Kyoto School

What can philosophers today learn from the psychosomatic practice of Zen Buddhism? How does Zen challenge the methodology of our cerebral practice of philosophy?  In order to address these questions, this essay examines one of the major transitions that have occurred in modern Japanese philosophy, namely the translation of Zen Buddhist ideas into a philosophical idiom. When Zen ideas are discussed in an academic context, we need to be attentive to the fact that they have been displaced from the psychosomatic practices—the embodied-spiritual disciplines—in which they were originally embedded. Fortunately, there have been a few philosophers who have commuted between the psychosomatic practice of Zen and the intellectual discipline of philosophy, most notably the main figures of the first three generations of the Kyoto School: Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), Nishitani Keiji (1900–90), and Ueda Shizuteru (1926–2019). The central sections of this essay examine how they challenge not just the ideas but also the disembodied methodology of Western philosophy by drawing on their psychosomatic practice of Zen. The final sections then critically compare and contrast Zen’s psychosomatic practice of with Richard Shusterman’s “somaesthetics” and with Pierre Hadot’s retrieval of the ancient Greek and Roman conception of philosophy as a “way of life,” a way that was not only more soteriologically oriented but also more holistically practiced than is modern academic philosophy. The essay concludes by addressing the prospects, for those living in contemporary Western or Westernizing countries, of incorporating psychosomatic disciplines such as those of Zen into the practice of philosophy as a truly holistic pursuit of wisdom and liberating way of life.

Citation information:
Bret W. Davis, “Commuting Between Zen and Philosophy: In the Footsteps of Kyoto School Philosophers and Psychosomatic Practitioners,” in Transitions: Crossing Boundaries in Japanese Philosophy, edited by Francesa Greco, Leon Krings, and Yukiko Kuwayama (Nagoya: Chisokudō Publications, 2021), pp. 71–111.

Amidst ongoing attempts to think beyond Western frameworks for education, there is a tendency to overlook Japan, perhaps because it appears highly modern. This is striking given that some prominent strands of Japanese philosophy have formulated an explicit and exacting challenge to the core onto-epistemic premises of modern Western thought. It is also surprising because Japanese educational practices have resulted in some of the highest achievement outcomes-both cognitive and noncognitive-found anywhere in the world and inculcate a worldview that is distinct. Herein, we thus attempt to make visible the potential contribution of modern Japanese philosophy by outlining some of the core ideas, then turn to sketch resonances with and responses to other projects outlined in this Special Issue. Our approach is elucidation through relational comparison. Through this process, we suggest that the notion of self-negation as a mode of learning may be helpful in explaining why-at the empirical level-the outlook of Japanese students, and perhaps other East Asian students, diverge markedly from their Western peers. Yet we also find that an attempt, such as ours, to link divergent onto-epistemic thought to alternative empirical hypotheses quickly gives rise to various doubts and discomforts, even among otherwise sympathetic scholars.

Résumé: Fruit du colloque "Spiritualité japonaise - Perceptions et représentations, entre tradition et occidentalisation" organisé par les Universités Libre de Bruxelles et Catholique de Louvain, cet ouvrage propose des recherches en philosophie de la religion sur le Japon comparativement à l’Occident.

A translation of Miki's short writing entitled "Tetsugaku-no nai Nihon"「哲学のない日本」.  This is a work in progress. If you have any criticisms, suggestions, questions, etc., please contact the translator. 
Special thanks to Cody Staton (KU Leuven) for the helpful suggestions.

In the second volume of Rinrigaku, Watsuji Tetsurō focuses on developing his notion of betweenness (aidagara 間柄) through the ethical organisations (jinrinteki soshiki 人倫的組織) of family, local community, economics, cultural community, and the state. Although those who have commentated on the later volumes have focused on the controversy which surrounds Watsuji’s account of the state, very little attention has been paid to the role of virtues within his thought. It is precisely this academic lacuna which this enquiry is intended to address. In this paper, there are two particular aims which I hope to achieve: firstly, I will seek to explicate the role which virtues play within Watsuji’s ethical system, and secondly, I will attempt to evaluate how the virtues inform Watsuji’s normative approach.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason demonstrates that it is impossible to have knowledge of the thing in itself by means of either concepts or intuitions. The great student of Nishida Kitarō and Martin Heidegger, Japanese philosopher, Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990), does not seem to dispute Kant’s claim that the thing in itself cannot be known by means of reason or indeed by any act of consciousness whatever. But for Nishitani the Critique does not demonstrate that it is impossible to experience or obtain awareness of the thing in itself through purely non-subjective, non- representational, and non-conceptual means. In what follows, I recon- struct Nishitani’s formulation of the paradox of representation and show how his method of resolving the paradox provides an argument against Kant, that one can know the thing in itself by non-conceptual means. For Nishitani it appears that the impossibility of knowing the thing in itself by means of reason shows a new path forward. Rather than attempt to know the thing in itself by means of reason or subjectivity in general, we can still gain access to the thing in itself by transcending reason and subjectivity altogether. To state this even more generally: insofar as philosophy itself performs its rational work from the standpoint of subjectivity (whether implicitly or explicitly), we can apprehend the thing in itself by transcending the standpoint of philosophy. In Nishitani’s terms, the only way to know the thing in itself is by “breaking through self-consciousness” (Nishitani 1983, 16–17).

