Tag: political philosophy

Breaking Dialectic: Tanabe Hajime’s Adaptation of Hegelian Reason in the Logic of the Specific

       In modern Japanese philosophy, Tanabe Hajime stands out as a philosopher who assimilated and transformed major parts of Western thought, specifically German idealism. Tanabe’s engagement with Hegel best displays his inspiration from German idealism. While Tanabe draws strongly from Hegelian dialectics in his own works such as the Logic of the Specific (種の論理), Tanabe ultimately reworked Hegel’s logical system to display historical fallibility, ethical failure, and the necessity of radical self-negation.¹ This comparison illuminates both Tanabe’s intellectual development and a broader evolution of the Kyoto School. While philosophers and Japanese society debated between Buddhist notions of impermanence and non-self and Western systematic philosophy, Tanabe Hajime was able to rework both areas of thought to confront guilt concerning unethical historical acts and transform the individual and society through self negotiation. Through deep engagement with Hegel’s dialectical philosophy Tanabe transforms Hegel’s philosophy by rejecting Hegel’s teleological reconciliation of contradictions and replaces it with a model focused on historical fallibility, the instability of communal structures or species, and the need for radical self-negation or metanoesis.

       First in order to understand Tanabe, Hegel’s philosophy must be explained. Hegel’s dialectic operates within the teleological movement of Absolute Spirit, where contradictions are ultimately reconciled through sublation or a simultaneous canceling and lifting up of a concept.² For Hegel, the historical process tends toward increasing actualization of freedom through institutions such as the state, ethical life, and shared rational structures. Individuals participate in this rational whole and do not participate in anything outside of the rational whole.³ Historians of philosophy have often seen Hegel as offering a self-confident modernity in which reason’s capacities are affirmed, even when they operate through contradiction.

       In connection to Hegel, Tanabe’s early work heavily drew from the Hegelian model of the rational structures. But by the 1930s and 1940s, Tanabe found many limitations in the idealist assumption of an ultimately harmonizing rational structure or state. In the Logic of the Specific, Tanabe replaces Hegel’s concept of Spirit, an overarching structure where all things in existence are a manifestation of this “Spirit”, with a three part structure: individual, species, and universal.⁴ While this format resembles Hegel’s universal individual mediation, Tanabe assigns a very different role to the mediating term. Hegel’s mediating structures (especially the state) are rational embodiments of universal ethical principles. Tanabe’s “species,” however, are historically contingent communities such as nations, religions, cultures, social institutions that shape the individual’s concept of meaning and are very prone to flaws such a collective delusions or mob mentality. In contrast to Hegel’s confidence in the rationality of historical development, Tanabe depicts these species as inherently unstable, prone to self-absolutization, and capable of generating collective delusions.

       The shift from Hegel’s trust in rational historical development to skepticism can be associated with Tanabe’s interaction with crises of Japanese nationalism during World War II.⁵ While Hegel’s state is the ethical culmination of Spirit’s self-realization, Tanabe saw the Japanese state of his time showcasing the species’ capacity for violent error. Therefore the Logic of the Specific is both a philosophical model but also a historical critique that seeks to explain how rational systems and communal forms can betray their supposed universality.

       The conflict between Tanabe and Japanese nationalism leads to what Tanabe later called metanoetics, or the philosophy of repentance.⁶ While Hegel propels Spirit forward by incorporating contradiction into higher unity, Tanabe believes the Spirit’s self realization signals the breakdown of reason’s self-sufficiency. Tanabe states, reason cannot fully comprehend or repair its own failures and transformation requires not sublation but absolute self-negation through “other-power” (tariki), a concept drawn from Shin Buddhist thought.⁷ Tanabe’s turn to metanoetics marks a significant rejection of Hegel’s rationalism in order to focus on existential and Buddhist forms of dialectic. 

