Beyond Nature and Culture

Philippe Descola

（日本語解説版：一部の欧文文字が文字化けしています）

Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2005 (Proceedings of the British Academy 139, pp.137-155, 2006)

5

My starting point rests on a philosophical intuition corroborated by ethnography, combined with a thought experiment for which I can find no justification except that it bears interesting anthropological fruits. I borrow the intuition from Husserl’s idea that if humans try to experience any form of non-self by leaving out of the account the instituted world and everything it means for them, the only resources that they can avail themselves of are their body and their intentionality8. These twin assets, which I prefer to call physicality (in the sense of dispositions enabling a physical action) and interiority (in the sense of self-reflexive inwardness), are not Western constructs generated by the marriage of Greek philosophy with Christian theology and subsequently raised under the rigorous ferule of a long line of Cartesian tutors. According to developmental psychology, the awareness of this duality is probably innate and specific to the human species9, a point confirmed by ethnographic and historical accounts: for despite the known diversity of conceptions of the person, notions of physicality and interiority seem to be universally present, although with an infinite variety of modalities of connections and interactions between the two planes. A proof of this would be that there is no known case of a conception of the ordinary living human person that would be based on interiority alone ? let’s call it a mind without a body ? or on physicality alone ? a body without a mind ?, or not at least, in the latter case, until the advent of materialist theories of consciousness of the late twentieth century. Rather than reducing the distinction between interiority and physicality to an ethnocentric prejudice, one should instead apprehend the specific forms this distinction was given in Europe by philosophical and theological theories as local variants of a more general system of elementary contrasts that can be studied comparatively.

私の出発点は、民族誌によって裏付けられた哲学的直観と、人類学的に興味深い実を結ぶということ以外、 何の正当性も見いだせない思考実験との組み合わせにある。もし人間が、制度化された世界と、それが人間にとって意味するものすべてを考慮から外すことに よって、あらゆる形の非自己を経験しようとするならば、人間が利用できる唯一の資源は身体と意図性だけである、というフッサールの考えから、私はこの直観 を借りている8。私が身体性（身体的行為を可能にする性質という意味で）と内面性（自己反省的内面性という意味で）と呼ぶこの二つの資産は、ギリシア哲学 とキリスト教神学の結婚によって生まれた西洋の構築物ではなく、その後、デカルト主義者の長い家系の厳格なフェルールの下で育てられたものである。発達心 理学によれば、この二重性の認識はおそらく生得的なものであり、人間という種に特有のものである9。その証拠に、20世紀後半に唯物論的意識論が登場する までは、内面性だけ、あるいは身体性だけ、あるいは心なき身体とでも呼ぼうか。内面性と身体性の区別を民族中心主義的な偏見に還元するのではなく、この区 別がヨーロッパで哲学的・神学的理論によって与えられた具体的な形を、比較研究可能な、より一般的な初歩的対照体系の局所的な変種として理解すべきであ る。

1 A. Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, CUP, 2000), p.73.

2 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society; essays and addresses (London, Cohen & West, 1952), p. 130.

3 Ph. Descola, ‘Societies of nature and the nature of society’, in A. Kuper (ed.) Conceptualizing Society (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 107-126, and ‘Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-102.

4 For instance, T. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, Routledge, 2000) and E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos e o perspectivismo amer?ndio’, Mana 2 (2) (1996), pp. 115-144.

5 C. L?vi-Strauss, La pens?e sauvage (Paris, Plon, 1962), pp. 154-155, my translation.

6 True, some non-human species also ascribe properties (at least relational and behavioural features) to humans and other non-humans; but before they can be included in a general theory of ontologies, a lot of ground remains to be covered.

7 I am very grateful to Tim Ingold and Peter Marshall for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of the lecture and for their suggestions of stylistic amendments.

8 E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923-1924) II, Theorie der ph?nomenologischen Reduktion (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1959), pp. 61-64.

9 P. Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (New York, Basic Books, 2004).

10 E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 117.

11 J. von Uexku?ll, Streifzu?ge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen ? Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag, 1956).

12 E. Viveiros de Castro, 'Os pronomes cosmol?gicos', p. 117 (my translation).

13 Ibid., p. 122.

14 W. B. Spencer et F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, Macmillan & Co, 1899), p. 202.

15 C. G. von Brandenstein, Names and Substance of the Australian Subsection System (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 54.

16 C. G. von Brandenstein, ‘Aboriginal Ecological Order in the South-West of Australia - Meanings and Examples’, Oceania XLVII (3) (1977), pp. 170-186.

17 M. Granet, La pens?e chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 1968 (1934)), p. 297.

18 A point which Viveiros de Castro was the first to make, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 129.

19 B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais ?t? modernes. Essai d’anthropologie sym?trique (Paris, La D?couverte, 1991).

20 K. Århem, ‘The Cosmic Food Web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society, pp. 185-204.

21 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘On social structure’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 70 (1940), pp. 1-12, republished in Structure and Function, p. 190.

22 M. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p. 13.