The shock of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami prompted us to reflect upon many serious problems. In this laboratory we study two great thinkers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, to prepare ourselves to make fundamental observations on the crises of the modern world.

The seemingly self-evident fact that we are living in the world has not been fully brought into philosophical consideration. Heidegger's phenomenological ontology reexamined our factual ordinary "being-in-the-world". Arendt then articulated the active human life, dividing it into labor, work and action. Among these activities, action, as connected with speech, shows the political form of living together. Humans are animals that by nature act and speak. Political philosophy aims at gaining insight into the meaning of public discussion.

As natural beings human beings fabricate their unnatural, artificial world they live in and maintain. The disaster on March 11, 2011, showed us how fragile a home our world is and how important our intergenerational effort of maintaining it is. When the world is damaged, it can be a chance for us to learn lessons for the love of it.

Let us enjoy exposing ourselves to the traditions of philosophy and explore the possibilities of basic thinking.