A translation of a Japanese text written by philosopher Tosaka Jun in 1935, at the moment the country had begun to embark upon a course of fascist authoritarianism that led to war and total destruction. Titled The Japan Ideology, the text purposely recalls its derivation and kinship with Marx and Engels's The German Ideology and expands on the role played by philosophic idealism in preparing the population for both the new politics of fascism and the demands of the eventual (...) war it brought. In its penetrating analysis of the relationship between philosophy and the formation of ideology in a politically critical and crucial historical time, this foundational work in the Japanese Marxist tradition remains accessible and timely, speaking forcibly to conditions that continue to persist in Japan and everywhere in today's world. (shrink)

Japanese science and technology studies has historically developed under the influence of Marxism, which generally had a great impact on prewar and postwar Japanese social sciences. However, since the late 1970s, the Marxist tradition was taken over by postmodernism and then neoliberalism. The global immiserization of working class recently brought back Marx and his critique of capital. The Marxist tradition should be revitalized by reviewing neo-Marxist works in the 1960s and 1970s, which rightly made science and technology (...) the subject of criticism for the first time. (shrink)

Although it seems natural to consider the last fifty years the contemporary period, because this year (1995) punctuates a historical period celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, this essay will limit the term “contemporary” roughly to the last twenty‐five years. The reason for this demarcation is that at the beginning of the 1970s, we witnessed a new philosophical mood emerging in Japan. Prior to that period, the Japanese philosophical scene was dominated by the study (...) of European thinkers, such as Husserl, Heiddeger, Sartre, and Merleau Ponty. The end of the students' movement in the early 1970s also marked the end of the ideological disputes launched by Marxism since the early 1930s. Instead, it appears that the Japanese intelligentsia in the early 1970s began to acutely sense problems inherent in the Eurocentric philosophy which had served as a foundation for Western science and technology. This occurred largely through a recognition that scientific technology had yielded, as its unexpected byproduct, a “mind/heartless” society, pollution, and global ecological crises, which had permeated almost all parts of the Japanese archipelago to threaten the psyche of the Japanese people and their mode of living. In this essay, I should like to briefly introduce three representative contemporary Japanese thinkers who have addressed some aspects of these problems in their writings. They are Nakamura Yujiro, Sakabe Megumi, and Yuasa Yasuo. (Because of the limitations of space, this article will restrict itself to these three thinkers, but this should not suggest that there are no other representative thinkers in Japan. Consider particularly those belonging to the neo Kyoto school, such as Nishitani Keiji, Kosaka Masaki, Koyama Iwao, Umehara Takeshi and Ueda Shizuteru. Nishitani's works are well known in the English speaking world, along with those of Abe Masao. Out side of the Kyoto school, we can also mention other thinkers, such as Matsumoto Masao, Hiromatsu Wataru and Ichikawa Hiroshi.). (shrink)

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, _Sources of Japanese Tradition_, Volume 2, has been considered the authoritative sourcebook for readers and scholars interested in Japan from the eighteenth century to the post-World War II period. Now greatly expanded to include the entire twentieth century, and beginning in 1600, _Sources of Japanese Tradition_ presents writings by modern Japan's most important philosophers, religious figures, writers and political leaders. The volume also offers extensive introductory essays and commentary (...) to assist in understanding the documents' historical settings and significance. Wonderfully varied in its selections, this eagerly anticipated expanded edition has revised many of the texts from the original edition and added a great many not included or translated before. New additions include documents on the postwar era, the importance of education in the process of modernization, and women's issues. Beginning with documents from the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, the collection's essays, manifestos, religious tracts, political documents, and memoirs reflect major Japanese religious, philosophical, social and political movements. Subjects covered include the spread of neo-Confucian and Buddhist teachings, Japanese poetry and aesthetics, and the Meiji Restoration. Other documents reflect the major political trends and events of the period: the abolition of feudalism, agrarian reform, the emergence of poltical parties and liberalism, and the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. The collection also includes Western and Japanese impressions of each other through Western religious missions and commercial and cultural exchanges. These selections underscore Japanese and Western apprehension of and fascination with each other. As Japan entered the twentieth century, new political and social movements -- Marxism, anarchism, socialism, nationalism, and feminism -- entered the national consciousness. Later readings in the collection look at the buildup to war with the United States, military defeat and American occupation. Documents from the postwar period echo Japan's struggle with its own history and its development as a capitalist democracy. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that two eminent Marxists in the 1930s, the Italian Antonio Gramsci and the Japanese Tosaka Jun, shared three important characteristics of so-called Western Marxism: the methodological development of Marxism, the focus on the superstructure, and the pessimism about the impossibility of immediate revolution. Showing that Gramsci and Tosaka shared these characteristics enables us to revisit the framework of “Western Marxism,” which confusingly consists of both theoretical characteristics and geographical criteria. Looking at (...) Gramsci and Tosaka on the same plane allows us to revisit Marxist thought different from the orthodox Marxism in Soviet Russia, and not strictly as a Western, but as a part of potentially global movement of thought. (shrink)

