Abstract
As the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy, UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照 (b. 1926) has not only followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), but has taken several strides forward in their shared pursuit of what can be called a “philosophy of Zen.” The “of” in this phrase should be understood as a “double genitive,” that is, in both its objective and subjective senses. Ueda not only philosophizes about Zen, he also philosophizes from Zen. Like Nishida and Nishitani before him, he has devoted himself to the practice of Zen as well as to the study of Western philosophy. However, what does it mean to speak, much less philosophize, about Zen experience? Ueda has in fact concentrated much of his attention on questions concerning the relation between Zen and philosophy or, more generally, between experience and language. Any development of a “philosophy of Zen,” Ueda recognizes, must begin with the question of what it means to “speak of experience.” What does it mean to express, that is, to speak from and about experience? This question has been at the heart of Ueda’s philosophical path from the beginning. His many works on this topic include a seminal early (1968) essay “Zen and Language,” later re-titled “The Language of Zen” (Ueda 2001: 183–260), articles written in German including “Awakening in Zen Buddhism as a Word-Event” (Ueda 1982a), and a recent article, “Language in a Twofold World,” which Ueda put together to represent his thought in a major anthology of Japanese philosophy (Ueda 2011a). In these and other works, Ueda convincingly demonstrates that the question of the relation between language and experience has always been a pivotal issue for the Zen tradition itself. He also shows how this tradition can help us, in the wake of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, to return afresh to this fundamental question.
Abandon words and speaking, and say a word!
—Wumen (Nishimura 1994: 103; Shibayama 2000: 175)
What can be understood with and expressed by language is not, in the end, language. … Any yet, at the same time, it is not the case that there is something that cannot be expressed by language. Rather, at bottom lies what I have called the primordial movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.”
—Ueda Shizuteru (Ueda 2002a: 309)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Although Ueda is widely recognized as the most important contemporary philosopher in the lineage of the Kyoto School, only fairly recently has research began to appear on his thought in Japanese and in Western languages. See the essays gathered in Shūkyōtetsugaku kenkyū 21 (2004) and Tōzai shūkyō kenkyū 4 (2005), as well as Davis (2008, 2013a, 2014b), Döll (2005, 2011, 2015), Heisig (2005), and Nagel (1998). On the Kyoto School and Ueda’s place therein see Davis (2014a) (Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this essay are my own. Since the subject of this essay is Ueda’s philosophy of Zen, I will generally use Japanese readings of terms and phrases from the Chan/Zen tradition. Names of Chinese figures, however, will be given in pinyin with Japanese pronunciations in parentheses. Japanese and Chinese names are written in the order of family name followed by given name.).
- 2.
I will discuss the noteworthy views of Wright (1998) and Hori (2000) below. A lucid attempt to moderate the debate between the proponents of “Traditional Zen Narrative” (TZN) and “Historical and Cultural Criticism” (HCC) can be found in Heine (2008). In seeking a middle way beyond the extremes of the TZN view that language is merely a heuristic instrument (a disposable finger pointing at the moon) and the HCC accusation that Zen’s use of language dissolves into sheer nonsense, Heine argues that “Zen writings are fully expressive of spiritual attainment, rather than merely a prelude to the abandonment of language,” and that Zen invents “a creative new style of expression that uses language in unusual and ingenious fashions to surpass a reliance on everyday words and letters” (Heine 2008: 29, 38, 40). Along with Hee-jin Kim, Heine prefers the epistemological and soteriological affirmations of language in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō to other figures and texts in the Zen tradition that stress the need to cut through the “entangling vines” of language (see Heine 1994; Kim 1987; Kim 2007). A more critical treatment of the topic of language in Zen can be found Faure (1993), who argues that Chan (Zen) emerged as “first and foremost … a discourse on practice and a discursive practice” that, like all discourses, is “subject to specific epistemological, cultural, and sociopolitical constraints” (Faure 1993: 194). While dismissive of what he sees as Chan/Zen’s “rhetoric of immediacy,” which purports to attain to a “pure experience” outside of language, Faure, too, is more sympathetic with Dōgen’s affirmative view of language. He writes: “A recurrent description of awakening is that ‘the path of language is cut off, all mental functions are extinguished.’ However, language was also perceived as having an infinite depth. Therefore, the possibility of an awakening taking place within language could not be excluded. Perhaps this alternative is at the background of the famous opposition drawn by Dōgen between Linji’s notion of the ‘true man without a rank’ (C. wuwei zhenren, J. mui no shinnin)—who has awakened outside (and without) language—and his own advocacy of the ‘true man with a rank’ (C. youwei zhenren, J. ui no shinnin)—who has awakened with and within language” (Faure 1993: 195–196). As we shall see, however, Ueda problematizes this apparent dichotomy between with/within and outside/without language, and in so doing offers a fresh alternative that is able to account for both positive and negative attitudes toward language found in the Zen tradition (including Dōgen).
- 3.
- 4.
This key phrase can also be translated as “exiting language and then exiting into language.” But, as we shall see, it is important to bear in mind that Ueda thinks of this as a bidirectional and circling movement. I will keep the phrase in quotes to indicate that the two moments of the movement must be thought together.
- 5.
According to Ueda, Nishida eventually realized that, as a philosophical standpoint which intended to “explain everything,” “pure experience” was insufficient because it did not account for the intellectual reflection involved in this activity of explaining itself (Ueda 1991a: 167). In response to this problem, Nishida shifted to a standpoint of “self-awareness” that would include both “intuition” and “reflection.” Nishida’s understanding of self-awareness as a matter of “seeing the self within the self” led to his middle period philosophy of “place,” which was subsequently developed through his considerations of alterity and history into his later period philosophy of the dialectically self-determining world. In the latter, as Nishida himself notes in his 1936 preface to An Inquiry into the Good, the notion of “pure experience” is rethought as “acting-intuition” (Nishida 1987: 6–7 = Nishida 1990: xxxiii). In any case, while Nishida’s abiding concern was with developing a system of philosophy which could “explain everything,” Ueda focuses his attention on the sense in which the primal event of pure experience takes place as a death-and-rebirth of language and meaning, which entails a death-and-rebirth of the linguistic horizons and meaningful parameters of—and thus of the very possibility of—explanation. In this sense, while Nishida was more concerned with developing a philosophical system on the basis of Zen experience, Ueda is more concerned with giving a phenomenological account of the basic Zen experience itself.
- 6.
Ueda also refers here to Dōgen’s “the presencing of truth” (J. genjō-kōan 現成公案) as a rudimentary phrase. As if in counterpoint to the idea that “nothing is hidden,” however, in the text that bears the title Genjōkōan Dōgen proclaims: “When one side is illuminated, the other side is darkened” (Davis 2009: 256). Working out the relation between such contrasting and/or complementary rudimentary phrases found in Zen literature (level B) would require developing a philosophy of Zen (level C). In this case, one might argue that “nothing is hidden” does not entail that everything is simultaneously illuminated.
- 7.
The idea of “pure experience” has in fact been frequently attacked by critics of Zen and the Kyoto School who claim that it is as ideologically motivated as it is epistemologically questionable (see Faure 1993: 78–80; Sharf 1995). While in some cases I would question the epistemological assumptions and ideological motivations of these critics themselves, I do not doubt that the notion of “pure experience” can and has been used for ideological ends and in epistemologically questionable ways, at least by epigones, if not at times by the Kyoto School philosophers themselves. I will nevertheless make the case in what follows that Ueda’s specific account of “pure experience” as a bivalent event of “exiting language and exiting into language” is a viable and compelling way to think about the relation between experience and language, a way, moreover, that effectively calls into question some of the philosophical assumptions of these critics (and of the philosophers on whom they rely).
- 8.
