Ryōsuke Ōhashi

Ryōsuke Ōhashi

Ryosuke Ōhashi ( jap. 大橋良介 , Ōhashi Ryosuke * 8. February 1944 in Kyoto ) is a Japanese presence philosopher with contributions in the field of phenomenology , aesthetics , German idealism , Heidegger , Japanese by the Buddhist -oriented philosophy .

Life

Ōhashi was born in Kyoto in 1944 as the son of a math teacher. From 1965 to 1969 he studied philosophy at the Kyōto State University and from 1969 to 1973 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, where he received his doctorate summa cum laude with the thesis “Ecstasy and Serenity - Zu Schelling and Heidegger ” . In 1983 Ōhashi was the first Japanese to do his habilitation at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, where he had many philosophical discussions with Heinrich Rombach . As a professor of philosophy Ōhashi taught from 1975 to 1985 at the Shiga Medical University in Ōtsu , from 1985 to 2003 at the Technical University of Kyoto . In July 1990 he was awarded the Philipp Franz von Siebold Prize and in March 1996 Ōhashi received the Humboldt Medal . From 2003 to 2007 he taught aesthetics and art philosophy at the University of Osaka (Handai) and from 2007 to 2010 philosophy at the Buddhist Ryūkoku University in Kyoto. In addition, he was visiting professor at the Universities of Cologne, Vienna, Hildesheim and Tübingen. Numerous lectures in France, the USA, Taiwan and Hong Kong. 1997/98 was Ōhashi Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin , 2010/11 at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche and the Kolleg Morphomata of the University of Cologne; 2013/14 Fellow at the Research Institute for Philosophy in Hanover . Since 2014 he has been the director of the Japanese-German Cultural Institute (Kyoto).

Philosophical work

Ōhashi is the grandchildren of Keiji Nishitani and a student of Max Müller and belongs to the Kyōto School , a school of philosophy in Japan , which was established at the beginning of the 20th century . Ōhashi's work and research are based on the philosophical sense of this school, the systematic examination of the Japanese and the Western spiritual tradition. Since his dissertation on Schelling and Heidegger, he has been concerned with an intercultural and philosophical encounter between Western and Far Eastern thought. Even before his dissertation, this topic became apparent to him when he came across the works of Heidegger at the beginning of his studies. With Ōhashi, the intercultural-philosophical encounter between Western and Far Eastern thought means first of all to experience the other as the other and not as the other that I have imagined. In this context, Ōhashi also refers to the experience hidden in language. Translating words, grammatical worldviews, thoughts, concepts or mythical ideas into one's “own language” can only succeed if this language modulates and expands in such a way that it opens up and assimilates to the other and not the other way around Try to squeeze the other into the terms of your own system and then output this as a translation. Exactly this topic he had already addressed in relation to his work on Heidegger and cites Heidegger as an example, who discussed the question of " being " as the basis of Western thought. In German, the noun “Sein” can also be used as a verb and Heidegger says that when the word “Sein” disappears we cannot speak and consequently cannot understand. So the word "being" is crucial. In the Japanese language there are two translations for the word “to be” and in Chinese there is no word at all for the copula “to be” (is). Because of the compulsory translation, something crucial is lost that is implied in the German word “Sein”.

phenomenology

Partly taking into account Heidegger's point of view, and dealing with Hegel, but mainly following Nishida's "idea of ​​place", Ohashi developed "Phenomenology of Place" and puts it into a new philosophical context with his habilitation thesis "Temporality Analysis of Hegelian Logic", when he understands this as a doctrine of the senses. Ryōsuke Ōhashi argues that Hegel's explicit treatment of time contains an implicit idea of ​​"original time" and equates the Hegelian concept of time "original time" with spirit, because Hegel describes "spirit" as "the concept of time". Logic as the category of this spirit or its eternal essence must then contain the structure of temporality.

