Jean-Luc Nancy notes that the community, since it is no absolute subject (self, will, spirit), is by its naturenot inscribed in any logic metaphysics. In spite of this, or indeed because of this, Western philosophyhas persistently tried to interpret the community through precisely these metaphysical terms (Nancy,1986, page 18, La Commonauté désoevrée, Christian Bourgeois, Paris). Some thoughts about Russianand Japanese notions of community and space will show that characteristics pointed out by Nancy andKant are binding only for societies that function within a Western intellectual framework. I want tointroduce and compare the thought of Nishida Kitaro. (1870 – 1945) and Semën L Frank (1877 – 1950),who develop the notions of basho and sobornost' as alternative philosophical concepts of space. BothNishida and Frank attempt to overcome what they consider a typically `Western' idea of individual `I'sas materialized `objects'. Procedures like Einfü h- lung or intuition are inefficient because all they dois to transform the other, from the point of view of the `I', into an object. Finally, for the Eurasianist, thestate organization had at its center a personal god, and the `symphonic personality' of Russia-Eurasiarepresented a nonegoistic, communal consciousness
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