Expanding the scope of existential discourse beyond the Western tradition, this book engages Asian philosophies to reassess vital questions of life's purpose, death's imminence, and our capacity for living meaningfully in conditions of uncertainty. Inspired by European existentialism in theory, the book explores concrete techniques for existential practice via the philosophies of East Asia. The investigation begins with the provocative existential writings of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryop, who asserts that meditative concentration conducts a potent energy outward throughout the (...) entire karmic network, enabling the radical transformation of our shared existential conditions. Understanding her claim requires a study of East Asian traditions more broadly. Considering practices as diverse as Song-dynasty Chinese views on mental cultivation, Buddhist merit-making ceremonies, the ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and Yijing divination, the book concludes by advocating a speculative turn. This 'speculative existentialism' counters the suspicion toward metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century European existential thought and, at the same time, advances a program for action. It is not a how-to guide for living, but rather a philosophical methodology that takes seriously the power of mental cultivation to transform the meaning of the life that we share. (shrink)

This collection of essays is an exercise in comparative philosophy of religion that explores the different ways in which humans express the inexpressible. It brings together scholars of over a dozen religious, literary, and artistic traditions, as part of The Comparison Project's 2013-15 lecture and dialogue series on "religion beyond words." Specialist scholars first detailed the grammars of ineffability in nine different religious traditions as well as the adjacent fields of literature, poetry, music, and art. The Comparison Project's directors then (...) compared this diverse set of phenomena, offering explanations for their patterning, and raising philosophical questions of truth and value about religious ineffability in comparative perspective. This book is the inaugural publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa, USA). The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. Specialist scholars of religion first explore this topic in their religions of expertise; comparativist philosophers of religion then raise questions of meaning, truth, and value about this topic in comparative perspective. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of essays highlights the relevance of Buddhist doctrine and practice to issues of globalization. From philosophical, religious, historical, and political perspectives, the authors show that Buddhism—arguably the world’s first transnational religion—is a rich resource for navigating todays interconnected world.

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

Does the Buddhist doctrine of no-self imply, simply put, no-other? Does this doctrine necessarily come into conflict with an ethics premised on the alterity of the other? This article explores these questions by situating Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics in the context of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The work of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō provides a starting point from which to consider the ethics of the self-other relation in light of the Buddhist notion of emptiness. The philosophy of thirteenth-century Zen Master Dōgen (...) casts doubt on Watsuji’s commitment to reciprocal self-other relationality, showing that the idea of self-emptiness disrupts any conventional understanding of reciprocity and promotes instead other-oriented compassion. Despite interesting similarities between the ethics of alterity and Buddhist compassion, a Buddhist-influenced understanding of alterity differs from Levinas on important points, by making possible the claim that all others—human, animal, plant, and mineral—are ethical others. (shrink)

Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, but rather to be learned by heart.Here's what is necessary: one blow with a club, one scar; one slap on the face, a handful of blood. Your reading of what other people write should be just like this. Don't be lax!In several recent articles, Leigh Kathryn Jenco questions the use of Eurocentric methodologies in conducting cross-cultural research within and about Chinese traditions.3 As she says, "postcolonial and 'non-Western' societies (...) can be positioned as particularly challenging case studies, offering 'alternative' views of self, culture, and society. However, their rich traditions of historical, political, and literary scholarship can play no role in... (shrink)

Zen has come to America. As Bret Davis notes in his Preface to the sprawling Zen Pathways, he is, in many ways, late to the party. By that Davis means that during the decades when various “Zen cent...

Here the relationship between Shinran and Eshinni, founding family of the largest Buddhist sect in Japan, serves as a methodological model for philosophical engagement. Though the Pure Land notion of “easy practice” (Jp. igyō 易行) may be seen as Zen’s less rigorous counterpart, Shinran’s turn toward “other-power” (tariki 他力) is driven by the same philosophical debates over practice and liberation that occupied contemporaries such as Dōgen. The answers to such debates, which Shinran and Eshinni enacted concretely via their lifestyle choices, (...) help us rethink both academic practices and the role of philosophers as engaged intellectuals today. (shrink)

The exchange between Peter Park, Dan Flory and Leah Kalmanson on Park’s book Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon took place during the APA’s 2016 Central Division meeting on a panel sponsored by the Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies. After having peer-reviewed the exchange, JWP invited Sonia Sikka and Mark Larrimore to engage with these papers. All the five papers are being published together in this issue.

