In this thesis, we study the least fixed point principle in a constructive setting. A constructive theory of functions and sets has been developed by Feferman. This theory deals both with sets and with functions over sets as independent notions. In the language of Feferman's theory, we are able to formulate the least fixed point principle for monotone inductive definitions as: every operation on classes to classes which satisfies the monotonicity condition has a least fixed point. This is called the (...) principle of monotone inductive definition. Furthermore, we may formulate this principle in a uniform way as: there is an operation which maps a monotone operation to its least fixed point. This is called the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition. Feferman raised the question of the strength of the principle of monotone inductive definition when adjoined to his theory . This question is our primary concern in this thesis. ;Our main results are the consistency of both the principle of monotone inductive definition and the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition adjoined to his theory, and the proof theoretical equivalence between the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom and the system of the Pi-one-one Comprehension Axiom. Determination of the proof-theoretical strength of the principle of monotone inductive definition adjoined to Feferman's theory still remains open. ;The consistency of both the principle of monotone inductive definition and the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition with Feferman's theory will be achieved by constructing their models in set theoretical sense. The proof theoretical equivalence between the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom and the system of the Pi-one-one Comprehension Axiom can be obtained by a careful examination of the model construction for the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom, which is parallel to the model construction for the principle of monotone inductive definition with his theory. (shrink)

今日の教育の再検討という問題意識を背景に,「助力」という教育のあり方を三人の先行研究から,その思想,理論,実践を整理し考察する。.

This book offers the first comprehensive collection of essays on the key concepts of Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the father of modern Japanese philosophy and founder of the Kyoto School. The essays analyze several of the major philosophical concepts in Nishida, including pure experience, absolute will, place, and acting intuition. They examine the meaning and positioning of Nishida’s philosophy in the history of philosophy, as well as in the contemporary world, and discuss the relevance of his philosophy in the present context. (...) The book next looks at the significance of Nishida’s philosophy in the wider contexts of science, arts, and religion. The book includes a glossary of key terms that have been translated in a unified manner throughout the volume. (shrink)

For two and a half months in 1928, the Japanese philosopher Shûzô Kuki had weekly talks with a young French student of philosophy—Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1928, Kuki had just come to Paris after having studied with Heidegger and Husserl. Freshly ac­quainted with the new phenomenology, Kuki in­troduced Sartre to this emerging movement in philosophy. In a well-researched introductory essay, Stephen Light details the eight years Kuki spent in Europe in the 1920s, a period during which Kuki came to know Henri (...) Bergson, Heinrich Rickert, and Emile Brehier, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. Light includes translations of two of Kuki’s essays on time and often of his short essays on matters Japanese, culminating in the insightful “General Characteristics of French Philosophy.” None of the Kuki essays were previously available in English. The final section of the book is a facsimile of the never before published notebook Kuki used during his discussions with Sartre. (shrink)

This essay is an overview of the intellectual itinerary of the Japanese philosopher Kuki Shūzō (1888-1941). Kuki first came to the attention of Western readers in Heidegger's A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer. After correcting the record on Kuki with regards to this famous piece, the essay turns to the work that Heidegger and the Japanese Inquirer were discussing, namely, The Structure of Iki. The essay discusses both the background and basic arguments of this work. The (...) essay then expands on Kuki's Western reception, indicating that his thinking evolved beyond his early work with the phenomenon of iki. His later thinking concerns the problem of contingency and the essay concludes with a discussion of his late work, The Problem of Contingency. The essay reviews Kuki's thinking as a whole in order to develop a sense of his hermeneutics. (shrink)