Buddhism has gradually reclaimed its place as the most important spiritual tradition to the extent that modern Japanese philosophers no longer even mention Confucian thought, especially since the birth of a Japanese style of philosophy represented by the Kyoto School. Against this historical background, it may seem questionable if anything like an effective interaction between Japanese Buddhist-inspired philosophy and Confucianism ever existed. This essay concentrate on the two occasions in the history of modern Japanese philosophy when (...) the problem of morality gained crucial importance. The first concerns the issue of morality among the second generation of Kyoto School philosophers, culminating in the theme of “overcoming modernity,” and its discussion of how to go beyond modernity, thereby transforming society and the world. This discussion is clearly inspired by Confucian ideas. Since this theme is based on the evaluation of past philosophies and thoughts, it is inseparable from a modern version of doctrinal classification conceived by KŌYAMA Iwao 高山岩男. The second occasion we will examine in this essay is the postwar Marxist critique of this theme. Inheriting this theme of the Kyoto School, HIROMATSU Wataru 廣松渉 proceeds to criticize modern Japanese Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism itself from a practical point of view in order to surpass their shortcomings. In both cases, the question is how such notions as morality and morals are problematized in modern Japanese philosophy, or, more specifically, what the place of morality and practice in Buddhist philosophy is? This is the question that will enable us to see the modern version of interaction between Buddhism and Confucianism. (shrink)

