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13In Remembrance of Ueda ShizuteruJournal of World Philosophies 5 (1): 292-293. 2020.Ueda Shizuteru 上田閑照, one of the most consequential and celebrated Japanese philosophers of the last hundred years, passed away on June 28, 2019, at the age of 93. A professor of religious studies at Kyoto University, he was not only a leading scholar of Meister Eckhart and Nishida Kitarō, he was a highly original philosopher in his own right and widely recognized as the central figure in the third generation of the Kyoto School. Moreover, he was not only one of the foremost philosophical interpr…Read more
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10Engaging with the Japanese Philosophical Tradition of Engaged KnowingJournal of World Philosophies 5 (1): 256-258. 2020.This review examines the main topics and the main thesis of Thomas Kasulis’s Engaging Japanese Philosophy. The book covers the entire fourteen-hundred-year history of philosophical thinking in Japan, with a focus on seven key Buddhist, Confucian, Native Studies, and modern academic philosophers. The author’s main thesis is that Japanese philosophers have predominantly aimed at an existentially “engaged knowing” rather than the kind of objectively “detached knowing” that has come to dominate mode…Read more
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8Korak unatrag kroz nihilizam. Radikalna orijentacija filozofije zena Nishitanija KeijijaFilozofska Istrazivanja 96 (1): 121-139. 2005.
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Trans-mysticism: Ueda Shizuteru on Zen after Meister EckhartIn Gregory S. Moss & Takeshi Morisato (eds.), The dialectics of absolute nothingness: the legacies of German philosophy in the Kyoto school, Cornell University Press. 2025.
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Provokativna podvojenost u japanskoj filozofiji religije: s fokusom na Nishidi i zenuIn Kahteran Nevad & W. Heisig James (eds.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 5: Nove Granice Japanske Filozofije, Nanzan Institute For Religion & Culture. pp. 116-145. 2009.
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11Forms of Emptiness in ZenIn Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.This chapter examines the six forms that the teaching of emptiness takes in Zen. Before doing this, the chapter comments briefly on Zen's relation to the doctrinal sources upon which it critically and creatively draws. The Zen tradition understands itself to be based on Śākyamuni Buddha's profoundest teaching of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which has been passed down not through texts and doctrines but by way of face‐to‐face acknowledgment of awakening. The six rubrics which the notion of emptiness is use…Read more
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15In and Out of WordsJournal of Continental Philosophy 3 (1): 105-134. 2022.What is the relationship between language and experience? This question was a central concern of the eminent Kyoto School philosopher and lay Zen master Ueda Shizuteru (1926–2019). In fact, this question has long been a focal issue of the Zen tradition. Famously, if also paradoxically, the Zen tradition has claimed to “not to rely on words and letters” even while producing volumes of texts: poetry and didactic discourses as well as encounter dialogues (mondō) and kōan collections. Critics have a…Read more
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10Heidegger on the Way from Onto-Historical Ethnocentrism to East-West DialogueGatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 6 130-156. 2016.Heidegger often asserted that Germany, as “the land of poets and thinkers,” has a central world-historical role to play in any possible recovery from the technological nihilism of the modern epoch. And yet, on numerous occasions, Heidegger also demonstrated a serious interest in dialogue with the East Asian traditions of Daoism and Zen Buddhism. How are Heidegger’s entrenched ethnocentrism and his interest in East-West dialogue related? While neither can be wholly confined to one or another peri…Read more
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22Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of ZenIn Gereon Kopf (ed.), The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Springer. pp. 713-738. 2016.As the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy, UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照 has not only followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治, but has taken several strides forward in their shared pursuit of what can be called a “philosophy of Zen.” The “of” in this phrase should be understood as a “double genitive,” that is, in both its objective and subjective senses. Ueda not only philosophizes about Zen, he also…Read more
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Conversing in emptiness: rethinking cross-cultural dialogue with the Kyoto schoolIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Philosophical Traditions, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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12Engaging Dōgen's Zen: the philosophy of practice as awakening (edited book)Wisdom Publications. 2016.How are the teachings of a thirteenth-century master relevant today? Twenty contemporary writers unpack Dogen's words and show how we can still find meaning in his teachings. Engaging Dogen's Zen is a practice oriented study of Shushogi (a canonical distillation of Dogen's thought used as a primer in the Soto School of Zen) and Fukanzazengi (Dogen's essential text on the practice of "just sitting," a text recited daily in the Soto School of Zen). It is also a study of the entire self. Here, the …Read more
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19Ueda Shizuteru’s Zen Philosophy of Dialogue: The Free Exchange of Host and GuestComparative and Continental Philosophy 14 (2): 162-177. 2022.This essay seeks to understand the nature of both interpersonal and intercultural dialogue from the perspective of Zen Buddhism as it has been interpreted, in dialogue with Western philosophy and religion, by the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School: Ueda Shizuteru (1926–2019). It examines how Ueda develops a philosophy of interpersonal dialogue on the basis of Zen teachings and practices. In particular, it reveals how Ueda draws on Huayan and Zen Buddhist notions of “host”…Read more
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11The Legacy of Ueda Shizuteru: A Zen Life of Dialogue in a Twofold WorldComparative and Continental Philosophy 14 (2): 112-127. 2022.Ueda Shizuteru 上田閑照 (1926–2019) led a double life. And he taught us how we, too, can lead double lives. Or rather, he explained how we are already in fact doing so. It’s just that we don’t realize...
