Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
The studies by the Inklings are one small part of an enormous intellectual enterprise, transcending cultures and spanning centuries, to make sense of the connection, broadly stated, between ‘words' and ‘the world' (both concepts understood in their most general sense). The Inklings were doing this; Hopkins was doing this in his poetry; Wittgenstein was doing this in his study of language; Plato and Aristotle were doing this, centuries earlier.
Morihei Ueshiba was doing this, also, but he was part of an intellectual tradition that was Chinese and Buddhist, which followed a different set of parameters. I think this is why kotodama is a concept that needs to be looked at from many directions, including Japanese language, Japanese literature, and ‘new' religions like Omoto and their antecedents.
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I should add (another footnote LOL) that I think that the study of philosophy and literature should go together. Without literature in some form philosophy is sterile; without philosophy in some form literature can be undisciplined 'stream of consciousness' intellectual wandering.
The study of Barfield and Williams in literature needs to be complemented by the study of J L Austin, for example, who was teaching philosophy at Oxford when Wittgenstein was teaching philosophy at Cambridge.
Japan does not have a similar intellectual tradition and so the study of kotodama, for example, has to be approached through literature, mythology, and especially Japanese religion, including Shingon Budhism and Shinto, with offshoots of both in a 'new' religion like Omoto.