Introduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work John W. M. Krummel Nakamura Yūjirō (中村雄二郎) (1925-) is one of the more signifi cant philosophers of contemporary Japan.1 He graduated from the Faculty of Literature at the University of Tokyo in 1950 and spent his teaching career from 1965 to 1995 at Meiji University, specializing in philosophy and intellectual history. Probably the most important theme that reappears throughout Nakamura's philosophical project of his mature years is the concept of 'common sense' (kyōtsū kankaku 共通感覚). Th ere are additional issues that are important in his philosophy, such as the imagination and place. In the following I touch upon these concepts while outlining his general trajectory leading up to, and providing the context for, the essay following this introduction. And I end with a discussion of the relevance of this piece as well as his general project. I then briefl y describe the context for the essay. Common Sense Nakamura discusses common sense, the content of section three of the following article, through a variety of works.2 But the most important work that explicates this idea is his 1979 Kyōtsūkankakuron (『共通感覚論』On Common Sense) (Nakamura 1983; hereafter referred to as OCS). Nakamura starts with the point that human beings exist not merely as individuals but always within some sort of a meaningful social framework-a 'world'-assumed in our perceptions (OCS, pp. 1-4). Perception must assume the world as its necessary context-an intersubjective horizon of experience (OCS, p. 86-87). Common sense usually has this meaning of a sense that people possess common to a society (OCS, p. 7). In Japanese this is called jōshiki (常識). It is our common understanding based on the self-evident or obvious within the common semantic fi eld of a particular society or culture at a given time, but which we hardly ever notice (OCS, p. 5). However, it can also block our view of what is not obvious or self-evident. Social Imaginaries 1.1 (2015) 71-82 72 John W. M. Krummel Nakamura wants to remind us of the original meaning of the term, common sense, that is, as a sense that is common to, coordinates and integrates the various sensations (sense), a synthetic sense that gathers and arranges the socalled fi ve senses (OCS, p. 7). Th e meaning of common sense as the faculty of judgment common to society became its more popular meaning only in eighteenth century England. But Nakamura traces it back to the humanistic lineage that stems from the Roman classics, includes Cicero, and extends up to the Renaissance (OCS, pp. 7, 152-153). He traces its older and more originary sense, on the other hand, to Aristotle's koinē aisthēsis or what in medieval times became known in Latin as sensus communis. Common sense in this signifi cance is what is in phase with, and required by, the imagination as its 'seat', serving as the contact point between sensitivity and reason (OCS, p. 199). Aristotle (1941, p. 582) understood common sense as such as a primordial sensible faculty that compares, distinguishes, and coordinates the distinct senses.3 René Descartes, inheriting that Aristotelian notion of common sense, refers to the sensorium commune that is the organ or seat of the sensus communis (sens commun) and identifi es it with a small part of the brain, the pineal gland (in Meditations IV, On Man, and On the Passions I) (OCS, pp. 174-176). At the same time, he distinguishes sens common as sensible and bodily from conceptual thought and reason, and devalues it together with the imagination as the cause of error (OCS, pp. 178-179, 343). Although the tradition based on this Aristotelian sense of common sense occupied the main current up to the period of the Renaissance (OCS pp. 152-153), since the beginning of modernity it became forgotten and today remains only as an undercurrent. Historically, there is a relationship between the two lineages of common sense-the Aristotelian-Scholastic line and the line from the Roman classics to Renaissance humanism-when Cicero took Aristotle's sensus communis and changed its meaning from the integration of the fi ve senses to the faculty of sound judgment common to a people. Cicero changed its meaning by emphasizing ceaseless inquiry, open debate, the value of probability in the pursuit of truth, and the importance of consensus and agreement concerning public issues (OCS, pp. 240-241). And he proposed a rhetorical form of knowledge that appeals to common sense in this social sense and deals with concrete practice (OCS, pp. 288-289). In the eighteenth century Giambattista Vico (in his Scienza Nuova) inherited this humanist