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Should/Can Philosophy be Ethnic? Varieties of Internationalism in Philosophy
Author(s) -
Sasaki KenIchi
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9973.00064
Subject(s) - internationalism (politics) , humanism , african philosophy , western philosophy , philosophy , ethnic group , philosophy education , epistemology , social science , sociology , political science , law , politics , anthropology , theology
This paper describes the situation of philosophy in Japan with respect to the question of internationalism. For more than a hundred years, Japan took Western culture as its model and European philosophy as the authentic philosophy. This tendency was paradoxically strengthened by the post‐war humanism. It gave us Japanese philosophers a clear discipline to work in but cut us off from our own native culture, history, and philosophical traditions. In wishing to recover this loss, I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between two forms of internationalism: humanistic and merely fashionable. The latter in fact derives from domestic reasons.