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Character and Everydayness: The Bottom-Up Historical Epistemology of Tosaka Jun

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Abstract

This paper attempts to examine how the concept of character in Tosaka’s philosophy presents us with the distinctive features of a situated epistemology. To do this, I will make comparative, although by no means exhaustive, use of the work of Heinrich Rickert. I will not attempt to argue that Rickert was Tosaka’s main interlocutor; however, I will show that the concept of character can be understood as a response to one of the challenges posed by the neo-Kantian philosopher: how can history be grasped philosophically without falling into metaphysical reduction or subjective relativism? Tosaka would answer this question through the concepts of character and everydayness.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. I appreciate their careful reading and attention to detail, which have helped me identify areas that require further clarification and engagement with existing scholarship.

Funding

This work is a result of the KAKEN Project Nr. 22K19959.

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Correspondence to Fernando Wirtz.

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Wirtz, F. Character and Everydayness: The Bottom-Up Historical Epistemology of Tosaka Jun. Journal East Asian Philosophy (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-023-00021-8

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