In this article, I examine Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō to reconsider the notion of hope, many discourses of which are characteristically future oriented. Although there is an overwhelming suspicion that hope is incompatible with Buddhism due to its forward-looking nature, I argue that Dōgen’s Buddhist soteriology can establish a present-focused conception of hope that can challenge the dominant discourses of hope. In this comparative analysis, I first examine the conditions for hope and show that most theories regard hope as teleological and future oriented. As Dōgen rejects a linear conception of time, a future-oriented hope collapses in Dōgen’s soteriology. Nevertheless, I argue that Dōgen’s theory of temporality can ascertain a new theory of hope grounded in the interconnectedness of all moments, a present-oriented conception of hope based on the radical teleology established within the moment of the absolute now (nikon). Through an analysis of Dōgen’s soteriology from the perspective of hope, it becomes evident that Dōgen’s theory of temporality creates a space for karmic causality while also emphasizing the non-obstruction between practice and enlightenment. Hence, the notion of hope presents a way in which we can reconcile the apparent contradictions between the twelve-fascicle Shōbōgenzō that emphasizes the former and the seventy-five-fascicle version that advocates the latter. Although hope is not central to Buddhist soteriology, this article shows that it is beneficial to analyze Buddhist teachings from the perspective of hope, for not only does it offer a new insight to the growing philosophical discourses on hope, but it also presents a way in which we can reconcile the contradictions within Dōgen’s various writings.
{"title":"Hope without the Future: Zen Buddhist Hope in Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō","authors":"R. Dunlap","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0006","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I examine Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō to reconsider the notion of hope, many discourses of which are characteristically future oriented. Although there is an overwhelming suspicion that hope is incompatible with Buddhism due to its forward-looking nature, I argue that Dōgen’s Buddhist soteriology can establish a present-focused conception of hope that can challenge the dominant discourses of hope. In this comparative analysis, I first examine the conditions for hope and show that most theories regard hope as teleological and future oriented. As Dōgen rejects a linear conception of time, a future-oriented hope collapses in Dōgen’s soteriology. Nevertheless, I argue that Dōgen’s theory of temporality can ascertain a new theory of hope grounded in the interconnectedness of all moments, a present-oriented conception of hope based on the radical teleology established within the moment of the absolute now (nikon). Through an analysis of Dōgen’s soteriology from the perspective of hope, it becomes evident that Dōgen’s theory of temporality creates a space for karmic causality while also emphasizing the non-obstruction between practice and enlightenment. Hence, the notion of hope presents a way in which we can reconcile the apparent contradictions between the twelve-fascicle Shōbōgenzō that emphasizes the former and the seventy-five-fascicle version that advocates the latter. Although hope is not central to Buddhist soteriology, this article shows that it is beneficial to analyze Buddhist teachings from the perspective of hope, for not only does it offer a new insight to the growing philosophical discourses on hope, but it also presents a way in which we can reconcile the contradictions within Dōgen’s various writings.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"107 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines Karatani’s 2014 book, The Structure of World History, aiming to clarify its sweeping philosophical argument in one respect. Among the many ways that we can appreciate Structure is to read it as the elaboration of a profoundly spatial interpretation of our world’s history. In making this claim I am not suggesting that Karatani simply emphasizes space over time, which is not so. Rather, I contend that many of the book’s achievements are best grasped by reading the book as a work of geography. To be sure, geography, as typically understood by academic geographers, is largely absent from Structure: there are no maps and the word “geography” is only used once. Moreover, Karatani never claims to have found the spatial structure of history. Rather, my claim is that the analysis of world history in Structure is acutely spatially sensitive—particularly with regard to the repetition of sociospatial forms through modes of exchange (which effectively comprise the “structure” of the book’s title)—and that this sensitivity grounds Karatani’s radical reinterpretation of Marxism. Structure thereby provides a spatially informed theory of the historical processes that have made this world as such, one that refuses the telos of capital-nation-state. The result is a revolutionary, geographical philosophy of world history.
