A Philosopher’s Defeat in World War II: Tanabe Hajime’s Conversion to Shin Buddhism in Philosophy as Metanoetics
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
In the last years of World War II, Tanabe Hajime, started writing Philosophy as Metanoetics (the way of zange). He was inspired by Shinran, a thirteenth-century Japanese Shin Buddhist thinker and began to understand philosophy as metanoetics. “a philosophy that is not a philosophy”. Philosophy that is not a philosophy cannot be undertaken by one’s own power, but must be acquired through Other-power. Hence, philosophizing implies the continual act of “practice-faith-witness” (gyo-shin- sho) of the philosopher’s own metanoia, performed by Other-power within himself. This paper argues that Tanabe’s conversion became a creative deconstruction of modern philosophy caused by the cultural encounter occasioned by the war, which generated a dialectical effect in his thinking and eventually led to his conversion to Shin Buddhism.
Article Details
Consent to Publish and Transfer of Copyright
By publishing in Prajñā Vihāra, the author agrees to transfer and assign to Assumption University of Thailand as the Publisher of the Journal, the copyright to the Article in any form, including any and all rights, interests and claims related to it.
The author does retain the following rights:
- The right to make further copies of the published article for their use in classroom teaching.
- The right to reuse all or part of the published article in a compilation of his or her own works or in textbooks of which they are the author or coauthor.
- The right to make copies of the published article for internal distribution within their academic institution.
- All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.
- The Article is his or her original work, and has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
- It does not contain any matter that is obscene, libelous, or contrary to law.
- They have obtained the necessary license or written authority and paid any and all related fees for the use and reproduction of text, tables, illustrations and other copyrighted work from the owners of the intellectual property rights, and can furnish the Publisher copies of the license/written authority and proof of payment of related fees upon the signing of this Agreement.
- They have the consent of the Co-Authors of the article upon the signing of this Agreement.
- In the event that they intend to republish, reprint or translate all or part of the Article in other publications, they will secure the prior written permission from the journal Editor.
Prajñā Vihāra adopts the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND) license