Asian Philosophical Traditions Research Articles

Eric S. Nelson: <i>Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom</i>

Eric S. Nelson: <i>Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom</i>

Hut Existence or Urban Dwelling?

Heidegger’s “Creative Landscapes: Why do we remain in the provinces?” and “Dialogue on Language” reveal the importance of rootedness for his existentialism. The article engages with the provinciality of Heidegger’s thought by juxtaposing his solitary “hut existence” to Buddhist compassion and the urban aesthetics of Kuki Shūzō. Turning to the East allows for a deprovincialization of Heideggerian themes. The rich philosophical legacy of reflecting on intercultural modernization and urbanization processes in East Asian philosophical traditions presents a genuine opportunity to rethink what it means to dwell today.

Концепция «места» Накамуры Юдзиро

The ideas of Nishida Kitaro, in particular his concept of the “logic of place,” had a significant impact on many Japanese philosophers of the 20th century, and not only those who belonged to the Kyoto school. We can say that the very category of place has acquired the status of a universal cognitive (ontognoseological) metaphor, widely used in a variety of contexts. Nakamura, like many other mod­ern Japanese philosophers, uses the concept of place as a frame that allows us to view reality as a dynamic network of multi-level connections and interactions. The works of the Tokyo philosopher Nakamura Yujiro, whose scientific activity took place in the last third of the 20th – early 21st centuries, is a vivid example of the further development of the theory of place at the modern level, confirming its heuristic possibilities. The article is devoted to the analysis of Nakamura’s views in his books Topos Theory, Common Sense Theory and Predicative World and Systems, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of topological meta­phors in various fields of both natural science and philosophy, contributing to the development of modern ontological and epistemological theories. The con­ducted research demonstrates the potential of Asian philosophical traditions, which should be taken into account while solving the problems facing modern philosophy.

Acceptance-Based Therapies and Asian Philosophical Traditions: Similarities and Differences in the Concept of Acceptance

Mindfulness and acceptance-based psychotherapies have gained popularity in the last few decades as a “third wave” of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Acceptance is an important factor in all of these psychotherapies and stems from Asian philosophies, therefore similarities are necessarily seen between the psychotherapies themselves. This paper aims to demonstrate the ways in which acceptance-based psychotherapies converge by virtue of sharing the same philosophical root, as well as how they diverge in their applications of this concept. Specifically, this paper will examine similarities and differences in the concept of acceptance amongst the therapeutic models of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, as compared to the Asian philosophical traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. Acceptance in these psychotherapies will first be collectively compared with that of the Asian philosophical traditions, then key similarities and differences will be highlighted among the psychotherapies themselves. A secondary aim of this paper is to illustrate REBT as an acceptance-based psychotherapy, though it is not often included in discussions of third wave acceptance-based CBTs.

Tasŏk Yu Yŏngmo on God as Nothingness

In the East Asian philosophical traditions, the concept of nothingness has been occupying a central place. Yu Yŏngmo (1890-1981, pen name: Tasŏk 多夕; hereafter Tasŏk) was one of those who accepted Christianity in the early twentieth century Korea yet incorporated its notion of God into the broad framework of nothingness. For him, God (Hananim 하나님), far from being identified with an anthropomorphic, personal being of certain supernatural properties, is closely associated with the primordial void (mu; ŏpsŭm 없음). In other words, despite having accepted the Christian Bible as the basis of his fundamental faith he integrated its central doctrines into the ancient traditions in East Asia. As sons and daughters of God, i.e., as embodied divinity expressing True Self (cham-na) or Spiritual Self (ŏl-na), we also participate in this spiritual order of nothingness. There are thus strong Buddhist-Confucian-Daoist elements that are found in his indigenized form of Christianity.

North Korea's juche ideology: indigenous communism or traditional thought?

ABSTRACT This article examines the content of North Korea's juche ideology by analyzing official texts in comparison with Confucian classics and new religious movements in South Korea. The comparison revealed a series of similarities that vividly demonstrate that juche ideas have absorbed core elements of Korean and East Asian philosophical traditions.

A cross-cultural reflection on Shusterman’s suggestion of the “Transactional” body

In “Redeeming Somatic Reflection,” the final chapter of his work Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, Shusterman (Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, p. 182, 2008) analyzes John Dewey’s philosophy of body and mind and claims that Dewey looks to biological naturalism to provide a more unified vision of the two. He also observes that compared with William James, Dewey provides a better-balanced theory that integrates emotion, cognition and physiological reactions into a larger unity of behavioural response.

Madhyamaka and Modern Western Philosophy

In the past the study of Asian philosophical traditions has often been approached by asking how the theories developed within these nonWestern cultures would help us to solve problems in contemporary Western philosophy. The present account, which summarizes results of a research project funded by the John Templeton foundation in 2015, attempts to reverse this way of studying Asian philosophy by investigating which theories, approaches and models from contemporary Western philosophy can be used to support, analyse, refine and advance insights into key questions discussed by Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka. Our discussion concentrates on six key philosophical areas that can contribute in important ways to the analysis and development of Madhyamaka thought: metaphysics, logic, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy of science, and ethics.

