Kyoto School

I develop Tetsurō Watsuji’s relational model of the self as “betweenness”. I argue that Watsuji’s view receives support from two case studies: solitary confinement and dementia. Both clarify the constitutive interdependence between the self and the social and material contexts of “betweenness” that define its lifeworld. They do so by providing powerful examples of what happens when the support and regulative grounding of this lifeworld is restricted or taken away. I argue further that Watsuji’s view helps see the other side (...) of this deprivation, how reconstructing aspects of betweenness is, at the same time, a reconstruction of the self. I conclude by briefly indicating further consequences of this view. (shrink)

Review of The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy by Bret W. Davis (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2022.

Philosophe japonais polyglotte au savoir encyclopédique, Yamauchi Tokuryū est à n’en point douter l’un des auteurs les moins étudiés de l’école de Kyōto. La présente étude vient corriger ce qui ne constitue rien d’autre qu’un accident de l’histoire, tant l’ampleur du projet philosophique de Yamauchi est à même de susciter l’intérêt du philosophe, du savant et de l’amateur cultivé. La démarche de ce penseur japonais, disciple de Nishida Kitarō, est remarquable en ce qu’il chercha à proposer un dépassement englobant de (...) ce qu’il nomme, d’une part, la « logique du logos » – qui figurait déjà chez Aristote et se structure autour des principes d’identité, de contradiction et du tiers exclu – et, d’autre part, la « logique du lemme » – méthode d’appréhension intuitive des étants qui, née en Inde, serait d’inspiration essentiellement bouddhique. Cette étude, dans laquelle les conceptions bouddhiques qui traversent le propos de Yamauchi sont explicitées, est essentiellement consacrée à l’analyse de ses deux essais les plus importants Logos et lemme (1974) et Philosophie de la latence (1993). Le lecteur y rencontrera une discussion tant de la logique aristotélicienne que d’un régime de logicité tel que le tétralemme, tant du coeur des philosophies européennes que de celui des pensées bouddhiques. Il y rencontrera en outre une discussion de l’idée de néant, de la causalité et de la question du fondement de l’être, nourrie de conceptions bouddhiques telles que la « coproduction conditionnée » (pratītya-samutpāda) et la « latence » (anuśaya). (shrink)

This essay rethinks the concept of biocommunism by rearticulating it via a sensitivity towards individual suffering rather than the human species as a whole. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Marx’s concept of alienation because of the central role that the fourth kind of alienation plays in Dyer-Witheford’s original conception of biocommunism. The second part briefly elaborates on the discussion of species in the Kyoto School. These two parts lead to the third part, where a (...) novel interpretation of biocommunism is outlined, focusing on individual suffering rather than the human species. (shrink)

This essay confronts Ray Brassier’s vindication of nihilism with other two important but frequently underexamined philosophical attempts to overcome nihilism: Hans Jonas’ and Keiji Nishitani’s. By putting these different takes on nihilism into dialogue, it explores some blind spots in Brassier’s position, as well as some of the practical consequences, for our current planetary situation, of undertaking a radical divorce between the normative and the natural that results from his radical nihilism. The article opts for a more moderate acceptance and (...) eventual self-overcoming of nihilism, according to which, even if natural entities are indifferent to human reasons and meanings, this does not entail that nature is bereft of a human-independent normative dimension. In other words, the essay argues that care must be taken not to confuse criticisms of an anthropocentric conception of reasons and meanings with the belief that meaning is completely absent from the natural world. Thus, the central contention of the article is that, given our current climate and ecological catastrophe, one of the most pressing tasks of contemporary philosophy is to understand normativity in non-anthropocentric ways, so that humans are no longer considered as the only entities that respond to normativity. Such an attitude conceives humans as estranged normative creatures amidst a meaningless, indifferent natural world, toward which they would have no ethical responsibilities. The essay finishes by suggesting ways in which to develop an account that does not fall into this ethical vacuum. (shrink)

