In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 95-99 [Access article in PDF] The Distinction between ego (e) and ego-Self (e/S): Notes on Religious Practice Based upon Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Yagi Seiichi Toin University The Goal of Religious Practice We cannot see the transcendent as an object. Nor is it the case that the transcendent and the human are two separated realities that are united afterwards. When the Self (Christ in me--Gal. 2:19-20) reveals (...) itself to and in the ego (Gal. 1:16), the ego becomes aware of the Self, which is divine--human or transcendent--immanent. This is called enlightenment.In enlightenment, the ego (hereafter: e) does not vanish.When the Self (hereafter: S) appears to and in the ego, the ego (now a relatively independent part of S) becomes the function of S. The ego, understanding itself as the knot of inner and outer reality, plays the role of the reason of the whole body, the center of which is S. In this case we represent such a person as e/S. e/S is the subjectivity of the religious life. D.T.Suzuki and one of his disciples, Ryomin Akizuki called e/S the "individual qua trans-individual." 1 In enlightenment, e/S as the authentic subject, which remains potential before enlightenment, is actualized or realized so that it understands itself as e/S, no more as the mere ego. In order for e/S to be realized and understand itself as e/S, egocentricity, egoism and the confusion of the verbalized reality with "reality as it is" must be overcome. This is the goal of religious practice. e/S From the point of view of interreligious dialogue,"Christ who lives in me" corresponds to "actualized Buddha-nature" or "the Formless Self" in Buddhist language, that is, the Self as we call it. 2 In the case of Paul,"Christ who lives in me" is the ultimate subject of him on the one hand, and "Christ the Son of God" is the object of his faith on the other (Gal. 2:19-20). That means: the ego of Paul that believes in the Son of God is borne by "Christ in me"; as Paul says, "Christ was revealed to and [End Page 95] in me" (Gal. 1:16). In this way, the subjectivity of Paul consists of e/S. Of S, namely, Paul is aware as e/S--neither as e, which is ignorant of S, nor as S. It is impossible for S to exist alone. Egocentricity and Egoism The distinction between e and e/S is of fundamental importance to our theme. e means in this essay the mere ego that is ignorant of S.When it becomes aware of S we represent it as the ego of e/S. e is egocentric and egoistic. It goes without saying that the ego-centered "I" driven by desires produces immorality and social anomies. The biblical word for this is sin, the transgression of the Law.But there is another problematic concerning e, namely egoism, which can be at work even in the effort to attain a high level of morality. We understand the egoistic ego as follows: the ego is to itself the only reality that concerns and moves it. It posits itself solely on itself apart from the relation to others and to S. By itself it projects itself and strives to realize itself. It can, among others, set up its own ideals and pursue their realization. It can, for example, conceive the moralistic ideal that seems to be the reverse of immorality and social anomie. Indeed, it can succeed in controlling egocentricity so that it seems to have attained perfect morality. In reality, it is interested only in its own moral perfection, not in the person encountered (moralistic egoism). Such e is illustrated in Luke 18:9-14 and described in Romans 7:7-24. Egoistic ego must die to itself and must be freed from egoism. (In Romans 6, for example, Paul does... (shrink)

I elucidate Heidegger’s understanding of the “place-being” of the “question of being.” My premises are: 1) Heidegger’s “question of being” can be appropriately made sense of as the “question of language.” 2) The “question of language” requires a topological approach that looks into the link between the place-nature of language and the open-bounded essence of human existence. First, I explain the topological underpinnings of Heidegger’s later thought of being as the clearing and language; second, I examine Sheehan’s phenomenological reading of (...) Heidegger by focusing on the relationship between alētheia and appropriation. In the first section, I explain the correlation between place and language within the context of the “question of being” and display how understanding the former is crucial in having a more complete perspective for the latter. In the second section, I examine Sheehan’s acknowledgment of Heidegger’s idea of place in his understanding of the nature of human existence in relation to Ereignis, while criticizing the “metaphorical” reading of the “placebeing” of the clearing. (shrink)

European countries; eminent thinkers; Turkish image; Islam image.

