The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
East Asian Studies

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.

Nishitani Keiji (1900–90)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Parkes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Nishitani Keiji ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
East West

Nishitani Keiji is generally regarded as the leading light of the ‘second generation’ Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. Influenced by Zen thinkers from Chinese and Japanese Buddhism as well as by figures from the Western mystical and existential traditions, he is a pre-eminent voice in East–West comparative philosophy and late twentieth-century Buddhist–Christian dialogue. Primarily a philosopher of religion, Nishitani strove throughout his career to formulate existential responses to the problem of nihilism.

KUHN AND PHILOSOPHY

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL FRIEDMAN
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Teaching Philosophy ◽  
New Model ◽  
Accumulation Model ◽  
History Of

Initially trained as a physicist, Kuhn became a leading and extraordinarily influential figure in the history of science. He saw his work in the history of science as contributing to a novel philosophical conception of the nature of science. At the outset of Structure, for example, Kuhn announces his intention to replace the “development-by-accumulation” model he associates with the philosophical tradition before him—including, in particular, what he calls “early logical positivism”—with a new model of radical conceptual discontinuity or incommensurability. Structure was written during Kuhn's tenure teaching philosophy and history of science at Berkeley, and, shortly after its publication, he took up a new post as professor of philosophy and history of science at Princeton. From 1983 until his death in 1996 Kuhn was professor of philosophy at MIT, where he attempted further to articulate his conception of incommensurability, taking account of developments in linguistics and philosophy of language.

Masao Abe

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
The West ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
University Of Hawai'i ◽  
The University

Masao Abe (阿部正雄, 1915–2006), was a prominent exponent of Japanese Zen Buddhism within academic circles in the West and made a distinguished contribution to comparative philosophy and interreligious dialogue. Abe’s Zen was shaped by the thought of the Kyoto school of Japanese philosophy and its principle of “absolute nothingness.” Abe linked absolute nothingness to the Buddhist principle of emptiness (sunyata) and based his engagement with Western philosophical thought and Christian theology on the Kyoto school’s appropriation of this Buddhist teaching. Abe began graduate studies in philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University in 1942, where he was influenced by Keiji Nishitani’s lectures on nihilism and the philosophy of religion. Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s exposition of Zen challenged Abe’s youthful commitment to Pure Land Buddhism. After completing his studies, Abe worked as a professor at Nara University of Education (1952–1980), while also teaching periodically at Kyoto and Hanazono Universities. Starting in the 1950s, he began a study of Christian theology at Union Theological Seminary, with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, and Western philosophy at Columbia University. After his retirement from teaching in Nara in 1980, Abe became a visiting professor at Claremont Graduate University and subsequently at the University of Hawai‘i, Purdue University, the University of Chicago, and several other American and European universities. He also participated at the East-West Philosopher’s Conference at the University of Hawai’i and, with John B. Cobb, was co-chair of the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (the “Cobb-Abe Group”). Abe’s version of Zen was influenced by D. T. Suzuki’s engagement with Western thought, and the philosophy of the Kyoto school, which began with the work of Kitaro Nishida and continued with Hajime Tanabe, Keiji Nishitani, and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu. Nishida, reflecting Japanese Zen teachings, articulated a logic arising within the standpoint (tachiba) of absolute nothingness (zettai mu), the “place” (basho) wherein all dualism is overcome. Nishitani and Hisamatsu would later link Nishida’s philosophy more explicitly with Buddhist teachings, especially the goal of “awakening” (jikaku) to the “emptiness” (sunyata) of all things in their “true suchness” (shinnyo). Based on these philosophical roots in the Kyoto school and following the example of D. T. Suzuki as an apostle of Zen in the West, Abe engaged in extensive comparative studies with Western philosophical thought and interreligious dialogue with Christians and Jews.

scholarly journals The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Soviet Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 34-41
Author(s):  
I. V. Kozii
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Philosophy ◽  
Parallel Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
General Outline ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Free Development ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Further Development

A number of opinions of the modern Ukrainian scientists concerning the definition of the term “Soviet philosophy” and its impact on the further development of a philosophical thought in Ukraine are analyzed in the article. The connection between the intensity of the popularization of the Marxism ideology by the speakers of the Soviet philosophy in Ukraine and the degree of freedom in the evolution of national philosophical traditions (in this case, the Ukrainian philosophy) is established. Also, the notions “Soviet philosophy”, “Ukrainian Soviet philosophy”, with the parallel analysis of the development of some core vectors of the Ukrainian philosophy in the Soviet period, are construed.The influence of the main concepts of the Ukrainian Soviet philosophy on the further development of national philosophy is evaluated. The article states that for the further unbiased development of the Ukrainian philosophical tradition it is necessary to get rid of the obsessive influence of the Soviet past that was under way in the Ukrainian history for many decades of the XX century, and also continues to indirectly influence the contemporary Ukrainian philosophy. Thus, in order to ensure the further free development of the Ukrainian philosophy, domestic scholars should, in an impartial way, investigate the role and place of totalitarian ideology (Soviet philosophy) in the history of the development of the Ukrainian philosophical thought, and thus be able to go their own way. Therefore, it is essential to analyse objectively a number of core and fundamental questions regarding the activities of apologists of the Ukrainian Soviet philosophy.Such analysis will help to generate more objectively the general “outline” in the plane of which the investigated phenomenon developed, since we see that many issues in the evolution of the Soviet philosophy either are not covered at all, or are given somewhat distorted. So now there is an increasingly urgent need to study the declared phenomenon.

