"What is culture? What can we learn from art, architecture, and fashion about how people relate? Can cultures embody ethical and moral ideals? These are just some of the questions addressed in this book on the cultural philosophy of three preeminent Japanese philosophers of the early twentieth century, Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō and Kuki Shūzō"--.

• Cover
• Japanese Philosophers on Society and Culture
• Japanese Philosophers on Society and Culture: Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō, and Kuki Shūzō
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Japanese Cultural and Social Philosophy in Context
  • New Texts and Novel Perspectives: The Focus of This Book
  • Watsuji, Kuki, and Nishida on Culture and Society
  • The Philosophy of Culture in Europe in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
  • Japanese Culture and Japanese Nationalism
  • Why Study Japanese Cultural and Social Philosophy?
  • Notes
• Chapter 2
• Watsuji Tetsurō’s Early Views on Culture
  • THE THREE FACETS OF CULTURE: CONSTRUCTED, DYNAMIC, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
  • Background: Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara—Publication, Themes, and Structure
  • The Three Facets of Culture as Construct
  • Toward a Philosophical Analysis of Culture: Pilgrimages as a Prelude to Watsuji’s Later Works
  • Conclusion: Traces of Watsuji’s Philosophical Analysis of Culture
  • Notes
• Chapter 3
• The Development of Watsuji’s Theory of Culture and Climate
  • FROM PILGRIMAGES TO THE ANCIENT TEMPLES IN NARA TO CLIMATE AND CULTURE
  • Situating Climate and Culture in Relation to European Philosophy
  • The Purpose of Climate and Culture: Identifying the Phenomenological Structures of Intersubjectivity
  • Space and Time: Fundamental Structures of Human Experience Disclosed through Culture and Climate
  • From Method to Cultural Milieu
  • Notes
• Chapter 4
• Watsuji’s Three Climatic and Cultural Zones
  • CLIMATE AND CULTURE: SEPARATING ESSENTIALIST AND NON-ESSENTIALIST STRANDS IN WATSUJI’S THOUGHT
  • The Three Cultural Types
  • Spatial Aspects of Climate and Culture
  • Temporal Aspects of Climate and Culture
  • Nondeterministic Elements of Watsuji’s Theory of Climate and Culture
  • Similarities between Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara and Climate and Culture
  • Deterministic and Essentialist Aspects of Watsuji’s Theory of Culture
  • The Roots of Geographic Determinism in Watsuji’s Interpretation of Heidegger
  • The Transition from Cultural Phenomenology to Ethics
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• Chapter 5
• Kuki’s Hermeneutic Approach to the Floating World
  • An Introduction to Kuki’s The Structure of Iki
  • Kuki’s Hermeneutic Method: Adaptation and Innovation
  • The Influence of Bergson on Kuki’s Interpretation of Hermeneutics
  • Influence and Originality: Kuki’s Hermeneutic Method
  • Notes
• Chapter 6
• Kuki and Heidegger
  • The Origins of Hermeneutics in Husserl—“To the Things Themselves!”2
  • Heidegger’s Phenomenological Method—The Hermeneutics of Facticity as Fundamental Ontology
  • Kuki’s Hermeneutic Interpretation of Japanese Culture
  • Kuki’s Concept of Culture: Iki as the Meaning of a Japanese Worldview
  • Conclusion: Culture as the Rediscovery of Iki
  • Notes
• Chapter 7
• Kuki Shūzō’s Concepts of Culture and Society
  • KUKI’S CONCEPTS OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY
  • Chance and the Ethical Intuition of Freedom
  • The Influence of French Philosophy and Heideggerian Existential Phenomenology on Kuki
  • Evaluating the Success of Kuki’s Solution to the Puzzle of the Individual and Intersubjective Nature of Ethical Experience
  • Notes
• Chapter 8
• Nishida
  • Who We Are as Individuals
  • Who Are the Others?
  • Overcoming Our Everyday Notion of Self: Recognizing Our Fundamental Co-Origination with Others as the Activity of Cultural Production
  • Notes
• Chapter 9
• Nishida’s Views on Morality and Culture
  • The Historical Body and the Historical World as the Contextual Unfolding of Absolute Reality
  • How Should We Live as Social Beings? Nishida’s View of Ethical and Moral Life
  • Expressing Our True Self in Science, Art, and Morality
  • Expressing Our Moral and Ethical Obligations in Society
  • What Can We Learn from Nishida for Our Globalized World?
  • Notes
• Conclusion
  • The Background to a Study of Japanese Cultural Thought in the Twentieth Century
  • Inspired by Watsuji: Culture as an Ongoing Process of Responding to the Physical and Social Environment
  • Inspired by Kuki: Cultural Ideals as Ethical Ideals—A Japanese Ethics of Difference
  • Inspired by Nishida: Culture as World Religious Culture
  • Concluding Words
  • Notes
• Works Cited
  • Abbreviations
  • Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author