"Extreme, Extreme Thinking"

2019/04/01

My current specialty is philosophy, but I originally graduated from the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Law at the same Keio University. I then went on to the Major in Philosophy here at the Graduate School of Letters, where I am today. The reason I changed my field of expertise to philosophy was because I was drawn to its extremity. Philosophy is extreme in every respect. For example, anyone who aspires to scholarship is expected to be skeptical—whether toward popular opinion, the conventional consensus in academia, or even one's own research career to date. However, once a philosopher begins to exercise skepticism, it does not stop until everything has been doubted. The existence of God, the existence of the world, and even the self (this person that I believe to be my unified personality) become objects of philosophical skepticism. Why is this? It is because philosophers have a pure desire to know. People usually seek specific information for a particular purpose, interest, or motive. The same is generally true for scholars. Ordinary scholarship, as indicated by the word "discipline," refers to a systematic body of knowledge regulated by purpose and method. Philosophers, however, purely want to know how everything truly is. This is why a philosopher is called a philosopher. The word we Japanese translate as "philosopher" originated in ancient Greece, where it originally meant something like "one who is enamored with wisdom." In this sense, philosophy is an extreme form of thinking that attempts to push thought to its limits. But this is because what philosophy seeks is the "extreme"—that is, the root of all things, the limits of what we humans can know or think, or what can be said to "be" or "exist" in the ultimate sense.

The subjects of my current specialized research are M. Heidegger and L. Wittgenstein, two philosophers who were active in the first half of the twentieth century. If you ask why I study philosophers from so long ago, it is because, in my view, they are the most extreme among philosophers who are known for their extremity. The former says very extreme things in the field traditionally called "ontology," while the latter does so in the relatively new field of "philosophy of language." Because of their sheer extremity, both have many "detractors" among philosophers and philosophy researchers. But for me, that is precisely their appeal. To be precise, rather than "researching" them, I am struggling daily to spin out my own extreme thoughts, using their extreme thinking as a model. I have yet to reach a satisfactory level of extremity, though.

As an undergraduate, I first seriously encountered the aforementioned "extremity" of philosophy and had an experience where everything I had studied up to that point instantly paled in comparison. Even now, I encourage young people who tend toward extreme thinking in various matters to pursue philosophy without hesitation. Half of this is my hope that they will encounter true extremity and realize the half-heartedness of their own. The other half is my wish that, since they have the aptitude for extreme thinking, they would properly think through that extremity. What is required of a person living with others in life is, in most cases, not the extreme but the "golden mean." Aristotle also said that the ability to unerringly hit the golden mean is "virtue." Furthermore, as we are compelled to live as "professionals" of some kind in society, we inevitably move in the direction of "specialization." However, the extremity required in the Major in Philosophy is by no means the pinnacle of specialization. This is because ultimate specialization is not the same as the fundamentality or radicalness that philosophy seeks. With the exception of the very few who make a living from philosophy, "extreme, extreme thinking" is something that most students in the Faculty of Letters can only encounter during this period of their lives. However, I believe that this experience will surely bring about a significant change in their lives.