グレゴリー・ベイトソンにおけるゲーテ的形態学の継承と展開

This paper examines Gregory Bateson’s epistemology as a twentieth-century continuation and transformation of Goethean morphology. Focusing on Bateson’s 1970 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, later published as “Form, Substance, and Difference,” it argues that Bateson rearticulates Goethe’s critique of substance-based modern science by grounding knowledge in patterns, relations, and differences rather than in material entities. Following C. G. Jung, Bateson distinguishes between pleroma, the domain of matter and energy, and creatura, the domain of information and meaning, identifying Goethe as a foundational precursor of a science of creatura. Through cybernetics and systems theory, Bateson expands this insight into a relational concept of mind distributed across organism–environment circuits. The paper highlights Bateson’s theory of hierarchical mental organization, his redefinition of the unit of survival as an ecological system, and his critique of the boundary between inner and outer mind, in contrast to Freudian psychology. Drawing on examples from the Korzybski lecture, it further examines altered states of consciousness, aesthetics, and death as moments that reveal mind as a transindividual process. The paper concludes by situating Bateson’s Goethean morphology within contemporary debates on environmental ethics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.