Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and (...) superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed. (shrink)

The following essay, “The Unsolved Issue of Consciousness” (Torinokosaretaru ishiki no mondai 取残されたる意識の問題), by Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 from 1927 is significant in regard to the development of what has come to be called “Nishida philosophy” (Nishida tetsugaku 西田哲学). In what follows, in addition to providing some commentary on the important points of his essay, I would like to show its relevance or significance not only for those who would like to study Nishida’s thought but also for (...) philosophy in general, especially in the contemporary setting. It was first published in 1927 by Iwanami Publishers in a collection of essays by different authors, Philosophical Essays in Commemoration of the Sixtieth Birthday of Dr. .. (shrink)

This chapter takes a critical look at universities from the perspective of the neopragmatist philosophy of education outlined by Richard Rorty. The chapter begins with a discussion of Rorty’s view of the ends that educational institutions properly serve in a liberal democracy. It then considers the kind of culture that Rorty takes to be conducive to those ends and the kind that is antithetical to them. Rorty sometimes characterizes the latter as a culture of ‘egotism’. After describing the main aspects (...) of such a culture, the chapter uses it as an interpretive key for understanding the ‘dark side’ of the contemporary university. Our thesis is that within a Rortyan, neo-pragmatist philosophy of higher education, the ends that universities are meant to serve in a liberal democracy are vulnerable to frustration and corruption by a culture of egotism. (shrink)

Despite the initial strangeness of grouping Iris Murdoch (a Platonist), Martha Nussbaum (an Aristotelian), and Richard Rorty (a pragmatist) together, this paper will argue that these thinkers share a strong commitment to the moral purport of literature. I will also show that their shared idea of moral engagement through literature interlocks the individual’s sense of self and the world of others. After considering their accounts, I will conclude by raising the question of literature’s moral limits.

This essay by Nishida Kitarō from 1927, translated into English here for the first time, is from the initial period of what has come to be called “Nishida philosophy” (Nishida tetsugaku), when Nishida was first developing his conception of “place” (basho). Nishida here inquires into the relationship between logic and consciousness in terms of place and implacement in order to overcome the shortcomings of previous philosophical attempts—from the ancient Greeks to the moderns—to dualistically conceive the (...) relationship between being and knowing in terms of subject-object or form-matter. During the course of articulating his novel approach to consciousness and cognition, Nishida discusses what he takes to be the weaknesses of Greek hylomorphism, Kantian (and neo-Kantian) dualism, and Husserlian phenomenology. Dissatisfied with the attribution of mere passivity to placiality, and turning away from consciousness objectified as a subject of statement, Nishida imparts to consciousness qua place a certain logical independence as an active yet un-objectifiable “predicate.” This investigation of consciousness as the unobjectifiable place for objectification leads Nishida to the notion of what precedes consciousness itself, a “place of nothing” (mu no basho) that envelops the dichotomized structures of subject-predicate, being-nothing, subject-object, universal-particular, et cetera. (shrink)

This article examines the potential for moral agency in human resource management practice. It draws on an ethnographic study of human resource managers in a global organization to provide a theorized account of situated moral agency. This account suggests that within contemporary organizations, institutional structures—particularly the structures of Anglo-American market capitalism— threaten and constrain the capacity of HR managers to exercise moral agency and hence engage in ethical behaviour. The contextualized explanation of HR management action directly addresses the question of (...) whether HRM is inherently unethical. The discussion draws on MacIntyre’s conceptualization of moral agency within contemporary social structures. In practice, HR managers embody roles that may not be wholly compartmentalized. Alternative institutional structures can provide HR managers with a vocabulary of motives for people-centred HRM and widen the scope for the exercising of moral agency, when enacted within reflective relational spaces that provide milieus for critical questioning of logics and values. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on whether HRM can ever be ethical, and provide a means of reconnecting business ethics with longstanding concerns in critical management studies. (shrink)

