Anton Sevilla-Liu | Kyushu University (original) (raw)

Books by Anton Sevilla-Liu

A preview of the Palgrave edition of my book, as well as the full dissertation on which the book ... more A preview of the Palgrave edition of my book, as well as the full dissertation on which the book was based.

This book is a rethinking of ethics and socio-political life through the ideas of Watsuji Tetsurô. Can we build a systematic philosophy of morality, society, and politics, not on the basis of identity and ego, but rather on the basis of selflessness? This book explores such an attempt by the leading ethicist of modern Japan. Using concrete examples and contemporary comparisons, and with careful reference to both English and Japanese sources, it guides the reader through Watsuji’s ideas. It engages three contemporary issues in depth: First, how do we approach the moral agent, as an autonomous being or as a fundamentally relational being? Second, is it the individual or the community that is the starting point for politics? And finally, is ethics something that is globally shared or something fundamentally local? This book aims to be an informative and inspiring resource for researchers, students, and laypersons interested in Buddhist thought.

[This is my translation of 仏教vs倫理 (Buddhism vs. Ethics) by Sueki Fumihiko. I had previously relea... more [This is my translation of 仏教vs倫理 (Buddhism vs. Ethics) by Sueki Fumihiko. I had previously released an internally printed version, but this is the final print publication. This file includes the Translator's Introduction and Preface. The full book is available on amazon for less than $11. Also see https://www.createspace.com/6783463 ]

In this book, Sueki discusses the difficult relationship between religion and ethics. He understands ethics as something fundamentally tied to inter-human relationships, which presumes mutual intelligibility. How then do we relate to the "other"--that which cannot be reduced to our comprehension? How do we relate to other cultures, other genders, or even ourselves as unintelligible others? How do we relate with the kami, buddhas, and the dead? Sueki refers to this as the problem of "trans-ethics." He argues that it is religion that has constantly tried to focus on this relationship with the other. In the case of Buddhism, this involves attempts to construct ethics, difficulties with ethics, and transcendence beyond ethics.In particular, he highlights the possible role of the much maligned "funeral Buddhism" in such a Buddhist counter-position to ethics.

A full English translation of Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士, Han Bukkyogaku: Bukkyo vs. Rinri 反・仏教学―仏教ｖｓ.倫... more A full English translation of Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士, Han Bukkyogaku: Bukkyo vs. Rinri 反・仏教学―仏教ｖｓ.倫理 (Japan: Chikuma Gakugei Bunko, 2013). This translation has been printed as an in-house publication (Sueki Research Office, 2015).

The download is a preview that includes only the Introduction. Please message me if you are wanting a copy of the rest of the book.

This book was a real pleasure to translate. Here, Prof. Sueki talks about ethics as being concerned with the realm of ningen (humans), but how Buddhism, while having ethical components, introduces elements that go beyond the order of the ethics of ningen. Particularly interesting for me were his reading of the Lotus Sutra as a philosophy of the bodhisattva -- a being that exists fundamentally oriented toward the other, his notion of the dead (the deceased) as one of the most other of others, and the relationship we have with the deceased irreducible to mere memory, without presupposing an eternal soul (as in Tanabe Hajime's philosophy of existential communion with the dead).

Papers by Anton Sevilla-Liu

Journal of Philosophy of Education 55.1, 2021

What does it mean to educate for self-awareness? How does this fit within education, with its oth... more What does it mean to educate for self-awareness? How does this fit within education, with its other objectives, and other learning processes? These are key questions for more comprehensive versions of the mindful education movement. In order to provide some responses to these questions from a cohesive philosophical position, this article examines the philosophy of education of Mori Akira (1915-1976). It closely analyses his philosophy of self-awareness (jikaku), while drawing comparisons with other Kyoto School philosophers. In order to fully understand Mori's particular conception of self-awareness, it traces how this idea developed throughout his entire career: from his first book, The Philosophical Quest for Educational Ideals (1948), which focusses on the questing self-awareness of the teacher, to the early-middle period (particularly The Practicality and Inwardness of Education, 1955, and Philosophical Anthropology of Education, 1961), which develops a systematic view of the self-awareness of students, and to his final book, The Fundamental Principles of Human Formation (1977), which reexamines generativity in light of uncertainty and death. What this trajectory shows is a view of education centred on self-awareness and dynamically wrestling with key educational paradoxes, potentially deepening the philosophical grounding of mindful education.

Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 30, 2023

This conceptual-methodological article examines how qualitative research, particularly the recent... more This conceptual-methodological article examines how qualitative research, particularly the recent developments in narrative analysis, can be used in a manner consistent with Contextual Behavioral Science. Qualitative research is ordinarily a form of "descriptive contextualism" that can be used for understanding the narratives of the client, the therapy process, and its results. Narrative analysis contributes to the idiographic understanding of a particular experience by carefully examining narrative elements like plot, motives, and characters. The use of such analysis is now supported by attempts to use behaviorism and Relational Frame Theory to understand narratives. However, in response to the criticism that qualitative research is merely descriptive rather than functional, new developments in narrative analysis that go beyond description of stories toward the scope, effects, and boundaries of stories are examined. This makes possible a narrative analysis that is functional-descriptive, where understanding and prediction-and-influence are combined.

Bulletin of Kikan Education, 2023

This article introduces "Schema Pedagogy," the educational application of Schema Therapy that was... more This article introduces "Schema Pedagogy," the educational application of Schema Therapy that was introduced by Marcus Damm (2010) in Germany. Schema Therapy is a 3 rd wave development of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It examines the needs of people, how the failure to meet these needs results in Early Maladaptive Schemas, how these schemas manifest as different modes, and how such problems can be addressed. Schema Pedagogy bridges these principles to the classroom, for both pathological and non-pathological students, allowing for more effective student guidance and prevention of future characterological problems. After introducing the approaches, this article proceeds to examples of how schemas show in university classrooms, both in students and in teachers, and how people cope with these schemas in an educational context. Next, it examines the application of Schema Pedagogy, using several examples from university classroom experience, showing the use of observation and relationship building, addressing mind games, and mode mapping. Finally, in the discussion, it reconsiders Schema Pedagogy from the point of view of the fundamental principles of education as argued by philosopher of education Gert Biesta. It shows how Schema Pedagogy's conceptualization of the struggling student fundamentally contributes to subjectification and active learning, and how the view of relational mental health contributes to relational subjectivity and collaborative learning.

The Qualitative Report 27.10, 2022

The psychology of self-compassion is growing in importance for understanding well-being and helpi... more The psychology of self-compassion is growing in importance for understanding well-being and helping people in therapeutic and educational settings. However, present research may be limited by a narrow focus on nomothetic self-reports like the Self-Compassion Scale. This article supplements that qualitatively, looking at self-compassion in life stories. It is guided by the questions, "How do students experience the struggle between self-compassion and its deficit? And how is this experience manifest in their narrative identity?" This study examined three Japanese university students who submitted their narrative self-reflections, including stories of the high point, low point, turning point, and recurring pattern in their lives, without any direct prompting about "self-compassion." However, their life stories spontaneously pointed to self-compassion and its deficit. These stories were analyzed using the methods of narrative analysis presented by Murray and Josselson, beginning with descriptive/inductive approaches then proceeding to a more interpretative phase using McAdams' psychology of narrative identity. As expected, their stories included their struggles with self-criticism and self-isolation in what they do and how they think and feel about it. But beyond that, the paper points to entire personas in their stories and their self-conception revealing this struggle with low self-compassion. This shows that self-compassion can be seen on the level of narrative identity via life stories.

Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 2022

This paper examines the connections between Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Kyoto Sch... more This paper examines the connections between Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Kyoto School Philosopher Mori Akira (1915-1976), in order to see how ACT and functional contextualism can engage other subfields in academic philosophy like philosophy of the human person, ethics, and philosophy of human becoming, and other areas such as eastern and continental philosophy. It first examines Mori's model of the layers of human existence (organic, conscious, reflective, and self-aware) and how it connects to ACT's views of the human person (workability, languaging, self-processes), presenting how these potentially critique modern ideas of the human being as a merely rational animal. It then proceeds to ACT and Mori's ethics of freely-chosen values and how these can critique utilitarian and deontological ethics. Finally, it proceeds to the philosophy of human becoming and how ACT and Mori can contribute to a contextual-existential view of the path of human development.