notion of sensus communis from Cicero and, in his anti-Cartesian stance, advanced his understanding of it as the criterion of practical judgment over which a community is in consensus. Parallel to this Vico advocated rhetorical knowledge as the knowledge of probable truths founded on common sense. Nakamura inherits this understanding of common sense as what facilitates the integration and interpretation of meanings, serving as the logic of the 'life world' (OCS, pp. 42-43). Introduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work 73 Nakamura thus points to two aspects of common sense: the faculty of receptivity within an individual human being that integrates the various senses; and the faculty of judgment held in common among people. And each sense has been the focus of one or other of two distinct intellectual pedigrees in the history of Western thought (OCS, pp. 152-153). In Nakamura's view, the two are supposed to correspond (OCS, p. 10) for the synthetic integration of the various senses ought to found the communal standards of a society and the latter ought to be an externalization of the former. But in turn on the basis of common sense (jōshiki) as the socially habituated, taking root at the unconscious level, our common sense (kyōtsū kankaku) can become fi xed in its mode of integrating the fi ve senses (OCS, pp. 28-29). Certainly habituation as such on some level is convenient and necessary-indeed indispensable for social life-for example in the act of buying a ticket to ride public transportation or waiting for the green light to cross a cross-walk (OCS, pp. 29, 32). Yet it can become congealed as what is merely "common place," mere convention, through captivation to invisible institutions, to the extent that it loses-and even obstructs-the ability to deal with the abundant diversity and alterations of reality (OCS, pp. 30, 188). In such situations common sense needs to be questioned as inadequate in its grasp of reality (OCS, p. 11). Th is entire issue brings the two senses of common sense-kyōtsū kankaku and jōshiki- together (OCS, p. 280). For it is not simply social convention that becomes congealed but, even deeper, the integration of the senses so that one no longer grasps reality in its diversity, and it becomes necessary to rearrange the senses in a way that would re-activate them and retrieve the original activity of common sense (OCS, p. 30). Nakamura distinguishes common sense in its healthy recombination of the two aspects from reason's ability to analyze, divide and partition. Common sense in its ideal function is rather what takes the whole picture into view and spontaneously responds to the ever-changing demands of the real world and its concrete situations. He refers to Hannah Arendt (1998 [1958], pp. 283-284), according to whom common sense originally meant the sense that adapts each of the fi ve senses to the world common to everyone (OCS, pp. 151, 324.n.11). According to Nakamura, the critique and requestioning of knowledge and theory today leads us to the roots of the self-evidence of everyday experience. On this basis he thinks it would be meaningful to retrieve the original idea of common sense to shed new light on what we mean by common sense. Th e various contemporary issues surrounding the grounding of perception-body, identity, language, critique, time and space, landscape, institution, consciousness, etc.-all relate to, and converge on, this issue of common sense (OCS, p. 9). Moreover there is the issue of the disintegration of the senses when the inherited social paradigm no longer seems applicable. Nakamura refers to Kimura Bin (木村敏) (1931~), who takes both schizophrenia and depersonal neurosis to be such pathologies, whereby common 74 John W. M. Krummel sense as the faculty that orients us to the world as whole is no longer at work (OCS, p. 44-46). In any case it is this recognition of common sense as what constitutes or perceives that horizon of the world along with rhetoric as a form of knowledge that cognizes the possibilities of that horizon that leads Nakamura in section three of the following essay to a discussion of Nishida Kitarō's concept of place as well as the "predicate"-nature of the Japanese language. If it is common sense rather than pure reason that is the faculty for making practical decisions within specifi c communal contexts, it is also common sense that comprehends language in its natural use with all of its logical ambiguity or polysemy, metaphorical expressions, and contextuality. And it is also common sense that relates to place (topos, locus), connecting us to the environment. Th e rational subject