Japanese Environmental Philosophy
Edited by J. Baird Callicott and James McRae
Author Information
Edited by J. Baird Callicott, University Distinguished Professor and Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of North Texas, and Edited by James McRae, Associate Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion, Westminster College
J. Baird Callicott is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy and author or editor of a score of books and author of dozens of journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and book chapters in environmental philosophy and ethics. Callicott has served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as President, Yale University as Bioethicist-in-Residence, and the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center as Visiting Senior Research Scientist (funded by the National Science Foundation). His research goes forward simultaneously on four main fronts: theoretical environmental ethics, comparative environmental ethics and philosophy, the philosophy of ecology and conservation policy, and climate ethics. He taught the world's first course in environmental ethics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His most recent book is Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic (Oxford University Press, 2013).
James McRae serves as Vice-Chair of the Faculty and Associate Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. His publications include the books Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (with J. Baird Callicott, SUNY Press, 2014) and The Philosophy of Ang Lee (with Robert Arp and Adam Barkman, University Press of Kentucky, 2013).
Contributors:
Carl Becker holds a Ph.D. in comparative philosophy from the University of Hawai'i at Ma with a specialization in Japanese Buddhism. Subsequently he taught Asian Philosophy at Southern Illinois University and the University of Hawai'i, and Comparative Thought at Japan's National Osaka, Tsukuba, and Kyoto Universities. He serves on the editorial boards of Mortality, and of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality.
Steve Bein is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Hawai'i at Ma?noa, specializing in Japanese philosophy and ethics. His publications include Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro's Shamon Dogen (University of Hawai'i Press, 2011) and Compassion and Moral Guidance (University of Hawai'i Press, 2011). He is also a science fiction and fantasy novelist, and publishes essays on philosophy and science fiction in Blackwell's Pop Culture and Philosophy Series.
Augustin Berque holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Paris and served as the Director of Studies at the EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He has also served as Director of the Maison Franco-Japonaise in Tokyo, an invited researcher at the Nichibunken (Centre for International Research on Japanese Culture, Kyoto), and a Professor at Miyagi University, Sendai. His numerous publications include the books Le Sauvage et l'Artifice: Les Japonais Devant la Natur (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), Être Humains Sur la Terre: Principes d'Éthique de l'Écoumène (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), and Milieu et Identité Humaine. Notes Pour un Dépassement de la Modernité (Paris: Editions Donner Lieu, 2010). A member of the Academia Europaea, he was in 2009 the first.Westerner to receive the Fukuoka Grand Prize for Asian cultures.
J. Baird Callicott holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Syracuse University and recently retired as University Distinguished Research Professor and Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is one of the founders of environmental ethics and philosophy, teaching the world's first course on the subject in 1971. He has served the International Society for Environmental Ethics as President and Yale University as Bioethicist-in-Residence. He is the author or editor of a score of books, including Thinking Like a Planet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (with James McRae, Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), Earth's Insights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), and Beyond the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). The anthology, Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany, SUNY Press, 1989), which he co-edited with Roger T. Ames, was the world's first book on the subject of comparative environmental philosophy.
Goda Hiroko holds a Doctorate of Social Anthropology from Tokyo Metropolitan University.
After retiring as a professor at Hyogo Prefectural University in 2011, she founded the Institute of Environmental Anthropology, where she has continued to study the correlation of society and environment, especially focusing upon the environmental ethics reflected in folk customs and rituals in Japan. Some of her recent publications on these topics are The Environmental Anthropology of Miyaza and Touya (Tokyo: Fuukyo-sha, 2010) and "Amphibious Gods Linking Mountain, River & Sea and Irrigation Technology", in KUWAKO Toshio's Topology of Japanese Culture (Tokyo: Toushin-do, 2008).
