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3 On the Originality of "!ZUTSU" Oriental Philosophy MAKINO Shinya As is well known by those interested in philosophy, the collected works of the late Professor IZUTSU Toshihiko were publised several years ago. From just a glance at these volumes, we come to know how wide the scope of his research activities was. The first volume, Philosophy of Mysticism, a study on Greek philosophy, written in the days of his youth, the second volume, Islamic Culture, the third volume, Russian Humanity, the fourth volume, Structure of Meaning, a semantic study of the Qur'anic world-view, the fifth volume, Islamic Philosophy, the sixth volume, Consciousness and Essence, the seventh volume, Translation of the Holy Qur'an, the eighth volume, A Study on the Qur'an, the nineth volume, Oriental Philosophy, and so on. In this way, the scope of his research extends from Greek philosophy and the philosophy of the European Middle Ages to Islamic thought, Judaic thought, Ancient Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy of Lao-tzu, Buddhistic philosophy of Yuishiki and Kegon, and the philos-ophy of Zen Buddhism, so that his research activities find no place to stop at any moment. Furthermore, the writings which are contained in the collected works are all those written in Japanese. In addition to these there are ten and several bulky volumes of monographs written in English, which are considered to be far more important as his academic
2~2 MAKINO Shinya works. Because of this, only about half of his scholarly achievements are available to the public, therefore a total picture of IZUTSU's philosophy is not rightly grasped except by very few people. Meanwhile, it is related that Professor IZUTSU's outstanding ability allowed him to master more than twenty foreign languages and after that he investigated many cultures of the world and elucidated especially the essence of religions and philosophical sys-tems of various peoples by making free use of these languages. Of course, such a matter is certainly observed in Professor IZUTSU's work, but it cannot be said that the true nature of Professor IZUTSU's research works is rightly valued here. Accordingly, I intend to state in the following a part of what I consider as the real focus of Professor IZUTSU's research. As I mentioned above, much has been written about the extensive scope of his research activities. In these days, when learning tends to be specialized and subdivided increasingly, it is certainly surprising that the sphere of his research activities contains within it the principal cultures of the world, such as Europe, Arabia, Persia, India, China and Japan, and develops really on a global scale. However, the true trait of his research works does not consist only in such vastness, but it must be noticed that his research is extremely deep as well as peerlessly original in each sphere of his research activities. Here I have first of all expressed the peculiarity of IZUTSU's philosophy by the key words "depth" and "originality", which are somewhat abstract. So, I mean to explain it more concretely from the standpoint of subject matter and method respectively in IZUTSU's philosophy. Making a general survey of all his works, we find diverse themes and topics appearing successively. If we, however, observe more carefully, we come to realize that there exists among the themes a strikingly important subject matter, namely a fundamental subject which is the very starting-point of IZUTSU's philosophy. And this basic subject does not always appear externally, but it resounds
