ABSTRACT
As Paul Standish points out, language is the very medium in which human being is possible and the world comes to light. Initiated into these language games, we see the world from a new perspective and, at the same time, transform ourselves. The interdependence between world disclosure and self-transformation through language games is a characteristic of Japanese philosophy. In this chapter, thus, I examine the relationship between language and education in Japanese philosophy by exploring the significance of thinking in Japanese rather than in other languages. First, Sugita overviews the philosophical significance of thinking in Japanese, as founded by Kitarō Nishida (西田幾多郎) and Tetsurō Watsuji. It will become clear that Japanese logic has a predicate-oriented structure that implies a self-transformation through experience where the subject and object are inseparable. Next, he argues that Japanese expressions with the middle voice exhibit a distinctive view of self-transformation, as exemplified by the Japanese word ru (る), which has both spontaneous and passive meanings. Finally, he shows that the self-transformation manifested in Japanese predicates differs from the subject-oriented language model where the encounter with the otherness of the other through world disclosure is left as a trace. This view of language will be tied to Levinas’ and Agamben’s analysis of the trace of otherness in the reflexive form of our language usage.