Nishida’s and Merleau-Ponty’s “perceptual ontologies” lead to other notions of self, spirituality, and faith, bringing out the distinctive and comparable religious paths of Buddhism and embodied phenomenology entered by deepening the prereflective openness to the world’s “voices of silence.” Loughnane’s study highlights how Nishida’s and Merleau-Ponty’s turn towards a series of artists in their respective cultural contexts brings out the particular groundedness in the materiality of the beings of the world in this “mutual interexpressivity” or “reversibility.” Faith is revisioned as the dropping of egoistic control to allow perception to be carried into the depths of the world of spiritual hearkening.

Arthouse Tacheles, Kyoto School and Chaos Theory ...

Presented at the conference Indeterminate Futures / The Future of Indeterminacy, University of Dundee (UK), 13 – 15 November 2020; published 2 November 2021: https://queenmobs.com/2021/11/how-long-is-now/

The future is no longer seen as open. But before aligning ourselves to the mantra of the “slow cancellation of the future” (Mark Fisher) we should firstly have a closer look at the present, now: for if we can show that the present is indeterminate, it will be a simple task to show that the future is indeterminate as well.

The now is both a particular now – our contemporary present – and each now throughout history: the present now is thus unique. Unlike the future and the past, the now may not be reduced to statistics, probability or algorithms: according to a Sufi’s saying it is the sword that cuts time into two. To counter the “slow cancellation of the future” we thus must become aware that the doctrine of determinism merely holds for the past. Our political and artistic practice may be wholly unpredictable if we literally engage with autopoiesis, dynamic systems and feedback loops right at the edge of chaos, thus transferring an originally scientific concept to politics and arts. If understood precisely, the now is able to disrupt the pattern of determinacy through the unpredictable event of chaos. If the present now is open, the future is open too.

京都学派の哲学者たちは、後の現象学的身体論を先取りするような身体観を提示した。本稿は、こうした京都学派の身体論の生成と展開を西田幾多郎や田辺元のテキストに沿って内在的に読解しながら、その本来の近代認識論批判の立場（日本的「身体論」）が文化本質主義的イデオロギー（「日本的身体」論）へと転じる機制を明らかにした。そのうえで、20世紀後半になって古典芸能の身体性や世阿弥の能楽論を安易に「日本文化」に還元して解釈する「日本的身体」論が横行する言説状況が到来したことを批判した。
The Kyoto School philosophers, Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, etc., produced theoretical discourses of the body in 1930's, which foreran Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body. This paper reveals the process of their discussion and examines how those metaphysical debates on the body that appeared in modern Japan(日本的「身体論」) fell into cultural essentialism(「日本的身体」論).

In reply to critics who summarily dismiss Nishida's philosophy as weakened on the historical front by excessive attention to the mind and interiority, in this essay I provide textual proof of a major shift in Nishida's late work based on the attept to overcome the dichotomy between the "within" and the "without". This is accomplished by applying a "dialectic of the historical world" to the mutual self-expression of the world and the things that make it up, including but not restricted to conscious subjects. I see here the core of Nishida's complementary ideas of praxis and poiesis, and from there discuss the revised notions of politics, technology, morality and history. I conclude by displacing a blanket rejection of Nishida's view of history with a particular critique aimed at an overly abstract and optimistic tendency that kept Nishida from recognizing the darker side of technology and the relationships of humans to their natural and social world.

Published in video format, together with an accompanying Guidebook (217 pgs) and optional Book Transcript (534 pgs), as part of The Teaching Company's Great Courses series. Also published as an audiobook by Amazon's Audible.
    The twenty-four lectures/chapters offer a thorough and engaging introduction to both the practice and the philosophy of Zen Buddhism. The course/book provides clear and in-depth explanations of the real teachings and practices of this ancient Asian tradition, and it relates those teachings and practices to the real lives of twenty-first century Westerners. It is ideally suited for those who wish to both learn about the philosophical teachings and also engage in the practice of Zen, especially its central practice of meditation. Several of the lectures explain the nature and methods of Zen meditation, and periodic “mediation checkups” offer strategies for dealing with common issues that arise and offer further guidance for developing and deepening a practice of meditation.   
    The first lecture of the course/book reflects on our approach to Zen. It questions some preconceptions and popular images that we may have in order for us to recover what Zen calls “the beginner’s mind.” The second lecture then goes right to the core of Zen as a path of self-discovery that leads, paradoxically, through a process of self-forgetting. The next two lectures then explain Zen meditation and how to practice it. After that, several lectures explain, from a Zen perspective, the basic teachings of Buddhism, including the “Middle Way” between indulging and repressing our desires, and the problem of spiritual suffering that is rooted in our resistance to impermanence, our excessive cravings, and our misunderstanding of the nature of the self.
    The course/book goes on to clarify Zen’s understanding of the nature of the self in relation to other selves and the world as a whole, and also Zen’s teachings with regard to karma, morality, nature, art, language, and spiritual as well as physical death and rebirth. It explains what it means not only to bring your mind into a state of concentration and stillness while on the meditation cushion, but also what it means to dwell in the “Zone of Zen” during your daily activities. It ends with an elucidation of the The Ten Oxherding Pictures, a classic and beloved set of pictures and verses that summarize the stages a practitioner goes through on the path of Zen.

