At the turn of the 20th century, when Japan was evolving from an isolated feudal society into a modern nation, a Japanese educator wrote this book to introduce the rest of the world to his society's traditional values. Author Inazo Nitobe defines bushido, the way of the warrior, as the source of the virtues most admired by his people. In this eloquent work, he takes an eclectic and far-reaching approach, drawing examples from indigenous traditions--Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, and the centuries-old philosophies (...) of samurai and sages--as well as from ancient and modern thinkers of the Western world. Generations of scholars and other readers with an interest in sociology have turned to this classic for an understanding of the soul of Japan. (shrink)

In Legends of the Samurai, Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Hiroaki Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. For this purpose, Sato has chosen to translate, wherever possible, writings (...) closest in time to the actual event. His translations are a testament to his mastery of the language for they flow with lively ease that one might not expect from accounts, many of which are ancient. Legends of the Samurai covers legends from mythological times to the early eighteenth century. Through this book Sato describes men accomplished in martial arts, warrior-commanders in battle, and samurai's own views of themselves. It ends with a famous modern retelling of a mass disembowelment in the mid-seventeenth century. (shrink)

To date, film scholars have found the films of Jim Jarmusch to be tantamount to works of postmodern philosophy. For as intriguing and productive as such interpretations of Jarmusch’s films have been, I submit that the postmodern framework occludes a crucial aspect of Jarmusch’s film-philosophy, namely, his investment in the ordinary. From this perspective, I intend to show the availability of Jarmusch’s films to Wittgensteinian interpretation. More specifically, I plan to situate Jarmusch’s arthouse action film Ghost Dog: The (...) Way of the Samurai (1999) between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida in order to demonstrate the profound affinities between Jarmusch’s film-philosophy and Wittgenstein’s conception of ordinary language. Through a consideration of character dialogue, I will demonstrate the extent to which Jarmusch rejects the private language argument – which, by extension, amounts to a rejection of linguistic relativism as an instance, or species, of skepticism – in favor of ordinary conceptions of language, expressiveness, knowledge, and responsibility. (shrink)

In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot discusses the understanding of philosophy held by the Greco-Roman ancients. Philosophy was not understood only as an exegetical or analytical exercise, but as a spiritual practice - a way of life. Becoming a member of a philosophical school was tantamount to a religious conversion involving one's entire self. To make one's doctrines 'ready to hand' required a number of 'spiritual exercises' which, if regularly followed, were intended to evince (...) such a transformation. Hadot discusses the role of such exercises for (among others) Platonists, Epicureans, Christians, and Stoics. I propose that the Samurai should be added to such a consideration. Their respective exercises allowed the adherents genuinely to adopt their system of beliefs. Many beliefs held by Stoics and Samurai are surprisingly similar. After having discussed some of these similarities, the most striking similarity will be revealed: the role of spiritual exercises in preparing both the Stoic and the Samurai for death. (shrink)

This paper examines the content of the Japanese Samurai spirit, which is comparable to the Korean Seonbi spirit, focusing on its relationship with Confucian thought. Specifically, the paper discusses the distinctive nature of Nitobe Inazo's ‘Bushido’, which spoke of Samurai morality based on universal Confucianism, Tsuda Sokichi's Bushido theory which totally rejected the influence of such Confucianism, and the spread of Confucianism which began in earnest with the end of warfare in the Edo period through Nakae Tojyu and (...) Yamaga Soko. First, I argue that Nitobe's Bushido developed Bushido based on Confucianism, which refers to universal morality, but that it also encompassed values specific to Japan due to the historical circumstances of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. Next, I pointed out that Tsuda's Bushido theory, which he criticized, was an argument based on historical grounds that put the actual lives of warriors in the foreground, but was limited in that it unilaterally emphasized only the historical particularities of Japan and downplayed the role of Confucianism as a universal ideology. Next, the creation of a new Samurai spirit through Confucianism in the Edo period, or the content of the Confucian Shido theory, through Tojyu's viewpoint of Bunbu Ittoku and Soko's emphasis on external dignity, revealed that although the Sonbi spirit and the Samurai spirit are based on the same Confucianism, the two are as dissimilar as the conflicting images represented by Bun and Bu. (shrink)

This article discusses the theoretical implications of Emmanuel Levinas‟s philosophy upon traditional military ethics of service. Throughout the discussion Japanese Bushido is used as an example to provide a specific, practical characterization of such an ethic upon which to apply a Levinasian analysis. Levinas‟s phenomenology and his idea of “ethics as first philosophy” are briefly outlined, and then a comparison is made between these ideas and more traditional ethics relating to the military such as Bushido and the Just (...) War tradition. The conclusion is reached that a traditional ethic of service that requires a soldier to perpetrate acts of violence against others on command is profoundly unethical in Levinasian terms, but that Levinasian ethics leaves open the possibility of a soldier as one who defends others rather than operates as a living weapon on the orders of a state. (shrink)

_Seven Samurai_ Directed by Akira Kurosawa Japan, 1954.

The flip side of radical autonomism is known as radical moralism. Splitting the difference between radical autonomism and radical moralism is the view known as moderate moralism, endorsed by contemporary aesthetician Noël Carrol. Radical moralism traces its roots back to Plato, who was all too aware of art's power to sway the hearts of its audience. The joke slightly depowers the powerful person, by transferring that power to the audience who laughs. John Belushi's Samurai Futaba sketches are more cringy (...) than funny to modern sensibilities, because the butt of the joke is Belushi's fictitious Futaba – a stand‐in for a stereotypical 1970s American understanding of a Japanese person. The butt of an impressionist's joke is usually, pretty straightforwardly, whoever they are doing an impression of. So, the butt of a typical Chase‐as‐Ford pratfall is Gerald Ford, and the butt of Carvey's famous “read my lips” antics is George H.W. Bush. (shrink)

A graphic novel version of the classic book that first introduced Westerners to the samurai ethos. This graphic novel version of the cult classic Bushido brings the timeless secrets of the samurai to life. Originally published in 1905, Bushido was the first book to introduce Westerners to the samurai ethos. Written by Inazo Nitobe, one of the foremost Japanese authors and educators of the time, it describes the characteristics and virtues that are associated with bushido—honor, courage, justice, (...) loyalty, self-control—and explains the philosophy behind how samurai were educated and trained; the connection between the sword and the samurai; seppuku; and the position of women in samurai culture; among other themes. To this day,Bushido is considered a must-read for anyone who wants to understanding the soul of Japan and navigate their world with integrity and honor. (shrink)

