Le haïku est une poésie japonaise de seulement 17 syllabes. Le Japon compterait 10 millions de haïkistes principalement non professionnels. Chacun compose des haïkus et les montre à des confrères en recherchant une reconnaissance. Mais est-il judicieux de qualifier le haïku d’activité d’amateurs?

仏教とは「超越と実存」のせめぎ合いの歴史である――「恐山の禅僧」が、ブッダから道元までの思想的変遷に迫る、かつてない仏教史。.

ArgumentHijōji was an important keyword in the militarist Japan of the 1930s. Previous scholarship has assumed that such language sprung from the global financial crisis of 1929, and subsequent diplomatic events. Our article demonstrates, however, that a full-bodied language of emergency was crafted well before the collapse of the global economy, and against the backdrop of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which destroyed the Japanese capital. While previous “great earthquakes” had been opportunities to strengthen Japanese participation in the global (...) project of science, this one led more dramatically to a crisis of reason, and indirectly contributed to the spiritual, anti-western, and anti-rational rhetoric of what became the “Showa Restoration.” This and other post-disaster landscapes, we argue, should be examined as compelling sites for the crafting of political language – sites of opportunity and meaning as well as trial. While the phrase “state of emergency” was coined under very different circumstances in post-war Britain, it gained power and charisma in Japan, and likely other places around the world, by its association with natural catastrophe. Thus did modern politics establish a new connection with the traditional realm of the sublime, and in the case of Japan, the supernatural. Emergency's ability to associate politics with nature would never disappear, and has perhaps even strengthened in the early twenty-first century. (shrink)

In contemporary nihilism the nihility stretches, so to speak, into the site of God’s being, and in this way becomes an abyss. And upon this godless nihility that has become an abyss, all life, not only biological life and souls, but even spiritual and personal life, manifests the form of something fundamentally meaningless. At the same time, it is furthermore claimed that human beings can only truly become free and independent and become true subjects when they resolutely ground themselves upon (...) this abyssal nihility. (shrink)

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness as the (...) fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

Persons with visual impairments (hereafter PVI) detect and discover obstacles and road conditions by touching with a white cane when walking on the streets. In one training session, an Orientation and Mobility specialist (hereafter SPT) guided a PVI by grasping and moving the cane that the PVI was holding. We conducted a multimodal analysis of two instruction sequences, one a "proving and achieving" demonstration (Sacks in Lectures on conversation, Blackwell, 1992) and the other a "learnable" (Zemel and Koschmann, in Discourse (...) Stud 16:163–183, 2014) demonstration. The achieving demonstration proved the assessment of the PVI's performance. In the "learnable" demonstration, the PVI was able to receive and perform the most critical part of the "learnable" of the long contact touch without the aid of talk. Sharing a single cane touch is an efficient way for both the guiding SPT and the guided PVI to jointly experience and understand the environmental features. The SPT did not need to verbally confirm that the guided touch was accountable to the PVI and seemed confident that intersubjectivity with the PVI had been established. A unique form of being with others and achieving intersubjectivity in society was identified. In traditional learning instruction, it has been assumed that the learnable is presented and communicated visually and audibly. However, through guided touch learnable is presented and conveyed effectively in the cases of this paper. It seems that the sense of touch has been considered to be just for the occasion, but this is an example of something that is not just for the occasion but is consequential, that is, usable for further occasions. The data is in Japanese. (shrink)

We present several models which satisfy CH and some ♦-like principles while others fail, answering a question of Moore, Hrušák and Džamonja.

We investigate splitting number and reaping number for the structure (ω) ω of infinite partitions of ω. We prove that ${\mathfrak{r}_{d}\leq\mathsf{non}(\mathcal{M}),\mathsf{non}(\mathcal{N}),\mathfrak{d}}$ and ${\mathfrak{s}_{d}\geq\mathfrak{b}}$ . We also show the consistency results ${\mathfrak{r}_{d} > \mathfrak{b}, \mathfrak{s}_{d} < \mathfrak{d}, \mathfrak{s}_{d} < \mathfrak{r}, \mathfrak{r}_{d} < \mathsf{add}(\mathcal{M})}$ and ${\mathfrak{s}_{d} > \mathsf{cof}(\mathcal{M})}$ . To prove the consistency ${\mathfrak{r}_{d} < \mathsf{add}(\mathcal{M})}$ and ${\mathfrak{s}_{d} < \mathsf{cof}(\mathcal{M})}$ we introduce new cardinal invariants ${\mathfrak{r}_{pair}}$ and ${\mathfrak{s}_{pair}}$ . We also study the relation between ${\mathfrak{r}_{pair}, \mathfrak{s}_{pair}}$ and other cardinal invariants. We show (...) that ${\mathsf{cov}(\mathcal{M}),\mathsf{cov}(\mathcal{N})\leq\mathfrak{r}_{pair}\leq\mathfrak{s}_{d},\ma thfrak{r}}$ and ${\mathfrak{s}\leq\mathfrak{s}_{pair}\leq\mathsf{non}(\mathcal{M}),\mathsf{non}(\mathcal{N})}$. (shrink)

By using finite support iteration Suslin c.c.c forcing notions we construct several models which satisfy some ♢-like principles while other cardinal invariants are larger than ω1.