Artık günümüzde, doğayı bilinçsizce kullanma anlayışı geçerliliğini yitirmiş, yeni ve çok boyutlu bir yaklaşım başlamıştır. İnsanı ve yaşadığı çevreyi yeni baştan gözden geçirip, yeni bir zihniyet ve hayat tarzı geliştirmek zorunlu hale gelmiştir. Çevre bilinci ve kavramı bu düşüncenin sonucudur. Günümüzde insan ile evren arasında bir barış ve uzlaşma kaçınılmaz hale gelmiştir. İnsan dünyayı bilinçsizce kullanan ve hükmeden bir despot değil, Yüce Yaratıcının kurduğu düzene saygılı, fitne ve fesattan uzak, çevresiyle barışık, emri altındaki tüm varlıklara şefkat içerisinde davranan bir naip, bir vekil olmak zorundadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Çevre, Osmanlı, çevre nizamnamesi, berat, ihtisab, Kyoto Protokolü

ENVIRONMENT: THE PROBLEM OF THE CENTURY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE The way of thinking that condones reckless use of the environment is no longer possible and has been replaced by a new and multidimensional approach. Today, looking at humankind and the environment in a new light as well as developing a new way of thinking and a new way of life are indispensable. Environmental consciousness is a result of this new way of thinking, and it requires a harmonious state of reconciliation between human beings and the universe. Human beings have to be regents on the Earth who respect the order designed by the Almighty Creator, abstain from mischief and malice, live in peace with their environment, and approach the creation submitted to their use with mercy not tyrants that control and misuse the world heedlessly.

In this presentation I discuss how the Greek concept of chōra inspired two major philosophers of East and West in the early twentieth century: Nishida Kitarō in his development of the concept of place (basho) and Martin Heidegger in his thinking concerning “region” (Gegend).  Not only was Plato’s concept of chōra in the Timaeus an important source for both, we can also draw connections to the pre-Platonic everyday understanding of the term as well.  I argue that chōra in general entails concretion-cum-indetermination, a space that implaces human existence into its environment and clears room for the presencing-absencing of beings.

Keywords: Nishida, Heidegger, place, region, chōra

Paper presented at the annual SPEP conference of 2014 held in New Orleans, LA.

This is a partial translation of Kuki Shūzō's "Gūzensei-no mondai" 偶然性の問題 (1935). This translation is a work in progress and if you have any suggestions, criticisms, questions, etc., please feel free to contact the translator.
Special thanks to Sean Winkler for his variable comments on the text.

Dans Amour de soi, amour de l'autre et dialectique et Je et tu, Nishida Kitarō interroge l'amour en son sens et, à cette occasion, pense à nouveaux frais la nature et l'identité du soi ainsi que la relation d'altérité.

Le soi, en tant qu'auto-détermination de l'amour, doit s'aimer soi-même. Toutefois, cet amour n'est pas à entendre seulement comme amour de soi, mais aussi comme amour de l'autre. Envisagé  comme une relation dialectique où l'altérité est essentielle pour la détermination du soi, le véritable amour est celui où le soi voit en soi-même l'autre absolu. Tout en le rapprochant de l'agapè chrétienne, et en particulier des écrits d'Augustin concernant l'amour de Dieu en son rapport au soi, Nishida appelle cet amour éveil à soi du néant absolu. C'est pourquoi ce rapprochement avec le christianisme apparaît problématique car il met face à face deux conceptions du monde très éloignées: une métaphysique du néant et une métaphysique de la création et de la chute.

Pour tenter de comprendre ce qui permet à Nishida d'associer ces deux métaphysiques autour du thème de l'amour, il convient d'analyser la manière dont il entend l'amour chrétien. L'hypothèse que je soutiens consiste en ceci que le rapprochement opéré par Nishida nécessite une lecture particulière de l'agapè, indépendante de son aspect créationniste au sens strict. Tandis que l'amour chez Augustin est ce qui permet de regagner, après la chute, son lieu propre établi par Dieu en fonction d'un ordre du monde, chez Nishida, au contraire, le basho n'implique pas une telle chute. C'est pourquoi l'influence du bouddhisme a infléchi, à mon sens, la lecture nishidéenne de l'amour chrétien. Il me semble notamment que le concept de basho, lieu de l'amour comme relation dialectique, doit en partie son élaboration à une notion bouddhiste comme celle de position dharmique (hōi). Ceci impliquerait que dans l'interprétation nishidéenne de l'amour se trouve également, en creux, une pensée de l'interdépendance (engi).

