Tanabe Hajime

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Tanabe Hajime ( Japanese 田邊 元 ; born February 3, 1885 in Tokyo ; † April 29, 1962 ibid) is a Japanese philosopher , a student of Shinran , Kitarō Nishida and Martin Heidegger .

Life

Tanabe, the westernmost among the philosophers of modern Japan, is a student of the Tokyo philosopher Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945), whose important successor he is also, and Raphael von Koeber (1848-1923). In 1904 he began studying mathematics at the Imperial University of Tokyo , which he soon gave up in favor of philosophy. In 1913 he begins lecturing on natural philosophy and philosophy of science (based on Kant ) at the Imperial University of Tōhoku . In 1919, through the mediation of his Japanese teacher, he was appointed an assistant professor at the Imperial University of Kyoto .

From 1922 to 1924 he stayed in Germany, during the time he worked at the universities in Berlin with Alois Riehl (1844–1924), in Heidelberg with Heinrich Rickert (1836–1936) and in Freiburg Breisgau with Edmund Husserl (1859– 1938) studied. In Freiburg he met Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Oskar Becker (1889–1964) as Husserl's assistants.

Tanabe reports that when he came to Germany he was “dissatisfied” with him. As he writes in his fundamental essay on death dialectics in the Heidegger Festschrift of 1959, it lay in the fact that in Western philosophy, in contrast to Eastern philosophy, it was “relatively rare” that death was the fundamental problem of the philosophical thinking has become questionable. This already indicates a point in which Western philosophy cannot agree with our East Asian thinking. ”(P. 93) He continues that“ the thought of the expansion and development of power of human life, which underlies all modern thinking and it prevails "to Japanese thought as" strange, empty talk "appeared. He emphatically refers to the fact, which is religiously conveyed to every Japanese (Buddhist) consciousness, that "thinking of the inevitable, enigmatic death makes the transience and frailty [of human] life [us] through the marrow and bone". This dissatisfaction, which Tanabe speaks of, he carried around with him since he began “to study Western philosophy” (p. 94). When he was given the opportunity in Freiburg Breisgau in the early twenties in 1922 and 1923 to attend lectures by the then private lecturer Martin Heidegger, he was “deeply moved that in his [Heidegger's] thinking a reflection on death became the center of philosophy has become". This reflection on death, emphasizes Tanabe, supports the philosophy “from the ground up”. He explains that through Heidegger's lectures he had the impression “that precisely here a way to the philosophy I was looking for has been found. So I only learned the way of philosophizing through Professor Heidegger. In this sense he is my actual teacher. "

In 1926 Tanabe was appointed as Nishida's successor to the chair at Kyoto University. In the 1940s (1931–1940), the main area of ​​Tanabe’s thought efforts was Hegel’s philosophy , which was paradigmatically reflected in a seminal essay ( On Hegel’s teaching from judgment . Hegel studies. Vol. 6. pp. 211–229. In collaboration with the Fink and Heidegger student Hartmut Buchner, who taught in Japan from 1958 to 1962, was translated by the Kyotian Tanabe student Kōichi Tsujimura ) could only be made accessible to a German audience in 1971. In 1945 he resigned from his professorship when he had reached the age limit; in the meantime Tanabe appears in the consciousness of the philosophical professional world as the leading representative of the Nishida School , he leaves the university. After the Japanese capitulation, Tanabe retreats to the mountains, where he ponders in seclusion about the possibilities and conditions of a metanoetic philosophizing.This reflection begins the second phase of his philosophy, the detailed reception of which is still pending in Western philosophy.

In 1950 Tanabe was awarded the Order of Culture by the Emperor .

plant

East-oriented phase - logic of species

Hajime Tanabe stands in the religious-philosophical tradition of the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism (100 BC - 300 AD), a second historical development phase of Buddhism , as it was later by the Japanese thinkers Shinran (1173-1263) and Eihei Dogen Kigen Zenji (1200-1253) were understood and transmitted. Standing in this tradition, he emerged in a first (eastern) phase of his philosophy as a representative of a philosophy of absolute nothing . According to his claim, his philosophy should present itself as a link between Eastern and Western thinking. As a student and successor of Nishida, who is committed to his spiritual legacy, he points to a “weakness” (Brüll) in his philosophy, which he seeks to overcome in his thinking. Although Nishida, Tanabe explains, in his systematic development of a thinking of absolute nothingness, as a synthesis of Western philosophy of being and Eastern nothingness doctrine, tries to elevate this into a pure experience, he remains attached to the intuition of the moment because, according to Tanabe, an intuitive apprehension of the nothingness of itself, conceived as an absolute, would fail.

