午夜剧场

I wrote an introductory book on philosophy. However, I did not intend to lead the reader down the main path of the history of philosophy. To begin with, I myself am someone far removed from that main path.

Even so, I have continued to think about what philosophy is in my own way, and I have long held the desire to convey those thoughts.

That said, putting it together into a book is a troublesome task. To tell the truth, more than ten years ago, I was invited to write an introductory book on philosophy and accepted. However, I was ill-prepared at the time. After years of agonizing over it, I ended up declining the offer.

Now, I am someone who sides with the "democracy of philosophy." In other words, everyone must be able to "philosophize," and I believe that a world where everyone is "philosophizing" is a desirable landscape.

Let me use an analogy. There are professional painters, but separately from that, anyone can paint. Even people who think they can't paint, can. Of course, it is fine to base one's work on techniques or art history, but that is not essential to the act of starting to paint. There is no point in discouraging people with such things.

Philosophy is the same; everyone should be able to engage in philosophy even without the history of philosophy. For an introductory work, this position might seem self-evident, but in my opinion, most philosophy introductions are still too intimidating. I sense a petty greed in them, a desire for the reader to learn the history of philosophy if possible.

I wanted to strip away the context of the history of philosophy (especially Western philosophy) to the extreme and awaken the reader to their own innate power to "philosophize"—or so I thought ten-odd years ago. To do that, the philosophical moments that visit everyone equally should be emphasized. So, back then, I thought about organizing the book around the theme of "inspiration." However, that ultimately did not work out.

The decisive cause of that failure was likely that my thoughts on what generates that very inspiration were not clearly defined. This time, because those thoughts have settled to some extent, I was able to publish the book.

Situations that create resistance—this is the "source of inspiration." Now, I have run out of space here. The rest is in the book.

Kazumi Takakuwa

Shueisha Shinsho

224 pages, 902 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.