Prof. Dr. Bret Davis – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Prof. Dr. Bret Davis

Loyola University Maryland
Philosophy

External Senior Fellow (FRESCO Programme)
July 2023 – December 2025

Last Update: 06.11.2024

Curriculum Vitae

Bret W. Davis is Professor and Higgins Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches courses on Asian, Western, and cross-cultural philosophy. Prof. Davis was raised in the United States, where he attained a BA (1989) in philosophy (with minors in religion and art/art history) from Trinity University, and an MA (1996) and Ph.D. (2001) in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He has also studied and taught for more than a year in Germany and for more than thirteen years in Japan. In Japan, he studied Buddhist thought at Otani University, completed the coursework for a second Ph.D. in the history of Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University, taught philosophy of religion, ethics, comparative thought and other courses in Japanese at various universities, and practiced Zen Buddhism at Shōkokuji, one of the main Rinzai Zen training monasteries in Kyoto. He has published numerous books and articles on East Asian philosophy and religion (esp. Zen Buddhism), on modern Japanese philosophy (esp. the Kyoto School), on Continental philosophy (esp. Heidegger, phenomenology, and hermeneutics), and on issues in cross-cultural philosophy and comparative philosophy of religion. He serves on the executive committee of several international societies and is co-editor of two book series, World Philosophies with Indiana University Press and Transcontinental Philosophy with SUNY Press, as well as of the Japanese philosophy section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Selected Publications

Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 480 pages.
Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), 2007. 424 pages.
The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020; paperback edition 2022. 840 pages.
“The Kyoto School.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 3^rd edition 2019.
“Knowing Limits: Toward a Versatile Perspectivism with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zhuangzi and Zen.” Research in Phenomenology 49/3 (2019): 301–334.

FRIAS Project

Knowledge and Wisdom in Zen Buddhism

As a philosopher who works on traditional East Asian and modern Japanese philosophy, as well as on phenomenology and hermeneutics, I was invited by Prof. Nadja Germann, a specialist in Arabic philosophy, and Prof. Frieder Vogelmann, who works on the political implications of various epistemologies, to collaborate on a project entitled “Knowledge Across Borders” (Wissen über Grenzen). The project will result in the publication of a thematic issue of the journal Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte (AfB) dedicated to the concept of “knowledge.” I envision the topic of my own article contribution as follows: There is a conception of “knowledge” as inherently “delimiting” in both Buddhist and Daoist philosophies, a conception that is developed in Zen (which synthesizes Buddhism and Daoism) and also by some modern Japanese philosophers. While investigating this “delimiting” conception of knowledge, I will also examine how these philosophies—along with their practices—aim to awaken and cultivate a kind of “wisdom” that entails what I call a “versatile perspectivism,” that is, an ability to wisely and effectively apply differently delimited kinds of knowledge in varying circumstances.