Some Opening Remarks on the Exclusionary Tendency in Western Philosophy

Some Opening Remarks on the Exclusionary Tendency in Western Philosophy Ron Bontekoe (bio) There is a serious danger involved in taking the idea of the "philosophical tradition" too narrowly. Many readers of this journal will be familiar with the dangers of cultural exclusion—in particular with the long-standing tendency of many Western philosophers to reject out of hand the legitimacy of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophy, on the grounds that these Asian modes of thinking do not appear to address the same problems that Western philosophers are interested in, in the same kind of way that Western philosophers prefer to approach these problems. This culturally myopic view of what is entitled to be called "philosophy" is deplorable, and needs to be resisted, but it probably helps to remember in this regard that the Asian philosophical traditions have not been the only victims of this attitude. It was not that long ago, no more than fifty or sixty years, in fact, that many Anglo-American analytic philosophers were adopting a similarly exclusionary attitude toward European Continental philosophy—declaring that Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example, were "not philosophers." This, it turned out, meant little more than that coming to understand these alien thinkers required more effort than the deniers of their philosophical bona fides were willing to put in. In time influential thinkers emerged—William Barrett and Walter Kauffman come immediately to mind—who were willing to put in the effort required to understand what these seminal Continental figures were saying, and to explain their messages in terms that more typical Anglo-American analytic philosophers could grasp. And thus the legitimacy of the phenomenological and existential approaches to philosophy came gradually to be accepted even in the most die-hard analytical departments. Today, a similar service is being performed for the various Asian philosophical traditions by, to name just a few, people like Roger Ames, Arindam Chakrabarti, and Thomas Kasulis. We can hope that, in due time, their efforts will bear similar fruit, and that figures like Xunzi, Śaṅkara, and Dōgen will come to be recognized in Western philosophy departments as being as "mainstream" as Heidegger and Nietzsche are now understood to be. [End Page 957] But it is not cultural exclusion and myopia that worries me most, and which I want to address first in this introductory piece. Rather, it is disciplinary myopia. Philosophy began historically, and begins for each budding young future philosopher, in wonder: wonder at what the fact of our existence means, if anything; wonder at the astonishingly intricate structure of the natural world; and wonder about how best we should live our lives within this astonishing world. Thus, philosophy has always been, and remains, bound up with the search for meaning and direction. But so, too, right from the outset, it was bound up with the effort to understand more clearly the precise nature of that world the meaning of which we were trying to penetrate. Thus, metaphysics is as old a component of philosophy as is ethics, and epistemology—or the effort to explain to ourselves why our metaphysical and ethical claims deserve to be taken seriously—is almost as old as either of the other two major branches of philosophy. In the West, philosophy is sometimes referred to as "the mother of the sciences," and this is a far less metaphorical claim than it might appear to be. The early philosophers simply were the early scientists, as the examples of Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and, in particular, Aristotle make abundantly clear. The basic question that generated the various sciences—what is the precise nature of the world, and how does it work?—is a question that the early philosophers were intensely interested in as well. But it has been a recurrent feature of the history of philosophy that, as inquiry into one or another of the various dimensions of the natural world has matured to the point of developing its own distinct methodology, it has hived off from philosophy and established its own distinct identity as a new science. We see a steady progression of these new sciences emerging, and leaving philosophy permanently behind, from about the sixteenth century on. Astronomy...

Response to Levine

In this short reply to Levine's critique, I defend the enterprise of 'fusion philosophy.' I agree that the sort of careful scholarly examination of Asian philosophical traditions that is often done under the banner of 'comparative philosophy' is of great importance. But it is a separate question whether those traditions have resources that would help us solve philosophical problems of current interest. This is the question fusion philosophy tries to answer.

Alterior reflections from Asian philosophies: Levinas and the comparative way

Following the lead by Levinas, this paper suggests that the Western philosophical vision is in need to see itself vis a vis other visions of humanity that recognize different places for humans in the natural world, social world, and in the heavens. Moreover, an exclusive Western vision needs alterity to see itself for what it more truly is. Casting our gaze toward the Asian philosophical traditions, especially the Chinese and Indian traditions, provides the West with this needed reflection. By lifting ideas from the Asian philosophical tradition vis a vis the Western, the West can gain a greater understanding of itself by looking at the other.

