James Mark Shields
James Mark Shields is Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities and Asian Thought at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), Japan Foundation Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto, Japan), and Research Associate with the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Harvard University. He was educated at McGill University (Canada), the University of Cambridge (UK), and Kyoto University (Japan). He conducts research on modern Buddhist thought, Japanese philosophy, comparative ethics, and philosophy of religion. He has published articles and translations in Asian Philosophy, The Eastern Buddhist, Japan Review, Studies in Religion / Sciences religieuses, Journal of Religion and Society, Kultura i Politkya, and Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions. He is author of Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought (Ashgate, 2011) and co-editor (with Victor Sōgen Hori and Richard P. Hayes) of Teaching Buddhism in the West: From the Wheel to the Web (Routledge, 2003). He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Warp and Woof: Modernism and Progressivism in Japanese Buddhism, 1886–1936. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy. (Source Accessed Jan 15, 2020)
Library Items
Critical Buddhism
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the relative calm world of Japanese Buddhist scholarship was thrown into chaos with the publication of several works by Buddhist scholars Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, dedicated to the promotion of something they called Critical Buddhism (hihan bukkyo). In their quest to re-establish a "true" - rational, ethical and humanist - form of East Asian Buddhism, the Critical Buddhists undertook a radical deconstruction of historical and contemporary East Asian Buddhism, particularly Zen. While their controversial work has received some attention in English-language scholarship, this is the first book-length treatment of Critical Buddhism as both a philosophical and religious movement, where the lines between scholarship and practice blur. Providing a critical and constructive analysis of Critical Buddhism, particularly the epistemological categories of critica and topica, this book examines contemporary theories of knowledge and ethics in order to situate Critical Buddhism within modern Japanese and Buddhist thought as well as in relation to current trends in contemporary Western thought. (Source: Taylor & Francis)
Shields, James M. Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. https://archive.org/details/criticalbuddhismengagingwithmodernjapanesebuddhistthoughtjamesmarkshields_202003_771_Y/mode/2up.
Shields, James M. Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. https://archive.org/details/criticalbuddhismengagingwithmodernjapanesebuddhistthoughtjamesmarkshields_202003_771_Y/mode/2up.;Critical Buddhism;Critical Buddhism;The doctrine of buddha-nature in Japanese Buddhism;Zen - Chan;Hakamaya, N.;Matsumoto, S.;James Mark Shields; Critical Buddhism: Engaging with Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought
Affiliations & relations
- Bucknell University · workplace affiliation
- International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto, Japan) · secondary affiliation
- Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Harvard University. · secondary affiliation