This article explores the narrative potency and ritual efficacy of a medieval Japanese esoteric Buddhist text in relation to the process of awakening and the construction of imperial legitimation, perceived as two interrelated objectives. Entitled the _Kinpusen himitsuden_, ‘The Secret Transmission of the Golden Peak’, the text was written by the Shingon monk Monkan Kōshin in 1337, soon after the outbreak of the civil war, at the stronghold of the southern court in Yoshino. The text is treated here as a (...) complex ritual platform of metamorphosis and empowerment, intermingling the local cultic structure and the esoteric Buddhist ritual stage of the imperial court as well as realities internal and external to the text, which mutually inform and impregnate one another. Focusing on the articulation of a rock—the body/abode of Zaō, a tutelary mountain deity—we explore its transformation from the site of a local legend of apparition into a Buddha, an object of contemplation, the centerpiece of the imperial stage and a mold for the practitioner’s liturgical body, an achievement allowed by the text taken as a transformative agent. We demonstrate that as an epitome of esoteric Buddhist power, Zaō becomes the source of the emperor’s renewed authority as a Buddhist king, and that in turn, the emperor’s participation in the semiotic sphere of the text endows the deity with sovereign power. As such, this article shows that rather than a vessel of knowledge, the text-as-an-event, is a powerful mechanism of transformation. (shrink)

This essay argues that Islam, understood as a historically produced body of knowledge, contains resources from which we can reconstruct a conception of human dignity understood as a human right. This reconstruction requires a critical reinterpretation of some of these resources. Pursued with historical sensitivity and a comparative lens, this interpretative activity can bring about considerable benefits. It can help us overcome the religious/secular and Islam/West binaries which have limited the human rights debate. It can help us envision a human (...) rights agenda that is universal and yet appreciative of cultural difference. (shrink)

This book intends to renovate the view of social sciences in the German-speaking world. It explores the intellectual tension in the social science in Austria and Germany in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It deals with how the emergence of the new school changed the focus of social science in the German speaking world, and how it prepared the introduction of an evolutionary perspective in economics, politics, and sociology. Based on primary evidence, this development is lively described in a series (...) of encounters and decisions by each social scientists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesYagi YōichiTranslated by Paul L. SwansonIn Japan, the disasters of the giant tsunami and the resulting crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011 have been grim reminders of the unprecedented tragedies of the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just sixty-six years ago. These are experiences in which one becomes speechless, when words (...) are no longer able to convey what used to be their usual meaning.At that time, people were faced with basic and universal questions concerning the fundamental constitution of human existence. What is the ultimate basis for our thoughts and actions? Is there a way to know? If there is a way to know these answers, how do we attain them? The state of intellectual inquiry in postwar Japan, however, was not able to face these questions and come up with answers. Rather, there was a tendency to avoid facing these questions directly and instead rely on absorbing the pronouncements of Western thought.Within this postwar intellectual environment in Japan, the Japan Society for Buddhist- Christian Studies has continuously attempted in an academic way to discuss comprehensive themes, based on Buddhist-Christian or Christian-Buddhist foundations, and is perhaps the only forum in Japan that has consistently sought answers to these basic and universal questions of human existence.It was in this time of crisis that the thirtieth annual conference of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met 5-7 September 2011 at Hanazono University in Kyoto. Discussion of a recent book, Dialogue and Commentary: The Words of Jesus and the Words of Zen (対談評釈 イエスの言葉／ 禅の言葉, Iwanami Shoten, 2010, in Japanese), a series of dialogues and discussions between Ueda Shizuteru and Yagi Seiichi, was chosen as an appropriate theme for this meeting. This book was chosen because it is a splendid synthesis of the activity and discussion carried out by our Society over the past thirty years. Through the magnificent dialogue of these two men, we hoped to open a "living horizon" for a mutual understanding of "the words of Jesus and the words of Zen." The main themes were "direct experience," "self-awareness," "place," and "words."The two dialoguers—Ueda and Yagi—have not only both served and provided [End Page 139] leadership for the Society over many years, as presidents and in other capacities, but also share a basic sense of fundamental questions. They are also leading philosophers of religion who represent the attempt to seek answers to fundamental questions within Buddhism and Christianity in postwar Japan. Ueda Shizuteru, a leading authority and internationally recognized scholar of Meister Eckhart, is also known for his contributions on the philosophy of religion (especially the idea of "place"/basho) in the tradition of Nishida Kitarō, Nishitani Keiji, and Zen Buddhism. His basic philosophical statement is "I am I when I am not I." Yagi Seiichi, on the other hand, is known for promoting religion (philosophy) as "a logic of place" as seen in the New Testament, and for his historical and essentialist critique of New Testament thought. To Yagi, the essence of "the religion of Jesus" is religion as a "logic of place," and if we return to this place we can (to borrow the exquisite phrasing of Yagi himself) "drink directly from the same fountain that was discovered by Jesus." Through this experience we can transcend not only biblical fundamentalism and the exclusivist absolutism of Christianity, but also make it possible to have a true dialogue with other religions. For Yagi, the dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity not only should deepen common understanding, but also open the way to mutual reform, clarify the truth that flows at the basis of both religions, and probe into the fundamental constitution of human existence, and this is why he has constantly sought after dialogue with Buddhists.Yagi Seiichi has stood out as a partner in dialogue for many years. His discussions with the Zen master Hisamatsu Shin'ichi (A Religion of Awakening, published in 1980) was an epochal event in intellectual history from the perspective of "Buddhism and Christianity." Yagi has also been involved in important dialogues with Nishitani... (shrink)

