Article

Toshihiko Izutsu on Intercultural Dialogue and Zen Dialogue in Consciousness and Essence: Toward a Dialogical Religious Education in the Era of Irreligion

Author

Ryuichiro Narita

Information

pp. 1~25 / 2026 Vol.85 No.0

Abstract

[Objective] This paper examines Toshihiko Izutsu’s theory of dialogue in Consciousness and Essence, focusing on intercultural dialogue and Zen dialogue, and clarifies its significance for religious education in the era of irreligion. [Contents] The paper first clarifies the dialogical character of the educational relation and the role of religiosity in it. It then analyzes the relationship between culture and language in Izutsu’s thought and shows how the impossibility of dialogue emerges from cultural and linguistic articulation. Against this background, it examines Zen as the negation of essence, the movement from articulation through non-articulation to articulation (II), and the structure of Zen dialogue as vertical dialogue grounded in non-articulation.[Conclusions] Zen dialogue should not be understood as the introduction of Zen as religious content, but as one concrete form of educational dialogue rooted in religiosity. The paper argues that such dialogue opens a possible direction for religious education in the era of irreligion by unsettling fixed relations between self, other, and world.

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