Reposant la question de la structure logique de la modalite chez Kuki, cette etude vise a mettre en evidence les multiples dimensions du temps humain. Une telle meditation s’accompagne d’une reflexion sur le ≪ vecu ≫ de la vie concrete dont Kuki fournit une elucidation que l’on pourrait qualifier de metaphysique. Cette metaphysique de la vie est a rapprocher de la pensee de l’Instant tel que Kierkegaard le pense, de la temporalisation heideggerienne et de la duree chez Bergson. Mais le (...) philosophe le plus important convoque par Kuki reste Nietzsche dont la pensee fulgurante de l’eternel retour du meme nourrit la categorie de la contingence de l’existence. Sauf que precisement, la contingence ne peut pas etre une categorie. La philosophie nietzscheenne traverse et nourrit l’oeuvre de Kuki. La presente etude a pour ambition de laisser se confronter la pensee du retour et le temps de la duree. C’est dire qu’il est question ici de reflexion metaphysique sur cette dimension fondamentale de la conscience qu’est la forme du sens interne. Utiliser cette notion c’est eo ipso faire reference a Kant. Quels sont les rapports de ces multiples temporalites avec le temps eternel des dieux et du destin, telle est la question que souleve l’opus magnum de Kuki. Nous montrons les articulations d’abord logico-metaphysiques, ensuite existentiales de la structure de l’existant. C’est le raffinement esthetique de l’aristocrate qu’etait Kuki qui a nourri notre essai de penser et de comprendre la structure de l’Iki. (shrink)

There are parallels between the Japanese philosopher Shūzō Kuki and the European philosophers Heidegger and Derrida with regard to their philosophical discourses on the idea of style and their respective elaboration of this notion as a playful quantity that needs to be seized by equally playful philosophical approaches.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō ed. by Matsumaru Hisao, Arisaka Yoko, and Lucy Christine SchultzFernando Wirtz (bio)Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō. Edited by Matsumaru Hisao, Arisaka Yoko, and Lucy Christine Schultz. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2022. Pp. v + 240. Hardcover $109.99, isbn 978–3-319417-83-7.This collection of essays has several virtues. First, although Nishida is one of the most widely translated Japanese philosophers into English, this is the (...) first collection of interpretative essays that attempts to cover the different aspects and stages of his work in a comprehensive manner.Second, this collection gives voice to several Japanese scholars who have long been working on Nishida's philosophy, but who are nevertheless little known outside Japan. Of course, as the editors explain in the introduction, the book intentionally seeks to incorporate perspectives that may dislocate the reader given the "fact that academic authors in countries other than the English-speaking Anglo-American regions write differently to express their ideas" (p. vii). This is a significant gesture, since Japanese philosophy has from its very beginnings been wracked by the problem of translation and counter-translation. It is an act of courage for the book to acknowledge that there are different "forms of expression" that, even if they may confuse the Anglo-American reader, serve to broaden the reader's philosophical sensibility (p. xiii–xiv).Third, rather than each chapter limiting itself to expounding Nishida's thought in a general way, each in turn problematizes specific aspects of the philosopher's work, connecting it with other authors and problems.As the editors explain, the book has a bipartite structure. In the first part, several contributors explore "seven principal concepts" that are intended to reflect Nishida's perception of his own system, while in the second part, contributors investigate the place of Nishida's thought in the global history of philosophy, drawing connections between Nishida's thought and other fields such as religion, science, and art. In addition, the relevance of his thought to both the present and the future is discussed. The book includes an appendix with a chronology of Nishida's life and work and also a glossary of fundamental concepts.In Chapter 1, Nakajima Yuta explores the concept of "pure experience," highlighting its importance in Nishida's later philosophy and its relation to the self-developing structure of consciousness. In particular, Nakajima analyzes the influence of Wilhelm Wundt's Outlines of Psychology in the work An Inquiry into [End Page 1] the Good. In that sense, this article provides the historical context in which Nishida developed his ideas in contrast to the psychologist. As the author points out: "The main point of criticism is that Nishida regards the foundational elements in Wundtian psychology as mere virtual abstractions of the primordial systematic unity of experience" (p. 7). This last statement leads to the recognition that any linguistic limitation of this primordial unity becomes an abstraction, since pure experience is the framework of the meaningful, where all meanings are dynamically generated and superimposed (p. 10).Itabashi Yūjin, in Chapter 2, establishes the transition from pure experience to "absolute free will" in the work, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness, by comparing Nishida's text with the philosophies of Cohen and Schopenhauer. To understand this transition, we must not lose sight, as the author says, that when the self reflects itself in itself, it is self-producing and self-determining. This self-determination is not purely intellectual, but a total activity in which "thinking and sensation are one" (p. 20). Thus, the will is absolute because there is nothing prior to the self-productive activity of the will. For this reason, it is precisely in religious experience that "authentic life" (p. 22) emerges from the negation of the subjective self, that is, from the fiction of a foundation of absolute will.The person responsible for presenting the concept of "self-awareness" is Okada Katsuaki. In Chapter 3, Okada takes as a starting point the "subjectless" (p. 28) character of the Japanese language in order to explain the paradoxical possibility of experience experiencing itself. (p. 30). The self-awareness of the activity of the previous chapters becomes... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIki is the key word of Shūzō Kuki’s The Structure of Iki, and it became one of the most widely recognized Japanese aesthetic categories mainly due to this work. However, in The Problems of Contingency, which is Kuki’s most important philosophical work, there is no discussion of iki again, and consequently, most commentators of Kuki fail to see the correlation between his theories of iki and contingency. This article, by contrast, intends to provide a new interpretation of iki in the (...) light of Kuki’s theory of contingency. The specific thesis of this paper is that aesthetic phenomena categorized as subject to the principles of iki are positively evaluated in Japanese culture just because the consciousness of iki is just one form of the consciousness of contingency, in which the awareness of alternatives to the actual situation could produce considerable spiritual entertainment for aesthetic subjects. (shrink)

What is culture? What can we learn from art, architecture, and fashion about how people relate? Can cultures embody ethical and moral ideals? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book on the cultural philosophy of three preeminent Japanese philosophers of the early twentieth century, Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō and Kuki Shūzō.

There are many links between Kuki Shūzō and the French philosophy of the 1920s that treated the phenomenon of contingency. Examined are (1) the problem of time as it presented itself to French philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century and its reception by Kuki as an Oriental philosopher and a Buddhist; (2) the problem of liberty and of existence in these French philosophers and in Buddhism; and (3) the phenomenon of the dream as a psychic and aesthetic phenomenon (...) for Kuki and for the French philosophers in question. (shrink)

In this article, I compare and contrast the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas with that of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher, Kuki Shūzō. In the resulting counterpoint, I put special emphasis on the conception of time espoused by each author. I argue that both go astray by mistakenly basing their ethics on the complete otherness of the other (diachrony) rather than recognizing that both the other (diachrony) and I (synchrony) are originally inseparable in experience before the conceptual separation of “me” and “you.” (...) The fetishization of otherness, which is associated with the feminine in the ethics of both philosophers, leads them to overlook how the details of our everyday concrete experience can provide a guide for action. This paper also explores the two East Asian ethical ideals that Kuki proposes–the Buddhist ideal and the ideal of bushidō, the code of the samurai warrior. In his ethics, Kuki prefers the ethics of bushidō to that of Buddhism. I explain how Kuki’s misunderstanding of Buddhism leads him to this choice, and I explore what he overlooked in Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

In this book, Graham Mayeda demonstrates how Watsuji Tetsuro and Kuki Shuzo, two twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, criticize and interpret Heideggerian philosophy, articulating traditional Japanese ethics in a modern idiom.

In this book, Graham Mayeda demonstrates how Watsuji Tetsuro and Kuki Shuzo, two twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, criticize and interpret Heideggerian philosophy, articulating traditional Japanese ethics in a modern idiom.

With an excellent compilation of essays, Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō offers an answer to one of the foundational questions for any philosophical research: Why Nishida at all? To seasoned...

