Can a philosopher repent for supporting war by inventing a new way of thinking?
In short: Hajime Tanabe, a titan of the Kyoto School, spent his life bridging Western science and Eastern Buddhism. Yet, his legacy is haunted by his wartime support for Japanese militarism. His post-war masterpiece, Philosophy as Metanoetics, serves as a radical, confessional attempt to move beyond philosophy itself through the act of repentance.
Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962) was a central figure in the Kyoto School, a group of thinkers who sought to synthesize Western rationalism with Buddhist insights. Trained in mathematics and physics, Tanabe studied in Germany under Edmund Husserl and befriended Martin Heidegger. His early work focused on the philosophy of science and mathematics, but he eventually turned toward existential questions, grappling with the modern crisis of nihilism. Unlike his colleague Kitarō Nishida, who emphasized contemplation and intuition, Tanabe insisted that the proper mode of human existence is action, specifically ethical action.
Tanabe’s intellectual journey took a dark turn during the 1930s and 1940s. He utilized his 'logic of species'—a dialectical theory where contradictory oppositions are mediated by a third term—to defend Japanese state and racial superiority. He later expressed profound remorse for this, admitting that he had succumbed to the prevailing militaristic mood. In his monumental post-war work, Philosophy as Metanoetics, he framed his philosophy as a confession of repentance, or metanoia. He argued that traditional Western speculative philosophy contained the seeds of the ideological frameworks that fueled World War II, and thus, philosophy must be overcome.
His concept of 'Absolute Nothingness'—distinct from the religious Buddhist notion—was intended to capture the historical, temporal nature of human existence. Tanabe believed that humans are prone to 'radical evil,' a Kantian idea suggesting an ineluctable propensity to act against the good. By engaging with thinkers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Tanabe proposed that humans could realize compassionate divinity through continual death and resurrection, by acknowledging their own nothingness. His work remains a unique, challenging dialogue between Eastern heritage and Western conceptual tools, with some modern commentators even viewing his critique of reason as a precursor to deconstruction.
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