An English translation of Miki Kiyoshi's "Katarare-zaru Tetsugaku" 語られざる哲学 (1919). A page break is indicated with two vertical lines (||) and a paragraph change, inserted by the translator, is indicated with a single vertical line (|). This is the first of the twelve sections that constitute the whole essay (which would amount to 90 pages or so). This translation is a work in progress and please feel free to contact the translator for suggestions, criticisms, concerns, discussions, etc.

Nishitani is a 20 th century Japanese philosopher of religion associated with the Kyoto School. He is best known for his articulation of a philosophy of Zen Buddhism that aims to "overcome nihilism by way of passing through nihilism." He writes of the need to move from the "field" of representational consciousness and reified being, back through the field of nihility, and then all the way down to the ultimate field of emptiness or śūnyatā, the field on which all beings exist as they truly are in mutually supporting and interpenetrating relations with one another.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion and the Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119009924 .

Two major philosophers from the first half of twentieth century for whom the nothing is a significant ontological issue are Nishida Kitarō and Martin Heidegger.  Nishida's basic concept is the absolute nothing (zettai mu) upon which the being of all is predicated.  Heidegger, on the other hand, while known as the thinker of being par excellence, thematizes the nothing (Nichts) as an ulterior aspect of being.  Both are responding to the tradition of Western metaphysics that tends to substantialize being and dichotomize the real.  However, ever since Nishida's reduction of West and East as cultures of form and formlessness, nothing and being, and his critique of Heidegger for the objectification or abstraction of fact, Nishida's Kyoto School descendants have had an ambiguous relationship with Heidegger's thought, mixing fascination for his ontology and dissatisfaction with his treatment of the nothing.  Yet neither Nishida nor those Kyoto School critics of Heidegger appear to have been familiar with Heidegger's later works.  In this presentation, I thus compare and assess Nishida's and Heidegger's discussions of the nothing by examining their oeuvre as a whole. 
Both thinkers are striving to express what is fundamental and must be assumed by the ontic.  A misunderstanding may arise in how one understands what Heidegger-as the thinker of being-means by "being" (Sein, Seyn).  Yet his position approaches that of the Kyoto School in his own reluctance concerning the very use of this term (e.g., crossed-out Sein) and his characterization of it as "nothing" (Nichts).  Neither Nishida nor Heidegger means by "nothing" a literal nothing, but rather that which permits beings in their relative determinacy to be what they are and wherein or whereby we find ourselves always already in our comportments to them.  Both Heidegger and Nishida seem to have in mind something like a context that that must be assumed in the background of the foreground of beings-a ground, however, that is unstable and hence, an unground.  Nishida characterizes that ultimate context wherein everything is implaced as a place of absolute nothing (zettai mu no basho) that negates itself to give rise to, or make room for, beings.  For Heidegger, being as an event (Ereignis) that clears room for beings, releasing each into its own, is not a thing, a nothing (Nichts).  Perhaps a distinction here is that in Nishida the emphasis is on the place itself wherein beings arise, whereas in Heidegger the emphasis is on the event that clears room for beings.  On the other hand neither does Nishida ignore the dynamism involved in place in its self-negation and creativity nor does Heidegger ignore the placiality of the event that he characterizes in terms of the open and a topology.  Nevertheless, we may contrast and assess the thinkers on the basis of a more evident distinction in the language they employ in discussing the nothing.  Yet each, in their distinct ways, seemed to have had an intuitive grasp of an un/ground, foundational to the human experience and being and permitting such differences.

Nisokuhokō no tetsugakusha-tachi [Bipedal Philosophers]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 2020. 65 pages.
This small book is based on an interview and dialogue with Nakajima Takahiro which was conducted in Japanese on December 19, 2019 at the East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts of the University of Tokyo. The volume also includes a foreword by Prof. Nakajima and an afterword by each of us. The interview/dialogue begins with a discussion of my education and research, and then addresses a number of related topics in Continental, Japanese, and cross-cultural philosophy. Specific topics discussed include Heidegger's turn from the will to Gelassenheit, related issues in the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart and the Zen philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, the philosophical import of translation and cross-cultural experience, the problem of Eurocentrism and “Euromonopolism” in the field of philosophy, and the meaning of the terms “philosophy,” “comparative philosophy,” and “world philosophy.”

