Nishida Kitaro's Chiasmatic Chorology

Nishida Kitaro's Chiasmatic Chorology
Author: John W. M. Krummel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253017866

Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945) is considered Japan's first and greatest modern philosopher. As founder of the Kyoto School, he began a rigorous philosophical engagement and dialogue with Western philosophical traditions, especially the work of G. W. F. Hegel. John W. M. Krummel explores the Buddhist roots of Nishida's thought and places him in connection with Hegel and other philosophers of the Continental tradition. Krummel develops notions of self-awareness, will, being, place, the environment, religion, and politics in Nishida's thought and shows how his ethics of humility may best serve us in our complex world.

Chiasmatic Chorology

Chiasmatic Chorology
Author: John Krummel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

In this philosophical work I explicate Nishida Kitaro's dialectics vis-à-vis Mahayana non-dualistic thought and Hegel's dialectical philosophy, and furthermore in terms of a "chiasmatic chorology." Nishida's work makes ample usage of western philosophical concepts, most notably the terminology of Hegelian dialectics. Nishida himself has admitted affinity to Hegel. And yet content-wise the core of Nishida's thinking seem close to Mahayana Buddhism in its line of thought traceable to the Prajñaparamita sutras. The point of my investigation is to clarify in what regard Nishida's dialectic owes allegiance to Hegel and to Mahayana and wherein it diverges from them. Moreover to what extent is Nishida's appropriation of Hegelian terminology adequate in expressing his thought? The work explicates the distinctive aspects of Nishida's thinking in terms of a "chiasmatic chorology" to emphasize the inter-dimensional and placial complexity of the dialectic. In summary two overarching concerns guide the work: 1) The relation of Nishida's dialectic to its forebears -- Mahayana non-dualism and Hegelian dialectics --; and 2) The distinctness of that dialectic as a "chiasmatic chorology." The work concludes that while Nishida, in his attempt to surmount the dualism of Neo-Kantianism, was led to Hegel's dialectic, the core ideas of his dialectic extend beyond the purview of Hegelianism. Contentwise his dialectic is closer in spirit to Mahayana. While Nishida admits to such commensurability with key Mahayana doctrines, his thought nevertheless ought not to be confined to the doctrinal category of "Buddhist thought" both because of its eclectic nature that brings in elements drawn from western and eastern sources, thereby constituting his work as a "world philosophy"; and because of its creative contributions, such as the formulation of basho and its explication in dialectical terms. What cannot be expressed adequately in terms of Hegelian dialectics is the concrete chiasma of what Nishida calls his "absolute dialectic." Moreover its founding upon the choratic nature of basho not only escapes the grasp of Hegel's self-knowing concept but extends beyond previous formulations within Buddhism.

Heidegger and Kabbalah

Heidegger and Kabbalah
Author: Elliot R. Wolfson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253042585

While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger's indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger's thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson's comparison between Heidegger and kabbalah sheds light on key concepts such as hermeneutics, temporality, language, and being and nothingness, while yielding surprising reflections on their common philosophical ground. Given Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism and his use of antisemitic language, these innovative readings are all the more remarkable for their juxtaposition of incongruent fields of discourse. Wolfson's entanglement with Heidegger and kabbalah not only enhances understandings of both but, more profoundly, serves as an ethical corrective to their respective ethnocentrism and essentialism. Wolfson masterfully illustrates the redemptive capacity of thought to illuminate common ground in seemingly disparate philosophical traditions.

Merleau-Ponty and Nishida

Merleau-Ponty and Nishida
Author: Adam Loughnane
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2019-12-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438476116

Places the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Nishida in dialogue and uncovers a demand for a motor-perceptual form of faith in both philosophers’ meditations on artistic expression. In Merleau-Ponty and Nishida, Adam Loughnane initiates a fascinating new dialogue between two of the twentieth century’s most important phenomenologists of the Eastern and Western philosophical worlds. Throughout the book, the reader is guided among the intricacies and innovations of Merleau-Ponty’s and Nishida’s ontological approaches to artistic expression with a focused look at a rarely explored connection between faith and negation in their philosophies. Exploring the intertwining of these concepts in their broader ontologies invokes a reappraisal of the ambiguous status of religion and art in the writings of both thinkers. Measuring these ambiguities, the ontologies of Flesh and Basho are read in-depth alongside great artworks and the motor-perceptual practices of seminal landscape artists such as Cézanne, Sesshū, Taiga, and Hasegawa, as well as other major figures of European, Chinese, and Japanese art history. Loughnane studies these artists’ bodily practices, focusing on the intimate relations realized with the landscapes they paint, and illuminating a valence of their expressive disciplines as a motor-perceptual form of faith. Merleau-Ponty and Nishida is an exciting intercultural reading, expanding two philosophers’ projects toward new horizons of research, revealing incitements in their writings that challenge unambiguous distinctions between art, philosophy, faith, and ultimately philosophy East and West. “Loughnane illuminates the ambiguous, chiasmatic, and dynamic relationality between the body and the world, providing concrete examples from art history East and West. He not only skillfully explains Nishida’s and Merleau-Ponty’s ontological notions, but also puts their philosophy to the test of art works, proving that their thinking reveals an important truth of art.” — Takeshi Kimoto, Chukyo University

