Dr. Yoko Arisaka
Long-Term Fellow
2025-2028
Bio
Yoko Arisaka is currently Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Hildesheim, in a German Research Foundation project, “Philosophizing in a Globalized World” (2025-2028). During 2024-2025, she served as Roche Research Chair at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. From 2019 to 2024 she was a research associate with the German Research Foundation project, “Histories of Philosophy from a Global Perspective” at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. She had been a Fellow at the Forschungsinstitut für Philosophy Hannover from 2009 to2011. Before coming to Germany in 2005, she had been Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at the University of San Francisco (1996-2007). She was born in Kamakura, Japan, but moved to California in 1980.
Her latest publications include Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō and Histories of Philosophy and Thought in the Japanese Language from 1835 to 2021 (co-edited with Leon Krings and Tetsuri Kato).
Research
Modern Japanese Philosophy, Phenomenology, Political Philosophy, Gender Theory, Philosophy of Race, Decolonial Theory
Regions
Japan, Asia, USA
Languages
English, Japanese, German
books
Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō (edited with H. Matsumaru and L. Schultz), Cham: Springer, 2022.
Histories of Philosophy and Thought in the Japanese Language from 1835 to 2021 (co-edited with Leon Krings and Tetsuri Kato), Hildesheim: Olms, 2022.
Kitarō Nishida in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts (Kitarō Nishida in 20th Century Philosophy, edited with Rolf Elberfeld, Freiburg: Alber, 2014
Prophetischer Pragmatismus: Eine Einführung in das Denken von Cornel West (Prophetic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Cornel West, edited with Jürgen Manemann, Volker Drell and Anna Maria Hauk), Paderborn: Fink, 2012.
Articles
„Die Etabilierung von Philosophy of Race in einem deutschsprachigen Kontext? Eine vergleichende (philosophiehistorische) Betrachtung“, in: Philosophie und Rassismus. Debatten und Kontroversen, hg. v. Franziska Dübgen, Marina Martinez Mateo und Ruth Sonderegger, 2025.
“Race,” in Nils Baratella, Steffen Herrmann, Sophie Loidolt, Tobias Matzner, Gerhard Thonhauser, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology, London / New York: Routledge, 2024.
“Miki’s Philosophical Anthropology: Embodiment, Mediality, and Everydayness,” in Fernando Wirtz, Stephen Lofts, eds., Miki Kiyoshi and the Crisis of Thought, Chisokudo, 2024.
“The Controversial Identity of Japanese Philosophy,” in Bret Davis, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
“The Paradox of Dignity: Everyday Racism and the Failure of Multiculturalism,”Ethik und Gesellschaft 2 (2010).
Activities
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Practices of Epoché: A Phenomenological Retreat (Summer School)
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Epistemology of Ignorance: What We Don’t Know About Race and Racism (Yoko Arisaka)
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Philosophizing in Akan: The Genetic-Analytic Method and Bottom-Up Approaches to Conceptual Translation
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Philosophizing in Many Languages: Translation, Proto-Philosophy, and Middle Voice Agency
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Wrestling with Knowledge: Perspectives from the Wolof Tradition (with Monika Rohmer)
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Sub-Saharan Islamic Archives and African Philosophy (with Ousmane Kane)