin
notes, work to analyze the creative nature of the self through its basis in historical reality. 19 This is
not to say, however, that Nishida simply embraces a rectilinear conception of time, which conceives
of the historical past as a stream which determines the present into the future. Instead, Nishida
emphasizes the dynamic “self-determination” [jiko gentei] of the present from the “historical world”
[rekishiteki sekai]. The historical world functions not merely as the storehouse of past experience,
but is also integrated into the present in its movement of self-formation. He articulates this
movement as an irreversible, sequential transition of moments moving “from the made to the
making” [tsukuraretamono kara tsukurumono e], in which the present self-determines itself,
affirming itself through its negation of the historical past. Taking seriously the Marxist critiques of his
students Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) and Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), Nishida claims that the selfdetermination of the present is only possible as a historically and materially determined
phenomenon, and thus only insofar as it is concretized in the “historical body” [rekishiteki shintai]. It
follows that the notions of history and body are inextricably linked such that whenever Nishida
refers to the body in his later works, he is always referring to the historical body, which is such when
it is inscribed by the historical world. 20
This notion of the self-determination of the present in its negation of the historical body
functions as both “temporal-spatial and spatial-temporal” [jikanteki-kūkanteki, kūkantekijikanteki]. 21 The body functions as a useful starting point in articulating the spatial dimensions of
Nishida’s analysis insofar as it operates as a common space that articulates itself across both subject
and object, making clear the inter-connection between these two poles and functioning beyond the
active-passive division, and thus the subject-world dichotomy. In his writings on the body, Nishida
employs the notion of “active-intuition” [kōiteki chokkan] using this term to expand on his middle
period analysis of the supraconscious self as the locus of self-world, subject-object relationality.
Active-intuition operates, to use James Heisig’s expressions, as a fundamental inter-active, interintuitive relationality, 22 functioning as the condition of the possibility for the binary between active
and passive, and thereby further making possible both an active subject grasping and molding
objects in the world and an intuited object in which the subject becomes passive in the face of
objects in the world. But against the traditional dichotomous conception, in which passivity is
articulated as belonging to and manipulable for activity, in active-intuition my activity necessarily
entails the activity of the thing, and the activity of the thing necessarily entails my activity. Active19
Itabashi, Yujin. Rekishiteki genjitsu to nishida kitarō tetsugaku, (Hōsei University Press, 2008), p.17.
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” New NKZ, Vol.7, p.134. Originally published in 1935.
21
Nishida. “Jissen to taishō ninshiki: Rekishteki sekai ni oite no ninshiki no tachiba,” New NKZ, Vol. 8, p.129.
Originally published in 1937.
22
Heisig, James. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School, (University of Hawaii Press,
2001), p.55.
20
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 7
intuition prioritizes neither subject nor object, and therefore refuses the fundamentality of any form
of unidirectionality. Instead, the world flows against the subject and the subject flows against the
world. This means that action is always being acted upon, a bidirectional activity in which we form
and determine objects as we are formed and determined by objects. As such, Nishida emphasizes
mutual mediation, the fact that it is only in and through their connection with the other that each
expresses itself as itself. Our primordial mode of being in the world lies in mutual mediation, in the
locus of action-acted, forming-formed. Insofar as the self-expression of both the subject and world
are active qua passive, passive qua active, they stand together as a whole prior to any division, with
the primordial connectedness of active-intuition functioning as the transcendental condition for any
possible subject-object, self-world relation. Thus, on the most primordial level there is an activeintuitive relationality structuring the “dialectical self-identity” [jiko dōitsu] of the many and the one.
But this topos of connectivity is not restricted to “actual existing space” [jistsuzaiteki kūkan], and
we must keep in mind that the body is always concretized as the historical body in these later works.
It follows that dialectical self-identity also functions on the temporal plane, and therefore that in
active-intuition “actual existing space envelopes the temporal.” 23 On the spatial-temporal [kūkanteki
jikan] level, active-intuition unifies each object into a collective movement of self-determination of
the present in the sequential transition from the made to the making. In Nishida’s philosophy, at the
same time that subject and object are spatially situated as fundamentally both unified and
independent, they are also temporally singular yet connected into a dynamic whole. As the many
instantly determine themselves in the move to the making, the whole simultaneously determines
itself, uniting the singular into a new totality. As stated above, this is not a reduction of the singular
into the collective, but rather the simultaneous recognition of singularity and unity, of many and one.
