Nishida\'s Basho as CHIASMA AND CHŌRA (CCPC 2012)

See Joachim Israel, The Language of Dialectic and the Dialectics of Language (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979). And see G.S. Axtell's discussion of Israel's definition in his "Comparative Dialectics: Nishida Kitarō's Logic of Place and Western Dialectical Thought," Philosophy East and West, vol. XLI, no. 2 (April 1991), p. 176.

Dr. Shigenori Nagatomo initially related this story to me. The text in which the story appears was written during the end of the Warring States period (ca. 222BCE) or the beginning of the Ch'in (Jp.: Shin) Dynasty (221-206BCE), the first unified state of China. See Han Fei Tzu, The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, vol. II, trans. W.K. Liao (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1959), p. 143.

We should also keep in mind here that "radical" comes from the Latin root radix, which refers to "the root of things."

This term chiasma (adj. chiasmatic) is not to be confused with chiasmus (adj. chiatic), a figure of speech based on inverted parallelism, whereby the order of terms in parallel clauses is reversed in one of the clasues (e.g., "one should eat to live, not live to eat."). The dictionary treats these two as separate words. And yet in the radical reciprocity of the dialectic, the chiasma in Nishida also contains the sense of a chiasmus.

This means that even the basic contradiction between life or birth and death can be viewed as a simplification into bi-conditional opposites of a complex chiasma of multiple processes on a variety of levels, e.g., social-ethical, physical, biological, etc.

It may be interesting to note at this juncture that Maurice Merleau-Ponty also had a comparable notion he called chiasm, the paradoxical form of a whole composed of parts, interrelating in inverse structural orders. An example, suggested by Andrew Feenberg in his discussion of this would be history as what is "drawn" by the subject and what "draws" the subject. See Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 130ff, especially p. 138; Yoko Arisaka and Andrew Feenberg, "Experiential Ontology: The Origins of the Nishida Philosophy in the Doctrine of Pure Experience," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. XXX, no. 2 (June 1990), p. 202; and Andrew Feenberg, "Experience and Culture: Nishida's Path 'To the Things Themselves'," Philosophy East and West, vol. 49, no. 1 (1999), p. 38. I was unaware of Merleau-Ponty's concept when first drawing up my own interpretations of Nishida's dialectic in terms of a chiasma. Merleau-Ponty's sense of chiasm is in fact closer to the dictionary definition of chiasmus (i.e., a figure of speech based on an inverted parallelism, e.g., "One should eat to live, not live to eat."). And yet the chiasma in Nishida also contains this sense of a chiasmus or what Merleau-Ponty's calls chiasm, as is evident in Nishida's notion of dialectical inter-determination, such as between individual and environment, or in the universal's determination of the individual and its reverse determination by the individual, and in the inverse correspondence between absolute and finite.

Ueda, p. 67.

I neologize the term anontology to characterize this structure of basho as what Nishida calls absolute negation. We cannot call it meontology because (mē) is still a conditional adverb (e.g., "I think not…"). I use anontology on the other hand to mean the structure encompassing both on and mēon, or being and non-being, ultimately referring to basho vis-à-vis absolute nothing.

Ueda, p. 80.

On this see Sallis, p. 118.

Derrida, p. 89.

The expression epekeina tēs ousias "beyond being," was used by Socrates in the Republic to refer to to agathon ( , "the good." Derrida however points out the possibility of extending the expression to chōra. He bases this on a passage where Socrates speaks of how the liberated prisoner, having exited the cave, could turn his gaze upward and "…be able to look upon the sun – not in its appearances… or in some other base [hedra], but the sun itself by itself in its own chōra … and behold how it is." (Republic 516b) On this see Sallis, pp. 113-14.fn.23; and see Derrida, "Tense" in The Path of Archaic Thinking: Unfolding the Work of John Sallis, ed. Kenneth Maly (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 73-74.

Derrida, On the Name, p. 103; see also pp. 92-93.