A number of modern theologians have concluded that the rise of natural science makes it necessary to give up the idea that God acts in particular ways to affect the course of events in the world. I reply to this claim, taking up the challenge to explain what might be meant by a ”special’ act of God. There are several ways to conceive of such acts, including the possibility that God might determine what is left determinable in the structures of (...) nature, e.g., at the quantum level. I address objections to this view, and consider metaphysical puzzles that it presents. (shrink)

This article engages Richard Rorty’s controversial concept of ethnocentrism with the help of Randolf (Randy) S. David’s writings. The first section defines Rorty’s concept of ethnocentrism and responds to the general criticisms of relativism and divisiveness that have been made against it. The second section suggests a conceptual replacement for Rorty’s notion of a vicious ethnocentrism: egotism. Egotism is a kind of cultural ethnocentrism that is resistant to openness, creativity, and social transformation. Inspired by David’s work, the third and final (...) section suggests how the concepts of ethnocentrism and egotism might be of some use as conceptual tools for articulating contemporary social issues in the Philippines. (shrink)

This quantitative study utilized the descriptive method of research that aimed to assess the implementation of environmental conservation practices in Baybay City Leyte with 92 officials and 115 zone residents of the 23 barangays in the city. Data were gathered through online and pen-paper surveys using frequency mean and Chi-square test. Barangay officials & Zone residents showed the same level of awareness of the environmental conservation practices implemented in Baybay City. Based on the results, the highest average weighted mean environmental (...) conservation practices were the Ordinance on Solid Waste Management. Whereas, the Ordinance on the Use of Plastics Bags has the lowest average weighted mean. There is no significant difference in the level of awareness of the environmental conservation practices between the barangay officials and zone residents. The findings on the level of implementation of the environmental conservation practices, barangay officials asserted a high level of implementation while zone residents claim to have implemented of all the (3) ordinances. For barangay officials, the Ordinance on Solid Waste Management had the highest weighted mean. While the Ordinance on the Use of Plastics Bags had the lowest weighted mean. Whereas, for the zone residents the Ordinance on Regulating the Use of Plastics Bags had the highest weighted mean. While the Ordinance on Anti-Littering and Prohibiting Persons from Throwing any Refuse or Garbage, Spitting, or Improper Urinating into Streets and Canals had the lowest weighted mean. There is a significant difference in the level of implementation of the environmental conservation practices between the barangay officials and zone residents on the Ordinance on Anti-Littering and Prohibiting Persons from Throwing any Refuse or Garbage, Spitting, Improper Urinating into Streets and Canal and Ordinance on Solid Waste Management. However, there is no significant difference in the level of implementation of environmental conservation practices in the Ordinance of the Use of Plastics Bags. (shrink)

Abstract: Creativity and holistic education involves dynamic interplay between generating ideas and making judgment about them. Getting the balance right is critical and as Carl Jung (2009) explains, the creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect alone but by the play instinct, the creative mind plays with the object and thoughts it loves. As mentioned earlier to be creative is a response to the inward thoughts and emotions of a human being, we encourage children in the western (...) world to make hand prints with paint, to colour in the lines and if we realise it or not we are using creativity as a holistic part of their development, by encouraging their creative intelligence; sadly, in the Middle East the idea of creativity is a poverty mindset that has been heavily removed from their culture and creative intelligence and it is this that has destroyed creativity from painting to writing. (shrink)

Foundational theories of mental content seek to identify the conditions under which a mental representation expresses, in the mind of a particular thinker, a particular content. Normativists endorse the following general sort of foundational theory of mental content: A mental representation r expresses concept C for agent S just in case S ought to use r in conformity with some particular pattern of use associated with C. In response to Normativist theories of content, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Åsa Wikforss propose a (...) dilemma, alleging that Normativism either entails a vicious regress or falls prey to a charge of idleness. In this paper, I respond to this argument. I argue that Normativism can avoid the commitments that generate the regress and does not propose the sort of explanation required to charge that its explanation has been shown to be problematically idle. The regress-generating commitment to be avoided is, roughly, that tokened, contentful mental states are the product of rule-following. The explanatory task Normativists should disavow is that of explaining how it is that beliefs and other contentful mental states are produced. I argue that Normativism, properly understood as a theory of content, does not provide this kind of psychological explanation, and therefore does not entail that such explanations are to be given in terms of rule-following. If this is correct, Normativism is not the proper target of the dilemma offered by Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss. Understanding why one might construe Normativism in the way Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss must, and how, properly understood, it avoids their dilemma, can help us to appreciate the attractiveness of a genuinely normative theory of content and the importance of paying careful attention to the sort of normativity involved in norm-based theories of content. (shrink)