{"title":"The Spatial Structure of World History","authors":"Joel Wainwright","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Karatani’s 2014 book, The Structure of World History, aiming to clarify its sweeping philosophical argument in one respect. Among the many ways that we can appreciate Structure is to read it as the elaboration of a profoundly spatial interpretation of our world’s history. In making this claim I am not suggesting that Karatani simply emphasizes space over time, which is not so. Rather, I contend that many of the book’s achievements are best grasped by reading the book as a work of geography. To be sure, geography, as typically understood by academic geographers, is largely absent from Structure: there are no maps and the word “geography” is only used once. Moreover, Karatani never claims to have found the spatial structure of history. Rather, my claim is that the analysis of world history in Structure is acutely spatially sensitive—particularly with regard to the repetition of sociospatial forms through modes of exchange (which effectively comprise the “structure” of the book’s title)—and that this sensitivity grounds Karatani’s radical reinterpretation of Marxism. Structure thereby provides a spatially informed theory of the historical processes that have made this world as such, one that refuses the telos of capital-nation-state. The result is a revolutionary, geographical philosophy of world history.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"33 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article Kobayashi Toshiaki discusses the importance in all periods of Karatani’s oeuvre of the notion of an “exterior” that necessarily falls beyond the bounds of a system, together with the notion of “singularity” as that which cannot be contained within a “universal.” The existential dread vis-à-vis the uncanny other that Karatani in his early works of literary criticism had initially found to be the underlying tone in Sōseki’s works remained with Karatani himself throughout his career and is what had drawn him closer to philosophy. This sense of the “exterior” to—or other than—the normality of consciousness and the meaningfulness of the world is then extended and applied as the “exterior to systems” in his analyses of logical, mathematical, and linguistic systems, in his reading of Marx’s discussion of capitalist economics, and most recently in his analysis of commodity exchange between communities.
{"title":"The Shifting Other in Karatani Kōjin’s Philosophy","authors":"Kobayashi Toshiaki, J. Krummel","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In this article Kobayashi Toshiaki discusses the importance in all periods of Karatani’s oeuvre of the notion of an “exterior” that necessarily falls beyond the bounds of a system, together with the notion of “singularity” as that which cannot be contained within a “universal.” The existential dread vis-à-vis the uncanny other that Karatani in his early works of literary criticism had initially found to be the underlying tone in Sōseki’s works remained with Karatani himself throughout his career and is what had drawn him closer to philosophy. This sense of the “exterior” to—or other than—the normality of consciousness and the meaningfulness of the world is then extended and applied as the “exterior to systems” in his analyses of logical, mathematical, and linguistic systems, in his reading of Marx’s discussion of capitalist economics, and most recently in his analysis of commodity exchange between communities.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"17 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The year 2015 will become memorable in the history of Japanese philosophy in Europe. From the third to the fifth of December, the first annual conference for the European Network of Japanese Philosophy (ENOJP) took place at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Catalunya, Spain). The conference was organized by local ENOJP member Raquel Bouso and her students and staff of the University Institute of Culture. The participants were welcomed warmly to a distinguished academic environment within the inspiring architecture of the city.
{"title":"Conference Report: Japanese Philosophy in a New Key","authors":"R. Müller","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The year 2015 will become memorable in the history of Japanese philosophy in Europe. From the third to the fifth of December, the first annual conference for the European Network of Japanese Philosophy (ENOJP) took place at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Catalunya, Spain). The conference was organized by local ENOJP member Raquel Bouso and her students and staff of the University Institute of Culture. The participants were welcomed warmly to a distinguished academic environment within the inspiring architecture of the city.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"137 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At times in the world of thought, a moment comes that compels us to try a fatal jump. The “turn” that Karatani Kōjin attempted in his Investigations I (1986) may be one such case. It is accomplished in the way of “transcendence through the transversal to the outside” in his Transcritique: Kant and Marx (2001). I want to pay, however, attention rather to the fact that, previous to his “turn,” Karatani aimed at exactly the radicalization of introspection during the period from “Introspection and Retrospection” (1980) to “Language, Number, and Money” (1983). It is true that Karatani’s analysis is driven to the wall as it goes, and it is suddenly interrupted halfway. But this does not mean that all Karatani’s efforts of the radicalization of introspection were in vain. As Asada Akira says, we recognize that “an event that is worthy to be called authentically thinking was experienced once at least in our days.”
