Reference and symbol in Platos Cratylus and kuukais Shojijissogi

·期刊原文
Reference and symbol in Plato's Cratylus and kuukai's Shojijissogi

T.P.Kasulis
Philosophy East and West
Vol. 32:4 (October 1982)
PP.393-405
The University of Hawaii Press
(C) by University of Hawaii Press

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P.393

Early in its development, a philosophical tradition
will consider the nature of language, for language
is, after all, the medium of philosophical express-
ion. To be truly philosophical, an inquiry must have
a least a rudimentary theory about the relationship
between words and nonlinguistic reality. This does
not mean that every cultural tradition will make the
same initial decision about this relationship. We
only require that a preliminary theory of language
be logically consistent and a reasonable reflection
of at least some aspect of language as used in
everyday life. This paper examines the pioneering
Western and Japanese philosophies of language as
presented in Plato's Cratylus and Kuukai's Shojijis
sogi(a) (The Significance of Sound-word-reality). We
will find similar questions asked in these two
works, as well as dissimilar answers.The comparisons
and contrasts will suggest some general observations
about the nature of comparative philosophy.
Both Platoand Kuukai inquire into the origin,
function, and truth of language.The Cratylus and
Sound-word-reality are ground-breaking efforts that
emerge out of and go beyond a prephilosophical view
of language. In most ancient cultures, words are
generally believed to have a creative, magical
power. In fact, the ancient assumption is often that
things exist through speech.In Genesis,for example,
God says "let there be light" as part of his
creation of light. Since God was the only conscious
being at that time, his speech can hardly be
regarded as communicative. It displays rather a
performative, creative power. The opening of the
Gospel of John also refers to the divinity,timeless-
ness, and creative force of the World. In fact, the
Gospel tells us, the word is God. Similarly, India's
earliest philosophical-religious text, the .RgVeda,
refers to sacred speech(vaac)as a supreme principle
or deity of sustenance. The text says, for example,
that it is through vaac that we eat (see X.125.4).
In China, the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching
claims the nameless to be the beginning of the
cosmos at large, but it is the named which is the
mother of the variegated universe of things. Such
examples could be multiplied almost endlessly, but
the point is merely to recognize this archaic view
as constituting, to a large extent, the tradition
both Plato and Kuukai tried to supersede. Both
figures tried to go beyond the simply magical into
the philosophical.
This consideration of the prephilosophical view of
language reminds us that Plato and Kuukai lived in
worlds very different from our own. Their cultures
were still very much imbued with shamanism, ritual,
oracular pronouncements, divination, and frenzied in
cantations. Even Socrates,a hero of Western rationa-
lism,supposedly initiated his philosophical quest in
response to a pronouncement

P.394

from Delphi and, to his dying days, believed in the
advice of a guardian spirit (daimoon). Cognizant of
this difference in worldviews, we should not expect
too much of our philosophical pioneers.In reading an
ancient philosophical text, we sometimes feel it
stops just when it approaches the key issue and it
leaves the most critical point unargued. But that is
partly an indication of the greatness of the work
seminal treatises lead us to the questions we ask
today.We can hardly expect an ancient classic to
answer our questions, since its answers are what
generated our questions. In short,we must view Plato
and Kuukai with both reverence and tolerance.
Our cross-cultural comparison will begin with a
brief synopsis of the two works under consideration.
Since the Cratylus is more familiar to most Western
readers, we will start with it.Before discussing any
details, however, we should first make a general
observation about its general subject matter. The
main topic of the dialogue is the nature of
language. Today, such a philosophical discussion
would involve an analysis of word, meaning, and
reference. To the extent the Cratylus inquires into
the connection between names and the things to which
they refer, the discussion is modern.The conversants
in the ancient dialogue are also interested,
however, in the origin of language. The dialogue
assumes that in order to understand the relationship
between the name and the named, one must also
understand how that relationship could come about.
For most of us today, the origin of language is
hardly a philosophical issue. We are only too happy
to leave the question to linguists and philologists
(who also, as a matter of fact, prefer not to deal
with it). Yet,insofar as we develop a philosophy of
language,we implicitly take a metaphysical, if not a
historical, position on origination. That is, in our
concern for what language can be used to accomplish,
we often reflect assumptions about why or how
language came into being in the first place. Wilbur
Marshall Urban expresses this point well:

It is often maintained that origins do not affect
validity, but notoriously they do and nowhere more
clearly than in this sphere of language.It is, as we
have seen, almost universally assumed that what
speech was originally made for determines in some
significant way what it is capable of doing now...In
any case, to revert to our primary question,
historical origins may not affect values, but
metaphysical concepts of ultimate origin certainly
do.(1)

Bearing in mind this comment on the metaphysical
origins of language,we will pay special attention to
the metaphysical positions underlying Plato's and,
later, Kuukai's views of language.

II

In the Platonic dialogue,Socrates tries to delineate
a middle position between the views of Cratylus and
Hermogenes. Hermogenes takes the stand of many
sophists: names or words are merely conventions,
lacking any nonarbitrary basis. Thus, any word
whatsoever may be used to refer to a thing as long
as one establishes a convention in doing so. This
conventionalism probably arose out of

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the awareness that different languages use different
words to refer to the same thing. This fact was well
known to the cosmopolitan Greeks who were in contact
with foreign lands through trade,travel,and military
operations.The problem with Hermogenes'interpretation,
however, is that it leads to a radical relativism
and leaves open the possibility for completely
private languages.
Plato has Socrates respond that although the
phonetic form of a word may vary cross-culturally,
the meaning of the word is not arbitrary.The
meaningfulness of a word is judged by how well it
serves us in actual use;the succession of sounds used
in pronouncing the word is not important. Plato's
basic model is that our experience yields (or, more
technically, reminds us of) formal patterns of mean-
ing to which we refer through a conventionally
approved sequence of sounds. Although we may say
"dog" and Germans say "der Hund," the idea expressed
is universal.To speak falsely is to apply that idea
to a wrong referent-a cat,for example.According to
Plato, pronunciation may be conventional,but meaning
and reference are not at all arbitrary.
Cratylus, on the other hand,is a disciple of
Heraclitus. As such, he holds two seemingly imcompa-
tible opinions. On the one hand, he maintains the
inherent rightness of names.He audaciously informs
Hermogenes, for example, that "Hermogenes"cannot be
his true name, even though everyone knows him as
such. Why? Because he is no son of Hermes (the
etymological derivation of the name). Cratylus is
reticent to say whence the appropriateness of names
is derived, so Hermogenes accuses him of oracular
obscurity.That there is some inherent, unanalyzed
structure in words is probably a reflection of
Heraclitus' doctrine of logos.On the other hand,
Heracliteans also maintain that the physical world
is in constant transformaton. Insofar as words refer
to things and things are in flux, words must also be
continuously changing.Ultimately,this position leads
to ineffability. Aristotle informs us (Metaphysics,
1010a) that Cratylus eventually disdained to speak
in words at all and communicated only through
gestures. Fortunately, for the purposes of Plato's
dialogue, he had not yet reached this extreme
position.
In responding to Cratylus, Socrates again leads us
in the direction of the Platonic theory. That is,
words do not refer to the ever-changing objects of
sense experience,but rather to the permanent objects
of reason,the realm of forms or ideas. Whereas every
particular dog may undergo changes, the idea of dog
is constant.The world of flux is real-the senses
observe it and we learn (remember) from our contact
with it-but it is ultimately grounded in something
permanent, the true referent of words, that is,the
forms.
Both Cratylus'pre-Socratic and Hermogenes'sophistic
position are at least proto-philosophical, but is
there any evidence of the prephilosophical
understanding of language we discussed above? It is
so interwoven into the dialogue that we might have
overlooked it were we not already sensitive to
it.First, we find several references to the
oracular. At the opening of the dialogue, Hermogenes
is frustrated with Cratylus' mysticism and Socrates
is invited to interpret Cratylus'