In the 1860s and 1870s, the feudal monarchy of the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled Japan for over two centuries, was overthrown, and the entire political order it had commanded was dismantled. This immense political transformation, comparable in its results to the great social revolutions of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries in the West, was distinctive for lacking a major role for mass political mobilization. Since popular political action was decisive elsewhere for both providing the force for social revolutions to (...) defeat old regimes and for pushing revolutionary leaders to more radical policies, the Meiji Restoration’s combination of revolutionary outcomes with conservative personnel and means is puzzling. This article argues that previous accounts fail to explain why a group of relatively low-status samurai—administrative functionaries with some hereditary political privileges but in fact little secure power within the old regime—was able to overcome far more deeply entrenched political actors. To explain this, it is necessary to distinguish clearly between two political processes: the long-standing political relations of feudal monarchy and magnate lords and the unprecedented emergence of independent samurai political action and organizations cutting across domain boundaries. It was the interaction of these two processes that produced the overthrow of the Tokugawa and enabled the revolutionary outcomes that followed it. This article’s revised explanation of the Meiji Restoration clearly places it within the same theoretical parameters as the major revolutions of the seventeenth century and later. (shrink)

This is the book on bushido, the much-cited but widely misrepresented samurai code of honour. Drawing on authentic historical texts, it is a detailed and accurate exploration of medieval life in Japan and the samurai, a must-have for anyone with a love of martial arts or Japanese history. This is the go-to volume on bushido ("the way of the warrior"), drawing on a wide range of historical sources to paint a vivid picture of the samurai in action (...) and separating the truth from the myth of samurai chivalry. It offers a long-overdue update to the attractive but inaccurate portrait of the samurai painted in Bushido: The Soul of Japan, which has been a bestseller ever since its publication in 1905, and the equally idealistic Hagakure (c.1716). In The Book of Bushido, Antony explores the reality of warrior behaviour versus the idealistic depiction created for an Edwardian audience by the author of Bushido: The Soul of Japan. He reveals the truth of how the samurai really behaved and of what they considered to be a warrior ethos. He replaces the image of the perfect eastern warrior with the much more interesting reality of hardened, bloodstained military leaders with human failings and a complex set of ideas about the world, who engage in ritual, magic and ceremony, who lead their followers in war and peace and who, above all, are fighting a battle between addiction to power and morality. This is the story of bushido – the way of the samurai. (shrink)

Philosophy challenges our assumptions—especially when it comes to us from another culture. In exploring Japanese philosophy, a dependable guide is essential. The present volume, written by a renowned authority on the subject, offers readers a historical survey of Japanese thought that is both comprehensive and comprehensible. Adhering to the Japanese philosophical tradition of highlighting engagement over detachment, Thomas Kasulis invites us to think with, as well as about, the Japanese masters by offering ample examples, innovative analogies, thought experiments, (...) and jargon-free explanations. He assumes little previous knowledge and addresses themes—aesthetics, ethics, the samurai code, politics, among others—not in a vacuum but within the conditions of Japan’s cultural and intellectual history. For readers new to Japanese studies, he provides a simplified guide to pronouncing Japanese and a separate discussion of the language and how its syntax, orthography, and linguistic layers can serve the philosophical purposes of a skilled writer and subtle thinker. For those familiar with the Japanese cultural tradition but less so with philosophy, Kasulis clarifies philosophical expressions and problems, Western as well as Japanese, as they arise. Half of the book’s chapters are devoted to seven major thinkers who collectively represent the full range of Japan’s historical epochs and philosophical traditions: Kūkai, Shinran, Dōgen, Ogyū Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitarō, and Watsuji Tetsurō. Nuanced details and analyses enable an engaged understanding of Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintō, and modern academic philosophy. Other chapters supply social and cultural background, including brief discussions of nearly a hundred other philosophical writers. In his closing chapter Kasulis reflects on lessons from Japanese philosophy that enhance our understanding of philosophy itself. He reminds us that philosophy in its original sense means loving wisdom, not studying ideas. In that regard, a renewed appreciation of engaged knowing can play a critical role in the revitalization of philosophy in the West as well as the East. (shrink)

Review of the following books (in German): -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel (...) Philipps (Hrsg.): Widerstand denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)

There is no arguing the impact of Inoue Tetsujirō on the development of philosophy in Japan from the Meiji Restoration through the end of the Pacific War. He was the first Japanese to receive a doctorate in philosophy from Germany and the first native-born chair of the philosophy department at Tokyo Imperial University, the training center for almost all the major Japanese philosophers who graduated before 1915. Inoue was instrumental in making German idealism the Western philosophy (...) of choice for Japan, but he also appreciated Asian traditions as well, having no qualms about claiming there was true philosophy in India, China, and premodern Japan. He set the foundation for academic philosophy in Japan not so much through his own rather simplistic personal philosophy, but especially through his contributions to the organization of the field. This article focuses mainly on Inoue’s troubled relation with Confucianism. On one hand, in seeking a premodern philosophy to serve as the bedrock for modern Japan, Inoue looked to the Edo-period Confucian traditions originating in China. He divided them into Shushigaku, Yōmeigaku, and what he named Kogaku, the school focusing on classical texts preceding neo-Confucian developments and interpretations. In many respects, like so many others of his generation, Inoue was by training and personal preference a Confucian. That is not the whole story, however. Inoue understood Confucianism’s primary purpose as cultivating the social values and order that would ensure an efficient society of human flourishing, stability, and harmony. Yet, he also likely suspected that the people of the new Japan, with its modernization and plethora of Western ideas, would not unquestioningly accept the authority of the Confucian classics, nor be willing to undertake the rigors of textual study that are the hallmark of the Confucian scholar. In Edo-period Japan, that study had been the responsibility of the samurai class, but in their democratization program, the Meiji reformers had abolished the old class system. Education of the young would now shift from the Confucian academies to the new public school system. Always cooperative with the government to the point of being obsequious, Inoue took a leading role in the National Morality program and its installment in the nationwide school curriculum. That curriculum combined a Shinto-based reverence for the sacred nature of the emperor in the kokutai ideology along with practical moralistic values that could be loosely called Confucian. Yet, if schooling for most was limited to the elementary level and if there was no longer a samurai class to oversee the moral behavior of the society, who could nurture and enforce the moral order? Through a set of fortuitous events, Inoue “discovered” bushidō, the Way of the warrior. If there were no longer a samurai warrior class, perhaps all Japanese could become de facto samurai—at least in their mindset. Most may no longer have the scholarly skills and time to glean their spiritual and moral insights from Confucian texts. Yet, they could find the virtues of loyalty, sincerity, filiality, and compliance with seniority within the distinctively mindful heart and spirit of ancient Japan carried within the Japanese bloodline. What happened to the Confucianism of Inoue Tetsujirō? Some of its values were absorbed into bushidō and National Morality, but the praxis of the Confucian scholar and the ideal of the kunshi seem to have been lost, much to Japan’s detriment. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is the author of possibly the most notorious one-liner of twentieth-century philosophy: 'Hell is other people'. Albert Camus was The Outsider. The two men first came together in Occupied Paris in the middle of the Second World War, and quickly became friends, comrades, and mutual admirers. But the intellectual honeymoon was short-lived. In 1943, with Nazis patrolling the streets, Sartre and Camus sat in a café on the boulevard Saint-Germain with Simone de Beauvoir and began a discussion (...) about life and love and literature that would pull them all together and finally tear them apart. They ended up on opposite sides in a war of words over just about everything: women, philosophy, politics. Their fraught, fractured friendship culminated in a bitter and very public feud that was described as 'the end of a love-affair' but which never really finished. Sartre was a boxer and a drug-addict; Camus was a goalkeeper who subscribed to a degree-zero approach to style and ecstasy. Sartre, obsessed with his own ugliness, took up the challenge of accumulating women; Camus, part-Bogart, part-Samurai, was also a self-confessed Don Juan who aspired to chastity. Sartre and Camus play out an epic struggle between the symbolic and the savage. But what if the friction between these two unique individuals is also the source of our own inevitable conflicts? The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus reconstructs the intense and antagonistic relationship that was (in Sartre's terms) 'doomed to failure'. Weaving together the lives and ideas and writings of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Andy Martin relives the existential drama that still binds them inseparably together and remixes a philosophical dialogue that speaks to us now. (shrink)