{"title":"The Documents of a Great Defeat: Karatani Kōjin Immediately Prior to his “Turn”","authors":"Uemura Tadao","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0004","url":null,"abstract":"At times in the world of thought, a moment comes that compels us to try a fatal jump. The “turn” that Karatani Kōjin attempted in his Investigations I (1986) may be one such case. It is accomplished in the way of “transcendence through the transversal to the outside” in his Transcritique: Kant and Marx (2001). I want to pay, however, attention rather to the fact that, previous to his “turn,” Karatani aimed at exactly the radicalization of introspection during the period from “Introspection and Retrospection” (1980) to “Language, Number, and Money” (1983). It is true that Karatani’s analysis is driven to the wall as it goes, and it is suddenly interrupted halfway. But this does not mean that all Karatani’s efforts of the radicalization of introspection were in vain. As Asada Akira says, we recognize that “an event that is worthy to be called authentically thinking was experienced once at least in our days.”","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"61 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mobility is the key to overcoming the capital-nation-state. It can be divided into two types: the mobility of pastoral nomads and original hunter-gatherers. It is impossible for us to find a society of nomadic hunter-gatherers in today’s world, but we can have a thought experiment by observing existing wandering band societies. Yanagita Kunio is a thinker in Japan who drew attention to nomads. He has examined various types of nomads since his earlier years but is ridiculed for insisting on the existence of mountain nomads. Nonetheless, he has never given up on the reality of mountain nomads. Even though he later focuses on farmers with fixed settlements, or the common people, he still continues his search for the possibility of the existence of mountain nomads. Eventually, he came to look for traces of mountain nomads in indigenous beliefs. These indigenous beliefs were not limited to the Japanese.
{"title":"Two Types of Mobility","authors":"Karatani Kōjin, Cheung Ching-yuen","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2016.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2016.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Mobility is the key to overcoming the capital-nation-state. It can be divided into two types: the mobility of pastoral nomads and original hunter-gatherers. It is impossible for us to find a society of nomadic hunter-gatherers in today’s world, but we can have a thought experiment by observing existing wandering band societies. Yanagita Kunio is a thinker in Japan who drew attention to nomads. He has examined various types of nomads since his earlier years but is ridiculed for insisting on the existence of mountain nomads. Nonetheless, he has never given up on the reality of mountain nomads. Even though he later focuses on farmers with fixed settlements, or the common people, he still continues his search for the possibility of the existence of mountain nomads. Eventually, he came to look for traces of mountain nomads in indigenous beliefs. These indigenous beliefs were not limited to the Japanese.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"4 1","pages":"15 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2016.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article clarifies the role Husserl’s philosophy plays in the development of Nishida’s philosophy between 1911 and 1917. During this period, Nishida formulates his thought against Rickert’s and Takahashi’s view that sharply distinguishes the transcendence of meaning from mental process. In doing so, showing the mutual dependence of the “transcendent” and the “immanent” was necessary. Nishida believes that Husserl’s idea of the mutual dependence of act-matter and act-quality could highlight the mutual dependence of the “transcendent” and the “immanent.” Consequently, Nishida attempts to develop his thought with the help of Husserl’s philosophy, which brings about a change in Nishida’s thought. First, Nishida develops his philosophy on the basis of the mutual dependence of act-matter and act-quality in intentional experience. Second, Nishida tries to elucidate the qualitative difference in self-awareness with the concept of act-quality. In addition, Nishida understands the qualitative difference as that of various worlds based on Husserl’s view of the constitution of various worlds. Finally, Nishida argues for the unity of worlds through the will, under the influence of Husserl’s assertion concerning the connection of various worlds through the “I.”
{"title":"Nishida and Husserl Between 1911 and 1917","authors":"Mitsuhara Takeshi","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2015.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2015.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This article clarifies the role Husserl’s philosophy plays in the development of Nishida’s philosophy between 1911 and 1917. During this period, Nishida formulates his thought against Rickert’s and Takahashi’s view that sharply distinguishes the transcendence of meaning from mental process. In doing so, showing the mutual dependence of the “transcendent” and the “immanent” was necessary. Nishida believes that Husserl’s idea of the mutual dependence of act-matter and act-quality could highlight the mutual dependence of the “transcendent” and the “immanent.” Consequently, Nishida attempts to develop his thought with the help of Husserl’s philosophy, which brings about a change in Nishida’s thought. First, Nishida develops his philosophy on the basis of the mutual dependence of act-matter and act-quality in intentional experience. Second, Nishida tries to elucidate the qualitative difference in self-awareness with the concept of act-quality. In addition, Nishida understands the qualitative difference as that of various worlds based on Husserl’s view of the constitution of various worlds. Finally, Nishida argues for the unity of worlds through the will, under the influence of Husserl’s assertion concerning the connection of various worlds through the “I.”","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"3 1","pages":"116 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2015.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In philosophical circles at home and abroad, Tanabe’s work has attracted far less attention than that of others in the Kyoto School. The rarefied and abstract cast of his prose often impedes contact with the underlying, existential questions that drove him. This is nowhere more apparent than in the way he treats art and the mind of the artist in his mature work. After a review of Tanabe’s comments on aesthetics in his Collected Works, the premises in his general philosophy on which they rely and the questions they neglect, this article suggests that that we cannot stop at accusing him of failing to draw direct, essential connections between artistic sensibility and the guiding principles of his logic, but must attend to the dimly felt presence of an aesthetic at work beneath the surface of Tanabe’s very mode of thought.
