Introduction
Certain highly interesting issues have emerged from the writings of Martin Heidegger (1959, 1962) and these publications set the stage for the concepts discussed in this presentation. A young philosophy student from Japan, Watsuji Tetsuro, just happened to be in Germany at the time that Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) was being published. His first critique of Heidegger addressed the concept of self across Asian and European cultures. His book (Watsuji, 1961) was called Climate and Culture and it challenged the intellectual heritage of the West with its predilection for a "philosophy of being" and its lack of concern for a "philosophy of nothingness." Many differences separate these philosophies, but the one under investigation in this presentation is the phenomenology of self across culture. This journey begins with the writings of Watsuji and his noted colleague, Nishida Kitaro (1960), and their students of the Kyoto School of Philosophy. It culminates with a discussion of the concept of the social self by G. H. Mead and his followers in the Chicago School. Certain basic differences between these philosophies are discussed regarding how self is referenced within culture. It is egocentric in the West and allocentric in the East. These differences are due to what Nishida calls the locus of the self (basho). Numerous references are made in this paper with regard to structuralism as a system of opposites and how these concepts related to the philosophy of nothingness in the East and the social self in the West.
Watsuji and the Contextualized Self
During the Meiji Restoration Period (1868-1912), the city of Kyoto gave rise to modern Japanese academic philosophy (tetsugaku). One of the foremost contributors to the Kyoto School was Watsui Tetsuro (1889-1960). Like many of the members of his generation, the question of individualism dominated his intellectual life. At first he turned to the West for intellectual sustenance and wrote monographs on Nietzche and Schopenhauer, but with the passage of time, he began to abandon his belief in individualism and turned, instead, towards the study of ancient Japanese culture, in particular, Zen and Confucian models of the world.
Early in his career, Watsuji was drawn to Germany because at that time it was the "Mecca of the Philosophy." However, it was not the rationalism of Neo-Kantianism that attracted his interest, but the philosophical anthropology movement (Lebensphilosophie) with its concern for the inner meaning of human existence. Hence, he identified himself with existentialists and the phenomenologists. What is interesting about his travel to Germany is the fact that he happened to be there as a student when Martin Heidegger published his Time and Being (Sein und Zeit). Watsuji was intrigued by Heidegger's attempt to explain the structure of human existence in terms of time, Being as Temporality. Heidegger's concept of being, Dasein, is predicated on the notion that one finds the authentic existence as being-in-time and being-toward-death. One is aware of self when one becomes aware of dying. Watsuji expressed his disagreement with Heidegger in Climate and Culture (Watsuji, 1961) .
In that early work, Watsuji noted that Heidegger's concept of being was characteristic of Western thought in that it was highly individualistic. In particular, Heidegger's model lacked the concept of a social self. The self is only meaningful, Watsuji noted, when it includes both the individual and the social aspect of being in the world. The term that he coined for this interconnectedness is ningen. It consists of two Kanji characters, the first for person (hito) and the second for between-ness (aida). This term refers to the betweenness among selves in the world. From his point of view, the concept of the individual in the West can only be obtained by rejecting society and the social self. In the East, however, one becomes a social self by rejecting one's individuality. The real self of Zen Buddhism, he noted, occurs between these two contradictions. It is the empty center that results from the double negation the individual and society . This results in an ethical harmony in which the individual ego emerges as a social sign that is integrated into a network of social relations. The space in which this occurs is called fudo. Watsuji (1961) wrote about this concept in a book that has been translated in the West as Climate and Culture. Before continuing with Watsuji's critique of Heidegger, one needs to discuss a similar model of self among western scholars.
The Social Self as a Sign
Are there any concepts in the West that even come close to the concept of the empty-self? The answer is affirmative. There are some interesting parallels between the concepts of Zen Buddhism and Linguistic Structuralism and the Pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce (1955) that merit discussion within this context. Beginning with the former, anyone who has had an introductory course in linguistic structuralism will immediately understand this concept of the sign as an empty marker for a set of relations. For example, in phonetics, is the study of human sounds used in language. These sounds exist. They have substance. Not only can they be described in articulatory terms, but they can also be documented acoustically. However, when these phones are placed within a particular language system, they constitute the phonemes of that language. The units that occur as phonemes are no longer concrete sounds, they are now linguistic signs. They emerge as abstractions that represent the relationships of opposing sounds in a particular language.
