Kuki Shūzō

Kuki Shūzō 九鬼周造 (Tōkyō, 15 February 1888 - Kyōto, May 6th 1941) was a Philosophe Japanese.

Biography

Fourth wire of the baron Kuki Ryūichi, high-civil servant of the Ministry for the Culture and Education (Monbushō), and Hatsu, whose rumor made old a Geisha. Whereas it was pregnant of Shūzō, it have a relation with Okakura Tenshin, so that Shūzō always regarded it as his/her spiritual father. After studies of philosophy at the Imperial University of Tōkyō (today University of Tōkyō), it spent eight years to Europe as a foreign student: initially in Germany, where it followed the courses of the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert, then in France where it became acquainted with Henri Bergson. Of return in Germany, it followed the courses of Martin Heidegger and discovered the Phénoménologie. With Miki Kiyoshi or Watsuji Tetsurō, it was thus one of the first to introduce the philosophy of Heidegger in Japan. On its return to Japan and until its death, he taught philosophy at the Imperial University of Kyōto (today Université of Kyōto). Its seminars on Descartes or Bergson had a great influence on the development of French philosophy in Japan; he also taught phenomenology. Simultaneously with its teaching of the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, it developed an original esthetics which was based on the hermeneutics to reinterpret the traditional Japanese concepts such as the iki or the fūryū , all concepts by which it sought a definition of the properly Japanese existence.

Principal works

the Structure of the iki '“いき” の構造' (1930, transl. france 1984,2004)
the Problem of the contingency '偶然性の問題' (1935, transl. france 1966)
Ningen to jitsuzon (the Man and the Existence) '人間と実存' (1939)
Bungeiron (Test on the humanities) '文芸論' (posth. 1941)

Sources

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