Ueda’s familiarity is with the continental European tradition of philosophy rather than with the Anglo-American analytic tradition, and I will be referring mainly to continental philosophies of language. For a landmark anthology of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, see Rorty (1967).
- 9.
This ambiguity is clearer in German, since erfahren is often used in the sense of “to find out” or “to come to know” as well as “to experience.”
- 10.
Gadamer’s insistence on the irreducibly linguistic nature of our relation to the world is strongest in the period of his magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960). Subsequently, there is arguably a turn in his thinking away from too closely identifying being with language, and late in life he sometimes reflects on the limits of language (see Gadamer 2000). In an interview with an Indian philosopher, he goes so far as to say that “language is always limited. At some point, we have to look beyond language” (Gadamer in Pantham 1992: 130). For a fuller treatment of Gadamer in this regard, see Davis (2015).
- 11.
Nishitani calls this dualism into question by referring to what he calls “the paradox of representation.” In ordinary dualistic experience on what Nishitani calls “the field of consciousness,” “all things are taken to be objective entities, in opposition to which the self-conscious ego is posited as a subjective entity.” The paradox of representation lies in the fact that “an object is nothing other than something that has been represented as an object, and even the very idea of something independent of representation can only come about as a representation” (Nishitani 1987: 122 = Nishitani 1982: 108). That is to say, the very idea of a “thing in itself” outside representation is itself a representational idea. Nishitani’s solution to this paradox, however, is not to declare a subjective or linguistic idealism but rather to suggest the possibility of nondualistic experience. The field of consciousness is both a place of alienation from things and a place wherein things are distorted by being reduced to objects within the representational horizon of the egocentric subject. Only by breaking through this field of dualistic and egocentric experience, and, moreover, through the field of nihilism, wherein the world loses all its (egocentric) meaning, can one experience things nondualistically on “the field of emptiness” (see Davis 2004b: 155–158).
- 12.
This statement retains its significance beyond the restrictions of the representational philosophy of language of this early work. Wittgenstein later speaks of a plurality of “language games,” each defining a “form of life,” as collectively defining the shifting parameters of the worlds in which we dwell (see Wittgenstein 1958: 11). It should also be noted that, in his early period, Wittgenstein is also interested in directing out attention the experience of the mystical which exceeds the limits of our linguistically determined worlds.
- 13.
On Heidegger’s understanding of “the nothing,” and Ueda’s interpretation of Heidegger’s shift from experiencing the nothing in an attunement of “anxiety” (G. Angst) to experiencing it in an attunement of “releasement” (G. Gelassenheit), see Davis (2013b: 465–468).
- 14.
On Ueda’s phenomenology of “being-in-the-twofold-world” (J. nijūsekainaisonzai 二重世界内存在), according to which we are situated within a world of meaning which is in turn situated within a “hollow-expanse,” see Ueda (2002a: 329–345; Ueda 2002c: 294–295; Ueda 2002d; Ueda 2011a: 769; Ueda 2011b: 75–76; Ueda 1992: 63–64).
- 15.
The word Nishida uses for a “moment” of pure experience is not the usual shunkan 瞬間 but rather setsuna 刹那, derived from the Sanskrit ksana, which is a technical Buddhist term for the smallest increment of time (Nishida 1987: 9 = Nishida 1990: 3). Although Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers sometimes calculated a ksana to be approximately 1/75 of a second, Ueda suggests that the Kierkegaardian notion of Augenblick as a momentary irruption of eternity into time is closer to what is at issue here (see Ueda 1991a: 79; Ueda 2002a: 375).
- 16.
One could compare this to Heidegger’s discussion of artworks, and poetry in particular, as opening up and establishing a world. “Poetry,” writes Heidegger, “is the founding of being in the word” (Heidegger 2000: 59). Developing this idea, John T. Lysaker writes that “certain poems enable us to experience the birth of sense in such a radical fashion that they transform the sense of all that is” (Lysaker 2002: ix).
- 17.