cannot be abstracted from that contextualizing interrelationality of common sense, language, and place. Place Place (basho 場所) was an important concept in the thought of Nishida Kitarō (西田幾多郎) (1870-1945), famous as the founder of the Kyoto School of philosophy. Nakamura raises the issue of place as it comes up in Nishida's "logic of place," and believes it to have contemporary signifi cance. He attempts to reconceptualize this theme by relating it to various issues, without relying on Nishidian jargon (OCS, pp. 300-302, 304; 2001b, p. 2). Before looking at Nakamura's reading of Nishida, I will fi rst give a short explication of Nishida's theory in order to help contextualize the Nakamura essay that follows. Nishida in his 1926 essay 'Place' (Basho) attempted to overcome the subject-object dichotomy that raises the question of how two ontologically distinct entities are related in the process of cognition. His method was to de-focus attention away from the object-the grammatical subject (shugo 主 語) of a judgment-and to turn attention towards what encompasses the dichotomized terms in the fi rst place, allowing for their relationship. Th is led him to his notion of place (basho), which he also regards as what becomes the predicate (jutsugo 述語) in that it is what determines and contextualizes the grammatical subject. He thus views cognition and judgment as founded upon, contextualized on the basis of, the self-determination or diff erentiation of place that in cognitive terms is a non-diff erentiated, un-objectifi able, transcendental unity. Th e dichotomized terms are but abstractions, articulations, objectifi cations, of that concrete unity, which we are in touch with prior to our cognitive or judicative acts. Nishida understands place in a variety of ways, such as in terms of the fi eld of consciousness (ishiki no ba 意識の場) or the world (sekai 世界) of human interactivity. But the deepest and most Introduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work 75 foundational place for Nishida is what he calls the place of absolute nothing (zettai mu no basho 絶対無の場所) that encompasses, implaces, all, including opposites and contradictories.4 Nakamura (in section two of the following essay) fi nds Nishida's theory of place as what is 'predicate-like' (jutsugoteki 述語的) to be analogous to Tokieda's Motoki's (時枝 誠記) (1900-1967) linguistic theory of the Japanese language. Tokieda focuses on one's situatedness assumed by language in terms of a 'scene' or 'fi eld' (bamen 場面)-neither strictly objective, nor purely subjective-implied in, and broader in signifi cance than, the literal meaning of a sentence. Nakamura suggests there may be something unique to Japanese thought traditionally, due to its language, in its recognition of 'rhetorical knowledge', which had been traditionally suppressed in Western modernity. As opposed to a narrower view that would reduce language to the objectindicative, Nakamura believes Tokieda's theory points to a view to language in terms of common sense that involves a reconsideration of the positive signifi cance of imagery in language to underscore the logos of common sense (OCS, pp. 286, 289-290, 344). Nishida's relating of place to a 'nothing' (mu) can easily lend its reading to mystical terms. Nakamura fi nds Nishida's 'absolute nothing' (zettai mu 絶 対無) as such to be a concept that excludes the dimension of relativity. He believes this closes the path to unfolding various concrete issues belonging to place (Nakamura 1995, p. 20). Nishida's pupil, Miki Kiyoshi (more on him below) attempted to overcome Nishida's limits by incorporating discoveries from the social sciences, but his career was cut short by imprisonment and death. Nakamura sees his own project as inheriting Miki's legacy. In a variety of works, Nakamura thus spells out four principle ways in which place as such has become an issue for us today: 1) place as ontological ground; 2) place as somatic, the body; 3) place as symbolic space; and 4) place as the linguistic or discursive topos involved in concrete inquiry or argument (OCS, pp. 258, 295; 2001a, p. 68; 2001b, p. 30). Th ese aspects of place are also the topic Nakamura covers in the fi rst section of the following essay. Th e issue of place, according to Nakamura, became neglected in modern philosophy as its opposite concept, the epistemological subject, became the substratum instead. Nakamura takes Descartes' statement, "I think, therefore I am," as not only expressing the desire of modern man for independence but to also be an epochal claim that provided its grounding (2001a, pp. 65-66). But as the possibility of the subject's