In 2016, a Cincinnati Zoo worker shot and killed a Western lowland gorilla to protect a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the animal’s enclosure. This incident involves a variant of the classical trolley problem, one in which the death of a human being on the main track might be avoided by selecting an alternate track containing a member of an endangered species. This problem raises two important questions for environmental ethics. First, what, if anything, imbues a human child with (...) greater value than a member of a critically endangered species? Second, is it ethical for zoos to house species such as gorillas? With regard to the first question, at a minimum, it is not obvious whether a human child or a gorilla has the greater value. With regard to the second question, an appeal can be made to Japanese environmental philosophy, particularly the ethical paradigm of kyōsei and the aesthetics of Yuriko Saitō. Members of endangered species have intrinsic value, which entails human obligations to protect the species as a whole and minimize harm to its specimens. (shrink)

Compassion is a word we use frequently but rarely precisely. One reason we lack a philosophically precise understanding of compassion is that moral philosophers today give it virtually no attention. Indeed, in the predominant ethical traditions of the West, compassion tends to be either passed over without remark or explicitly dismissed as irrelevant. And yet in the predominant ethical traditions of Asia, compassion is centrally important: All else revolves around it. This is clearly the case in Buddhist ethics, and compassion (...) plays a similarly indispensable role in Confucian and Daoist ethics. In Compassion and Moral Guidance, Steve Bein seeks to explain why compassion plays such a substantial role in the moral philosophies of East Asia and an insignificant one in those of Europe and the West. The book opens with detailed surveys of compassion’s position in the philosophical works of both traditions. The surveys culminate in an analysis of the conceptions of self and why the differences between these conceptions serve either to celebrate or marginalize the importance of compassion. Bein moves on to develop a model for the ethics of compassion, including a chapter on applied ethics seen from the perspective of the ethics of compassion. The result is a new approach to ethics, one that addresses the Rawlsian and Kantian concern for fairness, the utilitarian concern for satisfactory consequences, and the concern in care ethics for the proper treatment of marginalized groups. Bein argues that compassion’s capacity to address all of these makes it a primary tool for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

“Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen makes available in a clear and fluid translation an early classic in modern Japanese philosophy. Steve Bein’s annotations, footnotes, introduction, and commentary bridge the gap separating not only the languages but also the cultures of its original readers and its new Western audience.” —from the Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis In 1223 the monk Dogen Kigen came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage (...) to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of Soto Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji’s efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan’s intellectual past, where he discovered writings by Dogen that had been hidden away by the monk’s own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon Dogen , which single-handedly rescued Dogen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen is the first English translation of Watsuji’s landmark book. A text intended to reacquaint Japan with one of its finest philosophers, the work delves into the complexities of individuals in social relationships, lamenting the stark egoism and loneliness of life in an increasingly Westernized Japan. In addition to an introduction that provides biographical details on Watsuji and Dogen, the translation is supplemented with a brief guide to the themes and ideas of Shamon Dogen, beginning with a consideration of the nature of faith and the role of responsibility in Watsuji’s vision of Dogen’s Zen. It goes on to examine the technical terms of Dogen’s philosophy and the role of written language in Dogen’s thought. (shrink)

“Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen makes available in a clear and fluid translation an early classic in modern Japanese philosophy. Steve Bein’s annotations, footnotes, introduction, and commentary bridge the gap separating not only the languages but also the cultures of its original readers and its new Western audience.” —from the Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis In 1223 the monk Dogen Kigen came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage (...) to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of Soto Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji’s efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan’s intellectual past, where he discovered writings by Dogen that had been hidden away by the monk’s own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon Dogen , which single-handedly rescued Dogen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen is the first English translation of Watsuji’s landmark book. A text intended to reacquaint Japan with one of its finest philosophers, the work delves into the complexities of individuals in social relationships, lamenting the stark egoism and loneliness of life in an increasingly Westernized Japan. In addition to an introduction that provides biographical details on Watsuji and Dogen, the translation is supplemented with a brief guide to the themes and ideas of Shamon Dogen, beginning with a consideration of the nature of faith and the role of responsibility in Watsuji’s vision of Dogen’s Zen. It goes on to examine the technical terms of Dogen’s philosophy and the role of written language in Dogen’s thought. (shrink)