Postcolonial studies and decolonial theory make visible the nature and extent of Eurocentrism through a critique of constructed categories as basic as “history” and “culture.” Walter Mignolo asserts a strong claim that the concept of “culture” is itself a colonial construction, and hence all cultural difference bears the mark of coloniality. This thesis presents a challenge to the field of comparative philosophy: What does “cross-cultural” philosophy even mean if all so-called cultural difference is indeed colonial difference? Could comparativists, in the (...) wake of this critique, preserve the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical inquiry even when basic terms of discourse are suspended? This essay is a thought experiment in accepting Mignolo's general premise that all cultural difference is colonial difference, through which I offer three strategies for philosophizing comparatively under this constraint: historical contextualization, subversive categorization, and decen.. (shrink)

While influential works have been devoted to comparative studies of various Asian philosophies and continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, this collection is the first to fully treat the increased interest in intercultural and interdisciplinary studies related to the work of Emmanuel Levinas in such a context. Levinas and Asian Thought seeks to discover common ground between Levinas’s ethical project and various religious and philosophical traditions of Asia such as Mahāyāna Buddhism, Theravādic Buddhism, Vedism, Confucianism, Daoism, and (...) Islam. -/- In these 13 essays, contributors draw on resources as diverse as the self-sacrificial ethic of bushidō, Islamic jurisprudence, and contemporary research in cognitive science. The essays are organized around three primary themes of enduring ethical, political, and religious importance. The first set of essays considers a dialogue between Levinasian and Asian accounts of the self, others, and the intersubjective relationship. Through a conversation with a variety of non-Western traditions, the second group of essays addresses the question of Levinas’s extreme portrayal of the self’s responsibility to the other and its potential limits. Finally, the collection ends with essays that utilize Asian thought and culture to consider ways in which Levinas’s ethics of alterity might be put into practice in the sphere of politics, social norms, and institutions. -/- Levinas and Asian Thought is not only a comprehensive attempt to bring Levinas into conversation with the philosophies of Asia, but it also represents a focused effort to recognize, address, and overcome Levinas’s own Eurocentrism. Overall, the thoughtful investigations collected here chart new territory, pushing Levinas’s practice of philosophy outside its familiar European and Jewish contexts, expanding our understanding of key Levinasian terms, thus furthering the thinking necessary for ethics as first philosophy. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students, as it builds connections among Levinas studies, Asian philosophy, comparative philosophy, continental philosophy, and ethics. (shrink)

The methods of philosophy may be associated with practices such as rational dialogue, logical analysis, argumentation, and intellectual inquiry. However, many philosophical traditions in Asia, as well as in the ancient Greek world, consider an array of embodied contemplative practices as central to the work of philosophy and as philosophical methods in themselves. Here we will survey a few such practices, including those of the ancient Greeks as well as examples from East Asian traditions. Revisiting the contemplative practices of philosophy (...) can help us to rethink the boundaries of the discipline, the nature and scope of scholarly methods, and the role of philosophy in everyday life. (shrink)

This article engages bell hooks's concept of “radical black subjectivity” through the lens of the Buddhist doctrine of no‐self. Relying on the Zen theorist Dōgen and on resources from Japanese aesthetics, I argue that non‐attachment to the self clarifies hooks's claim that radical subjectivity unites our capacity for critical resistance with our capacity to appreciate beauty. I frame this argument in terms of hooks's concern that postmodernist identity critiques dismiss the identity claims of disempowered peoples. On the one hand, identity (...) critique has an emotional component, as it involves questioning the self and possibly letting go of aspects of that self in which a person has inevitably made emotional investments. On the other hand, it has an aesthetic component, as it opens a space for the creative crafting and recrafting of identity. Japanese aesthetics emphasizes that all aesthetic appreciation is accompanied by feelings of mournfulness, for the object of aesthetic appreciation is transient. Linking hooks's liberatory aesthetics with the resources of the Japanese tradition suggests that mournfulness in the face of self‐loss necessarily accompanies all instances of critical resistance. Thus non‐attachment becomes a useful framework in which to understand both the emotional and aesthetic components of empowered identity critique. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of essays highlights the relevance of Buddhist doctrine and practice to issues of globalization. From philosophical, religious, historical, and political perspectives, the authors show that Buddhism—arguably the world’s first transnational religion—is a rich resource for navigating todays interconnected world.

