Original scientific paper

Logos and Pathos. Miki Kiyoshi’s Logic of the Imagination

Masakatsu Fujita

Abstract

Miki Kiyoshi’s Logic of the Imagination, a text that he worked on over a long period of time during the latter half of his life, could rightly be called his magnum opus. In this article I investigate the impetus behind Miki’s conception of a »logic of the imagination«. I seek to clarify what it is that he sought to problematize, and what he was attempting to think, by way of this novel idea. To begin with, I comment on Miki’s innovative understanding of human being, that is, on the existence of an original anthropology underlying his »logic of the imagination«. In Philosophical Anthropology, which was written prior to Logic of the Imagination, Miki locates the unique characteristic of philosophical anthropology in the fact that it refuses to abstract human being from the body. This means that human being is not merely consciousness, but must rather be understood as an embodied existence, in other words, as a being with pathos. The body, in turn, must be understood in its subjectivity. It is on the basis of this embodied anthropology, I purport, that Miki conceived of the »logic of the imagination« as a »logic of praxis«. Miki saw human praxis, not as a simple manifestation of emotions, passions and impulses, but rather as an endeavor to produce concrete images or forms from out of these wellsprings of pathos. In other words, according to Miki, human praxis transforms pathos into a different order of reality. In order for things to take shape, the intellect must come into play. In other words, a place must be opened up wherein affectivity and intellect can intermingle. One could saw that it is precisely the faculty of imagination that opens up such a place, and that can therefore give birth to images from out of the intermingling of affectivity and intellect.

Keywords

logos; pathos; logic; imagination; Miki Kiyoshi

Hrčak ID:

202540

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/202540

Publication date:

16.3.2005.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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