independence became realized, its excessive pursuit has begun to undermine the very foundation of its sustenance, e.g., the eco-system. In turn this has put the autonomous inner reality of the ego-subject into question, turning much of our focus upon the community (kyōdōtai) or the native environment (koyū kankyō) (2001a, pp. 66-68). Place as ontological ground thus involves a variety of concrete issues that are urgent 76 John W. M. Krummel today, including the global environment as the eco-system, the native environment of living things, the community of human beings, the realm of the unconscious, etc., issues that are not necessarily distinct (1995, p. 20). Place as ground is ontological place, the foundation for the establishment of being, shaping the fi eld wherein the ego is constituted and from out of which we eventually emerged and emancipated ourselves as individuals (OCS, pp. 258259). As a paradigmatic example of this correlative and dynamic relationship between self (subject) and place (substratum), Nakamura discusses in several of his works, including the following essay, the relationship between the hero (theatrical actor, leading role) and the chorus (members of the performing group) in ancient Greek tragedy, and the historical emergence of the former out of the latter (e.g., OCS, p. 259ff ; 2001a, pp. 66-67). Nakamura laments that the modern ego's gradual congealing and independence signifi es the severance of its ties to, and loss of, the chorus-like substratum (2001a, p. 67). A prime case of such a substratum is one's native environment-the Umwelt or environing world-having biological and ecological connotations, permitting the sustenance and activity of the individual. But Nakamura adds that it can have a broad "spiritual" signifi cance as the concrete manifestation of the chorus-like community or unconscious, as indicated in the expression genius loci (OCS, pp. 261-262; 2001a, pp. 67-68). Th e community, the unconscious, and the native environment can all be place as ontological ground in this sense, but there are other senses of place as well. Place as the ego's ontological ground overlaps with somatic place, the body. On the one hand the ego-subject cannot exist without having a body as its substratum. On the other hand, an external spatial place in turn is given meaning and articulated through one's bodily existence (OCS, p. 262; 2001a, p. 68-69). Th e active body we live opens us to the world, shaping its horizon (2001a: 69). Th e body as place is thus not the physiological body bounded by skin but rather the phenomenological body that spreads outward to include the extended space of perception (1995: 20). And implicated in this is a communal sense. Place as such is a correlate of common sense (OCS, p. 48). Th e internal articulation of space can also happen in the dimension of symbols, leading to the notion of place as symbolic space. As an example, Nakamura mentions sacred space or mythical or religious space as distinguished from ordinary or secular space, and established through the selection of a place, such as a mountain peak or the interior of a forest, as having special meaning, usually taken to possess a self-coherent wholeness, so that shrines or places of worship are built there (OCS: 266-267; 2001a, p. 69-70). As we can see the above three aspects of place-as ground, somatic, and symbolic-all overlap one another and moreover touch upon the issue of common sense. Lived place is the object of common sense in its most characteristic sense (OCS, pp. 269-70). It is also the horizon of the world where we are interrelatIntroduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work 77 ed with one another and with thing-events. Because it involves us in manifold ways, we can deal with it only by relying on common sense (OCS, p. 270). Th e fourth kind of place is linguistic or literary topos for discourse and inquiry as found in the theory of topics (topica) in ancient rhetoric. In ancient times, the method of disputation and accumulating ideas in regard to a specifi c theme was called topica. According to Nakamura, this was related to the strongly placial character of language (1995, pp. 20-21). In Aristotle, topics had to do with what kind of, and how much, matter an argument is to deal with and where it is to begin. For Cicero (1949, §§7-8, pp. 386-387; 2003, p. 119), in order to advance an adequate argument, we need to know its hidden place or topic (locus, topos) that allows us to uncover the issue (OCS, pp. 270-271; Nakamura 2001a, pp. 70-71). Topos in this sense is the contextual locale where a group of points concerning a certain issue for