Kyoto School
The first time the designation “Kyoto School” appeared in print was in a 1932 Japanese newspaper article titled “The Philosophy of the Kyoto School”.The term refers not so much to a well-defined philosophical movement or academic institution, but rather to a kind of philosophical ethos that emerged in the departments of religion and philosophy at Kyoto University and was inspired by the man considered Japan’s greatest thinker since modern times, Kitarô Nishida (1870 -1945). Nishida, the unintended initiator of the Kyoto School, as a child of the Meiji period, was among the first students to have the opportunity to study Western philosophy in Japanese universities. He read German and English, studied Kant, among others, Hegel and Schopenhauer, wrote his thesis on Hume’s causality theory in 1884 and finally became a professor at Kyoto University in 1914.
Yoshinori Takeuchi, also a member of the Kyoto School, described Nishida’s contribution to Japanese philosophy as follows: “It is no exaggeration to say that in him Japan has had the first philosophical genius who knew how to build a system permeated with the spirit of Buddhist meditation by fully employing the Western method of thinking.” Yet “Nishida philosophy” could not have grown into the broader “Kyoto School” without Nishida’s own student and successor within Kyoto University, Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962). Tanabe is cited as the second of the three main figures around which the Kyoto School formed. The third to complete this list, a student in whom both Nishida and Tanabe recognized an exceptionally gifted mind, was Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990). The work of these three giants of Japanese philosophy still forms the beating heart of the philosophy of the Kyoto School.
The Kyoto School, by which we mean not only Nishida’s philosophy but also its dynamic expansion through Tanabe and Nishitani, was the first philosophical movement in Japan to be able to stand side by side with the major philosophical schools and movements of the West. In the broad sense of the word, the Far East has for centuries had an extensive has had an extensive “philosophical” tradition for centuries. But if we understand the concept of ‘philosophy’ in its strict sense as the intellectual tradition that originated in Athens in the 6th century BCE, spread through the Greek and Roman worlds, took root in the countries of the 4th century took root in the countries of Europe, and since the 17th century has also been practiced in America, only then does the historical importance of an Eastern philosophical movement that follows the method of the Western tradition become clear.
Western thinkers were never directly challenged by intellectual developments from the Far East and even comparative philosophy, which seeks to expand the concept of philosophy to incorporate Eastern thought as well, does in in fact do nothing more than confirm the discrepancies. Although they overwhelmingly adhere to their Eastern and Buddhist background, the thinkers of the Kyoto School do not simply put Buddhist teachings in a Western garb, nor bring the Western model into a Japanese package. The Kyoto School is unique because of its combination of Eastern spiritual thought with Western philosophical training and method. This makes it exemplary of the cultural and intellectual climate of modern Japan.