In this paper, I will describe the history of Japanese science studies (In the Japanese language, the term ?science studies? [Kagaku-ron] is used to indicate a broad area, which covers the history, philosophy, and social studies of science and technology.) from the beginning of the twentieth century to around the mid-1980s, and will argue how depoliticization took place in its history. Japanese science studies was formed under the conspicuous influence of German philosophy before World War II (hereafter (...) WW II), especially in its neo-Kantian tradition. During the military regime, science studies offered a hiding place for Marxists. However, after the end of the Asian-Pacific War, British influence became stronger in the history and sociology of science in two stages. First, logical positivism arrived, in this case, mainly from the USA under the name of ?analytic philosophy.? Second, the American influence was furthered by the introduction of Kuhn?s theory of paradigm which unexpectedly depoliticized Japanese science studies. This trend seems to have reflected the course of the Cold War. After the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, one of the most significant legacies of Cold War Science, we need to review the history of science studies in order to retrieve its ?critical? function. Even though this paper focuses on Japan, comparable reflections should be made worldwide. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected DocumentsSteven HeineSourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents. Translated and edited by David A. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo, with Agustin Jacinto Zavala. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. xx + 420.Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents, translated and edited by David H. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo, with Agustin Jacinto Zavala, is a new translation of twentieth-century (...) Japanese philosophers and is the second book in a series on Resources in Asian Philosophy and Religion that had been devised and edited by the late Charles Wei-hsun Fu (the first book was Stuart D. B. Picken's Essentials of Shinto: An Analytical Guide to Principal Teachings [Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994]). Here, a team of translators who are all very well known for their expert work in the field provide a series of selections from seven philosophers, each of whom is associated with the Kyoto School approach to comparative philosophical analysis.The seven thinkers include: (1) Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto School, which is based on a synthesis of Western thought, particularly German Idealism, and the Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy of emptiness or universal nothingness (Nishida remains by far the most important representative of the school, and he has had numerous works translated into English, often by Dilworth and/or Viglielmo); (2) Tanabe Hajime, Nishida's first and foremost disciple, who approached the notion of absolute nothingness from the standpoint of Pure Land Buddhist other-power and repentance; (3) Kuki Shūzō, who was known for his travels to Europe and his work on aesthetics and contingency; (4) Watsuji Tetsurō, who pioneered the field of cultural anthropological history in Japan; (5) Miki Kiyoshi, who criticized Nishida in light of Pascal and Kierkegaard as well as Hegelian dialectics; (6) Tosaka Jun, a sharp Marxist critic of Nishida, who during the 1930s attacked the apparent accommodations of his colleagues with the Imperialist authorities; and (7) Nishitani Keiji, who developed the Zen perspective implicit in Nishida's philosophy by emphasizing the religious-conversion experience that emerges from a contemplative awareness of the universality of absolute nothingness.The translators provide a substantial introductory essay discussing the biographical and conceptual issues in the development of the life and thought of each philosopher. This section is very useful, and generally goes into more depth and detail than other materials available in English. The translations themselves, which cover a wide variety of styles and methods of argumentation, are clear and readable, though at times a bit imprecise and inconsistent. A main issue involved in evaluating the book has to do with the selection of thinkers and passages translated. Unfortunately, there are no philosophers represented here who are not in the circle of the Kyoto School. There is no question of the dominance of Nishida and his followers (and critics) in the realm of Japanese philosophy, but other voices reflecting the positions of Marxism, phenomenology, logic, structuralism, and postmodernism could have had some representation. One problem is that the reader is given very little indication of current trends (since the writings of Nishitani, the last philosopher [End Page 311] on this list, are already several decades old). And there is certainly nothing in this volume to point to future concerns and tendencies in Japanese philosophy.On the other hand, given the book's content, a positive feature is that the translators have fulfilled an important goal of choosing selections that have not previously appeared in English but which are nevertheless representative and crucial for understanding the overall significance of each thinker's approach. Therefore, Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy will serve as a beneficial supplement or complement to existing sources. It is a handy compendium that puts readers in touch with the full variety of Kyoto School philosophers, including those who vary from and argue with Nishida.By the late 1990s, it had become impossible to discuss Nishida and the Kyoto School without dealing at least in part with the question of political implications: to what extent, if any, were these thinkers involved in supporting and promulgating the doctrine of the imperial order, which sought hegemony throughout Asia. The key figures, especially Nishida, Tanabe... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:David Hume and Adam Smith: A Japanese Perspective by Tatsuya SakamotoEstrella TrincadoTatsuya Sakamoto. David Hume and Adam Smith: A Japanese Perspective. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 297. ISBN 9780367683023. Hardback. £130.This book is a collection of essays and articles by the Japanese scholar Tatsuya Sakamoto. In the foreword, Ryu Susato, professor of the Faculty of Economics at Keio University, Tokyo, notes that in (...) Japanese society Marxism has been the dogma of the history of social and economic thought. As a consequence, Japanese society has been labelled as “collectivist.” In this context, only a privileged intellectual background allowed Sakamoto to find his own way, as he graduated from Keio University and was part of its faculty. The Faculty of Economics of Keio University has spread the academic culture of liberalism that descended from Yukichi Fukuzawa (1834–1901), a reformer and founder of Keio and one of the most influential liberal thinkers in Meiji Japan (1868–1930). In addition, the family background of Sakamoto and the interest of his mother in the English language left a mark on him. Sakamoto was one of the rare Japanese scholars to study abroad in the 1980s, in particular at the University of Glasgow for two years (1984–1986) under the academic guidance of Andrew Skinner. There, he took interest in biographical and bibliographical studies. During his initial research, he found on a note by George Chalmers some evidence for David Hume’s authorship of an anonymous review of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in the Critical Review of May 1759.1 Then, along with David D. Raphael, Sakamoto transcribed the material with a commentary in the Journal of the History of Philosophy2 (Chapter 6 of the reviewed book) and he published “Hume’s Early Memoranda and the Making of His Political Economy” in Hume Studies3 (Chapter 4). There, Sakamoto gives interesting insights on Hume’s Early [End Page 163] Memoranda of manuscripts published by Mossner.4 This manuscript compilation shows the desire of Hume to pursue a systematic discourse on political economy. These efforts resulted in a large number of works published by Hume from 1748 to 1757 and even after his death, in Essays, Moral and Political, in The Natural History of Religion, and in Political Discourses.Later, Sakamoto published various articles on Hume’s economic thought in English (Chapters 1 and 5). In addition, he published his first monograph in Japanese.5 He argued that the “civilized society”—an idealization of Western societies—which was thought to be a prerequisite in Japan for the socialist revolution, concealed the different eighteenth-century historical realities of European countries in which Hume and Smith lived. Sakamoto received for this monograph the Suntory Academic Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 1996 and the Japan Academy Prize in 2001. In his Japanese monographs, Sakamoto interprets Hume as a firm defender of modernity and civilization, using his empiricist theory to inspire the spirit of serving the public good of a civilized society. Hume is a main character of the historiographical odyssey of the conflict between order and liberty.6 Hume tried to bridge the gap between the practical empiricism of mercantilist literature7 and the normative rationalism of natural jurisprudence,8 developing the science of economics on a philosophical foundation.After a brief leave spent at Boston University under the care of Knud Haakonssen, Sakamoto coedited a collection of essays written by Japanese scholars9 (Sakamoto’s contribution is included in Chapter 3). Another of Sakamoto’s important contributions is Chapter 9 of this book, originally published in The Adam Smith Review in 2017.10 There, we learn of Yoshihiko Uchida (1913–1983), a Japanese historian of social thought who specialized in Smith and Marx, and paid much early attention to the Smith-Rousseau connection in his The Birth of Economic Science (never published in English). As Sakamoto says, Uchida’s original view of this great Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, proves that scholars infuse new life into classical texts, no matter how distant they may be from the object of their study in space and time. Besides, by discussing in English previous Japanese scholars’ contributions, Sakamoto is... (shrink)

Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, the quotidian dimension took political centrality in Japan thanks to the leading role of the New Left movement and its ideology. This went hand in hand with an appreciation of the philosophical approaches of Marxist intellectuals such as Jun Tosaka and Gorō Hani, who saw the quotidian as a fundamental space for historical transformation. We know how Tosaka and Hani developed an everyday-centred philosophy of history through their writings, but we know little about (...) how formats other than the written word – such as cinema – contributed to thinking historical reality from the same ideological approach. To address this gap in our understanding, this article analyses the intersection of two highly representative films with Tosaka and Hani’s historical thought: Secrets Within Walls ( Kabe no naka no himegoto, Kōji Wakamatsu, 1965) and Ceremonies ( Gishiki, Nagisa Ōshima, 1971). These films’ cinematic allegorisation of post-war Japan’s everyday relationships was a way to reflect on the political character of that period. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. (...) This volume explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government's current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history and Asian Studies, sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 4 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 177-208.

Japanese philosopher and literary critic, Kōjin Karatani, introduces a ‘third position’ that seeks to correct the limitations of post-modern thought and the problems of global capitalism. By restoring Kant’s ‘transcendental’ as the methodological basis for capturing the structural interstice between different theoretical positions, Karatani’s ‘third position’ allows for a re-introduction of Marxism in addressing the circulation of the capital-nation-state trifecta and its relationship to ideological superstructures operating within a closed discursive space. Many years earlier, Nishida Kitarō, the father (...) of the Kyoto School, had also developed a ‘third position,’ except that this standpoint seeks to overcome the cultural-philosophical logics of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ thought. As Nishida claims, Western epistemologies cannot be converted into universal standpoints because they fail to make visible the conditions that both precede and structure contradictory categories. In this paper, I will discuss and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Nishida’s and Karatani’s standpoint of the ‘third.’. (shrink)

The Japanese philosopher, Tanabe Hajime is taken up as an example of a thinker who, like the conference question, straddles intellectual histories East and West. Of all the Kyoto School philosophers, it was he who took history most seriously. He not only criticized Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxist notions of teleology and the modern scientific myth of "progress" on their own ground, but went on to counter these views of history with a logic of emptiness grounded in Buddhist philosophy. The (...) essay concludes with an attempt to uncover the tacit assumption that allows Tanabe to make his arguments. (shrink)