Bien que John Stuart Mill et Jeremy Bentham aient été considérés comme d’illustres exemples de « Philosophes radicaux », leurs exigences en matière de réforme sociale et politique étaient basées sur des points de vue différents. Comparée à celle de Bentham, l’analyse de Mill concernant le principe d’utilité et de démocratie représentative présente certains traits « perfectionnistes » et « élitistes ». La présente étude se propose d’examiner ceci à la lumière de la réception et de la réponse de Mill (...) aux idées de Bentham sur la politique. Bien que Mill fût, en partie, un partisan enthousiaste de Bentham, et qu’il lui attribuât le mérite de promouvoir les réformes juridiques et politiques, il semble avoir commencé, à partir de 1833, à évaluer ouvertement Bentham de façon critique. Ceci peut être perçu dans ses discussions et sa relation intellectuelle avec George Grote, qui était aussi un politicien et un historien utilitariste. L’accent mis par Mill sur le rôle essentiel de « l’éducation sociale du peuple » dans la promotion de l’esprit public fut développé dans des dialogues avec Grote et l’examen de ses études historiques. La présente étude conclut que Grote fit preuve de plus de sympathie envers Bentham que Mill, dans l’approche théorique aussi bien que dans l’approche pratique. Bien que tous les trois fussent vraiment dévoués à la même cause radicale, ils avaient toutefois des visions différentes de la crise de la démocratie parlementaire. L’examen du contexte de sa relation intellectuelle avec Grote fournit l’une des sources permettant de comprendre le défi jeté par Mill aux idées de Bentham relatives à la réforme politique. (shrink)

We propose a novel probabilistic image selection method for the Web image gathering system we proposed before. It employed two-step processing: (1) Gather HTML files of Web pages related to given keywords, analyze them and fetch only Web images expected to be highly related to the keywords. (2) Select only relevant images from the gathered images based on the image-feature-based clustering. In this paper, we propose building a generative model based on the Gaussian mixture model to represent the distribution of (...) image features of images related to the given keywords, and applying it to select images instead of the processing (2). We call the new system ``Probabilistic Image Collector''. We show the effectiveness of our proposed system by the experimental results. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a generic image classification system with an automatic knowledge acquisition mechanism from the World Wide Web. Due to the recent spread of digital imaging devices, the demand for generic image classification/recognition of various kinds of real world scenes becomes greater. To realize it, visual knowledge on various kinds of scenes is required, and we have to prepare a large number of learning images. Therefore, commercial image collections such as Corel Image Gallery are widely used in (...) conventional studies on generic image classification. However, they are not suitable as learning images for generic image classification, since they do not include various kinds of images. Then, in stead of commercial image collections we propose utilizing of a large number of images gathered from the World-Wide Web by a Web image-gathering system as learning images. Images on the Web have huge diversity in general. So that we take advantage of the diversity of Web images for a generic image classification task, which is the first attempt among this kinds of work. By the experiments, we show that utilizing of Web images as learning images is effective and promising for generic image classification. (shrink)

Prenant acte de la fondation aristotélicienne de la métaphysique comme science de l’être en tant qu’être, Nishitani interroge la posture philosophique qui, sous-jacente à ce geste initial, le détermine de l’intérieur. En fait, c’est la conception même de la philosophie, comprise comme pensée objectivante et analytique, que remet en question Nishitani en retraçant la genèse de la question de l’être chez les prédécesseurs d’Aristote. Et c’est à l’aune de cette question de l’être qu’il réévalue l’héritage aristotélicien de l’ousia, et plus (...) spécialement le rapport de l’essence et de l’existence à l’être-vrai à l’intérieur de cette question de l’être. (shrink)

Dans cet article publié deux ans après la parution de son maître ouvrage, Qu’est-ce que la religion? , auquel il est fait allusion dans les dernières lignes, Nishitani jette un regard rétrospectif sur son parcours philosophique. Plutôt que de rédiger un essai autobiographique, l’auteur y adopte une perspective analytique sur sa propre démarche et s’efforce d’expliciter la position philosophique qui est la sienne, qu’il a forgée très tôt dans sa carrière et à partir de laquelle il faut comprendre sa pratique (...) de la philosophie. Tout l’intérêt de ce texte réside dans la jonction qu’il établit entre les préoccupations du jeune Nishitani pour la question du nihilisme et ses réflexions de maturité, imprégnées de l’héritage spirituel du bouddhisme. (shrink)

We study the Mathias–Prikry and Laver–Prikry forcings associated with filters on ω. We give a combinatorial characterization of Martinʼs number for these forcing notions and present a general scheme for analyzing preservation properties for them. In particular, we give a combinatorial characterization of those filters for which the Mathias–Prikry forcing does not add a dominating real.

In recent years several books by major figures in Japan's modern philosophical tradition have appeared in English, exciting readers by their explorations of the borderlands between philosophy and religion. What has been wanting, however, is a book in a Western language to elucidate the life and thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Japan's first philosopher of world stature and the originator of what has come to be called the Kyoto School. No one is more qualified to write such a book than (...) Nishitani Keiji, whose lifetime coincides with the rise and flowering of the Kyoto School and whose own critical contribution to Japanese thought has been so important. _Nishida Kitaro_ is a translation of essays Nishitani wrote about his teacher from 1936 to 1968 and published as a book in 1985. This series of meditations by one master on another provides a remarkable, living portrait of Nishida the person and conveys the enthusiasm he aroused in his students. Examining Nishida's most important work, _An Inquiry into the Good_, Nishitani penetrates to the core of his thought and presents it in language that is a marvel of clarity. (shrink)