| The sounds of language are called phones | The perceived sounds within a language are called phonemes |
| Phones do not belong to any language. They are individual units of sounds | Phonemes belong to a specific language |
| Phones can be pronounced | Phonemes cannot be pronounced. They are abstractions. |
| Phones can be documented acoustic phonetics | Phonemes can only be documented auditorily phonemics |
| Phones are catalogued sounds; they do not belong to a system | Phonemes are classified sounds; they belong to a system. |
| Phones are not contextualized. They do not belong to any language | Phonemes are contextualized. They belong to a specific language. |
For example, the phoneme /p/ represents a contrast between the voiceless bilabial stop [p] and its opposite, the voiced component [b]. Can one pronounce this phoneme? No, it does not exist as a physical sound. It is merely a sign that marks the relationship between [p] and [b]. It no longer exists as concrete unit; it is an abstract relationship. Is this abstraction real? The answer is yes; it is psychologically real. When one listens to the sounds of a language, one perceives the phonemes of that language and not its phones. These phonemes are psychological real. They are what are perceived by the speakers of that language. If one were to rephrase this concept into the language of Zen Buddhism, they perceive the empty sounds of language. These sounds are empty because they cannot be pronounced. They are signs and designate relationships to other signs in the system.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is the founder of the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism. It was his attempt to apply the laboratory models of experimentation to everyday life. In science, concepts are provisional and tentative and need to be empirically tested and verified by a community if inquirers. In working out his theory of semiotics, Peirce developed the concept of Personhood. He argued that the human self cannot be defined with reference to the Cartesian private mind. The reference for the human self can only be found in a community. To be a self is to belong to a community. For Peirce, the human self is a sign. It has a triadic relationship in that it involves (1) an indication of (2) something to (3) someone. In other words, every sign represents an object to an interpretant. Consequently, for Peirce a person is a sign. In rejecting Cartesian subjectivism, he developed a concept of the self that is social, dialogical (interactive), and relational (Colapietro, 1989). It is interesting to note that this view of self has been the source of attack by Poststructuralists. Perhaps it is because in this model, man is no longer centered. He is not a positive entity. He no longer has substance. He has been decentered and remains as merely a sign, a relationship to others (Culler, 1981).
This treatment of self as a sign is comparable in many respects to Watsuji's concept of self (ningen, the in-between-ness among persons). The person (hito) does not fully reside in the individual. Nor does the person fully reside in society (seken). The real self (ningen) resides in a relationship (aidagara, betweenness among persons) with others. The real self is a sign that captures the relationship between two opposites, self and society. If one wants to stand out as an individual, he must negate his social self. If one wants to become a part of society, he must negate his ego. By means of this double-negation, one creates a self that is both social and individual. Watsuji calls this self by the name of ningen, a self that is between other selves, an empty self.
Watsuji and the Problem of Social Space
Watsuji noted another problem with Heidegger's philosophy. It emphasized Time as a primordial concept and treated Space as derived. Watsuji argued that both Time and Space should both be conceived of as basic concepts. They should co-exist as primary concepts (gleichursprunglich). There are several concepts of Space in Heidegger's work, but none of them address the concept of a lived social space that Watsuji had in mind. What was needed was a subjective space that connects the individual self with the social other . Heidegger did have the concept of Mitsein (being-with) but it was not interactive. He also had the concept of Zwischen, but it was predicated on a space-of-action, a functional space (Zuhandenheit) in which one makes things available to themselves. What Watsuji meant by social space is noted in Climate and Culture. In this work, Watsuji discussed how spatial geographical settings differ in their climates and these differences created a range of modes of people's sensitivity to natural circumstances as well as human existence. Watsuji saw these differences as being responsible for different ethical aspects of being. The social space (fudo) of Japan differed from those of other geographical regions . Climate does not exist part from history. Different geographical regions have different histories. How one views himself in Space and Time is inextricably linked to one's climate. One's concept of self comes from the climate that one resides in. This is why the concept of fudo is so important to Watsuji. It is where the true self resides. One is linked to a country, a region, a climate, a history, and its people. At this point, it would be interesting to compare the concept of Climate with the concept of the sign in structuralism. The sound system of a language is composed of signs known as phonemes. These phonemes are context sensitive. They are only phonemes in the language under discussion. Each language has its own phonemic system. Each phonemic system resides within a context, a climate. The true meaning of a linguistic sign resides in a specific context, a language. Languages, however, are not isolated sign systems. They too are embedded in other signs system, a particular culture at a particular place in time. For Watsuji, the self is a sign. The true self (ningen) is a sign that is located within an ethically balanced place and time (.fudo). This place and time has a history, a culture, a special geographical setting . The true self is always contextualized. It always exists within an existential climate that includes others. For Heidegger, on the other hand, one encounters the world (in-der-Welt-sein) before one encounters social relationships.
