Re-politicising the Kyoto School As Philosophy

1 '¬" Statement of Aims: The Kyoto School, founded by Japan's first (and arguably greatest) modern philosopher Nishida KitarÃ' during his time at Kyoto Imperial University (1911-1927), is an increasingly fashionable subject for research in Philosophy, History and Japanese Studies. However, the field is scarred by the dubious legacy left by the involvement of some members of the School in the ultra-nationalist and imperialist politics of the wartime period (1931-45). This scar represents a serious obstacle preventing the Kyoto School from taking its rightful place in the canon of modern philosophy, and political philosophy in particular. Until now, the story of the wartime Kyoto School has been narrated in a largely biographical manner '¬" authors have concentrated on the political implications of the actions of figures such as Nishitani Keiji, Tanabe Hajime and Miki Kiyoshi. A particular emphasis in the literature has been on the apparent complicity of the Kyoto School in the institutional process of the conceptualisation of the notorious Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The result has been an incoherent condemnation of Kyoto School philosophy through non-philosophical devices. The contributors to this book contend that existing approaches fail to take the Kyoto School seriously as a school of philosophy. Rather than focussing on biographical details, the essays in this book will engage substantially with the philosophical texts of the members of the Kyoto School, demonstrating that the school developed serious and sophisticated positions on many of the key questions of political philosophy. We suggest that these positions are innovative and fresh, and that they may be of value to political philosophy today, as well as of value to intellectual historians of Japan. However, at the moment, these positions lay buried beneath the assertions of the non-philosophical literature about the complicity of the school during the war. A further insight that should be pursued in this book is the idea that the politics of the Kyoto School were not delimited by the wartime period, as is conventionally maintained. Rather, politics can be shown to be one of the key concerns of the Kyoto School throughout its existence (1911-1991). We suggest that a relatively coherent picture of a Kyoto School Political Philosophy can be constructed without resorting to the war-years at all. To some extent, this liberates (or at least broadens) Kyoto School politics from the period traditionally conceived as its darkest hour. Hence, this book re-politicises the Kyoto School '¬" moving beyond simple assertions of its members' complicity during the war, and beyond reactionary statements that Kyoto School philosophy was not concerned with politics at all. It re-politicises the Kyoto School qua philosophy, suggesting that the school developed real philosophical insights into politics that we should take seriously today. In particular, the book will focus on the various ways in which we might locate the Kyoto School in established traditions of political thought, and the insights offered by the school about central concepts in political philosophy. This '¬~properly political' and '¬~properly philosophical' approach will be completely new to the literature.Goto-Jones, Christopher S. is the author of 'Re-politicising the Kyoto School As Philosophy ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415372374 and ISBN 0415372372.