Wonder Woman has evolved considerably since the Golden Age. (Thank Hera!) Different writers in different eras have tinkered with her back story and her resulting character. Yet throughout her many retellings people can point to two consistent trends: she is a warrior, and she protects the abused. As a warrior, her honor code isn't so different from bushido, the code of the samurai. She is selfless, fearless, relentless, and she even has a magic lasso to enforce the samurai (...) virtue of honesty. In the hands of her best writers, Wonder Woman is not a generic do‐gooder, nor is she a milquetoast rule follower. Though her moral motivations may shift from one author to the next, what is consistent throughout her many incarnations is that Wonder Woman is uniquely placed to be the samurai feminist, the only one who can reconcile bushido and care ethics. (shrink)

Zen and Japanese Culture is one of the twentieth century's leading works on Zen, and a valuable source for those wishing to understand its concepts in the context of Japanese life and art. In simple, often poetic, language, Daisetz Suzuki describes his conception of Zen and its historical evolution. He connects Zen to the philosophy of the samurai, and subtly portrays the relationship between Zen and swordsmanship, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese love of nature. Suzuki's contemplative work (...) is enhanced by anecdotes, poetry, and illustrations showing silk screens, calligraphy, and examples of architecture. Since its original publication in 1938, this important work has played a major role in shaping conceptions of Zen's influence on Japanese traditional arts. Richard Jaffe's introduction acquaints a new generation of readers with Suzuki's life and career in both Japan and America. Jaffe discusses how Zen and Japanese Culture was received upon its first publication and analyzes the book in light of contemporary criticism, especially by scholars of Japanese Buddhism. (shrink)

When it comes to books on samurai philosphy, Hagakure is iconic to contemporary readers. But Budōshoshinshū, which was also written by a respected samurai during the Edo period, was equally influential at the time. Both works address the warrior's role in times of peace and emphasize the importance of living selflessly. Written by Daidōji Yūzan (1639-1730), a Confucian scholoar who descended from a long line of prominent warriors, Budōshoshinshū comprises 56 pithy instructive essays for young samurai on (...) how to live morally, with professional integrity and a higher purpose; to carry on the true chivalrous tradition of bushido. Budōshoshinshū is imbued with classic Confucian philosophy, centered on living one's life with sincerity and loyalty. (shrink)

The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is an enigmatic thinker whose works call out for interpretation. One of the most fascinating strands of this interpretation is in terms of Japanese thought. Kierkegaard himself knew nothing of Japanese philosophy, yet the links between his own ideas and Japanese philosophers are remarkable.. This book examines Kierkegaard in terms of Shinto, Pure Land Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, the Samurai, the famous Kyoto school of Japanese philosophers, and in terms of pivotal Japanese thinkers who (...) were influenced by Kierkegaard. (shrink)

У статті розглядаються антропологічні аспекти японського вчення «шляху воїна» (бусідо). Обґрунтовується правомірність історико-філософського підходу до вивчення бусідо як філософської антропології, у центрі якої – тип людини-воїна (homo militans). Проаналізовано основні екзистенціали бусідо – смерть, свобода, служіння.

