Twentieth century philosophy and ecology of The World of Living Things by Imanishi Kinji

Imanishi Kinji’s 1941 book, The World of Living Things has, despite its wide readership and influence in Japan in the twentieth century, not been fully examined in terms of its presentation of the philosophical issues with which Imanishi was engaging and to whom he was responding. The volume, which presents Imanishi’s hastily written view of the whole world in terms of ecology, philosophy, and anthropology, with discourses that have only been partially discussed and brought to light in the English-language scholarship. Scholars in the 1980s who can be credited with introducing Imanishi’s perspectives to the English-language scholarship, such as Beverley Halstead and Atsuhiro Shibatani, wrote of his ideas with a nearly hagiographic admiration that sometimes overshadowed what they so admired. Scholars who studied Imanishi in the twenty-first century, such as G. Clinton Godart, Pamela Asquith, and others, were more detailed in their analyses of Imanishi’s work, but their work is still limited in significant ways. This study examines Imanishi’s The World of Living Things with regard to its presentation of a monistic view of reality, a non-material component of life that is possessed by living things, and a perspective of ecology that does not rely on Darwinian competition for resources. These three facets of Imanishi’s most well-known book will be examined in the context of the influence of those scholars who Imanishi is known to have read during his education at Kyoto University, including Charles Elton, Jan Smuts, Nishida Kitarō, and Tanabe Hajime. In this analysis, a novel perspective on Imanishi’s philosophy and its context will be presented by means of a close reading and analysis of The World of Living Things, as well as the published works of the aforementioned scholars. In so doing, interpretations of Imanishi and his relationship to other scholars of the time as they come through in secondary scholarship will be evaluated and critiqued.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Haight, Nicholas Bright

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mayer, Alexander

• Imanishi Kinji
• ecology
• philosophy
• The World of Living Things
• Buddhism
• Asia-Pacific War
• Nishida Kitaro
• Jan Smuts

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Nicholas Haight

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116138

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116138