「ペーター・スローターダイクとフクシマ原発事故」 (科研基盤C)
Peter Sloterdijk and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident
Peter Sloterdijk and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident
本研究は、ドイツ人哲学者ペーター・スロータダイクの提起する「anthropotechnics」と言う概念が持つ射程を解明し、彼の思想の現代的意義を明らかにするものである。そのために、特に日本とドイツにおいて「フクシマ危機」をめぐって、現在展開されている諸議論を参照し、フクシマ以後の世界のなかで彼の哲学を検証する。哲学・文学のみならず広く人々の知的生活に働きかける彼とともに、現代社会における「人間性」の問題を倫理的・政治的な視点から考究して、新たな展望を開く。また単なる思弁的研究に終わることなく、東北大震災後の現実を担うこれからの若者に、種々の知的戦略を具体的に提供する。
This research
project focuses on Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of anthropotechnics which envisages alternative ways of life and
crisis management from a philosophical and ethical point of view. Relationships
to concepts and models of other thinkers as well as the German public will be
elucidated. The research combines discursive and rhetorical text analyses with
inquiries into ethical discussions concerning the Fukushima nuclear accident and its
consequences.
Research Aim:
After the Great Tokai Earthquake and the impending nuclear threat of Fukushima, professors of liberal arts are confronted with the acute demands of their young students for explanation and security. Literature has for centuries been the media in which mankind has posted its worries and fears, its hopes and visions. It is the task of literature professors to explain concepts and images, rhetoric and interpretative strategies. And these basic techniques of understanding remain imperative even in a society and university that is constantly drifting away from the classical corpus of literature. It is in view of these developments that I have contrived the research project in hand. Year after year, the findings of the research are presented in graduate and undergraduate classes to help students to develop interpretative strategies to come to terms with the new situation that has changed their lives so dramatically.
Peter Sloterdijk:
The focus point I have chosen is therefore a book that offers alternative points of view in order to discuss life and crisis management. It is directly related to the Great Tokai Earthquake even though it was published two years earlier: a 700pages long philosophical essay Du mußt dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik (2009) (You Must Change Your Life. On Anthropotechnics, 2013), proposing a radical change of man’s attitude towards the planet Earth, calling for “anticipatory” strategies of understanding. Its author Peter Sloterdijk (*1947) is regarded as the most famous and outspoken living philosopher in Germany today. For years his astounding, provocative and highly controversial books have kept the German public on the alert. Besides being a professor at the University of Karlsruhe he is a prize-loaded publisher of philosophical essays and treatises and a notorious public figure in the mass media.
Anthropotechnics:
As the subtitle shows, Sloterdijk’s book is ment to be an introduction to anthropotechnics, a term he uses to describe the basic human characteristics of learning, which he regards as the ultimate and most appropriate description not only of the meaning of human life, but of the very foundations of the conditio humana. In doing so this work takes its place in a long tradition of philosophical, religious, and cultural attempts at grasping the essence of humanity (as God’s image and creature, as homo faber, homo erectus, and homo loquax, as the forever unsatisfied pre-matured child of psychoanalysis). While linking his argument to various Western and Eastern traditions of learning and teaching (asceticism, meditation) he claims an “anthropological turn”, that could also be understood as a “re-physicalization of metaphysics”, in the tradition of these explanatory models. The justification of the new envisaged conditio humana is then the planet itself on the verge of destruction by its ignorant human navigators, an idea also explored in another book by Sloterdijk: Das Raumschiff Erde hat keinen Notausgang (2011).
Germany and Japan:
While Du mußt dein Leben ändern can also be analyzed from a distinct philosophical point of view, the project in hand is concerned with its positioning in similar, historical and traditional cultural discourses as well as with the analysis of its influence on political and ethical discussions in the wake of the "Fukushima Crisis" in Germany. Therefore the focus point of this project is a discursive analysis trying to elucidate the use of conceptualizations, imagery, and rhetoric of a highly elaborate example of essayistic literature in contemporary German intellectualism. Since its publication, there have only been a handful of research books and various papers to be included in this project. However, the intellectual situations in Japan and Germany respectively call for a detailed analysis of Sloterdijk’s anthropotechnics at this point of time. While the combination of Western and Eastern thought, typical of Sloterdijk’s thinking, attracts a transnational perspective, this feature also demands careful restriction by the question to what extent German and Japanese approaches are compatible. While the German visualizations and conceptualizations of far-away terror-stricken Japan may add some helpful insights into today’s Japanese public discussions, the Japanese down-to-earth reaction to the manifest threefold catastrophe allows a very critical, corrective assessment of the discussions in Germany today.
After the Great Tokai Earthquake and the impending nuclear threat of Fukushima, professors of liberal arts are confronted with the acute demands of their young students for explanation and security. Literature has for centuries been the media in which mankind has posted its worries and fears, its hopes and visions. It is the task of literature professors to explain concepts and images, rhetoric and interpretative strategies. And these basic techniques of understanding remain imperative even in a society and university that is constantly drifting away from the classical corpus of literature. It is in view of these developments that I have contrived the research project in hand. Year after year, the findings of the research are presented in graduate and undergraduate classes to help students to develop interpretative strategies to come to terms with the new situation that has changed their lives so dramatically.