discussion can be found (OCS, pp. 162-163). So topica is rhetoric that makes use of such topoi, and according to Nakamura, its basis is common sense. Because topics (topica), in dealing with concrete matters, has to be based on probability, it came to be regarded as uncertain and thus ignored in modernity (OCS, p. 271; 2001a, p. 71). Yet Nakamura points out that the probable, when tied to discovery, has an extremely positive signifi cance. Descartes' criteria of truth-clarity and distinctness-cannot apply to anything beyond the realm of mathematics and natural science. It does not apply to history or the humanities (OCS, pp. 272-273). Recognizing this, Vico (1965, p. 13) stated that common sense (sensus communis) based on probable truth is both the criterion of practical judgment and the guiding criterion of speech and debate (OCS, pp. 271-272).5 Common sense is the sense that provides or uncovers (contextual) places (topoi) for our communal understanding6 amidst the multi-sidedness of human existence (OCS, pp. 164-166, 272). Nakamura makes the point that within the life-world, a concrete issue possesses a coherence of its own for which we need to discover its topos-the context wherein it coheres-while avoiding quasior abstract universal explanations on the one hand and utter individualism that would abandon explanations on the other hand (OCS, pp. 275, 301). We can only grasp the meaning of history in the form of an approximate sense possessed by the assemblage of facts and belonging to the multi-sided consideration of concrete issues (OCS, pp. 276, 301). Related to this, Nakamura regards what have been called generative ideas- ideas that through their polysemantic, multi-layered, and dynamic nature give rise to other ideas in history-as linguistic topoi. Like topoi in ancient rhetoric, they are loci where various meanings are implicit and stored (OCS, pp. 277278), waiting to be uncovered by common sense. Nakamura makes the point in section three of the following essay that common sense relates to place in all of the above signifi cances. 78 John W. M. Krummel Imagination Another major Japanese philosopher who Nakamura discusses in a variety of works is Nishida's student, Miki Kiyoshi (三木清) (1897-1945). What interests Nakamura in Miki's work is especially his theory of the imagination. Miki (1968, p. 453) attempted to surpass Nishidian philosophy by overcoming what he took to be its defects (Nakamura 1995, p. 5),7 but before he was able to accomplish this task, he was arrested for harboring a Communist friend and died in prison. Ironically World War II had already ended a month prior to his death but amidst post-war confusion, political prisoners of the previous regime had not yet been released (1995, p. 5). In his attempt to uncover the concrete unity of the subjective and the objective, Miki arrived at the notion of the (creative) imagination (kōsōryoku 構 想力) (in Kōsōryoku no ronri, Logic of the Imagination, 1937), whose function, Kant had recognized in the fi rst and third Critiques (1995, pp. 6-7, 10n). For Aristotle the imagination is passive (pathos) in being worked upon by the sense impressions. Yet because the object's activity upon it is indirect, mediated by the senses, the imagination escapes the object's constraint to become active and creative (OCS, pp. 228-229). Th is is why Descartes devalued the imagination as a source of error. Miki however focuses upon that creative power, takes the imagination to be a faculty that operates on a collective level in the construction of civilization or culture, and takes its logic to be a "logic of form" (katachi no ronri 形の論理).8 Consequently, as Nakamura explains in section three of the following essay, Miki felt that with his notion of the imagination as the faculty of the formation of forms he had been approaching Nishidian philosophy with its notion of the self-formation of the formless arising out of the place of nothing (1995, pp. 7, 10). Miki's theory, in Nakamura's view, provides a more concrete expression for Nishida's theory by tying Nishida's formulations of place to the concrete structures and institutions of society and history. Nakamura therefore suggests, in section three of the essay, a parallel between his thought and Miki's when he says that he stands in the same current of awareness of issues as Miki and that while Miki, borrowing Kant's terminology, proposed a 'logic of imagination', he himself, borrowing Aristotle's terminology, proposes a 'theory of common sense'. Relevance Th ere are several points where Nakamura's work is relevant for theorists of the social imaginary and readers of Social