Shuzo Kuki is a Japanese philosopher, belonging to the Kyoto school, who lived about a hundred years ago. He learned philosophy in Europe and developed an original theory of contingency, by accommodating the Asiatic way of thinking on the one hand, and Western philosophy on the other. In this article, I show that we can find similarities between his theory of contingency and the philosophy of Deleuze, especially in regard to the subject of temporality and eternal return. Needless to say, (...) the theory of the third time is a crucial theme in Difference and Repetition, and is closely related to the time of eternity, and the original or primitive contingency. Taking into consideration these aspects of time is indispensable in examining in depth the concepts of difference and virtuality. Kuki's theory of contingency, which incorporates early twentieth-century European philosophy, elucidates these concepts in an unexpected way. Therefore, my aim in this article is not to attempt a comparison between Eastern and Western thought by quoting Deleuze, but to illustrate a hidden lineage of thought, which runs from the nineteenth century into the philosophy of virtuality of the twentieth century. This same lineage appears in Japan in Kuki's theory, and Deleuze's thought is, at least in one aspect, a modern manifestation of the same roots. (shrink)

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative aesthetics. The work begins with an overview of aesthetic theory in the West from the eighteenth-century empiricists to contemporary aesthetics and concludes with a survey of various critiques of psychic distance. Throughout, the author takes a highly innovative approach by juxtaposing Western aesthetic theory against Eastern aesthetic theory. Weaving between cultures and time periods, the author focuses (...) on a remarkably wide range of theories: in the West, the Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation, Heidegger's Gelassenheit, semiotics, and pragmatism; in Japan, Zeami's notion of riken no ken, the Kyoto School's intepretation of nothingness, D. T. Suzuki's analysis of the function of no-mind, and the writings of Kuki Shuzo on Buddhist detachment. "Portrait of the artist" fiction by such writers as Henry James, James Joyce, Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki demonstrates how the main theme of detachment is expressed in literary traditions. The role of sympathy or pragmatism in relation to disinterest is examined, suggesting conflicts within or challenges to the notion of detachment. Researchers and students in Eastern and Western areas of study, including philosophers and religionists, as well as literary and cultural critics, will deem this work an invaluable contribution to cross-cultural philosophy and literary studies. (shrink)

This is a book about space. On a first level, it reflects traditional Japanese ideas of space against various “items” of Western culture. Among these items are Bakhtin's “dialogicity”, Wittgenstein’s Lebensform, and “virtual space” or “globalized” space as representatives of the latest development of an “alienated”, modern spatial experience. Some of the Western concepts of space appear as negative counter examples to “basho-like”, Japanese places; others turn out to be compatible with the Japanese idea of space. On a second level, (...) the book attempts to synthesize, by constantly transgressing the limits of a purely comparative activity, a quantity which the author believes to be existent in Japanese culture that is called “the virtual”. Be it Kuki Shûzô's hermeneutics of non-foundation or his ontology of dream, Nishida Kitarô’s virtual definition of the body of state, or Kimura Bin's notion of “in-between” (aida) that is so closely associated with the “virtual space” of Noh plays: what all these conceptions have in common is that they aim to transcend a flat notion of “reality” by developing “the virtual” as a complex ontological unity. (shrink)

When I deliver an introductory lecture on Japanese Philosophy, I always raise the following question: Is it appropriate to modify the word philosophy with an adjective such as Japanese? Philosophy is, after all, a discipline that addresses universal problems, and so transcends the restrictions implied in geographical descriptors. However, as Kuki Shūzō argues in his essay “Tokyo and Kyoto,” I think that this is only part, and not the whole truth of the matter.One’s thinking takes place within the framework of (...) one’s cultural heritage, and the different nuances of each of the words one uses can influence how one thinks. It is for this reason that every philoso­phy has its own unique character. As Otto Pöggeler suggests, there is something about the thought of Japanese philosophers such as Nishida Kitarō and Nishitani Keiji that does not fit easily into the framework of “philosophy” in the Western tradition. This is a conse­quence of the fact that they did not simply passively adopt, but rather attempted to critically challenge Western philosophy. I suppose that their grounding in Japanese and other Eastern traditions contributed to their critical challenge of Western philosophy. And I submit that there is a strong tendency in traditional East Asian thought to not simply grasp things within a presupposed framework of “knowledge,” but rather, since “knowledge” itself is understood to be a certain kind of restriction, to return to its roots.Needless to say, neither Nishida’s nor Nishitani’s thought is merely a philosophical reiteration of such traditional East Asian teachings. Nevertheless, we can say that the East Asian idea that knowledge is at root something restrictive lives on in their thinking. The radical­ity of Nishida’s and Nishitani’s thought can be understood to lie in the manner in which they cast light on the limits of the “knowledge” pursued by Western philosophy, problematizing the basis on which this knowledge is established as well as the framework it sets up.I think that the “character” of this or that philosophy arises from such different ways of seeing things and different attitudes toward “knowledge.” It is crucial to point out, however, that the gaps resulting from these differences need not become hindrances for philosophical thinking. Indeed, I think that the existence of such gaps, rather than hindering “dialogues” between different philosophies, is precisely what enables them to be meaningful. This is also what I have in mind when I stress the importance of dialogue in my lectures on Japanese philoso­phy. It is, after all, the creative dialogue engendered in this manner that enables philosophy to progress along its path of radical inquiry. (shrink)

