Japanese and Korean Philosophy
Koji Tanaka
The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy
Edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield
Print Publication Date: May 2011 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy Online Publication Date: Sep 2011 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0026
Abstract and Keywords
This part of the book starts by stating that the Japanese and Korean traditions of philosophy, when compared with other Asian traditions, present distinctive features. Divisions in Japanese and Korean schools of philosophy are employed and maintained for “practical” reasons. The text here introduces the analysis to follow in this part of the book, stating that it describes the thoughts and ideas developed by Japanese and Korean philosophers and also engages with the issues with which these philosophers grappled.
Keywords: Japanese philosophy, Korean philosophy, issues, Buddhism, schools of philosophy
THE Japanese and Korean traditions of philosophy, when compared to other Asian traditions, present distinctive features. In China and India, the two main sources of philosophical inspiration in Asia, we can recognize distinctive subschools of thought. This is the case, for example, in the various Buddhist schools of thought that arose in China and India. Divisions between these schools are useful even when the boundaries are not well marked or have been questioned. In Japan and Korea, divisions are employed and maintained for “practical” purposes. For instance, some thinkers are identified as Confucians, some are Buddhists belonging to various sects of Buddhism, and so on. Philosophically, however, the notion of “schools of thought” is difficult to maintain in the Japanese and Korean context. 1 Whereas in China and India (as well as many other parts of the world), there is a tendency to maintain distinctions between schools of thought, philosophers in Japan and Korea tend to adopt and adapt the thoughts afforded by different traditions of philosophy. Instead of division, they are mostly interested in synthesis of thought. Creativity and ingenuity are considered to arise from the ways in which various thoughts can be synthesized in the formation of new ideas. As such, Japanese and Korean philosophers actively synthesize ideas found in the Chinese and Indian traditions (as well as others) into their own contexts.
(p. 298) Thomas Kasulis calls the philosophical orientation that can be seen to underlie the Japanese and Korean traditions one of intimacy as opposed to integrity.2 Instead of pursuing the integrity of their philosophies, by distancing their views from that of others, Japanese and Korean philosophers often seek what is intimately relevant to them. In martial arts, for example, students are taught to absorb what the teacher has learned into their own experiences and practice, to acquire the teacher's knowledge “within their own skins” so to speak. The transmission of intimate knowledge is not unique to martial arts. Much of our knowledge, in fact, is of this kind.
As babies learn how to behave, they replicate much of their parents' behavior in their own responses. In learning about the setting up of a computer, one is often shown what a friend has learned by trial and error. Hence, a concern with intimate knowledge is not unique to Japanese and Korean traditions of philosophy. What is unique, however, is that philosophers in Japan and Korea are primarily concerned with knowledge of this kind. This is not to say that they are only interested in theorizing about intimate knowledge. Rather, their philosophical activities are often carried out from this orientation and for the sake of acquiring such knowledge.
In making explicit such an orientation, one shouldn't insist that it is essential to Japanese and Korean philosophy. Such essentialization both overgeneralizes certain features and mischaracterizes the respective traditions. Nonetheless, it is useful to think of Japanese and Korean traditions as stemming from an orientation of intimacy since it allows us to make sense of the relevancy, significance, and value of the claims and arguments put forward by Japanese and Korean philosophers.
In this section, scholars of international standing not only describe the thoughts and ideas developed by Japanese and Korean philosophers, but also engage with the issues with which these thinkers grappled. In so doing, they exemplify one of the core philosophical values at the heart of these traditions, namely, that philosophy lies not in redescription but creative engagement with the ideas of “the old” when placed in a contemporary context. The authors of the chapters contained in this section focus on a mixture of important topics and prominent figures in Japanese and Korean philosophy viewed from a contemporary point of view.
The way in which the orientation of intimacy plays a role in Japanese and Korean thought can be best understood in the context of ethics. As a student of martial arts imitates the teacher, she or he shares the intimate wisdom of the teacher about martial arts. This sharing is made possible by the sense of compassion one has toward the other. Ethics that arises from the sense of compassion may not be rule driven or based on responsibility, but is based on the sense of responsiveness to everything around us. In the first article of this section, Robert Carter explores a sense of Japanese ethics that can be characterized in this way. It derives from elements of Confucian, Buddhist, and Shintľ ethical traditions that, from a Japanese perspective, all share a common element: namely, charting a path toward becoming an ethical being and living an ethical life with a caring attitude toward the world (p. 299) and others. As Carter presents, the twentieth-century philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō 3 incorporates this element into his thought and presents Japanese ethics to be concerned with living in relationships with others, an ethics of social interaction. Japanese ethics, in his view, focuses on the practice of an ethical path and the cultivation of acting and being in the world of which we are a part.
This feature of Japanese ethics can, in fact, be found in artistic practices. As Mara Miller presents in the following chapter, Japanese aesthetics is concerned with a wider variety of experiences and objectives than its Western counterpart. Japanese aesthetics recognizes such experiences as mononoaware (awareness of the poignancy of things) and shibui (an acetic quality or astringency). These experiences often involve everyday objects and activities. Haiku is a good example of fine arts that have transformed everyday experiences into the expression of aesthetic values. Most important, Miller demonstrates how Japanese aesthetics is tied to the notions of cultivation and personal relationships that obtain between the practitioner and the audiences. Hence, arts are seen as expressions of one's identity as well as the cultivation of intersubjectivity (and/or cosubjectivity).