Comparative philosophy is an important site for the study of non-Western philosophical traditions, but it has long been associated with “East-West” dialogue. Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies shifts this trajectory to focus on cross-cultural conversations across Asia and Latin America. A team of international contributors discuss subjects ranging from Orientalism in early Latin American studies of Asian thought to liberatory politics in today's globalized world. They bring together resources including Latin American feminism, Aztec teachings on ethics, Buddhist (...) critiques of essentialism, and Confucian morality. Chapters address topics such as educational reform, the social practices surrounding breastfeeding, martial arts as political resistance, and the construction of race and identity. Together the essays reflect the philosophical diversity of Asia and Latin America while foregrounding their shared concerns on issues of Eurocentrism and coloniality. By bringing these critical perspectives to bear on the theories and methods of cross-cultural philosophy, Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies offers new insights into the nature and practice of philosophical comparison. (shrink)

When I first opened my copy of Thomas Kasulis's Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History, I had planned to skip around, as one might do when reading an edited volume. Initially, I was most interested in how I might excerpt various chapters for classroom use. And I have indeed come away with many ideas for reading this book with students. But, after making it through just the first few pages of Kasulis's highly informative and entertaining history of Japanese philosophy, I (...) found that the book demands to be read in the order in which it was written. In addition to his role as philosopher and historian, in this book Kasulis is a storyteller. And so, as when enjoying a... (shrink)

When considering questions of Buddhism, business and the economy, the production and transfer of karmic merit is an often-overlooked resource, perhaps due to the unexamined assumption that merit is not, after all, ‘real.’ This essay aims to show that taking merit production seriously reveals a well-established economic model that operates alongside, and at times contrary to, systems of monetary exchange. Precisely because of the tendency to interface with money economies, networks of merit transfer can intervene in common economic practices underlying (...) existing social conditions. For example, Xinxing (540–594), founder of the Sanjie movement, teaches that we can discharge our otherwise insurmountable karmic burden by making a single donation to the ‘Inexhaustible Storehouse.’ Donations to the Storehouse were thought to generate merit for the donors, a system already relied upon by Buddhist monasteries to raise money. However, unique to Xinxing’s Storehouse, anyone could borrow as needed, and repayment was optional. The Storehouse was so successful that it began to rival the government as a resource for social welfare, leading to its eventual disbandment. Moving from Xinxing to the present, this essay surveys other examples of merit-making rituals as drivers for charitable giving and socio-political change. (shrink)

Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page.Great commentarial traditions, such as the Talmud or the studies of Chinese classics, are not passive expositions of authoritative source materials but constructive and at times subversive projects, seizing mainstream interpretations of influential texts and repurposing them for novel and creative applications. In this process, new concepts are not produced ex nihilo, as it were, but are wrested from the (...) old ones via the productive power of commentarial writing. For example, historian Tze-ki Hon has argued that the civil servants of the Northern Song accomplished a quiet political revolution... (shrink)

Bin Song's translation of Gao Panlong's works on quiet sitting ) is a slim volume that nonetheless makes a large statement on the status of "Confucianism" as a subject of scholarship in philosophy and religious studies. The opening paragraph of the introduction announces Song's interpretative and methodological commitments: In this book, "Confucius" will be known as Kongzi, his venerated pinyin name. The terms "Ru" and "Ruist" will be used in place of "Confucian." Likewise, "Ruism" will be used in place of (...) "Confucianism." Lastly, the term "Neo-Confucianism," which is normally used to describe new developments within Ruism during the Song and Ming Dynasties, will be replaced... (shrink)

_This article makes the following comparative claims about the contributions of Song- and Ming-dynasty Chinese discourses to recent work in the related fields of new materialism and speculative realism: emerging trends in so-called new materialism can be understood through the Chinese study of _qi _, which can be translated as “lively material” or “vital stuff”; and the notion of “speculation” as this is used in recent speculative realism can be understood as the study of, engagement with, and ultimate transformation by (...) _li _, a term meaning “principle” or “structure.” However, the focus of the article is as much polemical as it is comparative. By arguing that these contemporary Western movements be categorized by Chinese schools, I challenge and reverse the tendency to subsume non-Western philosophies under Western categories and intervene in the academic practices that continue to define the “new” on Eurocentric models alone._. (shrink)

The recently published collection Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, edited by Bret Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason Wirth, gathers together the best in contemporary scholarship on the Kyoto School and its legacy. This review essay is an opportunity to raise questions about the implications of this scholarship and to reflect critically on the future of the field. Although early Kyoto School philosophers are renowned for their lofty intellectual rigor, almost every one at some point bemoaned the (...) overly abstract flavor of their own work and that of their contemporaries. The call to make the philosophy concrete is without a doubt the unfinished business of the Kyoto School. This review assesses the collected volume’s range of critical and creative perspectives on the practical implications of Kyoto School theory, while indicating room for further engagement with this issue in future research. (shrink)

