Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy: Pedagogy for Human Transformation (Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education Book 1)

The work of the Kyoto School represents one of the few streams of philosophy that originate in Japan. Following the cultural renaissance of the Meiji Restoration after Japan’s period of closure to the outside world (1600-1868), this distinctly Japanese thought found expression especially in the work of Kitaro Nishida, Keiji Nishitani and Hajime Tanabe. Above all this is a philosophy of experience, of human becoming, and of transformation. In pursuit of these themes it brings an inheritance of Western philosophy that encompasses William James, Hume, Kant and Husserl, as well as the psychology of Wilhelm Wundt, into conjunction with Eastern thought and practice. Yet the legacy and continuing reception of the Kyoto School have not been easy, in part because of the coincidence of its prominence with the rise of Japanese fascism. In light of this, then, the School’s ongoing relationship to the thought of Heidegger has an added salience. And yet this remains a rich philosophical line of thought with remarkable salience for educational practice. The present collection focuses on the Kyoto School in three unique ways. First, it concentrates on the School’s distinctive account of human becoming. Second, it examines the way that, in the work of its principal exponents, diverse traditions of thought in philosophy and education are encountered and fused. Third, and with a broader canvas, it considers why the rich implications of the Kyoto School for for philosophy and education have not been more widely appreciated, and it seeks to remedy this. The first part of the book introduces the historical and philosophical background of the Kyoto School, illustrating its importance especially for aesthetic education, while the second part looks beyond this to explore the convergence of relevant streams of philosophy, East and West, ranging from the Noh play and Buddhist practices to American transcendentalism and post-structuralism. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Sounding the Echoes – By Way of an Introduction....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 Pure Experience and Transcendence Down....Pages 19-26 The Philosophical Anthropology of the Kyoto School and Post-War Pedagogy....Pages 27-40 The Kyoto School and J.F. Herbart....Pages 41-53 A Genealogy of the Development of the Clinical Theory of Human Becoming....Pages 55-63 The Kyoto School and the Theory of Aesthetic Human Transformation: Examining Motomori Kimura’s Interpretation of Friedrich Schiller....Pages 65-76 Metamorphoses of ‘Pure Experience’: Buddhist, Enactive and Historical Turns in Nishida....Pages 77-90 William James, Kitaro Nishida, and Religion....Pages 91-107 Ecological Imagination and Aims of Moral Education Through the Kyoto School and American Pragmatism....Pages 109-130 Front Matter....Pages 131-131 Martinus Jan Langeveld: Modern Educationalist of Everyday Upbringing....Pages 133-146 Zeami’s Philosophy of Exercise and Expertise....Pages 147-156 ‘We Are Alone, and We Are Never Alone’: American Transcendentalism and the Political Education of Human Nature....Pages 157-167 Whitehead on the ‘Rhythm of Education’ and Kitaro Nishida’s ‘Pure Experience’ as a Developing Whole....Pages 169-180 A Different Road: The Life and Writings of Soseki Natsume as a Struggle for Modern Accommodation....Pages 181-201 Negativity, Experience and Transformation: Educational Possibilities at the Margins of Experience — Insights from the German Traditions of Philosophy of Education....Pages 203-220 The Sense of Indebtedness to the Dead, Education as Gift Giving: Tasks and Limits of Post-War Pedagogy....Pages 221-231 Back Matter....Pages 233-235 The work of the Kyoto School, including luminaries such as Kitaro Nishida, represents one of the few streams of philosophy that originate in Japan. This book is the first collection in English to examine the School's notions of aesthetic education.