Kyoto School, Misc

El texto refuta que el primer documento escrito en el que se encuentra el apelativo «escuela de Kioto» corresponda al artículo que escribiera Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) publicado en 1932 con el título «La filosofía de la escuela de Kioto». Se demuestra que fue otro pensador, Tsuchida Kyōson (1891-1934), quien en su obra Pensamiento contemporáneo de Japón y China, escrita originariamente en japonés en el año 1926 y, luego, en inglés, 1927, engloba a Nishida y Tanabe bajo el nombre «escuela de (...) Kioto», por lo tanto, años antes del texto tosakaniano. La inclusión de esta fuente desapercibida se suma al asunto sobre la significación histórica de la designación de la «escuela» en vida de sus miembros más célebres, además de revelar las confluencias en ciertos juicios críticos que Tsuchida y Tosaka hicieran sobre las ideas y sistemas de los filósofos de Kioto. Capítulo de libro: Crespín Perales, Montserrat, "El eslabón desapercibido. La denominación "escuela de Kioto" en la obra de Tsuchida Kyoson (1891-1934), Pensamiento contemporáneo de Japón y China (1926, 1927)", en Crespín Perales, Montserrat, y Wirtz, Fernando (eds.), Después de la nada. Dialéctica e ideología en la filosofía japonesa contemporánea, pp. 41-86. (shrink)

Ueda writes in his Reading Nishida Kitarō (Nishida Kitarō o yomu) that to compare Heidegger’s entire thinking up to his last period with Nishida’s thought also up to his last period, including their multiple turns, would be “one of the most valuable paths to investigating the significance, potential, and problematics of Nishidian philosophy.” In this paper I examine the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru through the juxtaposition of those two thinkers, of West and of East, who prove to be significant for (...) the creative unfolding of his thought: Martin Heidegger who had inspired much of phenomenology and Continental philosophy, and Nishida Kitarō who had inspired the development of Kyoto School philosophy and much of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The Heideggerian and Nishidian streams of thought, in their “placial turns”—Nishida’s “logic of place” and Heidegger’s “topology of beyng”—meet in Ueda as he reads each in light of the other’s terminology and concepts. Through his readings and appropriations that underscore their commonalities and differences, Ueda thus develops a compelling philosophy of place, world, and horizon, a thinking of being-in-the-twofold-world. The chapter thus examines the meeting of Nishida and Heidegger in Ueda. (shrink)

This article focuses on Kyoto School philosophy’s “philosophy of world history,” during World War II, and its arguments for a multipolar world order in opposition to the older Eurocentric and colonialist world order. The idea was articulated by the second generation of the Kyoto School—Nishitani Keiji, Kōyama Iwao, Kōsaka Masaaki, and Suzuki Shigetaka—in a series of symposia held during 1941 to 1942 and titled the “The World-historical Standpoint and Japan.” While rejecting on the one hand the myopic patriotism of the (...) ultranationalists, they argued for a view to the world and its history, that in contrast to the Eurocentric view to world history, was polycentric. In terms of world politics they associated their view with the aim to construct a co-prosperity sphere in East Asia of autonomous nations to counter European colonialism as part of a new polycentric or multipolar world order. Metaphysically this notion of a co-prosperity sphere as well as of a multipolar world was grounded in the Kyoto School’s concept of “nothingness” as an open space for autonomous but corelated subjects. During the war, these discussions came under fire by critics from the Right, and then after the war, from the Left. I will examine the potential viability of these ideas today as a polycentric world may be on the horizon that ideally would give space to difference and diversity and avoid the violence of homogenization. A comparison of their notion of the nothing with Jean-luc Nancy’s concept of the same may provide some clues. (shrink)