This essay attempts to elaborate a political theory of capital’s violence. Recent analyses have adopted Karl Marx’s notion of the “primitive accumulation of capital” for investigating the forcible methods by which the conditions of capital accumulation are reproduced in the present. I argue that the current scholarship is limited by a certain functionalism in its theorization of ongoing primitive accumulation. The analytic function accorded to primitive accumulation, I contend, can be better performed by the concepts of “capital-positing violence” and “capital-preserving (...) violence.” In coining these new concepts, I first refine the conceptual core of primitive accumulation as the coercive capitalization of social relations of reproduction, which falls into sharpest relief in the violent history of colonial capitalism. I then elucidate this conceptual core with reference to Carl Schmitt’s account of European colonial expansion and Walter Benjamin’s reflections on law-making and law-preserving violence. The resultant concepts of capital-positing and capital-preserving violence, I conclude, can illuminate both the historical and the quotidian operations of the politico-juridical force that has been constitutive of capitalism down to our present moment. (shrink)

This article examines the views of Burke, Tocqueville, and Marx on the nature and extent of modern revolution and its restorative logic. I argue that, while all three supported the introduction of changes in society, they differed on how to steer the course of such changes, which resulted in a peculiar meaning of modern revolution. Each of them proposed good and bad versions of modern revolution, offered specific ways of protecting the good versions from producing perverse effects, and warned against (...) the ugly consequences of a failed revolution. Burke’s conservative revolution favored incremental change against radical social transformations. Contra Burke, Tocqueville acclaimed the egalitarian tendency as a preordained path and advocated democratic revolutions insofar as political liberty could be rescued from the ills of social equality. Marx drew the possibilities of a proletarian revolution from the future the history of class conflicts had prepared. Particularly in his later works, Marx rejected Blanqui’s abortive version of conspiratorial revolution and social revolution without democratization. Overall, each of these thinkers—Burke, Tocqueville, and Marx—reconciled political and social revolutions in their own way, acknowledging that in order to prevent social and moral decay, modern revolutions inevitably gravitate to the Christian logic of restoration. (shrink)

情報化により「生」を見失った現代。いまこそ宗教は、宗教的真実を現代に通じる言葉で語る時である。宗教回復への道を示す最新講義。.

This article is about the signs during the creative stage of one’s self-development. With the acceptance of the creative act as an existential phenomenon, the research considers the creative process as a genuine expression that has been actualized during one’s search for his/her existence. An artist reflects his/her existential being through his/her work to construct an original self, by facing the world and within the struggle to construct the new self that stands beyond confusion. Tarasti’s philosophical approach to “existential semiotics” (...) will be applied to the existential being of the artist Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye, and her creative act will be analyzed by means of the modalities, the semiotic square of being/doing, and the sign processes evident in the field of art. Siesbye’s existential personality and creative acts have been discussed by looking at what she has done in terms of her attitude on clay; her position in the contemporary art world and her artistic interrogations has been discussed in the existential being of the artist with the existential signs. (shrink)

This article investigates the early modern history of dog labor in small-scale industrial production in Europe and the Americas as a paradigmatic example of the history of animal labor. The turnspit dog was the “product” of material conditions of production as they were forced to labor in butter-churning, knife-grinding, water-raising, sewing, and food industries. Furthermore, their bodies and labor tried to be “perfected” by selective breeding and violent methods of training, mechanical dressage, and labor discipline. The incorporation of dog labor (...) into mechanized industrial production developed hand-in-hand with certain ideas, ideologies, and mentalities, such as the mechanistic interpretation of bodies deprived of soul, mind, and sentience. (shrink)

Ultimately all change in the social world depends on self-expansion leading to self-transcendence, that is, depends upon, even if it does not entirely consist in, radical negation, which is pivotal...

