Editor’s Words: Kyoto School, Everydayness, and the Logic of Social History

The current issue is a special one that examines themes related to everydayness and the logic of social history within the Kyoto School philosophy.The inspiration for this special issue comes from the growing interest among Kyoto School scholars in exploring how "everydayness"-the "ordinary condition of life"-reveals what it means to exist in the world.Everydayness, or to use the German word, Alltӓglichkeit, was first brought into vogue by Martin Heidegger who sought to undermine traditional metaphysics that tended to substantialize being and dichotomize the real. 1 Towards this end, Heidegger's double structure of Dasein sought to clarify how just being there in the world grounds the sphere of existence into "a way of life shared by members of the same community" (Haugeland, 2005, p. 423).If Heidegger's take on everydayness stands correct here, then the discourse of everydayness cannot be severed from the discourse of social history.It is important to bear in mind that many of the Kyoto School thinkers theorize social history as a kind of logic (ronri 論理) that articulates the endless structurization of the world's self-formation.What Heraclitus calls logos is the root source of the Kyoto School's probing of the unfolding of (social) historical life.