The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

This paper re-envisions the personhood of severely disabled children, who are often excluded from the category of human beings in the academic literature due to their perceived lack of mental faculties, based on Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro’s concept of human beings. It begins with Carl Elliott’s claim that personhood should be used as a thick ethical concept. This concept has two features. First, it represents a fusion of fact and value. Second, it is embedded in our rich and culturally specific (...) forms of life. This paper suggests that Watsuji’s concept of ningen also has these features. Watsuji criticizes how Western ethicists take individual consciousness or will as their starting point for determining personhood. Instead, he argues that neither a subject nor a community exists as an entity in itself, but that the relationality between them is essential to their identity and that our communication is embedded within rich and social contexts. Through his etymological study of Japanese word ari, Watsuji points out that in making statements, one both discloses the world and becomes aware of the attitude one should take toward other beings. Some commentators, such as Sakabe Megumi, have suggested that such self-awareness entails the transformation of our sense of relationality. This paper leverages Watsuji’s concept of ningen to re-envision the relationship between caregivers and severely disabled children as relationality-based and therefore open to complex and rich communication. (shrink)

Although it seems natural to consider the last fifty years the contemporary period, because this year (1995) punctuates a historical period celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, this essay will limit the term “contemporary” roughly to the last twenty‐five years. The reason for this demarcation is that at the beginning of the 1970s, we witnessed a new philosophical mood emerging in Japan. Prior to that period, the Japanese philosophical scene was dominated by the study of (...) European thinkers, such as Husserl, Heiddeger, Sartre, and Merleau Ponty. The end of the students' movement in the early 1970s also marked the end of the ideological disputes launched by Marxism since the early 1930s. Instead, it appears that the Japanese intelligentsia in the early 1970s began to acutely sense problems inherent in the Eurocentric philosophy which had served as a foundation for Western science and technology. This occurred largely through a recognition that scientific technology had yielded, as its unexpected byproduct, a “mind/heartless” society, pollution, and global ecological crises, which had permeated almost all parts of the Japanese archipelago to threaten the psyche of the Japanese people and their mode of living. In this essay, I should like to briefly introduce three representative contemporary Japanese thinkers who have addressed some aspects of these problems in their writings. They are Nakamura Yujiro, Sakabe Megumi, and Yuasa Yasuo. (Because of the limitations of space, this article will restrict itself to these three thinkers, but this should not suggest that there are no other representative thinkers in Japan. Consider particularly those belonging to the neo Kyoto school, such as Nishitani Keiji, Kosaka Masaki, Koyama Iwao, Umehara Takeshi and Ueda Shizuteru. Nishitani's works are well known in the English speaking world, along with those of Abe Masao. Out side of the Kyoto school, we can also mention other thinkers, such as Matsumoto Masao, Hiromatsu Wataru and Ichikawa Hiroshi.). (shrink)

Philosophers, novelists, and intercultural comparisons : Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens /​ Richard Rorty Lifeworlds, modernity, and philosophical praxis : race, ethnicity, and critical social theory /​ Lucius Outlaw Modern China and the postmodern West /​ David L. Hall From Marxism to post-Marxism /​ Svetozar Stojanović Incommensurability and otherness revisited /​ Richard J. Bernstein Incommensurability, truth, and the conversation between Confucians and Aritotelians about the virtues /​ Alasdair MacIntyre The commensurability of Indian epistemological theories /​ Karl H. Potter Pluralism, relativism, and (...) interaction between cultures /​ Bimal K. Matilal The problem of relativism /​ Jiang Tianji. Between relativism and fundamentalism : hermeneutics as Europe’s mainstream political and moral tradition /​ Ferenc Feher Conceptual schemes and linguistic relativism in relation to Chinese /​ A.C. Graham The origins of the question : four traditional Japanese philosophies of language /​ Thomas P. Kasulis Meaning as imaging : Prolegomena to a Confucian epistemelogy /​ Roger T. Ames On the dual nature of traditional Chinese thought and its modernization /​ Li Zhilin A planetary macroethics for humankind : the need, the apparent difficulty, and the eventual possibility /​ Karl-Otto Apel Reasonable challenges and preconditions of adjudication /​ Antonio S. Cua The French Revolution and the Holocaust : can ethics be ahistorical? /​ Hilary Putnam Tradition and moral progress /​ Joel J. Kupperman The shape of artistic pasts, East and West /​ Arthur C. Danto. Surrealistic distortion of landscape and the reason of the milieu /​ Megumi Sakabe Why art changes /​ Richard Wollheim The transcendental in a comparative context /​ Frederick J. Streng Reflections on religious pluralism in the Indian context /​ Margaret Chatterjee Three enduring achievements of Islamic philosophy /​ Lenn E. Goodman Two dimensions of religion : reflections based on Indian spiritual experience and philosophical traditions /​ G.C. Pande Between nationalism and nomadism : wondering about the languages of philosophy /​ Graham Parkes The discourse of cultural authenticity : Islamist revivalism and enlightenment universalism /​ Aziz Al-Azmeh Traditional political values and ideas : an examination of their relevance to developments in contemporary African political order /​ Kwame Gyekye On the interpretation of traditional cultures /​ Maria L. Herrera. The concept of progress and cultural identity /​ Roop Rekha Verma Moses, Hsüan-tsang, and history /​ Agnes Heller Secularism : sacred and profane /​ Daya Krishna Scientific progress and content loss /​ Larry Laudan A dialectical view of scientific rationality and progress /​ Marcello Pera Scientific progress reconsidered /​ Ilkka Niiniluoto Does progress in science lead to truth? /​ Lorenz Krüger. (shrink)

