James W. Heisig

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesJames W. HeisigThe Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies held its twenty-second annual conference this year, organized around the theme "Body, Place, and East-West Exchange." The meetings were held at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 22-24 July 2003, with main presentations by Honda Masaaki ("From Body to Place"), Kawanami Akira ("The Body and the Pure Land"), and Hanaoka Eiko ("Body Theories East and West"). A research report was also given by Yagi Seiichi ("A Prolegomenon to Locus Theory"), following up on his presentation at the 2002 conference.Thepapersand discussionsofthe conferenceare publishedin the journal Tōzai shūkyō (Religion East and West), edited and published at the Nanzan Institute. It is available online at the Institute's Web site and may also be ordered directly.James W. HeisigNanzan Institute for Religion and CultureCopyright © 2004 The University of Hawai'i Press...

The twelfth bi-annual symposium of the Nanzan Institute took up the problem of the philosophical tradition of Japan and how it has fared abroad. There were two principal foci of the meetings: the history and future prospects of the study and teaching of Japanese philosophy outside of Japan, and the preparation of a Sourcebook of Japanese Philosophy aimed at providing a solid anthology of Japanese philospohical resources from the earliest times up to the present. To address these two questions, 16 participants from six language-groups— Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish—were invited to Nanzan to deliver papers and discuss projects of common interest, including the Sourcebook. The final day of the conference included a discussion with selected Japanese philosophers and intellectual historians at Kyoto University.

The essay that follows is, in substance, a lecture delivered in Brussels on 7 December 2016 to the 2nd International Conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy. In it I argue that the strategy of qualifying nothingness as an “absolute,” which was adopted by Kyoto School thinkers as a way to come to grips with fundamental problems of Western philosophy, is inherently ambiguous and ultimately weakens the notion of nothingness itself. In its place, a proposal is made to define nothingness in terms of “connectedness.” The discussion is bound on both ends by an apology for transgressing established academic boundaries. On one end, I open with a brief digression on a common ground for philosophies East and West as a mestizaje to which no tradition can claim dominance. On the other, I close with an appeal for restoring respect for the role of mythical narration as a way to bridge the connection between theory and practice without having to revert to moral absolutes, particularly as it relates to safeguarding this fragile planet of ours from the ongoing sepsis of economic “progress.”

he fourteen essays gathered together in this, the third volume of Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, represent one more step in ongoing efforts to bring the concerns of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy into closer contact with philosophical traditions around the world. As its title indicates, the aims are twofold: to reflect critically on the work of leading figures in the modern academic philosophy of Japan and to straddle the borderlands where they touch on the work of their counterparts in the West. A first group of essays deals with the modern Japanese philosophers Kuki Shūzō, Nishida Kitarō, Nishitani Keiji, and Takizawa Katsumi. These are followed by three essays on comparisons with classical Western thought and three with contemporary philosophy. The final three contributions offer reflections on the role of Japanese philosophy today.