無限心或絕對無？論認知事實本身的可能性

Infinite Mind or Absolute Nothing? On the Possibility of Knowing Facts Themselves

如何賦予客觀性知識在東方的心靈思想中其應當的位置，是近代東亞哲學所面臨的問題之一。對此，有些東方哲學家重新追尋了知性直觀與物自身的問題，其中最有重要性的仍是西田幾多郎與牟宗三。近幾年來，兩人的哲學雖然被列入比較研究的對象，然而關於客觀性知識的問題來說，西田的「絕對無」與牟宗三的「無限心」尚未受到足夠的重視。本文主要探討的文獻則是兩人的有關知識理論的中期著作，藉以追尋如何把握物自身或事實本身的問題。其結果則是對於兩人的知識理論之綜合性的理解，而其關鍵在於自覺的追尋，以及雙向性的超越。在自覺的深化中，對外方向上的超越與內在的方向上的超越則一體兩面而互相連動。客觀性知識的根柢若是事實本身的某種把握，後者只是跟著「絕對無」或「無限心」同時可以得到的。這項結果不僅說明事實本身之概念的意義，而且強烈暗示兩人的表面上不合理的「心」與「無」的理論之知識理論上的價值。

Modern East Asian philosophy faced a difficulty in endowing objective knowledge with its adequate location in the traditional Eastern view of mind. This led some philosophers to reconsider intellectual intuition and the relevant question of things themselves from an Eastern perspective, and among them most notably are Nishida Kitarō and Mou Zongsan. Although these philosophers have recently been comparatively studied, their core concepts such as “absolute nothing” and “infinite mind” have not been sufficiently discussed from the perspective of objective knowledge. This paper examines the question of grasping things themselves or facts themselves by reconsidering two philosophers' middle works on the theory of knowledge. The result is the synthetic view of their seemingly divergent theories, based on the pursuit of self-awareness and the principle of bidirectional transcendence; according to this principle, the outward transcendence is correlated to the inward or immanent transcendence, so that the knowledge of facts themselves are epistemologically correlated to absolute nothing or infinite mind, which gives foundation to objective knowledge. This view not only explains the meaning of the “knowledge” of facts themselves, but also strongly implies the epistemic value of the two philosophers' seemingly esoteric concepts of mind and nothingness.