Fostering critical thinking and broad horizons


Humanities and Philosophy

The Humanities and Philosophy unit covers a wide range of subjects which explore various cultural and critical practices focusing especially on verbal representations. The unit comprises two sub-units:

The philosophy/social thought sub-unit deals with modern Western ethics, philosophy, and social thought in the context of their long histories since the classical age while at the same time giving full heed to the pressing issues of our contemporary, ever more globalised world, such as environmental destruction, historical memory, nationalism, neoliberalism, and civil society.
The other sub-unit working on the study of literature, art, language and ethnology consists of faculty members whose particular empirical research presently centres around such areas as the United Kingdom, North America, Germany, France, Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula, China and Taiwan.

The unit as a whole places great emphasis on the importance of close and analytical reading of pertinent literature in its primary form, and encourages students to read materials in their original language whenever possible.
A characteristic of research in the humanities and philosophy at Hitotsubashi is that it is incorporated in the Faculty (as well as the Graduate School) of Social Sciences whereas it tends to be part of a Faculty of Letters at other universities. This means that we engage in new interdisciplinary approaches that would connect the methods and projects of social sciences with those of the humanities.