Unlearning is a recurrent theme in Japan. To further understanding of what this entails, we focus on the view of learning laid out by a revered 13th century Zen-inspired playwright. For Zeami, learning involved a movement from the acquisition to unlearning of skills, punctuated by an experience of mushin, followed by creative reemergence. To deepen understandings of this unlearning model, we turn to draw comparison with recent discussions in the Western literature, focusing on Double-Loop Learning and Learning III, both inspired (...) by Bateson. Learning III, which Bateson utilized several Zen references to explicate, appears to gesture towards the alternative punctuation of learning envisaged by Zeami, although differences remain. We then shift to highlight empirical work on contemporary Japanese schooling, highlighting practices which suggest elements of a Zeami-like worldview continue to live on in Japan’s learning culture. Unlearning, when viewed as a living tradition embedded in culture, rather than merely a premodern past or future philosophical possibility, help sets the stage for a transnational, transdisciplinary dialogue on how we learn. We perform our own extended dialogue that led to this piece, a mode of engagement we view as methodological innovation, as we work to unlearn our past parochialisms. (shrink)

This essay introduces Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism to illuminate how history teachers may invoke a critique of the past and present through democratizing the production of knowledge in the classroom. Historical materialism gives students access to the means of knowledge production and entrusts them with the task of generating a critique of politics though encounters with historical objects. The rise of the alt-right, alternative facts, and fake news sites necessitates social studies methods that intervene into the fascist seductions of narrative (...) in history. A Benjaminian pedagogy emphasizes reading practices that acknowledge the political layers of history inscribed within the objects. This generates space for forms of pessimism and dialectic critiques of barbarism that students may experience with history beyond the teacher’s capacity for understanding. In the name of democracy over fascism, the article adds a political critique to students’ historical and critical thinking skills. (shrink)

This essay retrieves the meaning and importance of renga, or linking poetry. Long forgotten, even in Japan, it was the form of which the great Bashō was the mater (not haiku as is now believed). When examining renga poetry, one can see that it is based not on authorial vision, but rather the trans-subjective mood that guides the different links made by the various poets who collaborate in the “rolling” of a renga. The radical implications of this form for both (...) aesthetics and ethics will be considered. (shrink)

「稽古」とはいかなる思想か。そこに秘められた「智恵」が意味するものとは。「稽古」を知の地平に解き放ち、こころとからだと世界のありかを探る、注目の書。.

本書は、人間的営みとしての学びの広さ・深さ・自由さを確認していく。人間の成長、人間形成という視点から、学びの実践を通して「学び」の人間学的原理、学ぶ主体にとっての意味を考察。個人の具体的な経験を通して 、多様な学びのあり方を提示。日本人の学び方、教え方の伝統や特徴とその問題について考察。.

Translated into English for the first time, leading Japanese philosopher, Nishihira Tadashi, explores the deeply experiential philosophy of losing yourself in the reality of the present. He takes us on a tour through the history of Zen, the gatekeeper of the philosophy of no-mind D.T. Suzuki, the Noh theory of Zeami and Takuan's treatise on swordsmanship. Nishihira pulls together the threads of this genealogy of no-mind, showing the richness of the concept and its essential connection to the paradoxical task (...) of becoming fully human. (shrink)

いま、なぜ日本の思想なのか。出発点としての問いかけ。近代において日本思想の研究が立ち上がって行く過程、日本的なるものへの問い、多様な「日本」観などを検討する。.

Today, at the close of the twentieth century, we are confronted by radical changes in the nature of intercultural relations. Those who in previous centuries were unable to venture far from their native villages are today able to visit foreign lands as a matter of course, not only as tourists but also for reasons of commerce or employment. A high degree of intercultural understanding is manifested thereby. But at the same time there arise cultural conflicts and friction. How is that (...) sort of understanding which transcends cultural frontiers possible at all? And what is the root of the different sorts of failure to achieve intercultural communication? These are pressing problems by which mankind as a whole is confronted, and they are problems which philosophers, too, are called upon to face. (shrink)

The contemporary times are the era in which the natural sciences and technology are hyper-developed. Nowadays the future of mankind is not altogether filled with the light of hope. On the contrary the human beings are thrown into the difficult situations. What kind of critical situation is there in front of us then? Three points must be considered and inquired. 1) What is the recognition of the present condition? 2) From which does the critical situation arise? 3) On the base (...) of these two steps aforementioned, I would like to elucidate how it is possible for mankind to conquer and to overcome the crisis of human beings. A fundamental cause of this predicament is the concentrated will in the subjectivity and the voluntary constitution of the metaphysics since the Greek and Roman School of Stoic Philosophy and its successor, Descartes as its precursor. Therefore every one must achieve the self-negation of his own will not only for himself but also for the human society. (shrink)

Philosophy is global, insofar as it is a relation of a human being towards its world and as such a thinking of the »betweenness«, of logos and of structure, as they disclose themselves in the relations between the Ego and the world, between the beginning and the end, between the Ego and the others. e theme of »the relational thinking« transcends boundedness to a particular cultural sphere. e transcendence is possible because of the insight into the identity of structures in (...) every culture, which is founded on the performance of a deliberation upon a repeated analysis of the most fundamental issues. e thinking of the relation is the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

文献的知識の皮相ではなく、内部にひそむ日本独特の悲哀の感情を読む梅原日本学。縁故をもつ著者達が回顧しつつ思想的意義を説く。.

巧緻を極めた完全犯罪の罠ともいうべき言葉の繭を破り「神」と「死」の謎に迫る、躍動感溢れる究極の探究報告。「いま」生きているこの現場の徹底究明。.