This article is a hermeneutical attempt to clarify the characteristics of the perspective of Toshihiko Izutsu’s philosophical semantics and its characteristics, which constitute the method of his “Oriental Philosophy,” while referring to his study of Islamic thought. After his return to Japan from Tehran for the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Izutsu developed his philosophical reflections toward the construction of his “Oriental Philosophy.” In developing his ideas and framework of “Oriental Philosophy,” it is noteworthy that while writing his major work Consciousness and Essence (in Japanese, Ishiki to honshitsu), he developed his interpretation of the Qu’rān from the viewpoint of his Oriental Philosophy, characterized by the multi-layered structures of reality and consciousness. His philosophical reflection is characterized by the theory of semantic articulation by language, according to which the state of the absolutely unarticulated reality precedes that of every semantic articulation of reality. After he was invited to the Eranos Conference as a lecturer in 1967, he delivered his lectures there twelve times for the fifteen years. Through his creative “reading” of the traditional Oriental thoughts, Izutsu attempted to extract fundamental patterns of Oriental philosophical reflection and to construct “Oriental Philosophy” semantically on the basis of the “synchronical structuralization” (in Japanese, kyōjiteki-kōzōka) of Oriental thoughts.
