著者

神山 四郎

出版者

慶応義塾大学言語文化研究所

雑誌

慶応義塾大学言語文化研究所紀要 (ISSN:03873013)

巻号頁・発行日

no.8, pp.p117-138, 1976-12

著者

神山 四郎

出版者

慶應義塾大学

雑誌

史学 (ISSN:03869334)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.46, no.4, pp.353-363, 1975

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論文One of the crucial problems in contemporary philosophy of history is to determine which is more relevant-historical explanation or historical understanding. Writers on this question may be divided into three types- (1) Idealists, (2) Covering-law theorists, and (3) Reactionists, as M. Mandelbaum has summed them up. I think the only possible approach, in current theoretical arguments, is the third one, which accepts, besides explanation by covering-law, some sort of understanding, especially when it is concerned with a more complicated account of human actions. It does not neccessarilly follow, however, that understanding is a peculiar way of historical inquiry rather than a kind of provisionary account which has still to be 'filled out' by some more rigorous explanation. Historians surely try not just to describe the given events, but to explain them. Thus, 'understanding' might be said to lie in the middle of 'description' and 'explanation'; historians would first describe the events as they were given, and then by attempting to answer the 'why' of these events they would proceed to 'understand' them, and finally when this 'why' could be answered objectively such an 'understanding' might be replaced by an 'explanation.' This, is basically the same in all areas of scientific inquiry of which history may be a rather incomplete one. Thus, the other several kinds of historical explanations, which are supposed to be peculiar to history according to W. Dray and others, would be after all reduced to the Hempelian model of explanation. It is true that historians may seldom succeed in giving explanations as satisfactory as those of physicists, but this does not preclude historians from filling out their explanations. I suppose that the very process of this 'filling out' constitutes progress in the field of historical studies. Scientific explanation is merely a logical instrument of our historical thinking, and need not be extended to a problem of, say, historical perspective, which is surely open to the philosophy of history.

著者

神山 四郎

出版者

慶應義塾大学

雑誌

史学 (ISSN:03869334)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.36, no.1, pp.104-107, 1963

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批評と紹介

著者

神山 四郎

出版者

慶應義塾大学

雑誌

哲學 (ISSN:05632099)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, pp.125-154, 1951-08

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It goes without saying that there is nothing commensurable substantially between God and His creatures in the same genus. But, since creatures exist actually in participating with God, there is something to make possible to be commensurate both terms at least analogically. In order to remind us its possibility most positively, St. Bonaventure asserted such a doctrine of divine expressionism as God expresses Himself in His totality and perfection in the results of His creation-by this expressionism he believed to be able to make his own theocentrism perfect. Thus the creatures impressed God's image by God Himself should be similar to the totality of Him even to the personal relation, but not in the substantial participation, but in the expressed similitude. As the relation between the creatures and the Creator has the similar relation between a sign and its meaning, we can recognize God through the creatures as well as the meaning through the sign. St. Bonaventure explained us such a recognition by the term "contuitio," analogical intuition, that is a particular conception which has epistemological foundation on the theory of illumination of the Plato-Augustinism. According to the Pseudo-Dionysius' formula the creatures are disposed on the hierarchy which is diffusively emanated from a divine source. Analogical concejtion seemed to be situated in it-the material world that is far from the origin is "vestiglum," the spiritual world, nearer to the origin, is "imago," and sanctified spirit is "similitudo." "Ex tantis indiciis" we can see (contueri) God, and travel to God Himself following these vestiges-he said this travel "Itinerarium mentis in Deum." Put we cannot use these analogical conceptions as the method for the purpose of getting a conception of "being." It is because, by these analogical conceptions he intended not to define the term "being," but merely toresearch a vestige, of God "Fabricator" imaresied upon the creatures. So in a word it is a symbolical conception, threfore the contuition of St. Bonaventure contributed far less to the formation of the analogical conceptions in the scholastic logic, than to the foundastion of christian humanism as a symbolical mysticism which conserved firmly and made us conscious the principles of the primacy of spirituality, solemnity of person and sanctification of body.