We investigated how the perception of being dissimilar to others at work relates to employees’ felt inclusion, distinguishing between surface-level and deep-level dissimilarity. In addition, we tested the indirect relationships between surface-level and deep-level dissimilarity and work-related outcomes, through social inclusion. Furthermore, we tested the moderating role of a climate for inclusion in the relationship between perceived dissimilarity and felt inclusion. We analyzed survey data from 887 employees of a public service organization. An ANOVA showed that felt inclusion was lower (...) for individuals who perceived themselves as deep-level dissimilar compared to individuals who perceived themselves as similar, while felt inclusion did not differ among individuals who perceived themselves as surface-level similar or dissimilar. Furthermore, a moderated mediation analysis showed a negative conditional indirect relationship between deep-level dissimilarity and work-related outcomes through felt inclusion. Interestingly, while the moderation showed that a positive climate for inclusion buffered the negative relationship between deep-level dissimilarity and felt inclusion, it also positively related to feelings of inclusion among all employees, regardless of their perceived (dis)similarity. This research significantly improves our understanding of how perceived dissimilarity affects employees by distinguishing between surface-level and deep-level dissimilarity and by demonstrating the importance of a climate for inclusion. (shrink)

Yapay zekâ araştırmaları doğrudan etkilerini gördüğümüz sayısız uygulamayla birlikte tüm hızıyla sürüyor. Ancak bu araştırmaların nihai amacı hayatımızı kolaylaştıran teknolojiler üretmekten ziyade insanın sahip olduğu türden bir zekâyı, genel yapay zekâyı, hatta daha fazlasını elde etmektir. Yapay zekânın sadece bir satranç ustası olmasını, araç kullanmasını veya asistanlık yapmasını değil, anlamlı iletişim kurabilmesini, yaratıcı fikirler ortaya koyabilmesini, sağduyu sahibi olabilmesini, dünya hakkında düşünebilmesini istiyoruz. Böyle bir zekânın olabilirliği üzerine konuşulduğunda felsefi problemler baş gösteriyor. Bunlardan öne çıkanı yapay zekânın insanlar gibi gerçek (...) bir zekâya sahip olup olmadığını nasıl bilebileceğimiz ile ilgili epistemolojik problemdir. Bu noktada zekânın belirtisini sergilenen davranışlarda arayan davranışçı yaklaşım haklı görülebilir ancak bunun bir koşulu vardır: Yapay zekâ bizi kendisinin gerçekten de genel bir zekâya sahip olduğuna ikna etmelidir. Bilincin bu ikna girişiminde bir rol oynuyor olabilmesi yapay zekâ ve bilincin sanılandan daha güçlü bir şekilde birbirine bağlı olduğunu imleyecektir. Daha otonom bir varlık/birey olma hedefinde yapay zekânın yolu bilincin varlığı ile kesişiyor olabilir. (shrink)

Vallortigara & Rogers (V&R) assume that the alignment of escape responses in gregarious species is the central evolutionary organizer of a wide range of cerebral asymmetries. Although it is indeed likely that the benefits of a population asymmetry in social species outweigh its costs, it is hard to see (a) why the population should not oscillate between two subgroups with mirror-image asymmetries, (b) why solitary animals should keep their inherited population asymmetry despite a resulting fitness reduction, and (c) and why (...) so many vertebrate species have comparable cerebral asymmetries. (shrink)

Aboitiz and colleagues propose that the tectorotundal pathway of birds and reptiles is homologous not to the mammalian colliculopulvinar system but to the posterior complex/intralaminar nuclei. However, as outlined below, a large amount of strong evidence points to a homology of the tectorotundal and the colliculopulvinar system. This makes it likely that DVR and isocortex might be in part homologous.