I am an associate professor in the philosophy department at Boston College. I work primarily in contemporary Japanese philosophy (esp. Watsuji, Nishida, and Kimura), phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics (esp. Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and the early Heidegger), and cross-cultural philosophy.

I grew up in New Orleans and later moved to a small town in northern Louisiana to board at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA). During my undergraduate studies at Emory University I spent a year at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea studying classical (pre-Qin) Chinese philosophy and Sŏn (Zen) Buddhist thought. This experience also led me to develop a serious interest in Japanese philosophy, and I subsequently moved to Tokyo to study Japanese. After several years of studying and working in Japan I returned to the U.S., where I completed a dissertation on the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Nishida Kitarō at The Pennsylvania State University. For more about my work, please see my CV and the research and teaching pages on this site.

E-mail: david.johnson.8 [at] bc.edu