I am borrowing this term from John Sallis' discussion of the chōra in his Chorology.
THE CHIASMA AND THE CHŌRA
John W.M. Krummel
Many have noted Nishida's appropriation of nineteenth century German philosophical, especially Hegelian dialectical, terminology. And yet one may question whether that language was sufficient in capturing what he sought to express. In this presentation I will provide a reading of Nishida's philosophy of basho or place by explicating two aspects that confound traditional metaphysical discourse; and I will characterize them in terms of the Greek words chiasma and chōra. While the former is implied in his so-called "dialectic," the latter is what embraces or enfolds, and expresses itself in, the former. I will argue that because of its chiasmatic and chōratic nature, the Sache Nishida strove to capture and express through the language of dialectics, perpetually slips away from any systemic bounds. Combining these two terms I will take the liberty of presenting Nishida's mature philosophy, what he calls "absolute dialectic," in terms of a chiasmatic chorology to better characterize the real matter of his thinking.
Sec. 1: Dialectic and Chiasma
One of the central themes in Nishida was that of contradictory self-identity, an identity that by its very nature involves opposites. If dialectical logic involves the inter-relationship reflecting a system wherein the terms are constituted only in their inter-relations or in the context set by their inter-relations, Nishida's system may be regarded as "dialectical." Certainly, Nishida described his own depiction of reality as a "dialectic" (benshōhō). The mature Nishida views this as involving a relation of inter-determination that can never be reduced to either of its terms — an "inter-determination" he characterizes in terms of mujun, "contradiction" or "paradox."
[We need to understand here that the term mujun includes the meaning of logical contradiction, not just contrariety.] The term comes from a Chinese story appearing in the text of Han Feizi wherein a vendor is selling lances and shields. On the one hand the vendor advertises his lances as so sharp that there are no shields the lances would fail to penetrate. But on the other he advertises his shields to be so strong and solid that nothing, no lances, can penetrate them. His characterizations are contradictory. Nishida's dialectic involves the play between logical contradictories in this sense, e.g., being and non-being. From a trans-logical perspective they can be seen to be bi-conditional in that each implies the other and conditions the other as its contradictory. The bi-conditionality for Nishida involves their mutual self-negation (jiko hitei) precluding any conceptual synthetic resolution. The mediator [or medium] is not a sublating concept but mutual self-negation, or from another perspective, their very field that is no-thing. Any sort of self-affirmative act is seen to be predicated upon this prior self-negation. Such self-negation, on the part of each individual, for Nishida, mirrors the absolute nothing (zettai mu) that is the basho, field or place, of the world's dialectical self-formations (via self-negations). It mirrors the self-negation of an abysmal place that qua world clears room for the emergence of correlative beings. (See Bashoteki ronri Z10 315-16) The relationship between the individual and the world involves this mutual self-negation.
But broader and deeper than what can be reduced to either terms of bi-conditional opposites, and even to their interrelationship, Nishida's absolute dialectic involves a chiasma, a criss-crossing of multiple factors on multi-dimensional levels. It would seem to exceed in complexity mere binomial logical contradiction between yes and no, being and non-being, or even the triadic formula of traditional dialectics. [For the more precisely one attempts to demarcate the boundary between X and ~X, the more incomplete the determination and the more ambiguous and complex the matter is revealed to be.] {e.g., life/death} The multi-dimensional complexity is one of over-determination that threatens to undermine the very language of traditional dialectics. The term chiasma ( ) derives from the Greek khiasma ( , meaning "cross-piece," "cross-over," or "X-shape." It also comes from the Greek khiazein, meaning "to mark with an X," and the Greek letter khi ( , ). I use chiasma here to refer to the cross-configuration or intersection in Nishida between the horizontal inter-relationality amongst individuals (co-relative beings) and the vertical inter-relationality between individuals and what envelops them (whether understood as basho, world, absolute, nothing, etc.). This means also, for example, the various cross-dimensional inter-sections between the spatial and the temporal, linear and circular, individual and universal, the body and its social and natural environments, etc. By taking Nishida's "contradiction" (mujun) as a chiasma, we can focus upon its character as an inter-dimensional cross-section of over(inter)determinations where opposites, including contradictories, condition one another, and also as an irreducible complexity from out of which they are abstracted. The expression of contradictory self-identity then seems to depict only the tip of the iceberg of a vast complexity that is chiasmatic. While Nishida at times emphasizes logical contradiction in its ontological significance, we might also take this as a surface manifestation or expression of a logically irreducible plethora of a manifold in chiasmatic interaction — the concrete reality of which is neither simply being nor simply non-being.