Western-oriented phase - metanoetic philosophy

The word metanoetic is a three-part Greek compound that comes from the adverb μετα (behind, after), the verb νοεω (1 notice, notice, perceive; 2 recognize; 3 see; 4 understand; 5 consider, ponder, think, consider) and the postfixum -ικος (-ικη, -ικον; denotes an affiliation). The nouns νοος and νους, derived from the verb νοεω, mean 1 meaning, contemplation, thinking power, understanding, reason, spirit, insight, prudence; 2 mind, heart, disposition, way of thinking; 3 Thought, opinion, desire, intention, will. As understanding, reason, cleverness, insight, spirit they have entered both the philosophical and the theological occidental world of concepts. The newly formed term metanoëtics, which was first used by the religious scholar Karl Francke (Metanoëtics. The science of thinking changed by redemption. Leipzig 1913), experienced an analogous education due to the already existing and used philosophical concepts of the Noëtic and the Dianoëtic (s. Klaus Oehler: The doctrine of Noëtischen and Dianoëtischen thinking in Plato and Aristotle. A contribution to the investigation of the history of the consciousness problem in the antiquity. Munich 1962).

The self-formation of the word metanoetics, which is in the philosophical and religious-philosophical (Francke) sense of the word, can therefore be described as reflecting on Tanabe's endeavors, as it stands in this disciplinary context of a noetic (intellectual) thinking and a dianoetic (rational) thinking, that encounters an affiliation to a purely transmundan something and tries to emphasize it, which is either spatially behind or temporally behind the human understanding or a human reason (spirit) proceeding towards insight. For this reason, it is not to be confused with the religious-philosophical concept of a μετανοια - change of opinion, repentance, penance (from μετανοεω - change one's mind, repent, repent, also μεταγνοια, μεταγνωσις), since its meanings are theologically different in the course of the urn Transforming thought through the corpus novi testamenti graece into a change of mind, repentance, conversion, whose Christian practice remains attached to the world.

Philosophically, it could be emphatically said that through another, in ignorance of Francke's, East Asian re-creation of the metanoetical, reference is made to something behind (spatially) every human insight or after (temporally) every human understanding, which is either God or nothing and can be brought to concept, language and development. In this sense it seems logically logical that the philosophical program of a metanoetics refers to an “absolute nothing” (as opposed to and distinct from a merely “mundane nothing”).

In summary, it can be said that in Tanabe's unintentional re-creation of the term metanoetics, as he presents it in his work Philosophy as metanoetics , the accent emphasis on a (probably to be understood temporally in the Heidegger sense) claim of a possible ability of insight of the human being, which, if All of his worldly deeds, actions, and projects have come to a final end, put him in front of an “absolute nothing”, which is his death, in whose “bearing” (jap. nin) the resurrection is to be found and is ready for him.

literature

Primary literature

All of Tanabe's publications up to 1955 were published in Japanese.