This temporal movement takes place within actual space, which functions as “the intermediary
which mutually correlates independent objects.” Thus on the spatial-temporal level, we have the
“contradictory identification of the many and the one” [ta to ichi to ga mujunteki jikodōitsu].
But Nishida’s analysis is not merely spatial, nor merely spatial-temporal, and thus he does not
prioritize spatiality. Rather, his analysis also proceeds from the other direction, with active-intuition
being articulated from the temporal-spatial [jikanteki kūkan] standpoint. As discussed above, Nishida
articulates history as a sequential transition of successive moments in the movement from the made
to the making. Despite history operating as the hallmark of his later work, the radicality of this view,
and thus its difference from the rectilinear conception of time, comes to the fore through its
emphasis on the present. Privileging the “absolute present” [zettai no genzai] in his analysis, Nishida
claims that the present moment creatively unfolds as self-determination, a diffusion [kakusan] and
dispersion [sanran] of novelty in the present moment. This is possible inasmuch as active-intuition is
the “affirmation of absolute negation” [zettai hitei no kōtei], and thus insofar as the absolute present
unfolds and determines itself by negating and transcending the past, thereby affirming itself into the
present moment. This movement is termed absolute insofar as this creative diffusion is conditioned
by the negation of the past, and thus of the rectilinear conception of time. This movements is
termed a diffusion insofar as it is an unfolding of the one into the many within the framework of the
contradictory identity of opposites. The disconnected, singular moment arranges the scattered many
into a unified movement of self-determination in the transition from the made to the making, while
simultaneously negating this unity, dispersing this unity into the many, thereby crystallizing the
23
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.162.
8 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself
contradictory identity of the many and the one as the “perishing and becoming of each moment.” 24
Finally, this is termed creative insofar as this negation of the present moment into the future allows
for a novel unfolding of the present moment. 25
Despite perishing and becoming in each moment, the present moment is not completely isolated
from past and future. In fact, it is quite the opposite, as Nishida interprets historical formation as a
“continuity of discontinuity” [hirenzonku no renzoku] and thus stresses the “simultaneous existence”
[dōji sonzai] of past and future in the present moment. 26 But Nishida does not merely collapse past
and future into the present, a concern of his colleague Tanabe Hajime (1889-1962); rather, he
preserves the distinct temporal modalities of past, present, and future, yet articulates them into the
present moment through the notion of the “eternal now” [eien no ima]. Nishida: “when I say that
things are historically formed as the self-determination of the eternal now, in other words to say
that things are actively seen, it is not to say that things appear by chance.” 27 Each moment is
enveloped by the eternal now. This means that, if we formulate the determination of the instant
according to a two-dimensional coordinate system, and conceive of it as a horizontal movement
from the made to the making, then the eternal now stands vertical, making robust what would
otherwise be a flat, linear unfolding. 28 This vertical expansion allows for two movements. First, in
this upward expansion of the horizontal present moment, the eternal now undercuts any universal
standpoint for temporality, dispersing the present moment into the many, and thus into a multitude
of present moments, of temporal movements. This entails that, as Ishida Masato notes, “no
perspective fathoms the ‘absolute depth’ of the past—there is no universal method to determine
whether a past occasion belongs to a relatively ‘immediate’ past or a ‘remote’ past.” 29 Second, past
and future are integrated into the determinative-forming of the many present moments through this
vertical axis. This means that the historical body, which as mentioned above functions as the
storehouse of the past, is integrated into the present through the eternal now.