Western philosophy argues for an individual notion of self and abstracts individuals from social groups and sees human beings as something independent or self-existing. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger argues provides a notion of existence (Dasein) that is temporal. This framework overemphasizes the individuality of Dasein over the sociality of Mitsein (being-with). Hence, describes authentic existence as being-in-time and being-toward-death and fails to account for the importance of social existence within a climate (fudo) of lived space. For Watsuji, existence (sonzai) involves a concrete human existence in both time and space. Hence, he coined a term for existence, (sonzai) that included both time (son) and space, zai).
The Interactive Social Self
Watsuji argued that it was this overemphasis on the self as a temporal individual that presents a problem for the study of ethics in the West. He later replied to this aspect of Time and Being in his work on Ethics in Japan (rinrigaku), He noted that ethics could not be understood as a matter of individual consciousness. Ethics always involves others. Watsuji proposes that the concept of social self (jita) needs to be incorporated into Western philosophy. There were many in the Kyoto School of Philosophy who agreed with Watsuji about his concept of the ethical self, but they disagreed with his articulation of that concept in Japanese philosophy.
Nishida is another scholar of the Kyoto School who addressed the concept of self. It was his contention that the concept of the social self developed by Watsuji was too passive. It needed to be more interactive. He created a more interactive model of the social self in several ways. First, Nishida incorporated the concept Self as Pure Experience from the work of William James (1983) who advocated a process theory of self. The self, James, argued in his attack of Descartes, is not a single substance or permanent entity that requires nothing other than itself to exist. Nor is the self, as Hume contended, a succession of feelings. The self is a feeling of succession which constitutes the continuity of selfhood from one moment to the next in the flowing stream of thought. Although thoughts in the stream of consciousness are private, separate, and isolated, they do occur contexts that appear as felt sensations or fringes of experience. The fringes of experience and the stream of consciousness constitute a process theory of self in which the past is constantly being replaced by the present and the future is always anticipated in the present. Hence, the self is a emergence and revision in time and the fringes of space, the Focus-Field Model Self. For Nishida (1960), developed a similar process model of self. The self is devoid of subject-object dualism. It is embedded within a pure experience in time. The place in which this pure experience takes place is called basho (place).
Second, Nishida went on to extend his theory with the concept of the relationship between I and thou (ware to nanji). The true self (shakaiteki jiko) is a social self that emerges from the dialectics of I and thou . The self is a series of events of pure experiences in the ever changing stream of consciousness, an egoless state. It has no underlying substantial identity. In the fringe of consciousness surrounding this egoless state, there are I-thou relationships that engage the social self, relations with I (ware) and thou (nanji), self (jiko and the other (ta, and the individual (kobutsu) and the environment (kankeyo). Nishida has transformed the self of pure experience into a contradictory self of I and thou. It is this dialectic between self and others that enables one to experience self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-awakening. It should be noted, however, that the self consciousness of Nishida is never individual. It is always a social consciousness, a consciousness between persons in society. The other includes other humans (mawari, hoto, seken), but it also a relationship with nature.
Third, Nishida argued that whereas individualism is grounded in eros (the desire for objects), The I-thou relationship was based upon agape (selfless love). It is in this context that he brings in the concept of the Kenotic Self. He refers to the Christian idea of ?e????s, kenosis, the emptying of self through unconditional love). This is a relationship that exists between people (I-thou) and between people and deities (I-Thou). Nishida finds this concept concomitant with the teachings of Zen Buddhism.
Finally, the concept of basho is seen as one of co-origination (pratitya-samutpada, dependent coorigination), a Mahayana Buddhist principle. Whereas Watsuji had a passive concept for the locus of social space (fudo), Nishida proposed the more interactive concept of basho.
