Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962)

Tanabe Hajime was a central figure of the so-called Kyoto School, and is generally acknowledged to be one of the
most important philosophers of modern Japan. He held Kant in high esteem, and used a Neo-Kantian critical
methodology in his early studies in epistemology. In the 1920s he was chiefly influenced by Nishida Kitarō’s
original cosmological system. He adapted Nishida’s idea of ‘absolute nothingness’ to political situations and, in
so doing, contributed much to establishing the foundations of what became the most influential philosophical
school in Japan up until the end of the Second World War.

In 1919, Tanabe was appointed associate professor under Nishida Kitarō at Kyoto University. In 1927 he was
promoted to full professor, replacing Nishida soon after. In 1945 he retired to Kitakaruizawa, Gunma-ken, and
dedicated his later life to meditation and writing.
Under the influence of Nishida, Tanabe wished to develop his own cosmological system. This desire grew stronger
during his stay in Germany from 1922 to 1924, where he studied under Edmund Husserl at Freiburg University
and became friends with Martin Heidegger. Although he did not accept much of their phenomenological method,
he was stimulated by Heidegger’s intention to remodel phenomenology into a cosmology by assimilating
existentialism. Returning to Japan, he began to turn his interpretation of Kantian philosophy into a systematic
cosmology. The fruit of these efforts was his work Kanto no Mokutekiron (Kant’s Teleology), published in 1924,
in which he characterized Kantian reflective judgement as the faculty of a comprehensive teleological world view
(see Kant, I.).
Tanabe’s attention then turned to dialectics. He held Hegelian dialectics to be just the logical method that could
give concrete shape to a teleological comprehension of the world (see Hegel, G.W.F.). According to him, the
formula ‘thesis-antithesis- synthesis’ represents the process through which teleologically driven objects gradually
realize themselves. The final aim of the process indicates the teleological perfection of the world. To this he
applied the term ‘absolute nothingness’, chiefly on the grounds that this term describes the activity of dialectical
negation. Thus ‘absolute nothingness’ took on an active meaning in his understanding, where it had been originally
used by Nishida in a meditative, introspective way. Tanabe described his steps to a thorough acceptance of
dialectics in his work Hegerutetsugaku to Benshoho (Hegel’s Philosophy and Dialectics) in 1932.
In 1934 Tanabe introduced a new notion, ‘the logic of species’, the novelty of which earned him a reputation as an
original thinker. As he understood it, the triad of genus-species-individual was simply a variant of the triad of
propositional logic, universal- particular-singular, as it is applied to human existence. In his logic of species,
therefore, Tanabe was concerned with giving a new priority to the particular in human experience.
In its methodological structure, the logic of species was an attempt to apply dialectics to the real world. The
individual is determined decisively by the species; conversely, the former seeks of its own free will to determine
the latter. The two face each other as opposites in tension. Each is irrational and selfish in that each immediately
affirms its own being, but through mutual interpenetration they can be purified of their irrational qualities and
raised to the level of rationality. The resultant synthesis is the genus. Thus the individual and the species are
synthesized in the genus; that is, a particular society is ‘generalized’. Tanabe lumped together these results in the
notion of the ‘state’. The state as the realization of the universal had an important position in his thought. It was
only natural for him to take the next steps towards a theory of the state, identifying the dialectical process with the
perpetual self-renewal of the polity. Among his articles during this period, great importance can be attached to the
one entitled ‘Kokkatekisonzai no Ronri’ (The Logic of National Existence), which appeared in 1939.
Tanabe’s theory of the state was in its basic structure an admittedly rationalistic one. Pivoting on a dynamic in
which ethnic unity is ‘generalized’ into rationality through the activity of free individuals, it offered the ideal of
the nation-state. It was Tanabe’s intention to give the Japanese state a rational, democratic basis; in this way, he set
himself to check the irrationalistic, warlike modes of thinking. Obviously his efforts failed, chiefly due to the
confusion of the ideal state with the real Japanese state. Tanabe watched as his own words were twisted by the
nationalists into a justification for military aggression and, with pangs of conscience at this turn of events, his
thinking came to a standstill.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)
 After December 1941, Tanabe was no longer able to publish any philosophical work. It was only at the end of the
war, with Zangedo toshiteno Tetsugaku (Philosophy as Metanoetics), that his struggles bore fruit and released his
thinking from its predicament. This work is often characterized as Tanabe’s ‘Confessions’, for he described in it
his experience of personal salvation. In despair over his philosophy up to that time, he had abandoned all attempts
at realization under his own power and repented his errors. At this point he came to the awareness of returning to
life by the grace of a transcendent Other-power. Since the new form of his philosophy was based on this
experience, he named it ‘metanoetics’. Thereafter he concentrated on religious thinking.
Tanabe then tried to reorganize his logic of species in light of the experience of metanoetic salvation. The
particular society is ‘generalized’ through human action deriving ultimately from Other-power. This time, the
resulting society is called not the state, but the religious community in its universal character. From here, Tanabe
developed his interest in sociological research into the history of religions. In his notable work Kirisutokyo no
Bensho (Dialectic of Christianity), published in 1948, he explicated the development of primitive Christianity as
typical of the way in which a religious community is founded. In his last years, he theorized on the
bodhisattva-way of Mahāyāna Buddhism from the perspective of sociological philosophy of religion.
See also: Japanese philosophy; Kyoto School; Logic in Japan
HIMI KIYOSHI