“Gonsen kōan bring to light the fact that while the Fundamental is ‘not founded on words and letters’, it is nevertheless expressed through words and letters” (Hori 2003: 21).
- 18.
It remains to be discussed how dialogue—beginning with the mondō of sanzen—is an essential aspect of language for Ueda. It is noteworthy that, in his first book on Zen, the long chapter on language is followed by an equally long chapter on dialogue (Ueda 2001: 183–319). In his first German essay on the topic of language and Zen, Ueda writes: “The verbal as well as the nonverbal articulation … takes place primarily in the betweenness [im Zwischen] of person and person…. The originary word articulates itself in the encounter with and in facing the other…. The place of articulation is primarily the between [das Zwischen]” (Ueda 1982a: 229). There is also a form of Zen-affiliated poetry that Ueda attends to, the “linked verses” of renku 連句, which is noteworthy for its radically dialogical character (see Ueda 2001: 321–344; Ueda 2011b: 59–71 = Ueda 1989b: 25–36). On Ueda’s understanding of interpersonal dialogue and its relevance to intercultural dialogue, see Davis (2014b: 182–194; 2017).
Works Cited
Cleary, Thomas and J. C. Cleary, trans. 1977. The Blue Cliff Record. Boulder: Shambhala.
Davis, Bret W. 2004a. Provocative Ambivalences in Japanese Philosophy of Religion: With a Focus on Nishida and Zen. In Japanese Philosophy Abroad, ed. James W. Heisig, 295–329. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
———. 2004b. The Step Back Through Nihilism: The Radical Orientation of Nishitani Keiji’s Philosophy of Zen. Synthesis Philosophica 37: 139–159.
———. 2008. Letting Go of God for Nothing: Ueda Shizuteru’s Non-Mysticism and the Question of Ethics in Zen Buddhism. In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 2, ed. Victor Sogen Hori and Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, 226–255. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
———. 2009. The Presencing of Truth: Dōgen’s Genjōkōan. In Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, ed. Jay Garfield and William Edelglass, 251–259. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2013a. Review of Shizuteru Ueda, Wer und was bin ich: Zur Phänomenologie des Selbst im Zen-Buddhismus (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2011). Monumenta Nipponica 68 (2): 321–327.
———. 2013b. Heidegger and Asian philosophy. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger, ed. François Raffoul and Eric S. Nelson, 459–471. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
———. 2014a. The Kyoto School. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (winter 2014 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. URL http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/kyoto-school/.
———. 2014b. Conversing in Emptiness: Rethinking Cross-Cultural Dialogue with the Kyoto School. In Philosophical Traditions (Royal Institute of philosophy supplement 74), ed. Anthony O’Hear, 171–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2015. Sharing Words of Silence: Panikkar after Gadamer. Comparative and Continental Philosophy 7 (1): 52–68.
———. 2017. Jiyū-na hinjugokan: Ueda shizuteru no zen-tetsugaku kara mita taiwa no kakushin [The Free Exchange of Host and Guest: The Core of Dialogue According to the Zen Philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru]. In Nihon hatsu no sekai shisō[Global Thought from Japan], ed. Kazuhiko Tōgō, Tetsurō Mori, and Masanori Nakatani, 104–124. Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten.
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dōgen 道元. 1990a. Shōbōgenzō 『正法眼蔵』 [The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye].4 vols., ed. Yaoko Mizuno 水野弥穂. Tokyo: Iwanami.
———. 1990b. Dōgen zenji goroku 『道元禅師語録』 [The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Dōgen], ed. Genryū Kagashima 鏡島元隆. Tokyo: Kōdansha.
———. 2002. The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. Trans. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Döll, Steffen. 2005. Wozu also suchen? Zur Einführung in das Denken von Ueda Shizuteru. Munich: Iudicium.
