Today, I started to re-read intensively Kimura's "aida".
The corresponding English word for Aida may be
"between" or "between-ness". As I am currently working on
intersubjectivity and social cognition, what Kimura thinks through the notion
of aida seems very attractive.
He tries to re-consider the problem of intersubjectivity
based on the notion of aida. "Aida" in Japanese literally means the
spatial or temporal distance between two things. In the context of social
cognition, aida means the "between" of two or more persons. Needless
to say, it refers to the realm of inter-subjectivity.
However, a bit surprisingly, he asks what it means to be
alive, in the introduction of the book. He says, the life that is explained in
biological sciences is mere "vital activities of living substances."
The life itself is beyond such activities that are found in the particular
living organism. In fact, even though one living organism ends up by death, the
life itself does not come to an end. The life manifest itself through the
living organism but itself is beyond those. What he stresses is that our sense
of living has its own root in what he here calls "the life itself",
which is beyond particular living organisms.
In the deepest sense, Kimura's notion of aida seems
to refer to this relation between each particular living organism
(humans, animals, plants) and the universal life-force. The life itself is the
universal ground, which makes possible the subjectivity of the particular
living being. Before describing the intersubjectivity, the notion of aida
refers to the foundation of the subjectivity which appears as the sense
of living. This is what I found in Kimura's text today.