In being integrated into the present, the historical body functions alongside future possibilities to
constrain the horizons structuring the self-determination of the instant. As Jacynthe Tremblay
remarks, “the present thus appears as the center in which the past has already passed and
simultaneously has not yet passed, and in which the future has not yet arrived, although it appears
there already.” 30 Thus as the present moment becomes, affirming itself into and then negating itself
out of existence, it perishes into the past. As it sinks into the past through the movement of negation,
the modified historical body upon which the past is inscribed conditions the simultaneous selfdetermination of the present, thereby structuring the new formation of the present. This selfdetermination of the present is the production of subjectivity qua objectivity, and this means that
24
Nishida. Tetsugaku no konpon mondai (Benshōhōteki sekai), New NKZ, Vol. 6, p.250. Originally published
in 1934.
25
There are degrees of novelty, however, and this will be discussed through the notions of active and
passive habits below.
26
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.162.
27
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.201.
28
Nishida himself puts it in terms of such a two-dimensional coordinate system. cf. Nishida, “Jikaku ni
tsuite,” New NKZ, Vol.9, p.483. Originally published in 1943.
29
Ishida, Masato. “The Sense of Symmetry: Comparative Reflections on Whitehead, Nishida, and Dōgen,”
In Process Studies, Vol.43, No.1, p.11.
30
Tremblay, Jacynthe. “Hidden Aspects of Temporality from Nishida to Watsuji,” In Essays in Japanese
Philosophy, (Nagano: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2008), p.168.
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 9
the historical body, in its integration into the present, operates as a discursive constraint. As such,
this movement forms a network of pre-discursive, conceptual and practical associations which
determine the formation of subjectivity, and thus its horizons for perception, thought and action.
This schema is made evident in the way in which Nishida situates artistic production in the “style
theories” [yōshiki] 31 of Alois Riegl and Willhelm Worringer, as well as in Jane Harrison’s work on
Greek mythology and ritual. 32 Artistic style is formulated as part of the historical body which, as
discussed above, is integrated into, and thus conditions, artistic expression in the present. Nishida’s
concrete articulation of historical style heavily draws upon his colleague Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960).
In particular, Nishida draws on Watsuji’s 1927 work, “Concerning the ‘Style Theories’ of Eastern Art”
[Tōyō bijutsu no ‘yōshiki’ ni tsuite] and his 1928 article, “Characteristics of the Arts Based on
Differences in ‘Location’” [‘Tokoro’ ni yotte kotonaru geijutsu no tokushusei], claiming that Egyptian,
Greek, and Japanese people [minzoku] form an artistic style within their own distinct environment or
climate [fūdo]. 33 This association becomes extremely problematic as Nishida undertakes an
unsubstantiated East-West comparative analysis, privileging the expression of spirit [kokoro] as the
artistic style structuring Eastern, particularly Japanese, art. 34 Regardless, for present purposes it is
important to see that artistic style, as part of the historical body, functions alongside the future to
articulate the horizon of affordances for artistic expression. 35 As such, it acts as a paradigm, carving
channels and suggesting a course for artistic behavior. 36
But it is important to further recognize that Nishida does not believe that the formation of
subjectivity is merely determined by the historical body nor by what is now called discourse. He thus
does not believe that artistic expression is determined by artistic styles. This is because he does not
claim that history moves from the made to the made, or the making to the made, and thus does not
endorse any form of strict historical determinism. For Nishida, the movement of self-determination
of the present, as made, is conditioned by the past and also, as making, stands in direct relation to
the future. Insofar as past and future are integrated into the unfolding of the present, they delimit
the horizon of affordances open to the present, thereby conditioning the expressive possibilities in
the self-determination of the present. Since this movement is active-intuitive it constitutes
subjectivity qua objectivity; that is, subjectivity qua the historical, material world. Here, the historical
body, as the paradigmatic horizon constraining expressive activity, constitutes subjectivity as a
suggestion for interpreting the historical world into the future.
It follows that the emergence of subjectivity through active-intuition, through the integration of
the past in the movement of self-determination in the present moment, follows the path impressed
by the historical body. Subjectivity is subjected, produced and located in its integration of the
material historical body. As such, Nishida privileges the subject as shutai, decentering the
Aristotelian Homo Faber, the Cartesian cogito, and Kantian transcendental subjectivity by
emphasizing the subject’s fundamental relationality with the promulgation and propagation of the
31
Riegl, Alois, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in Österreich-Ungarn (Late Roman Art
Industry), Trans. R. Winkes, (Bretschneider: Rome, 1985).
