Species-being in the Philosophy of the Kyoto School

Mechademia, 2010

of a resolute break between prewar and postwar Japan, postwar manga and animation do not abandon the speciesism seen in wartime manga and manga films. On the contrary, speciesism, that is, the translation of race relations into species relations, becomes more prevalent in the postwar era. Postwar manga and animation refine, intensify, and redouble the wartime aspiration of “overcoming racism” by summoning and implementing (often in the context of war) a multispecies ideal, which often takes the form of a peaceable kingdom in which different populations (species) coexist productively and prosperously. The continuity with wartime speciesism is particularly evident in the works of Tezuka Osamu, who is usually acknowledged as the pivotal figure in establishing new conventions for manga and television animation in postwar Japan. While this essay begins by exploring the continuity between wartime speciesism and Tezuka’s interest in the ideal of a peaceable animal kingdom, it becomes clear...

This essay revises Foucault’s account of biopolitics in the light of the impact of the molecular and digital revolutions on ‘the politics of life itself’. The confluence of the molecular and digital revolutions informationalises life, providing an account of what it is to be a living thing in terms of complex adaptive and continuously emergent, informationally constituted, systems. Also re-visiting Foucault’s The Order of Things, and its interrogation of the modern analytics of finitude, the paper argues that our contemporary politics of life is therefore distinguished by the quasi-transcendentals that now distinguish informationalised life – Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Here, too, the paper argues, the figure of Man, which once united the quasi-transcendentals of Life, Labour and Language, is replaced by the Contingency that now unites Circulation, Connectivity and Complexity. Observing that a life of continuous emergence is also one in which production is continuously allied with destruction; such a life is lived as the continuous emergency of its own emergence. This account of contemporary biopolitics, together with its emergency of emergence, contrasts, in particular, with that offered by Agamben in his appropriation of Schmitt.

2021

Karl Marx and his complex socio-political and economic theory has been one of the most reference theory in the contemporary capitalist society of the 21st century but is also often a victim of biased reading because of the widely shared misinterpretations about his work, especially on his unique concept of man as "species-being." In response, this paper will tackle the Marxist version of man's essence (as well as the inherent inadequacies of both idealist philosophical systems and economic rationality theories with their formulations of absolute specificities of man) and a well lived communal life, to be able to accurately ground his criticisms towards capitalist system and analyze the reasons why he posited the communist society as the best alternative offering the conditions for man to acquire true fulfillment.

European Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 2023

close reading, please be aware that both "unity" and "unification" translate the same term. "Humane State" translates 人類的国家 (alternatively, 人類国家). As the goal of rational state-building, the humane State is the concrete form of a "generified Species" ("State" is here capitalized to distinguish the political institution from "state" as "condition"; in most cases, context clarifies ambiguity, but "humane State" presents special challenges.) The English "humane" has an ethical resonance that is not necessarily present in the Japanese 人類. We should note that, where this idea might be expressed in English as humankind or homo sapiens, which focus on the species level, in Japanese, the term is constructed with the sinograph for genus (類). This point was certainly not lost on Tanabe. In "The Logic of Social-being" Tanabe identifies the humane State with "the actual mode of the Genus, " which "corresponds with the Idea of the state, " in particular, the Idea of "harmony and peace within and without." 26 Social-ontologically, the humane State is a mode of the Genus; practically, it is guided by the Idea of foreign and domestic accord based on rational intercourse. Given the prominent role of "mediation" (媒介) in Tanabe's logic of Species, we note that 無媒介 and its variants are translated as "unmediated" or "without mediation, " while 直接的, which does not contain the same sinographs as used in "mediation, " is translated as "immediate." The terms that could be translated as "object" have been handled as follows. 客観 and its variants are translated as "object" ("objective, " etc.). 客体 is specified in translation as "object (simpliciter)." This distinction can be clarified with reference to Hegel's pr: "If we consider ethical life from the objective point of view, we may say that ethical man is unconscious of himself." 27 Something "objective" (客観的) can be taken for granted through its, often implicit, relationship to the subject (so, in Hegel's example, "ethical man" is not aware of his role in the objectivity of laws). Yet, when the individual person is alienated from the object, it appears as an object (simpliciter) (客体). In this sense, Tanabe writes, "The anti-subjectivity of the Species is recognized as the objective (simpliciter) being of the Species, which, in

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2012

The aim of this anthology of seventeen essays, clearly set forth by the editors' introduction, is "to promote dialogue between Western and Eastern philosophy, and more specifically between Continental philosophy and the Kyoto School" (p. 1). This venture is guided by the conviction that philosophy is ultimately "a quest for liberating wisdom" and not just an academic exercise (p. 15). This book comes as a timely response to today's globalized environment, which is fast becoming one-dimensional, flat, and uniform, and in which human beings are unwittingly reduced to mere "numbers" for the profit of faceless corporations. Facing and acknowledging the present reality, thinkers are looking "deep within," to "dig down deeper," in order for "philosophy to recollect and retrieve its original radicality, for human beings, who think while living and live while thinking, the very act of living originally entails the act of philosophizing" (pp. 30-31)-so appeals Ueda Shizuteru (see below). In this milieu, intellectuals are challenged to "rethink the fundamental principles of the world" from the "vantage point of the gap between radically different cultural and philosophical traditions" (p. 22). Out of such an expanded vista, new philosophical possibilities are bound to emerge and show us how to engage twenty-first-century issues of all sorts that concern not only human beings but also the health of the earth. This volume invites us to share in a richer wisdom of humanity and overcome narrowly defined ethnocentrism and even the conventional academic concept of what philosophy is. As such, it reflects a certain paradigm shift that is taking place within the discipline of philosophy, announcing that the time is upon us to widen our intellectual horizons yet again. Marking the importance of the publication of this book, Ueda Shizuteru, the widely known "third-generation" Kyoto School thinker (the "first generation" being Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime, the "second generation" being Nishitani Keiji, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, et al.), penned the original essay specifically for this volume entitled "Contributions to Dialogue with the Koto School" (pp. 19-32), which gives a handy exposition of the core philosophical insight of the Kyoto School thinkers, especially the notion of "absolute nothingness" developed by Nishida, and the idea of "emptiness" ("śū nyatā " or "kū ") applied to overcoming nihilism by going through the very midst of it, developed by Nishitani. The variety of essays compiled in this "collection of flowers" (antho-logia) makes this book highly accessible to the novice and the seasoned researcher alike in the areas of Japanese thought and Western Continental philosophy. Those who are new to the field of intercultural philosophical dialogue can gain

