This article examines the critique of philosophical Eurocentrism developed over the past two-and-a-half decades by Robert Bernasconi. The restriction of the moniker “philosophy” to the Western tradition, and the exclusion of non-Western traditions from the field, became the standard view only after the late eighteenth century. Bernasconi critically analyzes this restriction and exclusion and makes a compelling case for its philosophical illegitimacy. After showing how Bernasconi convincingly repudiates the identification of philosophy with Europe – asserted most explicitly by Continental philosophers (...) such as Hegel, Husserl, Levinas, and most recently Rodolphe Gasché – the present article critically reflects on both the significance and the limits of Bernasconi’s own predominantly “immanent critique” of philosophical Eurocentrism, and ends by calling on philosophers to engage more thoroughly in studies of and dialogues with non-Western traditions of philosophy. (shrink)

The recently published collection Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, edited by Bret Davis, Brian Schroeder, and Jason Wirth, gathers together the best in contemporary scholarship on the Kyoto School and its legacy. This review essay is an opportunity to raise questions about the implications of this scholarship and to reflect critically on the future of the field. Although early Kyoto School philosophers are renowned for their lofty intellectual rigor, almost every one at some point bemoaned the (...) overly abstract flavor of their own work and that of their contemporaries. The call to make the philosophy concrete is without a doubt the unfinished business of the Kyoto School. This review assesses the collected volume’s range of critical and creative perspectives on the practical implications of Kyoto School theory, while indicating room for further engagement with this issue in future research. (shrink)