I. Introductory Remarks Beyond meaningless debates about whether countries like China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia should open themselves to immigration and naturalization by foreigners, we ought to ask why these countries, authoritarian and democratic alike, have yet to do so. After all, it is not as if Japan does not rely on foreign…

How might we forestall death; how can we promote health? What does it mean to “care” about ourselves and our bodies? What should we care about, and how? — Contents I. Fears of death II. Health and agency III. On Chinese medicine IV. Care for the body I. Fears of death How hard it is to die in the twenty-first century. Half a year ago, my neurologist remarked to me that he felt I had become more of a worrywart since my concussion, an…

Some self-commentary; the fear of too much time; literature over philosophy as descriptions of human fragility — Contents I. Thinking, being, and pain II. The self and the universe III. The horrors of free time IV. Philosophy and literature I. Thinking, being, and pain For a long time, I have found it puzzling that I belong in my own skin, that I am a subject who cannot experience any self other than myself…

How is academism useless; what does it lack? How might we have perfectly good reasons to avoid enlightenment? What can the existential lives of animals teach us about how to face death positively? Is it worthwhile? — Contents I. The practical university II. Enlightenment and ignorance III. Death and animals I. The practical university Why even bother spending time thinking, when any good philosophy involves a convoluted argument that even the most intelligent thinker eventually loses track of while reading? Why bother writing and clarifying philosophy even for oneself, when all people…

Life and tragedy; the social function of prophecies; ethics beyond idealism — Contents I. Aristotle and tragedy II. The function of prophecies III. Ethics, meaning of life, and stages of life I. Aristotle and tragedy Aristotle’s Poetics is a theory of literary style, but in terms of actual content, the majority of the text focuses on tragedy, and more specifically, the nature of tragedy as having a…

The nonsense of Disney — I was taken to see the Broadway play today, which was overall enjoyable; not exceptionally thrilling, but not without interesting segments either. The story can be summarized as follows: the play is split in two acts, where the first act narrates the travails until “happily ever after” and the second…

What do we mean when we say that life is suffering? Why must we suffer? Why must we live? Is Ricœur’s ethics really a hopeful one? Is it right? — Why would we do something that persists in making us unhappy? Do I enjoy what I study? Frankly, no; but I feel pressure to show that I am a capable thinker, and that I have ideas that other people will respect. If I decided to spend less effort on academics…

Some notes on Ricœur’s La métaphore vive — Ricœur is interested in metaphor because it explains the difference between words that can be replaced within a sentence and changed meanings in the sentence as a whole. If I say that “My love is a rose,” I claim similarity between the two objects “love” and “rose” that extends beyond…

Disability and its applicability to Ricœur’s ethics; two qualifications to its theory; the ethics of the Other and the necessity of the True-Other-not-the-Self; accepting mediocrity — My head hurts as I read, and I struggle to remember the contexts of the phrases that would make it possible to understand why they are being said; especially when reading in Japanese, I struggle to recognize the words and piece them together grammatically. I did not have such problems…