The image of the “mirror” (鏡kagami) appears frequently in the philosophical texts of Nishida Kitaro (西田幾多郎1870-1945), where it assumes various functions. Mirror references first occur in meditations on the philosophies of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) and Henri Bergson (1859-1941). The most fascinating evocation here corresponds to the idea of a “self-enlightening mirror”, used to probe the philosophical ground for self-illumination. This idea seems to point back to Buddhist meaning that intervenes in Japanese intellectual history. We take this as our warrant for (...) establishing here, firstly, how Nishidean philosophical speculation can be critically related to the thought of Dogen (道元1200-1253); and, secondly, in what sense it has stimulated some contemporary approaches in Japanese philosophy (for example, those of Nitta, Ohashi, and Sakabe). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ōmori Shōzō and Kotodama Theory: How Can We Overcome the Need for Bodily Encounters?Maki SatoIntroductionŌmori Shōzō is known for his theory of tachi-araware monism. Tachiaraware monism is his attempted counter-argument to the Cartesian dualism of the object–subject divide, or in his words, a divide between physical (butsuri, mono, science, object) and non-physical consciousness (ishiki, koto, perception, incident), perception (chikaku, 知覚) and conception (shikō, 思考). His concept of Kasane-egaki is (...) also often cited as a core concept of his theory of time.1 The main aim of this paper is to first overview the works of Ōmori since there is only a limited amount of his translated work so far.2 Consecutively, the paper focuses on Ōmori’s theory of kotodama and its related arguments with an intention to expand his concept of Kowaburi into the ethics of online encounters during the pandemic.The world in 2020 was suddenly forced to face the pandemic caused by COVID-19. What COVID-19 alerted us to is tremendous, and there are countless problems that the invisible virus has revealed. Among those are the hidden problems of contemporary society, not limited to the discrimination among races, gender, and jobs (white-collars versus essential workers), the problem of zoonosis, and the related environmental problems (climate change and intrusion into wild nature) caused by over-exploitation of nature. In developed countries, most students and those serving as intellectual workers face their daily lives being overly occupied with online lectures and meetings. COVID-19 worked to normalize remote work, which further normalized and forced our everyday life to shift to cyberspace. [End Page 101]In introducing and overviewing Ōmori’s philosophy, this paper attempts to see the current situation through Ōmori’s philosophy to draw out some ethical implications related to non-physical online encounters and how we can perceive human interactions and relationships under such conditions. Under the constraints caused by COVID-19, humans’ limitless desires to interact with others are expanding more so to the sphere of cyberspace, leading to technological development, such as VR. In short, first, the paper overviews Ōmori’s philosophy. Second, through the overview of Ōmori’s philosophy, the paper seeks adaptable philosophy of his that may work as soft binding grounding ethics for cyberspace encounters where substantial bodily encounters are void. In doing so, the paper intends to draw out weak binding ethics implied in Ōmori’s philosophy that may work to empathetically engage with others in cyberspace where embodied encounters with others are dissolved.Ōmori Shōzō and His Philosophy: A Short Introduction and OverviewIn his short essay introducing the Japanese philosophy of the 1970s, Yasuo Kobayashi coined the term “Komaba quartet” by selecting four active eminent philosophers based on the Komaba campus at the University of Tokyo.3 Among them is Ōmori Shōzō (1921–97), aligning with Hiromatsu Wataru (1933–94), Sakabe Megumi (1936–2009), and Inoue Tadashi (1926–2014). Ōmori is the oldest of the Komaba quartet and received higher education before World War II. He served at the Naval Technology Institute Mitaka Laboratory during the war with his physics degree from the Tokyo Imperial University.4 After the war, he studied philosophy at the University of Tokyo with an interest in phenomenology, leading him to study at Harvard and Stanford in the United States.During his professorship at the University of Tokyo, he inspired countless students who are now leading the philosophy academy in Japan, such as Noe Keiichi (1949–) and Noya Shigeki (1954–). In the round-table discussion titled “Explanatory Round-Table on the Charm of Ōmori’s Philosophy,” four of his former students—Iida Takashi and Tanji Nobuharu, in addition to Noe and Noya—worked on selecting his works. It is impressive to read that all four [End Page 102] of them recall how exciting and inspiring it was to take his classes.5 Iida recalls that Ōmori’s classes were exceptional since philosophy courses were all about reading, with might and main, the texts written in a language other than Japanese at the University of Tokyo. However, Ōmori, with his postwar American education, welcomed discussion with the students and was keen on questioning... (shrink)

