This book presents the first collection of essays on the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru in a Western language. Ueda, the last living member of the Kyoto school, has fostered the East-West dialogue in all his works and has helped to open up the Western image of philosophy by engaging the Zen tradition. The book reflects this particular trait of Ueda’s philosophy, but it also covers all thematic fields of his writings. Contributions from both young and established scholars and experts from (...) Japan, Europe and the U.S. make this a unique introduction to and reception of Ueda’s philosophy. Readers will discover discussions of mysticism in the East and West, and consideration of modern philosophy topics including self-awareness, nature and poetic language. The book also presents a focussed look at language and nothingness, considering silence and nihilism. Chapters allow the reader to understand the timeliness of a thinking that mediates and transcends the dichotomy of East and West. This volume will appeal not only to scholars of Nishida, Japanese philosophy, mysticism and religious experience in Japan, but also to scholars of Western philosophy, especially those interested in Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. It makes an ideal introduction to Zen philosophy and presents important contributions to scholarship on language and experience. (shrink)

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

This book contains short analyses of Ogyū Sorai’s most important works, as well as a biography and a number of essays. The essays explore various aspects of his teachings, of the origins of his thought, and of the reception of his ideas in Japan, China, and Korea before and after "modernization" struck in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ogyū Sorai has come to be considered the pivotal thinker in the intellectual history of Early Modern Japan. More research has (...) been done on Sorai than on any other Confucian thinker of this period. This book disentangles the modern reception from the way in which Sorai's ideas were understood and evaluated in Japan and China in the century following his death. The joint conclusion of the research of a number of the foremost specialists in Japan, Taiwan, and the West is that Sorai was and remains an original, innovative, and important thinker, but that his position within East-Asian thought should be redefined in terms of the East-Asian tradition to which he belonged, and not in the paradigms of European History of Philosophy or Intellectual History. The book represents up-to-date scholarship and allows both the young scholar to acquaint himself with Sorai, and the intellectual historian to compare Sorai with other thinkers of other times and of other philosophical traditions. (shrink)

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

dai 1-kan. Hō no kihon riron -- dai 2-5-kan. Hōshisō no rekishiteki tenkai -- dai 6-8-kan. Gendai jitteihō no kihon mondai.

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

This edited volume is the first in English that covers the philosophy of feeling and related topics in Japanese philosophy on Nishida Kitarō and fellow thinkers. Part I focuses on Nishida Kitarō’s philosophy of feeling, including, but not limited to, comparisons with Tanabe Hajime, Koyama Iwao, and provides coverage of Buddhist, moral and Chinese philosophy. Part II goes beyond Kitarō into topics such as Japanese aesthetics, Nietsche’s reception in Japan, and the philosophy of AI. This is a comprehensive scholarly text (...) on feeling in Japanese philosophy, aimed at researchers and students working in the field. (shrink)