個體性の問題 : ナートルプ研究 (完)

Abstract

Although Paul Natorp, who from his earlier days was keenly interested in the problem of individuality, attacked it from the fields of speculative philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and psychology, no definitive solution could be reached so far as he adhered to his epistemological standpoint, which presupposed the opposition between subject and. object. The problem of individuality could only be adequately dealt with, when Natorp outgrew his earlier standpoint in proceeding to a metaphysical one founded on a new logic. His psychological study and his religious experience were the moments, which led him to this new insight. The fundamental categories of his “universal logic” (die allgemeine Logik) are the categories of modality --i.e. possibility, necessity, actuality --which are meant to signify the modi of being itself, and not the modi of cognition as it was the case with Kant. Possibility signifies the state before the oppositions appear, necessity the world of oppositions and contradictions, and actuality the ultimate mode of being in which all contradictions cease to exist. It is in this third modus of actuality that the process of individualization is completed; each individual here represents the universe in its own way; and in this aspect human actions come to take on the character of “the only possible”. The writer of the present paper notices how the counterparts of this train of thoughts are found in Buddhistic philosophies.