三浦梅園の哲學 : 極東儒學思想史の見地から

Abstract

Miura Baien is being accepted today, almost unanimously, as the greatest of pre-Meiji Japanese philosophers. His unique philosophy was, of course, the product of his genius, but at the same time, it embodied the development of philosophical thought in the Far Eastern world. Miura was formed by the Confucian education quite ordinary at that time. Later, he read Western books on natural subjects e.g., astronomy, geography, and medicine, mostly those introduced and translated into Chinese by Jesuits in the late Ming period, and was deeply impressed with their positivistic character. At the same time, he was not completely content with them. He felt that they lacked jori 條理, which in his opinion was indispensable in true science. He also rejected totally the concept of universe based on Christian faith. Eventually, he built a grandiose and coherent philosophical system by applying his jori logic i.e., the logic of thesis-antithesis and their unification in one, to the globe theory of earth brought about by European science, regarding the universe as being constructed by different ch'i culminating in one ultimate ch'i 一元氣. In this article I shall first survey Miura's life and his philosophy as outlined in the "Letter to Mr. Taga Bokkei 多賀墨卿", written by himself as an introduction to his thought. I shall then point out that his philosophy was hardly anything more than a variation on the philosophy of ch'i, formulated by Sung philosophers. The supposedly original jori logic too did not surpass the limits of this ch'i philosophy though he had due and sufficient reason to be proud. Notions as the ultimate existence of ch'i composed of the antithetic beings of yin and yang, the strata-structure of the world which is the total of different compounds of ch'i, the image of open universe in contrast to the closed universe in Europe, the macrocosmos-microcosmos model penetrating into people's mentality are, without doubt, within the paradigm of Confucian philosophy systemized by Neo-Confucianism. Miura's strict distinction between heaven and man and absolute denial of five elements are certainly notable. But even in these cases, we find brilliant forerunners in the history of Chinese philosophy, Hsun-tzu 荀子 and Liu Tzung-yuan 柳宗元 in the former, Wang T'ing-hsiang 王廷相 and Wu T'ing-han 呉廷翰 in the latter. In Japan itself, the scholars of Kaitokudo 懷徳堂in Osaka with whom Miura kept an intimate contact, for example, generally tended to deny the existence of five elements. At any rate, the philosophy of ch'i seemed at this time to have reached the stage to cast away the five elements. To summarize, it can be said that Miura's philosophy was a splendid monument to the encounter between the European geocentric theory of nature and the philosophy of ch'i. Whether or not one can see in it the spirit of modern science, as often been suggested, I cannot yet decide.