This collection of essays constitutes the first history of modern Japanese aesthetics in any language. It introduces readers through lucid and readable translations to works on the philosophy of art written by major Japanese thinkers from the late nineteenth century to the present. Selected from a variety of sources (monographs, journals, catalogues), the essays cover topics related to the study of beauty in art and nature. The translations are organized into four parts. The first, "The Introduction of Aesthetics," traces the (...) formation of notions of "beauty," "culture," and "art" in Japan. It includes discussion of the creation of the museum in Japan and the frenetic efforts of Nishi Amane, Okakura Tenshin, Ernest Fenollosa, and Mori Ogai to introduce German, British, and French aesthetic thought to the Japanese. This is followed by three sections that examine the transformation of the aesthetic field into an academic discipline that flourished at three major Japanese universities. "Aesthetics at Waseda University" begins with an essay on the spiritualism and idealism of Onishi Hajime and continues with essays on the impact of German Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life") on Shimamura Hogetsu and Takayama Chogyu, and work by the major Waseda aesthetician of the twentieth century, Aizu Yaichi. Thinkers of the Tokyo School adopted a "scientific" method in the study of art theory. Part 3, "Aesthetics at the University of Tokyo," focuses on the ideas of Otsuka Yasuji (holder of the world’s first Chair of Aesthetics), Onishi Yoshinori, Watsuji Tetsuro, Abe Jiro, Takeuchi Toshio, and Imamichi Tomonobu. The section concludes with a look at the contemporary philosopher Sakabe Megumi. The last section, "Aesthetics at the University of Kyoto," includes essays on Nakagawa Shigeki and Fukada Yasukazu, pioneers in the field of aesthetics, and on the philosophy of art of the "Kyoto School," which was deeply inspired by the thought of Nishida Kitaro. Finally the work of Kuki Shuzo, an influential teacher of Western philosophy at the University of Kyoto, is examined. A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics is a companion volume to Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader (UH Press, 1999). (shrink)