The jargon of Japanese art criticism has always had an abundance of unique terms, categories, and concepts. This is not only true when discussing traditional Japan, since there are just as many new terms today as there were in the past. Some of the new terms have developed or evolved from old ones, while others have appeared with no seeming connection to any traditional tendency. Yet, only a few of these terms can be considered for the meta-level discussion of Aesthetics, (...) whether or not they can be linked with a certain historical linage, as they have a simple descriptive function. This article will first try to discern between aesthetic and non-aesthetic terms that are at the core of Japanese discourse today. Second, and accordingly, following the footsteps of the renowned modernist aesthetician Kuki Shūzō, this article will also try to convey a single linguistic map of the distinctive cultural Aesthetic that is in motion in Japan today. (shrink)

Nishida Kitarô -- Tanabe Hajime -- Kuki Shûzô -- Watsuji Tetsurô -- Miki Kiyoshi -- Tosaka Jun -- Nishitani Keiji.

In his writings Philosophical Remarks, the Austrian-British Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein draws an octahedron with the words of pure colours such as “white”, “red” and “blue” at the corners and argues: “The colour octahedron is grammar, since it says that you can speak of a reddish blue but not of a reddish green, etc”. He uses the word “grammar” in such a specific way that the grammar or grammatical rules describe the meanings of words/expressions, in other words, how we use them (...) in our language. Accordingly, the colour octahedron can also be taken to represent grammatical rules about how we apply words of colour, e.g., that we can call a certain colour “reddish-blue”, but not “reddish-green”. In a different context, the Japanese philosopher Shūzō Kuki explores in his work The Structure of Iki what the Japanese word “iki” means. This word is often translated as “chic” or “stylistic” in English, but Kuki holds that it is an aesthetic Japanese concept that cannot be translated one-to-one, instead encompassing three aspects: “coquetry”, “pride and honour” and “resignation”. To explain the meanings of the word “iki” and other related words all of which Kuki calls “tastes”, he introduces a rectangular prism as a geometrical representation similar to Wittgenstein’s colour octahedron. In this paper, I argue that the rectangular prism does not solely explain how the modes of Japanese tastes are related to each other, but also has a grammatical character. On this score, I suggest that one can regard this rectangular prism as a description of the grammatical rules of the Japanese language. By appeal to the arguments of both philosophers and in comparison with them, I will not only clarify what they claim by geometrical representations but also examine what role this kind of representation plays as an explanation of grammar in general. Keywords: grammar, colour octahedron, rectangular prism, Shūzō Kuki, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative aesthetics. The work begins with an overview of aesthetic theory in the West from the eighteenth-century empiricists to contemporary aesthetics and concludes with a survey of various critiques of psychic distance. Throughout, the author takes a highly innovative approach by juxtaposing Western aesthetic theory against Eastern aesthetic theory. Weaving between cultures and time periods, the author focuses (...) on a remarkably wide range of theories: in the West, the Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation, Heidegger's Gelassenheit, semiotics, and pragmatism; in Japan, Zeami's notion of riken no ken, the Kyoto School's intepretation of nothingness, D. T. Suzuki's analysis of the function of no-mind, and the writings of Kuki Shuzo on Buddhist detachment. "Portrait of the artist" fiction by such writers as Henry James, James Joyce, Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki demonstrates how the main theme of detachment is expressed in literary traditions. The role of sympathy or pragmatism in relation to disinterest is examined, suggesting conflicts within or challenges to the notion of detachment. Researchers and students in Eastern and Western areas of study, including philosophers and religionists, as well as literary and cultural critics, will deem this work an invaluable contribution to cross-cultural philosophy and literary studies. (shrink)