Philosophers, novelists, and intercultural comparisons : Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens /​ Richard Rorty Lifeworlds, modernity, and philosophical praxis : race, ethnicity, and critical social theory /​ Lucius Outlaw Modern China and the postmodern West /​ David L. Hall From Marxism to post-Marxism /​ Svetozar Stojanović Incommensurability and otherness revisited /​ Richard J. Bernstein Incommensurability, truth, and the conversation between Confucians and Aritotelians about the virtues /​ Alasdair MacIntyre The commensurability of Indian epistemological theories /​ Karl H. Potter Pluralism, (...) relativism, and interaction between cultures /​ Bimal K. Matilal The problem of relativism /​ Jiang Tianji. Between relativism and fundamentalism : hermeneutics as Europe’s mainstream political and moral tradition /​ Ferenc Feher Conceptual schemes and linguistic relativism in relation to Chinese /​ A.C. Graham The origins of the question : four traditional Japanese philosophies of language /​ Thomas P. Kasulis Meaning as imaging : Prolegomena to a Confucian epistemelogy /​ Roger T. Ames On the dual nature of traditional Chinese thought and its modernization /​ Li Zhilin A planetary macroethics for humankind : the need, the apparent difficulty, and the eventual possibility /​ Karl-Otto Apel Reasonable challenges and preconditions of adjudication /​ Antonio S. Cua The French Revolution and the Holocaust : can ethics be ahistorical? /​ Hilary Putnam Tradition and moral progress /​ Joel J. Kupperman The shape of artistic pasts, East and West /​ Arthur C. Danto. Surrealistic distortion of landscape and the reason of the milieu /​ Megumi Sakabe Why art changes /​ Richard Wollheim The transcendental in a comparative context /​ Frederick J. Streng Reflections on religious pluralism in the Indian context /​ Margaret Chatterjee Three enduring achievements of Islamic philosophy /​ Lenn E. Goodman Two dimensions of religion : reflections based on Indian spiritual experience and philosophical traditions /​ G.C. Pande Between nationalism and nomadism : wondering about the languages of philosophy /​ Graham Parkes The discourse of cultural authenticity : Islamist revivalism and enlightenment universalism /​ Aziz Al-Azmeh Traditional political values and ideas : an examination of their relevance to developments in contemporary African political order /​ Kwame Gyekye On the interpretation of traditional cultures /​ Maria L. Herrera. The concept of progress and cultural identity /​ Roop Rekha Verma Moses, Hsüan-tsang, and history /​ Agnes Heller Secularism : sacred and profane /​ Daya Krishna Scientific progress and content loss /​ Larry Laudan A dialectical view of scientific rationality and progress /​ Marcello Pera Scientific progress reconsidered /​ Ilkka Niiniluoto Does progress in science lead to truth? /​ Lorenz Krüger. (shrink)

When people talk about religion, most soon mention the major religious traditions of our times, but then, thinking further, most mention as well the religions of Indigenous peoples and of such vanished civilizations as ancient Greece and Egypt and Persia. That is, we have come to understand that there are-and have been-many different religions; anthropologists estimate the total in the thousands. They also estimate that there have been thousands of human cultures, which is to say that the making of a (...) culture and the making of its religion go together: each religion is embedded in its cultural history. True, certain religions have attempted, and variously succeeded, in crossing cultural boundaries to "convert the heathens," but the invaded cultures usually put their unmistakable stamp on what they import, as evinced by the pulsating percussive Catholic masses sung in Africa. In the end, each of these religions addresses two fundamental human concerns: How Things Are and Which Things Matter. How Things Are is articulated as a Cosmology or Cosmos: How the natural world came to be, how humans came to be, what happens after we die, the origins of evil and tragedy and natural disaster and love. Which Things Matter becomes codified as a Morality or Ethos: the Judaic Ten Commandments, the Christian Sermon on the Mount, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Buddhist Vinaya, the Confucian Five Relations, and the understandings inherent in numerous Indigenous traditions. The role of a religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its attendant moral understandings. As a culture evolves, a distinctive Cosmos and Ethos appears in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the early humans, the stories, ceremonies and art associated with our religions-of-origin have been central to our lives. I stand in awe of these religions. I have no need to take on their contradictions or immiscibility, any more than I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipe ceremonies coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies. And indeed, the failure of Soviet Marxism to obliterate Russian Orthodoxy, and of Maoism to obliterate Buddhism, Confucianism, or Daoism, and of Christianity to obliterate Indigenous understandings, reminds us that projects designed to overthrow religious traditions face strong headwinds. (shrink)

For readers looking for insights into key issues linking current Eastern and Western views on the arts, aesthetics, and philosophy, Unsettled Boundaries offers fresh and insightful perspectives on current issues as seen by leading Chinese and Western scholars. Represented in the volume are previously unpublished essays of Nöel Carroll, Garry Hagberg, Richard Shusterman, and Jason Wirth alongside writings of Chinese peers Gao Jianping, Peng Feng, Liu Yuedi, Wang Chunchen and Cheng Xiangzhan. The essays in this volume draw attention to evolving (...) cultural and philosophical connections linking the cultures of East and West, while taking note of important differences in the respective cultures. These connections draw upon both traditional Confucian ideas and Chinese Marxist-Leninist aesthetics as well as western pragmatism, somaesthetics, and Wittgenstein-based analytic philosophy. Alongside these philosophical currents, are reflections on issues linking globalization to contemporary Balinese, Chinese, and Japanese arts, by Curtis Carter, Stephen Davies, Garry Hagberg, and Mary Wiseman. (shrink)

_Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is the first guide to cover both the Anglo-American analytic and European continental traditions. Organized thematically, the volume thoroughly discusses the major movements and fields of each tradition and features the contributions of highly distinguished specialists in their fields. This book is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to highlighting the multidimensional work of philosophers identified with the analytic tradition, with Nicholas Rescher writing on neoidealism, Josephine Donovan commenting on feminist philosophy, Tyler Burge (...) discussing the philosophy of language and mind, and Robert Hanna reflecting on Kant's legacy. The second section presents the thought of those who identified themselves with the continental tradition, featuring Jean Grondin on hermeneutics, Leonard Lawlor on phenomenology, Charles Scott on postmodernism, and Babette Babich on the philosophy of science. This volume also covers logical positivism, naturalism, pragmatism, aesthetics, existentialism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, structuralism, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The final section addresses concurrent trends in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African philosophy, and a comprehensive introduction by the editor not only provides a thorough outline of the problems and issues of the analytic and continental traditions but also boldly challenges the conviction that the two approaches must be rivals. _Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is an invaluable overview of the ideas that have shaped a monumentally important century in the history of philosophy, offering an unusually panoramic perspective that allows readers to form their own interpretations of original materials. (shrink)

The notion that particularism is a feature of traditional Japanese thought is argued against, demonstrating that leading Continental philosophies advocated "particularity" in Japanese interwar social and political theory as the most modern development in Western thought. This theory of modern particularity was explored in the Japanese journal Under the Banner of the New Science in the late 1920s, leading to subsequent development in both Marxist and non-Marxist social theories in Japan.

The article deals with the differences of the notion of 'object' or 'thing' in natural languages, concluding that some languages are by their structure more object-biased while others are more event-biased and proceeds to analyse how two common Japanese words, mono and koto , both meaning 'thing', have been treated in 20th-century Japanese thought, notably in the philosophical works of Watsuji Tetsurô, Ide Takashi, Hiromatsu Wataru and Kimura Bin. All of these thinkers represent different schools and trends (Watsuji (...) could be called a cultural particularist, Ide was an Aristotle scholar, Hiromatsu a Marxist and Kimura is a psychiatrist), but come to similar conclusions in this respect, allowing us to regard event-biased and object-biased linguistic constructions as manifestations of two different, but equally necessary cognitive faculties. (shrink)

In _Archaism and Actuality_ eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation of capitalism and fascism in Japan as a prime example of the uneven development of capitalism. He applies his theorization of subsumption to examine how capitalism integrates and redirects preexisting social, cultural, and economic practices to guide the present. This subsumption leads to a global condition in which states and societies all exist within different stages and manifestations of capitalism. Drawing on Japanese philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka (...) Jun, Marxist theory, and Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution, Harootunian shows how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and its program dedicated to transforming the country into a modern society exemplified a unique path to capitalism. Japan’s capitalist expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rise as an imperial power, and subsequent transition to fascism signal a wholly distinct trajectory into modernity that forecloses any notion of a pure or universal development of capitalism. With _Archaism and Actuality_, Harootunian offers both a retheorization of capitalist development and a reinterpretation of epochal moments in modern Japanese history. (shrink)