  • Tanabe Hajime: The Frontier of Logism in Epistemology . 1914.
  • Tanabe Hajime: The New Science . 1915.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Kant's Teleology . 1924.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics . 1925.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Logic of Dialectics . 1927.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Hegel's absolute idealism . 1931.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Hegel's Philosophy and Dialectics . Essays. Tokyo 1931.
  • Tanabe Hajime: On Hegel's Doctrine of Judgment . [1931] In: Hegel studies. Edited by Friedhelm Nicolin u. Otto Pöggeler. Vol. 6. Bonn 1971. 408 pp. - 211-229.
  • Tanabe Hajime: The Logic of Social Being . 1934.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Illuminating the meaning of the logic of species . 1937.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Philosophy as Metanoetics . 1946. [After Laube Tanabe's main work, which is a fundamental analysis of modern Japanese philosophy with Socrates (469–399 BC), Plato (428–348 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC) , Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), Descartes (1596–1650), Pascal (1632–1662), Kant (1724–1804), Fichte (1762–1814), Hegel (1170–1831), Schelling (1775–1854) , Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche (1844–1900), Husserl (1859–1938) and Heidegger (1889–1976)]
  • Tanabe Hajime: Existence, Love and Practice . 1947.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Dialectic of the Logic of Species . Essays. 1934-1940. 1947.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Accountability of Christianity . 1948.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Introduction to Philosophy . The basic problems of philosophy. 1949.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Valéry's philosophy of art . 1951.
  • Tanabe Hajime: The Historical Development of Mathematical Principles . 1954.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Dialectics of the Philosophy of Relativity . 1955.
  • Tanabe Hajime. The logic of the species as dialectics . From the Japanese v. David A. Dilworth et al. Taira Sato. In: Monumenta Nipponica. Studies on Japanese culture, past and present. Vol. 24.3. New York 1959. pp. 273-288.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Death Dialectics . [From the Japanese v. Koichi Tsujimura et al. Hartmut Buchner] In: Martin Heidegger on his seventieth birthday. Festschrift. Edited by Günther Neske. Pfullingen 1959. 348 pp. 93-133.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Memento mori . In: God in Japan. Impetus for discussion with Japanese philosophers, theologians and writers. Edited by Yagi Seiichi et al. Ulrich Luz. Munich 1973. 216 pp - 113-126.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Philosophy as metanoetics . From the Japanese v. Takeuchi Yoshinori, Valdo H. Viglielmo u. James W. Heisig. Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture. Edited by James W. Heisig. Vol. 5. Berkeley 1986. LXII, 316 S. [According to Laube, the English translation is "not reliable"]
  • Tanabe Hajime: Attempt to clarify the meaning of the logic of the species . In: The Philosophy of the Kyôto School. Texts and introduction. Ed. U. a. v. Ryosuke Ohashi. 2., ext. u. with a new introduction vers. 2011 edition. Worlds of Philosophy. Vol. 2. Freiburg Breisgau 2011. 548 pp. 137-182.
  • Tanabe Hajime: Valéry's philosophy of art . Cape. 4: The limit of the poem "The young Parze" and how to overcome it. In: The Philosophy of the Kyôto School. Texts and introduction. Ed. U. a. v. Ryosuke Ohashi. 2., ext. u. with a new introduction vers. 2011 edition. Worlds of Philosophy. Vol. 2. Freiburg Breisgau 2011. 548 pp. 184-211.

Secondary literature

General

  • Max Walleser : The Buddhist philosophy in its historical development . 4 vols. Heidelberg 1904–1927. [Vol. 1: The philosophical basis of older Buddhism. 1904. XII, 148 pp. - Vol. 2: The Middle Teaching of Nagarjuna. According to the Tibetan version. 1911. VIII, 188 pp. - Vol. 3: The Middle Teaching of Nagarjuna. According to the Chinese version. 1912. XIV, 192 pp. - Vol. 4: The sects of ancient Buddhism. VIII, 94 pp.]
  • Karl Florenz : The historical sources of the Shinto religion . From the old Japanese u. Chinese transl. u. declared Sources of the history of religion . Group 9: China, Japan. Vol. 7. Göttingen 1919. XII, 470 pp.
  • Otto Rosenberg: The Problems of Buddhist Philosophy . From the Russian v. E. Rosenberg. Materials for teaching Buddhism. Vol. 7/8. Heidelberg 1924. XVI, 288 pp.
  • Oscar Benl u. Horst Hammitzsch : Japanese spirit world . From myth to the present. Spirit of the Orient. o. Bd. Baden-Baden 1956. 420 pp.
  • Alfonso Verdú: Abstraction and Intuition as Paths to Truth in Yoga and Zen . A contribution to the phenomenology and metaphysics of non-Christian mysticism. Epimeleia. Vol. 1. Munich 1965. 310 pp.
  • Lydia Brüll: The traditional Japanese philosophy and its problems in the reception of the occidental-western . In: Bochum yearbook for East Asia research. [Vol. 1] Bochum 1978. pp. 319-347.
  • Lydia Brüll: East Asian Philosophy . New ways to research. In: Saeculum. Universal History Yearbook. Vol. 29.2. Cologne 1978. pp. 173-189.
  • Toshihiko Izutsu : Philosophy of Zen Buddhism . [Toward a philosophy of Zen Buddhism] From the English v. D. Rosenstein. Rowohlt's German encyclopedia. Vol. 388. Reinbek 1979. 156 pp.
  • Lydia Brüll: On the development of Japanese philosophy . In: Japan Handbook. Edited by Horst Hammitzsch in collaboration. m. Lydia Brüll, with co. Ulrich Goch. 2. unchangeable On. 1984. Stuttgart 1990. XVIII S. u. 2,610 col. - col. 1,295 - 1,318.
  • Japan manual . Edited by Horst Hammitzsch in collaboration. m. Lydia Brüll, with co. Ulrich Goch. 3rd edition 1990. Stuttgart 1990. XVIII, 1.814 pp.