This collection of essays constitutes the first history of modern Japanese aesthetics in any language. It introduces readers through lucid and readable translations to works on the philosophy of art written by major Japanese thinkers from the late nineteenth century to the present. Selected from a variety of sources (monographs, journals, catalogues), the essays cover topics related to the study of beauty in art and nature. The translations are organized into four parts. The first, "The Introduction of Aesthetics," traces the (...) formation of notions of "beauty," "culture," and "art" in Japan. It includes discussion of the creation of the museum in Japan and the frenetic efforts of Nishi Amane, Okakura Tenshin, Ernest Fenollosa, and Mori Ogai to introduce German, British, and French aesthetic thought to the Japanese. This is followed by three sections that examine the transformation of the aesthetic field into an academic discipline that flourished at three major Japanese universities. "Aesthetics at Waseda University" begins with an essay on the spiritualism and idealism of Onishi Hajime and continues with essays on the impact of German Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life") on Shimamura Hogetsu and Takayama Chogyu, and work by the major Waseda aesthetician of the twentieth century, Aizu Yaichi. Thinkers of the Tokyo School adopted a "scientific" method in the study of art theory. Part 3, "Aesthetics at the University of Tokyo," focuses on the ideas of Otsuka Yasuji (holder of the world’s first Chair of Aesthetics), Onishi Yoshinori, Watsuji Tetsuro, Abe Jiro, Takeuchi Toshio, and Imamichi Tomonobu. The section concludes with a look at the contemporary philosopher Sakabe Megumi. The last section, "Aesthetics at the University of Kyoto," includes essays on Nakagawa Shigeki and Fukada Yasukazu, pioneers in the field of aesthetics, and on the philosophy of art of the "Kyoto School," which was deeply inspired by the thought of Nishida Kitaro. Finally the work of Kuki Shuzo, an influential teacher of Western philosophy at the University of Kyoto, is examined. A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics is a companion volume to Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (UH Press, 1999). (shrink)

Though not yet a well-known figure outside of Japan, Naka Tarō 那珂太郎 stands at the crossroads of philosophical and artistic exchanges in twentieth-century Japanese literature. Not only was Naka a devotee of the great poet Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 and Kyōto School 京都学派 head and titan of modern Japanese literature Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎, but he was also versed in philosophy and art from Western Europe, with Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Charles Baudelaire all having exerted a great influence on his poetry. (...) Indeed, these "Western" figures influenced the Kyōto School itself; the work of Nishida and his acolytes and associates including Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治, Watsuji Testurō 和辻哲郎, and Kuki Shūzo 九鬼周造 would have been... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores philosophically the experiences of laughter and irony, focusing on Japanese sources but with a cross-cultural outlook. I ask whether globally unfavorable attitudes towards the comic in the European canon might have left unexplored or misunderstood several insights offered by the bodily and spiritual dimension revealed by laughter, and examine them through Japanese sources. Following a short but poignant triad of examples in Kuki Shūzō’s work, the paper analyses three instances of Japanese laughter and irony: the orgiastic (...) laughter of the gods luring Amaterasu out of the Heavenly Cave in Kojiki; the anthropomorphic animal scrolls of Chōjūgiga, and the “Tiger Cubs Crossing” stone garden in Ryōanji, Kyoto, concluding how each one of them offers an important insight on the bodily and conceptual phenomenological cluster of laughter and irony. I conclude with a further exploration of laughter in Zen, a religious tradition with a unique stress on the spiritual potential of humor, following Nishitani’s reading of Mumonkan and his connection to the experience of “emptiness”. (shrink)