Compassion is a word we use frequently but rarely precisely. One reason we lack a philosophically precise understanding of compassion is that moral philosophers today give it virtually no attention. Indeed, in the predominant ethical traditions of the West, compassion tends to be either passed over without remark or explicitly dismissed as irrelevant. And yet in the predominant ethical traditions of Asia, compassion is centrally important: All else revolves around it. This is clearly the case in Buddhist ethics, and compassion (...) plays a similarly indispensable role in Confucian and Daoist ethics. In Compassion and Moral Guidance, Steve Bein seeks to explain why compassion plays such a substantial role in the moral philosophies of East Asia and an insignificant one in those of Europe and the West. The book opens with detailed surveys of compassion’s position in the philosophical works of both traditions. The surveys culminate in an analysis of the conceptions of self and why the differences between these conceptions serve either to celebrate or marginalize the importance of compassion. Bein moves on to develop a model for the ethics of compassion, including a chapter on applied ethics seen from the perspective of the ethics of compassion. The result is a new approach to ethics, one that addresses the Rawlsian and Kantian concern for fairness, the utilitarian concern for satisfactory consequences, and the concern in care ethics for the proper treatment of marginalized groups. Bein argues that compassion’s capacity to address all of these makes it a primary tool for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

In the Rebels episode “Stealth Strike,” Kanan, Ezra, Rex, and Chopper rescue Commander Sato and his crew from the clutches of the Empire. Chopper occupies an uncomfortable moral position in Rebels, as do so many droids in the Star Wars canon. Many are highly intelligent, with unique personalities that aren't merely a function of their programming. The “organics” of the Star Wars universe, those sentient species made of flesh and blood seem to have relationships with droids similar to the kind (...) many of people have with their laptops and smartphones. Philosophers call beings who exhibit traits like self‐awareness, independent thought, and unique preferences persons. Mills says race is a social construct, not a biological fact. Social constructs, things that exist because societies create them, include things like money, empires, and rebellions, things so real that people are willing to die (or kill) for them. (shrink)

A traditional distinction is made in scholarship on Japanese Buddhism between two means for attaining enlightenment: jiriki 自力, or "self power," and tariki 他力, or "other power." Dōgen's Sōtō Zen is the paradigmatic example of a jiriki school: according to Dōgen, one attains enlightenment through strenuous zazen and rigorous ascetic practices. Shinran's Jōdo Shin Buddhism is the paradigmatic example of a tariki school: according to Shinran, human beings are incapable of self-salvation, but by chanting the nembutsu they can invoke the (...) compassionate power of Amida to save them. But the jiriki-tariki distinction is arguably a false one, with no place within Buddhism's nondualistic framework. If the basic Buddhist intuition toward nondualism is correct, then jiriki and tariki cannot be opposed at all, but must rather be two sides of the same coin. In fact, both Dōgen and Shinran are fully in agreement on abandoning the ego (ātman), and on abandoning the artificial self-other distinction that accompanies the ātman. Dōgen had deep faith in the path of the Buddhist patriarchs, and in the power of the sangha; hetaught that both were necessary means for attaining enlightenment. And Shinran firmly believed in incorporating the nembutsu in every facet of one's life, a feat for which supreme self-cultivation is required. Thus Dōgen and Shinran both preach tariki and jiriki; moreover, this is to be expected, for unless jiriki and tariki are one, their approaches to Buddhism would be dualistic. Dōgen and Shinran should be taken as model cases for understanding the unity of jiriki and tariki in all of Japanese Buddhism. (shrink)

One of the great virtues of LEGO is that it has the potential to make any one of us a Master Builder. In The LEGO Movie, Wyldstyle and Batman present a case study in the value of precision in language. If your basic two‐by‐four brick is the "uncarved block", LEGO makes "carved" ones too: cockpits, irregular minifig heads, all those cool bits. In the case of the LEGO brick, the less it's like a toy, the better we can play with (...) it. According to the Daoists, government is no different: the less it does, the better it works. One of the most telling differences between ancient Greek philosophy and ancient Chinese philosophy lies in their attitudes toward imprecision. LEGO Master Builders understand this. This is the Daoist model of government: commit yourself to the goal, be willing to be flexible, and voila, you've freed yourself of the tyranny of the instruction booklet. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the classical conceptions of justice and then examines the contemporary movements that arose to challenge these old concepts. It looks at Wakanda's record on justice. In the comics, the trial to become the Black Panther involves more than fighting, but ritual combat has always been the final and most glamorous test in Wakanda. The Wakandan philosopher Changamire quotes him in the 12‐issue run “A Nation Under Our Feet,” by Ta‐Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze. Changamire gathers not (...) just the powers that be (T'Challa the king and Aneka the rebel leader) but also ordinary citizens traumatized by the war, so that together they can navigate a path forward. Their interest is not retribution or reparation, but rather restorative justice. In the transformative justice movement, the work of justice is the work of building our capacity to take care of each other, as ordinary people in ordinary communities. (shrink)

Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself. One of the major themes in the Dune novels is what Friedrich Nietzsche calls self‐overcoming. This is an internal struggle against one's own physical, mental, and moral limits, in pursuit of a more powerful form of self‐expression. Hinduism says we're all born into samsara, the unending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In effect we're all players in the repertory theater of the cosmos, and director is the dharma, the cosmic (...) law behind both nature and morality. In the end, Hinduism says, we all reap what we sow. Self‐examination and self‐sacrifice in the name of self‐overcoming. But it's not selfish, as Nietzsche's philosophy is so often thought to be. (shrink)

There is a certain irony in Japan's foremost secular philosopher grounding his ontology and ethics in a term so infamously unclear as fūdo 風土, given that the Japanese word for philosophy itself denotes "clear thinking." One might make the case that Watsuji's concept of fūdo cannot but be unclear, since he is responding to Heidegger's Being and Time, which is hardly the model of lucid philosophy. That said, it is the philosopher's responsibility to clarify the unclear, and that is the (...) task David W. Johnson has appointed himself in Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger. It is a daunting charge, and Johnson does an admirable job of what those outside academic philosophy might... (shrink)

Zen advocates returning to a childlike state of mind, unburdened by the conceptual baggage that marks what people typically call “adult” and “mature” thinking – baggage that includes concepts of the self, of the future, and of hoarding worldly goods so one's future self will live comfortably. This chapter begins with a Zen master whose own life story is worthy of a Disney movie. His name is Dogen Kigen. Dogen chose the monastic path because he wanted the opposite of escape: (...) liberation. If the three marks of existence are the problem, the solution is not to flee them. Rather, it is to make peace with them. Rather, it is to make peace with them. If one can do that, maybe he/she can even reach a deeper level of insight: they were never the problem in the first place. (shrink)

Abstract:Watsuji Tetsurō's model of human existence (ningen sonzai) and his ethical principle of selfless solicitude (kokorozukai) imply not only a broadly permissive position on reproductive rights but a clearer vision of pregnancy and the fetus, and also a deeper moral critique of the anti-abortion movement.

Comics writer and artist Frank Miller reinvented Batman, bringing greater emotional, moral, and political depth to the character. This chapter considers Batman’s ethics and politics, examining his rejection of utilitarianism, his embrace of the will to power, his Kantian dilemma when dealing with the Joker, and the distinction to be drawn between Miller’s own libertarianism and Bruce Wayne’s Bat-Libertarianism.

Wonder Woman has evolved considerably since the Golden Age. (Thank Hera!) Different writers in different eras have tinkered with her back story and her resulting character. Yet throughout her many retellings people can point to two consistent trends: she is a warrior, and she protects the abused. As a warrior, her honor code isn't so different from bushido, the code of the samurai. She is selfless, fearless, relentless, and she even has a magic lasso to enforce the samurai virtue of (...) honesty. In the hands of her best writers, Wonder Woman is not a generic do‐gooder, nor is she a milquetoast rule follower. Though her moral motivations may shift from one author to the next, what is consistent throughout her many incarnations is that Wonder Woman is uniquely placed to be the samurai feminist, the only one who can reconcile bushido and care ethics. (shrink)

Hard determinism is hardly a new position, but the most common arguments are not widely convincing. Theological arguments rest on the oversight or control of a supernatural entity, and so are not convincing to any who do not share the metaphysical assumptions latent in the argument. Psychological arguments reston putatively scientific claims that, if examined more closely, seem not to be scientific at all. A doxastic argument avoids these pitfalls. According to this doxastic argument, beliefs are not freely chosen, for (...) to believe X is to be convinced of X, and it is not up to the agent to find something convincing or unconvincing. If an agent's allegedly free actions are based on beliefs, and if those beliefs cannot freely be chosen by the agent, then that agent's actions are not ultimately free. (shrink)

