L'11 d'abril de 2018, el Grup de Recerca de la Biblioteca Haas convida el Haas Fellow 2017, David W. Johnson, professor associat al Boston College, per impartir el seminari Nature, Culture, and Lifeworld: Some Ontological Considerations.

Resum del seminari

Per David W. Johnson

In this seminar, I want to consider two questions or themes. The first is the question of the relation between artifice, with its source in the self, and nature. How should we understand the puzzling relation between nature and culture? I will look at the ancient Japanese concept of nature as shizen 自然 and the modern Japanese concept of fūdo 風土, both of which overcome this form of ontological dualism by locating the being of the self firmly in nature.

The second theme will be a fuller treatment of the concept of fūdo. I will show how this notion leads to an ontologically robust conception of the lifeworldly dimension of nature, and so to the possibility of a partly re-enchanted conception of nature. This leads me to ask, what would it mean philosophically to take the appearances of nature at face value?  

Textos proposats: 

Pauline Couteau, “Watsuji Tetsurō’s Ethics of Milieu,” in Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, ed. James W. Heisig (Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2006), 269-290.

David W. Johnson, “Fūdo as the Disclosure of Nature: Re-Reading Watsuji with Heidegger,” Critical Perspectives on Japanese Philosophy, ed. Takeshi Morisato (Nagoya: Nanzan Institute Press, 2016), 299-326.

Watsuji Tetsurō, Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study, trans. by Geoffery Bownas (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988). [Trad. cast. Antropología del paisaje. Trad. Juan Masiá - Anselmo Mataix. Salamanca: Sígueme, 2006]