{"title":"Tanabe Hajime’s Elusive Pursuit of Art and Aesthetics","authors":"James W. Heisig","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2015.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2015.0000","url":null,"abstract":"In philosophical circles at home and abroad, Tanabe’s work has attracted far less attention than that of others in the Kyoto School. The rarefied and abstract cast of his prose often impedes contact with the underlying, existential questions that drove him. This is nowhere more apparent than in the way he treats art and the mind of the artist in his mature work. After a review of Tanabe’s comments on aesthetics in his Collected Works, the premises in his general philosophy on which they rely and the questions they neglect, this article suggests that that we cannot stop at accusing him of failing to draw direct, essential connections between artistic sensibility and the guiding principles of his logic, but must attend to the dimly felt presence of an aesthetic at work beneath the surface of Tanabe’s very mode of thought.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"3 1","pages":"1 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2015.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article approaches the interpretation of the principle of karma as suggested in a sideline in Watsuji Tetsurō’s early reading of the philosophy of Dōgen: Karma is the historic, conditioned origin of how our being is enacted at every single instant, of which each individual is the constantly renewed product. In a sense, any sentient existence in the world is thus karmic because it has a history. The consequences of the problem thus posed are explored in the context of the question of subjectivity, causality, and free will, reformulated here as the problem of “genuine choice,” the position where different inputs, such as desires, moral codes, and duties, prompt a person to choose between contradictory courses of action. The results of this analysis are then used to develop a rationalistic reading of one of Dōgen’s key terms, shinjin datsuraku (“casting off the bodymind”), building on Tsujiguchi Yūichirō’s recent work, as the refusal of a person to succumb to her primary karmic determination or to follow the most readily available course of action that her biological, social, and mental structures propose to her.
{"title":"Casting off the Bonds of Karma: Watsuji, Shinran, and Dōgen on the Problem of Free Will","authors":"Rein Raud","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"The article approaches the interpretation of the principle of karma as suggested in a sideline in Watsuji Tetsurō’s early reading of the philosophy of Dōgen: Karma is the historic, conditioned origin of how our being is enacted at every single instant, of which each individual is the constantly renewed product. In a sense, any sentient existence in the world is thus karmic because it has a history. The consequences of the problem thus posed are explored in the context of the question of subjectivity, causality, and free will, reformulated here as the problem of “genuine choice,” the position where different inputs, such as desires, moral codes, and duties, prompt a person to choose between contradictory courses of action. The results of this analysis are then used to develop a rationalistic reading of one of Dōgen’s key terms, shinjin datsuraku (“casting off the bodymind”), building on Tsujiguchi Yūichirō’s recent work, as the refusal of a person to succumb to her primary karmic determination or to follow the most readily available course of action that her biological, social, and mental structures propose to her.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"3 1","pages":"53 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2015.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research offers a fresh perspective helpful in navigating the debate in modern Japanese scholarship of the so-called nembutsu = magic debate. According to the majority of scholars, Shinran had no need to embrace the practice of “magical” recitation in his Pure Land soteriology that emphasized faith, but chose to keep it only because of his respect for Hōnen. I argue, on the contrary, that Shinran was following Hōnen’s intention to make use of the “magical function” of recitation practice, brought about through Pure Land metaphors and syntactic rhetorics, as a tool for training people incapable of performing the mental act of contemplation practice.
{"title":"Is Shōmyō Nembutsu Magic? Reconsidering Shinran’s Nembutsu Debate in Japanese Scholarship from a Multidimensional Perspective","authors":"Suhara Eiji","doi":"10.1353/JJP.2015.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JJP.2015.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This research offers a fresh perspective helpful in navigating the debate in modern Japanese scholarship of the so-called nembutsu = magic debate. According to the majority of scholars, Shinran had no need to embrace the practice of “magical” recitation in his Pure Land soteriology that emphasized faith, but chose to keep it only because of his respect for Hōnen. I argue, on the contrary, that Shinran was following Hōnen’s intention to make use of the “magical function” of recitation practice, brought about through Pure Land metaphors and syntactic rhetorics, as a tool for training people incapable of performing the mental act of contemplation practice.","PeriodicalId":29679,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese Philosophy","volume":"3 1","pages":"71 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/JJP.2015.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66434237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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