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"oracular" speech (384a).This,I believe,is a clue to
the purpose of the entire dialogue:Socrates will ex-
plain and,therefore,supersede the primitive religious
view of language. Throughout the dialogue, Plato
reminds us that Socrates is taking the role formerly
held by priests and priestesses. Once by Hermogenes
(396d) and once by Cratylus (428c), Socrates is said
to be divinely inspired. In fact, when Socrates
whizzes through a series of etymologies for the
names of gods and heroes, he himself is taken aback
and wonders if his soul has been spiritually
captured by the speeches of Euthyphro (396d).In
short, Socrates can be an oracle, but he can do
more-he can be a philosopher.
The transcendence of the primitive religious view
of language is also reinforced by Socrates'treatment
of the thesis that the first naming was of divine
origin.He mentions the thesis twice, once in talking
with Hermogenes(425d) and once with Cratylus (472c).
In neither case does he deny or argue against divine
origin.Rather,he points out that the thesis does not
help him ansewer the questions with which he is con-
cerned. The religious view of the origin of language
is not so much wrong as irrelevant. In short, Plato
has Socrates bracket the ancient religious point of
view.It is simply outside the concern of philosophy.
The divine, symbolic, evocative, and participative
aspects of language were left to religion.Philosophy
would concern itself primarily with reference, that
is, the proper way of making words name things.As we
shall now see, Kuukai made a significantly different
move in the Japanese tradition.

III

Kuukai (or Kooboo Daishi(b)) (A.D.774-835) is one of
the pillars of Japanese culture. He has left us with
a set of extraordinary treatises, poems, examples of
calligraphy, and legends of superhuman feats(such as
curing plagues and carving wooden buddha-images that
would not burn). Traditionally considered to be the
designer of the Japanese syllabary writing systems
(kana),he was the founder of the first public school
in Japan. He lived in a critical period for the dev-
elopment of Japanese civilization (compared with its
Asian mainland neighbors, Japanese culture evolved
very late) and he is credited with synthesizing folk
religion and Buddhist doctrine through his esoteric
or tantric form of Buddhism, Shingonshuu(c) ("true
word" or "mantra" school).
As Plato could draw upon the prephilosophical, the
sophistic, and the pre-Socratic traditions, Kuukai's
thought grew out of the Japanese prephilosophical and
mainland Buddhist traditions. Like Plato's Greece,
Kuukai's Japan was emerging from a mythical, magical,
archaic world view. Magical rites and incantations
(kotodama(d))were still ubiquitous,not only in rural
areas,but in the capital of Kyoto (Heian)itself. The
country was filled with kami(e), a sacred presence
that could take the form of a person, animal, place,
or natural object. The mountains were the retreats
for mystical priests (yamabushi(f)) who praticed a
strange form of religion that mixed indigenous, so-
called Shintoo practices and

P.397

ideas with Buddhist texts and doctrines imported from
China and Korea,a spiritual movement that would even-
tually take from as shugendoo(g).Meanwhile,the court
(in the process of moving from Nara to Kyoto) was a
mimicry of high Chinese society. The Confucian and
Taoist classics were studied, as much for reading
practice as to assimilate wisdom, and the six Nara
schools of Buddhism were strongly represented in
aristocratic circles. Buddhism was, however, still
viewed primarily as an exotic, foreign presence.
With its marvelous temples, images, scriptures, and
rituals, Buddhism was a repositorye of culture and
even a political force, but is was not really a
source of religious or philosophical inspiration.
Kuukai would be a major factor in the Japanization
of Buddhism.
Like Plato's Greece, Kuukai's Japan was ready to
move beyond the imaginative understanding associated
with myth to the rational understanding associated
with philosophy.The new feeling was that ideas should
be grounded in experience and justified through argu-
ment. Still, the differences between ancient Greece
and ancient Japan were vast.The Athenian world was
cosmopolitan, sophisticated in its relativism,moving
toward individualism, and even playing with the
notion of democracy. Japan, on the other hand, was
isolated, afraid of invasion, and in need of a
national identity based on a spiritual mandate.
Given his cultural setting, it is not surprising
that Plato wished to separate philosophy from
religion. In such a cosmopolitan context, one would
like to find a universally agreed upon basis for
truth.For such a situation,individualism rather than
collectivism, empiricism rather than intuition,
science rather than poetry would better serve one's
purposes. When we look at Plato's break with
religion from this perspective, Aristotle is his
natural successor. In Aristotle's writings the split
is so complete that the prephilosophical religious
elements of Greek society are seldom, if ever,
visible. If Plato were to write a history of
philosophy, he might have started with the Delphic
oracle's pronouncement to know oneself or perhaps
Hesiod's view of the gods as following cosmic
principles. Aristotle,of course,though of philosophy
as starting with Thales' materialism.