The Mask as a Social Face
What is the ontological status of the mask in Japanese philosophy? Is it merely a cover that hides the true self or does it reveal what is hidden behind the mask? Is the mask merely a social face that one chooses to wear on public occasions? Is the mask something that one feels comfortable wearing before others? In order to explain the significance of the mask, Watsuji argued that the face is not just a part of the body; it identifies the body. The mask is the seat of one's personality. The facial features of a human being play a crucial role in determining his personality. Hence, the face is the most important part of the body. When one looks into a mirror, he does not see how he appears to others, only how he appears to himself.
Sakabe (1982) has written about Watsuji's theory of the mask and the differences between the mask as a temporary surface (kamen) or as a facial feature (ganmen). The mask that one sees is a social mask. It corresponds to conscious knowledge. What it hides is the true self, the unconscious self that is hidden behind the mask. The face that the world sees is a social mask that represents one's social self. Sakabe (1982) draws on the use of masks (omote) in Noh plays in order to explain what the mask implies in his interpretation of Watsuji's theory of the mask. In Noh theater, he notes, all of the actors are males who wear masks and portray many roles: male or female, adult or child. These masks are not used to conceal the actor. They are used to portray the face on the mask. For example, before a performance an actor must enter a sacred space before the mirror (kagami no ma, the mirror in between). He performs a ritual of staring into the mirror until he becomes the mask. When he enters the stage, he is that mask. He is either the divine feminine face of a child or a demonic feminine face of an adult. When he puts on a mask, he becomes the mask. He is transformed into the face on the mask. The use of the mask is not to hide one's personality, but to impersonate some transcendent personality. In donning the mask, the actor becomes the true self of the mask. This is what Watsuji means when he says that the true self is to be found in the empty self. One's true self emerges when one is able to find a balance among others (hito to hito to no aidagara) and among vertical relationships (oyabun kobun). These relationships are both ethical (oyabun kobun) and aesthetic (aidagara). The face is the meeting point of these two axes.
Mead and the Social Self
There are many myths about George Herbert Mead (1934). He is often cited as the founder of the Chicago School of Sociology. In actuality, he was not in the Department of Sociology. That was headed by Albion Small. The concept of symbolic interactionism was not even known at that time. It was coined later by one of his student, Herbert Blumer. Mead did not even consider himself to be a sociologist much less the founder of a school. He saw himself as a exponent of pragmatism and his personal heroes were John Dewey and William James. Furthermore, he had great difficulty with writing. He agonized over putting his ideas down on paper and as a consequence only those who had the opportunity of being in his lectures benefited from his ideas. His most influential book, Mind, Self and Society, was published after his death. So what was it that made Mead a hero among intellectuals? First, he was at the forefront of the pragmatism movement and he was well respected for his views in this area.
Second, he introduced numerous ideas in his classes in social psychology that would have strong ramifications for social theory. He argued against the concept of a Monad that Leibniz espoused in his book, Monadologie. Mead did not see individuals as isolated units of consciousness. He saw them as individuals who are related through society. Individuals, Mead argued, are born into a certain nationality, located at a certain geographical region, and born into a given family. Men are born into social structures they did not create. They live in institutions and a social order that they did not make. They are born with the limitations of language, codes, customs, and laws. They do not exist as isolated individuals. They are in society and society exists in their minds. Third, Mead made a important distinction between "I" and "me." The former is the response of an individual to others. It is the psychological self. The latter is the response of others to the individual. It is the social self. What appears in consciousness is always the self as an object, as a" me." Individuals belong to a social structure, a social order. When a child learns to say "me" he has imported that social order into his own mind. He becomes a social being.
Third, Mead was one of the leading scholars in the study of consciousness. He linked the genesis of consciousness to the creation of the social self. When children play, they take on roles. At first they consider these roles as a form of play. It is only later in life that they mature and begin to create these roles in their imagination. It is at this time that they adopt these roles by acting them out. A child who plays doctor will create this role as a career in his mind and will become a doctor. Mead feels that human communication is possible only when the symbol that one arouses in him is aroused in others. Here are the seeds of Blumer's symbolic interactionism.
Fourth, Mead created the concept of "role-taking." This idea is very common in current studies of conversational analysis and ethnomethodology, but it was an established concept that he shared with his students in his classes on social psychology. Related to this idea of role taking is the "generalized other." One must understand the role of the other in order to interact with them. Role taking is important because a person sees himself as an individual only because his relationship to others and their roles.