Retrieving Realism renders the joint philosophical goals of Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor into what is probably their final and most concise form. It has two main objectives: first, it aims to deconstruct the mediationalism that undergirds Western philosophy, and second, it endorses contact theory, or embodied/embedded coping, as an alternative. In this essay, I present the book’s most salient themes and reveal areas that are ripe for further philosophical consideration. I also direct the reader to the work’s genuine ontological (...) challenge: how to come to grips with contact theory beyond the borders of epistemology. (shrink)

This paper explores the benefits of video feedback for teaching philosophy. Our analysis, based on results from a self-report student survey along with our own experience, indicates that video feedback possesses a number of advantages over traditional written comments. In particular we argue that video feedback is conducive to providing high-quality formative feedback, increases detail and clarity, and promotes student engagement. In addition, we argue that the advantages of video feedback make the method an especially apt tool for addressing challenges (...) germane to teaching philosophy. Video feedback allows markers to more easily explain and illustrate philosophical goals and methods. It allows markers to model the doing of philosophy and thereby helps students to see philosophy’s value. Video feedback is a promising tool for addressing both cognitive and affective barriers to learning philosophy. Such advantages are especially valuable in the context of a student-centered, intentional learning framework. In light of these advantages, we find that video feedback is underappreciated and underutilized. (shrink)

This essay considers how scholarly approaches to the development of molecular biology have too often narrowed the historical aperture to genes, overlooking the ways in which other objects and processes contributed to the molecularization of life. From structural and dynamic studies of biomolecules to cellular membranes and organelles to metabolism and nutrition, new work by historians, philosophers, and STS scholars of the life sciences has revitalized older issues, such as the relationship of life to matter, or of physicochemical inquiries to (...) biology. This scholarship points to a novel molecular vista that opens up a pluralist view of molecularizations in the twentieth century and considers their relevance to current science. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

This paper sets Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nishida Kitarō in dialogue and explore the interpretations of artistic expression, which inform their similar phenomenological accounts of perception. I discuss how both philosophers look to artistic practice to reveal multi-perspectival aspects of vision. They do so, I argue, by going beyond a “positivist” representational under-standing of perception and by including negative aspects of visual experience as constitutive of vision. Following this account, I interpret artworks by Cézanne, Guo Xi, Rodin, and Hasegawa according (...) to the versions of multi-perspectival vision articulated by Nishida and Merleau-Ponty. I conclude by highlighting a difference between Merleau-Ponty’s “depth” and Nishida’s “seeing without a seer” regarding the extent to which each of their philosophies de-substantialize and de-localize human vision. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate Kitarō Nishida's characterization of what he refers to as the 'self-contradictory' body. First, I clarify the conceptual relation between the self-contradictory body and Nishida's notion of 'acting-intuition'. I next look at Nishida's analysis of acting-intuition and the self-contradictory body as it pertains to our personal, sensorimotor engagement with the world and things in it, as well as to our bodily immersion within the intersubjective and social world. Along the way, I argue that (...) Nishida develops a rich and exceedingly current way of thinking through different facets of embodiment and interpersonal relatedness. I further argue that Nishida's work provides compelling reasons to foreground the mutually implicative, co-emergent nature of embodied self and world in our theorizing about the nature of self and experience. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive collection of essays on the key concepts of Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the father of modern Japanese philosophy and founder of the Kyoto School. The essays analyze several of the major philosophical concepts in Nishida, including pure experience, absolute will, place, and acting intuition. They examine the meaning and positioning of Nishida’s philosophy in the history of philosophy, as well as in the contemporary world, and discuss the relevance of his philosophy in (...) the present context. The book next looks at the significance of Nishida’s philosophy in the wider contexts of science, arts, and religion. The book includes a glossary of key terms that have been translated in a unified manner throughout the volume. (shrink)

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation (...) to the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

Original title : 「歴史的身体」『西田幾多郎全集』[Nishida Kitarō Gesamtausgabe], 3. Auflage, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, Bd. 14: 265–92.