Yamauchi Tokuryū, 2020. Logos et Lemme: Pensée occidentale, pensée orientale 『ロゴスとレンマ』（1974）. Translated by Augustin Berque with the assistance of Romaric Jannel. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

Présentant diverses interprétations du concept sanskrit de pratītyasamutpāda, le présent article vise à mettre en évidence la richesse ainsi que les marges des conceptions bouddhiques de la causalité. Nous nous proposons de dresser un panorama général des interprétations canoniques de ce concept chez les auteurs relevant de l’Inde bouddhique avant de nous intéresser à la manière dont un philosophe japonais lui-même bouddhiste, Yamauchi Tokuryū (1890-1982), l’interpréta pour interroger la relation entre cause et effet.

This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. -/- By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character (...) of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. -/- These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field. (shrink)

西田哲学と語りえぬもの──その独創的な言語と思考の運動の、秘められた可能性の中心とは何か。西田と対話し続けた半生の記録。.

文明批評家・土田杏村の初期の論説の他、多岐にわたる主題をとおして、人文科学の黎明を考究した画期的な日本思想史研究。.

東洋学・自然科学の学問の伝統を生み出した京都学派「文」の精神を明らかにする。大学とは何か、学問とは何かを考えるための好著。.

京都学派の経済哲学者として知られた梯明秀の本格的研究書。梯の戦時下における哲学の再評価と創造的復権をめざして、形而上学批判と根源的自然の復権というまったく新たな視点からその意義と射程を明らかにしようと する力作。.

This essay seeks to understand the nature of both interpersonal and intercultural dialogue from the perspective of Zen Buddhism as it has been interpreted, in dialogue with Western philosophy and religion, by the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School: Ueda Shizuteru (1926–2019). It examines how Ueda develops a philosophy of interpersonal dialogue on the basis of Zen teachings and practices. In particular, it reveals how Ueda draws on Huayan and Zen Buddhist notions of “host” and “guest” (...) to unfold the dialogical implications of the tenth of The Ten Oxherding Pictures, kōan interviews, linked verse poetry, and the Japanese greeting of the bow. The final sections of this article then explore the implications for intercultural dialogue of Ueda’s account of human existence as dwelling in a “twofold world” through a circulating process of “exiting language and exiting into language.”. (shrink)

In the field of philosophy, the common view of philosophy as an essentially Western discipline persists even today, while non-Western philosophy tends to be undervalued and not investigated seriously. In the field of Japanese studies, in turn, research on Japanese philosophy tends to be reduced to a matter of projecting existing stereotypes of alleged Japanese cultural uniqueness through the reading of texts. In Nothingness in the Heart of Empire: The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Kyoto School in Imperial Japan, (...) Harumi Osaki resists both these tendencies. She closely interprets the wartime discourses of the Kyoto School, a group of modern Japanese philosophers who drew upon East Asian traditions as well as Western philosophy. Her book lucidly delves into the non-Western forms of rationality articulated in such discourses, and reveals the problems inherent in them as the result of these philosophers' engagements in Japan's wartime situation, without cloaking these problems under the pretense of "Japanese cultural uniqueness." In addition, in a manner reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Martin Heidegger's involvement with Nazi Germany, the book elucidates the political implications of the morality upheld by the Kyoto School and its underlying metaphysics. As such, this book urges dialogue beyond the divide between Western and non-Western philosophies, and beyond the separation between "lofty" philosophy and "common" politics. (shrink)

