Background
Hajime Tanabe was born on February 3, 1885 in Tokyo, Japan. His father was the school principal of Kaisei Academy.
(A milestone in Japan's post-war philosophical thought and...)
A milestone in Japan's post-war philosophical thought and a dramatic turning point in Tanabe's own philosophy, Philosophy as Metanoetics calls for nothing less than a complete and radical rethinking of the philosophical task itself. It is a powerful, original work, showing vast erudition in all areas of both Eastern and Western thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520069781/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(Volume 3, Japanese Edition. In this collection of seven ...)
Volume 3, Japanese Edition. In this collection of seven essays on the "logic of species," Tanabe Hajime, a major figure in the Kyoto School, confronts the philosophy of his mentor, Nishida Kitaro, head-on as he sets forth his own systematic logic and lays the groundwork for his later work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1539726967/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(Volume 6, Japanese Edition. In this second collection of...)
Volume 6, Japanese Edition. In this second collection of six essays on the “logic of species” published between 1940 and 1949, Tanabe Hajime examines the consequences of his new logic and attempts to defend it against postwar critiques.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1987793609/?tag=2022091-20
2018
元 田辺
Hajime Tanabe was born on February 3, 1885 in Tokyo, Japan. His father was the school principal of Kaisei Academy.
He enrolled in the university of Tokyo first as a natural sciences student, then moved to literature and philosophy. After graduation, he worked in Tohoku University as lecturer. He spent two years studying in Germany at Berlin University and then the University of Freiburg from 1922-1924. At Freiburg, he studied under Edmund Husserl and was tutored by the young Heidegger.
After graduating from university, Kitaro Nishida invited Tanabe to teach at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University). After Nishida's retirement from teaching, Tanabe succeeded him. Tanabe accepted the position of Associate Professor at Kyoto University in 1919.
Tanabe wrote his major early work, Sūri tetsugaku kenkyū ("A Study of the Philosophy of Mathematics", 1925), which made him the leading Japanese philosopher of science.
In the late 1920s and into the 1930s, he developed "the logic of the species" - the "species" signified the nation as a historical mediating force between the individual and mankind. Tanabe departed from Nishida’s "logic of field," which was thought to emphasize the individual to the detriment of the historical aspect of humanity.
During the Japanese expansion and war effort, Tanabe worked with Nishida and others to maintain the right for free academic expression. During the war years, however, Tanabe wrote and published little, perhaps reflecting the moral turmoil that he attests to in his monumental post-war work, Philosophy as Metanoetics.
He lived for another eleven years and died in 1962 in Kita-Karuizawa, Japan.
(A milestone in Japan's post-war philosophical thought and...)
1990(Volume 1, Japanese Edition. )
2016(Volume 3, Japanese Edition. In this collection of seven ...)
2016(Volume 6, Japanese Edition. In this second collection of...)
2018Tanabe’s interest in philosophy was founded upon a thorough background in mathematics and the natural sciences and a consequent search for an approach to the sciences based on philosophical principles. The result was a constant stress on the need for practical application in the study of philosophy.
Tanabe’s early focus on neo-Kantian philosophy was more a reflection of the prevailing trend of the times than of a deep-rooted affinity and particularly following his return to Kyoto in 1927 after a period of study of phenomenology in Germany, there is increasing evidence in his writings of a move away from German idealism towards the study of dialectics. In particular, influenced by Nishida’s focus on "absolute nothingness", Tanabe came to stress the concept of an "absolute dialectic", developing this into his own philosophical system based on the theory known as the "logic of the species" in which "the species" represented the nation as a historical mediating force between the individual and mankind.
Defeat in the Pacific War, which happened to coincide with Tanabe’s retirement from Kyoto Imperial University, exercised a profound influence on the direction of his research, subsequent publications evidencing a heightened political awareness and a greater urgency in his advocacy of peaceful reform and democracy for Japan. At the same time, there is evidence of criticism of his own earlier philosophical methodology for its tendency to make absolutes of what he called "species" and a move away from Buddhism to an increasingly Christian perspective, as suggested by the author's self-categorization as a "werdender Christ".