Bret W. Davis

Bret W. Davis is Professor & Higgins Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches courses on Asian, Western, and cross-cultural philosophy, and where he directs The Heart of Zen Meditation Group. In addition to attaining a Ph.D. in philosophy at Vanderbilt University, he has studied and taught in Germany and Japan. While living in Japan for more than a dozen years, he studied Buddhist philosophy at Otani University and Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University while practicing Rinzai Zen at Shōkokuji monastery. Prof. Davis has published more than eighty scholarly articles on Zen Buddhism, the Kyoto School, Heidegger, and various other topics and figures in continental and cross-cultural philosophy. He has also published more than a dozen books, including the monographs Nihon-tetsugaku: Sekai-tetsugaku e no kōken (Japanese Philosophy: Contributions to World Philosophy, Chikuma, 2025), Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2022), and Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit (Northwestern University Press, 2007); the Great Courses video series and audiobook Real Zen for Real Life (2020); the edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2020, 2022) and Sekai no naka no Nihon no tetsugaku (Japanese Philosophy in the World, Shōwadō, 2005); and a translation of Martin Heidegger’s Country Path Conversations (Indiana University Press, 2010, 2016). Prof. Davis is co-editor of two book series, World Philosophies with Indiana University Press and Transcontinental Philosophy with SUNY Press, and serves on the executive committees of Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, International Society of Contemplative Research, Nishida Philosophy Association, Society for World Philosophies, and Collegium Phaenomenologicum.