Citation: Marina Christodoulou, “I Own therefore I Am. The Ontology of Property”, In Why Does What Exists Exist? Some Hypotheses on the Ultimate “Why” Question, edited by Mariano L. Bianca,Paolo Piccari. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021, pp. 169-182. Contributors: Mariano L. Bianca, Konstantinos Boultzis, Marina Christodoulou, Maurizio Ferraris, Marco G. Giammarchi, Enrico Guglielminetti, Roberta Lanfredini, Fabio Minazzi, Crister Nyberg, Paolo Piccari, Paolo Rossi. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6294-8; ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6294-3 -/- -------------- -/- The concept of Property is what attaches us to Existence, (...) Property, and Life, instead of non-existence, non-Being and Non-life (or Death). I occupy, I possess, I own, therefore I am, therefore I exist. I own a body, therefore, I am a being; I also own a self, therefore I am. -/- What exists exists because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is something rather than nothing because we own it. Why private property? Because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is private property because we need to own things, including ourselves, and we need to own because we need to sign and vice versa. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is not to argue for the “influence” of Cassirer, but rather to make known the reception of Cassirer in Japanese philosophy, illustrate the interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy, and hopefully spark interest in what might be a fruitful dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Historically, the paper defines Japanese philosophy and makes known its engagement with Western philosophy and the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and (...) its project of a critique of culture during its own self-development. Systematically, the paper points to the possible interconnection between Cassirer’s critique of culture and that of Japanese philosophy and makes the case for a mutually productive dialog between Cassirer scholars and those working in Japanese philosophy. Implicitly, the paper attempted to show that an engagement with Japanese philosophy from the perspective of a critique of culture forces us to question the Western dichotomy between philosophy and religion and the importance of this for the further development of a non-Eurocentric critique of culture. And by extension, that a critique of culture must be cognitive of the historicity of the culture from which it speaks. (shrink)

This book presents the first collection of essays on the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru in a Western language. Ueda, the last living member of the Kyoto school, has fostered the East-West dialogue in all his works and has helped to open up the Western image of philosophy by engaging the Zen tradition. The book reflects this particular trait of Ueda’s philosophy, but it also covers all thematic fields of his writings. Contributions from both young and established scholars and experts from (...) Japan, Europe and the U.S. make this a unique introduction to and reception of Ueda’s philosophy. Readers will discover discussions of mysticism in the East and West, and consideration of modern philosophy topics including self-awareness, nature and poetic language. The book also presents a focussed look at language and nothingness, considering silence and nihilism. Chapters allow the reader to understand the timeliness of a thinking that mediates and transcends the dichotomy of East and West. This volume will appeal not only to scholars of Nishida, Japanese philosophy, mysticism and religious experience in Japan, but also to scholars of Western philosophy, especially those interested in Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. It makes an ideal introduction to Zen philosophy and presents important contributions to scholarship on language and experience. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show the characteristics of Tiantai’s perfect teaching (yuanjiao) in Nishida’s philosophy of basho. This is an alternative to a certain type of Nishida interpretation that emphasizes influences from Huayan Buddhism and the Awakening of Faith in Nishida’s metaphysics, especially in his later notion of absolutely contradictory identity. These Buddhist doctrines as well as Yogācāra Buddhism are classified by Tiantai Buddhism as distinctive teaching (biejiao), not perfect teaching. This paper clarifies that the characteristics of the theory of (...) basho cannot be found in distinctive teaching although Nishida’s theory of cognitive act indeed shows similarities to Yogacara Buddhism. Following Mou Zongsan’s (1909―95) and Ando Toshio’s (1909―73) interpretation, I argue that Tiantai Buddhism, in its elucidation of the ontological stratum as the envelopment of cognitive act, has the same metaphysical structure as that found in Nishida’s logic of basho, which further crystallizes into the principle of contradictory identity. (shrink)

