In her first book, _Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought_, Leah Kalmanson draws on a wide range of Asian ritual and philosophical repertoires in making a case for the role of practical exercises of self-cultivation in the work of existential inquiry. This review considers some of the ways in which Kalmanson’s selection of sources is consonant with the intervention she seeks to make, and suggests some possible avenues for beginning to think in a similarly (...) expansive way with and about western traditions. (shrink)

Membership in the Kyoto School of philosophy is defined by both formal and conceptual criteria. Keta Masako 氣多雅子 is a member in good standing in both senses. Formally speaking, she currently occupies the Chair in Religious Studies at Kyoto University.1 This chair, together with the Chair in Philosophy, constitutes the formal nexus of the Kyoto School.2 Keta is the first woman to hold the chair, constellating her in a network that radiates “from the rather substantial circle of students and professors (...) that had formed around Nishida [Kitarō] during his final years at Kyoto and that had continued with Tanabe [Hajime].”3 Conceptually speaking, the Kyoto School is defined by a critical reflection on Asian and European... (shrink)

The growing scholarship on the Kyoto School of Japanese Buddhist philosophy has brought it to the attention of more and more people in the West, but in the process, the Kyoto School has acquired a fixed identity. It is usually depicted as centered around three main figures—Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji—and concerned with the philosophy of nothingness. In fact, however, as the thirteen scholars in this volume show, the Kyoto School included several other members beside the inner circle (...) of three, and these members were concerned with a wide range of philosophical issues beyond the philosophy of nothingness. The range and variety of these essays give a much more realistic picture of the many fronts on which the Japanese encountered Western philosophy. (shrink)