The term “History of Philosophy” usually refers to the Western history of philosophy. However, this particular conception, now taken for granted all over the world, is a post-19th Century construct emerging out of some German-speaking regions. Before the 18th Century, philosophy in Europe included Indian, Chinese, Caldean, Egyptian, Turkish, and other non-Western philosophies, but they became
excluded in the 19th Century in the process of constructing a particular historiography of philosophy in the late 18th to the early 19th Century. In this presentation, I will introduce the results of a five-year research
project at the University of Hildesheim which traces this development and show how and why the history of philosophy
became eurocentric. The research results also show that globally speaking, “histories of philosophies” refer to many different developments that look very different from the familiar European history of philosophy (for example, the developments in Chinese, Arabic, or Russian histories of philosophies). They should nevertheless be included in a wider, global conception of “histories of philosophy”.
The presentation will be in English, and those participating online are welcomed and encouraged to join the dialogue.
Yoko Arisaka is currently a research associate with the German Research Foundation project, “Histories of Philosophy from a Global Perspective” at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. She had been a Fellow at the Hannover Philosophical Institute in Germany from 2009 to2011. Before coming to Germany in 2007, she had been Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at the University of San Francisco (1996-2007). Her field of research include political philosophy (including philosophy of race and feminism), modern Japanese philosophy, and phenomenology.
Her publications include:
Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitaro, H. Matsumaru, Y. Arisaka, L. Schultz, eds. Springer, 2022
Histories of Philosophy and Thought in the Japanese Language from 1835 to 2021, Leon Krings, Yoko Arisaka, Tetsuri Kato, eds. Olms Verlag 2022
Kitarō Nishida in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts,Rolf Elberfeld and Yōko Arisaka, eds. Freiburg: Alber-Verlag, 2014