In Kuukai's
context, however, the need was to synthesize the
religious and the philosophical. The indigenous
Japanese attitudes had to be explained and defended
in terms of the sophisticated Buddhist terminology
and methodology brought from China, Korea, and ul-
timately India. Kuukai struggled with,and eventually
mastered,the arguments,perspectives, and insights of
more than a millenium of Buddhist philosophy. At the
same time, he remembered his Japanese heritage, his

spiritual debt to the mystical yamabushi. Naked int
the snowy mountain recesses of Japan, Kuukai had
chanted his incantations. He had learned firsthand
the psychophysical, as well as spiritual, power of
words(kotodama). When he encountered the teachings
and practices of esoteric Buddhism in China,he found
the vehicle for integrating the prephilosophical
religious

P.398

dynamism of Japanese spirituality with the intricate
logic and conceptual clarity of Buddhism. Not
surprsingly, then, Kuukai developed a philosophy
primarily concerned with those aspects of language
that Plato had bracketed out from his discussion:
the sacred, symbolic, evocative, and participative.
Kuukai's theories are extraordinarily complex, but
if we know the type of language use in which he was
most interested,his view of language can be summarized
relatively easily. Kuukai's paradigm of language is
the mantra, a speech-act with which most Westerners
have had little personal experience.Nevertheless, by
considering the following examples, we can see how
Kuukai's analysis relates to certain linguistic ex-
periences we have all had.

Leaving the college library, I stop at the check out
desk, opening my briefcase for the attendant. He
shifts through my papers a little and I say, "These
are only my own books." "I see," he says and off I
go. Opening the door into the late afternoon air,
the cold strikes me in the face and I feel a shiver
up my spine as I let out a "Grr!" Briskly walking
across the campus, I pass a man carrying a little
three or four year old on his shoulders. They are
reciting "The Night Before Christmas" to the cadence
of the father's strides. The father obviously
enunciates the words more clearly than the child,
but the child bobs up and down at the rhythm of the
poem, smiling, saying loudly the last rhyming word
of each line: "T'was the night before Christmas and
all through the house, not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse." When I get home, no one else is
there. I sit quietly, gazing at the last glimmer of
twilight barely illuminating the dark rug. Reminded
of an experiment suggested by Edgar Allan Poe, I
continue the gaze, intoning over and over slowly, in
a low voice, the world"Gloom.Gloom.Gloom."

In this little scenario, we have five utterances,
each different in kind from the rest. Let us briefly
consider them in turn.

(i) "These are only my own books."

This sentences is in a propositional form and its
purpose is to relay information to the attendant. If
my words "correspond" to the actual state of
affairs, my statement is "true." This referential
statement is of the kind Plato's theory of language
in the Cratylus addresses.

(ii) "I see."

The literal utterance notwithstanding, this is not
a statement about the attendant's visual acuity. In
fact, the attendant is informing me that he has
understood my comment, has made a cursory check, and
is inclined to believe me. Furthermore, he is giving
me permission to leave unmolested. To this extent,
the utterance has performative force as well as pro-
positional or locutionary meaning(following Austin's
distinction).The performative aspect is not included
in the discussions within the Cratylus, but we could
supplement Plato's theory of language fairly easily
if we wished.There is nothing in what Plato said that
excludes performatives from possible consideration.

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(iii) "Grr!"

