The prevailing pandemic caused by the covid-19 has plunged the entire world into anxiety and fear. How does a corona virus multiply itself and infect human beings? How can we cope with the anxiety and fear we feel in face with the covid-19? What on earth are we anxious about? What kind of fear shows itself in the pandemic? A complex of problems raised by the pandemic should be resolved not only by professionals in an infectious disease, specialists in hygiene, physicians, nurses, politicians, policymakers, and economists, but also by philosophers/scientists in religion, theologians, and persons engaged in religious practice. This paper strives to provide an analysis of the corona virus pandemic from the point of view of a historian of Christian thought. Insight into the invisible, the essential role of breath and breathing for human life, something transcendent beyond the boundaries of human reason, and agendas of a theology of kenosis are the main topics of the paper.

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The spread of the Coronavirus has severely impacted the practice of all mass religious rituals, and in Japan many of them are currently carried out without any visitors. To make up for this situation, religious rituals in Japan are often broadcast over the internet. The author of this article also participated in such a broadcast as a Gagaku performer in April 2021, but felt a certain apprehension. Can the religious consciousness of the individual experience a significant change only through observing the ritual on a monitor? Many religious organizations that partake in online broadcasts attach great importance to direct participation on the actual site of the ritual, but at the same time do not deem the internet broadcasts of their rituals as ineffective for the religious consciousness of the viewers. They seem to assume that an individual can somehow experience the sacred even through the monitor. Can the sacred appear on a monitor over the internet?

This article tries to explore any possible theoretical grounds for this assumption and summarize the points of discussion. The study explores St. John of Damascus’ theory of divine image, Rudolf Otto’s concept of “Divination,” Emile Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence,” and Talal Asad’s notes on the concept of ritual before the modern age.

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From the standpoint of the theory of the therapy in culture, this paper describes how the COVID-19 disaster has transformed the relationship with others, and how the contact with foreign individual, who have different physical experiences and appearances that no one has ever experienced before, is affecting the world of everyday life. In doing so, I drew on the theory of the affect and the empathy from Vygotsky, Spinoza, Bin Kimura, and Edith Stein. I focused on the micro-genetic change of bodily experience and the sensual experience of otherness. It is hypothesized that such a sense of difference could also be an opportunity to open unknown parts of the self. In the process of mind-body transformation, I can read the basic bi-directional movement of the strange into the familiar and the familiar into the strange. The incorporation of this basic movement into the reconstruction of empathic relationships with others suggests a path of self-reconstitution in a world full of threats to the unknown.

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In diesem Aufsatz versuche ich, die Bedeutung der Analyse der Angst in Sein und Zeit, Heideggers früherem Hauptwerk, deutlich zu machen. In Sein und Zeit bezeichnet Heidegger die Angst als eine „Grundbefindlichkeit [= Grundstimmung]“, in der das Dasein in seinem Sein eigentlich erschlossen wird. Sofern das Seinsverständnis als eine Seinsbestimmung zum Sein des Daseins gehört, besagt dies zugleich, dass das Sein selbst in der Angst erst ursprünglich erschlossen und verstanden wird. In Sein und Zeit, das die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein überhaupt stellt, vollzieht sich die Analyse der Angst nicht aus einem psychologischen oder anthropologischen Interesse, sondern einzig als Vorbereitung auf die Seinsfrage selbst.

Bisher schien für die bisherigen Interpretationen von Sein und Zeit die Behauptung Heideggers, dass in der Angst alle bedeutsame intentionale Beziehung zu Gegenständen unmöglich wird, oft ein Rätsel zu sein. Denn diese Behauptung scheint die Ansicht zu implizieren, dass es nicht möglich ist, dass sich das Dasein mit einem ursprünglichen Seinsverständnis eigentlich zu den Gegenständen verhält. Eine solche Interpretation beruht aber auf einem einfachen Missverständnis. Nach Heideggers Ansicht sind die Angsterfahrung und die Bezüge auf die Gegenstände nicht einfach widersprüchlich und unvereinbar, sondern das Dasein kann auch inmitten der Bezüge auf die Gegenstände in einer eigentlichen Weise vom in der latenten, verborgenen Angst Erschlossenen geleitet werden.