In meinem Aufsatz möchte ich die Ästhetik auf ihre Möglichkeit hin überprüfen, eine grundlegende Theorie des „Sinnlichen" innerhalb der menschlichen kulturellen Tätigkeiten zu sein. Dieses Vorhaben werde ich damit beginnen, Heideggers Kritik an der traditionellen Ästhetik zu behandeln. Dem überlieferten Ästhetikverständnis liegt nach Heidegger offenbar diesselbe vorstellend-vergegenständlichende Denkweise zugrunde, die der ganzen abendländischen Geschichte eigen ist. Doch lässt sich nach Heidegger mittels der auf dem metaphysischen Denken basierenden Ästhetik das Wesen der Kunst niemals erschöpfend behandeln, da die Kunst als das (...) Ins-Werk- Setzen der Wahrheit verstanden werden muss.Freilich nimmt Heidegger immer eine kritische Haltung gegenüber der sogenannte „Ästhetik" ein, aber man kann dadurch auch die Möglichkeit einer anderen erweiterten Ästhetik finden, die die anfängliche Wahrheitsfunktion der aisthesis als Wahr-nehmung ins Auge zu fassen versucht. Von diesem grundlegenden Standpunkt aus möchte ich mich mit einem gegenwärtigen Versuch des ästhetischen Denkens (Wolfgang Welsch) und mit einer nicht-europäischen traditionellen Ästhetik (Shüzö Kuki) beschäftigen. (shrink)

In meinem Aufsatz möchte ich die Ästhetik auf ihre Möglichkeit hin überprüfen, eine grundlegende Theorie des „Sinnlichen" innerhalb der menschlichen kulturellen Tätigkeiten zu sein. Dieses Vorhaben werde ich damit beginnen, Heideggers Kritik an der traditionellen Ästhetik zu behandeln. Dem überlieferten Ästhetikverständnis liegt nach Heidegger offenbar diesselbe vorstellend-vergegenständlichende Denkweise zugrunde, die der ganzen abendländischen Geschichte eigen ist. Doch lässt sich nach Heidegger mittels der auf dem metaphysischen Denken basierenden Ästhetik das Wesen der Kunst niemals erschöpfend behandeln, da die Kunst als das (...) Ins-Werk- Setzen der Wahrheit verstanden werden muss.Freilich nimmt Heidegger immer eine kritische Haltung gegenüber der sogenannte „Ästhetik" ein, aber man kann dadurch auch die Möglichkeit einer anderen erweiterten Ästhetik finden, die die anfängliche Wahrheitsfunktion der aisthesis als Wahr-nehmung ins Auge zu fassen versucht. Von diesem grundlegenden Standpunkt aus möchte ich mich mit einem gegenwärtigen Versuch des ästhetischen Denkens (Wolfgang Welsch) und mit einer nicht-europäischen traditionellen Ästhetik (Shüzö Kuki) beschäftigen. (shrink)

In the writings of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263) we read: “I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple of my own” (SZ Supplement: 10; Saitō 2010: 242; Yuien 1996: 6). Is he simply being modest? Does Shinran defy discipleship? Does he rule out the possibility of the reception of his thought? The answer to these questions is not clear; nevertheless, what we do know is that the reader of his writings is supposed to arrive at the (...) Buddha’s original teaching. Shinran’s voluminous works, however, exhibit more than an introduction to, or simple interpretation of, the Buddha’s preaching. We may say that Shinran has given us sermons and treatises that manifest an authentic and unique appropriation of the Buddhist tradition, and, therefore, his works offer the possibility of a thoughtful reception for his interpreters and disciples. The philosopher KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 (1888–1941) wrote remarkable verses about Shinran seven centuries after his death: “I will have no disciple, said Shinran; as for me [Kuki], I long to have his soul” (KSZ Supplement, 146; Saitō 2010: 242). Kuki’s poetic reflections express Shinran’s quest for an authentic life, and echo back the existentialist aspect of his philosophy. More than this, his words commit him to Shinran as his teacher. Do these words not enact the most authentic discipleship possible? In fact, SAITŌ Takako takes Kuki’s verses as empirical evidence of his receiving the intellectual legacy of Shinran. Thus, at the end of her article, the proof of historical facticity of reception retroactively justifies Saitō’s careful comparison of Kuki’s thought with Shinran’s, which began based on presuming similarities in content. In other words, the factual findings prove the validity of comparing Shinran and Kuki, although a truthful reading is impossible to verify historically. Be that as it may, Kuki’s poetic expression demonstrates the history of the reception of a pre-modern Buddhist by a modern philosopher in Japan, regardless of whether this discipleship was ultimately judged to be authentic and perfected, or an untimely failure. (shrink)