In the manifold dialectic of what Nishida calls the dialectical universal (another term for the world as a whole as the dialectical expression of basho), what on the vertical plane is the universal's self-determination and its reverse determination by the individual, on the horizontal plane is the inter-determinations of individuals belonging to that universal. The chiasmatic inter-reactions between them on these different planes constitute the unfolding of the world-matrix in society and history. The vertical and the horizontal here refer to different ways of speaking of the same dialectical matrix: the universal's self-determination is the individuals' co-determinations and neither can be prioritized over the other or reduced to the other. The different directions and planes of dialectical determination are mutually implicative so that the dialectical universal's self-determination means the individual's self-determination and the individual's self-determination also implies inter-determination among individuals, which in turn also means the self-determination of the universal to constitute the world of those individuals. (See FPP Z6 236-37) Universal and individual meet in the chiasma of inter-determinations. And its radical reciprocity — in its reverse determinations, mutual self-negations, and/or inverse correspondences — exceed in complexity simplistic formulas of bi-nomial interplay. What we have here is a chiasmatic inter-crossing of dimensions of the world-matrix, a chiasmatic sphere that is neither simply ideal nor merely material.
This chiasmatic sphere has a spatial significance but that "spatiality" also encompasses time. On the one hand it is horizontal as the spatial field of co-relative beings and the temporal course of successive beings. On the other hand it is vertical in its self-negating inversion that makes room not only for those horizontal relations but also for its relationship qua place with the implaced — or qua absolute with the relative, or qua nothing with beings. While the vertical in the self-emptying process — what Nishida comes to call inverse correspondence — collapses into the horizontal in the interrelations among beings, it simultaneously encompasses the horizontal in giving it space. The matrix of the world then is an infinite self-inverting space-time chiasma, an indefinite openness that in itself is both trans-temporal and trans-spatial. Basho we might say is this cross-dimensional self-inverting chiasmatic spatiality of the world. But paradoxically in making-room even for its own self-negation that in turn makes-room for beings — making space for its making space for beings —, it is a trans-temporal and trans-spatial space.
The chiasma of inter-dimensional inter-determinations is non-substantial. For the deep complexity of over-inter-determinations would deconstruct any notion of a substance. Its radically chiasmatic nature in its concreteness precludes the very possibility of substantialization. It is neither one substance nor a composite of many substances. Borrowing the terminology of Mahāyāna Buddhism we might say that Nishida treads the middle path between substantialism on the one hand and nihilism on the other. His stance is rather one of what Ueda calls a "dynamic non-foundationalist multi-dimensionalism."
Hence we might say that Nishida's philosophy, in its "logic of contradictory self-identity," implies not an ousiology in Aristotle's sense — i.e., a "logic of substance," or logic of non-contradictory identity —, but instead a chiasmology. Perhaps the language of the "logic of contradiction" can then be re-stated in terms of a field of an inter-acting or inter-folding mani-fold, a chiasmology, the legein of chiasma. Taking our discussion beyond Nishidian formulations, the dialectic of bi-conditional opposites or contradictories then ultimately gives-way to a chiasma of manifold forces and dimensions in (over)inter-determination, each term of which precludes reduction to any other in virtue of its own chiasmatic complexity. That is to say that each chiasmatic manifold of forces or folds, is in turn composed of further such chiasmas. In contrast to the Aristotelian ousiology of being the chiasmology points to a cross-sectional place of manifold intricate inter-activities. This is what subtends what in Nishida's terms is the contradictory identity between on (being) and mēon (non-being). If Aristotle's ousiology is an ontology, Nishida's chiasmology is then an an-ontology implying the en-folding of on and mēon within a chiasmatic mani-fold. His so-called dialectic is really an unfolding of that chiasma. And the place of that chiasma, enveloping the manifold, is Nishida's basho in its self-withdrawing self-negating or what I shall call its chōratic character.