This exclamatory utterance is obviously not refer-
rential. It seems almost a physiolgical response to
the cold; it is as if the body were somehow speaking
itself, or even that the experience of the cold were
speaking through the body. Although such speech acts
are common, the Western tradition has generally not
found them to be of any particular philosophical
interest. For someone like Kuukai who takes the
mantra to be the paradigm of language, however, such
utterances require further analysis and philosophical
attention.
First,we should note that the expression"Grr! "was
learned. Let us consider a related example. If I am
punched in the stomach, I might let out an "aggh!"
and it is equally likely that a Japanese, under
similar circumstances, would do the same. If I stub
my toe, however, I might yell"ouch! " but, strangely
enough, ouch is an English word not found in the
Japanese language. In such a case, a Japanese would
more likely say"itti! "Whereas the "aggh! "was a
purely physiological wxpulsion of air, the "ouch!
"and the "ittai! " are culture-bound expressions.
Such words, of course, have no referent so their
usage cannot be learned through ostension, but
rather through mimicing the verbal exclamations of
other people in the society. Futhermore, lacking
reference, such word may be said to have no
precisemeaning at all, yet they do have a correct
and incorrect use. We would want to say, for
example, that someone touching a hot stove and
yelling"Grr!" is not speaking standard English.
Second, in an utterance like "Grr!", there is a
melding of the mental, physical, and verbal. Its use
is almost a conditioned response.The somatic and the
mental, the phonetic and semantic are interfused.
From a physiological standpoint, the " Grr! " is
somehow more effectively confronting the cold than
"Humph" would be, for example. (In both the "ouch!"
and the "ittai!", we may note, there is a similar
abruptness and sharpness in the actual sounds of the
words. It seems that the sequence of sounds forming
the utterance of the word is not completely arbitrary).
Third, situated halfway between physiologically
determined sounds and words with culturally defined
meanings, expressions like "Grr!" may serve as a
clue to understanding the origin of language.
Specifically, if such expressions are taken to be
somehow paradigmatic of the most primitive form of
language, then a theory (metaphysical or historical)
about the origin of language should, following our
previous point,meld the mental, physical, and verbal
in some fundamental way.As we shall see,this is what
Kuukai's theory tries to do.

(iv) "T' was the night before Christmas and all
through the house.
Not a creature was stirring , not even a mouse.

Speaking also involves the enjoyment of,and parti-
cipation in,sound itself.Children learn nursery rhymes
long before they understand their meaning. In our

P.400

scenario,the father realizes that if he wants his
child to stop complaining about the cold, the
chanting of the poem might help. Not only is the
child's mind no longer preoccupied with the cold,
but the rhythmic movement and forceful exhalation of
breath increase circulation.More importantly,the very
resonance of words,particularly if they are expressed
sonorously or with stylistic sensitivity to euphony,
has an uplifting effect on the listener. In the West,
this phenomenon is sometimes discussed in terms of
rhetoric or in studies of the rituals of primitive
cultures, but seldom does this characteristic of
speech enter into philosophical forums per se.
In Kuukai's philosophy of language, however, the
power of sound is very important. The grunt of the
weightlifter,the quiet voice that soothes a distraught
baby, the "Geronimo!" of a parachutist,and the "ai!"
of a martial arts specialist all attest to the
everyday importance of phonic forces.Kuukai would say
that to think of words independently of their sounds
is to rationalize away the somatic physicality of
language. In its most primary form, language is
speech and speech involves the movement of the body
and the vibration of air.

(v) "Gloom.Gloom.Gloom."

The point of Edgar Allan Poe's word experiment is
to demonstrate that under the right conditions, a
word can evoke the psychological state to which the
word refers. A more complex example is this: "A
green mountain, the peak of which is enshrouded with
a royal blue cloud glittering with golden specks, is
what you are now thinking about." Here we have a
proposition about a psychological state that is true
upon your hearing or reading it. As noted already,
the idea that words can bring things into being is a
major premise of what was called the prephilosophical
understanding of language. Yet, Plato overlooks the
potential importance of such utterances.In discussing
the matching of words to things, he implicitly
assumes that the existence of the things precedes
the existence of words. This brings us to the basic
distinction between Plato and Kuukai.
It is misleading to say that Plato and Kuukai
simply have different theories of language. Rather,
they disagree on what usage of language is
paradigmatic for understanding the basis or origin
of language. It is this decision, which precedes
their theorizing, that determines the divergence
between their theories. In the most brief terms, we
can say that the Platonic theory of language is
descriptive of referential language use, that is,
utterances in which the referent of the word
preexists the naming of it. Nonlinguistic reality is
already there and language indicates it in a way that
has practical utility. Such a theory of language
assumes that reality has a structure independent of
human conciousness and that the origin of language
is pragmatic. Kuukai's theory of language, on the
other hand, is descriptive of symbolic language use,
that is, utterances in which the referent and word
are ontologically intertwined. The being of one
depends on, or is at least enriched by, the other.
Thus, reality expresses itself in language (as in
the Grr!") and language evokes reality (as in the
Gloom!"). With these prefatory remarks

