Ambedkar, the Kyoto School, and Japanese Buddhism: on the Possibilities and Risks of Buddhism

Devare shows Buddhist universality can serve emancipatory politics when mobilised from subaltern, anti-caste positions. This response asks whether Buddhism is inherently peaceful, examining the Kyoto School, which sharesthe Buddhist ontology of impermanence, emptiness, and relational selfhood with Ambedkar’s argument, yet remains complicit in wartime militarism. Drawing on Tristan Garcia’s theory of ‘us’, the paper traces how universalist claims can become dangerous: a collective claiming universality generates an internal ‘they’, subordinates particular ethics to that mission, and enables violence. The Kyoto School, itself an ‘inner they’ within Western universality, reproduced this by constructing Japan as the leader of a non-Western ‘us’, subordinating other Asians. Preventing this requires decoupling ‘us’ from the nation-state; engaged Buddhism’s self-negation offers a possible interruption.