Peter Sloterdijk:
The focus point I have chosen is therefore a book that offers alternative points of view in order to discuss life and crisis management. It is directly related to the Great Tokai Earthquake even though it was published two years earlier: a 700pages long philosophical essay Du mußt dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik (2009) (You Must Change Your Life. On Anthropotechnics, 2013), proposing a radical change of man’s attitude towards the planet Earth, calling for “anticipatory” strategies of understanding. Its author Peter Sloterdijk (*1947) is regarded as the most famous and outspoken living philosopher in Germany today. For years his astounding, provocative and highly controversial books have kept the German public on the alert. Besides being a professor at the University of Karlsruhe he is a prize-loaded publisher of philosophical essays and treatises and a notorious public figure in the mass media.
Anthropotechnics:
As the subtitle shows, Sloterdijk’s book is ment to be an introduction to anthropotechnics, a term he uses to describe the basic human characteristics of learning, which he regards as the ultimate and most appropriate description not only of the meaning of human life, but of the very foundations of the conditio humana. In doing so this work takes its place in a long tradition of philosophical, religious, and cultural attempts at grasping the essence of humanity (as God’s image and creature, as homo faber, homo erectus, and homo loquax, as the forever unsatisfied pre-matured child of psychoanalysis). While linking his argument to various Western and Eastern traditions of learning and teaching (asceticism, meditation) he claims an “anthropological turn”, that could also be understood as a “re-physicalization of metaphysics”, in the tradition of these explanatory models. The justification of the new envisaged conditio humana is then the planet itself on the verge of destruction by its ignorant human navigators, an idea also explored in another book by Sloterdijk: Das Raumschiff Erde hat keinen Notausgang (2011).
Germany and Japan:
While Du mußt dein Leben ändern can also be analyzed from a distinct philosophical point of view, the project in hand is concerned with its positioning in similar, historical and traditional cultural discourses as well as with the analysis of its influence on political and ethical discussions in the wake of the "Fukushima Crisis" in Germany. Therefore the focus point of this project is a discursive analysis trying to elucidate the use of conceptualizations, imagery, and rhetoric of a highly elaborate example of essayistic literature in contemporary German intellectualism. Since its publication, there have only been a handful of research books and various papers to be included in this project. However, the intellectual situations in Japan and Germany respectively call for a detailed analysis of Sloterdijk’s anthropotechnics at this point of time. While the combination of Western and Eastern thought, typical of Sloterdijk’s thinking, attracts a transnational perspective, this feature also demands careful restriction by the question to what extent German and Japanese approaches are compatible. While the German visualizations and conceptualizations of far-away terror-stricken Japan may add some helpful insights into today’s Japanese public discussions, the Japanese down-to-earth reaction to the manifest threefold catastrophe allows a very critical, corrective assessment of the discussions in Germany today.
Relevant Publications:
Herrad Heselhaus (2014d): Gendered Discourses on Disaster and Disaster Prevention in: Proceedings of the IGALA 8 (International Gender and Language Association), 5 pages, in print.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014c): Literature after Fukushima. A Comparison of German and Japanese Approaches, in: Proceedings of ICLA Conference (Sorbonne, Paris, 2013), 11 pages, in print.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014b): Turning the Screw of Immunology. Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, in: Doctoral Program in Literature and Linguistics, Tsukuba University (ed.): Studies in Language and Literature (Literature Bulletin), vol. 66, pp. 61-86.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014a): The Rise of Immunology. Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", in: American Literature Society of the University of Tsukuba and the LYNXX, vol. 24, pp. 21-30.
Herrad Heselhaus (2013c): Katastrophe – Desaster – Apokalypse. Ansätze einer philosophischen Seismo-Graphie, in: Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik (ed.): Neue Beiträge zur Germanistik, vol. 12, Japanisch-Deutsche Ausgabe von „Doitsu Bungaku“ vol. 148 (Tokyo: Ikubundo), pp. 8-25.
Herrad Heselhaus(2013b): Immunizing Society. The Adaptation of “Immunity” in the Discourses of the Humanities and Social Sciences, in: International Regional Studies, Tsukuba University (ed.): Area Studies Tsukuba, vol. 35, pp. 59-77.
Herrad Heselhaus (2013a): We have to change our Lives – Japan after Fukushima, in: Proceedings of the 2nd Algeria-Japan Academic Symposium in Oran (Algeria), 2012, p. 37-42.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014d): Gendered Discourses on Disaster and Disaster Prevention in: Proceedings of the IGALA 8 (International Gender and Language Association), 5 pages, in print.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014c): Literature after Fukushima. A Comparison of German and Japanese Approaches, in: Proceedings of ICLA Conference (Sorbonne, Paris, 2013), 11 pages, in print.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014b): Turning the Screw of Immunology. Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, in: Doctoral Program in Literature and Linguistics, Tsukuba University (ed.): Studies in Language and Literature (Literature Bulletin), vol. 66, pp. 61-86.
Herrad Heselhaus (2014a): The Rise of Immunology. Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", in: American Literature Society of the University of Tsukuba and the LYNXX, vol. 24, pp. 21-30.
Herrad Heselhaus (2013c): Katastrophe – Desaster – Apokalypse. Ansätze einer philosophischen Seismo-Graphie, in: Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik (ed.): Neue Beiträge zur Germanistik, vol. 12, Japanisch-Deutsche Ausgabe von „Doitsu Bungaku“ vol. 148 (Tokyo: Ikubundo), pp. 8-25.
Herrad Heselhaus(2013b): Immunizing Society. The Adaptation of “Immunity” in the Discourses of the Humanities and Social Sciences, in: International Regional Studies, Tsukuba University (ed.): Area Studies Tsukuba, vol. 35, pp. 59-77.
Herrad Heselhaus (2013a): We have to change our Lives – Japan after Fukushima, in: Proceedings of the 2nd Algeria-Japan Academic Symposium in Oran (Algeria), 2012, p. 37-42.