Phenomenoetics

In later publications Ōhashi endeavored to follow the “Philosophy of Void” developed by Keiji Nishitani for a “Philosophy of Compassion”. “ Emptiness ” and “compassion” (“compassion” or “big heart” of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who strive for the salvation of all living beings) are a pair of basic mahayana Buddhist terms. Instead of the term “ phenomenology ”, Ōhashi introduces the term “phenomenoetics”, which is linked to the term noetics . Here he means first of all the initial experience on which the Buddhist sutras are based. Ōhashi wants to say that every phenomenologically formulated thought is based on an initially intuitive experience, so that his endeavor can now be referred to as the "phenomenoetics of compassion".

Between path and system

Ōhashi's approach is polydisciplinary , combining various elements from scientific disciplines such as art , linguistics , literary studies and theology . According to Ōhashi, the most striking feature of the distinction between European and Japanese philosophizing is the “difference between path and system”. The system strives for perfection, for completion, whereby the whole of the system should be reflected in every single part. Like the way, nature knows no end and thus it does not know any completion. According to nachhashi, Far Eastern thinking could perhaps best be understood as a way, and so walking the way develops into a philosophical, ethical and religious practice, which is also understood as a way of life. At the same time, a religious context is integrated into this walk, because walking the path is religion without the concept of God, as we experienced in Buddhism , Taoism or Shintoism .

Religion and nature

Among other things, in the published publication "Japan in intercultural dialogue" (1999), Ōhashi uses specific manifestations of Japanese culture and various things and terms from this to describe the relationship between culture and nature. The underlying method or approach of Ōhashi is inherent in religious-philosophical views of Japanese cultural discourses. Therefore, Ōhashi's philosophy is often to be understood in the East Asian / Japanese religious tradition, to which he repeatedly refers. His contributions "Aesthetics of Water in Japan" or in "The Wind as a Concept of Culture in Japan" are examples. Ōhashi sees the original "Japanese religiosity in traditional Shintoism" and its beliefs rooted, which, unlike the European techné culture that shapes the whole world today, is a culture of wind and nature. Regarding the meaning of the wind as a cultural term, he says that “the religion in the East, especially in China and Japan, is the deepening or internalization of nature, thus the wind. This means that religion should not be understood here as a special area of ​​culture, but rather as its depth and foundation ”.

aesthetics

In the fields of philosophy and aesthetics (or Japanese aesthetics ), many of his publications, some of which have also appeared in a European language, make an important contribution to the intercultural-philosophical understanding that he teaches at Osaka University . In his teaching of aesthetics, he starts from different original positions in art in Japan and Europe . The main differences lie in the various development processes. In Japan, art and religion were not in any tension with one another from the start. Art developed as an "art path". The term “gei” which one could translate with the word “art” is therefore not understood as a contrapositionist matter of art and religion. In the European position, according to Ōhashi, people only spoke about art in the modern sense in more recent times. This must be understood in the sense of the "fine arts". Ōhashi indicates modernity as a being of European origin out of the historical context, but refers to the shattering of trust in the born modern European reason , especially through the two world wars , which in the philosophical world goes back a long way to post-Hegelian philosophy . In addition to these elements, after Ōhashi, there is another historical element, Asian modernism, which first came about in Japan, through which the position of Europe as the alleged center of world history was questioned and relativized. According to Ohashi, Japanese modernism has two layers. The upper class is the Europeanized one, but the lower class is traditionally Japanese. In the latter, a symbiosis between art and religion continues, while in the former, as in modern European life, art and religion are indifferent to one another. According to Ōhashi, it is essential to bring Western and Japanese aesthetics closer together in an intercultural dialogue. If the intercultural dialogue is carried out on a philosophical level, a new perspective arises in which European and Asian cultures also achieve a new and creative potential in the field of thought. As a result, in comparative aesthetics, the "other" cultures to be compared can be found more or less in "own" culture, which means that it is a matter of highlighting and considering the peculiar articulation of the two-layered nature of the own world and the foreign world. The cultural other than the with which of comparison in comparative aesthetics is there the other in itself. But the with which of comparative aesthetics is the self of the art world that affects us, the absolute alien, but as such the other in this which is transferred to us Self.

