AgoraAn open square of thought

Tanabe Hajime

1885–1962

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

For Tanabe, philosophy must pass through the admission of its own failure – and repentance, relying on a power beyond the self, opens a new way of thinking.

Placement

East Asian Philosophy · East Asia · Religion, Politics & Law, Metaphysics

Kyoto School philosopher and critic of Nishida: in his 1944 lectures “Philosophy as Metanoetics” he turns repentance and Shinran’s other-power into a new path of philosophy.

Key ideas

  • Logic of species
  • Metanoetics (zange)
  • Absolute mediation

Teachers: Edmund Husserl

Open in the star map

Influence

Influenced by 4

  • Shinran

    influenced by

    In Philosophy as Metanoetics (1946) Tanabe built on Shinran’s other-power: reason, having failed, passes through repentance (zange) and is reborn through a power not its own. Tanabe Hajime, Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku (1946), tr. Takeuchi Yoshinori, Philosophy as Metanoetics (1986); SEP “Tanabe Hajime”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Shinran › 1173–1263

  • Dōgen

    influenced by

    In My Philosophical View of the Shōbōgenzō (1939) Tanabe read Dōgen as a philosopher and found in him a dialectical thinking close to his own absolute mediation. Tanabe Hajime, Shōbōgenzō no tetsugaku shikan (1939); J. W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness (2001)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Dōgen › 1200–1253

  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

    influenced by

    In Hegel’s Philosophy and Dialectic (1932) Tanabe took up Hegel’s dialectic and turned it into ‘absolute mediation’, which he set against Nishida’s place of nothingness. Tanabe Hajime, Hēgeru tetsugaku to benshōhō (1932); SEP “Tanabe Hajime”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831

  • Edmund Husserl studied with

    studied with

    Tanabe studied with Husserl in Freiburg in 1922–23, after a stay with Riehl in Berlin; there he also met the young Heidegger and Oskar Becker. SEP “The Kyoto School” (B. W. Davis); J. W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness (2001)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Edmund Husserl › 1859–1938

Criticism

Criticizes 2

  • Nishida Kitarō

    criticised

    Tanabe criticised Nishida’s ‘place of absolute nothingness’ as a religious, Plotinian intuition that bypasses dialectical mediation, and later countered it with his ‘logic of species’. Tanabe Hajime, ‘Nishida sensei no oshie o aogu’ (1930); SEP “Tanabe Hajime”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Nishida Kitarō › 1870–1945

  • Martin Heidegger influenced by

    influenced by

    Tanabe, who came to know Heidegger in Freiburg, presented his hermeneutics of life in ‘A New Turn in Phenomenology’ (1924), and later contributed ‘Todesdialektik’ to his Festschrift (1959). Tanabe Hajime, “Genshōgaku ni okeru atarashiki tenkō” (1924); “Todesdialektik”, in Martin Heidegger zum siebzigsten Geburtstag (1959); SEP “Tanabe Hajime”

    Evidence: AI draft

    criticised

    In “Dialectic of Death”, his contribution to the Festschrift for Heidegger’s seventieth birthday (1959), Tanabe set a philosophy of death against Heidegger’s being-towards-death, which he read as still a philosophy of life. Tanabe Hajime, “Todesdialektik”, in Martin Heidegger zum siebzigsten Geburtstag. Festschrift (Neske, 1959), pp. 93–133

    Evidence: AI draft

    Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976

Works

  • 1946Philosophy as Metanoetics

    Written in the last years of the war: philosophy must pass through repentance and self-surrender to be reborn through an other-power.

Position

From 1930 Tanabe criticised Nishida’s “place of absolute nothingness” as contemplative and lacking mediation, and set against it a dialectic of “absolute mediation” indebted to Hegel. His “logic of species” placed between the individual and humanity the “species” – the ethnic community and the nation. In the war years this logic served to justify the nation-state, and his lectures urged students to sacrifice for it. In Philosophy as Metanoetics, lectured in 1944 and published in 1946, he declared philosophy’s failure, including his own: reason must pass through repentance (zange) and is reborn through an other-power, as in Shinran. Whether this amounted to sufficient self-criticism remains debated.

Life & context

Tanabe Hajime was born in 1885 in Tokyo. He studied mathematics and philosophy in Tokyo and first worked on the philosophy of science. In 1919 Nishida brought him to Kyoto. From 1922 to 1924 he studied in Germany, notably with Husserl in Freiburg, where he came to know Heidegger. He succeeded Nishida in 1928, retired in 1945 and lived in seclusion in Kitakaruizawa until his death in 1962.

Further main works

  • The Logic of Species (essays, 1934–1940)
  • The Dialectic of the Logic of Species (Shu no ronri no benshōhō, 1947)

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made

Open in the star map