横地 徳広

Thank you for the recent increase in website visits from the US. I would like to give a presentation on my work, Ethica of the Sea of Sorrow, to American readers and U.S. university libraries here. I hope you will purchase it. https://www.keisoshobo.co.jp/book/b10158535.html ＊ ＊ ＊ The Metaphysics of Literature is a souvenir of the philosophical meditations, which KUKI Shūzō attempted in the final years of his life. One could argue that memento would be the more appropriate term, especially if one foregrounds the Nietzschean elements in KUKI’s Ethica. Yet I choose souvenir─Life is an odyssey. For KUKI strikes me not as a man of “iji,” but rather as one who arrived at “akirame.” Iji denotes a proud self-possession celebrated in Bushidō, and akirame signifies the Buddhist mode of resignation. ＊ My book in the 21 century, Ethica of the Sea of Sorrow, follows KUKI’s philosophical stance “in search of lost Metaphysics of Literature” and turns toward a meditation on ISHIMURE Michiko’s Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow (Kugai-Jōdo). The questions of my book are these. Was Mokutaro a buddha? He was a child suffering from fetal Minamata disease. Was the Sea of Sorrow a Pure Land? It was the Minamata Bay shoreline, contaminated by organic mercury. ＊ Tales of Minamata and Amakusaー the lands that flank the Shiranui Sea from north and south. In my book, we seek to interpret these tales. On the one hand, ISHIMURE, in her Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow trilogy, portrayed the metaphysical existence of patients with fetal Minamata disease, who were forced to live unanswered questions within bodies deprived of freedom. On the other, ENDO Shūsaku, in his work Silence, portrayed the metaphysical existence of Christians shaken in their faith before a God who offered no reply. Both literary works possess a value that calls for our discernment through a philosophical gaze. By contrast, the Realm of Sorrow (kugai) in KUKI’s Ethica was a peculiar world isolated from the general public (seken) by waterways. There are lonely lovers (kohi-naka) who, despite their forbidden intimacy, nevertheless carry it through in this living world. In doing so, they will, in the Nietzschean sense, “this life, once more and innumerable times,” and thereby become a form of iki, that is, a lived kalokagathia. The moment in which the Realm of Sorrow (kugai) is transfigured into a Pure Land by their own will is precisely the moment when eternity contracts into an instant and the instant dilates into eternity. Yet can we truly say that the children suffering from fetal Minamata disease, by their own will in the Nietzschean sense, transfigured the Sea of Sorrow into a Pure Land? Was it indeed by an act of will? ＊ One thing is certain. Each child was a singular Thou. In this fact alone there lies a hidden kalokagathia. Such kalokagathia would suddenly surface on film. For photographer Eugene Smith and filmmaker TSUCHIMOTO Noriaki shared their everyday lives with these children, and so, the cherishing exchanged between such children and their families at that groundless depth (Abgrund) resonated with the souls of the two journalists, Eugene and TSUCHIMOTO. Thus I wish to say this: we, too, are not severed from these children. The existential expressions of the children suffering from fetal Minamata disease were first received by their families, by ISHIMURE, and by OGATA Masato. Then, these Translators of the Children’s Soul entrusted their task to Eugene and TSUCHIMOTO. These journalists, in creating their documentary works, returned a smile to each of the children. Such resonances repeated themselves, flowing down the rivulets of words and images, and diffusing faintly into our sea of sentient beings. Within this, I have come to think as follows… This meditation will be continued in my work, Ethica of the Sea of Sorrow. ＊ ＊ ＊ Appendix. Kūkai is the Grand Master who propagated the Dharma. His Buddhist poetry, wasan: 繋がぬ沖の捨小船 Tunaganu-Oki-no-Suteobune 生死の苦海 Shouji-no-Kugai 果てもなし Hate-mo-nashi I would like to paraphrase this poetry in relation to my own work as follows. A boat drifts alone offshore,  abandoned in the Sea of Sorrow. Sentient beings live and die,  sometimes in the World of Sorrow. Someone may cross over from this world,  and reach the Pure Land, far beyond. But who could? How, and when? ＊ A living mass of mullets had broken the surface of the Shiranui Sea. So ISHIMURE Michiko said. I wonder whether she knew HAYASHIBARA Raisei, haiku poet. His haiku: Kuruwame-ni 廓女に Bora-tobu-Umi-mo 鰡とぶ海も kururunari 暮るるなり I would like to overlay ISHIMURE with HAYASHIBARA, and to read his haiku in the following poetic way. A woman in the world of sorrow, at autumn dusk, looks out over the sea of sorrow, lost in thought. A mullet leaps on the water.

２０２３年９月末から１１月末くらいまで「大学出版部協会創立６０周年記念フェア」開催中とのこと。関西学院大学出版会と関学生協のツイートを拝見したところ、拙著『戦争の哲学――自由・理念・講和』（東北大学出版会、２０２２年）も、関学生協書籍部の棚に並べてもらっていました。２０２２年の 「ウクライナ情勢を読み解く 大学出版部の書籍」、「今こそあなたに寄り添うこの１冊を！ 大学出版部協会フェア＠紀伊國屋書店」に続き、拙著推薦、深謝します。おかげさまで第二版となりました。

I am planning to publish a book titled Cyber Ethica. The Japanese manuscript has already been completed, and the English version is currently in preparation. Please contact me if you would be interested in publishing it. This book contains a philosophical inquiry into the affirmative possibilities of Heideggerian / Merleau-Pontian AI. This Heideggerian AI can imitate the Practical Syllogism across a wide variety of situations and carry out the corresponding eupraxis, whereas the originality of Merleau-Pontian AI consists in its emphasis on embodied being-in-the-world. The strength of this inquiry lies in its elucidation of the holistically structured organicity among these forms of AI. This Heideggerian / Merleau-Pontian AI system is composed of two forms of generative AI. First, ontological perception of situation at the level of the minor premis is carried out by a transformer-based generative AI developed by Google, which employs a multimodal large semantic model trained on large-scale multimodal data, including not only text but also audio, images, and video. Second, an Architecture-Centric AI operates at the level of the major premise, establishing an ideal world schema, for example, eudaimonia, as examined through endoxa. The central problem, however, concerns the realization of artificial phronesis = Prudential AI that runs through the entire structure of Practical Syllogism. Incidentally, a transformer-based generative AI enables an ontological perception of situational aspects, understood here as practical nous. Architecture-Centric AI, by contrast, concerns an ontological aspect perception at the level of the ideal world schema. At this point, what must be addressed is the ontological relation between endoxa and eudaimonia. 【Table of Contents】 1. Ethical Reflections on the Historical A Priori of Evolution: Between Our Reality and the Fictional Prehistory of Nausicaä. 2. Semiotical Reflections on Molecular Biology and Genome Editing: Between Our Actual World and the Cinematic World of Blade Runner. 3. In Search of the Affirmative Possibilities of Heideggerian AI and Merleau-Pontian AI. 4. Cyber GAIA and Cyber Ecofascism. 5. The Cerebral Neocortex of Spaceship Earth in the 21st Century? 6. A Metaphysical Evolutionary Theory from the Noosphere to the unknowable Superintelligence. ⇒ Incidentally, the Noosphere is an integrated technosphere composed of all cyborgs, that is, a collective Cyberintelligence network. 【contact】 https://jglobal.jst.go.jp/detail?JGLOBAL_ID=202101013449395571