The problems of time and history are of particular relevance at the turning points in the development of human society, which can be considered to be the beginning of the 21st century. At the same time, in a changing world, it is important to take into account the ideas about time and history that have arisen in various cultural and civilizational areas. The article analyzes the attempt of a Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji belonging to the Kyoto school to formulate a modern concept of history based on the Buddhist view of the world and time. Unlike other religious and philosophical traditions, Buddhist thought practically did not touch upon topics related to history. Using Nishitani's philosophy as an example, the author tries to demonstrate the specifics of the modern Buddhist approach to understanding time and history and to determine its heuristic potential. Due to the fact that today the narrative view of history prevails, introducing a value component into the understanding of history, which turns history into a field of ideological struggle, an analysis of alternative approaches to history that have arisen, including those in non-Western thought, and reflecting its complexity and non-linearity, seems worthy attention. The ontologized model of history proposed by Nishitani poses new problems and thereby opens up new perspectives for considering time and history, such as the relationship of time, history and causality, history and space, definitions of the subject of history and the role of will in history, view of history as a dynamic network with many centers and horizons, understanding the relationship of past, present and future in history.
Many years the academic community has been discussing issues of a universal metalanguage as the general conceptual framework of modern social and humanitarian research, especially of philosophy. The article questions the claim that the language of Western philosophy was already accepted as a unified tool in the 20th century. The peculiarities of perception and further application of Western philosophical terminology in Japan in late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries are investigated here as a factual evidence base of argumentation. Special attention is given to examples of translation and interpretation of some concepts of Western origin, such as metaphysics, ethics, logic, substance, subject, etc., as observed in the works of eminent thinkers Nishi Amane, Inoue Tetsujiro, Nishida Kitaro, and Watsuji Tetsuro. The paper provides examples of new original concepts (as they did not have Western equivalents) developed by modern Japanese philosophers, such as Kimura Bin, Hiromatsu Wataru et al. The author concludes that the general conceptual framework that modern philosophy operates with is a very dynamic and open system, capable of transforming in different cultural contexts and in keeping with newly emerging issues that require analysis. The article identifies factors that provide philosophical communication between different cultures at the conceptual level, that is, the presence of a common circle of problems and presence of partial overlap between the key concepts. The author poses the problem of the emergence of new approaches and ideas in a situation of “conflicting interpretations,” or incomplete equivalence of similar notions when used by the parties in a dialogue, casting doubt on possibility, necessity and reasonability of exact reproduction of meanings and “complete domestication” in other cultures.
The research was focused on the political identity dynamics of the Japanese people through their attitude towards specific political issues, concepts, and doctrines, through ideas about the role of their country in the world, their attitude to “constituent Others” and their military history, as well as the analysis of differences between identities at the macro and micro levels during the emergence of the official course towards transforming Japan into a “normal country”. The solution to this problem is relevant in regards to Russia building a constructive policy in relation to Japan. The article analyzes a series of special and longitudinal studies characterizing generational change over the past 20 years in order to determine how much Japanese political preferences have changed in reference points that reflect their political identity, and which of these points allow us to identify significant determinants. As a key determinant of these surveys, the authors selected the degree of stability of pacifist self-consciousness, while analyzing the cumulative effect of several major factors in the formation of pacifism as the core of Japanese political identity: a) the archetypal principle of harmony (wa), expressed in the tendency of the Japanese people to smoothen out potential conflicts and in the outstanding ability to adapt and to adopt, b) the long-term implications of the constructivist paradigm in political rhetoric concerning the problem of national security; c) the impact of pacifist cultural and political discourse; d) the victimization complex that has developed in the wake of the defeat; and e) the absence of a clear perception of military threat in the society. Together, they make us believe that pacifist self-identification has a large margin of stability, and speak to the bifurcation of the current political identity of the Japanese people, which is experiencing a multi-vector pressure of the ‘power’ strategy of political realism and value-oriented approaches of constructivism. The authors identify the main directions of stratification of the political identity of Japanese society, point to some emerging trends in the realm of ideas on security policy, draw conclusions about the real place and influence of reflection on the Russian-Japanese territorial issue in the structure of Japanese political identity.
In the article, the author suggests an approach to the conceptualization of modernization problems that interprets them in the light of intercultural interaction. This approach helps particularly clear up the limits and framework of westernization specifying and making more precise the typology of modernization. In applying the approach to the analysis of Japanese modernization, the author brings about a hypothesis concerning mechanisms of cultural adaptation. These mechanisms contributed to reproduce some segments of Western pattern of modernization without destroying indigenous form of rationality and values. The author also makes an attempt to single out a set of basic ideas of such mechanisms in Japanese spiritual tradition.
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