East Asian Context
pp. 327-333
in: Michael Festl (ed), Handbuch Pragmatismus, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2018Abstract
Philosophy departments of universities in East Asia regularly teach courses in Western philosophy, such as Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy, Modern philosophy, Rationalism and Empiricism, German Idealism, Analytic Philosophy. Pragmatism is not among their core curricula, even if Pragmatist works might occasionally be included in ›special subjects‹, depending on the interests of the faculty members teaching the courses. While there are philosophers in the People's Republic of China, Japan, and South Korea who count Pragmatism among their research interests, it is still very much a minority interest in academic philosophy in the region, despite the fact that Pragmatism was introduced to East Asia as early as 1888, when Yūjirō Motora introduced Dewey's psychology and James's Pragmatism in the journal Rikugō zasshi. Dewey, who has visited Japan and China between 1919 and 1921, remains the most influential early Pragmatist philosopher in the region. Through Dewey, Pragmatism's influence in the region is much more salient in the area of education than in academic philosophy.
