Watsuji Tetsurō

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Watsuji Tetsurō (1955)

Watsuji Tetsurō ( Japanese 和 辻 哲 郎 ); (Born March 1, 1889 in Himeji ; † December 26, 1960 ) was a Japanese philosopher who also worked on cultural and intellectual history topics.

Early years

Watsuji was born the son of a doctor in Himeji . In his youth he was interested in poetry and western literature. At times he was co-editor of a literary magazine and wrote his own poems and dramas. He took an interest in philosophy in high school, though his interest in literature lasted the rest of his life.

With his early writings (between 1913 and 1915) he made Søren Kierkegaard's work known in Japan. During this time he also worked with Friedrich Nietzsche . From 1918 onwards, Watsuji sees Western philosophy in a predominantly negative light, mainly because of the individualism it attests, and he criticizes its influence on Japanese thought. This directed his interest to the roots of Japanese culture and Japanese Buddhist art, especially his work on the Zen Buddhist Dōgen should be mentioned. In those years he was also influenced by Natsume Sōseki , the famous Japanese writer and contemporary of Watsuji.

academic career

In the early 1920s taught Watsuji at the University of Tokyo , at Hosei University , at the Keio University and at the Tsuda Eigaku-juku. At that time he also began to deal with hermeneutics .

In 1925 Watsuji became professor of ethics at the University of Kyoto , where he met the other leading Japanese philosophers of those years, Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime . He held the chair for ethics from 1934 to 1949.

The writings on ethics written during the Second World War are characterized by a tendency to attribute fundamental superiority to the Japanese approaches to understanding man, which supported the nationalistic and militaristic currents of the time. Watsuji later regretted what he said.

In 1955 Watsuji was awarded the Order of Culture .

Watsuji died in 1961 at the age of 71. He was buried in the cemetery of Tōkei-ji Temple . The Watsuji Tetsurō Culture Prize has been awarded annually since 1988 in his honor .

plant

Watsuji's three main works are the two-volume history of Japanese ethics (1954), the three-volume ethics ( Rinrigaku from 1937, 1942 and 1949) and Fudo (1935).

When working out his ethics , Watsuji shows himself to be strongly influenced by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his work Sein und Zeit . While Heidegger develops an existentialism in Being and Time that is strongly oriented towards the individual's own way of life, Watsuji tries to think that the individual is more integrated into the community by resorting to Japanese ideas about the relationship between the individual and the community. However, this again seems to result in one-sidedness, so that the phenomenon of history cannot be explained in the case of an individual completely absorbed in the community.

In Fudo, Watsuji develops the connection between climate and environmental factors on the one hand and human cultures on the other. He differentiates between three classes of cultures: monsoons, desert and meadow climates.

Fonts

  • 1961–1963: Watsuji Tetsurō Zenshū ( Tetsuro Watsuji Complete Edition ) 20 volumes, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo.

Translations into German

  • 1992: Fūdo - Wind and Earth. The connection between climate and culture . Translated by Dora Fischer-Barnicol and Okochi Ryogi. Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt, ISBN 3-534-11618-6 .
  • 2005: Ethics as a human science . Translated by Hans Martin Krämer. Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt, ISBN 3-534-17958-7 .
  • 2012: Herder's philosophy of history (from the forerunner of the modern philosophy of history. Vico and Herder , 1950). Translated and commented by Imanishi Kenji. In: Rainer Godel / Karl Menges (Hrsg.): Herder Yearbook / Herder Yearbook. Volume 11, pp. 203-229. Synchron, Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-939381-51-8 .

Translations into other western languages

  • 1961: Fūdo ( 風土 ). Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study . Translated by Geoffrey Bownas. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
  • 1969: Nihon Rinri Shisōshi. ( 日本 倫理 思想 史 ). Japanese Ethical Thought in the Noh Plays of the Muromachi Period . Translation of Chapter 4 by David A. Dilworth. In: Monumenta Nipponica 24: 4, pp. 467-498. preview
  • 1971: Nihon Rinri Shisōshi ( 日本 倫理 思想 史 ). The Significance of Ethics As the Study of Man . Translation of the introduction by David A. Dilworth. In: Monumenta Nipponica 26: 3/4, pp. 395-413. preview
  • 1973: El hombre y su ambiente . Translated by Anselmo Mataix. Castellote, Madrid 1973, ISBN 84-7259-023-X .
  • 1996: Nihon Rinri Shisōshi ( 日本 倫理 思想 史 ). Watsuji Tetsurō's Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan. Translation of the first volume, by Seisaku Yamamoto and Robert Carter. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
  • 1997: Several essays in La otra filosofía japonesa: antología . Vol. 2. Translated by Agustín Jacinto Zavala. Zamora, Mich .: El Colegio de Michoacan / Mexico, DF: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, ISBN 968-6959-55-6 .
  • 1998: Various essays in the Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy. by David Dilworth and Valdo Viglielmo with Agustín Jacinto Zavala. Greenwood Press 1998, ISBN 0-313-27433-9 .
  • 2005: Pellegrinaggio alle antiche chiese d'Italia . Translated by Oliviero Frattolillo. L'Epos, Palermo, ISBN 88-8302-276-9 .
  • 2006: Antropología del paisaje: climas, culturas y religiones . Translated by Juan Masiá Clavel. Sígueme, Salamanca, ISBN 84-301-1621-4
  • 2009: Men to perusona. ( 面 と ペ ル ソ ナ ). Mask and Persona . Translated by Carl M. Johnson
  • 2009: Gūzō Sūhai no Shinri. ( 偶像 崇 拝 の 心理 ). The Psychology of Idol Worship. Translated by Carl M. Johnson Online text edition

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David A. Dilworth, et al .: Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents. Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn .; quoted from Robert Carter: Watsuji Tetsurô : Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004.
  2. ↑ Michael F. Marra: Japanese hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 2002, pp. 76-88.
  3. ↑ "As a result, Watsuji's ethics deal with a one-sided determination of the relationship between the individual and the community, which suggests the conclusion of a substantialization of the community." Hans Peter Liederbach: Martin Heidegger in Watsuji Tetsuro's thinking. Iudicium, Munich 2001, p. 149.
  4. ↑ Hans Rainer Sepp, Ichirō Yamaguchi: Life as a Phenomenon: the Freiburg Phenomenology in East-West Dialogue. Königshausen & Neumann, 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3213-6 , p. 270ff.
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Watsuji is the family name, Tetsurō the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Watsuji, Tetsurō
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 和 辻 哲 郎 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Himeji
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1960