Hajime Tanabe

  • Karl Francke: Metanoetics . The science of salvation altered thinking. Leipzig 1913. 170 pp.
  • Minoru Inaba: On the philosophy of Tanabe Hajime . In: Oriens Extremus. Magazine for the language, art and culture of the countries of the Far East. Vol. 13 Wiesbaden 1966. pp. 180-190.
  • Mikio Kuroki: The question of God in modern Japanese philosophy . Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime. In: The Question of God in Modern Japan. Edited by East Asia Institute. Bonn 1976. pp. 107-139.
  • Johannes Laube : Western and Eastern Heritage in Hajime Tanabe's Philosophy . In: New journal for systematic theology and philosophy of religion. Vol. 20. H. 1. Berlin 1978. pp. 1-15.
  • Johannes Laube: The “absolute dialectic” by Hajime Tanabe . In: New journal for systematic theology and philosophy of religion. Vol. 20. H. 3. Berlin 1978. pp. 278-293.
  • Johannes Laube: The meaning of gyo (practice) according to the Buddhist theologian Shinran and the philosopher Tanabe . In: European Studies of Japan. Edited by Ian Nish et al. Charles Dunn. Tenterden 1979. XII, 348 pp - 105-110.
  • Johannes Laube: Hajime Tanabe's experience of the “turn from death to life” in the years 1941–1944 . In: Journal for Mission Studies and Religious Studies. Vol. 63. H. 2. Münster 1979. pp. 119-128.
  • Johannes Laube: On the religious-philosophical significance of the “metanoetics” of the Japanese philosopher Hajime Tanabe . In: Journal for Mission Studies and Religious Studies. Vol. 653. H. 2. Münster 1981. pp. 121-138.
  • Johannes Laube: The interpretation of the Kyogyoshinsho Shinran by Hajime Tanabe . In: Journal for Mission Studies and Religious Studies. Vol. 65. H. 4. Münster 1979. pp. 277-293.
  • Johannes Laube: Critique of the “Logic of Species” by Hajime Tanabe . First part. In: New journal for systematic theology and philosophy of religion. Vol. 23 H. 3. Berlin 1981. pp. 297-318.
  • Johannes Laube: Critique of the “Logic of Species” by Hajime Tanabe . Second part. In: New journal for systematic theology and philosophy of religion. Vol. 24 H. 1. Berlin 1982. pp. 104-118.
  • Johannes Laube: Dialectic of Absolute Mediation . Hajime Tanabe's religious philosophy as a contribution to the “competition of love” between Buddhism and Christianity. With a preface v. Yoshinori Takeuchi. Freiburg Breisgau 1984. 336 pp.
  • Ryōsuke Ōhashi : On the philosophy of the Kyoto school . In: Journal for Philosophical Research. Vol. 40. H. 1. Meisenheim Glan 1968. pp. 121-134.
  • Lydia Brüll: The Japanese Philosophy . An introduction. Orientalist introductions to the subject, results and perspectives of the individual areas. o. Bd. Darmstadt 1989. XIV, 214 pp. [The dialectic of absolute mediation in Tanabe Hajime. Pp. 169-179.]
  • Hans-Joachim Koch: Amor Fati with Friedrich Nietzsche and Hajime Tanabe . A cross-cultural comparison. Gladenbach 1990. 88 pp.
  • Junko Hamada: Japanese Philosophy after 1868 . Handbook of Oriental Studies. Edited by Bertold Spuler. Dept. 5: Japan. Edited by Horst Hammitzsch. Vol. 5. Leiden 1994. VIII, 188 pp. [Tanabe Hajime and the logic of species. Pp. 56-60; Tanabe Hajime and the philosophy of metanoetics. Pp. 97-100]
  • Makoto Ozaki: Religion and politics in negative meditation . In: Studies in interreligious dialogue. Edited by the Faculty of the Catholic University in Leuven (Belgium). Vol. 8. Löwen 1998. pp. 19-34.
  • Makoto Ono: The term death in Shinran and Heidegger In: Future human being. Ethics between East and West. Edited by Ralf Elm. Writings of the Center for European Integration Research. Vol. 55. Baden-Baden 2003. 526 pp. 171-207.
  • Johannes Laube: Tanabe Hajime's philosophy as metanoetics - a “negative theology”? Introduction and translation. First part. In: Japonica Humboldtiana. Yearbook of the Mori Ôgai Memorial Hall Berlin Humboldt University. Wiesbaden 2008. pp. 152-209. ( online )

Web links

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Tanabe is the family name, Hajime the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Tanabe, Hajime
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 田邊 元 (Japanese, Kyūjitai); 田 辺 元 (Japanese, Shinjitai)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Tokyo
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1962
Place of death Tokyo