In the beginning of Star Trek Into Darkness, Mr. Spock descends into the heart of a raging volcano on the planet Nibiru. His mission: to detonate a cold fusion device that will solidify the bubbling magma before it erupts and destroys an entire civilization. Meanwhile, Captain James T. Kirk is on the bridge of the Enterprise facing a dilemma. He's duty‐bound never to violate the Prime Directive. One way to address the problem of the Prime Directive is to follow the (...) criteria used by Vulcans: reason and logic. This approach has been highly revered in the history of moral philosophy, and was most convincingly articulated by Immanuel Kant. Confucius and Aristotle would agree that while the Prime Directive is usually correct, there will be cases where it's wrong not to break it. The Prime Directive symbolizes just how difficult making good moral decisions can be. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenon of thought insertion, an experience reported by some schizophrenics where it is believed that other persons or forces are inserting thoughts into their minds. This relatively circumscribed symptom of schizophrenia raises difficult questions concerning our sense of agency for our thoughts. How is it possible that persons can think that their thoughts are not their own? Gallagher, drawing on Husserl’s early work on timeconsciousness, provides a subtle and sophisticated answer to this problem, suggesting that protention (...) may underlie our sense of agency for thinking and that the experience of inserted thoughts may occur in the event of an intermittent failure in this protentional function. More recent Husserl scholarship suggests, however, that this account may face problems on phenomenological grounds. It is argued here that our sense of agency for thinking requires more than protention, and, consequently, that the absence of protention cannot fully explain the loss of agency for thinking characterizing the experience of thought insertion. In order to contextualize this discussion of the phenomenon theoretically and, in the process, to provide an introduction to the difficulties in explaining it, this paper proceeds with a consideration of Frith’s early cognitive account of thought insertion and the contribution of Stephens and Graham in this regard. In conclusion, it is argued that, despite the merits of all three accounts presented, they remain unable to account for the phenomenon of inserted thoughts, and that we might more fruitfully understand this experience as bein a type of uncontrollable passive or autochthonous thinking. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

The most pressing issues of the twenty-first century—climate change and persistent hunger in a world of food surpluses, to name only two—are not problems that can be solved from within individual disciplines, nation-states, or cultural perspectives. They are predicaments that can only be resolved by generating sustained and globally robust coordination across value systems. The scale of the problems and necessity for coordinated global solutions signal a world historical transit as momentous as the Industrial Revolution: a transition from the predominance (...) of technical knowledge to that of ethical deliberation. This volume brings together leading thinkers from around the world to deliberate on how best to correlate worth (value) with what is worthwhile (values), pairing human prosperity with personal, environmental, and spiritual flourishing in a world of differing visions of what constitutes a moral life. Especially in the aftermath of what is now being called the Great Recession, awareness has mounted of the imperative to question the modern divorce of economics from ethics. While the domains of economics and ethics were from antiquity through at least the eighteenth century understood in many cultures to be coterminous and mutually entailing, the modern assumption has been that the goal of maximizing human prosperity and the aim of justly enhancing our lives as persons and as communities were functionally and practically distinct. Working from a wide array of perspectives, the contributors to this volume offer a set of challenges to the assumed independence of the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of human and planetary well-being. Reflecting on the complex interrelationship among economics, justice, and equity, the book resists "one size fits all" approaches and struggles to revitalize the marriage of economics and ethics by activating cultural differences as the basis of mutual contribution to shared human flourishing. The publication of this important collection will stimulate or extend critical debates among scholars and students working in a number of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, including philosophy, history, environmental studies, economics, and law. Contributors: Roger T. Ames, James Behuniak Jr., Steve Bein, Nalini Bhushan, Purushottama Bilimoria, Steven Burik, Amita Chatterjee, Baoyan Cheng, Gordon Davis, Jay L. Garfield, Steven F. Geisz, Peter D. Hershock, Larry A. Hickman, Kathleen M. Higgins, Heidi M. Hurd, Thomas P. Kasulis, Workineh Kelbessa, Lori Keleher, Oliver Leaman, James McRae, Jin Y. Park, James Peterman, Naoko Saito, May Sim, Robert Smid, Paul Standish, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Karsten J. Struhl, Meera Sushila Viswanathan, Wu Shiu- Ching, Xu Di, T. Yamauchi, Yang Liuxin. (shrink)

How are the teachings of a thirteenth-century master relevant today? Twenty contemporary writers unpack Dogen's words and show how we can still find meaning in his teachings. Engaging Dogen's Zen is a practice oriented study of Shushogi (a canonical distillation of Dogen's thought used as a primer in the Soto School of Zen) and Fukanzazengi (Dogen's essential text on the practice of "just sitting," a text recited daily in the Soto School of Zen). It is also a study of the (...) entire self. Here, the principles of Soto Zen practice are unpacked and explained by leading contemporary Buddhists from the living tradition--monks, priests, academics, and community teachers. Tackling Dogen's approach to key issues, such as the preeminence of shikantaza, universal buddha nature, and what it means to be a Mahayana Buddhist, the contributors to the volume help Zen practitioners and any who are trying to deepen their lives to appreciate better the teachings of Soto Zen and make these teachings part of their lives. By revisiting what remains precious in Shushogi and Fukanzazengi, we let them breathe just as we learn to breathe in zazen. We find that Soto practice not only engages Dogen and Sakyamuni, but all of our sisters and brothers, and indeed the great earth itself. Includes essays from Kosho Itagaki, Taigen Dan Leighton, Tenshin Charles Fletcher, Shudo Brian Schroeder, Glen A. Mazis, David Loy, Drew Leder, Steven DeCaroli, Steve Bein, John Maraldo, Michael Schwartz, Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Leah Kalmanson, Erin Jien McCarthy, Dainen David Putney, Steven Heine, Graham Parkes, Mark Unno, Shudo Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis. (shrink)

