TUJ Philosophy Lecture Series Presents: Guest Lecture by David W. Johnson “Watsuji’s Philosophical Anthropology”

You are invited to a lecture on June 27 by David W. Johnson, professor of philosophy at Boston College, USA. This lecture is dedicated to Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō’s (18891960), vision of being human as an individual and collective way of being. Human beings are given over to an inescapable relation to specific others and to wider social structures. This relational mode of being allows the self to be absorbed into a social whole, as well as to distinguish itself from it as an individual, in a continually oscillating movement of interaction. Human beings are thus both individual and social; they are hybrid beings. In this talk the speaker will provide an explanatory account of this hybrid structure and explain the philosophical significance of the dialectical relation that underpins it: this dialectic and the demands imposed by it provide ethical life with its essential aims and scope.

This TUJ Guest Lecture is organized by Jordanco Sekulovski.

The TUJ Philosophy Lecture Series is a non-profit forum of Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ) for the promotion of critical thinking. The lectures are free, open to the public, and feature speakers from universities around the world. The lecture series is a great way to learn about recent research in philosophy and in the humanities as a whole.

OFFICIAL EVENT WEBPAGE: https://sites.temple.edu/tujphilseries/2018/06/25/tuj-philosophy-lecture-series-presents-a-tuj-guest-lecture-by-david-w-johnson-watsujis-philosophical-anthropology/