あとがき

中島さんは上手い。話を引き出すのが上手い。高校時代の質問から始まり、徐々に大学、大学院での経験、そして博論から現在までの研究内容について、といつの間にか話が進んでいきました。知らないうちにすっかりリラックスしていて、個人的な話を混ぜながらあれこれと色々な哲学問題についてペラペラ喋りすぎてしまっていた次第です。自由に、大胆に、ときには偉そうに…。対談記録を読んだとき、「そんなことも言ってしまっていたのか！」と所々に反省しました。
正直にいうと、今でもこの記録が活字になることに対してはちょっと違和感があります。活字になる論文や本はいつもじっくり執筆し、何度も書き直します。学会での発表も、たいていは推敲を重ねた原稿を読み上げます。しかし対談録は違う。生き生きとした、禅の言葉を借りていえば、「活溌溌地（かっぱっぱっち）」に動いていた対話の記録なので、対談録の「活字」は文字通り「活きている字」にならなければならないと思います。もちろん記録は多少修正させて頂きました。「てにをは」を直したり、表現を改めたり、不必要な繰り返しを削ったり、補足したりしました。しかし、大胆な断言や自慢げな苦労話は敢えて残しました。論文ではなく対談録なので。他人の対談録を読むのは好きなので、今回は自分の番だと覚悟し、この生々しい対談録を出していただくことにした次第です。
インタビューではなく対談です。最後のほうで語っているように、中島さんとわたしの問題意識にはかなり重なっている所が多く、本当に面白い会話をすることができました。ハイデガーとエックハルト、西谷と禅、意志とそれを「放下」すること、無為と自然、「神の手前」と人格、普遍者と普遍性の区別、翻訳の難しさとその重要さ、日本哲学、哲学の定義および「西洋独占的な哲学理解」など、本当に盛りだくさんの興味深いテーマについて活発な話ができたと思います。
特に意見が一致したのは、「世界哲学」の現代的な意義についてでした。また、世界哲学に参加し、それを発展させるために特に必要となるのは、問題意識が不十分で東西の諸哲学をただ並べ比べるだけに終わりがちな「比較哲学者たち」ではなく、二つ以上の哲学伝統とそれらの文化的・言語的背景に長年をかけて親しくなり、それらの成果と洞察、長所と短所、見抜いたことと見過ごしたことを批判的にも共感的にも考察しながら現代の哲学問題に取り組むことのできる、「二本の足で歩く哲学者たち」だということでした。あるいは中島さんのように三本か四本の足で。要するに、このグローバル化の時代の哲学者たちは、言語をもつ動物とポリス的動物であるだけでなく、諸言語をこなす動物、コスモポリタン的動物、つまり少なくとも「二足歩行動物」とならなければならないのです。
「比較哲学」の代わりに「世界哲学」という表現がふさわしいかどうかは、中島さんがおっしゃったように、これから議論されるべきひとつの問いです。そもそも「世界哲学」をどう理解・定義付けするのかが重要になります。この対談の一年前に、中島さんが主催した「世界哲学としてのアジア思想」と題した国際シンポジウムに参加させていただきました。そのときわたしは、「世界哲学のなかの日本哲学」という発表をし、その原稿は東京大学のヒューマニティーズセンターのブックレットに載せていただいています。また、その原稿の長い版は「日本哲学とは何か――その定義と範囲を再考する試み」という題名で、京都大学の紀要『日本哲学史研究』第十六号に掲載されています。その発表と論文でわたしは、「日本哲学」の定義とともに「世界哲学」の定義についても考察しています。いくつかの不十分あるいは問題のある定義を批判した後、次の結論に辿りつきました。

「「世界哲学」を、ある哲学の立場でもなければ、ある伝統・文化・言語によって限定される分野でもない、むしろ諸伝統・文化・言語を出発点とする諸哲学が互いに出会い、対話を行う「場所」である、と理解する。「世界哲学」は「多元的な哲学対話の場所」であり、しかもその場所は予め特定の伝統・文化・言語によって規定されたものではなく、対話自身によって対話の場所が形成されてゆくのである。
　日本哲学は、その対話において、また、その対話への貢献として行われるべきである、と私は考えている。ならば、「日本哲学」とは、「（主に）日本における哲学の部分集合」であると同時に、より重要な意味では、対話の場所としての「世界哲学」における、日本の伝統・文化・言語を主に出発点とする学問である、といっても良いのではないだろうか。」

その「世界哲学のなかの日本哲学」に参加する「二足歩行の哲学者たち」が担うひとつの重要な役割は、「哲学」そのものの定義――その方法論と目的論を含める――についての議論に貢献することだとわたしは思います。対談の最後に、ホワイトボードに何かメッセージを書くように突然頼まれたとき、わたしは――頭の中は目の前の白板のように真っ白だったのですが――「哲学を「哲学」をもって考えなおす」、とちょっと意味不明なことを書きました。半年後の今、その写真を見て自分が書いたことの意味がやっとわかったような気がします。その場でそのメッセージを引き出した中島さんは、やっぱり上手い。

The Philosophy of the Kyoto School (2018) is translated into English by Robert Chapeskie and revised by John W. M. Krummel. It introduces the reader to the works of (some of) the members of the Kyoto School. The general structure of the book means that each member is represented by a primary text, which is supplemented by an introductory essay.

