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Lectures
Lessons for co-existence - from the focal point of East Asia
Lecture outline
This is a an omnibus lecture that is organized jointly by EALAI (East Asia Liberal Arts Initiative) and UTCP (The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy). Our existence is always together with the other. The other might mean all entities that are different from the self and sometimes it might even be another me that lives within myself. From the beginning the other is a complete stranger to me that stands in contradiction to me, and there is also no guarantee that the each entity of the other is a stable existence that should definitively be attached some kind of label. Does not assuming that “I” and “the other” are both complete unknowns itself mean that we treat the other in a violent manner? In every possible meaning we are “living together” with the other. If that is the case, what should we think and how should we act in order to pay the utmost respect to the existence and the dignity of the other and to treat this relationship in the right way? We want to think about what living together means, taking as focal point the topos which is this East Asia we are living in. This is also a lesson for us to lead a better life.
Day and period / Classroom
Friday, second period / No.1108
Targeted students
first-year liberal arts and science students, second-year liberal arts and science students
* Students who wish to take the class should register after having confirmed the details on UTask-Web.
| Session 1 (October 12) | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Session 2 (October 19) | Kajitani Shinji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Nature and normativity (1) - Is breast-feeding natural?” [Class content Session2 to 4] “Nature” does not constitute an object domain like animals and plants, but it is tinged with a certain kind of normativity. In what meaning however can this be a norm? In this lecture I am going to consider and discuss this question from various perspectives, such as the relationship with breast milk, death and nature. |
| Session 3 (October 26) | Kajitani Shinji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Nature and normativity (2) - What is a natural death?” |
| Session 4 (November 2) | Kajitani Shinji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Nature and normativity (3) - What is a natural relationship with nature?” |
| Session 5 (November 9) | Nakajima Takahiro (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “The practice of co-existence (1) - Science and religion”: [Class content] In this class I am going to reconsider the discussions related to science and religion in modern East Asia in the Post-Fukushima era. |
| Session 6 (November 16) | Nakajima Takahiro (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “The practice of co-existence (2) - China and women” [Class content] In this class I will consider the image of women in modern China, taking literary works by Lu Xun and the movie “King of the Children” (by movie director Cheng Kaige) as subject matters. |
| Session 7 (November 20) | Ishihara Koji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Philosophy of disability for co-existence” (1) Guest: Arai Yuki (JSPS) (This class is on a Tuesday, but takes place instead of the class on Friday) [Class content (Arai Yuki)] Lecture title: Disability and self-expression I am going to consider what it means when people with “disabilities” express themselves through literature, art, etc. Especially with regards to the self-expressions of people with mental disorders, I am not going to just take the medical perspectives of “treatment” and “rehabilitation”, but will also think about their role from a more social and cultural perspective. |
| Session 8 (December 7) | Ishihara Koji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Philosophy of disability for co-existence” (2) Guest: Inahara Minae (UTCP Uehiro research division for philosophy of co-existence) [Class content (Inahara Minae)] What does pain mean for us? There are many different kinds of pain we experience in our daily lives. In what kind of condition are we placed when we feel pain? And is pain a subjective sensation that only oneself can feel, or is it an objective sensation that can be quantified by some kind of science and shared by all people? In this class, by treating pain exclusively as an subjective sensation of the patient, I would like to consider pain from the side of the “person concerned” who is actually feeling the pain, a perspective that differs from the “pain” dealt with by medicine, which is seen as an objective sensation. |
| Session 9 (December 14) | Ishihara Koji (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Philosophy of disability for co-existence” (3) Guest: Mukaiyachi Nobuaki (Urakawa Bethel House, Hida Clinic) [Class content (Mukaiyachi Nobuaki)] I would like to introduce our self-study sessions that we are conducting together with persons who have experienced schizophrenia, etc. themselves. Self-study sessions are an activity where we study ways to help oneself and ways to improve one’s life, etc. together with friends and supporters and make actual use of them, under the motto “let’s do research!” on the hardships and difficulties that occur in various situations such as symptoms, daily life and human relationships. |
| Session 10 (December 21) | Ishii Tsuyoshi (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Who are the ‘good persons’? - The people in the movie ‘Still Life’ and ethics (1)” [Class content Session10 to 12] While watching the movie “Still Life (original title: Shanxia Haoren)” by Jia Zhangke, one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese cinema, we will think about the “life” of the people who have been thrown into the big waves of modern civilization and politics, economy and society. |
| Session 11 (January 11) | Ishii Tsuyoshi (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Who are the ‘good persons’? - The people in the movie ‘Still Life’ and ethics (2)” |
| Session 12 (January 18) | Ishii Tsuyoshi (Associate Professor, University of Tokyo): “Who are the ‘good persons’? - The people in the movie ‘Still Life’ and ethics (3)” |
| Session 13 (January 25) | General discussion |
【Lecturer profiles】
◆Kajitani Shinji
Associate Professor, University of Tokyo and UTCP member. Research areas are philosophy (especially phenomenology), comparative culture, medical history (especially modernization from the Edo period to the Meiji period). He focuses at the multi-layered, multi-dimensional structures of knowledge related to phenomena within society and among individual persons and considers how different types and phases of things connect and co-exist.
