Ryōsuke Ōhashi

Ōhashi was born in 1944 in Kyoto, the son of a mathematics professor. From 1965 to 1969, he studied philosophy at Kyoto State University and from 1969 to 1973 at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, where he graduated with honors with a thesis on "Ecstasy and Abandonment in Schelling and Heidegger." In 1983, he was the first Japanese to receive his habilitation from Julius-Maximilians University in Würzburg, where numerous philosophical dialogues connected him with Heinrich Rombach. As a professor of philosophy, Ōhashi taught at the Shiga Medical School in Ōtsu from 1975 to 1985, and at Kyoto Technical University from 1985 to 2003. In July 1990, he was awarded the Philipp Franz von Siebold Prize and in March 1996, the Humboldt Medal. From 2003 to 2007, he taught Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Osaka (Handai) and, from 2007 to 2010, Philosophy at the Ryūkoku Buddhist University in Kyoto. He has subsequently held lectureships at universities in France, the USA, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Ōhashi is a research professor at the International College of Morphomata at the University of Cologne and an extraordinary member of the Center for Human Sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. He was vice president of the Society for Intercultural Philosophy and later a member of its committee.

Ōhashi belongs to the Kyoto School, a Japanese academic philosophical movement that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Ōhashi's work and research are oriented, in accordance with the philosophical sense of this School, towards a systematic comparison of Japanese tradition with Western spiritual tradition. In his dissertation on Schelling and Heidegger, Ōhashi's theme therefore concerns the philosophical-intellectual encounter between Western and Far Eastern thought. This theme had already been revealed to him before his dissertation, when he encountered Heidegger's works at the beginning of his studies. For Ōhashi, the philosophical-intellectual encounter between Eastern and Western thought means, first and foremost, experiencing the other as Other and not as an imagined other. Ōhashi's reference in this sense also extends to the experience embedded in language.