This book is a new study of the leading seventeenth-century samurai Confucian, Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91). It describes his stormy life as a samurai, his interpretation of Confucian philosophy, and his imaginative commentary on Japan's greatest literary monument, The Tale of Genji. More than warrior and philosopher, Banzan is presented as a critic of the Japanese society of his day.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC SADISM IN THE FICTION OF YUKIO MISHIMA Jerry Piven New York University Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was one ofthe mostenigmatic authors of the 20th century. Novelist, playwright, actor, exhibiionist —his novels are rife with homoerotic and violent imagery, while his fanatical and nihilistic philosophy calls for a return to a Samurai ethos. Mishima thus attained infamy in Japan and in the West, as his shocking novels inspired (...) hordes ofyoung Japanese into a cult ofMishima worship, while critics who acknowledge his genius are still nervous about his sadistic homosexuality and his suicide. Mishima's works are suffused with erotic bloodshed and misogyny, and Mishima finally ended his life by ritually disemboweling himself. I will make the case that Mishima was incessantly plagued by torturous mimetic frustrations, and that his final act of spilling his blood and intestines can be interpreted as the result of mimetic hatred against his rivals. I also argue that Mishima was fundamentally schizoidal; in Girardian terms, a man whose hypocrisy for the sakeofdesire rendered him an exhibitionistic maskdisguisingmimetic rage and fear. Having previously written about Mishima from a psychoanalytic perspective, I believe that a Girardian approach would often yield drastically different interpretations of identical biographical and literary materials. ' 1I initially wrote on Mishima for several diagnostic assignments at my psychoanalytic institute, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). After considering the psychoanalytic and Girardian approaches, I expanded these original essays using identical material to determine whetherthe interpretations orconclusions would differ; I was struck by the way the same details could provide both remarkable congruences and vast divergences ofperspective. Read side by side, one can find compatible conclusions, but one also finds perceptions ofthe same details that would be difficultto conceive or articulate 70Jeremy Piven Mimesis, misogyny, and maculacy Kimitake Hiraoka was a frail, sickly child before he became the muscular and exhibitionistic novelist Yukio Mishima. His brutal and helpless childhood inaugurated his mimetic complexes: his need to escape the suffocating and diseased environment of his grandmother, his rivalry with her, and his mimetic ideal ofbeauty and muscular invulnerability. Mishima was an unhealthy youth, taken from the arms of his mother before he was two months old, and confined to the sickroom of his grandmother for the first twelve years ofhis life. Under the auspices ofhis tyrannical and ostensively psychotic grandmother, Mishima lived in the dark, could play only female friends (becausetheywere deemed harmless), and could eat only gentle foods. He thus lived an imprisoned life away from his parents, amid the excrescences of his sick and hysterical grandmother until adolescence, when his father "reclaimed him." Mishima later rebelled against this sickly nature, sculpting himself into a statuesque ideal of masculine beauty. He became obsessed with martial arts and the eroticism ofhis own engraved body. His fiction and philosophy were permeated by misogyny, glorification ofGrecian male sexuality and aesthetics, and the repudiation ofanything weak or feminine. He finally killed himselfbefore age could wither his masculine beauty. Mishima's fiction prominently features protagonists who mirror his sickly youth. The autobiographical Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku) describes the homoerotic development ofthis frail child. Such fraiIcharacters inMishima'sfiction arealwaysdrawneroticallytobeautiful males as both mimetic rivals and models. The narrator of Confessions describes his sexual attraction to a sewage collector, a "ladler of excrement"(8). Thehandsomemanwith "ruddycheeks" and "shiningeyes" fascinates the narrator, and he is filled with desire lookingathistightjeans. using psychoanalytic perspectives andjargon. Two ofthe original essays will be published inthePsychoanalyticReview in comingmonths: "PhallicNarcissism, Anal Sadism, and Oral Discord: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part I)," and "Narcissistic Revenge and Suicide: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part H)." I am currently translating these articles for publication in Japan. I included a brief discussion of Mishima in the introduction to Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory (Piven and Lawton, eds.), to explore the complex methodological and psychological dynamics of the field of psychohistory. A commentary on Mishima's traumaticchildhood entitled "The Pathology ofGenius," will appearin aforthcomingedition ofTapestry: TheJournalofHistoricalMotivations andtheSocialFabric, and afinal article, "Voyeurism and Rage in The Sailor Who Fellfrom Grace with the Sea," will appear in Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory, Volume II (2002). Mimetic Sadism in the Fiction ofYukio Mishima71 The narrator thus emerges into a burgeoning homosexuality, but he also fantasizes about dying dramatically. His... (shrink)

By the mid-19th century, an increasing number of Japan's political leaders and scholars realized that Japan had to adapt and incorporate some elements of Western-style industrialization into their own political and economic order as the necessary means to remain independent of Western imperialism. The Opium War in China, and later the Euro-American bombardments of the domain capitals in Choshu and Satsuma demonstrated that trying to defend the realm with only an increased emphasis on coastal defense would ultimately fail to keep (...) out the barbarians from the West. Sakuma Shozan, a samurai scholar from Matsushiro, proposed a dichotomous philosophy of 'Eastern ethics, Western science' as the means to strengthen Japan both internally and externally, and allow Japan to maintain its independence. In this paper, I argue that Sakuma's dichotomous approach can be interpreted within a Hegelian dialectical paradigm. After the traditional order of Japan (Eastern ethics as Idea/Thesis) came into contact with the industrializing order of the West (Western science as Nature/Anti-Thesis), Sakuma believed a new order would be created in Japan (Synthesis) that combined an increased knowledge on the Eastern ethics of Neo-Confucianism with the 'new' scientific knowledge of the West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) vi-vii [Access article in PDF] In Memoriam: Winston L. King Winston L. King was ninety-three when he died on February 15, 2000, at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. Diagnosed with cancer over a year ago, he continued many of his usual activities--reading widely, maintaining a voluminous correspondence, visiting with friends, and walking daily. Winston was one of those remarkable scholar-teachers of an older generation who (...) never ceased to develop new intellectual and research interests. With degrees from Asbury College (A.B., 1929), Andover Newton Theological Seminary (1936), and Harvard (S.T.M., 1938; Ph.D., 1940), his career included pastorates in New England (1930-1943, 1945-1949), Dean of the Chapel and professor of Grinnell College (1949-1963), professor of the history of religions atVanderbilt University (1964-1973), and after his retirement fromVanderbilt, an appointment as professor of philosophy at Colorado State University.Winston's two-year appointment with the Ford Foundation as the advisor to the International Institute for Buddhistic Studies in Rangoon (Yangon), Burma (Myanmar), from 1958 to 1960 proved to be a major turning point in his life and established his reputation as a significant interpreter of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast [End Page vi] Asia. Three important monographs resulted from Winston's stay in Burma: Buddhism and Christianity: Some Bridges of Understanding (1963), In the Hope of Nibbana: An Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics(1964), andAThousand Lives Away(1964). The last volume was the most widely regarded of the three, but each was at the forefront of later developments in the fields of Buddhist-Christian studies, Buddhist ethics, and modern studies in Southeast Buddhism.Winston was already well grounded in a broad comparative study of religion, as demonstrated by his Introduction to Religion(Harper,1954), before his sojourn in Burma. In the first chapter of that textbook, he set forth an understanding of religion as "unity-in-diversity and diversity-in-unity" that informed his sensibilities as a historian of religions--especially Buddhism--throughout his life. He saw being a person of faith as an advantage rather than a disadvantage in the study of religion, anticipating his subsequent work in Buddhist-Christian studies.Winston believed that the adherent of a particular faith is better able "to penetrate to the centrally important features of another religion" that might be opaque to the "nonreligionist." His analogical observation, "Being in love he will know how to understand something of another's being in the same situation" grew out of the deep mutual devotion between Winston and Jocelyn, his beloved wife of more than sixty-six years.Winston's special interest in Japanese Buddhism began to take shape in the latter part of his career with a Fulbright Lecturership in Kyoto in 1965-1966. Subsequently, he was to return to Japan to continue his study of Buddhism and Japanese language at sixty years of age. Several articles and two major monographs followed: Death Was His Koan: The Samurai-Zen of Suzuki Shosan(1986) and Zen and the Way of the Sword (1993).Throughout his career, Winston maintained a strong interest in the practice of faith, giving both personal and scholarly attention to Buddhist meditation in particular. While he was in Burma, he spent ten days at the International Meditation Center founded by U Ba Khin. An account of his experience appeared in the Journal of Religion (1961). In Buddhism and Christianity, he compared Christian prayer and Buddhist meditation; later he was to compare Theravada and Zen meditational methods and goals (History of Religions, 1970) and explore the yogic methodological background to Buddhist insight meditation (Theravada Meditation: The Buddhist Transformation ofYoga, 1980).Winston's empathetic approach to religious understanding, his scholarly breadth and productivity, and his humane, personal integrity set a standard to be emulated by those who follow him. We celebrate his life and his scholarship.Donald K. Swearer Swarthmore College... (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

