Does the Buddhist doctrine of no-self imply, simply put, no-other? Does this doctrine necessarily come into conflict with an ethics premised on the alterity of the other? This article explores these questions by situating Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics in the context of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The work of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō provides a starting point from which to consider the ethics of the self-other relation in light of the Buddhist notion of emptiness. The philosophy of thirteenth-century Zen Master Dōgen (...) casts doubt on Watsuji’s commitment to reciprocal self-other relationality, showing that the idea of self-emptiness disrupts any conventional understanding of reciprocity and promotes instead other-oriented compassion. Despite interesting similarities between the ethics of alterity and Buddhist compassion, a Buddhist-influenced understanding of alterity differs from Levinas on important points, by making possible the claim that all others—human, animal, plant, and mineral—are ethical others. (shrink)

In this article, an ecological ethic is developed from the ethical philosophy and environmental phenomenology of the Japanese ethicist Watsuji Tetsurō. More specially, it is illustrated that reading Watsuji’s ethics and concept of fūdo (風土) in tangent and drawing out the implications of his ontology of emptiness, provides the means to overcome the ecological issue of anthropocentrism. The ecological ethic developed here also goes beyond Watsuji’s account by criticising his focus on land and advocates the importance of the sea for (...) environmental ethics. Not only is it argued that a fully functional ecological ethic must account for all habitats, but that the sea can be seen to be more fundamental than the land in the formation of Watsuji’s concept of fūdo. (shrink)

Watsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central (...) to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands. (shrink)

This thesis aims to establish a Kierkegaardian philosophy of culture to address the theoretical problems of modern East Asian philosophy of culture, particularly Chinese New Confucianism and the Kyoto School who try to formulate their cultural subjectivities for the sake of cultural modernisation. Both schools adopt Hegelian philosophy of culture and therefore inherit the problems of Hegelian dialectics which Kierkegaard criticises. While Kierkegaard himself does not develop a philosophy of culture, this thesis argues that his concepts of culture in terms (...) of the manifestations of passions, community and contemporaneity are useful resources for the formulation of East Asian cultural selves. Firstly, in chapter 1, I argue that there are two tasks of modern East Asian philosophers of culture: how to understand a culture and how to establish a cultural self. Secondly, in chapter 2, I argue that there are three theoretical problems in Mou’s and Watsuji’s Hegelian philosophies of culture, namely, the impossibility of change in cultural value, the lack of empirical method and the neglect of openness of interpretation. Thirdly, in chapter 3, I argue that Kierkegaard’s definition of culture in terms of the manifestations of passions explain East Asian cultural development more consistently than Hegelian dialectics. Fourthly, in chapter 4, I establish a Kierkegaardian philosophy of culture and argue that a cultural self is formulated by the concepts of community and contemporaneity where individuals express their passions according to their free wills. Finally, I argue that Kierkegaardian philosophy of culture fulfils both the ontological and epistemic tasks of East Asian philosophers and solves the theoretical problems they encounter when they adopt Hegelian dialectics. (shrink)

Cross-cultural interviewing can pose challenges for journalists, given potential differences in language, word choice, volume, body posture, and group dynamics. This article explores some of the complexities of cross-cultural interviews with the dual aim of heightening awareness of ethical considerations for journalists who conduct them and of discussing ethical principles that may help in guiding their work. This article attempts to move the discussion of cross-cultural interviews beyond traditional Western ethics. Eastern moral philosophy and ideals of trust and human relations (...) similar to, but predating the work of contemporary Western communitarians are considered. The authors' ethnographic study of MLB's “Nippon Summer”—the influx of Japanese players in 2007—and analysis of articles resulting from press coverage of those players serve as a framework for discussing ethical considerations at play in cross-cultural journalism, when, for example, West writes East. (shrink)

This article engages bell hooks's concept of “radical black subjectivity” through the lens of the Buddhist doctrine of no‐self. Relying on the Zen theorist Dōgen and on resources from Japanese aesthetics, I argue that non‐attachment to the self clarifies hooks's claim that radical subjectivity unites our capacity for critical resistance with our capacity to appreciate beauty. I frame this argument in terms of hooks's concern that postmodernist identity critiques dismiss the identity claims of disempowered peoples. On the one hand, identity (...) critique has an emotional component, as it involves questioning the self and possibly letting go of aspects of that self in which a person has inevitably made emotional investments. On the other hand, it has an aesthetic component, as it opens a space for the creative crafting and recrafting of identity. Japanese aesthetics emphasizes that all aesthetic appreciation is accompanied by feelings of mournfulness, for the object of aesthetic appreciation is transient. Linking hooks's liberatory aesthetics with the resources of the Japanese tradition suggests that mournfulness in the face of self‐loss necessarily accompanies all instances of critical resistance. Thus non‐attachment becomes a useful framework in which to understand both the emotional and aesthetic components of empowered identity critique. (shrink)