_Ontology of Production_ presents three essays by the influential Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, translated for the first time into English by William Haver. While previous translations of his writings have framed Nishida within Asian or Oriental philosophical traditions, Haver's introduction and approach to the texts rightly situate the work within Nishida's own commitment to Western philosophy. In particular, Haver focuses on Nishida's sustained and rigorous engagement with Marx's conception of production. Agreeing with Marx that ontology is production and production (...) is ontology, Nishida in these three essays—"Expressive Activity", "The Standpoint of Active Intuition", and "Human Being" —addresses sense and reason, language and thought, intuition and appropriation, ultimately arguing that in this concept of production, ideality and materiality are neither mutually exclusive nor oppositional but, rather, coimmanent. Nishida's forceful articulation of the radical nature of Marx's theory of production is, Haver contends, particularly timely in today's speculation-driven global economy. Nishida's reading of Marx, which points to the inseparability of immaterial intellectual labor and material manual labor, provokes a reconsideration of Marxism's utility for making sense of—and resisting—the logic of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity by Simon FerdinandDavid TooheyMapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity BY SIMON FERDINAND Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019Mapping Beyond Measure is a geographical and theoretical critique of map art and the tradition of modern mapmaking. The book focuses in depth on a few related examples of map art and departs from critical (...) theory and post-Marxist readings of space. Simon Ferdinand emphasizes fine art and art-film as appropriate counterweights to the authoritarian calculation in modern cartography and, unexpectedly, map art’s critique of mapmaking.Mapping Beyond Measure follows the well-trodden path of critiquing a medium, mapping, and map art as irredeemably authoritarian.1 Situated in this approach, Ferdinand argues that map art reproduces modernist cartography’s assumptions even while critiquing mapping. Aiming to subvert this shortcoming, Ferdinand explores Peter Greenway’s semi-abstract map art films that do not prioritize science over artists. Greenway’s films, especially A Walk Through H, are shown as being as close to an idea of mapping beyond calculation as possible. Indeed, for Ferdinand, Greenway’s map art films are an improvement on “postmodern” theorists.Mapping Beyond Measure explores a small, though logically (and practically) related group of map artists. The first three chapters explore differing approaches to map art, from Soviet painting that unintentionally [End Page 126] heralds globalization and map art’s latent desires to dominate the world, to more contemporary map art about looming societal collapse through the death of nature and mass casualties from aerial bombardment of cities. The following two chapters focus on how mapping creates nation-states. These chapters elucidate the tragic inability of map artists to escape globalization and calculation, the latter exasperated by G.I.S. techniques. These map artists serve as an ensemble that spotlights what, to Ferdinand, are inevitable difficulties that ethical practitioners of map art face in escaping the pitfalls of calculation in mainstream mapping.In chapter 6 Ferdinand explains how Greenway’s film A Walk Through H gets as close as possible to challenging map art through semi-abstract, two-dimensional additions to maps and using movie cameras to create an illusion of movement. Thus, the hierarchy of scientists over artists is partially dismantled. Indeed, Ferdinand lauds Greenway for creating alternatives to established political theorists. Interestingly, Ferdinand replaces ontology with the concept of “chorein” suggesting a more fluid conception of mapping that is not available in theories of space or cartographic practices of calculation. Nonetheless, compared to one of the articles referenced, Ferdinand downplays the destructive nature of chorein as a militaristic, colonial use of maritime space to emphasize its creative potential.2Ferdinand’s examples are primarily Eurocentric, even, surprisingly, in the exception: his focus on Japanese map artist Satomi Matoba. Here Ferdinand departs from Eurocentric examples only to focus on Japan—the most privileged nation-state in Asia. Even in this focus on Japan, which also includes Hawai‘i, Ferdinand does not depart from a frame familiar to Europe: World War II. Indeed, the discussion of Pearl Harbor (a U.S. military base) focuses on U.S. foreign policy, not on Hawai‘i. This thematic choice is relevant to other map artists in Ferdinand’s book. Ferdinand’s critique of calculability is based mainly on the consequences of Nazism, as theorized by Stuart Elden. However, Ferdinand’s theoretical interventions on uneven development in maps and map art would have been more substantial with the addition of detailed, localized, narrative accounts of violence suffered by non-white populations in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and various European cities. Instead, we get an anonymous logic of maps that uses the idea of the past and potential [End Page 127] future destruction of cities to assume that everyone suffered to the same extent in World War II.While I am reluctant to criticize a book for not offering a solution to what it critiques, to a certain extent, the solution offered by Ferdinand contradicts his normative critique of calculability. In exploring Alison Hildreth’s map art, Ferdinand praises nuanced, temporally layered artistic explorations of ecological destruction and extinction. Likewise, A Walk Through H, is... (shrink)

Many systems of thoughts have migrated to Japan from abroad - Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, natural science, Marxism; all were transmitted to Japan and stopped there. It is said that Japan has been the terminus for imported thoughts. However, during the process of taking root in Japan almost every idea has been transformed within the Japanese mind. I would like to discuss a typical example of how Christianity has been changed within the Japanese mind.

Abstract: The symposium on overcoming modernity (kindai no chokoku) that took place in Tokyo in 1942 has been much commented upon, but later critics have tended to over-emphasize the wartime political context and the ideological connection to Japanese ultra-nationalism. Closer examination shows that the background and the actual content of the discussion were more complicated. The idea of overcoming modernity had already appeared in debates among Japanese intellectuals before the war, and was always open to different interpretations; it (...) could indicate Japanese ambitions to move beyond Western paradigms of modernity, but in other cases it referred to more radical visions of alternatives to modernity as such. Some versions linked up with Western critiques of existing modernity, including traditionalist as well as more future-oriented ones. These differentiations are evident in the symposium, and associated with diverse schools of thought. An important input came from representatives of the Kyoto school, the most distinctive current in twentieth-century Japanese philosophy. Despite the suppression of Marxist thought, the background influence of the unorthodox Marxist thinker Miki Kiyoshi was significant. Another major contribution came from the group known as the Japan Romantic School, active in literature and literary criticism. Other intellectuals of widely varying persuasions, from outspoken nationalists to Catholic theologians, also participated. The result was a rich but also thoroughly inconclusive discussion, from which no consensus on roads beyond modernity could emerge. -/- Keywords: Modernity; Westernization; nationalism; war; Kyoto School; Japanese Romanticism. (shrink)

This is a most unusual book. Mao Zedong was one of the most powerful people in the twentieth century. With Chiang Kai-shek he drove out the Japanese from China and then defeated Chiang in turn and carried out a major revolution over which he presided for many years. Everyone knows he was a poet and, like every Marxist leader, he was a philosopher of sorts. His Marxist philosophy evolved from his youth to old age, and he developed differences from (...) the Soviet model of Marxism that were quite significant. He "converted" to Marxism in his twenties and identified himself with that movement until he died in his eighties. But what was his education in philosophy like before he encountered Marxism? Whereas Marx, Lenin, and... (shrink)

After my History of Chinese Philosophy was published, the worldwide struggle between Marxism and fascism became more and more sharp and intense. In China, the anticolonialist struggle against Japanese imperialist aggression and the struggle for the liberation of the nation, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, had already turned from political struggle to armed struggle. In these struggles, the thought struggle occupied an important position.

_Ontology of Production_ presents three essays by the influential Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, translated for the first time into English by William Haver. While previous translations of his writings have framed Nishida within Asian or Oriental philosophical traditions, Haver's introduction and approach to the texts rightly situate the work within Nishida's own commitment to Western philosophy. In particular, Haver focuses on Nishida's sustained and rigorous engagement with Marx's conception of production. Agreeing with Marx that ontology is production and production (...) is ontology, Nishida in these three essays—"Expressive Activity", "The Standpoint of Active Intuition", and "Human Being" —addresses sense and reason, language and thought, intuition and appropriation, ultimately arguing that in this concept of production, ideality and materiality are neither mutually exclusive nor oppositional but, rather, coimmanent. Nishida's forceful articulation of the radical nature of Marx's theory of production is, Haver contends, particularly timely in today's speculation-driven global economy. Nishida's reading of Marx, which points to the inseparability of immaterial intellectual labor and material manual labor, provokes a reconsideration of Marxism's utility for making sense of—and resisting—the logic of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

This is a review-essay on William Haver’s recent translation of three essays by Nishida Kitarō in a volume entitledOntologies of Production. Nishida is one of the founders of the famous Kyoto School of philosophy and, while his philosophy is not really Marxist, Haver attempts to bring Nishida into dialogue with Marx in his Introduction and through his selection of essays to translate. I attempt to situate Haver’s translation in a brief discussion of a recent debate on how to write modern (...) Japanese intellectual history and, through this examination, I suggest a framework for analysing modern intellectual history drawing on the work of Harry Harootunian, Moishe Postone and Jacques Bidet. In short, this framework attempts to relate the production of ideas to the temporal dynamic associated with capital, the commodity-form and other related mediations that make up the modern global capitalist system. Then I turn to Haver’s Introduction and translations and both explain some of the key concepts of Nishida and show how, using the framework that I outlined, Nishida’s work can be conceived of as failing to understand its own conditions of possibility in the multiple mediations of capitalism. For this reason, Nishida’s work, like many other romantic critiques of capitalism, criticises the abstractions of modernity at an abstract level, failing to account for the mediations of capitalism such as class and the commodity. (shrink)

This paper presents the first dataset for Japanese Legal Judgment Prediction (LJP), the Japanese Tort-case Dataset (JTD), which features two tasks: tort prediction and its rationale extraction. The rationale extraction task identifies the court’s accepting arguments from alleged arguments by plaintiffs and defendants, which is a novel task in the field. JTD is constructed based on annotated 3477 Japanese Civil Code judgments by 41 legal experts, resulting in 7978 instances with 59,697 of their alleged arguments from the (...) involved parties. Our baseline experiments show the feasibility of the proposed two tasks, and our error analysis by legal experts identifies sources of errors and suggests future directions of the LJP research. (shrink)

pt. 1. Gaston Bachelard's historical epistemology.--pt. 2. For a critique of epistemology.