- 著者
-
宮野 真生子
- 出版者
- 西田哲学会
- 雑誌
- 西田哲学会年報 (ISSN:21881995)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.16, pp.42-57, 2020 (Released:2020-08-10)
What is the “eternal now” in the context of Kuki’s philosophy? In
responding to this problem, two lines of approach are possible. The first
of these is to ask about the nature of the “eternal now” established within
“recurring time.” Here, the “eternal now” that constitutes our problematic
is the instant in which a given matter is repeated indefinitely, maintaining
its oneness — an instant that Kuki considers a metaphysical and mystical
experience. The second approach is to ask about the nature of the “eternal
now” revealed at the root of contingency. According to Kuki, this “eternal
now” is a “élan vital” that underlies our normal experience of the flow
of time, making our reality possible. In the present when we encounter
contingency, we perceive a “élan vital” when we know that the reality is
“what it is.”
In this paper, after analyzing these two “eternal nows,” I clarify their
mutual relationship from the problematic of poetic language, and of rhyme
in particular. For Kuki, poetry expresses the present as qualitative time,
and rhyme is considered particularly excellent for such expression. Rhyme,
rather than merely a form of wordplay based on a coincidence of sound, is
something in which we feel astonishment, through our experience of this
coincidence of sounds and words, that words have been given as “what it is.”
Then, as this astonishment becomes more profound with the repetition of
this oneness of rhyme and rhythm, we become able to approach the living
heartbeat underlying our present, which is to say the “eternal now.” For
Kuki, rhyme is a way to connect the contingent present when we encounter
words not with an ephemeral moment, but with an eternity that transcends
time.