A chapter in the book, Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation, edited by Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames, and published by University of Hawaii Press. In this chapter I present a phenomenological ontology of place vis-a-vis horizon and also alterity (otherness), discussing related themes in Heidegger, Kitaro Nishida, Shizuteru Ueda, Otto Bollnow, Karl Jaspers, Ed Casey, Günter Figal, Bernhard Waldenfels, and others. Wherever we are we are implaced, delimited in our being-in-the-world constituted by a horizon that implaces us, (...) not only literally but semantically and ontologically. Whether we take place in its semantic sense or as ontological, I underscore its duplicity—taking off from Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of two-fold being-in-the-world—as on the one hand demarcating a realm of determinacy, our ontological finitude or our social imaginary world, and on the other hand through its horizonal nature as pointing to an indeterminacy or exteriority that demarcates or delimits that realm, finitizing us. That latter may be characterized as an excess irreducible to semantic or ontological determination or as a nothing or a-meaning. Hence place with its horizon implies the interface of meaning and a-meaning, nomos and anomy, principles and anarché, in Nishidian terms being and the nothing (mu), in Heideggerian terms unconcealment and concealment or world and earth. Thus the horizon that constitutes place entails both finitude and openness, allowing for alterity and alteration, whereby the determinations within place are never fixed, secure, or guaranteed. In demarcating a place, the horizon always points to a yonder beyond the place, its other. In its very contact with the unassmilable or irreducible, the line of demarcation is itself thus unpredictable in its fluctuations. The place determined within the nothing or the clearing of unconcealment amidst the concealed will thus always be provisional despite any appearance or claims to the contrary. Its determination is indeterminate. (shrink)

Nishida Kitarō, the cofounder and central figure of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. Nishida’s second generation Kyoto School descendant and current representative of the Kyoto School, Ueda Shizuteru, furthered this concept to understand both place and implacement in terms of a twofold world or twofold horizon. Nishida initially understood the self in its unobjectifiability as a kind of place wherein subject and object correlate. But this placial self came to be seen as itself (...) implaced within a contextualizing place wherein it can interact with things in the world and with other subjects in an “I-thou” relationship, but which ultimately is further implaced in an abyssal place of absolute nothing. He developed this understanding of place in terms of the socio-historical world and ultimately in terms of the divinity that negates itself in kenōsis to make room for the world of many. Roughly speaking and in a variety of versions, Nishida takes the system of places to involve the following: the place of beings or objects, the place that is consciousness, the place that is the world of human interactivity, and finally the place of absolute nothing. Ueda on the other hand, focuses on the twofold structure of place itself as involving the twofold structure of the horizon of experience. We are implaced in the world that in turn is implaced in a boundless openness. Our place is twofold in that there is the world of significances on this side of its horizon and the a-meaning of the nothing beyond its horizon. While Nishida formulates the system of places in terms of place of being, place of relative nothing, and place of absolute nothing, Ueda uses the fraction symbol as world/open expanse to convey his idea of “world amidst the open expanse.” I will explore this legacy of place as Nishida first formulated it and then as developed more recently by Ueda. While doing so I will also discuss each of their relations to phenomenology. Nishida was developing his theory of place cotemporaneous to the careers of Husserl and Heidegger. While he was aware of their work, it was only to a limited extent and he was quite critical of both thinkers and phenomenology in general. On the other hand, Ueda is quite knowledgeable of the phenomenological movement of Europe, having studied under Nishida’s student, Nishitani Keiji, who had studied under Heidegger and, himself, having studied in Germany. He incorporates the insights of Husserl, Heidegger, Bollnow, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Eliade, and others, in developing his own understanding of place. What both Nishida and Ueda offer vis-à-vis a phenomenology of place is a sophisticated analysis of that other to being that place as defined and limited must assume: what Nishida calls the absolute nothing (zettai mu) and what Ueda calls the open expanse (kokū). I will then end by looking at the implications these ideas have for our current situation of globalization in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This volume inquires into the relationship between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto School philosophy in relation to capitalist modernity.

Original source :「委員会の論理」『世界文化』[Culture du monde], n° 13, janvier 1936, 2–17 ; n° 14, février 1936, 16–33 ; n° 15, mars 1936, 12–25. Repris dans nmz 1 : 46–108. La version des œuvres complètes présente un certain nombre de variantes par rapport à la première publication en 1936. « La logique des comités » a été traduit en espagnol par Agustín J. Zavala. Je remercie vivement Saitō Takako pour sa relecture et ses précieuses remarques.

