Conférence samedi 15 mars 2014

M. Takeshi MORISATO (Institute of Philosophy / KU Leuven)

donnera une communication  sur le thème de:

The Transition Between Two Ages: Why TANABE Hajime is a Post-modern Thinker

TANABE Hajime (1954) 

Samedi 15 février  2014, 14h30-16h30 La salle 4.13

I.N.A.L.C.O. - Pôle des Langues et Civilisations
65, rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris
Métro 14 et RER C : Bibliothèque François Mitterrand
Sortie: rue des Grands Moulins Résumé:  

One of the most important tasks for studying Japanese Philosophy in western academia is to determine the starting point of its philosophical examination. As we deal with a certain philosophical issue, we must ask ourselves from which perspective we are facing the problem and to which methodology we are subscribing ourselves for generating our answer to it. This double structure of questioning the way(s) in which we are asking our question—that is precisely to define the very starting point of our philosophical investigation—is the most challenging task for those who engage in the history of philosophy. Though this task is daunting, it is undeniably a pressing problem for any scholar pursuing the path of comparative philosophy. When we face an intellectual tradition that has not been incorporated into the conventional lineage of another, we are led to examine the foundation(s) in which each of them is considered to be “philosophical” or “intellectual” in the first place. Through such profound reflections on the depth of human thinking, we can contemplate, for the first time, the possibility of constructing a meaningful dialogue between two intellectual traditions.

Keeping this important question concerning the foundation of (comparative) philosophy in mind, this presentation intends to investigate how the second pillar of the Kyoto School, Tanabe Hajime, prepares the ground for his post-modern philosophy, represented in his later works e.g., The Logic of Species, Philosophy as Metanoetics, Dialectic of Christianity, etc. To meet this end, we will roughly take the following five steps. First, I will discuss the importance of classifying Tanabe as a post-modern thinker and raise the questions involving with this process of classification. Second, we will look into Tanabe’s dialectical interpretation of Leopold von Ranke’s philosophy of history in The Logic of Species and examine how we are to think of the relation between two ages. Third, we will see how Tanabe characterizes his reflections on the Kantian and Hegelian framework of thinking in relation to the absolute dialectic that characterizes his own philosophy. In this section, Tanabe’s critical engagements with Kant and Hegel will be discussed in reference to what we have learned from the previous discussion on the philosophy of history. Fourth, in order to define clearly the transition from one framework of thinking to another (which mirrors the transition between two ages) in the works of Tanabe, I will determine the self-determining logic of Hegelian dialectic. The fifth and concluding section of this presentation will crystallize the key elements of the absolute dialectic and thereby, demonstrate how it overcomes the limitation of Hegelian self-determining dialectic. If these five steps are successfully made, this presentation will demonstrate the transition of human thinking in the works of Tanabe and rank him properly as a post-modern philosopher.

Accès libre 
Conférence suivie d'une discussion 

Responsables : Simon EBERSOLT, Akinobu KURODA,
Takako SAITÔ, Bernard STEVENS, Mayuko UEHARA
Contact courriel : takako.saito@univ-lehavre.fr,
akinobukuroda@gmail.com, simon.ebersolt@gmail.com