Abstract
The present paper aims at reconstructing the reactions to Husserl’s idealism in the writings of two of his Japanese students: Satomi Takahashi (1886–1964) and Tomoo Otaka (1899–1956). While both Takahashi and Otaka hold that Husserl’s phenomenological “idealism” is ultimately not idealism at all, they argue for this claim in quite different ways. Takahashi argues that Husserl’s position is not idealist enough to establish subjective idealism, which he takes to be the Master’s intended position and which Takahashi himself favors. In contrast, Otaka finds a possibility of realism in Husserl’s position.
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- 1.
See Nitta, Tatematsu, and Shimomisse (1978, 11) and Tani (2013, 20) for some information on these scholars. Note, however, that they do not provide a complete list of the Japanese students of Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg. Some of those students, including Takahashi and Otaka, published memoirs of their days in Freiburg. See Otaka (1938), Takahashi (1929c), Mutai (1964), Usui (1984), and Haga (1988). It remains largely unexplored why phenomenology gained such popularity among Japanese scholars. For a somewhat speculative explanation, see Altobrando & Taguchi (2019, 3–4).
- 2.
See, for instance, Husserl’s Nachwort §5 (Hua V, 149–155).
- 3.
A typical example is Tokuryu Yamauchi (1890–1982), who was in Freiburg in 1920. According to Yamauchi, there is no significant development of Husserl’s thought from the Logical Investigations to Ideas I and that his position is already established, and even better developed, in the former (cf. Yamauchi 1929, 1–2).
- 4.
Another Japanese student whose work is potentially within the scope of the present essay is Gôichi Miyake (1895–1982). As Cairns (1976, 17–18) reports, Miyake presented the paper “Die Intersubjektivität und die Konstitution der objektiven Welt” at a private seminar with Husserl on 13 August 1931. Both Cairns and Eugen Fink attended the seminar as well. Unfortunately, Miyake did not publish the paper and no manuscript of it has been discovered (I owe thanks to Kiyoshi Sakai and Rie Wakami for this information).
- 5.
Large parts of Einfühlung in die Phänomenologie in 1926/27 (Ms. F I 33) are published in a scattered manner across Hua IX and Hua XIV (see: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/apps/hua/details.php?cmd=search&words=F%20I%2033 last accessed on 21 August 2018). The Natur und Geist lectures from 1927 are published as Hua XXXII. Takahashi also attended Phänomenologische Übungen für Vorgeschrittene (über Humes Treatise) and Phänomenologische Übungen für Vorgeschrittene (über Kant) (cf. Schumann 1977, 313, 322). According to Risaku Mutai (1964, 175), during the winter semester 1926/27, every week Husserl invited Takahashi and Mutai to his home for discussion.
- 6.
For more on Otaka’s biography, see Uemura and Yaegashi 2016, 350–352. Note that Otaka’s surname is sometimes transliterated as “Odaka,” which is closer to the Japanese pronunciation of his name than “Otaka.” However, considering the fact that Otaka called himself “Otaka” in his German writings, I have used this same spelling, which is probably better known outside of Japan.
- 7.
See, for instance, Cartesian Meditations §§ 14–15 (Hua I, 70–75, especially 72–73 and 75).
- 8.
Even though Takahashi only mentions the name of the father of modern sciences in this context, it is almost certain that he has in mind Galileo’s discussion of secondary qualities in The Assayer (Galileo 2008, 185–189).
- 9.
This is how Husserl himself conceives the situation in Cartesian Meditations §41 (Hua I, 116–121).
- 10.
In the same article, Takahashi develops this interpretation by arguing that the phenomenological reduction is an act of reflection that has neutrality modification as one of its partial acts. See Takahashi (1930, especially, 59–62).
- 11.
Husserl expresses a similar view even more explicitly in his Phänomenologische Psychologie lectures in 1925: “Ich ändere also hinterher mein thematisches Interesse und sehe mir jetzt diesen ganzen subjektiven Prozeß an. Diesen mache ich ausschließlich zum Thema: nur die ihn als seiend habende reflektive Erfahrung sei in Geltung. Nur diese reine Reflexion soll mir den Boden geben, auf dem ich sicher stehe und denke, den Boden der reinen Subjektivität. Hier finde ich den Strom reiner Erlebnisse mit ihren reellen und ideellen [=intentionalen] Gehalten“ (Hua IX, 192, emphasis added).
- 12.
The same idea plays an important role in Otaka (see section 3 below).
- 13.
It may be disputable whether Takahashi represents Husserl’s position correctly, especially when it comes to the tension between his characterizations of empathy as perception and as interpretation. It should be noted, however, that Takahashi relies only on Husserl’s lectures he has attended and that, at this moment, he has not read the fifth Cartesian Meditation (cf. Takahashi 1931).
- 14.