I characterize Nishida Kitarō’s metaethical perspective throughout his work but focus especially on his later papers, most notably his writings on kōiteki chokkan, or active intuition. These include Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba (published in 1935), Kōiteki Chokkan (published in 1937), as well as Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan, published in 1945, and widely available in translation). I explore affinities between Nishida’s approach to ethics and metaethical intuitionism and sensibility theory. I then use this (...) analysis to identify a lesson that Nishida offers to contemporary metaethicists. (shrink)

In his essay Tracy Lupher (henceforth, TL) is concerned with Robert Kane's (1984) version of the modal ontological argument (MOA). As he correctly points out, Kane's argument is valid only if the accessibility relation between possible worlds is assumed to be symmetric. TL's remarks pave the way to thinking that the MOA is intended to establish the existence of a perfect being as a matter of logical necessity. Moreover, given TL's undisputed supposition (even shared by Kane) that S5 - (...) in which the accessibility relation is symmetric - captures the notion of logical necessity, the real issue becomes whether the premise of the MOA is true. Contrary to TL's main claim, the discussion thus shifts back from technical arguments for why the appropriate modal logic must have a symmetric accessibility relation to metaphysical, theological, or conceptual considerations about the notion of a perfect being itself. I argue that it is only due to such considerations that we even start to ponder the question of what modal logic is the appropriate one to choose. (shrink)

Although we cannot find any Aesthetics system in the works of NISHIDA Kitarõ (1870-1945), the most significant and influential Japanese philosopher of the twentieth-century, one of his central themes is the role of art and aesthetics in relation with morality and religion. His aesthetics approaches are magnificent examples of his aim to overcome the innate dualism that sustains modern epistemology and a door, apparently hidden, to a better understanding of all his speculative scheme of philosophy. This paper attempts to (...) throw light to the importance of the first aesthetic approximation developed by Nishida eleven years before the publication of Zen no Kenkyû [ 善 の?究 ] (An Inquiry into the Good) (1911) and twenty-three years before the publication of the more accurate system of aesthetics that we read in Geijutsu to dôtoku [芸術 と 道? ] (Art and Morality) (1923). We will analyze the small essay entitled "Bi no Setsumei" [美 の?明] ("An explanation of Beauty") (1900) and Nishida's first definition of beauty as muga [無我] (self-effacement or ecstasy). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one (...) place and the next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a possible convergence between two great twentieth century thinkers, Nishida Kitarō of Japan and Martin Heidegger of Germany. The focus is on the quasi-religious language they employ in discussing the grounding of human existence in terms of an encompassing Wherein for our being. Heidegger speaks of “the sacred” and “the passing of the last god” that mark an empty clearing wherein all metaphysical absolutes or gods have withdrawn but are simultaneously indicative of an opening (...) wherein beings are given. Nishida speaks of “the religious” dimension in the depths of one's being, that he calls “place,” and that somehow envelops the world through its kenotic self-negation. In both we find reference to a kind of originary space—the open or place—associated with quasireligious themes. I also point to their distinct approaches to metaphysical language in their attempts to give voice to that abysmal thought. (shrink)