32
Nishida. “Rekishiteki keisei sayō toshite no geijutstuteki sōsaku,” New NKZ, Vol.9, pp.236-237. Originally
published in 1941.
33
Ibid. p.280.
34
Ibid. p.282.
35
Ibid. p.280.
36
cf. “The idea is the basic paradigm of our actions.” Ibid, p.277. Idea is here understood as the historical,
actual world. Nishida. “Kōiteki chokan no tachiba,” pp.135, 160-161.
10 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself
historical body. That is, the subjectivity [shukan] of Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant is merely an
abstraction from the becoming of subjectivity [shutai] in and alongside the historical world.
Thus its connection to the historical material world does not entail the eradication of subjectivity
but rather its dispersion. Put more strongly: the historical body does not erase individual
subjectivity but rather the composition of subjectivity functions as the transcendental condition for
the propagation and future articulation of discourse. It is through its crystallization into the many
distinct subjectivities that discourse propagates. The singular subjectivity is here understood in its
fundamental relationality with objectivity. Through its integration of past movements, the
constitution of subjectivity functions to reproduce discursive formations. This suggestion for
interpretation is the most basic level at which expressive activity functions. In other words,
expressive activity largely functions as a prompting to repeat what has been given in antecedent
experience, thereby recapitulating the historical body through the constitution of subjectivity.
But this interpretive proposal cannot entirely stand as recapitulation, and it follows that on the
most primordial level expressive activity is a first order minimal expression and minimal
interpretation through which the made is transformed into the making. This ontological schema
comes forth explicitly in Nishida’s discussion of habit (shūkan). Nishida cites habit formation as the
most basic example of the historical body influencing, conditioning, and thereby suggesting a form
for the present. 37 We should note that our habits are not born out of the passive reception of the
world; rather, even the most ingrained of habits develops in the progression of history, usually in
relation to changes in one’s surrounding environment. As the environment changes our habits adjust,
remaining similar to what they once were but also regulating themselves in accordance with such
fluctuations. Nishida:
What composes our habit is not simply consciousness. Something like biological instinct is
established as the self-determination of the dialectical world. And something like second
nature [daini shizen] is established within our biological bodies, and moreover, it is established
as expressive activity. 38
Through his discussion of habits, Nishida provides an ontology of reproduction and, insofar as this
reproduction is minimally influenced by expressive activity and thus not a mere recapitulation of the
past, production. In this ontology of becoming, the passive habit is always minimally creative. It is
here, I argue, that Nishida makes his first step towards rearticulating subjectivity beyond the merely
subjected. It is indeed true that, through its vertical integration, subjectivity is, to use Stephen
Heath’s vocabulary, “interpellated” in discourse, largely functioning to reproduce and recapitulate
the historical world. 39 But this cannot merely function as a recapitulation of discursive constraints.
Despite being subjected to the historical body, subjectivity is structured by expressive activity, and is
thus always simultaneously forming-formed and formed-forming. This means that in its expressive,
intuitive self-determination, subjectivity entails novelty.
But the novelty entailed in habits, particularly of those linked to second nature, is extremely
constrained. If Nishida stopped here he would have an exceedingly restricted conception of novelty,
one which largely privileged the recapitulation and rearticulation of the objective, discursive,
37
Nishida. “Ronri to seimei,” New NKZ, Vol.8, pp.13-14. Originally published in 1936.
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.201.
39
Heath, Stephen. Questions of Cinema (Macmillan Press, 1981), p.106.
38
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 11
historical body. But Nishida proceeds, drawing upon the modern French philosopher Maine de Biran
in order to distinguish active habits [nōdōteki shūkan] and passive habits [judoteki shūkan].