bibliography

Books

• Ecstasy and serenity. To Schelling and Heidegger . (= Münchner Universitäts-Schriften Volume 16). Dissertation. Fink, Munich 1975.
• Temporality analysis of Hegelian logic. On the idea of ​​a phenomenology of the place (= symposium. Volume 72). Habilitation. Publishing house Karl Alber, Freiburg i. Br./ Munich 1984, ISBN 3-495-47550-8 .
• Kire. The "beautiful" thing in Japan. Philosophical-aesthetic reflections on history and modernity. , DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1994. (2nd, revised and expanded edition. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7705-5662-5 )
• Japan in intercultural dialogue . Judicium Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-89129-624-X .
• The “phenomenology of the mind” as a theory of the senses. Hegel and the Phenomenoetics of Compassion . Publishing house Karl Alber, Freiburg i. Br./ Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-48376-3 .
• Natural aesthetics intercultural . (Writings from the Friedrich Nietzsche College). Publishing house of the Bauhaus University, Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-86068-448-1 .
• Intersections: Essays on the East-West Conversation . Volume 1: Dimensions of the Aesthetic . Traugott Bautz Verlag, Nordhausen 2013, ISBN 978-3-88309-859-3 .

editor

• The philosophy of the Kyoto school . Texts and introduction. Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg i.Br / Munich 1990. (2nd, expanded edition. With a new introduction, 2011, ISBN 978-3-495-48316-9 )
• Doge. Shobogenzo. Selected Writings. Different philosophizing from Zen. Bilingual edition. Translated, explained and edited by Ryosuke Ohashi and Rolf Elberfeld . Keio University Press Tokyo, frommann-holzboog Stuttgart / Bad Cannstatt 2006, ISBN 3-7728-2390-4 .
• with Alfred Denker, Shunsuke Kadowaki, Georg Stenger and Holger Zaborowski: Heidegger and the East Asian Thought. (= Heidegger yearbook. Volume 7). Publishing house Karl Alber, Freiburg i. Br./ Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-495-45707-8 .
• with Martin Roussel: Letters of the World - World of Letters. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7705-5609-0 .