Inutsuka Yu is a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo, currently preparing her Ph.D. thesis on the thought of WATSUJI Tetsur? in the context of environmental philosophy and ethics. She is a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (since April 2015) and of the Research Center for International Japanese Studies at Hosei University (since December 2015). Her publications include the article "From Environmental Ethics to the Ethics of the Ecumene: The Landscape of the Genetically Modified Crops" in YAMADA Tomoyuki's Applied Ethics: Ethics in an Era of Emerging Technologies (Hokkaido: CAEP, 2014) and "The Formation and Structure of Augustin Berque's Mesology" in the Journal of Information Studies, 86, March (2014): 207-224 (in Japanese).
Midori Kagawa-Fox was born and raised in Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in Asian Studies from The University of Adelaide, Australia, and specializes in Ethics and Japanese environmental policy. She is currently teaching the Asian Studies course at The University of Adelaide. Her publications include "The Ethics of Japan's Global Environmental Policy: The Conflict Between Principles and Practice" (New York: Routledge, 2012) and "Environmental Ethics from the Japanese Perspective" Ethics, Place and Environment 13, no.1 (2010): 57-73.
Leah Kalmanson received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Hawai'i at Ma?noa in 2010. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa)?with research interests in comparative philosophy and postcolonial studies. Her publications include articles in journals such as Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review, Hypatia, Shofar, and Frontiers of Philosophy in China, and edited volumes including Levinas and Asian Thought (with Frank Garrett and Sarah Mattice, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013) and Buddhist Responses to Globalization (with James Mark Shields, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014).
Kuwako Toshio holds a Doctor of Arts and Letters from the University of Tokyo with a specialization in philosophy. He currently serves as Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology. His publications include the books Philosophy of Environment (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999), Philosophy in Landscape (Tokyo: University Tokyo Press, 2008), and Philosophy of Life and Landscape (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013).
James McRae holds a Ph.D. in comparative philosophy from the University of Hawai'i at M?noa with specializations in Japanese philosophy and ethics. He currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Faculty and Associate Professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. His publications include the books Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (with J. Baird Callicott, Albany: SUNY Press, 2014) and The Philosophy of Ang Lee (with Robert Arp and Adam Barkman, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013).
Steve Odin has taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Hawai'i at M?noa since 1982. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at Boston University, Tohoku University and the University of Tokyo. He has received several fellowships for one-year periods of research and teaching in Japan, including those from The National Endowment of the Humanities, Japan Foundation, and two Fulbright awards. Among his publications are Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism (1982), The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (1996) and Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics (2001). His most recent book is Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics (forthcoming).
Graham Parkes earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. After three decades at the University of Hawai'i at M?noa, he moved to University College Cork where he served as a Professor of Philosophy, Head of the Department of Philosophy, Head of the School of Sociology and Philosophy, and Director of the Irish Institute of Japanese Studies. His numerous publications include the books Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), Nietzsche and Asian Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), and a translation of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Yuriko Saito, born and raised in Japan, received her Ph. D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is Professor of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Her writings on everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental aesthetics have appeared in a number journals and book chapters, some of which have been translated into Finnish, French, Polish, and Portuguese. Her Everyday Aesthetics was published by Oxford University Press in 2008. She is Associate Editor of Contemporary Aesthetics, an online, free-access, and peer-reviewed journal.
Takahashi Takao graduated from the University of Tokyo and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Kyushu University. He is now an emeritus professor and visiting professor at Kumamoto University, Japan. His publications include the book Logic of "Co-existence with Disasters" (Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press, 2013) and Life, Environment, and Care (Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press, 2008), and he is the editor of the book Taking Life and Death Seriously: Bioethics from Japan (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005).
Toyoda Mitsuyo is an associate professor at Niigata University's Center for Toki and Ecological Restoration. She holds masters degrees from both the University of North Texas and University of Hawaii, and Ph.D. from Tokyo Institute of Technology. Her primary research interest is to combine environmental ethics, which she studied with Baird Callicott at the University of North Texas, with the dialogue-based educational method "philosophy for children" that she learned at the University of Hawaii. She examines philosophical issues that arise through the collaboration with the public and governmental sectors for sustainable development, and attempts to construct democratic process of environmental conservation. Her article, "Revitalizing Local Commons," appeared in Environmental Ethics 35, no. 3 (2013): 279-293.