◆Nakajima Takahiro
Associate Professor, University of Tokyo and UTCP member. Graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo and withdrew from the doctoral course in Chinese Philosophy, Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Tokyo. He is conducting research on Chinese Philosophy. His main areas of research are the deconstruction of Chinese Philosophy and the praxis of co-existence. His main works include “The philosophy of evil - The imaginative force of Chinese philosophy” (in Japanese, published as a Chikuma sensho), “The praxis of co-existence - State and religion” (in Japanese, published by University of Tokyo Press), “Philosophy (Humanism)” (in Japanese, published by Iwanami Shoten), “ ‘Zhuangzi’ - Become a rooster and tell the hour” (in Japanese, published by Iwanami Shoten), “Reverberating Chinese philosophy - Language and politics” (in Japanese, published by University of Tokyo Press), “Practicing Philosophy between China and Japan” (in English and French, published by UTCP), “Deconstruction and Reconstruction - The Possibilities of Chinese Philosophy” (in Chinese, published by UTCP) and “The Chinese Turn in Philosophy” (in English, French and German, UTCP).
◆Ishihara Koji
Associate Professor, University of Tokyo and UTCP member. Graduated from the doctoral course of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo. His research areas are the philosophy of science and Technology, ethics of science and technology and phenomenology. Recently he has been conducting research related to the philosophy of psychiatry and self-study sessions. His works include the translation of “The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science” by Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi (translated into Japanese by Ishihara Koji, Miyahara Katsunori, Ikeda Takashi, Boku Sutetsu, published by Keiso shobo, 2011) and together with Kono Tetsuya he has written “Development of Ethics of Science and Technology” (in Japanese published by Tamagawa University Press, 2009) and he also contributed the chapter “Mind, Brain and Machine” in Iwanamikoza Tetsugaku 5 (Iwanami lectures on philosophy 5) (in Japanese, published by Iwanami Shoten, 2008).
◆Arai Yuki
Research Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (PD). Graduated from the doctoral course of the School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo. His research areas are Japanese pre-modern and modern literature and theory of disability culture. His works include “Disability and literature - From ‘Shinonome’ to ‘Aoi Shiba No Kai’” (in Japanese, published by Gendai Shokan), “Literature of Isolation - The history of self-expression at sanatoriums for sufferers of Hansen's disease” (in Japanese, published by Shoshi Ars), and eh has co-written “The beckoning freak - Disability theory of expression and culture” (in Japanese, published by Seikatsu Shoin, edited by Kuramoto Tomoaki).
◆Inahara, Minae
UTCP Uehiro Research Fellow. Born as a premature baby, she developed a light cerebral palsy (athetoid-type) originating from a hypoxic condition in the incubator. After graduating from the School of Humanities and Social Science of the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, Australia, she studied at the graduate school of the same institution and received an honours degree. Afterwards she went to England and completed the PhD. course in Philosophy at the Graduate School of Hull University. Her research areas are theory of the body, feminist theory, phenomenology and philosophy of disability. Her major works include “Abject Love：Undoing the Boundaries of Physical Disability” VDM-Verlag (in English, published in Germany, 2009), “This Body Which is Not One: The Body, Femininity and Disability” in Body & Society Vol.15, No.1, pp.47-62, SAGE, (London, 2009)
◆Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi
Born in Urakawa-cho in Hokkaido. After his birth he spent his life at the “Urakawa Bethel House”, a base for local activities of persons have experienced mental disorders, as his parents had been involved with its establishment and management. In 2006 he graduated in Sociology from the College of Liberal Arts at International Christian University, Tokyo. After graduation he established the company MC MEDIAN Co., Ltd. in Ikebukuro together with friends who had experienced mental disorders. He came into contact with the NPO Tenohasi which is supporting homeless people mainly in the Ikebukuro area (representative: Morikawa Suimei, a psychiatrist) and participated in projects supporting people with mental disorders who are living on the street. Then, by adding Ikebukuro and Bethel, “Bethel Bukuro” started and he established the “Group home Familia” and the “Group home Shizuku”, etc. He has also been active as an employee of the Hida Clinic run by the medical corporation Soramugikai and in 2009 he become a director of the same corporation. He also conducts “self-study sessions” which were born at Bethel. Currently he also regularly conducts a program of self-study sessions at the Kezoji Clinic in Gunma and the Yowa Clinic in Nerima.
◆Ishii Tsuyoshi
Associate Professor, University of Tokyo and UTCP member. After graduating from the School of Political Science and Economics, Wasseda University, he completed the doctoral course of the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo. His area of research is Chinese modern history of thought and Chinese philosophy. He is considering the relationships between the individual and society, the individual and the period of time, as well as the individual and history. He has translated Wang Hui’s “The formation of modern Chinese thought” (into Japanese, published by Iwanami Shoten, 2011) and he has written a chapter in Hiroshi Okuzaki (ed.) “What kind of periods where the Ming and Qing dynasties? Compilation of essays on the history of thought” (in Japanese, published by Kyuko Shoin, December 2006).