The “shrinking” of the globe in the last few centuries has made explicit that the world is a tense unity of many: the many worlds are forced to contend with one another. Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. We exist by partaking in “the socio-historical world.” More recently, Jean-luc Nancy has conceived of the world in terms of sense. What is striking in both is that the world emerges (...) out of a nothing, created ex nihilo—the phrase stripped of its theistic connotations. While for Nishida the world is ultimately implaced in the “place of absolute nothing,” Nancy speaks of the nothing that is the basis of the world’s self-creation. I will explore a possible convergence between these and any light it may shed upon our contemporary situation of globalization and its implications for praxis. I look to a sense of the nothing as a chōratic spatiality, an opening that provides space for co-being and serves as the source of creativity. In face of globalization, the project for meaning through mondialisation (in Nancy) and within a multi-cultural world (in Nishida) would imply the appropriation of such an originary spatiality. (shrink)

The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. Their shared notion (...) of “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary hilosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. (shrink)

Nous nous proposons dans cette intervention de structurer synchroniquement trois moments philosophiques d’origines differentes : l’intuition agissante chez Kitarō Nishida, la dialectique de la mediation absolue chez Hajime Tanabe et la philosophie de l’individuation chez Gilbert Simondon, dans un contexte de reflexion philosophique sur la nature de la vie humaine. Les trois moments semblent susceptibles de se croiser, se critiquer et se completer dans un terrain transductif au sens ou l’entend Simondon. C’est ce nouveau terrain que nous entendons defricher (...) afin d’ouvrir une perspective ou un individu humain se transforme en agent responsable d’un transhumanisme a travers le processus de l’individuation dynamique et transindividuelle, laquelle nous preparerait a l’emergence du posthumain dans un futur proche. (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)

Co jest większe, bycie czy nic? Anzelm dowodzi istnienia Boga przy pomocy nihil. Bóg jako to, od czego nic większego nie może zostać pomyślane przez skończony umysł. Właściwe dla Anzelma logiczne – i być może mistyczne – użycie słowa „nic” domaga się porównania z negatywną ontologią Heideggera i jej recepcją w ramach tzw. Szkoły z Kioto założonej przez Nishidę. Czyż jednak pustka buddyzmu zen nie odsyła nas do – niewypowiedzianej – boskiej obecności?

This chapter will explicate what Nishida means by “nothing” (mu, 無), as well as “being” (yū, 有), through an exposition of his concept of the “place of nothing” (mu no basho). We do so through an investigation of his exposition of “the place of nothing” vis-àvis the self, the world, and God, as it shows up in his epistemology, metaphysics, theology and religious ethics during the various periods of his oeuvre – in other words, his understanding of nothingness that (...) he takes to be the root of the self, the world, and the religious notion of an absolute or God. We will also indicate some of the sources of his notion from the Eastern and the Western traditions. What unites his view to nothing from the different periods is an existential praxis, and what I call an “anontology” that avoids reduction to either opposites of being and non-being (on-mēon). (shrink)

The paper will explicate the Sache or matter of the dialectic of the founder of Kyoto School philosophy, Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), from the standpoint of his mature thought, especially from the 1930s and 40s. Rather than providing a simple exposition of his thought I will engage in a creative reading of his concept of basho (place) in terms of chiasma and chōra, or a chiasmatic chōra. I argue that Nishida’s appropriation of nineteenth century German, especially Hegelian, terminology was (...) inadequate in expressing what he strove to say—for his concept of basho confounds traditional metaphysical discourse. Because of its chiasmatic and chōratic nature, the Sache he strove to capture and express through the language of dialectical philosophy, perpetually slips away from any systemic bounds. His “dialectic” (benshōhō) implies a chiasma or a criss-crossing of multiple factors on multi-dimensional levels that exceed in complexity simplistic binomial oppositions or the triadic formula of traditional dialectics. The complexity is one of over-determination that threatens to undermine the very language of such a dialectic. As the deep complexity of over-inter-determinations would deconstruct any notion of a substance, what Nishida offers—as opposed to an ousiology (or logic of substance)—is a chiasmology. I thus argue that his so-called dialectic is really an unfolding of that chiasma. And if chiasma expresses the over-determinate aspect of Nishida’s matter of thinking, chōra would express its under-determinate aspect. Nishida himself based his concept of basho or “place” on Plato’s notion of the chōra from the Timaeus. I take Nishida’s basho in its chōratic nature as what simultaneously unfolds and enfolds the chiasma. But in the case of the chōra it is its under-determinate nature that refuses reduction to any of the terms of opposition. In its self-withdrawal, it provides a clearing, a space, for the chiasmatic unraveling of the many. Like the chiasma it undermines any claim to a first substance or the hegemony of a universal First. For in its indeterminateness, it is “nothing” (mu). The unfolding it enfolds is, as Nishida states, “a determination without determiner.” In concrete terms, however, we might develop Nishida’s concept further by returning to the original pre-Platonic Greek meaning of chōra in the sense of “region” or “country,” to understand chōra or basho here as the very space of co-existence provided by this very earth. As a chiasmatic chōra irreducible, in its over- and under-determinations, to being or non-being, Nishida’s basho qua mu proves to be the an-ontological origin of both on and meon (being and non-being). Rejecting the culture-nature dichotomy this notion of our place of being as chiasma and chōra underscores our holistic symbiosis with the earth as the anontological (un)ground and clearing for our co-existence in a concrete milieau with one another and with nature. It is this earth as our ultimate contextual wherein that provides a clearing for co-dwelling and mutual encounter with one’s other, that we must acknowledge today if we are to co-exist authentically and freely vis-à-vis our global neighbors and vis-à-vis the surrounding nature. (shrink)

