John C. Maraldo

I look back on my six months in 2008–2009 as a Roche Chair Fellow with deep gratitude and appreciation for its continuing support of interreligious and cross-cultural philosophical research.

I had just retired from a 28-year career in the Philosophy Department at the University of North Florida, and my wife and I were eager to return to Japan where we had lived at different times in the 1970s and 80s. Since my first visit to the NIRC in 1978 to get expert help from Jan van Bragt in attempting to translate Nishitani Keiji’s “The Standpoint of Zen,” I had returned several times over the decades to work with Jim Heisig and other scholars on various projects, including the editing of Rude Awakenings: Zen the Kyoto School and the Question of Nationalism in 1994.  As a Roche Fellow, my main preoccupation was the preparation of what we call the “Sourcebook,” that is, the monumental volume published in 2011 as Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, co-edited with Heisig and Tom Kasulis and involving almost one hundred other scholars and translators. And with the freedom to pursue other interests, too, I was able to formulate and present alternative conceptions of autonomy and practice, and to begin research that culminated in many essays in the three volumes titled Japanese Philosophy in the Making (2017–2023). I think my sojourn at the NIRC also gave me the courage later to return to and thoroughly revise work done in the mid 1980s on the issues of historical consciousness and hermeneutics in the study of Zen; The Saga of Zen History and the Power of Legend was published in 2023. Another long-term effect came from the congenial environment of the Institute—the collaborations, workshops and frequent presentations by resident and visiting scholars. That atmosphere has continued to strengthen my aspirations to articulate other alternatives that open us to embodied ways of understanding ourselves and the environment. The current focus on relationality in the natural sciences and the relation between humans and other animals inspires my current work.