Journal of Philosophical Research

Confucianism, since the time of Confucius, emphasizes “practical wisdom” as the realization of philosophy. This approach accentuates the practical aspects of wisdom rather than the analytical rationale of the intellect. Emphasis on practical wisdom persistently reinforces a moral foundation that is not differentiated from personal virtue. At the same time, practical wisdom in Confucianism stresses self-cultivation, or the complete transformation of the self, derived from the internal state of the heart/mind (xin 心). Finally, Confucian insists that practical wisdom must be transformed into practical action.

Along with our inordinate emphasis on managing our lives on the basis of impartial principles and rules, we have lost the sense that some of the greatest human achievements are accomplished precisely by going beyond anything that existing rules and principles allow. Along with our fixation on the values of morality and politics, which apply to everyone on the basis of our similarities to one another, we have lost the sense that there are also values that depend on our differences and distinguish us from the rest of the world. Philosophical Individualism is a theory that considers the values of difference and distinction to be of crucial importance to life, and models successful lives on successful works of art. That is what is meant by “the art of living.” But such an art is manifested in the abilities of successful leaders in any field: leadership always requires going at least one step beyond wherever what has been already codified can take them.

Philosophy is often understood in terms of public benefit as being synonymous with its application to other domains of public life such as politics, economics, education etc. The question I would like to raise is of an altogether different nature—namely, it is the question of whether philosophy can be seen as having any public or social value per se, before there is any further thought of application or usage. In particular, it is the question of whether it contains anything universally significant, something that could make it of interest to anyone as seen in the context of one’s personal evolution. And in order to answer that question, first we have to find out what philosophy is to the philosophers themselves and how it benefits them.

This paper begins with an overview of the origins and development of ancient direct participatory “democracy” and a related concept of the “public.” Through the Roman “res publica” and the “homo publicus” and much later the Magna Carta and the English tradition of participatory rights, as well as the French “division of powers” and the French Revolution and Kant’s “public usage of reason,” a rather modern concept of the “public” in representative modern democracies developed in the Enlightenment and materialized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In social and political philosophy there was a noticeable impact of “the public” and “public life” in debates, formal constitutions and their philosophical and pragmatic foundations. Dewey’s lectures on “The Public and its Problems” already emphasized the impact and the growth of communication technologies for “the public,” publicity, political and social life. Habermas diagnosed a “Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” from a pragmatic social philosophical point of view, although he did not really take up Dewey’s diagnoses and predictions of the role of media and communication technologies. The same is true for Gerhardt’s study The Public: The Political Form of Consciousness (2012). With the pervasive impact of digital communication and media technologies there has occurred another structural transformation of the public sphere and the concept of the public. Instant global multimedia communication certainly has largely positive effects, fostering social as well as individal freedom and even revolutionary changes. But there are also the widespread experiences of individual and group mobbing, “shitstorms,” cyber-crimes, electronic spying and data-mining, etc. The structure (the concept and reality) of the public has lately been and is currently rapidly changing again—due to the electronic information revolution.

The relevance of Aristotle’s philosophy today is the survival of many Aristotelian concepts, definitions, distinctions, in the culture of many countries. In some cases, e. g. in the fields of logic and of metaphysics, the Aristotelian concepts survive as useful instruments for reasoning, like the concepts of category, contrariety, contradiction, or the distinctions between matter and form and between potency and act. But in other fields, like biology and psychology, some Aristotelian doctrines serve equally as examples of conceptual innovations, as was recognised by the biologist Max Delbrück about the discovery of DNA and by Anthony Kenny about the discussion of the “Mind-Body Problem.” Even in the fields of ethics and of politics, the revival of the practical philosophy of Aristotle has been an occasion for developing new models of social life and organisation of society, as is shown by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha C. Nussbaum, and by economists like Amartya Sen.

In recent years rule-scepticism has been dominant among experts concerning Aristotle’s ethics. The present paper addresses three points that speak for this sceptical attitude: (i) Aristotle’s caveat against precision in ethics; (ii) the emphasis on the particular conditions of actions and on experience; (iii) the fact that moral education relies on habituation rather than teaching. At a closer look it emerges that all these considerations presuppose universal rules, laws, and institutions rather than exclude them, for they concern the adjustment of universal principles to particular cases. Knowledge of these principles may not be necessary in routine cases, but the emphasis on a master-science that provides the laws necessary for every well-functioning community and the appropriate education of the citizens shows that these principles are the indispensable foundation of both ethics and politics. It is Aristotle’s aim to provide the groundwork of such a master science that is the common concern of his ethics and politics.