Fifth, Mead had an interesting concept of the mind. He argued that consciousness is an inner discourse carried on by public means. In other words, inner experiences are made possible through symbolic interaction, viz., language and gesture. Mead was careful to note that his sociology was objective (social objectivism). He did not want to reconstruct the world only through introspection as Wundt did in German and Cooley did in America.
Sixth, Mead advanced the concept of the self not as a substance, but as a process. It is part of a larger social process in which interactions with others are rehearsed by an individual and internalized. Language plays an important role in this process of internalization.
Finally, Mead is noted for his concept of "gestures." It appears that he derived this concept from Georg Simmel in Germany while he was a student in Berlin. He saw in gesture the key mechanism through which social acts take place. He made a distinction between those gestures that were non-significant and those that were significant. The former was an unconscious act, the latter was fully conscious. Human thought arises when there are symbols: language, vocal gestures, non-verbal gestures. These become significant when a person can visualize his own performance. In this concept, one finds the seeds of Erving Goffman's work on the presentation of self in everyday life.
The Dramaturgical Self
Erving Goffman has taken the metaphor of the stage as the framework for his dramaturgical model of sociology. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman, 1959), he argued that people cast themselves into roles just as actors do on stage. People, he noted, are playwrights because they create their own social scripts in life. They are actors, because they act out these scripts. They are part of the audience because they watch themselves perform; and, they are critics because they are always judging their own behaviors. Goffman wanted to know how people manage their impressions to others (impression management). People are not free to merely act the way that they want. Society is demanding of individuals because it only allows a person to play certain roles and not others. Hence, people must foster personal impressions that will be seen as normal by others. They must know how to present a social self and they must learn how to present different personas (social masks) in the proper contexts. Hence, for Goffman, the attainment of self is a social process. It is also part of an ongoing social drama. People must be performers. They must present a front . They must do these things within a prescribed (stage) setting. They must give credible appearances. They must also perform in accordance to the expectations of others. They must know when to take roles and when to release them. If they fail to do these things, they may fail because they are "out of character." They may also fail because they are performing to the wrong scripts. They may even fail because of not knowing their roles (role failure).
The Naked Self
At the time that Goffman wrote his early work, he believed that people did not have a personal self. Everyone wore some kind of mask at all times in the public arena. If one took off this mask, one would find an empty face or an empty self. Later, Goffman did research by working under cover in an insane asylum and the research of this research was published as Asylums in 1961. It was this experience that changed his concept of the social self. In total institutions such as mental hospitals or prisons, people are linked to only one social role at all times, that of the patient or the inmate. Such an individual lives a regimented life. What happens in these organizations is that people are stripped of their uniqueness so that they can be better controlled. They are forced to wear the same clothes, have the same kind of haircut, perform the same tasks at the same time, etc. In such institutions, people are made to undergo "obedience tests." These are tests that ensure that the new members in total institutions will submit to the system. In military basic training, for example, one may be awakened at three A.M. and forced to dress and stand in formation because some alleged utensil was missing from the kitchen. Of course, no utensils were missing. This was merely an excuse to subdue the new recruits. Anyone who protests is subjected to punishment in the form of a five-mile run or by doing a hundred push-ups on the spot. At four A.M., the recruits are allowed to return to the barracks. They return from the cold and snuggle into bed only to be awakened by morning reveille. They have endured another obedience test. What Goffman found out is that in these situations there was a personal face behind the mask of each individual. He was able to observe when the social mask is taken off there is no formless or naked self behind the mask. He found that these institutionalized people all go out of their way to try to try to express their "real" selves as a way of rebelling against the system. Recruits will often stage their own mock search for utensils and play the roles of the top sergeant and his cadre of career officers. There are many ways in which an individual can express himself through his social facade.
The members of a total institution must accept the official definition of self that has been given to them. They must comply with the roles into which they have been cast. They exist within a defined situation. There are many ways in which individuals in total institutions can resist these attempts to annihilate their individual personalities. The inmates in total institutions rebel by making "secondary adjustments" to the established rules of the institutions. These minor adjustments usually go unnoticed by administrators. These revisions in the rules are secret. They are meant to defy the system. It is by means of these furtive actions that the naked self is able to maintain its individuality. It is the way in which one can defy the context of the situation. Rarely do these secondary adjustments erupt into acts of hostility because the consequences of openly revealing one's personal self is met by severe punishment such as being sent to a "bad ward" or to the stockade, or being removed from the services with a dishonorable discharge.
