The Philosophy of the Kyoto School

Description

The main purpose of this book is to offer to philosophers and students abroad who show a great interest in Japanese philosophy and the philosophy of the Kyoto school major texts of the leading philosophers. This interest has surely developed out of a desire to obtain from the thought of these philosophers, who stood within the interstice between East and West, a clue to reassessing the issues of philosophy from the ground up or to drawing new creative possibilities.The present condition seems to be, however, that the material made available to further realize this kind of intellectual dialogue is far too scarce. This book is intended to be of some help in this regard.The book presents selected texts of representative philosophers of the Kyoto school such as Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Miki Kiyoshi, Nishitani Keiji, and others who best illustrate the characteristics of this school, and works that together portray its image as a whole. Those who are interested in Japanese philosophy or specifically the philosophy of the Kyoto School can survey a comprehensive representation from this book.These texts are, of course, quite difficult and cannot be well understood without sufficient preliminary knowledge. Expository essays have therefore been included after each text to provide guidance. In each of these commentaries a scholar of our time with deep understanding of the philosopher in question has provided an account of his life, intellectual journey, and the significance of the text included here.From this book will emerge a new dialogue of ideas that in turn will engender new developments in philosophy, thereby further expanding the network of philosophical thought worldwide. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Place (1) (Nishida Kitarō)....Pages 3-12 The Scope of Nishida Kitarō’s Theory of Place (Fujita Masakatsu)....Pages 13-22 Front Matter ....Pages 23-23 Clarifying the Meaning of the Logic of Species (1, 4) (Tanabe Hajime)....Pages 25-41 What Does Absolute Negation Differentiate? (Nakaoka Narifumi)....Pages 43-53 Front Matter ....Pages 55-55 The Logic of Imagination (Preface, Chapter 1 “Myth” 1) (Miki Kiyoshi)....Pages 57-64 The Philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi (Akamatsu Tsunehiro)....Pages 65-77 Front Matter ....Pages 79-79 What Is the Technological Spirit? (Tosaka Jun)....Pages 81-88 On Tosaka Jun’s Scientific-Technological Spirit (Nishikawa Tomio)....Pages 89-106 Front Matter ....Pages 107-107 Body and Spirit [Mind] (Kimura Motomori)....Pages 109-122 Reading According to the Context: Kimura Motomori and “Body and Spirit” (Ōnishi Masamichi)....Pages 123-135 Front Matter ....Pages 137-137 The Metaphysical Element of the East (Hisamatsu Shinichi)....Pages 139-148 The Thought and Practice of Hisamatsu Shinichi (Imaizumi Motoji)....Pages 149-159 Front Matter ....Pages 161-161 The Position of Mathematics in Intellectual History (Shimomura Toratarō)....Pages 163-181 Shimomura Toratarō: Tracking “Intellectual History” (Takeda Atsushi)....Pages 183-196 Front Matter ....Pages 197-197 Nihility and Emptiness (Nishitani Keiji)....Pages 199-216 Philosophy of Overcoming Nihilism (Keta Masako)....Pages 217-229 Front Matter ....Pages 231-231 The Kyoto School and the Issue of “Overcoming Modernity” (Kosaka Kunitsugu)....Pages 233-251 The Identity of the Kyoto School: A Critical Analysis (Maraldo John C.)....Pages 253-268 Back Matter ....Pages 269-273