Although Plato studies occupy an important place in academia, the empiricist stance in considering reality, the modern epistemology of the self-identical ego, the devaluation of the image and imagination, and the restrictions on philosophy within academic research sometimes cause us to lose sight of the essence of Plato's texts and thought when analysing them. Discussing Plato from a Japanese perspective, this paper will introduce three Japanese thinkers, Sakabe Megumi, Izutsu Toshihiko, and Ino-ue Tadashi, who have critically examined modern Western (...) philosophy from their own philosophical backgrounds and provided valuable suggestions. Taking into account the arguments of these Japanese thinkers, this paper emphasizes the notions of separation, purification, and transcendence as core concepts of Plato's philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor’s IntroductionNakajima Takahiro 「東京学派」とは聞きなれない名称であろう。日本研究において「京都学派」は大変よく知られている。たとえ「京都学派」が、「無の論理は論理ではない」と述べた上で、戸坂潤が発明した批判的な概念であったとしても 、現在ではそれは西田幾多郎や田辺元を中心とした一大哲学運動として世界的に認知されている。ところが、西田にしても田辺にしてももともとは東京帝国大学で学んだ学生であった。また、戦前においては、井上哲次郎か ら桑木厳翼へと続く東京帝国大学哲学科の流れは、当時の社会状況と相互に影響しあって、一定の意義を示していたのである。また、大森荘蔵、廣松渉、坂部恵といった戦後の東京大学の哲学者たちは、「京都学派」の問題 系を乗り越えることを重視していた。 この特別号では、発見的概念として「東京学派」を用いて、戦前・戦後におけるその意義と広がりを探究することにした。それは東京大学もしくは東京帝国大学に限定されたものではなく、それ以外の東京圏の大学との相互 交流も含まれるものである。「京都学派」に対しては、政治との距離をどう測るかがしばしば議論されてきたが、「東京学派」は政治により密着したものである。日本の近代の哲学の有している政治性そして倫理性を考える のであれば、やはり「東京学派」の議論は避けて通る ことのできないものである。 無論、「学派」というほどのまとまりを「東京学派」が有しているわけではないことも確かである。西田幾多郎が「京都学派」で果たした中心性は、「東京学派」にはない。そこで、トマス・カスリスが示唆するように、「 学派」の代わりに「サークル」や「スタイル」という言葉を使った方がより正確かもしれない。それでも、あえて「東京学派」と呼ぶのは、「京都学派」に比べて関心を持たれることの少ない、しかし当時は圧倒的な影響力 を有し、戦後決定的に忘却されていった東京の哲学者たちに光をあて、近代日本の哲学の総体を明らかにしたいからである。「東京学派」の研究は緒についたばかりである。今後、国際的な研究の高まりを期待しながら擱筆 する。The “Tokyo School” may be an unfamiliar term to readers. The Kyoto School is very well known in Japanese studies. Even if the Kyoto School is a critical concept invented by Tosaka Jun, who stated [End Page 2] that “the logic of nothingness is not logic,” it is now recognized worldwide as a major philosophical movement led by Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe (...) Hajime. However, both Nishida and Tanabe were originally students at Tokyo Imperial University. In addition, before the war, the output of the Department of Philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University, from Inoue Tetsujirō to Kuwaki Gen’yoku, had a certain significance because it interacted with the social conditions of the time. In addition, postwar philosophers at the University of Tokyo, such as Ōmori Shōzō, Hiromatsu Wataru, and Sakabe Megumi emphasized overcoming the problematics of the Kyoto School.In this special issue, we use the Tokyo School as a heuristic concept to explore its significance and spread in the prewar and postwar periods. It is not limited to the University of Tokyo or Tokyo Imperial University but includes interactions with other universities in the Tokyo area. While the Kyoto School has often been discussed in terms of how to measure its distance from politics, the Tokyo School is more closely connected to politics. If we consider the political and ethical dimensions of modern Japanese philosophy, we cannot avoid discussing the Tokyo School.Of course, it is true that the Tokyo School is not as coherent as a “school.” The central role that Nishida fulfilled in the Kyoto School is perhaps lacking in the Tokyo School. Therefore, as Thomas P. Kasulis suggests, it might be more accurate to use the term “circle” or “style” instead of “school.” Nevertheless, I dare to call it the Tokyo School because I would like to shed light on the Tokyo philosophers who were less popular than those of the Kyoto School but whose influence was overwhelming at the time and who were definitively forgotten after the war, so as to clarify the totality of philosophy in modern Japan.Research on the Tokyo School has only just begun. I am writing this introductory note in anticipation of further international research on the Tokyo School. [End Page 3]Copyright © 2023 State University of New York Press... (shrink)

In order to re-examine what role Plato gives to images in the Republic, this chapter argues against modern commentators’ views and demonstrates that for Plato, images represent reality in special ways and that the simile is not simply a didactic method of explaining familiar objects, but is an effective method of inquiry to reveal a reality unknown to us. First it shows that Plato ascribes to images a special role of transforming our souls, by examining the famous story of Gyges’ (...) ring; second, by analysing the simile of the Sun, it shows that images are real in the sense that they reveal to us the world beyond sensible things. These two examples represent two important aspects, namely, a psychological exercise for changing ourselves and an ontological possibility for such images. In order to rehabilitate our conception of the image, the chapter considers views on images by Japanese philosophers, Megumi Sakabe and Toshihiko Izutsu. (shrink)