China & East Asia · 1885–1962
Tanabe Hajime
Kyoto School philosopher and Nishida’s critic
Criticised Nishida’s “place of nothingness” as too contemplative and proposed a “logic of species” centred on social mediation; after the war he called for “metanoetics”, philosophy as repentance.
Life and thought
Tanabe Hajime, born in Tokyo in 1885, studied mathematics and then philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University and wrote on the philosophy of science. Nishida brought him to Kyoto in 1919; in 1922–24 he studied in Germany, where he met Husserl and the young Heidegger. He succeeded Nishida in Kyoto and from 1930 openly criticised him. During the war his philosophy was used to support the state, and in 1945 he retired to a mountain village, where he wrote a book of self-criticism. He died in 1962.
His “logic of species” argued that individuals and humanity are always mediated by a “species”, a concrete community such as a nation; he meant it as social philosophy, but it lent itself to wartime nationalism. In Philosophy as Metanoetics (1946) he concluded that reason, pushed to its limits, breaks down, and that philosophy must pass through repentance (zange), relying on an “Other-power” in the spirit of Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism, to be reborn. This turn made him a partner in later Buddhist–Christian dialogue and a model of a philosopher confronting his own complicity.
Works
Argued against
1870–1945Nishida KitarōBrought to Kyoto by Nishida, Tanabe openly criticised his senior’s philosophy of place from 1930.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1882–1936Moritz SchlickPhysicist-philosopher who led the Vienna Circle1889–1976Martin HeideggerGerman philosopher of Being, compromised by his Nazi party membership1889–1951Ludwig WittgensteinViennese-born Cambridge philosopher who overturned his own first philosophy1891–1956B. R. AmbedkarDalit leader, jurist and chief architect of India’s constitution1891–1937Antonio GramsciItalian communist leader who wrote his major work in Mussolini’s prisons1891–1970Rudolf CarnapVienna Circle’s great system-builder, later in Chicago and Los AngelesOn the record
Brought to Kyoto by Nishida, Tanabe openly criticised his senior’s philosophy from 1930.
Tanabe’s 1930 essay “Requesting Instruction from Professor Nishida” opened his public criticism of Nishida’s philosophy of place.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Kyoto School”