Doch hier entsteht ein weiteres Problem. Wenn die Angst immer latent und verborgen ist, sogar in einer eigentlichen Existenz, dann ist nicht klar, wo und wie die Seinsfrage selbst gestellt werden kann. Ich möchte darauf hinweisen, dass gerade hier die Sprache im eigentümlichen Sinne eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Es liegt nämlich im Grunde der verborgenen Angst als Grundstimmung, dass der Bezug des Daseins auf das Sein selbst das sprachliche, d. h. ein fragendes Denken ist.

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During the mid-Meiji period, the narrative that Buddhism was corrupt, and thus had to be “reformed” to suit modern times, became a growing trend. While previous scholarship has focused on several prominent individuals who engaged in the discourse on the “reform” of Buddhism such as Inoue Enryō and Nakanishi Ushirō, this paper explores how the discourse spread to local Buddhist communities and was interpreted in various ways through Buddhist media.

Specifically, this paper focuses on the discourse on the “reform” of Buddhism in the journal Ryōchikai Zasshi, which was established in 1884 and aimed at the philosophical studies of Buddhism. Furthermore, this paper examines how the idea of “reform” was conceived by a lay Buddhist named Tajima Shōji (1852-1909), a renowned journalist and intellectual during this period. Based on the understanding of “religion” as “mokujūkyō” which emphasized obedience to a god, Tajima predicted the decline of Buddhism, with the belief that it could not attract the faith (shinkō) of people. It is noteworthy that with the emphasis on the element of shin in the teaching of Shinshū, Tajima considered this denomination along with Christianity to be the most suitable “religion” for modern Japanese society. Therefore, the cases of the Ryōchikai Zasshi and the work of Tajima reveal the dynamism of the debate of the “reform” of Buddhism, as well as the multifaceted relationship between this discourse and changing views towards Christianity in the mid-Meiji period.

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In this paper, I consider the use of Buddhist concepts in Tetsurō Watsuji’s ethicsrelated works. In particular, I focus on the relationship between Watsuji’s ethics and his interpretation of concepts such as emptiness and negative movement, which Watsuji emphasized in interpreting Buddhism in his Buddhist research books, such as Practical Philosophy of Primitive Buddhism; he later used these concepts in his main works, Ethics and Ethics as a Study of Humans. In his Buddhist interpretations, Watsuji was strongly influenced by the Hegel dialectic. In this paper, I outline these concepts based on Watsuji’s Buddhist writings and consider the differences between his position and the Hegel dialectic according to his ethical writings.

One conclusion of this paper is as follows. Watsuji criticized the Absolute Spirit, which is the end point of the Hegel dialectic. Watsuji thought that human irrationality cannot be explained from the standpoint of this idea. Instead, Watsuji put emptiness at the root of his human system; what he needed at that time was the Dharma system of Abhidharma Buddhism.

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This paper presents an interpretation of Kierkegaard’s “Contemporaneity with Christ” as the characteristic of Professor Kazuo Mutō’s (1913-1995) thought that intersects faith and mysticism, which are often considered as opposite concepts, in a way interacting with Keiji Nishitani’s mysticism, to develop Mutō’s own standpoint of the philosophy of religion, namely, theological philosophy of religion.

Mutō understood Contemporaneity with Christ from the relationship between faith and ethics to faith-mysticism. He sees Kierkegaard’s mysticism of faith as a bridge between Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth, to a certain degree reconciling the former, accused of pantheistic mysticism, and the latter, sublimated to supernaturalism.

Being between Christianity and the Kyoto School, Mutō believes that faithmysticism is a concept of mysticism inherent in Christianity, which can be traced back to the apostle Paul, or as Mutō put it, back to the New Testament. It represents the paradoxical unity of the transcendence of revelation and the immanence of religious experience, as well as a continuity of discontinuous relationship between Christianity and religions, or between the special revelation and the general revelation.

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