Japanese Philosophers on Society and Culture: Nishida Kitaro, Watsuji Tetsuro, and Kuki Shuzo

Japanese Philosophers on Society and Culture explores how three of Japan's preeminent philosophers of the twentieth century defined culture and analyzed its philosophical significance, adapting philosophical methodologies to study traditional sources of Japanese culture and critiquing European philosophy's methodologies. It also engages with the problem of cultural essentialism by identifying the progressive and conservative elements of each philosopher's characterization of Japanese culture.

Format: Hardback
Length: 298 pages
Publication date: 10 December 2020
Publisher: Lexington Books

Philosophers from all over the world have pondered the meaning of culture and its philosophical significance. In Japan, three prominent philosophers of the twentieth century—Nishida Kitaro, Watsuji Tetsuro, and Kuki Shuzo—have explored the concept of culture and analyzed its implications for social relations. Graham Mayeda delves deeper into the lesser-known aspects of their work, including a philosophical analysis of Watsuji's travel diary, Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara, the role of intuition in Kuki's ethics of otherness, and the role of culture in realizing Nishida's concept of reality as the historical world. These philosophers employed philosophical methodologies such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical logic to study the traditional sources of Japanese culture, including Confucianism, Buddhism, Bushido, and Shinto. Mayeda highlights how Nishida, Watsuji, and Kuki critiqued the methodologies they adopted from European philosophy and modified them to reflect the values that form the basis of their own cultural tradition. Additionally, he engages with the issue of cultural essentialism by identifying the progressive and conservative elements in each philosopher's characterization of Japanese culture.

Weight: 602g
Dimension: 159 x 237 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781498572088