Expressive activity largely functions as a passive habit, which is formulated as the inheritance of
past-impulses [shōdō] with a minimally creative interpretation. Against expressive activity as a
passive habit, Nishida formulates active-intuition as an active habit. Nishida: “If we speak from the
standpoint of the self-determination of the historical world, what is called an active habit should be
thought of as active-intuition.” 40 Active habit is therefore, Nishida continues, the “development of
historical life,” and should be understood as a creative reconfiguration and restructuring of past
patterns.
This means that subjectivity is not merely subjected, and thus is not simply interpellated into
discourse through the present moment’s integration of the historical body. Rather, as activeintuition, subjectivity emerges from the ground of its fundamental connectivity with objectivity, and
thus emerges both as active and forming as it is acted and formed. As William Haver puts it,
“perception, apperception, and cognition are not for Nishida merely inscriptions on an essentially
passive epistemological or phenomenological subject but modes of an active, aggressive,
appropriation, driven by a daemonic potential, the power to be.” In the self-determination of
subjectivity through absolute negation, the present moment allows for the constitution of a novel
potentiality beyond the paradigms carved by the historical body. That is, the self-determinative
production of subjectivity allows for the reorientation and reconfiguration of discursive power
relations. This means that subjectivity is produced with agency, as agency; that agency is guaranteed
in the co-production of subject and object, and is thus secured inasmuch as subjectivity is always
situated within and alongside the limitations of the historical body.
Nishida claims that “artistic intuition [geijutsuteki chokkan] is established as a certain case of
active-intuition,” 41 thus employing enhanced novelty as the grounds for a distinction between
instinctual and artistic production. This is, of course, a matter of degree. While instinctual
subjectivity is production, it is minimally novel and is thus largely dominated by the passive
inheritance of past impulses. On the other hand, while the agency that is born out of artistic
production integrates the historical past, it is differentiated in its active reconfiguration of past
impulses. 42 But the agency born in the self-determinative formative movements of the present,
either active or passive, is not necessarily equitable in terms of its subject-object relation, and
Nishida claims that determinations of agency are situated on a continuum between the immanent
[naizai] and the transcendental [chōetsu] poles. Keeping in mind these antipodes, Nishida articulates
two active movements of agency, distinguishing artistic intuition from “thought” [shii]. While both
function as forms of agency, constituted as the co-production of subjectivity and objectivity in the
self-determination of the present, thought functions in the transcendental direction, as an active
movement on the side of objectivity, and artistic intuition functions in the immanent direction, as an
active movement on the side of subjectivity. This means that the agency constituted in the latter
emphasizes the direction of the self in its expressive formation. Insofar as agency is constituted in
the direction of the self in artistic expression, the historical “world reflects the image of the self-
40
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.201.
Nishida, “Ronri to seimei,” p.340.
42
Nishida. “Rekishiteki keisei sayō toshite no geijutstuteki sōsaku,” p.264.
41
12 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself
itself.” 43 This is not a collapsing of the historical dimensions into subjectivity, and Nishida emphasizes
that “what is called artistic creative activity is not the activity of subjective consciousness. This must
come into being from the self-determination of the historical world.” 44
This articulation of artistic intuition can be used to reconceptualize our understanding of artistic
production, the work of art, the artist, as well as the relationship between these notions. First and
foremost, the work of art is neither reducible to its historical conditions nor to the life of the artist.
Concomitantly, the work of art is not the vestige of an expelled artistic agency, neither discharged
onto the world through an intense focusing of subjectivity (as in the Individual conception of the
artist) nor displaced and nullified in the larger unfolding of discourse (as in the artist’s death). Both
views are mistaken inasmuch as they articulate the work of art as a secondary event, assuming that
it is either the perceptions, thoughts, and actions of the already-existing artist-subject or the prearticulated discursive object that stands as the sole condition for the work of art. In the context of
activity and passivity, the first view is mistaken inasmuch as it presupposes a pre-formed subjective
agent which acts and molds a passive world, and the second view is mistaken inasmuch as it
assumes an active world which acts and molds a passive subject.