Note: this is an accepted journal paper expected to be published in Dec 2020. For the quotation please follow the format of Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies: Tam, Andrew Ka Pok, 'On the Relation between Watsuji’s Ningen Rinrigaku and Mencius’ Five Relationships', Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 17, no. 2, (Dec, 2020)

Watsuji Tetsurō’s idea of aidagara (間柄, often translated as ‘betweenness’) is an essential concept in his ningen rinrigaku with a robust Confucian heritage as he begins his reflection on aidagara from Mencius’ concept of gorin or five relationships; it seems that Watsuji tries to reinterpret gorin. However, unlike Yangmingism and the twentieth-century Chinese New Confucianism, Watsuji does not emphasise individual subjectivity; instead, in both Rinrigaku and Fūdo, Watsuji reduces individual self into aidagara and aidagara into the Buddhist notion of Kū.
Based upon Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics, this paper argues that Watsuji’s ningen rinrigaku fails to provide a consistent interpretation of Mencius’ teaching of gorin. According to Mou, an individual’s subjectivity whose mind nature is granted by Heaven precedes and produces mutual relationships among human beings; but the idea of Heaven is omitted in Watsuji’s anti-Neo-Confucian understanding of Mencius. Instead, Watsuji that the individual’s moral consciousness arises from aidagara, which is the negations of self and others, while the notion of self-negation contradicts with Mencius 7A. However, instead of accusing Watsuji of misunderstanding Mencius, this paper suggests one may understand Watsuji’s ningen rinrigaku as non-Confucian ethics instead of a consistent interpretation of Mencius.

「間柄」是和辻哲郎的人間倫理學中深受儒學影響的重要概念。他對間柄的 反思始於孟子的五倫概念;故此，和辻似乎嘗試重新詮釋五倫。然而，與陽明學 及二十世紀中國新儒家相反，和辻並不強調個人主體性;反之，在《人間倫理學》 及《風土》裡，和辻把個人主體還原成間柄，又將間柄歸於佛教「空」的概念。
根據牟宗三的道德形而上學，本文認為和辻的人間倫理學無法為孟子之五倫 提供一致的詮釋。根據牟宗三，個人主體所具有天賦之心性乃先於並生出人倫關 係。然而，「天」的概念卻不見於和辻對《孟子》的反理學詮釋。和辻認為個人 道德意識緣起於作為對自我與他者否定之間柄，可是自我否定之主張卻與《孟子. 盡心上》的說法相違。然而，本文指出，除了批評和辻曲解《孟子》以外，讀者 或可理解和辻的人間倫理學為一非儒學的新倫理學，而非對孟子的一致詮釋。

This paper explores how the concept of Absolute Nothingness as developed in the thought of three key Kyoto School thinkers Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji has influenced the practice of sound art. The paper examines the influence of these three philosophers on D.T. Suzuki and John Cage, the Mono-ha movement, and the Fluxus movement before examining how these influences have shaped sound art practice.

"George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber (eds.), The Roar of Awakening. A Whiteheadian Dialogue Between Western Psychotherapies and Eastern Worldviews, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2009. (251 p. ; ISBN: 978-3-86838-039-2 ; 89 €)
The primary goal of this volume is to describe the contemporary state of affairs in Western psychotherapy, and to do so in a Whiteheadian spirit: with genuine openness to the relative ways in which creativity, beauty, truth and peace manifest themselves in various cultural traditions. To do so, it chooses to explore afresh a cross-elucidatory path that was born with the field of history of religion (and Religionwissenschaft): what have we, and can we, learn from a dialogue with Eastern worldviews? In order to generate meaningful contrasts between these different systems of thought, all the papers address the following core issues. On the one hand, how does the given system understand the interaction of individuality, society, and nature (or cosmos)? Especially: what is its standpoint with regard to the nature of consciousness and with regard to the mind/body problem?; how far is it dualistic?; how are destiny and historicity assessed? On the other hand, what is the paradigm of all mal-adjustment (or pathology) and what is its typical tuning-in (or curative) pattern? What are furthermore the ins and outs of the diagnostic and therapeutic assessments involved? Wherever possible, some (meta)theoretical and clinical issues are addressed from the vantage point of selected material from abnormal psychology or psychiatry.
Table of contents
Contents
Contributors
Foreword — George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber
Introduction — Michel Weber
I. The View from the East
1. Consciousness: The Vedantic Approach to Life and Reality, Francis-Vincent Anthony
2. Dual-Aspect Framework for Consciousness, RamLakhan Pandey Vimal
3. The Paradoxes of Radical Asceticism: Jainism as a Therapeutic Paradigm, Jeffery D. Long
4. Yoga Therapeutics: Philosophical, Scientific and Humanistic Approaches, Ashok Kumar Malhotra
5. Can Indian spiritual practices be used in psychotherapy?, R L Kapur
II. Transcultural Dialogue
6. Ineradicable Frustration and Liberation in Tiantai Buddhism, Brook Ziporyn
7. An Exploration and Analysis into Chinese Traditional Psychotherapy Ideas—A Concurrent Comment on the Integrative point of view of Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy, Fengqiang Gao and Yingmin Chen
8. The Kyoto School and self-awareness in the field of the absolute nothingness —A comparison with Whitehead’s philosophy, Eiko Hanaoka
9. Jung and Hisamatsu Re-envisioning Religiosity: Jungian Psychotherapy and the Kyoto School, Tokiyuki Nobuhara
10. Reconstructing the Meaning of Being Human: A Postmodern Reinterpretation of Frankl in the Framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy, Yoshihiro Hayashi
11. The Development of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis, Shoji Muramoto
12. The Intercultural and Daseinsanalytical Psychiatry of Kimura Bin, Bernard Stevens
13. A Certain Form of Psychotherapy (Kenosis, Prajna, Jung, and Hillman), David T. Bradford
14. Vedanta, Process and Psychotherapy, Joseph Grange
15. On Zen Buddhism, Clive Sherlock
"

