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)

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Let us now examine some properties of these four modes of identification. Animism as a continuity of souls and a discontinuity of bodies is quite common in South and North America, in Siberia and in some parts of South-East Asia where peoples endow plants, animals and other elements of their physical environment with a subjectivity and establish with these entities all sorts of personal relations, whether of friendship, exchange, seduction, or hostility. In these animic systems, humans and most non-humans are conceived as having the same type of interiority, and it is because of this common subjectivity that animals and spirits are said to possess social characteristics: they live in villages, abide by kinship rules and ethical codes, engage in ritual activity and barter goods. However, the reference shared by most beings in the world is humanity as a general condition, not man as a species. In other words, humans and all the kinds of non-humans with which humans interact each have different physicalities, in that their identical internal essences are lodged in different types of bodies, often described locally as clothing that can be donned or discarded, the better to underline their autonomy from the interiorities which inhabit them. Non-humans see themselves as humans because they are said to believe that they share with the latter the same kind of soul, and yet they are unlike humans because their bodies are different. Now, as Viveiros de Castro pointed out in the case of Amazonia, these specific clothes often induce contrasted perspectives on the world, in that the physiological and perceptual constraints proper to a type of body impose to each class of being a specific position and point of view in the general ecology of relations10. Human and non-human persons have an integrally ‘cultural’ view of their life sphere because they share the same kind of interiority, but the world that all these entities apprehend and use is different, for each employs distinct bodily equipment.

では、これら4つの同一化様式の特性をいくつか見てみよう。魂の連続性と肉体の非連続性としてのアニミ ズムは、南アメリカや北アメリカ、シベリア、東南アジアの一部ではごく一般的なもので、人々は植物や動物、その他の物理的環境の要素に主体性を与え、これ らの存在と、友情、交換、誘惑、敵対など、あらゆる種類の個人的関係を築いている。このようなアニミズム体系では、人間も人間以外のほとんどの存在も同じ 種類の内面性を持っていると考えられており、動物や精霊が社会的特徴を持っていると言われるのは、この共通の主観性のためである。しかし、世界のほとんど の生き物が共有している基準は、種としての人間ではなく、一般的な状態としての人間性である。言い換えれば、人間も、人間が関わるあらゆる種類の非人間 も、それぞれ異なる身体性を持っている。それは、同一の内的本質が異なるタイプの身体に宿っているということであり、しばしば局所的には、着たり捨てたり できる衣服と表現されるが、それは、その身体に宿る内的本質からの自律性を強調するためである。非人間は、自分たちが人間と同じ種類の魂を共有していると 信じているため、自分たちを人間と同じように見ている。さて、ヴィヴェイロス・デ・カストロがアマゾンの事例で指摘したように、このような特殊な衣服は、 しばしば世界に対する対照的な視点を引き起こす。つまり、身体の種類に適した生理学的・知覚的制約が、関係の一般的な生態学において、それぞれの階級の存 在に特定の位置と視点を課すのである10。人間と非人間は、同じ種類の内面性を共有しているため、自分たちの生活圏について統合的に「文化的」な見方を 持っているが、それぞれが異なる身体的装置を用いているため、これらすべての存在が理解し利用する世界は異なっている。

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.