Mamoru Takayama

What is the future of history?

Was ist die Zukunft der Geschichte? Ein Erdbeben für Hegel (Presentation in German)
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In his work, the Japanese philosopher Mamoru Takayama associates two ways of reflecting on being, time, the world, the life of man and the development of mankind: the European philosophy of history above all as propounded by Hegel – and what we tend to awkwardly label “Japanese thinking”, fed by the Buddhist scriptures, the influences of Zen practices on Japanese culture and perhaps a specific experience of life in a country, in which earthquakes have always played an important role in its geographical and historic profile.

A causal nexus between past and future?

As a Hegel proponent, Takayama questions the role of causality and finality in history: In view of the multitude of heterogeneous processes in the world, which appear to have no common logic, not even a rational order, is it possible today to make out a movement in which something approaching a historic sense can be detected?

Is the extremely systematic Hegelian philosophy, supported by a clear and targeted rationale evolution of a world spirit still adequate to give orientation in the current chaos of conflicting powers, contradictory opinions and incompatible convictions?

Or have we misunderstood Hegel until now – is what he terms “causality” something quite different from a simple equation from which to infer the future from the past and present?

Takayama proposes that we think of the temporality of causality itself as the moment at which knowledge and ignorance, transparency and opacity, cohesion and conflict split. History, he appears to say, is something that happens in time with time, and should be recorded from that point forward.

Earthquakes that relieve time

On the other hand, Mamoru Takayama in his testimony on European philosophy is always someone who can remark with a smile: “And at some point – this much is clear – everything falls apart again.”

The earthquake, the breaking open of the seemingly solid ground, the unfathomability of the ground itself – this obviously does not appear to him so much as a threat, a catastrophe that must be fought at all costs, but rather as a relief and liberation. The certainty of the simple, banal and self-evident finite nature of everything in Takayama’s thinking is the antithesis of Hegelian theory.

And it is this tension that makes him particularly interesting to us: the search for the hidden causality in things that appear to have no reason or cohesion joins a calm, extremely life-affirming, nay joyful understanding with the void, on which everything that man does, says or thinks is based and to which everything ultimately returns.

Causality and the void, history in a world whose earth quakes – these parameters will play an important part in Takayama’s prognosis.

What will become of philosophy’s powers?

Our questions to him are therefore: What does a Japanese philosopher prophesy for the future of history in 2008 from his particular perspective? How is he able to remobilise the forces of philosophy to translate that thing called “future” into language when, despite (or perhaps because) knowing that we cannot determine it with any reliability occupies us constantly?

And: how can a “Japanese way of thinking” change our relationship to the future?

Mamoru Takayama will probably deliver his prognosis as a lecture. But his first words after greeting us at our first meeting were: “Attack me with your hands!” We therefore eagerly await his next surprise.