This article is the second translation of the preface and first chapter of Hatano Seiichi's Time and Eternity. A full translation of the text, published by Suzuki Ichiro 鈴木一郎 in 1963, is not easily accessible to most readers, while an excellent partial translation by Joseph O'Leary has recently been made accessible to a wider audience through the monumental work, Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. By providing a short historical introduction to both Hatano's life and works as a great thinker and teacher, (...) this article intends to supplement O'Leary's contribution and therefore enable more readers to gain access to the opening sections of Hatano's Time and Eternity. (shrink)

The verb κενόω means ‘to empty’ and St. Paul uses the word ἐκένωσεν writing that ‘Jesus made himself nothing’ and ‘emptied himself’. Śūnyatā is a Buddhist concept most commonly translated as emptiness, nothingness, or nonsubstantiality. An important kenosis–śūnyatā discussion was sparked by Abe Masao’s paper ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Śūnyatā’. I confront the kenosis–śūnyatā theme with Vattimo’s kenosis-based philosophy of religion. For Vattimo, kenosis refers to ‘secularization’: when strong structures such as the essence and the fulfilment of the Christian message (...) are weakened. Parallels between Abe’s and Vattimo’s thought will be demonstrated with regard to themes current in East–West comparative philosophy: reality and emptiness, the overcoming of metaphysics, the position of the Self, the human and the divine, and the relationship between science and religion. The latter point is particularly timely because since the 1990s religious fundamentalism has pushed forward a curio.. (shrink)

In the following, I would like to advance the position that it is too early to write down my own ›auto-bio-graphy.‹ For this purpose, I attempt to develop the idea of philosophy as auto-bio-graphy in three theses and to do so with the example of the philosophy of the Kyoto School so that the conception of philosophy as auto-bio-graphy can be expounded in consideration alongside some of the aspects of the philosophy of the Kyoto School.

This article compares Masao Abe's Buddhist view of ultimate reality in terms of dynamic Sunyata with certain concepts in the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb.

20世紀後半アメリカを中心にしたラディカル・エコロジーの成果と、西田幾多郎・和辻哲郎の思想の比較検証を通して、仏教的な自然・環境観が明示する“今日的意義”を提起した労作。.

Cuestiones alrededor de los intercambios filosóficos entre Japón y Europa.

This paper briefly introduces and analyzes Masao Abe of contemporary religious dialogue Theoretical Issues. First of all, the world's various religions for the contemporary situation, Abe pointed out that at present the most fundamental goal of interreligious dialogue is mutual creative transformation of inter-religious, the only way religion as a whole to respond effectively to the challenges of contemporary anti-religious ideology; Second, for intra-religious diversity issues, Abe made ​​a Buddhist "three Shenfo" theory as an integration of various religions of the (...) world's diversity and unity of the working hypothesis. I believe this hypothesis to some extent, demonstrated the interaction between learning and religion into the possibility and necessity, but on the other hand reflects a degree of superiority of Buddhism, it is difficult to Buddhism and other religions truly "equal" provide a theoretical basis for the mutual transformation. This essay contains a brief introduction and analysis of Masao 'Abe's theory on interfaith dialogue. First, according to Abe, the most serious challenge faced by all religions today is the anti-religious ideologies which question the legitimacy of religion as a whole. To cope with the challenge, interfaith dialogue must go beyond mutual understanding and engage in mutual transformation. Only then the authentic meaning of religious faith can be found and religion as a whole can respond to the anti-religious forces efficiently. Second with respect of the pluralistic situation of world religions, Abe proposed the three-body doctrine in Buddhism as a working hypothesis to deal with the unity and diversity of religious pluralism. On one hand, this proposal offers a theoretical basis for the mutual learning and mutual transformation of religions . On other hand it implies a superiority of Buddhism and to some extent hinders the equal mutual transformation of Buddhism and other religions. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to examine the problem connected with treating the philosophy of the Kyoto School as Buddhist philosophy, which is a serious trend among scholars concerned with this issue. This is a serious problem, since, in my opinion, it leads to a misinterpretation of both Buddhism and the position of this school, regardless of the fact that its representatives regularly refer to Buddhist ideas. Several such references are presented in the first section. Further considerations concern (...) the analysis of the Brahmajāla Sutta, which contains a critique of 62 classes of speculative views; this makes it an interpretational point of reference for the evaluation of the eventual Buddhist character of the Kyoto School. The third section presents preliminary conclusions of the analyses; the fourth section offers valuable literature for persons interested in the philosophy of the school. (shrink)