Czy istnieje filozofia japońska?

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of whether philosophical thought had existed in Japan before the arrival of what the Japanese call tetsugaku. The term, coined from the words tetsu (“wisdom”) and gaku (“learning”), was introduced in 1874 by Amane Nishi to refer to Western philosophy. The need for such a term arose in the Meiji period, when Japan opened to the Western world and the Japanese started to study philosophical disciplines. The article presents the peculiarities of the Japanese way of thinking, which has been inspired by other cultures (especially the Chinese, Korean and starting from 20th century, the European one) and affected by the ideas grounded in Buddhism, Confucianism as well as the native Shintoism. It examines the development of the native Japanese thought and attempts to determine whether there is a specifically Japanese philosophy, exhibiting its own characteristic features, distinct from the foreign influences and clearly distinguishable from religion and mythology.