Originally published as「歴史的世界の個性的な自己創造と国家：西田哲学における〈国家〉と〈民族〉」, in「西田哲学会年報第七号」[ Jahrbuch der Nishida-Gesellschaft] 7 : 55–76. Übersetzt von Leon Krings. In diesem Aufsatz wird der Frage nachgegangen, in welcher Weise der „Staat“ im späten Denken des Philosophen Nishida Kitarō thematisiert wird. Dies geschieht anhand der Staatstheorie Nishidas, wie sie sich in seinen Aufsätzen Das Problem der Staatsraison und Das Problem der japanischen Kultur sowie im Anhang zur Philosophischen Aufsatzsammlung iv darstellt. Zusätzlich werden Nishidas Schriften, die nach den Grundproblemen der Philosophie geschrieben wurden und den (...) theoretischen Hintergrund seiner Staatstheorie bilden, miteinbezogen. In diesen Schriften fragt Nishida – ausgehend von der genetischen Struktur der historischen Wirklichkeit – nach der Daseinsberechtigung sowie der Bedeutung des Staates, d. h. danach, was ein Staat ist und welche Art von Gemeinschaft es verdient, als „Staat“ bezeichnet zu werden. Mithilfe des im Folgenden dargestellten Leitfadens werde ich versuchen, Nishidas Gedankengang genauer nachzuverfolgen. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass er den „Staat“ als eine im höchsten Maße paradoxe Form der Gemeinschaft interpretiert. (shrink)

Relocating the figure of Jikaku (Self-Consciousness) in Nishida’s Intuition and Reflection in Self-consciousness.

Paradoxical Utterances. An Approximation about Nishida’s Use of Heraclitus’ Fragments in An Inquiry into the Good (1911) -/- The paper discusses the use of Heraclitus’ ideas in Nishida Kitarõ early work, An inquiry into the Good (1911), in order to show how both thinkers, distant in time and philosophical tradition, coincide in present the formative process of reality, defending a common principle that impulses the process (named logos and “pure experience”). It also discusses how these principles can be (...) feasible strategies to escape from a substance-based ontology, but resulting in linguistic paradoxical assertions, able to show the possibility for an identity of opposites. (shrink)

Original title: 「生の哲學について」『西田幾多郎全集』旧版 [Alte Ausgabe: Gesammelte Werke Nishida Kitarōs]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1978, 6: 428–51; 新版 [Neue Ausgabe]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 2009, 5: 335–53.

Conferencia Festival Internacional de Japón (Bilbao, Noviembre de 2010) .