The Cautious Self
By 1971, Goffman wrote Relations in Public in which he noted that the stage is not a friendly place. Actors, he noted, are among strangers. He must share his roles with these strangers. He must also share the stage with them. Under these conditions, life can be dangerous. Given this situation a person must hide his real self from the public. He must re-re-enact only the safe roles given him in society. This is why people wear social masks. People must get along with each other in public and be cautious of others. One should always be cautious and ready to flee from the danger of others. The self is fragile and must be protected from the public. For example, when people physically encounter another on the street, they go through extensive rituals to convince the other that their accidental meeting was not intentional. These are displays of territoriality. Each person has a personal territoriality that cannot be violated. To do so is against the rules of relations in public. It is a territorial offense to encounter another individual in their sacred space unless one is invited. The rituals of interchanges in public are orchestrated by one's culture. They are acts of civility which protect the sacred space of self. Anyone who violates this social norm is expected to remedy his offense by publicly apologizing. This is why people apologize when bumping into each other on a public street. This is why the court system asks the criminal of a violent act is expected to show signs of remorse.
The Looking Glass Self
One of the most important concepts that Cooley (1964) developed was the "looking glass-self." He wanted to dwell on the reflected character of the self. "Each to each a looking-glass, reflects the other that doth pass." He noted that when a person sees his face, figure, and dress in the glass, he is interested in the image because it is his own. However, one creates an image of how one looks in the eyes of another, a looking-glass self. He went on to add that there are three principal elements in this concept. First, one imagines how he appears to others. Next, he is concerned with their judgment of his appearance. Finally, he is aware of his own feelings of pride or mortification.
Another contribution by Cooley was his model of society as an organism. "Self and society," he said, "are twin-born." What he means by this is that the self and society are linked by an unbreakable bond. This is why he speaks of society as an organism. His analogy is not with biology, but with a holistic society. He wants to stress the fact that there are systemic interrelations between all social processes. "Our life," he stated, "is all one human whole … if we cut it up it dies in the process." Why was he so adamant about making this point? The answer lies in his reaction to the utilitarian individualism of Herbert Spencer, the Social Darwinist. By way of contrast, he wanted to place an emphasis on the wholeness of human life.
The concept of the "primary group" is another contribution that Cooley made to Sociology. He wrote about peer groups and gangs long before the current fixation on this topic. He noted that a primary group is based on harmony and love and these passions play a socializing role in the creation of a primary group. Even when there is competition in such groups, they tend to relate to a common discipline of the spirit. Such groups are built upon a diffuse solidarity of its members and not upon an exchange for services or for benefits. Whereas Mead spoke of the "I" and the "me" in social theory, Cooley focused on the "We." Given Cooley's isolation as a child, it seems that he is speaking of an ideal world in which he was never able to share with others, a group bonding. What is important about this concept of the primary group is that it is not limited to gangs. It can be the communal bonding of a whole village. Furthermore, Cooley's views provided an interested contrast with those of Durkheim who viewed society as an object in the external world, a collective consciousness. Cooley views society as part of the individual self.
Is there any evidence for the concept of the social self prior to the emergence of the Chicago School? The answer is affirmative. During the European Middle Ages, for example, one belonged to one of three Latinate strata in society:
| clericus | The class of clergy, the priests, cardinals, bishops, etc. |
| milites | The military class of soldier, horsemen, knights, etc. |
| labores | The workers, the peasants, the lowest class |
During these times, people were named according to their professions. Baker, Carpenter, Cook, Cooper (barrel maker), Gardener, Green, Shoemaker, Smith, Tanner, and so on. The family names of these people represented their social selves. They were born into this class structure and they would remain there.
There is one final comment on the mirror metaphor needs further clarification as its meaning differs greatly by those who use it. For some, one looks into the mirror and only sees his pure ego, something that no one else can. For others, one looks into the mirror and sees his own projection of himself, the good but never the bad or the ugly side of self. In the Noh Theater, one looks into the mirror to see the self that the actor wants to embody, the mask that the player must incorporate into his very being. Cooley used the metaphor to highlight the social "me" of Mead, but what he failed to include was the background images surrounding that self, the fudo of Watsuji and the basho of Nishida.
