Abstract

The thesis of the dissertation is that the Japanese have sought to engage the impermanence of things in such a way that impermanence becomes a source, or ground, and condition for the understanding and appreciation of things, and for the realization of meaningful human existence. This thesis is established and explained through distinguishing the engagement with impermanence, and the kind of understanding which this involves, from a discursive, conceptual understanding. The engagement has been further explained in terms of its aesthetic mode, which is presented through an examination of classical Japanese literature, and its meditative mode, which is presented through an analysis of Dogen's thought. Through these two forms of engagement the very features of the impermanence of things, such as their temporal finitude, contingency, incompleteness, and mutability, are seen to supply the conditions for the possibility of realizing meaningful human existence. ;Aspects of the traditions of Indian Buddhist and Chinese views on impermanence and change are also examined in order to show the distinctive significance of the Japanese views. ;The Japanese engagement with impermanence is philosophically significant because it is accomplished without an appeal to a metaphysics of timeless or eternal being, or to a theory of knowledge based on such a metaphysics. Rather than transcending time, the engagement with impermanence is timely and timeful. The realization of timeliness and timefulness is the gathering and disclosing in appropriateness to, and of, the particular transient occasions of experience. This has been further explained through the notion of an aesthetic ordering or patterning of things which such an experience exhibits