Gaisi Takeuti (1926–2017) is one of the most distinguished logicians in proof theory after Hilbert and Gentzen. He extensively extended Hilbert's program in the sense that he formulated Gentzen's sequent calculus, conjectured that cut-elimination holds for it (Takeuti's conjecture), and obtained several stunning results in the 1950–60s towards the solution of his conjecture. Though he has been known chiefly as a great mathematician, he wrote many papers in English and Japanese where he expressed his philosophical thoughts. In particular, he used (...) several keywords such as "active intuition" and "self-reflection" from Nishida's philosophy. In this paper, we aim to describe a general outline of our project to investigate Takeuti's philosophy of mathematics. In particular, after reviewing Takeuti's proof-theoretic results briefly, we describe some key elements in Takeuti's texts. By explaining these texts, we point out the connection between Takeuti's proof theory and Nishida's philosophy and explain the future goals of our project. (shrink)

Gaisi Takeuti extended Gentzen's work to higher-order case in 1950's–1960's and proved the consistency of impredicative subsystems of analysis. He has been chiefly known as a successor of Hilbert's school, but we pointed out in the previous paper that Takeuti's aimed to investigate the relationships between "minds" by carrying out his proof-theoretic project rather than proving the "reliability" of such impredicative subsystems of analysis. Moreover, as briefly explained there, his philosophical ideas can be traced back to Nishida's philosophy in (...) Kyoto's school. For the proving the consistency of such systems, it is crucial to prove the well-foundedness of ordinals called "ordinal diagrams" developed for it. Takeuti presented such arguments several times in order to show that they are admitted in his stand point. As a starting point of investigating his finitist stand point, we formulate the system of ordinal notations up to ε0 and reconstruct the well-foundedness arguments of them. (shrink)

The modern concept of ideology was established by the liberal politician and philosopher Destutt de Tracy, with the objective of creating an all-embracing and general science of ideas, which followed the sensualist and empiricist trend initiated by Locke that culminated in the positivism of Comte. Natural selection and immunity are two key concepts in the history of biology that were strongly based on the Malthusian concept of struggle for existence. This concept wrongly assumed that population grew faster than the (...) means of existence. This “natural” law contained implicitly the idea that the poor and least gifted would not survive. This idea led to the progressive development of the concept of natural selection, whose definitive version was given by Darwin. Mechnikov took the concepts of struggle for existence and natural selection and conceived infectious diseases as a struggle between a host and its invader, the so-called phagocytosis theory. This theory created the necessity to possess mechanisms to discriminate between the own and the foreign, and led to the conception of the immune self. These concepts were not developed from ideas coming from perceptions or sensations, but from ideas coming from their values: individual interest, inevitable inequality, property, utility and profit. Values are ideals that constitute an ideological matrix which exerts a numinous activity and influence the development of our future actions. In consequence, science and its practice cannot avoid and ignore the values that drive them and impulse them towards certain directions. (shrink)

Philosophe japonais polyglotte au savoir encyclopédique, Yamauchi Tokuryū est à n’en point douter l’un des auteurs les moins étudiés de l’école de Kyōto. La présente étude vient corriger ce qui ne constitue rien d’autre qu’un accident de l’histoire, tant l’ampleur du projet philosophique de Yamauchi est à même de susciter l’intérêt du philosophe, du savant et de l’amateur cultivé. La démarche de ce penseur japonais, disciple de Nishida Kitarō, est remarquable en ce qu’il chercha à proposer un dépassement englobant (...) de ce qu’il nomme, d’une part, la « logique du logos » – qui figurait déjà chez Aristote et se structure autour des principes d’identité, de contradiction et du tiers exclu – et, d’autre part, la « logique du lemme » – méthode d’appréhension intuitive des étants qui, née en Inde, serait d’inspiration essentiellement bouddhique. Cette étude, dans laquelle les conceptions bouddhiques qui traversent le propos de Yamauchi sont explicitées, est essentiellement consacrée à l’analyse de ses deux essais les plus importants Logos et lemme (1974) et Philosophie de la latence (1993). Le lecteur y rencontrera une discussion tant de la logique aristotélicienne que d’un régime de logicité tel que le tétralemme, tant du coeur des philosophies européennes que de celui des pensées bouddhiques. Il y rencontrera en outre une discussion de l’idée de néant, de la causalité et de la question du fondement de l’être, nourrie de conceptions bouddhiques telles que la « coproduction conditionnée » (pratītya-samutpāda) et la « latence » (anuśaya). (shrink)