My paper is an inquiry into the political significance of Aristotle’s concept of scholê, a word usually translated as ‘leisure.’ The words ‘school’ and ‘scholar’ are derived from scholê, which indicates a richness of meanings that go far beyond anything suggested by the word “leisure.”Perhaps taking up the subject as a political issue seems untimely during this troubled period of economic crisis. And yet, if seen from the perspective in which it was first raised, that is as a response to the question put forth by Socrates—‘what type of life is worth living?’—then inquiry into its nature may help us entertain the possibility that our economic and social ills have arisen from wrong answers that we have given to the Socratic question.Before examining Aristotle’s thoughts on leisure, I will first briefly turn to Plato’s concept of scholê so as to economically bring to the fore the difficulties involved when leisure is projected unto an entire republic as an overarching aim of public life.

In the history of philosophy, Plato’s theory of Forms has enchanted many philosophers, but it has faced more adversaries than proponents. Although it is unusual for contemporary philosophers to believe in the Platonic Forms, I confront Plato seriously and try to defend his thought by reflecting on its reception in modern Japan. For this purpose, the Japanese word “risō” (理想), which was originally a translation of the Platonic “Idea” or “Form,” will give us valuable hints.I discuss Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Popper, each of whom raised fundamental questions about the Forms as transcendent entities. First, Aristotle ignores one fundamental factor of the Forms, i.e., Eros: we aspire for the perfect or ideal state in our life with reference to the Forms. Next, Popper misses the important difference between the Form and the Ideal: i.e., the ultimate reality and its expressed form in words. Aspiring for the latter does not necessarily lead us to totalitarianism. Then, I argue that Nietzsche shares the same framework with Plato in considering the notion of “ideal.” We have to face his radical question of whether we should hold an “ideal” in everyday life.Finally, I introduce a brief history of how philosophers confronted reality by learning Plato in modern Japan. Michitaro Tanaka, in particular, cast critical eyes on the pre- and post-war society by studying Plato’s philosophy. To consider and discuss the Forms changes views and meanings of the world and of life. Plato thereby invites us to this common search through his dialogues, and leads us to the ideal (risō).

This paper, originally read on the site of Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, attempts to show how the two seemingly distinct themes of this dialogue, eros and rhetoric, are really one. Socrates there employs rhetoric, in which his decent but somewhat dull interlocutor, Phaedrus, takes great pleasure, in order to persuade the latter to assume philosophical eros, inclining his soul to truth. This aim contrasts vividly with the nihilistic one pursued by the greatest of the Sophist rhetoricians, Gorgias. Ultimately, philosophical eros conduces to intimations of immortality. This could be demonstrated, if more time were available, by exploring certain works of contemporary literature and philosophy; for example, in his Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas cites the Phaedrus more frequently than any other text.

In this paper, I discuss the Stoic views on eros in general and “Eros as a god of the Stoic cosmopolis” in particular. In the first part I present the works on Eros written by the Early Stoics; I discuss the fragmentary evidence about their views focusing on Zeno, the founder of the Stoic School. I point out how puzzling most Stoic views appeared to the opposing schools whose members did not hesitate to ascribe many scandalous and shameful views to them, though the Stoic view on eros is not very different from the pedagogical one defended by Socrates as presented in the works of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines of Sphettus and others. In the second part I focus on a single piece of information attested by Athenaeus, according to which Zeno in his Republic, a work written as an answer to Plato’s Republic, took “Eros who brings about friendship, freedom, and concord, to be the god of the city” (SVF I 263). This statement has been interpreted in various ways by eminent scholars, some of whose views I present in brief. In the third and last part, based on the testimony that the Stoics wanted to be called “Socratics,” I argue that Zeno proved himself a genuine Socratic, taking into account not only the Platonic Socrates’s view of eros, but also that of Xenophon, to whom Zeno’s philosophical education can be traced back. I also tend to believe that Zeno’s Republic is not a case of a conventional city, but that of the famous Stoic cosmopolis governed by the law of nature in a spirit of friendship, concord and freedom.

This paper is an investigation of Plato’s thought that the disruptive force of Eros can lead us in a good direction. It takes seriously Diotima’s teaching to Socrates that the erotic encounter with the beautiful beloved stimulates a pregnancy in the lover. This paper argues that Plato did not, and we should not, think of this pregnancy merely as a metaphor or an allegory. The paper also argues that we misread Diotoma’s account of erotic ascent if we think of the lover as coming to disdain his first loves, the beautiful body or the beautiful individual. What he comes to disdain is the thought that this could be the ultimate telos of his quest. But the beloved, or the memory of the beloved, in all his or her corporeality remains of crucial importance throughout the lover’s life. Giving birth in the beautiful—however creative the act—occurs in the aura of the beloved. The paper then takes these Platonic ideas and investigates them in relation to a fantasy-pregnancy that was long suppressed in the history of psychoanalysis: that of the patient known as Anna O. giving birth to her doctor’s baby. The paper argues that this should be understood as a pregnancy of soul—one that played a significant role in giving birth to psychoanalysis itself.

