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| The Kyoto School of Philosophy |
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| at Kyoto University |
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| Historical background |
TheKyoto School (京都学派,Kyōto-gakuha) is the name given to the Japanese philosophical movement centered atKyoto University that assimilatedWestern philosophy and religious ideas and used them to reformulate religious and moral insights unique to the East Asian philosophical tradition.[1] However, it is also used to describe postwar scholars who have taught at the same university, been influenced by the foundational thinkers of Kyoto school philosophy, and who have developed distinctive theories of Japanese uniqueness. To disambiguate the term, therefore, thinkers and writers covered by this second sense appear underThe Kyoto University Research Centre for the Cultural Sciences.
Beginning roughly in 1913 withKitarō Nishida, it survived the serious controversy it garnered afterWorld War II to develop into a well-known and active movement. However, it is not a "school" of philosophy in the traditional sense of the phrase, such as with theFrankfurt School orPlato's Academy. Instead, the group of academics gathered around Kyoto University as ade facto meeting place. Its founder, Nishida, steadfastly encouraged independent thinking.
According to James Heisig, the name "Kyoto School" was first used in 1932 by a student of Nishida andHajime Tanabe.Jun Tosaka considered himself to be part of the 'Marxist left-wing' of the school.[2] Afterwards, the media and academic institutions outside Japan began to use the term. By the 1970s it had become a universally accepted term.
Masao Abe writes in his introduction to a new English translation of Nishida's magnum opus that if one thinks of philosophy in terms ofKant orHegel, then there is no philosophy taking place in Japan. But if it is instead thought of in the tradition carried out byAugustine andKierkegaard, then Japan has a rich philosophical history, composed of the great thinkersKūkai,Shinran,Dōgen, and others.[3]
The group of philosophers involved with the Kyoto School in its nearly 100-year history is a diverse one. Members often come from very different social backgrounds. At the same time, in the heat of intellectual debate they did not hesitate to criticise each other's work.
The following criteria roughly characterize the features of this school:
Generally, most were strongly influenced by the German philosophical tradition, especially the thought ofKant,Hegel,Nietzsche, andHeidegger. In addition, many employed their cultural resources in formulating their philosophy and bringing it to play to add to the philosophical enterprise.
While their work was not expressly religious it was informed significantly by it. For example,Tanabe andKeiji Nishitani wrote onChristianity andBuddhism and identified common elements between the religions.[4] For this reason, some scholars classify the intellectual products of the school as "religious philosophy."
Although the group was fluid and largely informal, traditionally whoever occupied the Chair of the Department of Modern Philosophy at the University of Kyoto was considered its leader. Nishida was the first, from 1913 to 1928. Hajime Tanabe succeeded him until the mid-1930s. By this time, Nishitani had graduated from Kyoto University, studied withMartin Heidegger for two years inGermany, and returned to a teaching post since 1928. From 1955 to 1963, Nishitani officially occupied the Chair. Since his departure, leadership of the school crumbled — turning the movement into a verydecentralized group of philosophers with common beliefs and interests.
The significance of the group continues to grow, especially in American departments of religion and philosophy. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a growing interest inEast/West dialogue, especially inter-faith scholarship.Masao Abe traveled to both coasts of theUnited States on professorships and lectured to many groups on Buddhist-Christian relations.
The Kyoto School of Philosophy also influenced education in Japan, giving rise to the Kyoto School of Education. Nishida had various writings such as "On Education" (1933) and deeply influenced his student, philosopher of education Kimura Motomori.[5] Kimura in turn taught Mori Akira (also the student of Tanabe), who connected the Kyoto School's ideas to pragmatism and moral education. Through these figures, the ideas of the Kyoto School spread to philosophy of education and even educational practice.[6]
AlthoughDaisetz Teitaro Suzuki was closely connected to the Kyoto School and in some ways critical to the development of thought that occurred there — he personally knew Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani — he is not considered a true member of the group.[7]
Kitaro Nishida, the school's founder, is most known for his groundbreaking workAn Inquiry into the Good and later for his elucidation of the "logic ofbasho" (Japanese: 場所; usually translated as "place," or the Greek τόποςtopos). This brought him fame outside Japan and contributed largely to the attention later paid to philosophers from the Kyoto School.
Nishida's work is notable for a few reasons. Chief among them is how much they are related to the German tradition of philosophy sinceSchopenhauer. The logic of basho is a non-dualistic 'concrete' logic, meant to overcome the inadequacy of the subject-object distinction essential to the subject logic ofAristotle and thepredicate logic ofKant, through the affirmation of what he calls the 'absolutely contradictory self-identity' — a dynamic tension of opposites that, unlike the dialectical logic of Hegel, does not resolve in a synthesis. Rather, it defines its proper subject by maintaining the tension between affirmation and negation as opposite poles or perspectives.
Nishitani describes East Asian philosophy as something very different from what the Western tradition ofDescartes,Leibniz orHume would indicate.
It is 'intuitive and practical,' with its emphasis on religious aspects of experience not lending themselves readily to theoretical description. True wisdom is to be distinguished from intellectual understanding of the kind appropriate to the sciences. The 'appropriation' of Nishida's thought,...'embraces difficulties entirely different from those of intellectual understanding'...and those who 'pretend to understand much but do not really understand, no matter how much they intellectually understand' are the object of his scorn.[1]
Nishida wroteThe Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview, developing more fully the religious implications of his work and philosophy through "Absolute Nothingness," which "contains its own absolute self-negation within itself."[8] By this Nishida means that while the divine is dynamically paradoxical, it should not be construed aspantheism ortranscendent theism.
Nishitani and Abe spent much of their academic lives dedicated to this development of nothingness and the Absolute, leading on occasion topanentheism.[citation needed]
Keiji Nishitani, one of Nishida's main disciples, became the doyen in thepost-war period. Nishitani's works, such as hisReligion and Nothingness, primarily dealt with the Western notion ofnihilism, inherited fromNietzsche, and religious interpretation ofnothingness, as found in the Buddhist idea ofsunyata and the specifically Zen Buddhist concept ofmu.
Shizuteru Ueda was a disciple ofKeiji Nishitani.
Today, there is a great deal of critical research into the school's role before and during theSecond World War.
Hajime Tanabe bears the greatest brunt of the criticism for bringing his work on the "Logic of Species" into Japanese politics, which was used to buttress the militarist project to formulateimperialist ideology andpropaganda. Tanabe's notion is that the logical category of "species" and nation are equivalent, and each nation or "species" provides a fundamental set of characteristics which define and determine the lives and outlooks of those who participate in it.