The essay is a written version of a talk Nakamura Yūjirō gave at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris in 1983. In the talk Nakamura connects the issue of common sense in his own work to that of place in Nishida Kitarō and the creative imagination in Miki Kiyoshi. He presents this connection between the notions of common sense, imagination, and place as constituting one important thread in contemporary Japanese philosophy. He begins by discussing the significance of place (...) (basho) that is being rediscovered today in response to the shortcomings of the modern Western paradigm, and discusses it in its various senses, such as ontological ground or substratum, the body, symbolic space, and linguistic or discursive topos in ancient rhetoric. He then relates this issue to the philosophy of place Nishida developed in the late 1920s, and after providing an explication of Nishida’s theory, discusses it further in light of some linguistic and psychological theories. Nakamura goes on to discuss his own interest in the notion of common sense traceable to Aristotle and its connection to the rhetorical concept of topos, and Miki’s development of the notion of the imagination in the 1930s in response to Nishida’s theory. And in doing so he ties all three—common sense, place, and imagination—together as suggestive of an alternative to the modern Cartesian standpoint of the rational subject that has constituted the traditional paradigm of the modern West. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is very seldom, if ever, referred to in the works of whom we might think of as the eminent Asian metaphysicians. In spite of this, the big picture metaphysical views available in the thought of philosophers such as Nāgārjuna, Fazang and Nishida appear to share certain structural features with views more familiar to us from our own tradition; views that explicitly accept or reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Nāgārjuna looks to develop a kind (...) of metaphysical infinitism, Fazang an extreme form of coherentism, and Nishida a species of foundationalism. These three positions - infinitism, coherentism and foundationalism - are typically thought to exhaust the spread of possibilities by those working within the Western tradition. -/- In spite of their similarities to positions advanced within our own tradition, the cosmologies of many of the giants of Asian philosophy are characterised by their rather striking conclusions. Amongst such conclusions for Nāgārjuna is that everything is empty; for Fazang that everything is identical to everything else; and for Nishida that everything depends on absolute nothingness. If the Principle of Sufficient Reason is playing a role in the derivation of such striking conclusions, then it looks that there are more options regarding the metaphysical structure of the world available to us than our own tradition typically courts. If, on the other hand, these striking cosmological conclusions are arrived at without any consideration of sufficient reason, then there may well be ways of reasoning about the overarching structure of reality that are powerful but unfamiliar to Western thinking. In this contribution, I explore what, if any, role the PSR might be playing in the thought of Nāgārjuna , Fazang and Nishida, and what we might be able to learn from it. (shrink)

This collection of new essays focuses on metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics, and how much these comparisons can add to contemporary discussions of the foundations of morality. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the (...) Mexica (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony, naturalism, moral perception, and the nature of moral realism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. (shrink)

Erwin Schrödinger holds a prominent place in the history of science primarily due to his crucial role in the development of quantum physics. What is perhaps lesser known are his insights into subject-object duality, consciousness and mind. He documented himself that these were influenced by the Upanishads, a collection of ancient Hindu spiritual texts. Central to his thoughts in this area is that Mind is only One and there is no separation between subject and object. This chapter aims to bridge (...) Schrödinger’s view on One Mind with the teachings of Dōgen, a twelfth century Zen master. This bridge is formed by addressing the question of how time relates to One Mind, and subject-object duality. Schrödinger describes the experience of One Mind to be like a timeless now, whereas subject-object duality involves a linear continuum of time. We show how these differing positions are unified in the notion of ‘absolute present’, which was put forward in the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō (1871–1945). In addition, we argue that it is in this notion of absolute present that the views of Schrödinger, Dōgen and Nishida meet. (shrink)