Rossa Ó Muireartaigh - Tanabe vs Nishida: Creative Transitions through Conflict in the Kyoto School
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 2019-07-20

ENOJP4 Hildesheim 2018
Panel 28: Transitions in the Kyoto-School

Tanabe versus Nishida: Creative Transitions through Conflict in the Kyoto School

Rossa Ó Muireartaigh (Aichi Prefectural University)

Abstract: The Kyoto School can be understood as a coherent network of philosophers centering around Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime, who were united by their common interest in Buddhism and the concept of emptiness and its application to the modern Continental tradition. However, the Kyoto School was also wracked by conflict and argument between Nishida and Tanabe. Mindful of the observation made by the sociologist Randall Collins in his book The Sociology of Philosophies that it is through conflict that networks of philosophers do their
most creative work, I wish to explore in this presentation the actual contents and patterns of this rift between Nishida and Tanabe. The conflict between the two upset and bewildered the next generation of Kyoto School philosophers, figures such as Nishitani Keiji and Kosaka Masaaki, who felt that the split was based on misunderstandings rather than significant doctrinal differences. However, it can be argued that philosophy moves forward, transitions to further levels of dialectics, more through declarations of differences rather than assertions of agreement. For this reason, I believe that it is worth looking at the arguments between Tanabe and Nishida, in that it helps us to clarify certain underlying assumptions operating in both philosophies that may not be apparent without exposure through intimate critique. In particular, the issues of philosophy’s relationship to religion, the nature of nothingness and the self, and the place of history in a cosmology of emptiness seem to have been particularly thrust forward through the fissures between Nishida and Tanabe. As such, we can trace the transitions so far, and the possible transitions to come in the Kyoto School.

This talk took place at the fourth annual conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy [ENOJP], 5 – 8 September 2018, Universität Hildesheim, Kulturcampus Domäne Marienburg, Germany.

More informations:
http://enojp.org/
http://chisokudopublications.blogspot.com/
https://enojp4.wordpress.com/

Art Direction: Robin Alberding & Jerome Ebeling (CC-BY 3.0)