Articles from 2010

• Half as excess. Japanese hermetics near and far to Rombach. In: Helga Blaschek-Hahn, Hans Rainer Sepp (Ed.): Heinrich Rombach. Structural ontology - image philosophy - hermetics (= Orbis Phaenomenologicus Perspektiven. NF, Volume 2). Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4055-9 , pp. 221-235.
• To what extent is the “wind” a morphome? A figurative dynamic of culture in Japan. In: Günter Blamberger, Dietrich Boschung (ed.): Morphomata. Cultural figurations: genesis, dynamism and mediality. (= Morphomata. Volume 1). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-7705-5148-4 , pp. 287-306.
• The philosophical historical site of Nishida's philosophy. In: Tilman Borsche (ed.): General journal for philosophy. Vol. 36 (2011) issue 3, pp. 263–280.
• Vers la profondeur du sensible: La phenoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel et la compassion du Buddhisme du grand véhicule. In: Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger. No. 3 Julliet-September 2011, pp. 365-385.
• The fulfilling moment. The time teaching of the Zen master Dôgen. In: The Blue Rider. No. 31, 2011, pp. 42-47.
• The natural beauty as appearance. In: Christian Tewes, Klaus Vieweg (Ed.): Nature and Spirit. About their evolutionary relationship determination. Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-005176-5 , pp. 311–322.
• So Zarathustra laughed. In: Claudia Wirsing (ed.): On Nietzsche's balcony. Philosophical contributions from the Villa Silberblick. Volume II. Verlag der Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-86068-468-9 , pp. 14-25.
• The unground and the void. In: Julian Nida-Rümelin, Elif Özmen (ed.): World of reasons. F. Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7873-2269-5 , pp. 1081-1093.
• The Concept of Time According to Zen Master Dôgen: "A Pine Tree Is Also Time, A Bamboo Is Also Time." In: Figurations of Time in Asia. (= Morphomata. Volume 4). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-7705-5447-8 , pp. 148–156.
• How renunciation can be combined with courage. Earthquake and the Japanese mentality. A cultural-historical-philosophical consideration. In: Franziska Ehmcke, Chantal Weber, Antje Lemberg (eds.): Japan seen again and again. Perspectives on Japanese Studies at the University of Cologne. Lit Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-12057-1 , pp. 21–34.
• Reflections on Eastern and Western conceptions of time and time experiences in philosophy and painting. In: Thierry Greub (ed.): The image of the seasons in the change of cultures and times. (= Morphomata. Volume 7). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5527-7 , pp. 143-160.
• Preface. and the question of the “worldview” and the “worldview.” In: Heidegger and East Asian thinking. (= Heidegger yearbook. Volume 7). Publishing house Karl Alber, Freiburg i. Br./ Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-495-45707-8 , pp. 9-18, 59-74.
• A deeper thing from death - to Mishima's seppuku. In: Günter Blamberger, Sebastian Goth (Hrsg.): Economy of the victim. Literature under the sign of suicide. (= Morphomata. Volume 14). Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5611-3 , pp. 359-375.
• The problem of “evil” in Nishida's philosophy. In: Rolf Elberfeld, Yôko Arisaka (ed.): Kitarô Nishida in the philosophy of the 20th century. With texts by Nishida in German translation. Karl Alber Verlag, Freiburg i. Br./ Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-495-48609-2 , pp. 61–73.
• Self and Person in a Non-anthropological View. In: IHS Newsletter. Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science. National Taiwan University, Vol. 9, 1st Period, Spring 2014, pp. 1-9.

Aesthetic-philosophical essays

• A Small Fish Swallows a Large Fish. In: The Eastern Buddhist. Volume 25, No.1 New Series, Spring 1992. In Memoriam Nishitani Keiji 1900-1990. P. 101.
• Kire and Iki. In: Michale Kelly (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 2, Oxford, pp. 553-555.
• Japanese thinking in tradition and modernity. In: Clemens Kauffmann (Ed.): Risutora . (= Series of publications by the University of Regensburg. Volume 27). Universitätsverlag Regensburg, 2001, pp. 95-106.
• Philosophy and natural sciences in dialogue. In: Publications of the Japanese-German Center Berlin. Volume 48: 7th symposium in the series “The East - The West”: What should people know? Ethics in the age of technology. 25-26 October 2001, pp. 11-15.
• The way of the works of art. Humboldt Forum, what for? In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 14, 2008, p. 25.

Web links

• Ryōsuke Ōhashi website
• Literature by and about Ryōsuke Ōhashi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Ryôsuke Ôhashi on Google search

Individual evidence

1. ^ West-Eastern conceptions of time - Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche invites you to the conclusion of Ryôsuke Ôhashi's lecture cycle.
2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ [1]
4. ↑ Ikujiro Nonaka and Claus Otto Scharmer ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Dialogonleadership website. Retrieved August 6, 2010. 
5. ↑ Ryōsuke Ōhashi: Temporality analysis of Hegelian logic: to the idea of ​​a phenomenology of place. Symposium, vol 72, 1984. In: John F. Hoffmeyer: The advent of freedom. 1994, pp. 59-61.
6. ^ Franz Hahn: Together of Cultures: Another Enlightenment - a Symposium in Berlin ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 27, 2010. Retrieved August 20, 2010. 
7. ↑ Ryōsuke Ōhashi: Japan in intercultural dialogue. 1999, p. 29. In: Japan Forschung , 2000. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
8. ↑ Ryōsuke Ōhashi: Japan in intercultural dialogue. 1999, p. 33.
9. ↑ Ryōsuke Ōhashi: What must the comparison be made with in comparative aesthetics? In: Unity and Diversity: Understanding Cultures. 1998, pp. 155-165.