‘world problems’ appear in all parts of the world simultaneously and demand similar
and unified solutions (ibid.: 23). World religions are therefore religions which see all
problems in the world as world problems and occupy themselves deliberately with
their solution. World problems thus come to be considered as the very area where
religions show themselves as world religions.
But how and where do problems in the world reveal themselves as world problems?
In other words, what makes the world appear as such? With these questions our
discussion proceeds from the horizontal axis of the East and the West to the vertical
axis of religion and science. It may be true that belief in its traditional sense provides
for an experience of the world as such. But even pious people today admit that belief
does not develop without serious experiences of one’s existence in the world. Belief
therefore presupposes some facts pertaining to our lives. Religion is not something
beyond our concern in and with the world. Science, on the other hand, means an
empirical investigation of facts, including human existence, and thus is intrinsically
related to religion. This is what the vertical axis crossing the horizontal in the above
diagram refers to.
This conception of science, however, leads to a confrontation with scientism or
positivism prevalent today. Scientism proposes that scientific investigation is nothing
more than the accumulation of ‘facts’. The question thus arises: what actually are
‘facts’? They are not simply existing there, waiting for scientific investigation. Only
a little phenomenological reflection reveals that they show themselves as facts because
of the construction of, or at least the correlation with, what is usually called mind.
Mind thus is a fundamental fact. It is psychology that reveals this truth.
This concept of psychology must be distinguished from psychologism, a form of
reductionism that reduces all things to psychology. Without the awareness of this
distinction every psychological statement would be misleading and absurd, the worst
form of ideology. Jung is, indeed, right when he says: ‘Every science is a function of
the psyche, and all knowledge is rooted in it. The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic
wonders’ (Jung 1947/1954: par. 357). He obviously claims the primacy of psychology
over all the other sciences, but psychology must be subjected to this same self-criticism.
Self-criticism is therefore a touchstone of psychology. A psychology not open to
self-criticism would be a form of psychologism. One cannot be sure how far Jung’s
psychology is free from psychologism. He says, ‘Whoever speaks of the reality of the
soul or psyche is accused of “psychologism”. Psychology is spoken of as if it were
“only” psychology and nothing else’ (Jung 1944: par. 9), but he does not seem to
actually distinguish his psychology from psychologism.
Jung’s psychologyJung is not the first who expressed this psychological truth. Much earlier, Aristotle
said in his De Anima, ‘In a sense the psyche is all.’ As Hillman’s extensive works
(Hillman 1972; 1975) clearly show, there is a long history of psychology in its
primordial sense as well as its amnesia. It is not a mere accident that physicians of the
soul rediscovered psychology as ‘soul-making’ and that the key-concept of the
24 SHOJI MURAMOTO