نیشیتانی کیجی، شاگرد نیشیدا و تانابه، یکی از مهم‌ترین فیلسوفان مکتب کیوتو ژاپن است. تفکرات نیشیتانی در تشکیل هویت ملی ژاپنی پس از جنگ جهانی دوم تأثیر بسیار زیادی بر ژاپنیان نهاد. مسأله‌ی نیهیلیسم، دین، فرهنگ و سیاست از مهم‌ترین موضوعات فلسفه‌ی نیشیتانی محسوب می‌شود که در این میان دین و نیهیلیسم از اهمیت دوچندانی برخوردار هستند. نیشیتانی با تأثیرپذیری از فلسفه‌ی فیلسوفان غربی، به دنبال راهی برای بیان فلسفی مفاهیم ذن بودیستی و ایجاد راهی درخور برای تفکر در عصر مدرن و یافتن جایگاه مناسب ژاپن در میان سایر ملت‌ها بود. مقاله‌ی حاضر با معرفی نیشیتانی و سبک نوشتار فلسفی او، به مسأله‌ی نیهیلیسم از منظر وی و پاسخ عمیقاً دینی او به این مسأله خواهد پرداخت.

In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart’s answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart’s Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Regardless of whether Heidegger is promoting the will or, like Eckhart, letting-be, the mood of Heidegger’s discourse, from beginning to end, is imperative. Experience is all.

Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement does not just offer a novel way to read Eckhart and Heidegger, though. It also carefully examines Heidegger’s lifelong fascination with “the old master of letters and life,” as Heidegger liked to refer to his German predecessor. Drawing on archival material and Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart’s writings, this book argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger’s philosophy. The book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji’s seminal essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger’s classes in 1938.

This essay examines the relationship between Nishida's foundational notion of absolute nothingness and the classical Buddhist idea of emptiness. I reflect on the possibilities and risks of using Buddhism as hermeneutic paradigm in approaching the complexities of a modern Japanese philosophy with its alleged, but philologically ambiguous, references to a premodern Buddhist context.

In this paper, I wish to consider Watsuji Tetsuro’s (1889–1960) concept of climate (fudo), and consider whether it contributes anything to the relationship between climate change and ethics. I will argue that superficially it seems that fudo tells us little about the ethics of climate change, but if considered more carefully, and through the lens of thinkers such as Deleuze and Heidegger, there is ethical insight in Watsuji’s approach. Watsuji’s major work in ethics, Rinrigaku, provides concepts such as between-ness and trust that enable his philosophy of climate to move from a theory of national characters (as Fudo is often seen to be) to an approach to living well within one’s milieu.

Kire – vale a dire l’azione del «tagliare via» e del «recidere» – costituisce per Ryōsuke Ōhashi una categoria estetica e insieme una pratica che permea trasversalmente l’arte giapponese, dall’architettura alla scultura, dalla poesia alla pittura, dalla Via dei fiori a quella del tè e della spada. Kire rappresenta d’altro canto l’abbreviazione della formula kire-tsuzuki, che esprime l’esperienza della «dis/continuità», della «continuità del taglio» tra il fare artistico e l’irriflessa immediatezza della natura.

This book is meant to serve as an entry point for the English reader into the vast and profound ocean of East Asian philosophy. Focusing on China, it outlines the basic contours of the three major philosophical streams found in East Asia: Daoism (Taoism), Confucianism, and Buddhism. Beginning with the classical period, the book details the Daoist philosophies of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and the early Confucianism of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi. Next, the book explains the transmission of Buddhism from India to China, and provides individual chapters on the Chinese Buddhist schools of Huayan and Chan (Zen). This is followed by chapters on the Neo-Confucian philosophies of Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming; and the modern “New Confucian” thought of Fung Yu-lan and Tu Wei-ming. The final two chapters turn to Japan and investigate the Zen philosophy of Dogen and the modern Kyoto School.

In Nishitani's The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani explores, among other related topics, the history of the problem of Nihilism in the West. Conspicuously absent from Nishitani's historical analysis is the thought of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who famously raised the charge of Nihilism against Fichte's philosophy in 1799. As is evident from a variety of Hegel's texts, Hegel explicitly responds to Jacobi's charge against Speculative Idealism and designs his philosophy in part as a response to Jacobi's charge of Nihilism. On the one hand, Nishitani fails to appreciate Hegel's philosophy as a response to the problem of Nihilism because he has an incomplete possession of the history of the problem. On the other hand, Nishitani's critique of Hegel begs the question. Nishitani's dogmatic rejection of Hegel appears to be grounded in his methodological approach to the philosophy of history, which assumes the falsehood of Hegel's account. Jacobi's charge against Speculative Idealism consists in the Idealist's failure to account for the very existence of the world. On his view, philosophy is Nihilism because the world disappears completely from philosophical speculation. Hegel attempts to overcome this charge of Nihilism by rethinking the structure and content of reason.