———. 2011. Ueda Shizuteru’s Phenomenology of Self and World: Critical Dialogues with Descartes, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. In Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, ed. Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason M. Wirth, 120–137. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 2015. The Self That is Not a Self in the World That is Twofold: The Thought of Ueda Shizuteru. In The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, ed. Bret W. Davis. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199945726.013.2.
Dworkin, Craig. 2009. The Stutter of Form. In The Sound of Poetry, The Poetry of Sound, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin, 166–183. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Elberfeld, Rolf. 2011. The Middle Voice of Emptiness: Nishida and Nishitani. In Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, ed. Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason M. Wirth, 269–285. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Faure, Bernard. 1993. Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2000. Boundaries of Language. Trans. Laurence Schmidt and Monika Reuss. In Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, ed. Laurence Schmidt, 9–17. Lanham: Lexington Books.
———. 2004. Truth and Method. Second, revised edition. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum.
Heidegger, Martin. 1998. Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1999. Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein,” Gesamtausgabe, vol. 39. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
———. 2000. Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller. New York: Humanity Books.
———. 2010. Country Path Conversations. Trans. Bret W. Davis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heine, Steven. 1994. Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 2008. Zen Skin, Zen Marrow. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heisig, James W. 2005. Approaching the Ueda Shizuteru Collection. The Eastern Buddhist 37 (1-2): 254–274.
Hori, G. Victor Sōgen. 2000. Kōan and Kenshō in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum. In The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 280–315. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2003. Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義, Yūzō Mizoguchi 溝口雄三, Fumihiko Sueki 末木文美士, and Fumio Itō 伊藤文生. 1992. Hekiganroku 『碧巌録』. Vol. 3. Tokyo: Iwanami.
Kant, Immanuel. 1965. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Katz, Steven T. 1978. Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism. In Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Steven T. Katz, 22–74. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kim, Hee-Jin. 1987. Dōgen Kigen: Mystical Realist. Revised edition. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
———. 2007. Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lysaker, John T. 2002. You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Marra, Michael F. 2011. Japan’s Frames of Meaning: A Hermeneutics Reader. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
———. 1981. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.
Nagel, Bruno. 1998. Beyond a Personal God? Shizuteru Ueda’s Zen Buddhist Interpretation of Meister Eckhart. Trans. Lucy Jansen. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 8(1): 74–98
Nishida, Kitarō 西田幾多郎. 1987. Zen no kenkyū 『善の研究』 [An Inquiry into the Good]. Nishida Kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō]. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Iwanami.
——— 西田幾多郎. 1990. An Inquiry into the Good. Trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Nishimura, Eshin 西村恵信, ed. 1994. Mumonkan 『無門関』 [The Gateless Barrier]. Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko.
Nishitani, Keiji 西谷啓治. 1991. Nishida Kitarō. Trans. Seisaku Yamamoto and James W. Heisig. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——— 西谷啓治. 1986. Remembering Daisetz Suzuki. In A Zen Life: D. T. Suzuki Remembered, ed. Masao Abe, 148-159. New York: Weatherhill.
——— 西谷啓治 1987. Shūkyō wa nanika? 『宗教とは何か 』[What is Religion?]. Nishitani keiji chosakushū 『西谷啓治著作集』 [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji], vol. 10. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1987.
——— 西谷啓治. 1991. Nishida Kitarō. Trans.Yamamoto Seisaku and James W. Heisig. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pantham, Thomas. 1992. Some Dimensions of the Universality of Philosophical Hermeneutics: A Conversation with Hans-Georg Gadamer. Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 9: 123–135.
Raffoul, François. 2010. The Origins of Responsibility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1967. Duino Elegies. Trans. J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
———. 1970. Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. M. D. Herter Norton. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
———. 1975. Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties. Trans. J. L. Mood. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Rorty, Richard M. 1967. The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Sasaki, Ruth Fuller, trans. 2009. The Record of Linji. Ed. Thomas Yūhō Kirchner. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Sharf, Robert H. 1995. Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience. Numen 42: 228–283.