Here Takahashi refers to a script or scripts (hikki) of Husserl’s Natur und Geist lectures in 1919 (cf. Takahashi 1929b, 43n16). It remains a mystery how Takahashi obtained the script(s), but this should not be so surprising given that notes from the same lectures, taken by Erna Halle, were circulated in Munich (cf. Briefwechsel III/2, 257) and that Alexander Pfänder made an excerpt of them (cf. Hua Mat IV, XII–XIII). Anyway, thanks to the publication of the lectures in question, now we can confirm that Takahashi gets Husserl’s point right. “Es ist klar, dass, was wir Welt nennen, seinen vollen Sinn erst erhält durch Beziehung auf eine unbestimmt offene Vielheit mit uns kommunizierender Subjekte, aus welcher Vielheit jedes beliebige Gegensubjekt austreten, aber auch beliebige neue eintreten können (wofern sie nur Subjekte sind, die in Einfühlungs-zusammenhänge mit uns treten, deren Leiber als Leiber wir verstehen und die unsere Leiber als solche und als Ausdrücke unserer Erlebnisse verstehen können). Kant hat merkwürdigerweise das Problem der Intersubjektivität völlig übersehen. Schon für die transzendentale Ästhetik bedeutet Intersubjektivität eine konstitutive höhere Schicht, ohne deren Berücksichtigung die Konstitution einer Natur als vortheoretische Erfahrungseinheit nicht geleistet werden kann” (Hua Mat IV, 195, emphases added).
- 15.
Further on this line of interpretation, see, for instance, Zahavi (2003, 120–125).
- 16.
For the West-Coast interpretation of noema, see Føllesdal (1968). A more recent version of this interpretation can be found in Smith (2013, 245–273). For objections against this interpretation, see, for instance, Drummond (1990, chap. 5) and Zahavi (2004). Note that we do not mean that Takahashi’s interpretation of noema is the same as the West-Coast interpretation. There are some important differences between them. For instance, proponents of the latter would not agree with Takahashi’s claim that noemata are copies and that they are abstracted from the world.
- 17.
For an overview of this interpretation, see Zahavi (2003, 59–60; 2004, 48–50).
- 18.
We do not mean to claim that Otaka was influenced by Takahashi on this point. Even though Otaka’s library includes a copy of Takahashi’s Husserl’s Phenomenology [Husserl no Genshôgaku] (Takahashi 1931), in which the two aforementioned articles are collected, there is no trace of reading in it. Given the fact that Otaka was a heavy annotator, we have no good evidence for the claim that he read Takahashi’s book closely.
- 19.
Otaka is committed to this view even more explicitly in his introduction to philosophy of law from 1935. There he holds that, after transcendental (i.e., phenomenological) reduction, which give rise to the immanentization of objects, one finds the correlational opposition between noesis and noema in consciousness (cf. Otaka 1935, 184–186). Essentially the same idea is found also in Okata (1948, 98–99).
- 20.
In A Theory of the Structure of States, Otaka is skeptical about whether the individual subjectivity first view, as it were, he draws from Husserl is plausible, claiming that intersubjectivity should rather be put first (cf. Otaka 1936, 36n10; Uemura & Yaegashi 2016, 358–359). As we have pointed out in section 2, however, such an interpretation of Husserl is dismissed by many contemporary commentators.
- 21.
- 22.
According to Husserl himself, to the horizon of an actual given experience, non-actual, potential experiences also belong (cf. Hua I, 81–83). Thus, he famously speaks about the world as horizon or Welthorizont (cf. Hua VI, 145–146).
- 23.
As far as this point is concerned, Otaka captures Husserl’s idea very well. See, for instance, Ideas I §48 (Hua III/1, 102–103).
- 24.
The aspect of Otaka’s thought presented here is also found in his writings from the 1930s. See Uemura & Yaegashi 2016.
- 25.
For the realism of common sense, see the following passage: “Phenomenology raises the questions of whether objects we are seeing exist as we see them and whether the world we live in exists as we live in it; and it attempts to give positive answers to them. In this sense, the standpoint is phenomenology is quite obviously ‘realism’” (Otaka 1948, 98).
- 26.
Here we can take into consideration Crowell’s (2015) claim that phenomenology as transcendental philosophy focuses on meaning. But we should not understand Otaka’s position solely in accordance with such a picture, because Otaka’s conception of meaning does not coincide with Crowell’s. Whereas Crowell conceives meanings as the modes of givenness of objects, Otaka maintains that meanings are something we create in the cultural world of meaning.
- 27.
In this respect, Takahashi’s interpretation could be regarded as a variation of the early reception of Husserl that situates the founder of phenomenology in the context of Hermann Lotze and Bolzano (cf. Varga 2018, 109).
- 28.
In A Theory of the Structure of States, Otaka appeals to such a split between nature and spirit, which he ascribes to Dilthey (cf. Otaka 1938, 103). Note, however, that he does not mention Husserl’s noemata in this book.
- 29.
As De Warren observes, being introduced for an entirely new science called transcendental phenomenology, “the noema is an experimental concept in the making over which Husserl never gained complete mastery” (De Warren 2015, 230). This is why our remarks here are only provisional, leaving intact so many controversial issues concerning noema.
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Uemura, G. (2021). Not Idealist Enough. Satomi Takahashi and Tomoo Otaka on Husserl’s Idealism. In: Parker, R.K.B. (eds) The Idealism-Realism Debate Among Edmund Husserl’s Early Followers and Critics. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 112. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62159-9_14
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