Japanese philosophy is now a flourishing field with thriving societies, journals, and conferences dedicated to it around the world, made possible by an ever-increasing library of translations, books, and articles. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy is a foundation-laying reference work that covers, in detail and depth, the entire span of this philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the present. It introduces and examines the most important topics, figures, schools, and texts from the history of philosophical thinking in premodern and modern Japan. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, clearly elucidates and critically engages with its topic in a manner that demonstrates its contemporary philosophical relevance.
      The Handbook opens with an extensive introductory chapter that addresses the multifaceted question, “What is Japanese Philosophy?” The first fourteen chapters cover the premodern history of Japanese philosophy, with sections dedicated to Shintō and the Synthetic Nature of Japanese Philosophical Thought, Philosophies of Japanese Buddhism, and Philosophies of Japanese Confucianism and Bushidō. Next, seventeen chapters are devoted to Modern Japanese Philosophies. After a chapter on the initial encounter with and appropriation of Western philosophy in the late nineteenth-century, this large section is divided into one subsection on the most well-known group of twentieth-century Japanese philosophers, The Kyoto School, and a second subsection on the no less significant array of Other Modern Japanese Philosophies. Rounding out the volume is a section on Pervasive Topics in Japanese Philosophical Thought, which covers areas such as philosophy of language, philosophy of nature, ethics, and aesthetics, spanning a range of schools and time periods. This volume will be an invaluable resource specifically to students and scholars of Japanese philosophy, as well as more generally to those interested in Asian and comparative philosophy and East Asian studies.

Tanabe Hajime’s 1946 _Philosophy as Metanoetics_ (Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku, 1946) is a bold and complicated text in which Tanabe reflects on his experiences during the last years of the Pacific War in order to rethink the project of philosophy as a metanoetic process of self-negation, repentance, conversion and resurrection, inspired by True Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo shinshū). This chapter focuses on the status of history in the text, and in particular, the narratival function of Tanabe’s uncharacteristically personal Preface. The sense of history that emerges from the Preface and which is inherited by subsequent studies is that history remains an external reality to Tanabe’s thought, which, depending on one’s evaluation, Tanabe was either bravely standing up against, or unable to resist its determinations. In contrast, I draw upon Fredric Jameson's idea of the political unconscious, and locate history and the ideological significance of _Philosophy as Metanoetics_ internal to the text itself; namely, at the level of its formal structure and how history is formally displaced from philosophical reflection. I argue that once Tanabe begins to develop the temporal and historical logic unique to metanoesis, he does not bring metanoesis back to bear upon what initially threw him into penitent self-reflection in the first place; i.e., history.

The Kyoto School (Kyōto-gakuha) is a group of 20th century Japanese
thinkers who developed original philosophies by creatively drawing on the
intellectual and spiritual traditions of East Asia, those of Mahāyāna
Buddhism in particular, as well as on the methods and content of Western philosophy.
After an introductory section, this article will focus on four questions:
How should the Kyoto School be defined? What is meant by its central
philosophical concept of “absolute nothingness,” and how did the Kyoto
School philosophers variously develop this Eastern inspired idea in
dialogue and debate with Western thought and with one another? What are the basics of their political writings, and the basis of the controversy
surrounding them? What is the legacy of the Kyoto School for cross-cultural thinking?

In his seminal essay The Structure of Iki (「いき」の構造 ), Kuki Shūzō attempted a rigorous description of what he regarded as a highly specific phenomenon pertaining solely to Japanese culture. To consider the phenomenon called “iki” in all its ethnical specificity does not mean, however, to confine thought into cultural incommunicability. On the contrary, when following Kuki deep into the signification of iki, we are conveyed to a philosophical approach bearing much broader consequences. By conceiving his method as a “hermeneutics of the existential determinations of iki”—which he borrows from the Heidegger of the 1920s—Kuki proceeds to a subtle merging of aesthetical and existential categories. Such a hermeneutics, once applied to aesthetic and cultural phenomena, finally proclaims human existence as their ultimate principle of intelligibility.

To what extent can pure experience be considered to be “devoid of meaning” (An Inquiry into the Good, trans. M. Abe, p. 8)? It is well known that Nishida elaborated his own concept of “pure experience” in reference to the way it appears in the philosophy of William James. He thus aimed at founding philosophical speculation on a solid ground in a radically new way. It is by putting aside any kind of “meaning” (意味, imi), that Nishida reaches the realm of pure experience conceived as a strict unity of consciousness: “a truly pure experience has no meaning whatsoever” (trans. M. Abe, p. 4). Almost at the same period, in his seminal work, Logical Investigations, and moreover in his Ideas, Husserl attempted a similar move towards the authentic nature of consciousness. However, his phenomenological method of “bracketing (Einklammerung)”, by which the objective world is neutralized, has not conducted him to a suspension of meaning (Sinn) as such. On the contrary, this methodological procedure unveiled the intentionality of consciousness as a pure structure of meaning. If pure experience has to be considered as philosophy’s terra firma, a comparison with Husserlian reduction – or epochè – proves itself to be necessary. It should indeed provide us with a critical insight into what Nishida understands as being the true “content” of pure experience.