Despite Kant's belief in a universal causal determinism among phenomena and his rejection of any noumenal agency in brutes, he nevertheless rejected Descartes's hypothesis that brutes are machines. Explaining Kant's response to Descartes forms the basis for this discussion of the nature of consciousness and matter in Kant's system. Kant's numerous remarks on animal psychology-as found in his lecture notes and reflections on metaphysics and anthropology-suggest a theory of consciousness and self-consciousness at odds with that traditionally ascribed to him.

The thesis of this work is that in both modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism there has been a paradigm shift from a monological concept of self as an isolated "I" to a dialogical concept of the social self as an "I-Thou relation," including a communication model of self as individual-society interaction. It is also shown for both traditions all aesthetic, moral, and religious values are a function of the social self arising through communicative interaction between the individual and society. (...) However, at the same time this work critically examines major ideological conflicts arising between the social self theories of modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism with respect to such problems as individualism versus collectivism, freedom versus determinism, liberalism versus communitarianism, and relativism versus objectivism. (shrink)

This is a draft of the introduction to a forthcoming volume that brings together all of J. G. Herder's student notes from Immanuel Kant's lectures. It is intended as a volume in Kant's gesammelte Schriften (de Gruyter). These are the earliest notes (1762-64) we have from Kant's lectures (which span from 1755 to 1796) and the only notes before his professorship began in 1770. Included are improved transcriptions of Herder's notes on metaphysics, moral philosophy, logic, physics, and mathematics, and the (...) first transcription of his notes from Kant’s physical geography lectures. (shrink)

This book represents emerging alternative perspectives to the "constructivist" orthodoxy that currently dominates the field of science and technology studies. Various contributions from distinguished Americans and Europeans in the field, provide arguments and evidence that it is not enough simply to say that science is "socially situated." Controversial Science focuses on important political, ethical, and broadly normative considerations that have yet to be given their due, but which point to a more realistic and critical perspective on science policy.

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative aesthetics. The work begins with an overview of aesthetic theory in the West from the eighteenth-century empiricists to contemporary aesthetics and concludes with a survey of various critiques of psychic distance. Throughout, the author takes a highly innovative approach by juxtaposing Western aesthetic theory against Eastern aesthetic theory. Weaving between cultures and time periods, the author focuses (...) on a remarkably wide range of theories: in the West, the Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation, Heidegger's Gelassenheit, semiotics, and pragmatism; in Japan, Zeami's notion of riken no ken, the Kyoto School's intepretation of nothingness, D. T. Suzuki's analysis of the function of no-mind, and the writings of Kuki Shuzo on Buddhist detachment. "Portrait of the artist" fiction by such writers as Henry James, James Joyce, Mori Ogai, and Natsume Soseki demonstrates how the main theme of detachment is expressed in literary traditions. The role of sympathy or pragmatism in relation to disinterest is examined, suggesting conflicts within or challenges to the notion of detachment. Researchers and students in Eastern and Western areas of study, including philosophers and religionists, as well as literary and cultural critics, will deem this work an invaluable contribution to cross-cultural philosophy and literary studies. (shrink)

Abbreviations Works by Alfred North Whitehead 1) Adventures of Ideas. New York: Macmillan Co., 1967 AI 2) Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971 CN 3) Modes of Thought. New York: Macmillan Co., 1968 MT 4) Process ..

This paper is a study of four subscripted Gentzen systems G u R +, G u T +, G u RW + and G u TW +. [16] shows that the first three are equivalent to the semilattice relevant logics u R +, u T + and u RW + and conjectures that G u TW + is, equivalent to u TW +. Here we prove Cut Theorems for these systems, and then show that modus ponens is admissible — which (...) is not so trivial as one normally expects. Finally, we give decision procedures for the contractionless systems, G u TW + and G u RW +. (shrink)