I read Akiko Ikeda's "Remark". This is a collection of her philosophical fragments written from 1997 to 2007. It's a very poetic book. The style of this book is not to keep thinking about one idea till reaching expanded theory but to catch the moments those ideas had been born like snapshots. So it can't be the theories explained well. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense. But, as Wittgenstein had done, she has been writing these strong expressions with certain sentimentalism as Tahi Saihate. It has an intensity to be read.
This author's concern is this fact that why I am me and what is the state of being alive or not being dead. From this one, she connects it to the ideas about the universe. In other words, she doesn't ask about the mystery of the other people who should be in the middle of me and the universe. She is surprised at the enigma of herself and writes about it for her. But I think that the problem is why 'I' can share or think about that problem of her. She must be able to think about society or other people (so she could write about Japanese society or trends). How did she think about this problem?
I am the one who is just alive and not dead... I think it is just a clear fact. It's a precondition or given situation. But the fact that I can use language like this should be a strange one. Wittgenstein asks about this problem too much (absolutely). Akiko Ikeda has also stopped in front of this problem. But she doesn't fight against this problem. She just enjoys the problem itself as a cute thing. That funny attitude is actually I believe.
This book doesn't seem to produce a new philosophy. The idea Akiko Ikeda provides for us seems the one which lose its intensity if we try to discuss it in concrete language. I thought this is a journal of daydreams of her. A journal of daydreams... so we can enjoy being blown by this book's dreams. We also can write our daydreams. The existence which provides daydreams is our unconsciousness, which is the symbol of the others in ourselves. That fact is, however, one enigma. Did she know it?
