Kyoto School

History

Masao Abe writes in his introduction to a new English translation of Nishida's magnum opus that if one thinks of philosophy in terms of Kant or Hegel, then there is no philosophy taking place in Japan. But if it is instead thought of in the tradition carried out by Augustine and Kierkegaard, then Japan has a rich philosophical history, composed of the great thinkers Kūkai, Shinran, Dōgen, and others.

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:

1. Teaching at Kyoto University or at a nearby affiliated school.
2. Sharing some basic assumptions about using Asian thought in the framework of Western philosophical tradition.
3. Introducing and rationally investigating the meaning of "nothingness" and its importance in the history of philosophical debate.
4. Expanding on the philosophical vocabulary introduced by Nishida.

Generally, most were strongly influenced by the German philosophical tradition, especially the thought of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. 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, Hajime Tanabe and Keiji Nishitani wrote on Christianity and Buddhism and identified common elements between the religions. 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 with Martin Heidegger for two years in Germany, 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 very decentralized group of philosophers with common beliefs and interests.

Significance of its notable members

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 in East/West dialogue, especially inter-faith scholarship. Masao Abe traveled to both coasts of the United 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. 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.

Although Daisetsu Teitarō 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.

Tetsurō Watsuji became a lecturer at Kyoto Imperial University, joining Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji. While Watsuji joined their department, he is not typically considered a member of the Kyoto School owing to the intellectual independence in his work.

Kitarō Nishida

Kitarō Nishida, the school's founder, is most known for his groundbreaking work An Inquiry into the Good and later for his elucidation of the "logic of basho" (Japanese: 場所; usually translated as "place," or the Greek τόπος topos). 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 since Schopenhauer. 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 of Aristotle and the predicate logic of Kant, 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 of Descartes, Leibniz or Hume 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.

Nishida wrote The 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." By this Nishida means that while the divine is dynamically paradoxical, it should not be construed as pantheism or transcendent theism.

Nishitani and Abe spent much of their academic lives dedicated to this development of nothingness and the absolute.

Hajime Tanabe

Keiji Nishitani

Keiji Nishitani, one of Nishida's main disciples, became the doyen in the post-war period. Nishitani's works, such as his Religion and Nothingness, primarily dealt with the Western notion of nihilism, inherited from Nietzsche, and religious interpretation of nothingness, as found in the Buddhist idea of śūnyatā and the specifically Zen Buddhist concept of mu.

Tokuryū Yamauchi

Yamauchi Tokuryū was a disciple of Kitarō Nishida.

Masao Abe

Shizuteru Ueda

Shizuteru Ueda was a disciple of Keiji Nishitani.

Eshin Nishimura

Criticism

Today, there is a great deal of critical research into the school's role before and during the Second 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 formulate imperialist ideology and propaganda. 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.

Members

• Kitarō Nishida: 1870–1945 (KU Philosophy Dept. 1910–13, Chair 1913–28)
• Hajime Tanabe: 1885–1962 (KU Philosophy Dept.?, Chair, 1928–35?)
• Tomonaga Sanjūrō
• Keiji Nishitani: 1900–1990 (KU Philosophy Dept. 1928–35, Chair 1935–63)
• Kuki Shūzō
• Masao Abe
• Miki Kiyoshi
• Jun Tosaka
• Hisamatsu Shin'ichi
• Shizuteru Ueda
• Saneshige Komaki
• Tokuryū Yamauchi
• Takeuchi Yoshinori