Performanz – Allgemeine Anmerkungen und ein Blick auf Watsuji Tetsurōs Beschreibung des Menschen

Abstract

According to Austin, performatives are characterized by two features: First, performative sentences are not used to describe and cannot be true or false, they have no truth value. Second, uttering a performative sentence in appropriate circumstances is not simply saying something, but rather performing a certain kind of action. From the perspective of the philosophy of culture, performatives refer to the context, to external features of subjectivity and to visible traits like social space or body. In modern Japanese philosophy, Watsuji Tetsurō’s Ethics presents an anthropological model that can be interpreted using the vocabulary of performativity. The central idea here is that man is located and tied up in space and that he can find himself only through embodiment in institutional settings and role patterns.