Imaginaries. Studies of the imagination and sensus communis in intellectual history provides a historical context to contemporary discussions. But in addition to outlining that intellectual Introduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work 79 history, Nakamura's investigations also captures some of the unique ways in which modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy can contribute to that discussion. Common sense for Nakamura provides the horizon of self-evidence that shapes a certain layer of thought and behavior within a given time, society, culture, etc. (OCS, pp. 280-282). But when the ground it shapes begins to fragment and becomes overly diverse, we lose our sense of normality and are overcome with anxiety as we come in touch with the not-self-evident, the non-ordinary (OCS, p. 280). In periods of crisis when the horizon is thus shaken, a rearrangement or recomposition of 'knowledge' becomes necessary (OCS, p. 280). From the invention of the printing press to the recent emergence of the electronic media, our central nervous system has come to receive increasingly irresistible stimuli. What was at fi rst an expansion of the self through new media of communication has, in Nakamura's view, led to a sensory paralysis and an amputation of the self. What is necessary, more than ever, then is the rearrangement or recomposition of the senses and, borrowing Marshall McLuhan's (1964, p.45) terms, the discovery of a 'new sense ratio' for the distribution of the various senses (OCS, p. 59) that would allow us to overcome the paralysis caused by technological media. As each new media invention-such as the radio or photography-changes the distribution ratio of sensation, altering our whole sensory experience, we need a method for managing, from a psychological and social perspective, the alteration of the distribution ratio of sensation (OCS, p. 61). For this, common sense along with the imagination, in its constitution of the horizon of meaning, cannot be ignored as issues of inquiry. And on the basis of such an understanding of common sense Nakamura believes the rhetorical form of knowledge needs to be re-acknowledged (OCS, p. 301). Operating on the collective level among people sharing cultural values, common sense motivates the socio-culturally endorsed way of interpreting meaning and nurtures the emotions common to a group of people. Nakamura's theory of common sense should thus have something to contribute to current discussions of the imagination and much of what he says might be rephrased in terms of the social imaginary. In all of Nakamura's examinations of Nishida's notion of place or predicate, Tokieda's notion of the linguistic scene, and Miki's notion of the imagination, what Nakamura notices is a holistic image-a knowledge of the horizon constitutive of the world (or 'world picture')-necessary for knowledge. Th e arrangement of the senses, working in concert with collective understanding, into a coherent meaningful picture of the world, resonates with an understanding of the social imaginary in the constitution of a meaningful world for a collective. 80 John W. M. Krummel Context of the Essay Th e following essay was originally given as a lecture in France in Fall of 1983. Previously Nakamura had published another essay and given two lectures in the French language.9 As a result he was invited to give a lecture at the Collège international de philosophie, which at the time was presided over by Jacques Derrida. Th e talk titled, 'Th e "Logic of Place" and Common Sense' was subtitled, 'A Th eme in Contemporary Japanese Philosophy', and was chaired by Derrida himself. Th is was in the wake of the impact of contemporary French theory on Japanese thought during the 1970s but also of an increase in interest among French theorists on things Japanese. Derrida's involvement also seems signifi cant in light of his critique of Western phonocentrism. In the talk, Nakamura begins by discussing the 'rediscovery of topica', positions Nishida's 'logic of place' within contemporary developments, and explicates its connection to the logic of the Japanese language. He raises the issue of common sense to show that the split between rationality and sensibility that is a worldwide issue is keenly felt especially in Japan, and that there is a need for philosophers to respond to this (Nakamura 2001b, p. 29). He explains that this issue was presented in 1930 in Miki's Logic of the Imagination and that his own project of a 'theory of common sense' inherits Miki's 'logic of the imagination'. And in delving into the matter, he also had to inherit the issue of place from