著者
山本 和人
出版者
宗教哲学会
雑誌
宗教哲学研究 (ISSN:02897105)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.10, pp.50-67, 1993 (Released:2018-03-29)

“Millenarianism” is a term originally employed by medieval and early modern European historians, but has been referred to in various studies of many cultural, religious and nativistic movement outside the western world, such as the Prophetism in Africa, the Ghost Dance in North America, and the Cargo Cults in Melanesia. There is no consistent use of terminology among historians and cultural anthropologists, and the aim of this thesis is to offer some prospect for the integration of these studies. Some fundamental standpoints are discerned among them. Critical examination of these standpoints —psychological, sociological— of science of religion, would make two opposite tendencies clear. One is the view that millenarianism is something absurd or eccentric, and that the absurdity is to be reduced to psychological or sociological deficiencies. This is nothing but “labelling”. The other makes efforts to understand millenarianism which is essentially alien to our secular world view. It must be the process of understanding to endeavor to explain what seems alien to us, and we call this kind of attitude “proper appreciation”. Most studies are situated between these two polaritic tendencies. How can we avoid the labelling? There is something to learn in the standpoint of science of religion. As the science of religion is concerned with the integrated understanding of various religious phenomena which seem, at a glance, so hardly to be identifiable that we have difficulties in comprehending them under one word “religion”,so we must make much of our identification of many millenarian movements, for we have the tacit understanding that we also have an element in our experience which causes millenarianism. That is why we can recognize millenarianism. Thus, the preliminary lines for the study are laid down. First, the proper appreciation should be pursued as far as possible, not only to avoid labelling, but to carry our tacit understanding of millenarianism into direct statements. Second, the proper appreciation results in extending the application of millenarianism, because any of its limitation might presume the prejudiced labelling. This is only an immediate plan for the study, but we must start from it.
著者
山本 和人
出版者
宗教哲学会
雑誌
宗教哲学研究 (ISSN:02897105)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.5, pp.110-125, 1988 (Released:2018-03-15)

In his mature theory of perception, Whitehead acknowledges three modes of perception: perception in the mode of causal efficacy, perception in the mode of presentational immediacy, and perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference. While presentational immediacy is the mode which is developed from the traditional lines of arguments, especially Hume’s, the mode of causal efficacy is defined to complement presentational immediacy which he regards as inevitably abstractive. On the one hand, he attributes to causal efficacy what presentational immediacy lacks, that is, the sense of reality, that of passage of time, and so on. On the other hand, he identifies it with bodily senses. These two modes of perception are interrelated in symbolic reference, which assigns the “meaning” to the one, the “symbol” to the other, and the mediation of which makes us get our ordinary experiences of perception. The relationship of the two modes is, however, not so apparent against his intention. His own discussion discloses that the two modes are not distinct from each other as elements of symbolism, but that the mode of presentational immediacy has an essential relationship of derivation from the mode of causal efficacy. Further, the two sided definition of causal efficacy is necessarily accompanied with the metaphysical and ontological viewpoint as well as the proper epistemological one. These facts suggest us that the modes of perception are not real components, but idealized factors for the analysis of the experience of perception. Compared with the theory of significance in his former works, the mature theory has more incoherencies. Nevertheless, we can appreciate it in that he aims at the experience beyond perceptual representations, which is inexhaustible by any conceptual analysis. Perception itself is the idealized abstraction from concrete experiences. His theory does not give a complete explanation of the experience of perception, but a far-reaching prospect of interpretation of the experience that many theories have ignored.