ホワイトヘッドと西田哲学 : 神と世界との関係をめぐって

Abstract

Nishida time and again points out that it is with the relationship of God and the world that religion is most concerned. In the following I would like to examine the problem of how God and the world is related to each other in Whitehead's and Nishida's philosophy of religion. To state my conclusion first as to this problem, it seems to me that God and the world are in both philosophers conceived to be in panentheistic relationship. So far as Whitehead's philosophy of organism is concerned, many of its interpreters are agreed on the assertion that it can be grasped as panentheistic. On the other hand, in his final writing entitled “The topos-like logic and the religious worldview”, Nishida says, “My standpoint should be conceived as not pantheistic but panentheistic.” Then what is panentheism? According to Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is K. C. F. Kraus (1781~1832) who gave expression to this concept first of all. In an attempt to synthesize theism and pantheism, he brought out into relief the doctrine that all things are in God and called it as panentheism. On the one hand, in theism emphasis is put on the contention that God transcends the world as the personal existent. In this case, God tends to be assumed in the figure of despot who accuses man of his sinfulness to the bottom. On the other, pantheism which identifies God with the world, emphasizes so much the immanence of God in the world that the transcendent personal existence of God is apt to be negated. In an endeavour to bring into synthesis theism and pantheism by exposing to the sun and negating, the onesidedness pertaining to each of these standpoints, panentheism holds the position that God as the personal existent is immanent in and at the same time transcendent from, the world. By the way, that God is immanent in the world means, to use the terminology inherent in the logic of dialectic, that God makes the world as well as a human being be through His own negation. While making them be by negating Himself, God affirms Himself through the medium of a human being's transformation of self-negation-sive-self-affirmation. In such an affirmation God is said to be transcendent from the world. In other words, by negating Himself God affirms Himself through the medium of a human being, and a human being in turn affirms himself by negating himself through the medium of God. The relationship of God and the world such as this, Nishida tries to describe in terms of contrasted determination.’ My point is to assert that Whitehead's philosophy of religion whose standpoint consists in the contention that God and the world require of each other as ‘contrasted opposites, ’ comes, when pressed to its extreme in terms of the logic of dialectic, to be in accord with Nishida's view.

By means of the concept of ‘contrasted determination’ Nishida implies that a human being ......which he calls as an individual ......comes into contact with God regarded as the dialectic universal on all such occasions as he becomes a self-expressing formative element of the world in such a manner as he, while determined by the world, determines himself. Such a manner as this Nishida attempts to characterize in terms of the ‘dialectic identity of contradictions.’ The concept which is equivalent in Whitehead to Nishida's concept of individual is an actual entity. An actual entity brings the many into one and thus increases by one in such a way as determines itself by being determined by its own world. In this sense, it is a self-creating creature. Each time when it tries to bring the manifold into synthetic unity, it is said to reflect in itself the world. And when this synthesis comes to an end, it is in turn contained within the world as that which increases by one. This is what is implied by means of the phrase ‘one into the many.’ Thus while an actual entity reflects in itself the world by bringing the many into one, and one into the many, it operates as a formative element of the world. And what's more, it comes into contact with God on all scuh occasions as it operates in this way. These considerations bring us to the view that there is almost no difference in Whitehead's and Nishida's philosophy in that God and the world are related to each other in a panentheistic way.