Philosophies of Place

Philosophies of Place
Author: Peter D. Hershock
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2019-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0824878620

Humanity takes up space. Human beings, like many other species, also transform spaces. What is perhaps uniquely human is the disposition to qualitatively transform spaces into places that are charged with distinctive kinds of intergenerational significance. There is a profound, felt difference between a house as domestic space and a home as familial place or between the summit of a mountain one has climbed for the first time and the “same” rock pinnacle celebrated in ancestral narratives. Contemporary philosophical uses of the word “place” often pivot on the distinction between “space” and “place” formalized by geographer-philosopher Yi-fu Tuan, who suggested that places incorporate the experiences and aspirations of a people over the course of their moral and aesthetic engagement with sites and locations. While spaces afford possibilities for different kinds of presence—physical, emotional, cognitive, dramatic, spiritual—places emerge as different ways of being present, fuse over time, and saturate a locale with distinctively collaborative patterns of significance. This approach to issues of place, however, is emblematic of what Edward S. Casey has argued are convictions about the primacy of absolute space and time that evolved along with the progressive dominance of the scientific imagination and modern imaginations of the universal. The recent reappearance of place in Western philosophy represents a turn away from abstract and a priori reasoning and back toward phenomenal experience and the primacy of embodied and emplaced intelligence. Places are enacted through the sustainably shared practices of mutually-responsive and mutually-vulnerable agents and are as numerous in kind as we are divergent in the patterns of values and intentions. The contributors to this volume draw on resources from Asian, European, and North American traditions of thought to engage in intercultural reflection on the significance of place in philosophy and of the place of philosophy itself in the cultural, social, economic, and political domains of contemporary life. The conversation of place that results explores the meaning of intercultural philosophy, the critical interplay of place and personal identity, the meaning of appropriate emplacement, the shared place of politics and religion, and the nature of the emotionally emplaced body.

Philosophy of Science and The Kyoto School

Philosophy of Science and The Kyoto School
Author: Dean Anthony Brink
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-03-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350141119

This book offers the first introduction to a major Japanese philosophical movement through the interests and arguments of its founder, Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), his successor, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), and student-turned-critic, Tosaka Jun (1900-1945). Focusing on their contributions to thinking about place, space, and dialectics, this concise introduction brings these influential thinkers to life by connecting their work to issues still debated in the philosophy of science and physics today. Beginning with an overview of the reception of quantum physics and relativity theory in Japan and concluding with an account of the direct relevance of the Kyoto School to the development of world philosophy in a posthuman age, each clearly-written chapter engages historical contexts and includes: · Carefully-chosen excerpts and original translations of Nishida, Tanabe, and Tosaka · Focus boxes explaining complex concepts and problems of contextualization · A timeline, glossary and index · Further reading lists featuring relevant and significant articles and books in English This introduction is an ideal starting point for students and lecturers looking to become better acquainted with three central Japanese philosophers and learn why their work impacts our current thinking about science.

Marx after the Kyoto School

Marx after the Kyoto School
Author: Bradley Kaye
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022-02-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1538154080

Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) is considered Japan’s greatest modern philosopher. As the founder of the Kyoto School, he initiated a rigorous philosophical engagement with Western philosophy, including the work of Karl Marx. Bradley Kaye explores the political aspects of Nishida’s thought, placing his work in connection with Marxism and Zen. Developing concepts of self-awareness, Basho, dialectical materialism, circulation, will, nothingness, and the state. Nishida’s thought offers an ethics of personal will that radical awakening that offers clarity in a seemingly hopeless world.

Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy

Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy
Author: Shigeru TAGUCHI
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-01-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030219429

This volume addresses the impact of the introduction of phenomenology in Japan and its interaction with Japanese philosophy. It is well known that phenomenology was introduced at a very early stage in Japan. Furthermore, phenomenology still constitutes one of the main currents of thought in Japan. However, the specific way in which phenomenology has interacted with the indigenous Japanese tradition of thought and Japanese culture has until now not been addressed in great detail. This volume fills that gap. It discusses in detail the encounter and the interaction between Japanese thought and phenomenological reflection, with special regards to the topics of awareness and the self, the experience of otherness, ethics, and metaphysical issues. The book shows how phenomenology has served, and still serves, Japan to re-comprehend its “own” tradition and its specific form(s) of culture. At the same time, it offers an example of how different cultures and traditions can be both preserved and developed in their reciprocal action. More in general, it advances the philosophical debate beyond cultural enclosures and beyond mere scholasticism. The phenomenological tradition has always been open to new and alien ideas. An encounter with Japanese philosophy can offer a new challenge to actual phenomenological thinking.

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy

The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy
Author: Bret W. Davis
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
Total Pages: 841
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199945721

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.