Global citizens, cosmopolitanism, and radical relationality

Towards dialogue with the Kyoto School

Bibliographic Data

ID8858136
AuthorsSatoji Yano (Bukkyo University, Kyoto, Japan, corresponding author), Jeremy Rappleye (0000-0002-0717-8253, Kyoto University)
Year2021
Volume54
Issue9
Pages1355-1366
Publication date2021-03-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Philosophy and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1857 • E-ISSN: 1469-5812
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00131857.2021.1897570
OpenAlexW3138484659
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited12

Recent discussions around education for global citizenship continues to retrace notions of cosmopolitanism first laid out in Europe. Ostensibly seeking global inclusivity, much of this work ultimately returns to a rather narrow set of ontological and epistemic themes, primarily Stoicism and Pauline Christianity. The Kyoto School offers a constructive reconstruction of these core premises of European cosmopolitanism. In resisting the ontologizing of autonomous individualism and abstract universalism, Kyoto School thinkers offered an alternative tripartite structure that drew greater attention to the specific (nation-state): individual and universal are inevitably mediated by the ‘logic’ of specific histories, languages, institutions, and communities. Rather than naïve nationalism, this view emerged within a radically relational worldview: ‘continuity-in-discontinuity’ emplaced within absolute nothingness. Kimura Motomori, a leading Kyoto School educational thinker, explicitly extended these Nishidian ideas to challenge Rousseau’s contracting individualism, Kantian abstract universalism, and Hegelian teleological temporality, thus offering a fresh vision of cosmopolitanism: self-aware citizens engaging concretely in the task of (re)opening their specific societies. In conclusion, in part to demonstrate the very forms of critique we envisage, we trace historically the impacts of Kyoto School cosmopolitanism ideas on postwar policy in Japan and lament the recent regressive closing

Cosmopolitanism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Individualism · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Universalism · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Philosophy · Religious Education and Schools

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