Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Buddhism (3)
- Critical Buddhism (3)
- Religion (3)
- Buddhism and politics (2)
- Buddhist modernism (2)
-
- Immanence (2)
- Marxism (2)
- New Buddhist Fellowship (2)
- Politics (2)
- Radical Buddhism (2)
- Secularity (2)
- Seno'o Girō (2)
- Tanabe Hajime (2)
- Zange (2)
- "social Buddhism" (1)
- Aidagara (1)
- Alfred Kinsey (1)
- Anti-positivism (1)
- Asian philosophy (1)
- Asian religion (1)
- Atheism (1)
- Betweenness (1)
- Buddhism and modernity; modernism; Japanese Buddhism; awakening; Buddhist ethics (1)
- Buddhist (1)
- Buddhist Ethics (1)
- Buddhist ethics (1)
- Buddhist reform (1)
- Care (1)
- Colonialism (1)
- Comparative (1)
- Publication Year
Articles 1 - 23 of 23
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Prolegomena To A Buddhist(Ic) Critique Of Capitalism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Not even three decades removed from Francis Fukuyama’s post-Cold War proclamation of the “End of History,” the Western world is now undergoing a crisis of conscience – at the very least – with respect to both capitalism as an economic system and neoliberalism as its less-recognized but ever-present ideological foundation. The financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, the Occupy movement(s) of 2011, the 2016 challenge of self-styled Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and growing anxiety about the fate of the planet, particularly among the young, have opened up new avenues of critique, and brought …
Religious Naturalisms, Carol W. White
Religious Naturalisms, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
This article focuses on recent developments in religious naturalism in the twenty-first century, building on Jerome Stone’s 2008 study of its resurgence in the mid-twentieth century. I introduce religious naturalism as a synthesis of naturalistic ideas that often depart from traditional forms of religious thinking, defining it as a capacious, ecological religious worldview grounded in the observational conviction that nature is ultimate. I also describe different models of religious naturalism, focusing on the key ideas found in the influential publications of contemporary religious naturalists (e.g., Ursula Goodenough, Donald Crosby, Loyal Rue, among others). While acknowledging specific points of emphasis, I …
Which Politics Of Nature?: A Response To Crawford, Carol W. White
Which Politics Of Nature?: A Response To Crawford, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Religious Naturalism, Myriad Nature, And Justice: A Reply To Kahn And Keller, Carol W. White
Religious Naturalism, Myriad Nature, And Justice: A Reply To Kahn And Keller, Carol W. White
Other Faculty Research and Publications
No abstract provided.
Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White
Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White
Faculty Contributions to Books
This chapter provides an overview of select trends, ideas, themes, and figures associated with humanism in the Americas, which comprises a diversified set of peoples, cultural traditions, religious orientations, and socio-economic groups. In acknowledging this rich tapestry of human life, the chapter emphasizes the impressive variety of developments in philosophy, the natural sciences, literature, religion, art, social science, and political thought that have contributed to the development of humanism in the Americas. The chapter also features modern usages of humanism that originated in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. In this context, humanism is best viewed as a contested …
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Zen Terror In Prewar Japan: Portrait Of An Assassin, Brian Victoria, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai 新仏教同志会) of the Meiji period (1868–1911) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that …
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
The Scope And Limits Of Secular Buddhism: Watanabe Kaikyoku (1868–1912) And The Japanese New Buddhist 'Discovery Of Society', James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
Although New Buddhism is a term sometimes employed to refer to the broad sweep of reform and modernization movements in Japanese Buddhist thought and practice beginning in the 1870s, the term shin bukkyō refers more specifically to a broadly influential movement of some two dozen young scholars and lay Buddhists active in the last decade of the Meiji period (1868–1912). Founded in February 1899 as Bukkyō Seito Dōshikai (Buddhist Pure Believers Fellowship or Buddhist Puritan Association), the group changed its name to Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai (New Buddhist Fellowship) in 1903. Notto Thelle refers to the NBF as “the most consistent …
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields
Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
The late Meiji period (1868-1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic …
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Shields
Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Shields
Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The concept of Sorge, as developed in Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) classic work, Sein und Zeit (1927), describes an existential-ontological state characterized by “anxiety” about the future and the desire to “attend to” the world based on our awareness of temporality. In Japan, this concept was borrowed and critically developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). In Rinrigaku (1937–49), Watsuji argued that Heidegger’s Sorge remains overly reliant on the philosophical structures of Western individualism and subjectivism, and thus neglects the social dimension of human being. In turn, Watsuji’s contemporary, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed an alternative theory of “concern” in his reflections on …
Radical Buddhism, Then And Now: Prospects Of A Paradox, James Shields
Radical Buddhism, Then And Now: Prospects Of A Paradox, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
A Blueprint For Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism Of Seno’O Girō (1889–1961) And The Youth League For Revitalizing Buddhism, James Shields
A Blueprint For Buddhist Revolution: The Radical Buddhism Of Seno’O Girō (1889–1961) And The Youth League For Revitalizing Buddhism, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. One notable exception to this trend, however, was the Shinkō Bukkyō Seinen Dōmei (Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism), founded on 5 April 1931. Led by Nichiren Buddhist layman Seno’o Girō and made up of young social activists who were critical of capitalism, internationalist in outlook, and committed to a pan-sectarian and humanist form of Buddhism that would work for social justice and world peace, the league’s motto was “carry the …