The Co-Dependent Self
Supporters of the Kyoto School of Philosophy have taken the writings of Doi Takeo (1973) as support for their own Zen philosophy of self (Odin, 1996).. Doi developed the concept of indulgent dependency (amae). What he meant by this is that the Japanese are group-centered because of the interpersonal dynamics of the family structure (Nakane, 1970). This results in a child growing up with a need to be loved and cherished and with the expectation that he can presume on others and depend on their benevolence. Hence, it comes as a surprise to find Doi doing a critique of Nishida's Zen philosophy and the Japanese culture (Doi, 1986). Why did this occur? The answer can be found by looking closer at Doi, his profession, and his influences.
First, one must remember that Doi is a psychiatrist. His interest in the concept of self is pathological. As a psychiatrist, he has made major contributions to his field. For example, he considers amae to be an intrapsychic or fundamental human drive. Freud considered humans to have only two intrapsychic libidinous drives: the primal id-instincts of sex and aggression. Doi argued that his amae drive was co-equal to these drives and that it was non-libidinous. It is a natural instinct, he argued, for a human to seek the affiliation of others in a group. Doi represents an outer-directed social psychology that differs from the inner directed individual psychology of Freud. What is common to both Freud and Doi, however, is the belief that these intrapsychic drives must be constrained by culture.
Second, Doi was influenced by the work of Kuki Shuzo (1930). He even titled his book after him. The Structure of Amae (amae no kozo) reflects the title of Kuki's book The Structure of Iki (Iki no kozo). Who was Kuki and what were his ideas that influenced Doi? He was born into a wealthy aristocratic family and was known as Count Kuki. In 1922, he traveled to Germany where he studied philosophy under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Later, he went to Paris and hired a young Frenchman by the name of Jean Paul Sartre to be his private tutor. While in France, he was influenced by the work of Henri Begrson and upon his return to Japan, he joined Nishida at Kyoto University. He became involved in the Japanese Uniqueness Movement (nihonjinron) and promulgated his ideas in his book on the Structure of Iki. Like other writings form the Kyoto School, it focused on the social, relational, and contextual nature of self in Japanese group consciousness. What made his work different, however, was the fact that he specifically focused on the erotic character of intersexual relationships (iseiteki). His moral-aestheic ideal of Iki was embodied by the glamourous geisha, the flirtatious courtesan (tayu), and the sophisticated dandy (tsujin), all who inhabited the "floating world" (ukiyo) of the pleasure palaces of the Edo period of bordello culture. For Kuki, the concept of Iki (chic) was represented by paired oppositions: astringency (shibumi) - sweetness (amami), refinement (johin) - crudeness (gehin), and plain (jimi) -gaudy (hade). Of particular interest to Doi was the paired opposites of sweetness (amami) and astringency (shibumi). The sweetness of amami was positive and directed toward the gaudy (hade). The astringency of shibumi was negative and associated with the plain or somber (jimi). The amae of Doi is etymologically related to the adjective sweet (amai) and the noun sweetness (amami). Amami also has the meaning of a dependency wish or a drive to dependence. The verbal form of amami is amaeru which means "to act like a spoiled child" or "to coax" or indulge upon another's love." The sweetness is a positive quality which is associated with the positive quality of being indulged (amaeru-sha) and having someone involved in doing the indulging (amaerareru-sha). It is Doi's contention that this indulgent dependency (amae) must be constrained. Iki (chic) represents a balance between sweetness and astringency. Doi is not against the the role that indulgent dependency plays in the social character of the Japanese. What he is concerned with as a psychiatrist is that this drive is not being curtailed. Many of his patients suffer from the overindulgence of social dependency. He sees this dependency drive in his patients as being infantile, compulsive, and regressive. He feels that there should be a balance between the social self of face and the emotional self of the heart (kokoro).
Relationship between Selves: Continuity or Polarity?
What is the relationship between self and others? What is the nature of what Watsuji calls aidagara and Heidegger refers to as Zwischen? It turns out that there are two ways of viewing the nature of such structural relationships. In the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, this relationship is polar. On one end of the contrast is a positive pole and on the other is its negative counterpart. It was from this system of polarity that one finds the rationale for distinctive feature theory. Consider, for example, the feature of nasality. It has a positive feature that designates the presence of a nasal sound, [+nasal]. Similarly, it has a negative counterpart that marks the absence of such a feature, [-nasal]. This view of opposition is common to western scholarship. It is the either/or mentality behind such expressions as "love it or leave" or "you are either with us or against us." The oppositions are seen as disjunctions. What this concept of relationship fosters is a view that the self is in opposition to others. In some languages, this isolated view of self may even be expressed in the plural as inclusive we (I+you) and exclusive we (I +them).