The transcripts of the three Kyoto School roundtable discussions of the theme of 'The standpoint of world history and Japan' may now be judged to form the key source text of responsible Pacific War revisionism. Published in the pages of Chuo Koron, the influential magazine of enlightened elite Japanese opinion during the twelve months after Pearl Harbor, these subversive discussions involved four of the finest minds of the second generation of the Kyoto School of philosophy. Tainted by controversy and shrouded (...) in conspiratorial mystery, these transcripts were never republished in Japan after the war, and they have never been translated into English except in selective and often highly biased form. David Williams has now produced the first objective, balanced and close interpretative reading of these three discussions in their entirety since 1943. This version of the wartime Kyoto School transcripts is neither a translation nor a paraphrase but a fuller rendering in reader-friendly English that is convincingly faithful to the spirit of the original texts. The result is a masterpiece of interpretation and inter-cultural understanding between the Confucian East and the liberal West. Seventy years after Tojo came to power, these documents of the Japanese resistance to his wartime government and policies exercise a unique claim on students of Japanese history and thought today because of their unrivalled revelatory potential within the vast literature on the Pacific War. The Philosophy of Japanese Wartime Resistance may therefore stand as the most trenchant analysis of the political, philosophic and legal foundations of the place of the Pacific War in modern Japanese history yet to appear in any language. (shrink)

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)

The theism-atheism debate is foreign to many Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers such as the Japanese Zen Master Dōgen. Nevertheless, his philosophy of ‘expression’ is able to shine a new light on the various incarnations of this debate throughout history. This paper will explore a/theism from Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Dōgen introduces the notion of ‘expression’ to describe the concomitant vertical and horizontal relationships of the religious project, namely the relationship between the individual and the divine as well as the relationship among a (...) multiplicity of individuals, each of which Dōgen conceives of as an expression of the divine and/or the oneness of the cosmos. Dōgen’s philosophy presupposes the ‘way of emptiness’ and Chengguan’s ‘four dharma worlds’. To Dōgen, the former indicates the conventional nature of predication and signification, while the latter denotes the existential interwovenness of numerous individuals and the divine oneness of the cosmos. Such a philosophy implies that all truth claims and philosophical positions are mere intellectual and discursive constructions that are formulated against a perceived other. Therefore, Dōgen observes laconically that ‘when one side is expressed, the other is obscured’ or, as Dōgen says elsewhere, ‘when expression is expressed, non-expression is not expressed.’ Dōgen’s philosophical framework provides some interesting insights about one or more discourses on atheism: Again, the basic assumption is that all philosophical paradigms, systems, and positions are devoid of an absolute truth value, framed in a specific cultural and historical context which they express, and formulated vis-à-vis a perceived other. In this paper, I will look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s atheism from the perspective of Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Concretely, I will present Nietzsche’s position on his own terms, translate his philosophy into Dōgen’s terminology, interpret his philosophy from the standpoint of Dōgen’s philosophical approach, and assess the utility of such an exercise. I believe that such a project enables us to read theism through the eyes of atheism, atheism through the eyes of theism, both through the eyes of Dōgen, and Dōgen through the eyes of the a/theism debate. In this last section, I will introduce the language of Nishida Kitarō who attempted a similar project in his The Logic of Basho and the Religious Worldview. The goal of this project is to determine what atheism denies, what atheism contributes, and why a multi-faceted and multi-cultural engagement of atheism is important today. (shrink)

Hung Yao-hsün is the founder of philosophical research in Taiwan. He is strongly inf luenced by Mutai Risaku, who is a disciple of Nishida Kitarō and the first philosophy professor at Taihoku Imperial University. I will discuss how Hung developed his thoughts and philosophical research in Taiwan, and what the role of Japanese philosophy was. In his first essay titled “Philosophical Problems Today,” Hung Yao-hsün praised Heidegger’s philosophy of “existence.” However, Hung later criticized Heidegger’s philosophy, claiming that contradiction and negativity (...) in dialectics are not sufficiently considered. This criticism shows Hung’s influence from Mutai Risaku. In “Art and Philosophy,” Hung emphasizes the importance of a real foundation in the development of literature and art. This is based on Tanabe’s “logic of species.” The significance of Hung Yao-hsün’s thought does not lie in his understanding of Tanabe’s notion of species as a mere logical mediation, but in the interpretation of the species as an “actual foundation of life” and in the idea of cultural creation based on the historical and social characteristics of Taiwan. (shrink)

