Description
Book SynopsisConfronting Capital and Empire inquires into the relationship between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto School philosophy in relation to history. The Kyoto School was an influential group of Japanese philosophers loosely related to Kyoto Imperial University’s philosophy department, including such diverse thinkers as Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, Nakai Masakazu and Tosaka Jun. Confronting Capital and Empire presents a new perspective on the Kyoto School by bringing the school into dialogue with Marx and the underlying questions of Marxist theory. The volume brings together essays that analyse Kyoto School thinkers through a Marxian and/or critical theoretical perspective, asking: in what ways did Kyoto School thinkers engage with their historical moment? What were the political possibilities immanent in their thought? And how does Kyoto School philosophy speak to the pressing historical and political questions of our own moment?
Trade Review"There are no weak essays in the entire volume. The editors did a wonderful job screening for the best material on the subject and one can only hope that this will open up new pathways in comparative continental thought, with more books eventually published in this area to accommodate the new style of East-West" -Dr Bradley Kaye, in Marx&Philosophy Review of Books, 8 July 2019.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction: Studying the Kyoto School: Philosophy, Intellectual History, and Marx’s Critique of Modernity Viren Murthy, Fabian Schäfer and Max Ward Part 1: The Kyoto School and the Problem of Philosophy, History, and Politics 1 Philosophy and Answerability: The Kyoto School and the Epiphanic Moment of World History Harry Harootunian Part 2: Rethinking Nishida Kitarō with Marx 2 The Labor Process and the Genesis of Historical Time: With Marx, With Nishida William Haver 3 Commodity Fetishism and the Fetishism of Nothingness: On the Problem of Inversion in Marx and Nishida Elena Louisa Lange 4 Nishida Kitarō and the Antinomies of Bourgeois Philosophy Christian Uhl Part 3: Tanabe Hajime, Imperialism, and Capitalism 5 Ethnicity and Species: On the Philosophy of the Multiethnic State and Japanese Imperialism Naoki Sakai 6 Aleatory Dialectic Takeshi Kimoto 7 Tanabe Hajime as Storyteller: Or, Reading Philosophy as Metanoetics as Narrative Max Ward Part 4: The Legacies of the Kyoto School Philosophy 8 The Subjective Drive of Capital: Kakehashi Akihide’s Phenomenology of Matter Gavin Walker 9 Umemoto Katsumi, Subjective Nothingness, and the Critique of Civil Society Viren Murthy 10 The “Logic of Committee” and the Newspaper Doyōbi (Saturday): Nakai Masakazu’s Theory of Political Praxis Aaron S. Moore 11 Yanagida Kenjūrō: A Religious Seeker of Marxism Satofumi Kawamura 12 A Secret History: Tosaka Jun and the Kyoto Schools Katsuhiko Endo Index