From Copyright to Copia: Marcus Boon's Buddhist Ontology of Copying

From Copyright to Copia:Marcus Boon's Buddhist Ontology of Copying David Banash (bio) Marcus Boon, In Praise of Copying. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010. Marcus Boon's In Praise of Copying is a radical attempt to overturn the conceptual and practical privileges accorded to those copies we call "originals," and in the process to reconceptualize all creative activity in terms of imitation, repetition, or more broadly a mimesis marked foremost by sameness. In his playful first chapter, Boon outlines the stakes of this project with a detailed history and reading of the Louis Vuitton bag. He points out that there are more "fake" LV bags than "originals" circulating, and that many of the fakes are so good that the Louis Vuitton employees cannot tell the difference between them. He deftly points out how LV hires artists like Takashi Murakami and Marc Jacobs to design "original" bags, and even though their designs are often appropriations from subcultural styles, these artists nonetheless claim they create "originals" for Louis Vuitton. At the same time, it can paradoxically be more chic to carry a "fake" bag. Boon asks, "when original and copy are produced together in the same factory, at different moments; when a copy is actually self-consciously preferred to the original, we must ask again: What do we mean whey we say 'copy'?" (18). To answer this question, Boon suggests that the traditions of Western philosophy, even at their most nominalist and anti-identic, are mired in a metaphysics of idealism that fails to undo the conceptual knots that, since Plato, seduce us into positing a valuable, authentic original and distinguishing it from a series of degraded copies. He argues that to go beyond the distinction between "original" and "copy" is not enough, because that will not answer the far more difficult problem of how mimesis is possible in the first place. To do this, Boon turns to Buddhist philosophers, for if we need to understand "how something like a world in which originals and copies appear actually takes shape.… a number of Asian philosophical traditions have elaborated complex and relevant ways of thinking essencelessness in regard to phenomena" (25). Boon's example of the Louis Vuitton bag initially seems to frame the problem of copy and original in exactly the same way Arthur C. Danto thought about Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes. Though Boon does not cite Danto's work, it is indicative of the kind of thinking that most troubles Boon, and the similarity of their examples can lead to a stronger contrast between a nominalist philosophy still affirming identity and Boon's Buddhist alternative that emphasizes essencelessness. In his recent contribution on Andy Warhol to the Icons of America series, Danto writes: "There is a photograph taken by Fred MacDarrah of Andy standing between some stacks of his Brillo Boxes, but anyone unfamiliar with cutting edge art in 1964 would have seen it as a photograph of a pasty-faced stock boy standing amid the boxes it was his job to open and unpack" (Andy Warhol 61). Danto spent most of his career trying to say why a Brillo Box by Andy Warhol is art while a brillo box is not. Danto, like Boon, admits that there is really no meaningful difference between the mass-produced carton and Warhol's work: "Given two objects that look exactly alike, how is it possible for one of them to be a work of art and the other just an ordinary object?" (Andy Warhol 62). Danto's attempt to answer this came in part with his 1981 book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, and there he argues that art is essentially a matter of history, of a set of desires and concepts unfolding and coming to consciousness, and thus there really is an identity to art, though one that is developed provisionally, historically. On the point of turning himself into a full-fledged Hegelian, Danto explains that Brillo Box vindicates its claim to be art by propounding a brash metaphor: the Brillo-box-as-work-of-art. And in the end this transfiguration of the commonplace object transforms nothing in the art world. It only brings to consciousness the structures of art...

Exhibition as Proposition: Responding Critically to The Third Mind

In January of this year, the exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This ambitious exhibition is one of several recent projects aimed at rethinking modernism, in this case by tracing the complex relations between American artists and Asian philosophical traditions and cultural forms. We invited five scholars to engage in a critical conversation probing the issues raised by the exhibition, using its historically framed bias toward Japan as a starting point. Seth McCormick facilitated the discussion with Reiko Tomii. Alexandra Munroe, the curator of the exhibition, generously provided a response.

The notion of feminine in Asian philosophical traditions

The abstract notion of “the feminine”, (womanliness, feminine nature)—in French, le féminin, and in German, das Weibliche—as substantivum neutrum, remains together with its opposite, the masculine, connotative of an inherent disparity. It is meant neither as the biological affiliation of sex, nor as gender, the social response, or echo, of this biological affiliation. Rather, it is the spiritual attitude (psychic, spiritual being, mind) which is the norm for psychic manifestations in general, and is its subtle psychosomatic background. It is not necessarily connected with the rude biological differentiation of sex, but rather appears as a quality in one or the other form; either as the individual, the social group or forms of activities, etc., without respect to the biological manifestations of the participants. What this paper attempts to demonstrate, is the way in which the above described notion of the feminine, functions in classical Asian cultures and philosophies. In the famous Yijing, for instance, this is seen as the hexagram correlated to the male Qian; in the philosophy of Yin and Yang, as Yin the Earth, in correlation with Yang, the Heaven; which are united in the famous Taiji diagram, a sophisticated development of Chinese Neo‐Confucianism. The paper focuses on the Dao de jing, in which Lao Zi gives, as a counterbalance to the existing praxis, priority to the female principle (the feminine). He remains, however, faithful to the Asian tradition, maintaining that the masculine and the feminine should remain equal, correlative, neither one nor the other vying for dominance. The correlative embrace, “When you know the male yet hold on to. the female” (Dao de jing, chapter 28) subsists in the mythical past where both principles are joined in androgynous unity.