Concerned with the issue of the I-thou encounter and the question of how to overcome the problem of the confrontation that occurs in the worldly existence among individuals, the Japanese philosopher Ueda Shizuteru (1926-), a leading member of the Kyoto School, addressed this issue in his phenomenology of the self. Ueda develops his ideas as a hermeneutical practice in the reading of the well-known Zen classic parable Ten Ox-Herding pictures, given that Zen Buddhism is the main tradition upon which he (...) critically and creatively draws. In accordance with Zen, Ueda argues that the emptied self is a non-self self boundlessly open and compassionate. As a result, the selfless self is open to the other in such a way that a genuine encounter with the other can take place. In the encounter, the closed ego realizes that its self-identity includes also its self-negation, such that, for the selfless self the other’s concerns are one’s concerns. The main aim of this contribution is to look at Ueda’s understanding of the interpersonal relations in what he conceives as a twofold world, that is, the worldly existence and the infinite openness that imbues this existence. In the infinite openness, the fundamental difference between self and other disappears into the state where the individual becomes emptiness while maintaining their “otherness” as separate and distinct. It means that the nullified self still preserves its identity, the other is accepted as different, and at the same time both share this common selfless ground. Thus, a particular conception of identity arises in which we can trace its roots back to Nishida Kitarō’s notion of “self-contradictory identity” (矛盾的自己同一 mujunteki jikodōitsu) and Nishitani Keiji’s “non-duality of self and other” (自他不二 jitafuni). According to the first, each of us, as individual bodies, also contains absolute negation within. The latter refers to a mode of being where self and other are one and simultaneously each one remains what it is in itself, probably inspired in Mahāyāna Buddhist logic whereby two different things are neither one nor two and yet both one and two. Given that the identification of the subject with its context and the emphasis on the sameness can entail the risk of suppressing other’s alterity and subordinating the individual to the whole, these views have been regarded as ambivalent. Therefore, the criticism and implications of this standpoint of “contradictory identity” are also examined. However, the assumption here is that due to the ethical import of this standpoint, it could certainly be of interest if applied to social and intercultural relations. (shrink)

Cross-cultural dialogue between the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy and the classical pragmatist tradition in American philosophy can help educators to clarify aims for greater ecological responsiveness in moral education. This dialogue can contribute to meeting an urgent practical need to cultivate ecological imagination, and an equally practical need to make theoretical sense of the way in which ecological perception becomes relevant to moral deliberation. The first section of this chapter explores relational thinking in the Kyoto School and American (...) pragmatism to help develop, in the second section, a concept of ecological imagination. A fine-tuned ecological imagination is a capacity we already count on in our best environmental writers, educators, scientists, and policy analysts. Moral deliberation enlists imagination of a specifically ecological sort when the imaginative structures we use to understand ecosystemic relationships shape our mental simulations and what John Dewey calls our “dramatic rehearsals.” The final section draws from the foregoing to clarify some appropriate aims for contemporary moral education. Enriched through cross-cultural dialogue about the relational networks in which our finite lives are embedded, a finely aware ecological imagination can make the deliberations of the coming generation more trustworthy. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in the work of Tetsuro Watsuji, his discussion of intentionality remains underexplored. I here develop an interpretation and application of his view. First, I unpack Watsuji’s arguments for the inherently social character of intentionality, consider how they connect with his more general discussion of embodiment and betweenness, and then situate his view alongside phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Next, I argue that Watsuji’s characterization of the social character of intentionality is relevant to current discussions in phenomenological (...) psychopathology. I consider how it can help illuminate the character and structure of some anomalous experiences in schizophrenia. I argue further that this application can enrich existing attempts to connect Watsuji and psychopathology, such as those found in the work of the psychiatrist Bin Kimura. (shrink)