P.401

in mind, we can now succinctly state the main thesis
of Kuukai's theory of language as developed in
sound-word-reality.
According to Kuukai's theory, there is no sharp
distinction, on the ontological level, between the
mental,physical,and verbal.Kuukai calls these three
inter-penetrating realms the three mysteries or
intimacies (mitsu(h)). They are mysteries insofar as
they can be intimately, directly experienced but not
expressed in language. Rather, it is more accurate
to say that they are expressed as language. Since
the body, mind, and speech interpenetrate, they must
have a common structural element. Kuukai calls this
common factor Kyo(i)-resonance or vibration.Like all
Buddhists, Kuukai maintains that there are no per-
manent, unchanging substances. Like the Heraclitean,
the Buddhist maintains that all is impermanence, all
is in a state of flux. What we superficially take to
be independently existing entities are understood,
upon closer examination, to be processes dependent
on other processes. (Whitehead's concresence of
actual entities has been compared to this Buddhist
concept.) Since everything is a process,it is really
vibrating, ever-changing. What is the operation of
these vibrations? Sounds. The collections of sounds
make words.To what do words refer? To reality. What
is reality? Vibrations. Thus, the circle is closed.
Reality (the Dharmakaaya personified as Dainichi(j)
)expresses itself to itself for itself.
We can now see how our examples of symbolic
language can be understood in Kuukai's terms. In the
"Grr!" experience, there is no sharp experiential
distinction among the physiological, psychological,
and verbal. For the child reciting the "Night Before
Christmas," what the rhyme "means" is ultimately the
rhyme itself. In the word experiment with "gloom,"
where is the gloom? Is it the state of mind? the
word? the physical ambiance of the room? The
intuited resonance of the three constitutes the
gloom.
We may also note how Kuukai's theory can be used
to support the Heracliteans.The world is in flux, so
words, as indicators of reality, must also be in
flux.For example,a dog is not exactly the same today
as yesterday. Does that mean we can no longer use
the same word to refer to it? No, the word "dog" may
still be used, but the saying of the word is
different. The uttering of a word is itself a
vibration. As such, it is as much a part of the
physical world as is the dog. To speak is itself a
process-physical as well as mental. The word "dog"
is, in fact, never pronounced exactly the same way
twice. Furthermore, how we say the word at any given
time reflects, in part, the situation in which we
use the word. This situation includes the way in
which the particular dog has changed. Consider the
example of seeing your friend's son, Jimmy, after
having not seen him in five years. "Jimmy?" you say.
This is obviously not the intonation you used when
you called him by name five years earlier. From
Kuukai's perspective, the name cannot be separated
from the saying of the name.Hence,the change in your
saying of the name reflects, in part, the change
in Jimmy. In short, Kuukai would not accept the
analysis that we are using the same name (that is,
the same naming) to refer to a different (that is,
changed) entity.

