mercredi 6 mars 2019

In search of a transmodern paradigm / Augustin Berque

Proposed to Journal of Japanese philosophy. Corrected on 24/4/18

In search of a transmodern paradigm

nature in Imanishi’s “natural science” and Fukuoka’s “natural farming” 

by Augustin Berque 
Abstract – A transmodern conception of nature is proposed, sublating (aufhebend) the Aristotelian logic of the identity of the subject and the Nishidian palaeologic of the identity of the predicate, and discussing, as concrete examples, Imanishi’s theory of evolution and Fukuoka’s natural farming.

§ 1. Would the human history of nature only be a matter of milieu ? In 1968, Serge Moscovici (1925-2014) published a memorable essay on what he qualified as “human history of nature”. In the 1977 edition, the back cover made the wish that “this book, written before its time, may meet its readers, those of a time when , by dint of talking about nature, people almost forget that it has a history: ours”. But why the deuce would that book have been “written before its time”? And, half a century after 1968, would that time have come at last?