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Contemporary Buddhism: AnInterdisciplinary JournalPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcbh20

Japanese Buddhist Thought andContinental Philosophy: ThreePerspectivesDennis HirotaPublished online: 17 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Dennis Hirota (2014) Japanese Buddhist Thought and ContinentalPhilosophy: Three Perspectives, Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal,15:2, 432-432, DOI: 10.1080/14639947.2014.936660

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2014.936660

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SPECIAL SECTION

JAPANESE BUDDHIST THOUGHT AND

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY: THREE

PERSPECTIVES

Dennis Hirota

The three articles published here were originally presented at workshops held

under the auspices of Ryukoku University in Kyoto in 2011 and 2012. (A fourth

article, Heidegger and Nishitani on Nature and Technology by Graham Parkes,

has already been published elsewhere.) The meetings were part of a series

organized with the aim of developing fresh understandings of the implications for

contemporary life of traditional Japanese Buddhist thought. The three-year

project, now concluded, sought to explore the possibilities of illuminating vital

aspects of Japanese Buddhist thinking by viewing it, in its various strains, in the

light of European continental philosophy. Sponsored by the Ryukoku Research

Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Religion, Science, and the Humanities, it also

included two meetings held at the Harvard University Center for the Study of

World Religions, in which some of the contributors here also participated.

Over the past century, Japanese thinkers trained in western philosophy such

as Nishida Kitaro, Nishitani Keiji, and Takeuchi Yoshinori have sought to articulate

the stance of Japanese Buddhist thinking in relation to western philosophical

issues and modes of thought. On the whole, however, religious scholars within

sectarian Buddhist institutions have retained a highly conservative posture,

seeking to preserve and transmit doctrinal orthodoxies developed during the

Tokugawa period. At the same time, western specialists of Japanese religions have

been inclined to focus any philosophical interests on the Zen tradition and have

tended to view other major forms of Buddhism in Japanthe Shin Buddhist Pure

Land tradition of Shinran, in particularwithin the parameters of western

religious traditions, informed largely by Christian presuppositions.

As illustrated in the diversity of articles presented here, the themes and

approaches of continental philosophy since Hegel offer particularly rich resources

for elucidating Japanese Buddhist thinking by highlighting the sometimes striking

resonances and revealing divergences, and by dislodging Japanese Buddhist

doctrinal stances from their traditional footing and bringing them clearly to bear

on matters of contemporary life.

Contemporary Buddhism, 2014Vol. 15, No. 2, 432, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2014.936660

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