The 3rd BESETO (Peking University, Seoul National University and the University of Tokyo) Conference of Philosophy was held on January 10–11, 2009 at the University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus. The theme of the conference was “Philosophy in the East Asian Context: Knowledge, Action, Death, and Life.”

On January 22-24, 2009, the Collège international de Philosophie (CIPh) and University Paris 4 (Sorbonne) organized the international symposium “The Figure of the Outside: Jean-Luc Nancy” in Paris, under the heading of Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Gisèle Berkman. The symposium was very animated, with an audience of over one hundred throughout the three days.

A few weeks ago (January 9-10, 2009) UTCP hosted the third BESETO philosophy conference. I will not try here to summarize this large and diverse event, although I will say that I think it’s been a great success, both in terms of the level of presentations as well as in terms of its diversity and richness. I would like, though, to offer some “meta-reflections” on this conference, which was titled “Philosophy in the East Asian context”: some thoughts on the question of “context” or, if you will, the “place” of philosophy.

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The 15th session of the Seminar “Secularization, Religion, and State” was held on 15th December.

In seminar 5 of the UTCP Education Program "Brain Sciences and Ethics", we examine Moral Minds by Marc D. Hauser. In session 1 of this seminar, we discussed Prologue & the first half of chapter 1 (pp. xvii-31).

From September 2009, we will start a new mid-term education program "Reconstruction of Image Studies." The program director is Prof. Atsushi Miura.

On November 28th, Professor Michael Marra (UCLA) delivered a lecture titled ‘Aesthetic Categories: Past and Present’ as a UTCP seminar on Japanese Philosophy.

Following up on the article by Sara Roy, who will visit UTCP in March, in which she expresses a moral and political critique of the current war in Gaza, it is important to note that such a similar critical voice can also be heard from within the Israeli society itself.

The 11th and 12th Tokyo Colloquium of Cognitive Philosophy (TCCP) was held in the autumn of 2008.

About the media of the academic discourse

Takehiko Hashimoto published Technology Illustrated, Forms of Science: The World of Science Iconology (University of Tokyo Press).