Osamu Tezuka and life studies

Thinking about it now, I would assert that Tezuka’s Firebird can serve as a sort of progenitor/prototype for what I propose as “Life Studies.” The firebird, the continuous flow of life, embracing everything, salvages people who are trembling with fear, being suspended in the midst ofthe universe, and gives them meaning in life. On the other hand, Tezuka depicts people who reject this salvation, choosing to remain irreplaceable individual humans living here and now, and trying to obtain immortality by using technologies. “Civilization” and “History” are merely the tracks of human beings in their strenuous efforts and perpetual frustrations in trying to return to eternal existence from which they have been born as mortal beings.

I believe we can credit Osamu Tezuka with the true genesis of Life Studies.

I did not realize this until extremely recently, though; rather I had completely eliminated any recollection of the Firebird from my consciousness. I was diverted from the path of bringing philosophical meditations inspired by the thought of “my death” together with the notion of the Firebird’s “life” at some point in my teens.

Instead I began to concentrate on the idea of what my existence and that of other people was. Although I will not go into detail about this, I realized that I would, at some point, have to deeply examine this fundamental problem in philosophy, that I would have to confront the solipsist thesis sooner or later. Some people are inclined to think that it might be only “me” that actually has an inner consciousness because it is totally unclear whether you have “consciousness”=“another I”=“the other mind” inside your body.

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The Structure of the Inner Life of a Philosopher (1998)
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