List of works
Tanabe Hajime (1910-61) Tanabe Hajime zenshū(The Complete Works of Tanabe Hajime), ed. Y. Takeuchi et
al., Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963-4, 15 vols.(Edition of Tanabe’s complete works.)
Tanabe Hajime (1924) Kanto no Mokutekiron (Kant’s Teleology), in Tanabe Hajime zenshū(The Complete Works
of Tanabe Hajime), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963-4.(On Kant’s reflective judgment.)
Tanabe Hajime (1932) Hegerutetsugaku to Benshoho (Hegel’s Philosophy and Dialectics), in Tanabe Hajime
zenshū(The Complete Works of Tanabe Hajime), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963-4.(Tanabe’s view of Hegelian
dialectics.)
Tanabe Hajime (1939) ‘Kokkatekisonzai no Ronri’ (The Logic of National Existence), in Tanabe Hajime
zenshū(The Complete Works of Tanabe Hajime), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963-4.(Identifies Tanabe’s
dialectical process with a theory of the state.)
Tanabe Hajime (1946) Zangedo toshiteno Tetsugaku (Philosophy as Metanoetics), trans. Y. Takeuchi and J.W.
Heisig, Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1986.(Tanabe’s ‘Confessions’, as the start of his late
philosophy.)
Tanabe Hajime (1947) ‘The Logic of the Species as Dialectics’, trans. D.A. Dilworth, Monumenta Nipponica
1969, 24 (3): 273-88.(An attempt to reorganize the logic of species in the light of the metanoetic experience.)
Tanabe Hajime (1948) Kirisutokyo no Bensho (Dialectic of Christianity), in Tanabe Hajime zenshū(The Complete
Works of Tanabe Hajime), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963-4.(Tanabe’s study of the development of
Christianity.)
Tanabe Hajime (1959) ‘Memento Mori’, trans. V.H. Viglielmo, Philosophical Studies of Japan I, Compiled by
the National Commission for UNESCO: 1-12.(Summary of Tanabe’s meditation on death in his late days.)

References and further reading

Himi Kiyoshi (1990) Tanabetetsugaku Kenkyu - Shukyotetsugaku no Kanten kara (Studies in the Thought of
Tanabe: A Perspective from the Philosophy of Religion), Tokyo: Hokuju Shuppan.(Pursuit of the development
of Tanabe’s thought, laying great emphasis on his late religious philosophy.)
Laube, J. (1984) Dialektik der absoluten Vermittlung (Dialectic of the Absolute Mediation), Freiburg: Verlag
Herder.(Critical researches on Tanabe’s dialectical philosophy.)
Unno Taitetsu and Heisig, J.W. (eds) (1990) The Religious Philosophy of Tanabe Hajime: The Metanoetic
Imperative, Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press.(Record of the International Symposium on Tanabe’s
Metanoetics held in Massachusetts, 1989.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)