Augustine in the Garden of Zeus: Lust, Love, and Language

1990 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie O'rourke Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Baby Talk ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
History Of Theology ◽  
In The Beginning

Augustine's assimilation of Christ to wisdom in the philosophical tradition established a paradigm for method in theology. If in the beginning was the Word, and that primordial Word was analogous to intellectual concept rather than oral discourse, then in ideal imitation the theologian was a dialectician rather than a rhetorician. Yet if Christ is wisdom and the language of wisdom is dialectic, why did he speak rhetorically? Why the simile rather than the syllogism? Augustine proposed that scripture is divine baby talk. The academic business of theology became its education into human mature language by translating its images into ideas. Yet a hermeneutical and exegetical revolution since the late nineteenth century has, through historical and literary criticisms, restored scripture as rhetoric to its legitimate religious status. The conventional apologetics of pabulum is now intolerable. This alteration in norm is influencing, in the history of theology, an evaluation of the tradition as rhetoric. The research, although belated, may prove as revisionist as in scriptural studies. As the master rhetorician of anti-rhetoric was Augustine, a critical examination of the rationale for his methodological displacement of the scriptural norm with the contemplative ideal is cogent.

Kyoto School

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.W. Heisig
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kyoto School Of Philosophy ◽  
Nishitani Keiji ◽  
The One ◽  
Nishida Kitaro

The Kyoto school of philosophy pivots around three twentieth-century Japanese thinkers who held chairs of philosophy or religion at Kyoto University: Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) and Nishitani Keiji (1900–91). Its principal living representatives, who also held chairs at Kyoto until their retirement, are Takeuchi Yoshinori (1913–) and Ueda Shizuteru (1926–). The keynote of the school was struck by Nishida in his attempt, on the one hand, to offer a distinctively Eastern contribution to the Western philosophical tradition by bringing key Buddhist concepts to bear on traditional philosophical questions, and on the other, to enrich Buddhist self-understanding by submitting it to the rigours of European philosophy. The name ‘Kyoto school’ was coined in 1932 by the Marxist philosopher Tosaka Jun (1900–45) to denounce what he saw as a bourgeois ideology – which he characterized as ‘hermeneutical, transhistorical, formalistic, romantic, and phenomenological’ – that had grown up around Nishida, Tanabe and their immediate disciples at the time. These latter included Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945), Kosaka Masaaki (1900–69) and Koyama Iwao (1905–93) as well as the young Nishitani. At the time the Japanese state had taken its first definitive steps in the direction of a militaristic nationalism that would involve it in the ‘fifteen-year war’ with Asia and finally the West over the period 1930–45. As the leading philosophical movement in Japan, the Kyoto school was caught up in this history, although there was little unanimity among the responses of the principal figures. Postwar criticisms and purges of the Japanese intelligentsia attached a certain stigma to the school’s name, but later and more studied examination of those events, as well as the enthusiastic reception of translations of their works into Western languages, has done much to ensure a more balanced appraisal. Today, the philosophy of the Kyoto-school thinkers is recognized as an important contribution to the history of world philosophy whose ‘nationalistic’ elements are best recognized as secondary, or at least as an unnecessary trivialization of its fundamental inspirations. As a school of thought, the common defining characteristics of the Kyoto school may be seen in an overlap of four nodal concerns: self-awareness, the logic of affirmation-in-negation, absolute nothingness and historicity.

scholarly journals The Logic of “Mutual Transmission” in Huayan and Zen Buddhist Philosophy – Toward the Logic of Co-existence in a Globalized World

Asian Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-108
Author(s):  
Hisaki HASHI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
East Asian Studies ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Nishida Kitaro ◽  
Zen Buddhist

Is it true that in the history of East Asian cultures there was less “philosophy”, less “logic” and “rationality” before the process of modernization began in the nineteenth century? A number of scholars of East Asian Studies believe this is a form of prejudice. For example, Nishida Kitarō stated that in East Asian cultures there is another form of logic, which can be called the “logicus spiritus” (心の論理). This article examines the essential parts of this logic with regard to Huayan and Zen Buddhist philosophy, and is thus an effort at comparative philosophy.

History of thyroid surgery

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (11) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Technique ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Thyroid Surgery ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times

The authors present an outline of the development of thyroid surgery from the ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century, when the definitive surgical technique have been developed and the physiologic and pathopfysiologic consequences of thyroid resections have been described. The key representatives, as well as the contribution of the most influential czech surgeons are mentioned.

The Modernities of H. Lawrence Freeman

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
White Press ◽  
Grand Opera

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.

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