ERIC Number: EJ1244807
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Nov
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0814-0626
EISSN: N/A
Transcendental Monsters, Animism and the Critique of Hyperobjects
Australian Journal of Environmental Education, v35 n3 p163-172 Nov 2019
This transversal and transilient thought-experiment explores the application and significance of Japanese animism for environmental education and environmental philosophy. Through the exploration of indigenous knowledge found in Japanese folklore and Japanese Buddhism, the thought-experiment offers a critique of a certain strand of contemporary fatalistic and nihilistic thinking regarding the Anthropocene. At its simplest it questions the trend toward mysticism and obfuscation in environmental education and demands a response to the environmental crisis precisely through reason and rationality. How shall this be undertaken? On one level, the hauntings of [Japanese characters omitted.] (Yokai) and [Japanese characters omitted.] (Yurei) in Japanese folklore shall act as a prism through which to understand the impact of the fantastical on the contemporary imagination, and on another level, I shall critique the fantastical as such to question the so-called inaccessibility of the hyperobject (Morton, 2014), which in the end leaves us despairingly passive and without the possibility of response. It is in the work of the Japanese philosopher [Japanese characters omitted.] (Inoue Enryo) and especially his defence of Western Enlightenment beliefs during Japan's modernisation period (1868-1912) that a curious method and heuristic tool is found that may be used to address not only the problem of mystification in Japanese philosophy but also the obfuscation of the ecological object of recent Western thought. Seemingly sacrilegiously, it is through reason and at the limits of the rational that one may approach the hyperobject-in-itself, which is to say, the unfathomable as such.
Descriptors: Criticism, Folk Culture, Buddhism, Environmental Education, Asian Culture, Crisis Management, Climate, Imagination, Fantasy, Philosophy, History, Heuristics, Metacognition, Foreign Countries, Teaching Methods
Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: https://journals.cambridge.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Japan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A