

Stokes Hall North Room 349
Telephone: 617-552-3709
Email: david.johnson.8@bc.edu
Asian Philosophy
Philosophical Hermeneutics
Comparative Philosophy
Perspectives on Western Culture
Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, especially the Kyoto School
Hermeneutics and Phenomenology, especially Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty
Comparative Philosophy
By appointment
Professor Johnson joined the faculty in the fall of 2013. He has been a visiting researcher at Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (Freiburg, Germany), the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Nagoya, Japan), the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto, Japan), and Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). His current research focuses on the themes of life, nature, and sociality in the work of Kimura Bin and Watsuji Tetsurō. His recent monograph, Watsuji on Nature (Northwestern University Press, 2019), unfolds Watsuji’s novel and radical claim that nature and culture compose a tightly interwoven texture that is neither fully external to human subjectivity nor merely a product of it, and elucidates the wide-ranging implications of this notion for questions about the disclosive character of experience, the distinction between fact and value, and the possibility of a place-based ecological ethics. His other research interests include the phenomenology of perception, the nature of expression, and the experience of truth in the work of Nishida, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer.
Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger (Northwestern University Press, 2019)
“Word as Image: Gadamer on the Unity of Word and Thing,” Continental Philosophy Review (forthcoming)
“Enneads IV and V: A Puzzle about Perception,” Dionysius, Vol. 38 (forthcoming)
“Naturaleza, cultura y mundo de la vida: algunas consideraciones ontológicas,” Theoría Revista del Colegio de Filosofía, No. 38, 2020
“The Limits of Language: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Task of Comparative Philosophy,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2020
“The Anonymous Subject of Life: Some Philosophical, Psychological, and Religious Considerations,” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2019
“Self in Nature, Nature in the Lifeworld: A Reinterpretation of Watsuji’s Concept of Fūdo,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 68, No. 4, 2018
“Acting-Intuition and the Achievement of Perception: Merleau-Ponty with Nishida,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 67, No. 3, 2017
“Watsuji’s Topology of the Self,” Asian Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2016
“The Experience of Truth: Gadamer on the Belonging Together of Self, World, and Language,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2015
“Perception, Expression, and the Continuity of Being: Some Intersections Between Nishida and Gadamer,” Asian Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2014