Despite the breadth of material covered, Philip J. Ivanhoe's Three Streams: Confucian Reflections on Learning and the Moral Heart-Mind in China, Korea, and Japan traces a central narrative: the reception of and eventual reaction against Song-dynasty Confucianism throughout East Asia. The reception of these discourses speaks to the far-reaching influence of Song-dynasty Confucian philosophy, especially the so-called Cheng-Zhu school associated with the work of Zhu Xi. The reaction against them speaks to a turn against Song-era metaphysical speculation and towards fidelity (...) to the much earlier and supposedly authentic Confucianism of Mengzi. As Ivanhoe remarks, if we grant Alfred North... (shrink)

I am truly humbled and astounded to find myself the grateful recipient of the wise insight, critical engagement, and creative elaboration provided by the three readers of my book, Boram Jeong, Martina Ferrari, and Eric S. Nelson.I begin with Boram Jeong's attention to the decolonizing trajectory of the book. Throughout my writing process, I sought to enact the provincialization of Europe1 by decentering Eurocentric discourse and, at times, actively ignoring it. The result, I suspected, would be that my very theories (...) and methods would become unintelligible to the academic philosophical mainstream. At times, I worried to myself: does this book contribute to a "cross-cultural" philosophical project if other... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations by John MaraldoLeah KalmansonJohn Maraldo, Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations Nagoya: Chisokudō, 2019.Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations is the second in a series of three volumes featuring selections from John Maraldo’s work in Japanese philosophy over the years. The format might best be described as a hybrid text somewhere between an edited collection and (...) a single-authored book. All of the essays in Borderline Interrogations are updated versions of Maraldo’s own previously published works or records of unpublished talks. They are grouped thematically into five sections, with each section prefaced by a brief introduction to provide readers with context as well help them draw connections across the entire work. However, compared to the first volume, which was more or less unified via its focus on Nishida, this second volume offers a more disparate array of topics. This could be seen as a strength or a weakness, depending on whether readers approach the text expecting something more like a book or more like an edited collection. Hence, openness toward the hybrid format at the outset can help readers navigate the text and better appreciate its unique approach to philosophizing.In his introduction, Maraldo addresses questions of cultural borders and bridges, including issues of identity, translation, and disciplinarity. He selects the word “intercultural”—as opposed to multicultural, cross-cultural, or comparative—to describe the kind of philosophy developing in Japan during and after the initial impact of Nishida on the formation of the academic discipline at institutional centers in both Kyōto and Tōkyō. With this word choice, he invites readers to reflect on various Japanese philosophers’ engagements with German- and English-language texts. Familiarity with another language (whether this amounts to full fluency or basic academic competency) enables a style of philosophical conversation that Maraldo compares to a Gadamerian process of hermeneutic play. Crucially, the twists and turns of translation, or thinking across and between several languages at once, takes the lead in directing philosophical thinking, rather than the other way around. As Maraldo says, “What is [End Page 143] decisive is the moment of release from trying self-consciously to control all movement back and forth” (10). This interplay of multiple languages is a definitive feature of the intercultural philosophy that Maraldo associates with twentieth-century and contemporary Japan.He goes on to describe this kind of philosophizing via Ueda Shizuteru’s writings on the Japanese poem form of renku or “linked verse.” Such poetic practices are open-ended, allowing multiple participants to make creative connections arising from the ever-evolving context of the poem itself. The composition, in some senses, “lives” at this border between the verse just written and the verse yet to be added, being the sole property of neither verse’s author. So too, Maraldo suggests, does intercultural philosophy live at the border between various languages and intellectual traditions. Readers might appreciate thinking of the hybrid form of his collection itself on the renku model—various narrative and thematic threads do run through the book, but the work as a whole remains open-ended, marking a record of Maraldo’s own intercultural philosophizing over the many years of his career. It ends, but does not conclude, with a “cliffhanger” of sorts best appreciated with the conversational intercultural model in mind.Maraldo’s short introductions that precede each of the five sections of the book give ample context regarding the projects for which various works were written, Maraldo’s own interests at the time of writing, how his thinking has or has not changed over time, and so forth; but they do not go as far as they might in guiding readers to see the book’s larger themes. Hence this review will focus on bringing some of these themes into sharper focus.The opening section includes four essays on Watsuji Tetsurō’s ethical philosophy, the first of which is largely introductory, establishing the main concepts of personhood, community, and “betweenness” (aidagara 間柄) through a hermeneutic lens informed by Watsuji’s reading of Heidegger. The third and fourth essays are critical and constructive, respectively—the former... (shrink)

Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism offers an original and provocative interpretation of existentialist themes and threads running through classical and modern East Asian Buddhist and Ruist philosophical sources. The book takes its point of departure in existential questions concerning meaningfulness and meaning-formative practices, as articulated in European existentialism and postexistentialism, and traces how these questions are and can be addressed in their own terms in dharmic and Song dynasty Ruist discourses of karma, vital force, and ritual propriety. The book (...) elucidates existential techniques and practices encompassing case studies of Buddhist... (shrink)

… philosophy must be a practice as much as it is a theory.Leah Kalmanson, Cross-Cultural Existentialism, p. 1In the face of the sheer quantity of life's uncertainties, Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism provides more than a novel take on existential theory ; following the mantra of European existentialists that "philosophies are meant to be lived," Cross-Cultural Existentialism introduces the reader to a series of practices central to the Ruist tradition required to make philosophy "a concrete attitude, a (...) way of life". Kalmanson's turn to the East Asian tradition is largely motivated by her assessment that the... (shrink)

Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought develops what the author calls 'speculative existentialism' by challenging the metaphysical assumptions behind the existential inquiry in the West. The author turns to East Asian thought—Ruism in particular—questioning the "problematic understanding of subjective interiority" that remains in European existentialism despite its efforts to subvert subject-object dualism. The author writes, "my book is ultimately about the radical existential vision of Ruism, a tradition that has, in (...) general, received less attention than Buddhism in comparative existential work."1 A revised existentialism... (shrink)

Investigations of data-centered efforts in advocacy and activism are often cast in terms of a narrative of opposition between grassroots activists working through and with data, and corporations or institutions whose actions data might expose. The boundaries are, however, not so distinct in practice. Indeed, one outcome of successful advocacy efforts for opening big data to the public is that the activists may find themselves drawn into the institutions they critique or view as impediments in order to actualize those efforts (...) from the inside. Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic investigation of urban data initiatives inside city government, we explore the productive ambivalences of activism and advocacy that arise when those with data activist ideals find themselves operating within the government structure. (shrink)

The vast majority of health research resources are used to study conditions that affect a small, advantaged portion of the global population. This distribution has been widely criticized as inequitable and threatens to exacerbate health disparities. However, there has been little systematic work on what individual health research funders ought to do in response. In this article, we analyze the general and special duties of research funders to the different populations that might benefit from health research. We assess how these (...) duties apply to governmental, multilateral, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. We thereby derive a framework for how different types of funders should take the beneficiaries of research into account when they allocate scarce research resources. (shrink)

_K. al-Manām_ by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā is a compendium of 350 Muslim dream narratives in Arabic. The English introduction examines the function of dreams in classical Arabic literature with a focus on dreams as a means of edification.

The need for greater privacy protections in the United States has never been greater. In their work, “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies That Process Personal Data”, McCoy et al. (2023) correct...

This article tells the story of the oil and gas origins of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth is a homeostatic system. It shows how Gaia’s key assumption—that the climate is a fundamentally stable system, able to withstand perturbations—emerged as a result of a collaboration between the theory’s progenitor, James Lovelock, and Royal Dutch Shell in response to Shell’s concerns about the effects of its products on the climate. The article explains how Lovelock elaborated the Gaia hypothesis and (...) gave it evidential depth through a series of Royal Dutch Shell-funded research projects meant to identify organisms whose biological activities might double as climate-regulating mechanisms. The article goes on to show how this research subsequently laid the foundation for a distinct genre of climate change denialism, in which corporations sowed doubt not by denying the phenomenon of global warming but by naturalizing it. (shrink)

In the US and UK Births in obstetric units vastly outnumber births that take place outside of an obstetric unit. Still non-obstetric births are increasing in both countries. Is it professionally responsible to support a non-obstetric birth? It is morally responsible to choose to give birth at home? This debate has become heated with those on both sides finding empirical support for their positions. Indeed this moral debate is often carried out in terms of empirical evidence. While to some this (...) debate over the evidence is a distraction from what is genuinely at stake, namely different non-epistemic values, I will argue in this paper that the way forward is to take a closer and more fine grained look at the evidence. This closer look will first require that we distinguish between evidence of risk acceptability and evidence of safety and then focus carefully on evidence of the safety of non-obstetric births compared to obstetric births. (shrink)

Philosophical and theological perspectives of faith.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.