Carlos Astrada and Tetsuro Watsuji on the Phenomenology of Landscape

Abstract

The aim of this article is to critically compare the phenomenologies of landscape of two 20th-century philosophers deeply engaged with Heidegger’s thinking: Carlos Astrada and Tetsurō Watsuji. In the first section, I show how they understood the relationship between the human being and landscape. With specific peculiarities, they both considered that the analysis of “temporality” must be complemented with a treatment of “spatiality.” In the second section, I show that their analysis of spatiality was connected, on the one hand, to a re-evaluation of corporality, and, on the other hand, to a quest to emphasize the social-communitarian dimension of human existence. In the third section, I present their different interpretations of Heidegger’s notion of “Being-towards-death,” and establish the links between it and their phenomenologies of landscape. In the final section, I propose Astrada and Watsuji’s thoughts as the basis for an alternative modernity to that of the West.