Review: Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’S Critique And Lingering Questions For Buddhist Ethics (Uhp, 2009), James Shields
Review: Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’S Critique And Lingering Questions For Buddhist Ethics (Uhp, 2009), James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
Review of Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (UHP, 2009)
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Shields
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The half-century between the publication of the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語, 1890) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) was one of tremendous institutional and intellectual tumult in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist sects and scholars were not immune to the changing political and cultural winds. While it is true that by the late 1930s, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions had capitulated to the status quo, preaching, in the words of Joseph Kitagawa “the virtues of peace, harmony, and loyalty to the throne,” the previous decades show anything but a continuous progression towards …
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Shields
Awakening Between Science, Art & Ethics: Variations On Japanese Buddhist Modernism, 1890–1945, James Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
The half-century between the publication of the Imperial Rescript on Education (kyōiku chokugo 教育勅語, 1890) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) was one of tremendous institutional and intellectual tumult in the world of Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist sects and scholars were not immune to the changing political and cultural winds. While it is true that by the late 1930s, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions had capitulated to the status quo, preaching, in the words of Joseph Kitagawa “the virtues of peace, harmony, and loyalty to the throne,” the previous decades show anything but a continuous progression towards …
The Art Of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Quest For An Ontology Of Social Existence In Watsuji Tetsurō’S Rinrigaku, James Shields
The Art Of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Quest For An Ontology Of Social Existence In Watsuji Tetsurō’S Rinrigaku, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara (“betweenness”) in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as “Critical Buddhism.” The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from “topical” or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) “critical” thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of “reason” versus “intuition” in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison of Watsuji’s “ontological quest” with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji’s primary Western source and foil, is followed by …
Marx And The Bible: José Miranda’S Critique Of The Philosophy Of Oppression, James Shields
Marx And The Bible: José Miranda’S Critique Of The Philosophy Of Oppression, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This paper critically examines the liberation theology of José Porfirio Miranda, as expressed in his Marx and the Bible (1971), with a focus on the central idea (and subtitle) of this work: the “Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression.” Miranda’s critique is examined via certain key tropes such as “power,” “justice,” and “freedom,” both in the context of late twentieth-century Latin American society, and in the state of the “post-Christian” and “post-Marxist” world more generally, vis-à-vis contemporary liberal justice theory. Close examination of the potentialities, paradoxes and subtle evasions in Miranda’s critique leads not to the conclusion that Miranda does …
The Social Principles Of Jesus: A Critical Re-Examination Of Walter Rauschenbusch’S Social Gospel, James Shields
The Social Principles Of Jesus: A Critical Re-Examination Of Walter Rauschenbusch’S Social Gospel, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
It has been nine decades since Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) published a slim volume entitled The Social Principles of Jesus. Though today less well known than his other works Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), it is Social Principles that most adeptly summarizes the theological ethics of Rauschenbusch’s “social gospel.” Taking the form of a pedagogical treatise, Social Principles reads as both a finely tuned analysis of the modern relevance of the teachings of Jesus, and an impassioned plea on the part of its author for an end to the folly of interpreting Christianity …
Parameters Of Reform And Unification In Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought: Murakami Senshō And Critical Buddhism, James Shields
Parameters Of Reform And Unification In Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought: Murakami Senshō And Critical Buddhism, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
Reform is a word that, one might easily say, characterizes more than any other the history and development of Buddhism. Yet, it must also be said that reform movements in East Asian Buddhism have often taken on another goal—harmony or unification; that is, a desire not only to reconstruct a more worthy form of Buddhism, but to simultaneously bring together all existing forms under a single banner, in theory if not in practice. This paper explores some of the tensions between the desire for reform and the quest for harmony in modern Japanese Buddhism thought, by comparing two developments: the …
Review: Robert Carter, Encounter With Enlightenment: A Study Of Japanese Ethics (Suny, 2001), James Shields
Review: Robert Carter, Encounter With Enlightenment: A Study Of Japanese Ethics (Suny, 2001), James Shields
Other Faculty Research and Publications
Review of book: Robert E. Carter, Encounter with Enlightenment: A Study of Japanese Ethics (SUNY Press, 2001)
Eros And Transgression In An Age Of Immanence: Georges Bataille’S (Religious) Critique Of Kinsey, James Shields
Eros And Transgression In An Age Of Immanence: Georges Bataille’S (Religious) Critique Of Kinsey, James Shields
Faculty Journal Articles
This paper explores the religious implications of eroticism in Western culture since the Sexual Revolution, a period at once applauded for its open and immanent view of sexuality and denounced for its shamelessness and promiscuity. After discussing the work and effects of Alfred C. Kinsey, the father of the Sexual Revolution, I focus on a critical appraisal of Kinsey written by French theorist Georges Bataille (“Kinsey, the Underworld and Work,” in L’Erotisme, 1957). Bataille situates contemporary Western sexuality within a larger historical movement towards the “desacralization” of all aspects of human life: sex, under the scientific gaze of the Kinsey …