Member-only story
Introduction for Beginners
What is Japanese Philosophy?
Getting started with this lesser known but important field in Asian philosophy
Philosophy is a vast subject. It has become so vast that it is impossible to study all of it in a single lifetime. It covers topics such as the nature of reality, the nature of human knowledge, and how to live an ethical life.
For this reason, specialists are accustomed to dividing philosophy into subfields. For example, you can study philosophy of mind, aesthetics, metaphysics, and so on. You can also study philosophy not by topic but by country of origin. There are professors of French philosophy, Arab philosophy, Indian philosophy, and others.
Thus, from the above, there are two main ways the field of philosophy is currently divided: by broad themes or by geographic and cultural area.
The thematic approaches make it easier to focus on philosophical issues, such as:
“What is it to be human?”
However, this method can also hide a range of issues an author or a group of authors are really dealing with. For example, that Plato was probably more concerned about what it was to be Athenian than human in general.