New Literary History, 2016

one species, same difference? "life sciences." Chakrabarty deals most obviously with biology and ecology, while Gilroy is more concerned with biomedicine, genomics, and genetics. Neither scholar discusses cognitive neuroscience, a field that has, of late, significantly transformed the ways in which we think about consciousness, ethics, or the aesthetic experience. Of particular interest to both scholars of postcoloniality, it would seem, is a more restricted definition of the life sciences, one that requires us to linger on that first term, life, for a little while longer. Cognitive neuroscience's influence on the humanities has reoriented discussions of questions central to human life and has contributed to species thinking by proposing, for example, that there might be neurological "cultural invariants" that determine and delimit all human thought. 4 These issues turn primarily on what we might infelicitously call "the workings of the brain." The life sciences that Chakrabarty and Gilroy draw on, however, are typically concerned with understanding (and treating) the functions that regulate and generate biological life. The ethical appeal of their respective arguments resides in their focus on vulnerability and finitude, and, accordingly, their interventions mobilize life as a concept linked to longevity, duration, regeneration, and reproduction. In order to further probe the relationship between postcolonial studies and species thinking, however, we must differentiate between the environmentalist bent of Chakrabarty's most recent work and Gilroy's interest in medicine and biotechnology. It is important to make this distinction because ecology and biomedicine produce significantly different iterations of species thinking. As we shall see, Chakrabarty's environmental brand of species thinking focuses on the vulnerability that we share amongst ourselves and with other species on the planet; Gilroy's version underscores our biological commonalities as members of a vulnerable human species. And yet, despite these important differences, I suggest that both thinkers are united in their profound discomfort with the very idea of vulnerability that they seem, at first glance, to embrace. 5 Indeed, the main claim of my essay is that this ambivalence about vulnerability ultimately profiles new patterns of neocolonial domination and exploitation legitimized not in the name of "progress" and the civilizing mission but in the name of life, longevity, and the reproduction of the species. Species Thinking and the Anthropocene Let us begin with Chakrabarty and "The Climate of History," the essay that moved Baucom to articulate his own vision of species thinking. 6 Published in 2009, Chakrabarty's piece provocatively takes postcolonial

In this article, the division of humans and nature as initiated within European philosophy will be briefly traced in order to show how the objectification of the understanding of nature led, step by step, to an alienation of humans from nature and to the former's will to control the latter. It is true that the exploitation and pollution of nature results from this disharmonious power relation. But how is it possible to conceive of a solution? Or how might it at least be possible to ameliorate the situation so as to bring about some manner of harmonization? At the basis of this relationship, the concept of nature must be completely rethought, leading to ontological consequences. An approach/interpretation prevalent in Japanese philosophy can be found through the Shinto-Buddhist way of understanding nature and human beings as climatic beings. The work of modern Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji 和辻 哲郎 reveals the climatic dimension inherent in being human and shows the transcendence of humannature in his human-between (ningen 人間) project. The example of karesansui 枯山水 or Japanese dry gardens is used to demonstrate a practical implementation of this theory.

Bajo Palabra, 2023

This essay rethinks the concept of biocommunism by rearticulating it via a sensitivity towards individual suffering rather than the human species as a whole. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Marx's concept of alienation because of the central role that the fourth kind of alienation plays in Dyer-Witheford's original conception of biocommunism. The second part briefly elaborates on the discussion of species in the Kyoto School. These two parts lead to the third part, where a novel interpretation of biocommunism is outlined, focusing on individual suffering rather than the human species.

2002

The following can be thought of as an exercise in the rectification of names. That is to say that what the Kyoto School is understood to be today is divorced from what it actually was when it flourished as a philosophical beacon in the ‘dark valley’ of wartime Japan. Rectification of the name is needed to restore what the Kyoto School was in its original context, and to show how it has subsequently acquired other meanings. This reorientation of perspective can contribute to the on-going process of recovering and broadening the conception of the Kyoto School, and its contribution to political thought. Revitalization of its original reality can in turn contribute to fulfilling its intellectual potential. The chapter outlines the post-war creation of the image of the political thought of the Kyoto School before moving on to a consideration of the ambiguity strategy of ‘anti-systemic collaboration’ pursued by most of the Kyoto philosophers, and the interpretive problems that arise from it. The final section highlights a selection of political theoretical themes developed by the Kyoto School thinkers and discusses their relevance for contemporary theorising in light of recent trends in the history of political thought, political theory and international relations. The fulfilment of the intellectual potential of the Kyoto School political thought requires breaking out of its relative isolation by inserting it into new, and arguably more relevant and hospitable, disciplinary fields than the established traditions of comparative philosophy of religion and Japanese history.