But to understand these artistic concepts, an interpretive shift from the unidirectionality of being
to the bidirectionality of production is necessary. Such a move abandons the hermeneutical
framework, which sees work or text as an impetus to uncover the subject behind it or the hidden
discursive network of meaning structuring its appearance. In its place, it situates artistic production
as a moment in the production of the subjectivity of the artist, neither as a mere reflection of the
artist nor the discursive paradigm. This shift situates subjective agency not within the context of the
Aristotelian, the Cartesian, nor the Kantian subjectivity (shukan), but rather within the context of a
historically located conception of subjectivity (shutai). Here, subjective agency is secured in active
intuition, with subjectivity standing as such only through its fundamental relationality with
objectivity, in the interconnection of one and many. This secures a more flexible conception of
artistic agency, rooted in mutual mediation, in the locus of action-acted, whereby we form and
determine objects as we are formed and determined by objects. Thus on the one hand, the
production of subjectivity is constructed in relation to objectivity in the integration of the historical
past, and is therefore “chained” or “sutured” in the unfolding of discourse. 45 But, on the other hand,
as artistic production, subjectivity projects the self onto the world thereby making the “world reflect
the image of the self-itself.” 46 Here, objectivity is constructed in relation to subjectivity. This means
that artistic production, as rooted in this bidirectional activity, is the production of a subjectivity
which is placed and positioned in discursive webs as it moves beyond them, reconfiguring and
reorienting these discursive ideological systems.
The fact that such a conception is imbricated in a radically momentary conception of becoming is
important in our formulation of these artistic concepts. As discussed above, the bidirectionality of
active-intuition unfolds in the absolute present, with this production simultaneously negating
subjectivity out of existence, thus securing the alterity of future determinative productions of self
and world, and the independence of past determinations of self and world. As such, no Individual
can be deduced from the work of art, and thus there is no stable subjectivity that stands behind, and
43
Nishida. “Rekishiteki keisei sayō toshite no geijutstuteki sōsaku,” p.283.
Nishida. “Kōiteki chokkan no tachiba,” p.110.
45
Heath, Questions of Cinema, p.106.
46
Nishida. “Rekishiteki keisei sayō toshite no geijutstuteki sōsaku,” p.283.
44
Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself – 13
functions as an absolute link between, the disparate outputs of an artist’s oeuvre. Instead, there is a
dynamic conception of processual subjectivity, produced and extinguished in the present moment.
As such, our investigation privileges care for the disparate moments of production, investigating
those contemporaneous personal and social factors structuring the emergence of the work of art,
and thus of subjectivity. This requires an openness to radical diversity within an oeuvre, and thus
challenges the narrative approach to biography and discourse that has structured much inquiry.
Moreover, it also requires attention to distinct moments in the production of a single work, and thus
stresses the recognition of diversity between manuscripts or drafts, working to articulate different
subjective modes across one work.
But this is not to negate the conceptions of artist or oeuvre, severing all ties between the
different works created by an artist. In fact, Nishida’s conception of the simultaneous existence of
past and future in the absolute present, where past and present are integrated into the selfdetermination of the present through the eternal now, demands that we pay attention to such a
connection. Inasmuch as the work stands as the crystallization of a coming into being which
integrates past and future, the commentator also has an obligation to search for threads – both
subjective and objective – across a single work, several works of a single author, and different works
across different authors. Moreover, inasmuch as the distinction between immediate and remote
past is blurred in the formation of subjectivity, the commentator has to be especially aware of and
open to discontinuities between the temporally close and continuities between the temporally
distant.
Conclusion
This presentation has worked to articulate an alternative to those discourses built around either
the autonomy of the Individual or the author’s death. Using Nishida’s middle period philosophy, it
employed the notion of the self-itself, as an act underlying the subject-object duality, to argue that
the fluidity of the self-itself melts into manifold positions in artistic production, thereby decentering
artistic agency across a multitude of positions and diffusing artistic production across the continuum
of subjectivity and objectivity. Next, using his late period philosophy, it connected the work of art to
the manifold positions of the processual subject, claiming that the unfolding of the self-itself is
creatively produced through the novelty of the work of art as it reallocates, reorganizes, and
redeploys the present within the horizons delimited by the historical body.
14 – Kyle Peters: Producing the Self-Itself