P.402

Thus far, we have discussedthe metaphysics of
Kuukai's position. But how does kuukai know his
interpretation to be true? He claims experiential
verification, not only in the universal kinds of
experience already noted, but more explicitly and
less ambiguously in the special practices of Shingon
Buddhism. One comes into intimate awareness of the
unity behind the physical, verbal, and mental by
three means: by penetrating to the base of physical
action (mudras), of speech (mantras), and of though
(meditation on the mandalas). In each instance,
ritual establishes a special context such that one
becomes more directly avare of the pure act (which
is physical-mental-verbal).Through the pure act, one
is aware of the fundamental vibrations constituting
the universe.In linguistic terms,these are the five
seed mantras-A, Va, Ra, Ha,Kha-out of which language
itself is said to arise.Obviously, we cannot derive
every word in every language from these five
syllables,but this is because uttering these mantras
in meditation is what makes them seed mantras. More
precisely, through the mantric practice, one knows
directly the "true words" (shingon(K))which are in-
audible to ordinary hearing.These true words are the
resonances of the five elements constituting the
entire universe.To modernize the vocabulary a bit,we
may say these represent the basic verbal-mental-
physical energy states ordering the universe. On the
macrocosmic level,we discover these as the integrated
phenomenon Kuukai calls sound-word-reality.
For Kuukai,then,the ultimate basis of language is
not merely linguistic,since it is also psychological
and physical. In the Cratylus there is a search for
the smallest meaningful building block of language.
Since the dialogue assumes this must be a linguistic
unit, Socrates speculates whether individual letters
have meaning. This hypothesis is obviously untenable
and by the time of Aristotle, it is assumed that the
word is the smallest unit of meaning (see De
Interpretatione, 16a). But what would Heraclitus
have said about this? Some commentators interpret
his term logos from a verbal point of view (logos as
word), some from a psychological point of view
(logos as conceptual meaning), and some from a
metaphysical point of view (logos as the structure
of natural world). Obviously, if Kuukai were to
interpret logos, he would have said it was all
three.Again we note that if Kuukai's position had
been available to Cratylus, the Heraclitean position
might have been formulated in a way that would elude
Socrates' criticisms.

iv

We may stand back from our comparison and, in light
of it, make some generalities about comparative phi-
losophy. We note first of all that questions raised
in Cratylus and sound-word-reality are remarkably
similar: What is the basis of language and what is
the relationship between words and things? Our
discussion of Kuukai's position paralleled the issue
in Cratylus so well that we can imagine Kuukai as a
participant in the dialogue; he would have defended
Cratylus' Heracliteanism, for example. The parallel
concerns in Plato and Kuukai are

P.403

striking,and it would be difficult to find any other
such examples of philosophical affinity in comparisons
taken from later Western and Japanese thinkers (at
least until the emergence of self-conscious East-West
dialogue in the past century). This is probably true
for any comparison across cultures; the more dev-
eloped the philosophical traditions, the less
likelihood there is that their concerns will
precisely match. This observation leads into our
second consideration.
In Plato's dialogue, Cratylus and his Heraclitean
position lose the argument, lose in a way that
Hermogenes and the sophistic tradition do not.
Hermogenes' conventionalism is refuted certainly,
but it is refuted according to ground rules that
Hermogenes would accept, the standard of any
sophistic disputation, namely, rational argument
based in terminological clarification,analogies, and
counter-esamples. Hermogenes becomes a Socratic con-
vert and the Phaedo informs us that he was one of the
inner circle present at Socrates' death. Cratylus'
philosophical destiny, on the other hand, is not so
bright. While he can recognize the cogency of
Socrates'arguments, he also believes that Socrates
has not sympathized with the fundamental vision
behind Heraclitus' theory. It is not really the case
that Socrates refutes Heracliteanism; rather, he
excludes it. Cratylus is dealt out of the game, this
new enterprise that the West will come to identify
as philosophy. Indeed, the very last line of the
dialogue is Cratylus' plea to Socrates that he
consider these matters further. Socrates and Plato
do not do so, at least not in the way that would
make them more sympathetic to the Heraclitean
position. Plato's disciple, Aristotle, subsequently
makes the rift between religion and philosophy into
a chasm. Both literally and symbolically, Cratylus'
position is reduced to silent protest.
In another millennium on the other side of the
world in Japan, the opposite decision was made.
Kuukai recognized the referential uses of language
and even commented on them briefly in Sound-word-
reality. For him, though, referential language is
only relevant insofar as it leads one to the
symbloic mode. In short, Kuukai does not reject the
referntially based theory; he recognizes its
validity. Yet, he does not find it philosophically
interesting for his concerns. This attitude is much
like Plato's treatment of the hypothesis that
language has a sacred or divine origin-the issue is
meaningful, but not germane to the issue at hand.
What should we make of such a situation? Once two
philosophical traditions radically diverge, compar-
isons and contrasts will become increasingly
difficult. Plato's decision about language has had a
significant impact on Western thought. Perhaps not
until Heidegger has the Heraclitean view of language
ever been reconsidered seriously by a major Western
philosopher. It can also be noted that when the
metaphysical notion of logos was introduced into
Christianity via the Fourth Gospel, we traditionally
interpret this as a religious development, one
contributing to the dominance of the religious over
the philosophical. These "dark ages" prevailed until
scholastic Aristotelianism resurrected philosophy in
its classical form. The situation in Japan,
especially in terms of the influence of Kuukai (and
his kindred Trendai esotericist, Saichoo), was quite
the opposite. The