Sec. 2: Place and Chōra
Nishida's premise is that to be is to be in a place, to be implaced. (Basho Z3 415) Everything that exists is in a place, which in turn is ultimately in nothing: the place of absolutely nothing (zettai mu no basho). Ueda Shizuteru understands Nishida's basho to involve a multi-layered structuring of meanings, a horizon of meaning for experience, that constitutes the place wherein one always already finds oneself existing. Each horizon is in itself limited, implying a "beyond" that constitutes the very condition for the horizon's possibility. That "beyond" is always dark and unknowable, unobjectifiable, what Nishida called mu (nothing). What Nishida comes to call "the world" (sekai) in the 1930s can be viewed in light of that final place encompassing all others. Or if we take the "world" itself as a delimited and restricted horizon, it would imply a further openness enveloping it, itself unrestricted, un-delimited, the open that Nishida calls the place of absolute nothing which in the world-dialectic of the 1930s comes to take on the significance of that trans-temporal and trans-spatial space, enfolding and unfolding its chiasmology as we discussed above. The self-determining open sphere that is the world's matrix is the place of the inter-dimensional, inter-directional, inter-determining chiasma. We can further regard this open that unfolds and enfolds the chiasma in terms of the Greek chōra. If chiasma expresses the over-determinate aspect of Nishida's matter of thinking, chōra would express its under-determinate aspect. In the beginning of his 1926 essay, Basho, Nishida tells us that he drew inspiration for his concept of basho from Plato's notion of chōra in the Timaeus. (Basho Z3 415) In the initial stages of his basho-theory, the concept is adopted primarily in epistemological terms as the field of consciousness for the interrelationship of cognitive form and matter. (See Basho & Sauda hakushi ni tou Z3 415, 498; Ronri to sūri Z10 59) [Nishida was looking inward into the depths of consciousness when he characterized the bottom of the self to be a place of nothing. But in his later works of the 1930s and 40s he turns outward to the socio-historical world and comes to describe the world as implaced within that place of nothing.] [If we keep in mind the originary Greek sense of chōra as the context-giving field encompassing one's horizon (see Berque's discussions), we might consider the place (basho) of the world that Nishida develops in the 1930s as chōratic as well.]
Why chōra? [Nishida has also referred to the other Greek word for place, topos, as well and translators have often rendered basho as topos. But what Nishida regards as the final basho, the place of absolute nothing, is certainly closer in significance to chōra than to topos.] Chōra ( ) is a Greek term that has been variously translated as "place," "space," "land," "area." In Plato's Timaeus (49a-50c) the term is used to mean the "receptacle" (hupodochē; ) onto which the ideas are in-formed or in-scribed to make their particular copies. It is the third "something" or genus — triton genos (52a) — necessitated by the relationship between copy (thing) and paradigm (idea), i.e., between the formed individual qua "becoming" and the forming universal idea qua "being."
That idea of chōra expresses an in-definition that is neither subjective nor objective, neither paradigm nor copy. As all-receiving it becomes stamped or in-formed by all sorts of intelligible paradigms. But in itself it remains undetermined and hence characterless, formless. (50e) Remaining un-determined or un-defined, chōra then is neither intelligible (in the order of the ideas) nor sensible (in order of those in-formed beings). (52a-c) It refuses reduction to either term of opposition. Belonging to neither of the two genres of being — intelligible-formal and sensible-material —, lacking its own identity, chōra remains amorphous (amorphon), formless. [This much Jacques Derrida has shown in his reading of the Timeaus in his "Khōra" and so has John Sallis in his Chorology. Augustin Berque on the other hand has emphasized (in Écoumène) the originary pre-Platonic Greek sense of chōra as the context-providing or meaning-giving ecumene in the ties of the human habitat to the surrounding land or country, the field or milieu (also with the sense of medium), coming close to Heidegger's sense of Gegend or region, which in itself was inspired by a reading of chōra. Combining Berquean and Derridean readings of the chōra, I would like to underscore here both its concreteness as the field of being and its abysmality. Its formlessness can be viewed as its undeterminateness or indeterminability even while serving as the place of determination], an empty opening that makes-room for things, providing the space for whatever becomes. The verb form of chōra, chōreō ( ), along with the sense of being in flux, has the sense of making-room for another by giving-way or withdrawing [(which also resonates with Heidegger's sense of Gegend as a verb and also as Umgegend, Umgebung)]. As the wherein and whence of every this and that, chōra withdraws from any designation as this or that. We might add that it thus provides a clearing for the chiasmatic unraveling of the many.