What is emphasized in both ethics and aesthetics is the practice, actualization, and realization of the ethical and artistic path. One's ethical and aesthetic agency is revealed in the way we are and act in the world. If this is the way that ethics and aesthetics are conceived in Japanese thought, there must be intimacy between the freedom one can express and the nature or world in which one is. In the chapter on natural freedom, Bret Davis shows that
freedom for the Japanese isn't freedom from nature but is, in fact, an expression of nature. Nature is not thought of as an object of study but as a way of life. Naturalness is a way in which things, animals, plants, and people are. Freedom is to be found in the naturalness of our participation in nature. Given that one needs to practice being natural, it follows that freedom, in this sense, is an achievement. One achieves freedom by intimately engaging oneself with the everyday world. One becomes responsive to one's surrounding, whether in terms of a spontaneous compassionate act or in terms of a spontaneous artistic move, by means of actualizing freedom.
The Japanese focus on the realization of nature is given a soteriological character in Buddhism (and Shintō). Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253), often considered the most original and profound Zen thinker, centralizes practice or “enlightening engagement” with the world. Bret Davis engages with the intimacy, or rather inseparable nonduality, of practice and enlightenment as expressed by Dōgen in the following chapter. For Dōgen, enlightenment is a matter of verifying (in the sense of “making true”), realizing (in the sense of “actualizing”), and, thus, authenticating what one truly is in one's practice. In enlightening engagement with the world, however, one is not to assert one's subjectivity. Instead, one is to “drop off the body-mind” and openly and fully engage with the world. Enlightenment for Dōgen is, thus, an (p. 300) ongoing journey of the authentication of the path of illuminating and appreciating the innumerable aspects of the world within the world. Such a journey is not one where the ego schematizes how things are but one where things are allowed to reveal themselves.
The orientation toward intimacy is manifested in many areas of enquiry in Japanese philosophy. What is the context or space in which this intimacy can be ascertained? for Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), the originator of Kyoto “style” philosophy, it is “absolute nothingness.” In his chapter on Nishida, John Maraldo delves deep into this absolute nothingness, a space in which everything is held together and from which all distinctions arise. The world of which we are a part, and in which we are embodied, has a structure composed of distinctions. What is the context in which this world can be found in its own integrity? Absolute nothingness is Nishida's answer. The integrity of the world “as one” must be negated, leaving absolutely nothing. Absolute nothingness must remain obscure and dark since the distinction between clarity and obscurity itself must swing back to nothing. In Nishida's view, it is, nevertheless, from this obscurity or darkness that light may shine to make clarity possible.
When the light shines through, however, the self is not posited as the center but, rather, is placed as only one among many jewels. In East Asian Buddhism, this idea is expressed as Indra's Net, in which each jewel is thought to reflect all other jewels. In her chapter on Korean Buddhism, Jin Park explores the Korean Buddhist development of this thought. For Ŭisang (625–702), considered as the founder of Hwaŏm (Ch. Huayan) Buddhism, all opposites (universal/particular, sameness/difference, integrity/fragmentation) coexist in each entity. The Sŏn (Zen) Buddhist, Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), focused on the nature of the mind and language and problematized the linguistic creation of the world in one's mind. For him, hwadu meditation promises to break out of the mind's activity of individuating being and event in terms of our language from the interpenetrated whole.
The development of Korean Buddhism is constituted by intimate and creative responses to Chinese and Indian Buddhism. For instance, the twentieth-century Buddhists T'oe'ong Sŏngch'ŏl (1912–1993) and Pŏpsŏng (1913–) rekindled the Chinese debate whether awakening is sudden or gradual by introducing a social and ethical dimension informed by Korean society. Pŏpsŏng, and earlier Wŏnhyo (617–686), a contemporary of Ŭisang, also emphasized the intimate relationship that obtains between individual and society as in Indra's Net.
As the reader might have noticed, many more articles in this section are devoted to engaging with the Japanese tradition than that of the Korean tradition. This is because contemporary studies have tended to focus more on the Japanese tradition and, as a result, have generated more philosophical interest among contemporary philosophers.
This situation is regrettable, since it was partially because of the creative engagement of Korean philosophers with the Chinese and Indian material and its dissemination to Japan that Japanese philosophical thought was able to achieve its dominant position. Time may alter this situation. But, for now, more focus is given to Japanese philosophy.
(p. 301) Chapters of this section are written predominantly by philosophers who have exceptional grasp of the Japanese and Korean traditions. They are written in the format of an encyclopedia; yet each author was asked to not only present but also engage with the main issues and major figures of these traditions. It is hoped that readers can enter into Japanese and Korean philosophies and engage these traditions in their own philosophical work.
Notes:
(1) This may be questioned in the case of the Kyoto school. However, philosophers in Japan, especially those at Kyoto University, don't identify it as a “school.” Instead, they refer to it as Kyoto “style” philosophy.
(2) Thomas P. Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2002).
(3) In this introduction and the following chapters, Japanese names are given in the Japanese way, that is, surname/family name first followed by given name, unless the cited publication prints the name in another way.
Koji Tanaka
Koji Tanaka is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research focuses on logic, history and philosophy of logic, Buddhist philosophy, classical Chinese philosophy, and Japanese philosophy.
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