The Demon said to the swordsman, "Fundamentally, man's mind is not without good. It is simply that from the moment he has life, he is always being brought up with perversity. Thus, having no idea that he has gotten used to being soaked in it, he harms his self-nature and falls into evil. Human desire is the root of this perversity." Woven deeply into the martial traditions and folklore of Japan, the fearsome Tengu dwell in the country's mountain forest. Mythical (...) half-man, half-bird creatures with long noses, Tengu have always inspired dread and awe, inhabiting a liminal world between the human and the demonic, and guarding the most hidden secrets of swordsmanship. In The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts, a translation of the 18th-century samurai classic by Issai Chozanshi, an anonymous swordsman journeys to the heart of Mt. Kurama, the traditional domain of these formidable beings. There he encounters a host of demon; through a series of discussions and often playful discourse, they reveal to him the very deepest principles of the martial arts, and show how the secrets of sword fighting impart the truths of life itself. The Demon's Sermon opens with The discourses, a collection of whimsical fables concerned with the theme of transformation-for Chozanshi a core phenomenon to the martial artist. Though ostensibly light and fanciful, these stories offer the attentive reader ideas that subvert perceived notions of conflict and the individual's relationship to the outside world. In the main body of work, The Sermon, Chozanshi demonstrates how transformation is fostered and nurtured through ch'i - the vital and fundamental energy that flows through all things, animate and inanimate, and the very bedrock of Chozanshi's themes and the martial arts themselves. This he does using the voice of the Tengu, and the reader is invited to eavesdrop with the swordsman on the demon's revelations of the deepest truths concerning ch'i, the principles of yin and yang, and how these forces shape our existence. In The Dispatch, the themes are brought to an elegant conclusion using the parable of an old and toothless cat who, like the demon, has mastered the art of acting by relying on nothing, and in so doing can defeat even the wiliest and most vicious of rats despite his advanced years. This is the first direct translation from the original text into English by William Scott Wilson, the renowned translator of Hagakure and The Book of Five Rings. It captures the tone and essence of this classic while still making it accessible and meaningful to today's reader. Chozanshi's deep understanding of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, as well as his insight into the central role of ch'i in the universe, are all given thoughtful treatment in Wilson's introduction and extensive endnotes. A provocative book for the general reader, The Demon's Sermon will also prove an invaluable addition to the libraries of all those interested in the fundamental principles of the martial arts, and how those principles relate to our existence. (shrink)

Zen Masters of Japan is the second book in a series that traces Zen's profoundly historic journey as it spread eastward from China and Japan, toward the United States. Following Zen Masters of China, this book concentrates on Zen's significant passage through Japan. More specifically, it describes the lineage of the great teachers, the Pioneers who set out to enlighten an island ready for an inner transformation based on compassionate awareness. While the existing Buddhist establishment in Japan met early Zen (...) pioneers like Dogen and Eisai with fervent resistance, Zen Buddhism ultimately perservered and continued to become further transformed in its passage through Japan. The Japanese culture and Japanese Buddhism practices further deepened and strengthened Zen training by combining it with a variety of esoteric contemplative arts--the arts of poetry, the tea ceremony, calligraphy, and archery. Zen Masters of Japan chronicles this journey, and shows how the new practices soon gained in popularity among all walks of life--from the lowly peasant, offering a hope of reincarnation and a better life; to the Samurai warrior due to its casual approach to death; to the ruling classes, challenging the intelligentsia because of its scholarly roots. A collection of Zen stories, meditation, and their wisdom, Zen Masters of Japan also explores the illusive state of 'No Mind' achieved in Japan that is so fundamental to Zen practices today. (shrink)

Natsume S seki's novel Kokoro (1914) offers an indictment of the loneliness and isolation of a modernized Japan, a Japan in which people ‘feel cut off from every other living thing’. In this essay, I argue that Plato and S seki offer analogous critiques of an eradicated honor culture; an eradication that is rooted in the political exchange of honorific autonomy for honorific heteronomy. Moreover, I suggest that the deprecation and subsequent demise of the Japanese samurai and Greek warrior—individuals (...) for whom self-worth, dignity, and status are rooted in reputation and social regard—exemplify the dramatic cultural shift toward heteronomy. My reading aims to shed light on the rich philosophical connections between seemingly disparate cultures and texts through an exposition and exegesis of the master-protagonists Socrates and Sensei. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen War StoriesSteven HeineZen War Stories. By Brian Daizen Victoria. London and New York: Routledge-Curzon, 2003. Pp. xviii + 268. Hardcover $124.95. Paper $34.95.Brian Daizen Victoria's Zen War Stories, following his highly acclaimed but also highly provocative Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997), continues his withering attack on the embracing of wartime ideology by leading Zen masters and practitioners in Japan. Victoria seeks to show that the attitude characteristic (...) of numerous examples of prominent Zen monks and scholars was not simply a matter of benignly resisting, or even passively accepting, the rhetoric of Imperial Way Buddhism by clergy who were under pressure and powerless to stand up to the authorities. Nor was it an example of innocently recognizing historical and ideological affinities between Zen monastic discipline and military training.On the contrary, the Zen masters discussed here eagerly and enthusiastically endorsed some of the most excessive and reprehensible aspects of imperial ideology in the name of a corrupted vision of spiritual realization as a tool to spread the doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. They also used Zen wedded to hyper-nationalism and imperialism as a tool to misread the historical records of their own tradition and to help transport Japanese supremacy to China and Korea, while refusing to acknowledge or repent for their actions with the defeat of Japan. This outlook also infected numerous politicians and military figures, who turned to Buddhism as a way of explaining away or masking their roles leading up to, as well as during and after, World War II.In part 1 of Zen War Stories Victoria documents several masters who have become icons in the West for their apparent adherence to a Zen tradition linked with an ability to address contemporary culture. After showing in chapter 4 that Ōmori [End Page 345] Sōgen, praised for his prowess in swordsmanship and other arts, had a fascistic, "Mr. Hyde" side as manifested in the founding in 1932 of the Kinnō Ishin Dōmei (League for Loyalty to the Emperor and the Restoration), Victoria turns to the case of Yasutani Haku'un. In chapter 5, "Zen Master Dōgen Goes to War," we find that Yasutani, known as the teacher of Philip Kapleau and the inspiration for The Three Pillars of Zen, wanted to smash all universities for being traitors. He was a fanatical militarist who "transformed the life and thought of Zen Master Dōgen (1200-1253), the thirteenth-century founder of the Sōtō Zen sect in Japan, into a propaganda tool for Japanese militarism" (p. 68).In particular, Yasutani tried to argue that Dōgen's famed pilgrimage to Song China in 1223 was triggered not by a longing for the Buddhist Dharma but by a disgust with the new shogunate and an infatuation with preserving the Imperial House. According to Victoria, Yasutani's corrupted spirituality did not end with a support for militarism. He was also even more "ethnic chauvinist, sexist, and anti-Semitic" (p. 68) than his teacher Harada Daiun Sōgaku, whose "most memorable wartime quote is: '[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of enlightenment]"' (pp. 66-67).After discussing in chapter 7, "Zen 'Selflessness' in Japanese Militarism," how Zen's historical relation to the samurai was misinterpreted to support the imperial ideology concerning the acceptance of death by D. T. Suzuki and other prominent representatives of Zen, including former Eiheiji temple abbot Kumazawa Taizen, part 2 takes up examples of the involvement with Buddhist thought by military and political leaders. While this section is less devastating as a critique of Zen than of Japanese Buddhism and society in general, Victoria explains in chapter 10, "Buddhism-The Last Refuge of War Criminals," how easily the moral basis of religion can be distorted and subverted. For example, as recollected by Buddhist studies scholar Hanayama Shinshō, seven Class A war criminals who had been condemned to death continued, while on death row, to cling hypocritically to Buddhism to find some feeling of solace. For instance, Hirota Kōki never abandoned his attachment to Zen and the warrior class and... (shrink)

The object of the study is a screen costume in cinema as an element of the visual and artistic-figurative system of a Chinese film in the genre of "wuxia". The subject of the study is the problem of the formation of historical costume in the films of Wuxia, the historical and cultural origins of the costume and the peculiarities of interpretation in various films of Wuxia. Such issues as the degree of study of the topic under consideration and a number (...) of paintings from the late 1970s to the 1980s are analyzed. The analysis of the works reveals the specifics of the costume in Wuxia films, its relationship with traditional Chinese theater. Special attention is paid to the analysis of examples of the use of color in a costume as an expression of personality, social status and other characteristics of a character. The questions about the methods of displaying gender identity in a suit were raised. The methodology of the research consists in using a systematic approach at the intersection of art criticism, aesthetics, art practice, painting, film studies and film criticism. A systematic method, a historical and cultural method, and a system-structural analysis are used, which made it possible to consider the costumes of the characters as an integral part of the artistic concept of films by Chinese directors. The work provides a comprehensive study of the screen costume as a visual and expressive means, which helps to create a film image in the context of an artistic and imaginative solution to the subject-spatial environment of a Chinese film using the example of the Wuxia genre. For the first time, the historical and cultural origins of the costume are established at the stage of formation of the genre in cinema. The interpretive techniques and principles of Chinese directors in the use of costume in Wuxia films of the late 1970s - 1980s are revealed. The interpretation of the costume in the works of various Wuxia film directors is largely consistent with the traditional principles of the Beijing Opera. The hero's costume is perceived as an important means of communication with the viewer, visualization of the social status, clan affiliation, personality and emotional experiences of the heroes. Chinese directors of Wuxia films generally adhere to realism in the depiction of costumes of a number of socially labeled characters: a warrior (for example, a samurai), a monk, etc. Weapons make up the most important part of the character's costume, the type of weapon is also clearly consistent with his image, expressing primarily the social status of the hero. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of various interpretations and criticisms of Michel Foucault’s engagement with Buddhism, the focus of this article falls on the specific type of Zen Buddhism which he studied during his 1978 trip to Japan, and the possible relationship between its dynamics and those of his own research trajectory following the publication of The Will to Knowledge. In this regard, Foucault’s eschewal of the Engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Zen Buddhism of Taisen Deshimaru—both of which had (...) risen to prominence in France by the late 1970s— and his concomitant interest instead in the teachings of Zen Master Omori Sōgen, in which Zen and the samurai code of bushidō were closely aligned, will be examined. Moreover, it will be argued that such preference on Foucault’s part was indicative of his eminently practical, rather than general philosophical, interest in Buddhism as a technology for the adversarial repositioning of subjectivity in relation to discourse. Finally, the implications of this for the abovementioned various interpretations and criticisms of Foucault’s engagement with Buddhism, will be considered. (shrink)

In this article, I compare and contrast the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas with that of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher, Kuki Shūzō. In the resulting counterpoint, I put special emphasis on the conception of time espoused by each author. I argue that both go astray by mistakenly basing their ethics on the complete otherness of the other (diachrony) rather than recognizing that both the other (diachrony) and I (synchrony) are originally inseparable in experience before the conceptual separation of “me” and “you.” (...) The fetishization of otherness, which is associated with the feminine in the ethics of both philosophers, leads them to overlook how the details of our everyday concrete experience can provide a guide for action. This paper also explores the two East Asian ethical ideals that Kuki proposes–the Buddhist ideal and the ideal of bushidō, the code of the samurai warrior. In his ethics, Kuki prefers the ethics of bushidō to that of Buddhism. I explain how Kuki’s misunderstanding of Buddhism leads him to this choice, and I explore what he overlooked in Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics and a Hidden GodDavid WetselThe Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics and a Hidden God, by Mitchell Cohen; xi & 351 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, $35.00.Students of Pascal’s Pensées for the most part know Lucien Goldmann because of his 1959 landmark study, The Hidden God. Still controversial after thirty-five years, Goldmann’s theories concerning the Pensées have never been accepted (...) by mainstream Pascal scholarship. Jean Mesnard, France’s leading expert on Pascal, wrote in 1976 that “Goldmann’s Pascal is perhaps tragic, but he is most certainly a Molinist.” Mesnard, however, went on to acknowledge that no other critic before Goldmann had recognized the extent to which Pascal occupies a permanent place in the history of ideas. “To criticize Goldmann,” Mesnard went so far to say, “risks making Pascal less powerful.”Most pascalisants have erroneously assumed that Goldmann’s reading of Pascal represented nothing more than the imposition of Marxist theory upon the text of the Pensées. Among the revelations of Mitchell Cohen’s new study is that, to the contrary, Pascal represents one of the essential formative influences on Goldmann himself: “By the time he returned to Paris after the war, Goldmann was thoroughly conversant with Pascal’s oeuvre.... The appeal to him of Pascal was natural; Pascal was both a believer and a scientist.... [Goldmann] stated that were he to rewrite [Kant] he would assert that ‘Pascal was the first’ in the history of dialectical thought” (p. 48).Students of Pascal will be particularly fascinated by Cohen’s revealing analysis of Goldmann’s The Hidden God in the first section of chapter six of his study. Cohen’s account of Goldmann’s Towards a Sociology of the Novel (1964) and of his essays on Genet will likewise fascinate students of literature. However, The Wager of Lucien Goldmann goes far beyond those questions with which Goldmann’s name has been most closely associated in literary circles. The product of a painstaking excavation of Goldmann’s philosophical development, Cohen’s book recaptures a period of postwar Parisian intellectual life which drew to an end only with the events of 1968 and which has been obscured in recent years by postmodernism.A critic both of existentialism and of structuralism, Goldmann is portrayed by Cohen as the leading representative of Western Marxist humanism. Rejecting both the doctrine of Marxism’s “scientificity” and the traditional Marxist vision of the proletariat, Goldmann insisted upon Marxism’s need to reinvent itself. Specialists in Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, and particularly Lukács will appreciate Cohen’s careful explanations of Goldmann’s links to these key thinkers. Perhaps most fascinating is his account of the debate between Goldmann and the “anti-humanists”: “When the humanist Goldmann ‘transcended’ liberalism, he did so in the specifically Hegelian sense of negating and preserving at once, absorbing what was vital into socialism, while annulling [End Page 409] its abstractions. After all, he conceived socialist humanism as the culmination and not the annulment of Western culture...” (p. 290).This study, which I recommend to all students of modern France as well as to my fellow pascalisants, is, of course, not essentially meant to be a biography. Yet one sometimes finds oneself yearning for a more intimate portrait of Goldmann the man. Once he leaves his native Romania in the early 1930s, he seems to become the classical Parisian academic intellectual with no real personality of his own. Yet Cohen manages at least to neutralize Julia Kristeva’s parody of Goldmann in The Samurai, her roman à clef about French intellectuals in the 1960s, as quoted by Cohen: “Graying, pot-bellied, smiling, with his shirt open and of course no tie, he addressed everyone by the familiar tu and was always ripping up existentialism and lauding dialectical reason (as overhauled by Pascal), alienation, and the New Novel.”David WetselArizona State UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese AnimationJoseph MurphyAnime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. By Susan Napier. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 320.Certain progressions can be marked from Antonia Levi's Samurai from Outer Space in 1996 to Susan Napier's Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation in 2001. While both survey the phenomenon of (...) Japanese animation as consumed in North America, the palpable underdog subcultural context and sense of mission in Levi's earlier work has given way to a confident mainstream appreciation in Napier's, with the term "Japanese animation" replaced in English by the naturalized anime (a-ni-mé, pl. anime). In a fast-moving media phenomenon both were dated as soon as they were published; however, bolstered by the worldwide critical and financial success of Miyazaki Hayao's work, and contemporary with the exposure to youth by the rise of 24/7 cartoon networks and the runaway success of the card game-anime nexus, Napier's Anime finds itself still in the right historical moment. Though the book has limitations in terms of both its own systematicity and its treatment of potentially interesting philosophical themes in anime, it is a reliable and sometimes inspired guide to a new phenomenon that forms an increasingly important default in the background your students bring.Napier is concerned not so much with accounting for the visual and perceptual properties of anime as with its narrative qualities: "Japanese animation merits serious consideration as a narrative art form and not simply for its arresting visual style.... Much of this book will be an investigation into the themes, imagery, and ideas of some of the most memorable anime created over the last two decades" (p. 10). The strengths and weaknesses of this book are nicely summed up here. Concentrating on narrative—a formal property of storytelling transposable across media—allows a broad and well-chosen survey of themes, images, and ideas. However, there is some question as to whether this will allow the reader to satisfy the ambition to "understand what makes anime the distinctive art form it is" (p. 10).The book is comprised of twelve chapters in four parts. Part 1 is an introduction that argues for the importance of anime and sketches a quasi-Aristotelian method as the basis for Napier's taxonomy. Parts 2-4 cover major thematic divisions that characterize the particular obsessions, power, and drama of anime, and these are particularly well-chosen to reflect not just the relatively palatable work deemed suitable for TV or subtitled for video distribution in the United States but also the anarchic diversity of the phenomenon as it circulates in Japan. Part 2 is on the essential theme of the changeable body and includes discussion of the monstrous adolescent body, pornographic anime, and the cybernetic body, and will allow you to catch up with classic anime like Akira (1988), Ranma 1/2 (TV version, 1990s), and Ghost in the Shell (theater version, 1996). Part 3 is on fantasy and romance as genres and the unusual [End Page 493] space in anime for female leads, and includes discussion of Miyazaki's pastoral work and the comedy TV series Urusei Yatsura (1980s), Oh My Goddess (1980s), and Video Girl Ai (1990s). Part 4 discusses anime that have sought to make a self-conscious contribution to historical debate, including Barefoot Gen (1983) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988), on the bombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997), which presents a multicultural picture of Japan's past produced in consultation with Japan's leading ethnologists. Discussions are balanced and entertaining, introducing the major auteurs of the last twenty years (Oshii Mamoru, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, etc.) and creating the sharp impression that the genre of anime is not the same as the American concept of "cartoons."Though the anime phenomenon raises interesting sociocultural and critical questions about narrative and image culture, it is not immediately certain that there is a philosophical issue to anime. One might seek this philosophical content within the medium itself or in a systematic quality... (shrink)

Predication is a central theme in Arabic logic that has undergone significant semantic transformation throughout history. This article explores the evolution of predication's scope and meaning across four successive stages. Rather than pinpointing specific historical moments—given that these transitions lack clearly defined beginnings or endings—the focus is on key propositions that enrich our understanding of predication, drawing on the classifications of thinkers such as Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950), Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1262-65), Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), and Muhammad Ḥusayn (...) Ṭabātabāʾī (d. 1981). The transition from the first to the second stage is characterized by the acceptance of natural propositions (ṭabīʿīya), while subsequent stages involve essential primary (dhātī awwalī) and stronger/weaker (ḥaqīqa-raqīqa) propositions. This progression illustrates a shift from expressing the properties of external objects to articulating the properties of concepts, ultimately culminating in the expression of identity between concepts and external entities. The four stages can be summarized as follows: (1) First-order predication; (2) Second-order predication; (3) Second-order identity; (4) First-order identity. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the importance of making explicit different conceptions of movement for the philosophy of sport. In addition to the mechanistic and the Aristotelian approaches, this article presents a third, underexplored view of movement, namely that of Lucretius as interpreted by Karl Marx and Michel Serres. By exploring the similarities between Marx’s motion of repulsion and Serres’s turbulent flux, it will be argued that a Lucretian view offers a philosophy of movement that uniquely does not rely on (...) stasis. This Lucretian perspective is illustrated through Serres’s elaborations on the body and sport. It is concluded that sport is not primarily a rational, rule-guided practice but arises from moving and sensuous bodies that are always deviating from their standard trajectory. (shrink)

This article is a feminist intervention into the ways that disability is researched and represented in philosophy at present. Nevertheless, some of the claims that I make over the course of the article are also pertinent to the marginalization in philosophy of other areas of inquiry, including philosophy of race, feminist philosophy more broadly, indigenous philosophies, and LGBTQI philosophy. Although the discipline of philosophy largely continues to operate under the guise of neutrality, rationality, and (...) objectivity, the institutionalized structure of the discipline implicitly and explicitly promotes certain ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies as bona fide philosophy, while casting the ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies of marginalized philosophies as mere simulacra of allegedly fundamental ways of knowing and doing philosophy and thus rendering these marginalized philosophies more or less expendable. This article is designed to show that legitimized philosophical discourses are vital mechanisms in the problematization of disability. (shrink)

According to what I call the ‘Discontinuity Thesis’, literature can never count as genuine philosophizing: there is an impermeable barrier separating it from philosophy. While philosophy presents logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements, literature gives neither precisely formulated theses nor arguments in favor of or against them. Hence, philosophers don’t lose out on anything if they don’t read literature. There are two obvious ways of questioning the Discontinuity Thesis. First, arguing that literature can (...) indeed do what philosophy is generally taken to do. Second, arguing that philosophy is not, in fact, the presentation of logically valid arguments in favor or against precisely formulated statements – what it does is closer to what literature is generally taken to do. I use a combination of these two strategies and argue that philosophy is not as intellectually straightforward as it is advertized to be and literature is not as intellectually impoverished as it is generally taken to be. (shrink)

The standard view of pains among philosophers today holds that their existence consists in being experienced, such that there can be no unfelt pains or pain hallucinations. The typical line of support offered for this view is that it corresponds with the ordinary or commonsense conception of pain. Despite this, a growing body of evidence from experimental philosophers indicates that the ordinary understanding of pain stands in contrast to the standard view among philosophers. In this paper, we will survey this (...) literature and add to it, detailing the results of seven new studies on the ordinary understanding of pain using both corpus analysis and questionnaire methods. (shrink)

The emerging field of the philosophy of dance, as suggested by Aili Bresnahan, increasingly recognizes the problem that (especially pre‐modern) dance has historically focused on bodily perfection, which privileges abled bodies as those that can best make and perform dance as art. One might expect that the philosophy of dance, given the critical and analytical powers of philosophy, might be helpful in illuminating and suggesting ameliorations for this tendency in dance. But this is particularly a difficult task (...) since the analytic philosophy of dance is too young to have achieved a comprehensive treatment of dance per se, let alone to update such a treatment in line with the demands of social justice. As a step in that direction, the present article (a) summarizes dance theorists on disabled dance (as opposed to the dance of the temporarily able‐bodied, or TAB) and then applies (b) the philosophy of art and dance to disability, (c) the philosophy of disability to dance, (d) interdisciplinary disability theory to dance, and (e) my own Figuration philosophy of dance to disability, as inspired in part by John Dewey. (shrink)

This text gives voice to the idea that the study of the philosophy of thought and language is more than a specialism, but rather lies at the very heart of the ...

Many philosophy majors are shocked by the gap between the relative ease of lower-level philosophy courses and the difficulty of upper-division courses. This book serves as a necessary bridge to upper-level study in philosophy by offering rigorous but concise and accessible accounts of basic concepts and distinctions that are used throughout the discipline. It serves as a valuable advanced introduction to any undergraduate who is moving into upper-level courses in philosophy. While lower-level introductions to philosophy (...) usually deal with popular topics accessible to the general student in a piecemeal fashion, The Philosophy Major's Introduction to Philosophy offers coverage of important general philosophical concepts, tools, and devices that may be used for a long time to come in various philosophical areas. The volume is helpfully divided between a focus on the relation between language and the world in the first three chapters and coverage of mental content in the final two chapters, but builds a coherent narrative from start to finish. It also provides ample study questions and helpful sign-posts throughout, making it a must-have for any student attempting to engage fully with the problems and arguments in philosophy. Key Features Integrates topics from various areas of philosophy, such as philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical logic Provides descriptions of logico-mathematical tools necessary for philosophical studies, such as propositional logic, predicate logic, modal logic, set theory, mereology, and mathematical functions Makes connections with modern philosophy, including discussions of Descartes's skepticism and dualism, Locke's theory of personal identity, Hume's theory of causation, and Kant's synthetic a priori. Includes well-known entertaining puzzles and thought experiments such as the Ship of Theseus, the Statue and the Clay, a Brain in a Vat, and Twin Earth Lists helpful Exercise Questions and Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter and answers selected questions at the back of the book. (shrink)