Murphy Shimamoto

Contact

Email: murphy.shimamoto[at]gmail[dot]com

About

I achieved a first class honors undergraduate degree in International Social and Political Studies from University College London specializing in Political Theory and spent a successful year abroad at the University of Tokyo studying the Kyoto School of Philosophy and Heidegger.

My particular domains of interest are philosophy and film especially Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schmitt, Hobbes, and Rousseau in the former case and Tarkovsky, Tarr, von Trier, and Malick in the latter.

I also have varying degrees of familiarity with Spanish, French, and Japanese.

Writing

• Dogville: Theology and Theodicy
  On grace, sin, and divine judgement in Lars von Trier’s film.
  October 2026
• You Can See Everything
  On Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary and the limits of interpretation.
  October 2026
• A Time for Life and a Time for Death
  Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence and its reversal of Plato and St. Paul.
  April 2026
• Judgement or Compromise
  On Fichte’s separation of powers and the nullification crisis.
  January 2026
• How Kripke’s Wittgenstein argues that there are no meaning facts. A Summary
  Kripke’s sceptic on rule-following, and why finite cases cannot fix what we mean.
  January 2026
• Nishitani and Nietzsche: Doubt and Ironic Absurdity
  Nishitani’s attempt to discard Nietzsche and why we should not accept it.
  July 2025
• Nishida Kitaro’s Philosophical Middle Way
  How one Middle Way method runs through all of Nishida’s philosophy.
  May 2025
• Watsuji and Sōseki
  How Sōseki’s ethical individualism anticipates Watsuji’s ethics of ningen.
  January 2025
• How does Watsuji’s view of ningen challenge the meaning of an ethical standpoint, as theorized in Western philosophy?
  How Watsuji’s ningen challenges Western ethics built on individual consciousness.
  January 2025
• Why does Adorno’s analysis of the ‘culture industry’ play such a central part in his analysis of modern societies?
  How the culture industry stifles the capacity to conceive of the good life.
  April 2024
• War and Scarcity in Rousseau’s Nature
  Why scarcity in Rousseau’s state of nature leads to a natural state of war.
  December 2023

Movies

• Full list (1,147) ranked