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18Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen BuddhismOxford University Press. 2021.This book, the first of its kind, offers a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy and practice of Zen Buddhism. It is written by an academic philosopher who, for more than a dozen years, practiced Zen in Japan while studying in universities with contemporary heirs of the Kyoto School. The book lucidly explicates the philosophical implications of Zen teachings and kōans, and critically compares Zen with other Asian as well as Western religions and philosophies. It carefully explains the o…Read more
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40The Significance of Japanese PhilosophyJournal of Japanese Philosophy 1 (1): 5-20. 2013.When I deliver an introductory lecture on Japanese Philosophy, I always raise the following question: Is it appropriate to modify the word philosophy with an adjective such as Japanese? Philosophy is, after all, a discipline that addresses universal problems, and so transcends the restrictions implied in geographical descriptors. However, as Kuki Shūzō argues in his essay “Tokyo and Kyoto,” I think that this is only part, and not the whole truth of the matter.One’s thinking takes place within th…Read more
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134Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and BuddhismJournal of Nietzsche Studies 28 (1): 89-138. 2004.
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30The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy (edited book)Oxford Handbooks. 2014.The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy covers, in detail and depth, the entire span of Japan’s philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the present. It introduces and examines the most important topics, figures, schools, and texts from the history of philosophical thinking in premodern and modern Japan. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, clearly elucidates and critically engages with its topic in a manner that demonstrates its contemporary philosophical relevance.
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25Toward a Liberative Phenomenology of ZenYearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy 2017 (2): 304-320. 2017.The questions pursued in this essay are: What can philosophers today learn from a tradition of psychosomatic practice such as Zen Buddhism? How does such a tradition challenge the very methodology of our cerebral practice of philosophy? And finally: What would it mean to bring Western philosophy and the psychosomatic practice of Zen together, not necessarily to merge them into one, but at least to commute between them so that they may speak to and inform one another? In pursuing these questions,…Read more
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Toward a World of Worlds: Nishida, The Kyoto School, and the Place of Cross-Cultural DialogueIn W. Heisig James (ed.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy Vol.1, Nanzan Institute For Religion & Culture. pp. 184-204. 2006.
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30Sharing Words of Silence: Panikkar after GadamerComparative and Continental Philosophy 7 (1): 52-68. 2015.This article elucidates and interpretively develops Raimon Panikkar's hermeneutics of intertraditional dialogue by way of setting it into sympathetic and critical dialogue with the predominantly intratraditional hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. It argues that Panikkar's thought enables us not only to appreciate, but also to question the limits of the fundamental roles played by language and tradition in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Panikkar's own hermeneutical reflections arise directly out of int…Read more
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13Review of Richard Capobianco, Engaging Heidegger (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (9). 2010.
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20Step Back and Encounter: From Continental to Comparative PhilosophyComparative and Continental Philosophy 1 (1): 9-22. 2009.By drawing on the insights of a number of continental as well as Asian thinkers, this article reflects on the "significance" of comparative philosophy—both in the sense of discussing the "meaning" and in the sense of arguing for the "importance" of this endeavor. Encountering another culture allows one to deepen one's self-understanding by learning to "see oneself from the outside"; this deeper self-understanding in turn allows one to listen to what the other culture has to say. These two moment…Read more
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37Returning the world to nature: Heidegger’s turn from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to an indwelling releasement to the open-regionContinental Philosophy Review 47 (3-4): 373-397. 2014.The central issue of Heidegger’s thought is the question of being. More precisely, it is the question of the relation between being and human being, the relation, that is, between Sein and Dasein. This article addresses the so-called turn in Heidegger’s thinking of this relation. In particular, it shows how this turn entails a shift from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to “an indwelling releasement [inständige Gelassenheit] to the worlding of the world”. Although a wide range of p…Read more
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3Reply to Graham Parkes: Nietzsche as Zebra: With both Egoistic Antibuddha and Nonegoistic Bodhisattva StripesJournal of Nietzsche Studies 46 (1): 62-81. 2015.
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On the Way to Gelassenheit: The Problem of the Will and the Possibility of Non-Willing in Heidegger's ThoughtDissertation, Vanderbilt University. 2001.This dissertation shows how the problem of the will is at the very heart of Heidegger's thought---not only explicitly in his post-turn critique of the technological "will to will" and in his intimations of Nicht-Wollen or Gelassenheit---but in the twistings and turnings of the development of his thought-path as a whole. ;In Chapter 1, in the course of laying out the interpretive terms of the investigation, I also begin with a consideration of the "debate" between the two great 19th century philo…Read more
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22Opening Up the WestJournal of Japanese Philosophy 1 (1): 57-83. 2013.This essay aims to help prepare the way for those trained in Western philosophy to enter into dialogue with non-Western traditions of philosophy such as that of Japan. This will be done mainly by means of critical examination of some key instances of the ambivalence—the tension between the openings and closures—toward dialogue with non-Western traditions found throughout the history of Western philosophy. After tracing this ambivalence back to the Greeks, and to the figure of Socrates in parti…Read more
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Provocative Ambivalences in Japanese Philosophy of Religion: With a Focus on Nishida and ZenIn James W. Heisig (ed.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy: Japanese Philosophy Abroad, Nanzan Institute For Religion & Culture. pp. 306-339. 2004.
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37Otherwise than the Will: Davis' Faithful Transgression of HeideggerResearch in Phenomenology 39 (1): 135-142. 2009.