P.404

nature of the symbolic function, the unity of mind
and body,and the inseparability of consciousness and
matter became primary concerns for Japanese
philosophy. Religion and philosophy were never
sharply separated. Even Nishida, a twentieth-century
philosopher very sympathetic to the West, believed
the distinction between religion and philosophy to
be, at best, superficial. The recognition of these
historical tendencies often leads to the generaliza-
tion that Japanese thinking is more aesthetic and
Western thinking more logical or empirical.
The assumption that people in different cultures
actually think differently in some inherent way is
untenable. If true, all translation would be imposs-
ible, not merely difficult. Furthermore, how could
we account for Japan's being the world's largest
producer of steel, a world leader in electronics and
optics, and the third largest producer of steel, a
world leader in electronics and optics,and the third
largest manufacturer of computers? Are those marks
of a people who think aesthetically rather than
logically? No, the difference among traditions
derives not from variance in inherent thinking
patterns, but from differences in what is thought
about. A tradition which tends to focus on speech
acts like "Grr!" rather than propositional, referen-
tial speech is obviously going to sound aesthetic to
us. But if we were discussing such experience, we
would sound much the same. Conversely, when the
Japanese found it relevant to mate logic and
electronics, they developed computers that "think"
just like ours.
Perhaps this seems unfair. After all, when con-
fronted with the same options, Plato did exclude the
religious view of language whereas Kuukai did
embrace it. Does this not indicate that even in the
earliest stages of their intellectual traditions,
Japan and the West had different philosophical
inclinations? Not necessarily. As already noted,
Plato's historical and social context was very
different from Kuukai's. We have seen that, to a
great extent, the decision as to what speech act
should be considered paradigmatic depended on what
the two philosophers found to be most relevant or
philosophically interesting. It is not that logic
alone led them inevitably to their conclusions.
Their choices might well have been partly a reflec-
tion of their times and places.Furthermore, we have
the problem of the sociopolitical acceptance of ideas.
Even if Kuukai had lived in ancient Athens and esta-
blished a Heraclitean-Shingon school to rival
Plato's Academy, would he have attracted Greece's
best students(such as Arittotle)? If Plato had been
in Japan, would his ideas have received the imperial
patronage that Kuukai enjoyed? We cannot know the
answers to these questions, of course. But it is at
least imaginable that ideas dominate a tradition not
only because they are rational and grounded in
experience, but also because they are timely.
In summation, there is no prima facie reason to
abandon the hypothesis that the logical form of
rationality is the same around the world. Rather,
the divergence between cultures lies in the
traditional concerns of rationality, and therefore,
the experiences to which logic is applied. Human
experience is too complex to be analyzed all at once.
A tradition must be selective, choosing certain
points to be examined first and others deferred
until some later time. But

P.405

once the initial topics are chosen, their complexity
leads to ever further analysis and enrichment. New
terms are developed and the answer to one question
carries in its wake the beginnings of the next
question. A tradition seldom has the leisure to
return to those experiences initially bracketed from
consideration. At the same time, in each culture
certain forms of human experience come to be
understood as being particularly profound or
revealing. The experiences even become intensified
as they are self-consciously named and analyzed. In
short, each culture specializes, as it were, in the
cultivation and analysis of particular human
possibilities. This is why intellectual traditions
diverge as much as they do. Plato and Kuukai, great
individual thinkers and also products of their
social conditions, recognized similar alternative
interpretations of language. They chose diverging
paths and, to a large extent, that choice has
affected the disparate developments of the Western
and Japanese traditions.

Note

1. Wilbur Marshall Urban, Language and Reality
(New York:Macmillan, 1939; reprinted 1961).
pp.83-84