Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy

This volume addresses the impact of the introduction of phenomenology in Japan and its interaction with Japanese philosophy. However, the specific way in which phenomenology has interacted with the indigenous Japanese tradition of thought and Japanese culture has until now not been addressed in great detail.

This volume addresses the impact of the introduction of phenomenology in Japan and its interaction with Japanese philosophy. It is well known that phenomenology was introduced very early in Japan. Furthermore, phenomenology still constitutes one of the main currents of thought in Japan. However, the specific way in which phenomenology has interacted with the peculiar Japanese tradition of thought, with Japanese culture, or, more broadly, with the “Japanese mind”, has until now not been addressed in great detail. This volume fills that gap. It discusses in detail the encounter and the interaction between Japanese thought and phenomenological metaphysics, the Japanese and the phenomenological understandings of self and self-awareness, and Japanese ethics and the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. The book shows how phenomenology has served, and still serves, Japan to re-comprehend its “own” tradition and its specific form(s) of culture. It offers an example of how different cultures and traditions can be both preserved and developed in their reciprocal action. More in general, it advances the philosophical debate beyond cultural enclosures and beyond mere scholasticism. The Phenomenological tradition of philosophy has always been open to new and alien ideas. An encounter with Japanese philosophy can offer a new challenge to actual phenomenological thinking.