Journal of Systemic Therapies 41.2, 2022

This article examines and contributes to the recent dialogue on narrative therapy and mindfulness... more This article examines and contributes to the recent dialogue on narrative therapy and mindfulness (including embodiment, affect, and neuroscience) and the possibilities and dangers in combining them. To make this dialogue clearer, this article focuses on an epistemologically consistent approach to mindfulness, as found in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It focuses on a particular practice, Steven C. Hayes' "Guided Audio Meditation" that explores problem and preferred stories, and analyzes it using the concepts of both narrative therapy and ACT. With these foundations for the exchange of ideas, this article explores the core difficulty of this dialogue-the differences between mechanistic, formist, organicist, and contextualist epistemologies, the differences between deductive, anti-theoretical, inductive, and abductive approaches to theory, and the practical implications of these differences. In doing so it suggests how narrative therapy and ACT practitioners might learn from each other without sacrificing core ethical commitments.

International Journal of Asian Studies

Today, the modern value systems that once held sway have fallen apart, and people throughout the ... more Today, the modern value systems that once held sway have fallen apart, and people throughout the world are wandering in an aimless state. Amidst this, we are pressed to ask, “What kind of a new ethics might we construct?” We need to consider the possibility of an ethics that focuses on the religious view of humankind (previously ignored by modernity), that goes beyond this life, and includes the next life. In this article, I examine the way of being of bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna Buddhism via the Lotus Sutra. According to the Lotus Sutra, human existence is one that necessarily relates with the other, and this relationship is not confined to this life, but continues from past lives to future lives. Here, I refer to this as “bodhisattva as existence.” On this basis, it is possible to think of an ethics of “bodhisattva as praxis” that considers the benefit of others even after death. This view of bodhisattvas in the Lotus Sutra lives on in Japanese Buddhism and can be said to point to a ...

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Journal of Religious Ethics, 2016

Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook, 2018

One important task in internationalizing Japanese education is educating Japanese citizens to bec... more One important task in internationalizing Japanese education is educating Japanese citizens to become "global citizens." This paper is a philosophical analysis of how Global Education deals with the problem of cultural-moral difference (moral conflict that arises between different cultures). The usual approaches taken in Global Education and Kokusai Rikai Kyôiku are a mix of cultural relativism and moral anti-relativism. Teachers often take one of the following strategies to dismiss cultural-moral diff erence: utilitarianism, absolu-tized human rights, rational justifi cation, or "two-layer" approaches (suggested by Will Kymlicka). But these fail to balance the need for both openness to the other and moral engagement. As an alternative, I discuss Watsuji Tetsurô's search for moral unity in the empty dynamic of individualization and harmonization that is then expressed as culture. This unity is sought through a "herme-neutics of moral action," which considers how people are emplaced in multiple relational contexts in space and time. I sketch how this can be applied through a class on "Ethics across Cultural Diff erence." This alternative (Buddhist-Con-fucian) approach thus suggests a second sense of internationalizing Japanese education-using Japanese traditional theories to provide solutions for a global problem.

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2019

This article builds on the ethics of Watsuji Tetsurô (1889-1960) through a comparison with Mori A... more This article builds on the ethics of Watsuji Tetsurô (1889-1960) through a comparison with Mori Akira's (1915-1976) the philosophy of education to show how Watsuji's "ethics of emptiness" can be concretely manifested in human formation. While keeping Watsuji's ethics in view, this article examines Mori Akira's early philosophy of moral education in the 1950s, which can be found in his philosophy book, his teacher's manual, and his moral education student textbooks. This article begins with Watsuji's idea of "human existence," and its similarities with Mori Akira's idea of "human becoming," which adds a developmental angle to Watsuji's tensional view of the human being. It then proceeds to sketch out how ethics and education emerge from the view of human being/becoming of both thinkers. Finally, it carefully analyzes the key problem of the "dual-negative structure": How can we be good if goodness requires that we be both individual and collective, two aspects that are negatively related to each other? After showing Watsuji's issues, it shows Mori's contribution, which includes philosophical theory, scientific theories drawn from developmental psychology, and praxis drawn from Mori Akira's textbooks.

Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, 2020

With Honda Teruhiko, Mizokami Atsuko, and Nakayama Hiroaki. This paper uses phenomenological psy... more With Honda Teruhiko, Mizokami Atsuko, and Nakayama Hiroaki.

This paper uses phenomenological psychology both as a qualitative inquiry and a pedagogic tool in order to understand how graduate students experience the exercises of the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy program in a classroom setting. This understanding is necessary for both teachers and researchers of contemplative pedagogy to ensure that students are helped and not harmed by these practices, as well as to tailor teacher responses to the plurality of individual experience. Furthermore, it aids students in becoming aware of and articulating the changes they are undergoing through contemplative practices. This paper shares summaries of the autophenomenologies of three participants which are then interpreted by the research team. These idiographic descriptions are examined on four themes: 1) textures of attention, 2) "using" mindfulness to relax, 3) normative consciousness, and 4) pedagogical dangers and process. The analysis suggests that mindful education needs to take care in understanding the limits of our ability to express matters concerning the subtleties of how we pay attention, consider the complex interplay in non-clinical populations between "being mode" and "doing mode," and how that connects to our interpretation of "non-judgment" in mindfulness.

Published on: http://www.contemplativemind.org/journal

The download is a preview that includes only the Introduction. Please message me if you are wanting a copy of the rest of the book.

Journal of Philosophy of Education 55.1, 2021

Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 30, 2023

Bulletin of Kikan Education, 2023

The Qualitative Report 27.10, 2022

Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 2022

Journal of Systemic Therapies 41.2, 2022

International Journal of Asian Studies

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Journal of Religious Ethics, 2016

Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook, 2018

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2019

Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, 2020

With Honda Teruhiko, Mizokami Atsuko, and Nakayama Hiroaki. This paper uses phenomenological psy... more With Honda Teruhiko, Mizokami Atsuko, and Nakayama Hiroaki.

Published on: http://www.contemplativemind.org/journal

Polylog 41, 2019

Published in German as: Aida (Inter-) als Narrativ: Eine Relektüre der Aidagara-Ethik von Watsuji... more Published in German as: Aida (Inter-) als Narrativ: Eine Relektüre der Aidagara-Ethik von Watsuji Tetsurô

In this paper, I reinterpret the ethics of aidagara (betweenness, "inter-") of Watsuji Tetsurô (1889-1960) as a narrative ethics. I begin by showing that such a re-reading is possible, by examining how Watsuji's early existentialism shows a concern for the meaning of life, and how his shift to hermeneutics shows how this private sense of meaning is expressed intersubjectively. These are the theoretical foundations for any narrative approach. I then develop two forms of narrative ethics from this philosophy. First, I examine a "personal narrative ethics," which I develop via the theories of developmental/personality psychologist Dan P. McAdams (1954-), particularly showing how his view of agency and communion and their development in narrative identity concretely express Watsuji's "dual-negative structure" between individuality and totality. But I contribute to this narrative psychology using Watsuji, by showing a theory of narrative transformation-seen practically in narrative therapy as "re-storying." Second, and yet another contribution to narrative theory, is "historical narrative ethics," which shows how storying incorporates social and historical elements, and how re-storying can serve to transform these socio-historical narratives as well. In this way, I argue for a narrative re-reading that contributes to Watsuji's philosophy with an examination of how it might be concretely expressed (and empirically researched), but at the same time contributes from Watsuji's philosophy with a framework that consolidates narrative formation, transformation, and historical contribution.