La problématique générale de ce symposium est celle de la confrontation de la philosophie, considérée dans son unicité comme une démarche critique à laquelle rien de ce qui est humain n’est étranger et les religions dans leur diversité à travers l’espace et le temps. Il en résulte des types de rapports très divers, selon que la philosophie emprunte aux religions certains thèmes de sa réflexion ou que, par ses concepts, elle contribue à la théorisation dogmatique de celles-ci. La question essentielle demeure aujourd’hui celle des rapports entre la raison philosophique et les croyances religieuses, que l’on en fasse l’histoire ou qu’en fonction des évolutions de l’une et des autres dans le monde contemporain, l’on tente d’en inventer des formes nouvelles.

Past discussions on the silence of the Buddha have focused on speculations on the “reasons” of the Buddha’s silence. Most scholars offer an analysis of the Buddha’s pragmatic considerations or his argument on human epistemic limits, that is, either that the metaphysical questions are irrelevant to the cessation of suffering or that the metaphysical contents cannot be known. This paper argues that the silence of the Buddha can be seen as a “speech act” whose absence of words actually achieves two purposes, first, the silence expresses the Buddha’s refusal to participate in these debates, and second, the silence creates a “space” which guides the interlocutors to re-direct the focus of their religious understanding. It will be illustrated that this silence of the Buddha is a point of both distinction and connectivity between philosophy as pure speculation on the one hand, and religion as a problem-solving practice on the other.

Philosophy, which is limitless but abstract, and religions, which are concrete but unable to shed the limitations of their symbols, must construct a complementary relationship that draws on the strengths of both. Through developing philosophical insights into religious truth and values, we can shine new light on our modern maladies and urgent problems, such as the tendency to pursue facts but not truth in scholarly research (section 1), religious conflicts (section 2), and the rivalry between religion and ethics (section 3). The author demonstrates ways this is possible from the perspectives of Old Testament studies, ethics, and modern Japanese Philosophy.

In his essay ‘The Idea of Europe’ George Steiner claims that European culture derives from “a primordial duality, the twofold inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem.” For Steiner, the relationship between Greek rationalism and Jewish religion, which is at once conflictual and syncretic, has engaged the entire history of European philosophy, morality, and politics. However, given this definition, at present the United States of America seem to be more European than ‘the old Europe’ itself. Against Steiner, it will be argued that in order to fathom the distinctive characteristic of European culture, we have to take a third European tradition into account, which is inextricably bound up with Athens: the tradition of Greek tragedy. If we may call Europe a tragic continent, it is not only because its history is characterised by an abundance of real political tragedies, but also because it embodies, as an idea and an ideal, a tragic awareness of the fragility of human life. Instead of reducing the ‘idea of Europe’ to a financial and economic issue, Europe should remain faithful to this idea and ideal.

La scène contemporaine des arts visuels et de la danse contemporaine en Afrique, semble proposer une illustration réussie du mot de Theodor Adorno selon lequel « l’art a perdu son caractère d’évidence.» Et nombreux sont les artistes qui acceptent de ne pas être compris des publics locaux. En fait, on remarque que les productions artistiques de type patrimonial ou de type moderne et contemporain, apparaissent dans des occurrences inégales. Parfois, l’offre et la demande se raccordent avec bonheur. Parfois, l’offre attend en vain la demande et il apparaît qu’en art comme ailleurs sur d’autres marchés, la valeur n’est pas tant un attribut intrinsèque de l’objet, qu’une valeur ajoutée par l’artiste et les opérateurs culturels.

Plato both created the Western aesthetic tradition and rejected the artistic claim to truth. I suggest that Plato’s rejection of the view that non-philosophical art is true gave rise to a debate later traversing the entire Western aesthetic tradition. I further suggest that the post-Platonic Western aesthetic tradition can be reconstructed as an effort by many hands to come to grips with and if possible overturn the Platonic judgment. I finally suggest that Hegel, in disagreeing with both Kant and Plato, presents an interesting anti-Platonic argument for “reforging” as it were the ancient link between art and truth. For in the final analysis, art, or at least some kinds of art, is not only beautiful but also in a deep sense true.

Are all cultural products to be understood in cultural terms alone? The paper tries to open up our awareness beyond current culturalistic constrictions towards protocultural as well as transcultural factors involved in the production and understanding of art and other cultural phenomena.

This paper explores the relationship between technology and the environment. Although technological intervention can help humanity to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges, technological advances alone cannot solve all environmental ills. In some cases, the attempt to manipulate the environment through technology can lead to different types of environmental destruction. This paper thus suggests that the introduction and use of technology requires a critical assessment of its ethical and environmental benefits.