In the writings of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Shinran 親鸞 we read: “I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple of my own”. Is he simply being modest? Does Shinran defy discipleship? Does he rule out the possibility of the reception of his thought? The answer to these questions is not clear; nevertheless, what we do know is that the reader of his writings is supposed to arrive at the Buddha’s original teaching. Shinran’s voluminous works, however, exhibit more than (...) an introduction to, or simple interpretation of, the Buddha’s preaching. We may say that Shinran has given us sermons and treatises that manifest an authentic and unique appropriation of the Buddhist tradition, and, therefore, his works offer the possibility of a thoughtful reception for his interpreters and disciples. The philosopher KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 wrote remarkable verses about Shinran seven centuries after his death: “I will have no disciple, said Shinran; as for me [Kuki], I long to have his soul”. Kuki’s poetic reflections express Shinran’s quest for an authentic life, and echo back the existentialist aspect of his philosophy. More than this, his words commit him to Shinran as his teacher. Do these words not enact the most authentic discipleship possible? In fact, SAITŌ Takako takes Kuki’s verses as empirical evidence of his receiving the intellectual legacy of Shinran. Thus, at the end of her article, the proof of historical facticity of reception retroactively justifies Saitō’s careful comparison of Kuki’s thought with Shinran’s, which began based on presuming similarities in content. In other words, the factual findings prove the validity of comparing Shinran and Kuki, although a truthful reading is impossible to verify historically. Be that as it may, Kuki’s poetic expression demonstrates the history of the reception of a pre-modern Buddhist by a modern philosopher in Japan, regardless of whether this discipleship was ultimately judged to be authentic and perfected, or an untimely failure. (shrink)

Building on his 2017 book, Japanese Philosophy in the Making 1: Crossing Paths with Nishida, John Maraldo continues to shepherd his readers through an encounter with Japanese philosophy in this second volume. Departing from Nishida as the presumptive center, Maraldo interrogates the "borderlines" in his engagement with the thinking of Watsuji Tetsurō, Tanabe Hajime, and Kuki Shūzō, in addition to confronting important issues pertaining to politics and ecology. To speak of "shepherding" here is intentional; but it is not meant to (...) indicate any kind of paternalism, either in form or content. Rather, it is meant to capture the tremendous care with which Maraldo leads his readers down the path of his thinking. In... (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles by one of the leading scholars in Japanese thought dealing with three areas of Japanese philosophy and religion: Dôgen's Zen view of liberation, including the key doctrines of casting off body-mind, being-time, and spontaneous manifestation of the kôan; the relation between Buddhism, literary aesthetics, and folk religion; and a comparison of Japanese and Western thought, particularly Heidegger, on science, language, and death. The central theme throughout these essays is the meaning of time and (...) impermanence in Japanese religion and culture based on Buddhist contemplation. The book's title refers to a phrase used by Dôgen, the dramatist Chikamatsu, and others that plays on the twofold image of «dream» representing either the fleeting world of illusion or the nonsubstantial realm of ultimate reality. One of the articles is a new annotated translation of Dôgen's Shôbôgenzô «Muchû setsumu» («Disclosing a Dream Within a Dream») fascicle. Other essays offer novel interpretations of Chikamatsu and Kyoto-school thinkers Kuki Shûzô and Nishitani Keiji in addition to Japanese folk religion. (shrink)