Recently, in studies on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and other related thinkers outside Japan, ... more Recently, in studies on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and other related thinkers outside Japan, a new trend has arisen. Scholars are now attempting to go beyond mere exegesis of these thinkers, toward their application to various social concerns. Along these lines, in the dissertation entitled Exporting the Ethics of Emptiness: Applications, Limitations, and Possibilities of Watsuji Tetsurô's Ethical System (Graduate University for Advanced Studies, 2015), I clarified the entire system of Watsuji's ethics focusing on his Buddhist-inspired idea of " emptiness. " I argued that Watsuji's " ethics of emptiness " can articulate a way of thinking about ethics that maintains the tension between the subject and the object and the individual and the collective. And I tried to show the various global applications and potential of this way of thinking. However, in Sueki Fumihiko's Buddhism vs. Ethics and Philosophizing in Japan, he proposes some critical analyses which can serve as an important reference for such an application of Watsuji. Sueki suggests that Watsuji's ethics belongs purely in the domain of " ningen, " and is thus unable to deal with the other (tasha). Sueki's basic idea is that the genuine response to the other requires that we go beyond the ethical and into the " trans-ethical, " and he tries to show how this trans-ethics can be found in Buddhism. But does Watsuji's ethics really lack the trans-ethical moment or the other? In this presentation, I aim to clarify the ideas of the " ethical " and the " trans-ethical " and their complex relationship, through a cross-reading of Watsuji and Sueki. Specifically, I argue that while Watsuji tried to create an ethics of ningen, his introduction of the ideas of emptiness, non-substantiality, continuous negation, and other Buddhist/Nishidan ideas, brings in a trans-ethical moment that disrupts the closure of his ethical system. This can be seen practically in his ideas of social change, which he elaborated in Ethics vols. 2 and 3 (1943, 1949). Through this examination of Watsuji, I hope to put forth some productive suggestions regarding core issues that any “philosophy of nothingness” has to contend with, if it is applied to socio-ethical concerns.

This article is a comparative study of bell hooks's " engaged pedagogy " with Watsuji Tetsurô's s... more This article is a comparative study of bell hooks's " engaged pedagogy " with Watsuji Tetsurô's systematic ethics. The purpose of this comparison is twofold. The first reason is to examine the relational view of ethics that underlies hooks's thought in order to explore her deliberately " un-academic " work in a philosophically rigorous way. The second reason is to examine the fundamental connections of Watsuji's ethics of human existence to an education for human becoming. This comparison will be carried out in two stages. First, I will examine the connections of hooks and Watsuji on the level of society and relational structures. Second, I will delve deeper into the existential/spiritual level in the ethics/education of emptiness.

Record of Clinical-Philosophical Pedagogy, 2015

Nishitani Keiji was a Japanese thinker of the Kyoto School known for his masterpiece Religion and... more Nishitani Keiji was a Japanese thinker of the Kyoto School known for his masterpiece Religion and Nothingness, where he discusses the problem of nihilism and the need to go beyond that into the area of Absolute Nothingness. Kawai Hayao, on the other hand, is the founder of Japanese Analytical and Clinical Psychology. His work to be discussed in this presentation, Buddhism and the Art of Psychotherapy, takes a look at the differing concepts of I in Buddhism and in the West, as well as how this affects his psychotherapy. In the first part of this presentation, we will delve into the ideas of these two thinkers regarding personal ethics. We shall look into the similarities between these thinkers in terms of their views on consciousness and the problem of nihility/loss of relatedness facing modern man, which often manifests itself in the form of psychological problems. We will also be exploring how they resolve and unite dualities involved in the formation of personal ethics such as the unification of the individual-whole, being-nothing, conscious-unconscious, and the already-not yet. Using those above as a foundation, we will also be pointing out the social aspects of these ideas and their implications toward interpersonal relationships. Both thinkers agree on the problem of the separation of self in modern man with others and within himself. Nishitani gives clarity and depth to Kawai's ideas while Kawai's observations and experiences ground Nishitani's theoretical framework, giving it concrete applications in daily life. By combining these two thinkers, we hope to come up with a nuanced view of the self as it forms its personal ethics and the imperatives that such a view holds in the way we think of ourselves and relate with others.