The Kyoto School: A Buddhist Contribution to Ecological Civilization | Process Pop-Up

This pop-up, hosted by Jared Morningstar, examined the specific resources provided by the Kyoto School philosophers for collaborating in the project of ecological civilization.

From The Kyoto School: True Emptiness, Wondrous Being website:

“The Kyoto School was founded by Nishida Kitaro at the beginning of the 20th century, and now covers three generations of philosophers who have endeavoured to express the insights of the East in the philosophical language of the West. As they did so, however, they have in fact created a new kind of philosophy, a radically new way of thinking from the standpoint of emptiness – and empathy – which goes beyond the limited scope of traditional Western philosophy, which is the standpoint of being – and that of the self-centred calculative mind, cut off from a true experience of reality. Their insights will be of interest to those interested in current research about the nature of consciousness and cognition, as well as those concerned by the inadequacy of the prevalent Western mode of thinking in tackling social, political, economic and environmental issues.”

The Kyoto School and its representatives offer a unique dialogue with traditions of Process thought, as both maintain a skepticism of the dominant substance ontology of much of mainline Western thinking. In his forward to Nishitani’s masterpiece, Religion and Nothingness, scholar Winston L. King writes that

“One other possibility remains [for dialogue between the Kyoto School and Western thought] in the field of American philosophy, and one that has been slightly explored already. To this writer it seems to have the greatest potential for sustaining a full philosophical-religious contact between Buddhist East and Christian West of any thought pattern in America. This is the so-called process philosophy which had its roots in the thought of A. N. Whitehead, especially in his seminal Process and Reality” (Winston L. King, “Foreward” in Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, xxi).

Resources:

Science and Technology: Nature Denaturalised and Humans Dehumanised: https://thekyotoschoolofphilosophy.wo...

Watsuji’s Idea of the Self and the Problem of Spatial Distance in Environmental Ethics: https://ejjpenojp.files.wordpress.com...

Religion and Science in Nishitani Keiji: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEIU...

The Kyoto School Philosophy on Place: Nishida and Ueda: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14qBq...

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