Lexington Books The Kyoto School's Takeover of Hegel: Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe Remake the Philosophy of Spirit

The Kyoto Schools Takeover of Hegel: Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe Remake the Philosophy of Spirit is Peter Suares in-depth analysis of the Kyoto Schools integration of Western philosophical idealism with Japanese religious traditions. Suares traces the Schools attempts to develop a doctrine of absolute nothingness using Hegels dialectic of self-consciousness. Hegels dialectic plays a formative role in the work of the three principal figures of the School—Nishida Kitaro, Nishitani Keiji, and Tanabe Hajime—yet many of its aspects are difficult to integrate with their neo-Buddhist outlook. Suares shows how this difficulty manifests itself in the ambivalence of the three philosophers toward Hegel: they are not only his adherents, but also his outspoken critics. Their criticism itself is no less problematic. The ostensibly Hegelian ideas denounced by Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe are often difficult to identify in his philosophy. On the other hand, many of their own theses, which they advance in express opposition to Hegel, are in fact quite compatible with his teachings. Given the pivotal importance of Hegel to the Kyoto School, Suares demonstrates how these misreadings signal a problem with the coherence of the Schools broader worldview. The Kyoto Schools Takeover of Hegel suggests how this problem could have been mitigated, making the Schools philosophy of nothingness more effective than it is today.