Nishida (Nakamura 2001b, p. 29-30). His current philosophical undertaking was to shed new light on Nishida's 'logic of place' from the standpoint of his own 'theory of common sense', and in turn to develop his own thinking on the matter (2001b, p. 30). As he states in his prefatory note to the essay, his own theory of common sense thus ties into both the issues of place and the imagination and he attempts to make this connection explicit in the talk. Th ereby he presents his own theory of common sense that he developed after borrowing the term from Aristotle, and relates it to Nishida's concept of place, as an example of contemporary Japanese philosophy. References Arendt, H 1998 [1958], Th e Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Aristotle, 1941 Th e Basic Works of Aristotle, (ed.) R McKeon, Random House, New York, NY. Cicero, MT 1949 De Inventione, de Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica, (trans.) HM Hubbell, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Cicero, MT 2003, Ciero's Topica, (trans.) T Reinhardt, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Introduction to Nakamura Yūjirō and his Work 81 Krummel, JWM 2015, Nishida Kitarō's Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. McLuhan, M 1964, Understanding Media: Th e Extensions of Man, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Miki K 1968, Miki Kiyoshi zenshū dai jūkyūkan [Th e Collected Works of Miki Kiyoshi vol. 19], Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo. Nakamura, Y 1983, Kyōtsūkankakuron-chi no kumikae no tame ni [On Common Sense: For the Rearrangement of Knowledge], Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo. Nakamura, Y 1995, Nishida tetsugaku to nihon no shakai kagaku [Nishidian Philosophy and the Social Sciences of Japan]. Shisō [Th ought], November 1995, pp. 5-22. Nakamura, Y 2001a, Basho-"mu no ronri" [Place: "Th e Logic of Nothing"], in: Nishida Kitarō I, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo. Nakamura, Y 2001b, Gendai shisō to Nishida Kitarō [Contemporary thought and Nishida Kitarō], in: Nishida Kitarō II, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo. Nishida, K 2011, Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō, (trans.) JWM Krummel & S Nagatomo, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Vico, G 1965, On the Study Methods of Our Time, (trans.) E Gianturco, BobbsMerrill Co, Indianapolis, IN. Vico, G 1968, Th e New Science of Giambattista Vico, (trans.) TG Bergin and MH Fisch, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Author Biography John W.M. Krummel is Associate Professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, USA. Address: Religious Studies, Demarest Hall 300 Pulteney St. Hobart and William Smith Colleges Geneva, NY 14456-3382, U.S.A. Email: Krummel@hws.edu Notes 1 Th roughout this essay I follow the traditional Japanese order of putting the family name fi rst and the given personal name second in Japanese names. 2 E.g., Kansei no kakusei (Th e Awakening of Sensibility) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1975), Patosu no chi (Th e Wisdom of Pathos) (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1982), Rinshō no chi towa nanika (What is Clinical Wisdom?) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992), Basho (Toposu) (Place (Topos)) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1988), etc. 3 Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul) III, 425a14-19. In discussing the various sensory phenomena related to Aristotelian common sense, Nakamura (OCS, pp. 43, 309-312.n.23) refers to a number of other authors, most notably Japanese psychopathologist and philosopher Kimura Bin as well as to Maurice 82 John W. M. Krummel Merleau-Ponty, who grasped man as a single sensorium commune, an organ of common sense. 4 For a detailed explication of Nishida's theory, see my Introduction to Nishida Kitarō, Place and Dialectic: Two Essays by Nishida Kitarō (2011) and my Nishida Kitarō's Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place (Krummel 2015). 5 Vico, Il Metodo degli Studi del Tempo Nostro (On the Study Methods of Our Time), III. 6 Vico, Scienza Nuova (Th e New Science) §142 (Vico 1968: 63). 7 Miki expresses this sentiment in a letter from 1945. 8 Here we might remind our readers of how the German for imagination, Einbildung, is made up of the word Bildung meaning 'formation' or 'cultivation', in turn including Bild which means 'image' but can also mean 'form'. 9 For the special issue on Japan for the journal Critique (1983, vols. 1-2), Nakamura wrote "Nishida: le premier philosophe original au Japan."