Not all oppositions express disjunctions. They may be a part of a continuum in which one may move more towards one pole and farther away from the other. This is the concept of betweenness that Watsuji had in mind. One must move along a continuum and when there is a balance between self and others, the real self emerges. For the Noh actor, he must move his social self along a continuum until it recognizes and resonates with the self on the mask. At that point in psychological and social space, he is ready to enter the stage and perform his part.
Once again, there is a disparity in the betweenness (aidagara) of Watsuji and the betweenness (Zwischen) of Heidegger. The former is intended to be a relationship of continuousness and the latter one of a polarity. Both kinds of betweenness occur in Japanese and German cultures, but the cultural legitimation of self is contextualized differently.
The Changing Self
Language plays an important role in the social construction of self. It provides the epistemological medium for human social interaction. Berger and Luckmann (1969) have provided a model of how the personal self is modified through language into a social self. They contend that three processes are involved in the construction of the social self. The first is externalization and it occurs when a person attempts to share his thoughts, feelings, and emotions with others. He finds that they must be put into a social code (language, art, music, dance, etc.). The second process comes from society itself. It existed before the individual existed and will continue exist after. In society, language is institutionalized. Its codes, patterns, and models have been legimated. They have been codified. It is not a neutral code and it incorporates all kinds of social values, empistemological frameworks, and semantic domains. The individual involved in the transition from primary to secondary socialization has much to learn. Socialization is a life long process. Finally, because the individual is thrown into a society that already exists, he must incorporate that knowledge. This aspect of linguistic influence explains what some have called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Now, what is significant about this model is that all three processes go on simultaneously.
What does this mean for a phenomenological model of self? It explains the difference between Mead's I and Me, the personal self and the social self. It explains James concept of the multiple changing selves; and it explains the concept of multiple selves because the ego interacts with various regions and domains within society. The ego has many social masks. Does this model explain the concept of the empty self? In a sense, it does. There is no direct link between the individual and his social self. What this means is that the individual must infer through language just what his selves are. This is essentially what Nishida claimed in his model of the Zen self.
Concluding Remarks
The question of how space and time are related to the concept of self is an important one. The solution to this problem is complex. This journey began with the philosophical interaction between Watsuji and Heidegger. They held different models of how the self is related to time and space. Heidegger took time as a primary feature of Dasein and dealt with space tangentially. Watsuji argued that a concept of self must include both time and space. This is an important contribution to the phenomenology of self because in all languages time is treated as a spatial metaphor. There are four basic patterns.
| Time moves and the individual waits for it to arrive | Time stands still and the individual approaches it. |
| Latin: The future is in front of a person. He watches and waits for it to arrive | English: The future is in front of a person. He strives to be there. He approaches the future. He journeys into a march of time. |
| Greek: The future is behind a person and he looks back into the future to see if it has arrived. | Amoy: The future is behind a person. He must look backward and approach it. |
Time cannot be separated from space. They co-occur. Hence, there is something very relevant about Watusji's model of the contextualized self.
The next matter of concern has to do with how people are connected to each other within a social matrix. Two models of the relational process exist. In one, individuals are in polar opposition to each other; in another, individual exist along a continuum. How these linkages occur appears to be a cultural and social matter. It is a cultural matter because one of these is legimated over the other as a cultural preference; and it is social in that both models exist and depend on social contexts.
The sociology of deviancy, labeling theory, and social distance are all concepts that have emerged from the Chicago School of Sociology. The work of Doi provides a challenge to certain aspects of his psychiatric model. Doi claims that the need for dependency on others and the need for social acceptance are aspects of his non-libidinous intrapsychic trait and they should be curtailed by social mores of a culture. The problem becomes one of where should the line be drawn between normalcy and deviance? This question may not draw much attention from within a given culture, but it becomes especially significant across cultures. Is he, for example, imposing western values on his analysis of his own culture?
Is there a model of self that can account for the phenomenology of self across cultures? The answer to this is that there is a viable model, viz., the model proposed by the Chicago School of Sociology - the sociology of knowledge, symbolic interactionism, and the social construction of reality. What is interesting about this investigation of self across cultures is that it prevents theoretical constructs from becoming culture bound. By investigating the concept across cultures, one opens the door to different view points of view, experiences, and expressions of consciousness Morris, 1994).
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