Book review: Ontology of Production: Three Essays, written by Nishida Kitarō
In: Historical MaterialismThis is a review-essay on William Haver’s recent translation of three essays by Nishida Kitarō in a volume entitled Ontologies of Production. Nishida is one of the founders of the famous Kyoto School of philosophy and, while his philosophy is not really Marxist, Haver attempts to bring Nishida into dialogue with Marx in his Introduction and through his selection of essays to translate. I attempt to situate Haver’s translation in a brief discussion of a recent debate on how to write modern Japanese intellectual history and, through this examination, I suggest a framework for analysing modern intellectual history drawing on the work of Harry Harootunian, Moishe Postone and Jacques Bidet. In short, this framework attempts to relate the production of ideas to the temporal dynamic associated with capital, the commodity-form and other related mediations that make up the modern global capitalist system. Then I turn to Haver’s Introduction and translations and both explain some of the key concepts of Nishida and show how, using the framework that I outlined, Nishida’s work can be conceived of as failing to understand its own conditions of possibility in the multiple mediations of capitalism. For this reason, Nishida’s work, like many other romantic critiques of capitalism, criticises the abstractions of modernity at an abstract level, failing to account for the mediations of capitalism such as class and the commodity.
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Adorno Theodor W. Tarnowski Knut & Will Frederic The Jargon of Authenticity 2003a [1973] London Routledge
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Adorno Theodor W. Negative Dialektik and Jargon der Eigentlichkeit 2003b Frankfurt Suhrkamp Verlag
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Allinson Jamie C. & Anievas Alexander ‘The Uneven and Combined Development of the Meiji Restoration: A Passive Revolutionary Road to Capitalist Modernity’ Capital and Class 2010 34 3 469 490
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Arthur Christopher J. The New Dialectic and Marx’s ‘Capital’, Historical Materialism 2004 Brill Book Series, Leiden
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Axelos Kostas Bruzina Ronald Alienation, Praxis, and Technē in the Thought of Karl Marx 1977 Austin University of Texas Press
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Bidet Jacques L’État-monde: Libéralisme, socialisme et communisme à l’échelle globale 2011 Paris Presses Universitaires de France
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Goto-Jones Christopher S. Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School and Co-Prosperity 2005 London Routledge
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Harootunian Harry Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan 2000a Princeton Princeton University Press
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Harootunian Harry History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life 2000b New York Columbia University Press
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Marx Karl Fowkes Ben Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume 1 1993 [1976] Harmondsworth Penguin Books
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Najita Tetsuo & Harootunian H.D. Duus Peter ‘Japanese Revolt against the West: Political and Cultural Criticism in the Twentieth Century’ The Cambridge History of Japan 1993 Volume 6 Cambridge Cambridge University Press The Twentieth Century
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Nishida Kitarō Abe Masao & Ives Christopher An Inquiry into the Good 1987 New Haven Yale University Press
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Nishida Kitarō Haver William , Chow Rey & Harootunian Harry Haver William Ontology of Production: Three Essays 2012 Durham, NC Duke University Press
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Parkes Graham ‘The Putative Fascism of the Kyoto School and the Political Correctness of the Modern Academy’ Philosophy East and West 1997 47 3 305 336
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Postone Moishe Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory 1993 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Sakai Naoki ‘Ethnicity and Species: On the Philosophy of the Multi-Ethnic State in Japanese Imperialism’ Radical Philosophy 1999 95 33 45
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Sugimoto Kōichi Davis Brett W. , Schroeder Brian & Wirth Jason M. ‘Tanabe Hajime’s Logic of Species and the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarō: A Critical Dialogue with the Kyoto School’ Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School 2011 Bloomington Indiana University Press
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1
Najita and Harootunian 1993.
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3
Harootunian 2000a, p. 45.
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4
Harootunian 2000b, p. 2.
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5
See Postone 1993.
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6
Marx 1993, p. 255.
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7
Bidet 2011.
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9
Allinson and Anievas 2010, p. 479.
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10
Postone 1993.
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11
Marx 1993, p. 126.
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12
Arthur 2004, p. 169.
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13
Nishida 1987.
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14
Nishida 1987, p. 6.
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15
See Sakai 1999.
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16
See Sugimoto 2011.
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17
Axelos 1977.
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18
Adorno 2003a, p. 6; Adorno 2003b, p. 419. Harootunian uses Adorno’s concept of frozen emanations to describe the folklorist Yanagita Kunio’s use of the past. He writes: ‘The quest for a “capitalism without capitalism,” at the heart of his project, was driven by a desire to return to a fixed moment in an indefinite past (in the present) and the singularity of experience by taking away class, gender, or even regional identifications, in order to reunite through things, customs, “living culture” [seikatsu bunka], religious belief without content, much like Adorno’s “frozen emanations,” with an aura impossible to reach’ (Harootunian 2000a, p. xxx). Nishida is not as interested in the past, but use of Gemeinschaft along with the importance of religion and aura in his work make Adorno’s analysis relevant here.
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Book review: Ontology of Production: Three Essays, written by Nishida Kitarō
In: Historical MaterialismThis is a review-essay on William Haver’s recent translation of three essays by Nishida Kitarō in a volume entitled Ontologies of Production. Nishida is one of the founders of the famous Kyoto School of philosophy and, while his philosophy is not really Marxist, Haver attempts to bring Nishida into dialogue with Marx in his Introduction and through his selection of essays to translate. I attempt to situate Haver’s translation in a brief discussion of a recent debate on how to write modern Japanese intellectual history and, through this examination, I suggest a framework for analysing modern intellectual history drawing on the work of Harry Harootunian, Moishe Postone and Jacques Bidet. In short, this framework attempts to relate the production of ideas to the temporal dynamic associated with capital, the commodity-form and other related mediations that make up the modern global capitalist system. Then I turn to Haver’s Introduction and translations and both explain some of the key concepts of Nishida and show how, using the framework that I outlined, Nishida’s work can be conceived of as failing to understand its own conditions of possibility in the multiple mediations of capitalism. For this reason, Nishida’s work, like many other romantic critiques of capitalism, criticises the abstractions of modernity at an abstract level, failing to account for the mediations of capitalism such as class and the commodity.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 200 | 33 | 5 |
| Full Text Views | 34 | 3 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 35 | 6 | 0 |