Article
How economic philosophy developed in Eastern Asia is an issue that the Revue de philosophie économique/Review of Economic Philosophy has set to tackle. We open the debate with this first thematic issue on Japanese economic philosophy. A second volume will address China and neighboring areas.
International readers have scarcely heard of non-Western – in the present case, Eastern Asian – economic philosophy. We aim to bring to the fore the theoretical output of Eastern Asian economic philosophers. They often publish in their own language: for instance, authors featured in this issue usually publish in Japanese. Some do in English or French as well. Yet, when it is so, the articles in another language often display (at least slightly) different ideas. As a consequence, a (large) part of their works remains out of reach for the global audience in the discipline. Only Westerners who read Eastern languages have access and few do. Programs dedicated to “Japanese studies” throughout the world seldom bear upon topics such as those in economic philosophy, while the discipline would benefit from the wealth of diverse cultural backgrounds.
The aim of the Revue de philosophie économique/Review of Economic Philosophy in these two volumes is thus to remediate this situation. We will stress two aspects in our undertaking. On the one hand, we will highlight Eastern Asian economic philosophy in the historical perspective of its various local traditions. In this issue, for example, readers will discover who the founders of economic philosophy in Japan were through the words of their most contemporary representative, Yûichi Shionoya, recently deceased and whose texts we were granted permission to publish here…