Yukiko Kuwayama

What does feeling mean? Does it differ depending on the linguistic cultures in which one grows up, and if so, to what extent? This book explores the different forms of sensation and feeling formation that can be observed within the word field ki (気). Ki is often translated into German with words such as air, breath, atmosphere, life force or energy. Inspired by the linguistic phenomenology of J. L. Austin and based on philosophical approaches by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hermann Schmitz, Gernot Böhme and Rolf Elberfeld, this study establishes connections between everyday word use and modes of feeling or sensation and allows the basic outlines of a critical aesthetic of articulating feeling to emerge.

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal novel modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself.