No.72 Seminar ： The Japanese Path Beyond Metaphysics: the Kyōto School and Neoplatonism
- Vincent Giraud (The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2014/01/21 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center for advanced research (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- English
Summary
The research I am pursuing as a Hakubi Researcher aims to show the basic role that the western philosophical tradition known as “Neoplatonism” plays in the thinkers of the Kyōto School (Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji). For it is a surprising fact that this tradition, which began with Plotinus (205-270) and which powerfully influenced western philosophy over the centuries, provided a key reference for each of these thinkers. Why, and how, did Kyōto philosophers use this western tradition within their distinctively Japanese philosophical exploration? This crucial episode in the reception of Greco-Latin thought in modern Japan is still very little known. On this basis, I shall seek to establish connecting passages between the Kyōto thinkers and contemporary philosophers who have reactivated some Neoplatonic thought-forms within a phenomenological or deconstructive thinking that conceives of itself as post-metaphysical. For the ultimate goal of this research is to discover the contribution that the Kyōto thinkers can make to the principal questions underlying contemporary philosophical debate.