       Overall, Tanabe retains Hegel’s insight that human existence is mediated by communal and historical structures where individuals cannot access the universal directly but Tanabe uses this framework to criticize Japanese imperialism. Where Hegel envisioned reconciliation, Tanabe insists on an ongoing cycle in which individuals are forced to confront their complicity in the failures of the species and must reform it. Tanabe’s Logic of the Specific represents a reorientation of dialectical philosophy toward historical consciousness where Buddhist-influenced self-negation and ethical responsibility are used to navigate modernity’s crises.

  1. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
  2. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  3. Hegel, G. W. F. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

  4. Tanabe, Hajime. The Logic of Species (種の論理). In Tanabe Hajime: Collected Works, vol. 7. Trans. Yoshihisa Yamamoto. University of Tokyo Press, 1998.

  5. Heisig, James W. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
  6. Ozaki, Masakatsu. “Tanabe’s Interpretation of Hegel.” The Eastern Buddhist 20, no. 2 (1987): 107–130.
  7. Tanabe, Hajime. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Yoshinori Takeuchi, James W. Heisig, and Valdo Viglielmo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Xunzi and Human Nature: The Political Implications

“Now without teachers or proper models for people, they will be deviant, dangerous, and incorrect in their behaviour. Without ritual and the standards of righteousness, they will be unruly, chaotic, and not well ordered.”1

Xunzi, a third-century Confucianist philosopher argues within his writings that “people’s nature is bad”2 , and that they must ultimately make a deliberate effort to do good, through actions such as rituals and self-cultivation. Yet, as seen above, another way that Xunzi argues that humans can deliberately better themselves is by being taught and led to do good by their superiors, or as Xunzi states, ‘proper models’.

This piece argues that Xunzi’s statement above provides a theoretical platform for authoritarian rule of law in political spheres. The main reason behind this is that fundamentally if Xunzi’s moral philosophy is that humans possess an evil nature and that violence and chaos are the natural progressions, and thus the best way to avoid this is through specific social norms of righteousness and ritual, it is logical to argue that the state should also invoke such standards. Essentially, Xunzi’s authoritarian models of moral education can easily translate to authoritarian views in a political context. Eric Shwitzgebel corroborates this when focusing on the difference between Mengzi and Xunzi regarding their political philosophy, with Xunzi likely to have a more authoritative political philosophy.3   

This is evidenced as early as the 17th century when assessing the views set out by the Japanese Confucian scholar, Ogyu Sorai. who played an influential role in convincing the Shogunate to reform towards Confucian principles; ultimately being appointed the private secretary to Premier Yanagisawa.

As highlighted by Arthur Tiedemann, Sorai, upholding Xunzi as a philosophical and moral guide, prompted numerous legal and political changes, all driven by the idea that humans are inherently evil and can only improve through the means mentioned above.4 

This is evidenced when examining the political actions undertaken during Surai’s reform programme. Within this, Sorai recommended that free movement should be curtailed, as well as the fact that all people should be registered into ‘census registers’.5 

When reverting to the primary source above, the danger of Xunzi’s views on human nature is clear when putting it into the political context. By separating ‘proper models’ and the other (the rest of humanity) per se, Xunzi prompts a theoretical situation where a political system of authoritarian rule is validated.

This has been evidently shown when assessing the role of Sorai and his reform programme. Thus the argument is clear that there is an inherent interaction between Xunzi’s philosophical view on human nature and its role in indirectly promoting the political philosophy of authoritarianism.

  1. P.J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, Readings in classical Chinese philosophy, (Indianapolis, 2005), pg. 299. [↩]
  2. Ibid, pg. 298 [↩]
  3. Eric Schwitzgebel, ‘Human Nature and Moral Education in Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rosseau’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 24:2 (2007), pg.15 [↩]
  4. Arthur Tiedemann, Sources of Japanese Tradition: 1600 to 2000, (New York, 2005),  p.219. [↩]
  5. ‘Ogyū Sorai: Confucian Conservative Reformer: From Journey to Kai to Discourse on Government’, in Huang C., Tucker J. (eds), Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, (Dordrecht, 2014), p.173. [↩]