Collection of Articles on the Kyoto School Published in the Journal “Philosophie”
Past and Horizons of the Kyoto School
I would like to present here my most recent significant academic contribution in one of the most prestigious French-language philosophical journals.
It consists of the editing of an entire dossier in the 162nd issue of Philosophie, published in June 2024.
This dossier contains, after my brief presentation of the different contributions, the translation of a classic text by Miki Kiyoshi and various papers that present, discuss, or develop concepts that appear in the writings of philosophers of the Kyoto School.
I will provide an English translation of the titles and abstracts of the various papers published there. All of the contributors have done an amazing job of presenting the best of their current research.
Miki Kiyoshi, “Human and Environment” (translated from Japanese and presented by me)
Following my French translation of Miki Kiyoshi’s (1897–1945) “The Marxian Form of Anthropology” (1927), I present to my French-speaking readership a later writing titled “Human and Environment” (Ningen to kankyō 人間と環境), originally published in Introduction to Philosophy 『哲学入門』(1940). In this concise text, Miki addresses the question of the relationship between humanity and environment in the light of the distinction between the “contemplative subject” (shukan主観) and the “acting subject” (shutai 主体). This distinction, introduced by Miki in 1927, was to be adopted by several thinkers associated with the Kyōto School.
Jacynthe Tremblay, “The E-A-M Structure in Nishida Kitarō’s Schematic Explanations”
Between 1934 and 1945, the fundamental structure Nishida Kitarō’s (1870–1945) philosophy relies on the distinction between the two planes of the “dialectical world”, namely that of the subject and that of the object. Throughout these years, Nishida strove to illustrate this structure by means of a complex series of formulas and schematics. In this way, he came to show that, as a medium, the dialectical world possesses the status of an encompassing place in which the human being is born, acts and dies, and in which he/she encounters the domain of the object.
Yasuhiko Sugimura, “The ‘Self-Awakening’ Body: What Emerges from Maine de Biran’s Nishidian Appreciation” (translated from Japanese by me and revised by the author)
In a short text from 1936, titled “Some Impressions of French philosophy”, Nishida expresses deep sympathy for what he calls the “typically French philosophy of intimate sense”. What beckons our attention here is the recurrence of Nishida’s references to Maine de Biran. In the early 1930s, when he began to shift the emphasis of his philosophy from absolute nothingness to the idea of self-awakening corporeality, Nishida invoked Maine de Biran as a fellow traveler. At the last moment of their common journey, however, Nishida distances himself from Biran. This article tries to understand the specificity of Nishida’s conception of corporeality in contrast to that of Maine de Biran’s.
Fréderic Girard, “Nishida Kitarō’s Pure Experience and Motora Yūjirō’s Direct Experience: The Dual Structure of the Psyche Inherited from the Truth of the Chinese Apocrypha, the ‘Treatise on the Act of Faith in the Great Vehicle’ (Dacheng Qixinlun)”
A Study of Good (1911) by Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) emphasizes the concept of pure or immediate experience. Although he does not mention William James by name in a dictionary article that he wrote on this subject, Nishida’s diary mentions a reading of paramount importance: the Treatise on the Act of Faith in the Great Vehicle. This reading enabled him to emphasize the authentic truth that he was trying to illustrate. One of Nishida’s teachers, Motora Yūjirō (1858–1912), speaks in 1905 of “direct experience” in relation to Zen experience. His interpretation of this concept draws on the doctrine of shinnyo 真如, two-stage suchness, referring to the mentioned Treatise on the Act of Faith in the Great Vehicle. I conclude that Nishida’s pure experience is inspired by this work, and that what he calls “reality,” jitsuzai, corresponds to two-stage suchness.
Morten E. Jelby, “Transcendence and Matter in the Early Tanabe Hajime: From Pure Experience to Corporeality”
Both in his presentation of the concept of the ‘Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Life’ (1924) and his attempts at fleshing out the corporeality of ‘Dasein’ (1931) earn Tanabe Hajime the status of a pioneer in the critical reception of Heidegger’s thought. In this paper, I try to show how Tanabe draws on Heidegger in order to further an inquiry begun in his own early texts, concerned first and foremost with the questions of transcendence and of how “consciousness-in-general” is bound up with the world. Taking as our axis Tanabe’s first texts on Heidegger, I trace the trajectory of his thinking from the concept of pure experience to the dialectic of the body, passing through the questions of the material of givenness, the thing-in-itself, and Tanabe’s earliest divergences from Nishida Kitarō.
Romaric Jannel, “Below and Beyond Logos with Yamauchi Tokuryū”
If, in order to overcome the problem of the ineffability of the truth of Being, it is necessary to “make silence speak”, then the being that we are ourselves must be able to grasp the words in which it is expressed. With this problem in mind, I draw on the Japanese philosopher Yamauchi Tokuryū 山内得立 (1890–1982). I return to the question of the meaning of the tetralemma in the context of his philosophy. Furthermore, I propose a philosophical usage of this concept as a means of discussing, in metaphysical terms nourished by Buddhist thought, all that is, as well as all that is not.
Following the tradition of this journal, the whole is preceded by a translation of a classical text, a commentary on Leibniz by Aron Gurwitsch and followed by book reviews.
I will have to read this again, but so glad to see it again, excerpts from your book. I shall use my mind to fathom this stuff I love to ponder on. *** Thank you for liking Good Mourning too .Perhaps that was my 'silence speaking'.