Abstract
This paper elucidates Toshihiko Izutsu’s conception of the archetypology of the I Ching from the perspective of Edward S. Casey’s archetypal topography. Casey defines archetypal topography as the met hod which reveals the correlations of archetypal dominants as semantic structures by analyzing varied archetypal images. This topography deals with transcendental topics for archetypal dominants, with reference to C. G. Jung’s archetypes, H. Corbin’s mundus imaginalis, and Gilbert Durand’s general archetypology. In investigating the philosophical significance of the I Ching, Izutsu interprets its system as an archetypal structure in terms of divination, which closely resembles that revealed by archetypal topography, allowing us to recognize it as a transcendental structure. However, Izutsu also finds the system of the I Ching to be a metaphysical system, which he calls the self-articulation of the non-articulation. The revelation of this system is not transcendental archetypology, but metaphysical archetypology, which is realized by the Confucian sage whose subjectivity is one of the metaphysical subjectivities Izutsu pursues in his Oriental philosophy.