Shibayama, Zenkei. 2000. The Gateless Barrier: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan. Boston: Shambhala.
Shūkyōtetsugaku kenkyū 『宗教哲学研究』 [Studies in the Philosophy of Religion] 21. 2004.
Thurman, Robert A. F., trans. 1976. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Tōzai shūkyō kenkyū 『東西宗教研究』 [East-West Religious Studies] 4. 2005.
Ueda, Shizuteru 上田閑照. 1965. Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit: Die mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn.
———. 1981. Nishida tetstugaku ni okeru shūkyōrikai ni tsuite 「西田哲学における宗教理解について」 [On the Understanding of Religion in Nishida’s Philosophy]. In Zettai mu to kami 『絶対無と神』 [Absolute Nothingness and God], ed. Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 56–81. Tokyo: Shunjūsha.
———. 1982a. Das Erwachen im Zen-Buddhismus als Wort-Ereignis. In Offenbarung als Heilserfahrung im Christentum, Hinduismus und Buddhismus, ed. Walter Strolz and Shizuteru Ueda, 209–234. Freiburg: Herder.
———. 1982b. Emptiness and Fullness: Śūnyatā in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Trans. James W. Heisig and Frederick Greiner. The Eastern Buddhist 15(1): 9–37.
———. 1989a. Eckhart und Zen am Problem ‘Freiheit und Sprache.’ In Beihefte der Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 31: 21–92. Köln: E. J. Brill.
———. 1989b. The Zen Buddhist Experience of the Truly Beautiful. Trans. John C. Maraldo. The Eastern Buddhist 22.1: 1–36.
———. 1991a. Nishida kitarō o yomu 『西田幾多郎を読む』 [Reading Nishida Kitarō]. Tokyo: Iwanami.
———. 1991b. Freedom and Language in Meister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism: Part Two. Trans. Richard F. Szippl. The Eastern Buddhist 24(1): 52–80.
———. 1992. The Place of Man in the Noh Play. Trans. Paul Shepherd. The Eastern Buddhist 25(2): 59–88.
———. 1993. Zen and Philosophy in the Thought of Nishida Kitarō. Trans. Mark Unno. Japanese Religions 18(2): 162–193.
———. 1994. The Practice of Zen. Trans. Ron Hadley and Thomas L. Kirchner. The Eastern Buddhist 27(1): 10–29.
———. 1995. “Nishida’s Thought.” Trans. Jan Van Bragt. The Eastern Buddhist 28(1): 29–47.
———. 2001. Zen: Kongenteki ningen 『禅—根源的人間』 [Zen: Originary Human Being]. Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集』 [Ueda Shizuteru Collection], vol. 4. Tokyo: Iwanami.
———. 2002a. Keiken to jikaku 『経験と自覚』 [Experience and Self-awareness]. Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集』 [Ueda Shizuteru Collection], vol. 2. Tokyo: Iwanami.
———. 2002b. Zen no fūkei 『禅の風景』 [The Landscape of Zen]. Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集』 [Ueda Shizuteru Collection], vol. 5. Tokyo: Iwanami.
———. 2002c. Hishinpi shugi: Ekkuharuto to zen 『非神秘主義―エックハルトと禅』 [Non-Mysticism: Eckhart and Zen]. Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集上田閑照集』 [Ueda Shizuteru Collection], vol. 8. Tokyo: Iwanami
———. 2002d. Kokū/sekai 「虚空/世界」 [Hollow-Expanse/World]. In Ueda shizuteru shū 『上田閑照集』 [Ueda Shizuteru Collection], vol. 9. Tokyo: Iwanami
———. 2011a. Language in a Twofold World. Trans. Bret W. Davis. In Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, 766–784. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
———. 2011b. Wer und was bin ich? Zur Phänomenologie des Selbst im Zen-Buddhismus. Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: MacMillan.
———. 1964. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Wright, Dale S. 1998. Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davis, B.W. (2019). Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen. In: Kopf, G. (eds) The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2924-9_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2923-2
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2924-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)