Nishida's dialectic of negation is predicated upon that chōratic nature of basho. Like chōra Nishida's basho at its most concrete level eludes positive description, and yet in its very no-thingness, opens a space for things determined and differentiated from one another and envelopes them. For Nishida, however, basho is a self-forming formlessness. It is in this sense that it is a nothing (mu) that gives rise to being (yū). In distinction from [the chōra in Plato's transcendentalism], Nishida's version of chōra is thus also self-formative but via its individual elements. In its nature of giving-place to the various inter-relations between opposites — such as form/idea and matter —, Nishida's basho, as an empty or formless place, is indeed chōratic.
If we are to look back at that chōra in light of Nishida's dialectic of contradictory self-identity, Derrida comes close to Nishida's conception when he remarks that Plato's chōra seems to defy that either-or "logic of non-contradiction," "the logic of binarity." [(Here there is the possibility also of Derrida's influence from his discussions with Japanese architect Isoazaki Arata who has made use of Nishidian motifs, such as contradictory identity, in discussing chōra in relation to the Japanese concept of ma or spatial interval, while also making reference to basho.)] As a dark "beyond" that gives place to oppositions — being/becoming, idea/image, intelligible/sensible, universal/particular —, it is in excess, irreducible, to either opposites, beyond sense and meaning. Only from and within it, can their cleavage "have and take place." As excess it is ontologically "nothing," preceding all beings and allowing for all such binary or dialectical determinations. Nishida's basho is chōratic in precisely that way, slipping away from any law of contradiction that would reduce it to exclusively being or non-being.
Chōra then, in its indeterminacy and self-withdrawal, undermines the hegemony of any principle, idea or ideal claiming universal validity. Only when understanding the universal precisely in light of that an-ontological chōratic opening or self-negation qua basho, in its formless nothingness, can the idea of a universal permit the irreducible singularity of individuals as in Nishida's notion of the dialectical universal. Hegel had inherited the primacy of the idea from Plato as what in-forms, orders, the material of world history. Nishida, by taking-off from and developing the chōra rather than the ideas in Plato, hoped to overcome that dichotomy between form and matter with his notion of a self-forming formlessness as a place enfolding its own forms. In opposition to the idealism of Plato and Hegel, what one might call their idea-logy (logos of the idea/s), Nishida thus puts forth a logic of place, a chorology. It serves as a dark undertow that pulls apart and tears asunder any metaphysical tendency even within Nishida's own thinking toward reifying absolutes. [his head filled with 19th century German stuff… terminology saturated with metaphysical tendencies.] Such "chorology" of a place of nothing allowing for criss-crossing inter-dimensionality, the chiasma, places Nishida's so-called dialectic beyond Hegel's dialectical idea-lism founded upon the self-conceiving concept. But this in turn is what leads us to the question of the adequacy or inadequacy of the language of a dialectical logic in expressing that chiasmatic chōra, Nishida's matter of thought.
Sec. 3: Conclusion: Chiasmatic Chōra
The chōra both supports, or rather engulfs in its gaping abyss, and is constituted by, the chiasma. Nishida's mature thought entails both together as the reticulated space of a chiasmatic chōra. Within the chōra quasi-substances and apparent principles are generated and cease as singular constellations of a chiasmatic concurrence of manifold forces and dimensions. That unfolding enfolding is, as Nishida states, "a determination without determiner." The self-determination of the abysmal chōra then is a chiasma of (over)inter-determinations, a perpetually reconfiguring chiasmatic chōra, the sheer complexity of which undermines any final Aufhebung or even any structure that might be characterized as "dialectical." What we have here then is a chiasmology instead of an Aristotelian ousiology and a chorology in distinction from Platonist and Hegelian idea-logy (i.e., their idealism). Both chōra and chiasma work together to undermine, in Nishida's system of in-completion, any semblance to a metaphysics of self-closure under the postulation of an absolute — whether as idea or concept or Geist or substance. Irreducible, in its over- and under-determinations, to being or non-being, Nishida's basho is such a chiasmatic chōra that is furthermore the an-ontological origin of both on and meon (being and non-being). It is the very matter of Nishida's own thinking that has undermined his own repeated attempts to grasp it under the structure of a completed system once-and-for-all.