Tetsuro Watsuji Explained

Tetsuro Watsuji
Birth Date:March 1, 1889
Death Date:December 26, 1960 (aged 71)
School Tradition:Continental
Kyoto School
Watsuji Rinrigaku (Watsuji Ethics)
Notable Ideas:Being and Space (not just Time); Ethics as Philosophical Anthropology
Alma Mater:First Higher School
Imperial University of Tokyo
Institutions:Toyo University
Hosei University
Imperial University of Kyoto
Ryukoku University
Otani University
Education:Himeji Chugakko

was a Japanese historian and moral philosopher.

Early life

Watsuji was born in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture to a physician. During his youth he enjoyed poetry and had a passion for Western literature. For a short time he was the coeditor of a literary magazine and was involved in writing poems and plays. His interests in philosophy came to light while he was a student at First Higher School in Tokyo, although his interest in literature would always remain strong throughout his life.

In his early writings (between 1913 and 1915) he introduced the work of Søren Kierkegaard to Japan, as well as working on Friedrich Nietzsche, but in 1918 he turned against this earlier position, criticizing Western philosophical individualism, and attacking its influence on Japanese thought and life. This led to a study of the roots of Japanese culture, including Japanese Buddhist art, and notably the work of the medieval Zen Buddhist Dōgen. Watsuji was also interested in the famous Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki, whose books were influential during Watsuji's early years.

Career

In the early 1920s Watsuji taught at Toyo, Hosei and Keio universities, and at Tsuda Eigaku-juku (now, Tsuda University).[1]

The issues of hermeneutics attracted his attention,[2] especially the hermeneutics of Boeckh and Dilthey.[3]

In March 1925, Watsuji became a lecturer at Kyoto Imperial University, joining the other leading philosophers of the time, Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji. These three philosophers were members of the Kyoto School. While Watsuji joined their department, he is not typically considered a member of the School due to the intellectual independence in his work. In July, he was promoted to associate professor of ethics.

In January 1927, it was decided that he would go to Germany for 3 years for his research on the history of moral thought. He departed on 17th February and finally arrived in Berlin in early April. In the beginning of summer, he read Heidegger’s Being and Time which had just come out.[4] He then went to Paris. He left Paris in early December and arrived in Genoa on the 12th of that month.

From January to March 1928, he travelled to Rome, Naples, Sicily, Florence, Bologna, Ravenna, Padua and Venice. He then cut his trip short, returning to Japan in early July. So his stay in Europe only lasted for roughly a year.

In March 1931, he was promoted to full professor at Kyoto Imperial University.

He then moved to the Tokyo Imperial University in July 1934 and held the chair in ethics until his retirement in March 1949.[5]

During World War II his theories (which claimed the superiority of Japanese approaches to and understanding of human nature and ethics, and argued for the negation of self) provided support for Japanese nationalism, a fact which, after the war, he said that he regretted.

Watsuji died at the age of 71.

Work

Watsuji's three main works were his two-volume 1954 History of Japanese Ethical Thought, his three-volume Ethics, first published in 1937, 1942, and 1949, and his 1935 Climate. The last of these develops his most distinctive thought. In it, Watsuji argues for an essential relationship between climate and other environmental factors and the nature of human cultures, and he distinguished three types of culture: pastoral, desert, and monsoon.[6]

Watsuji wrote that Kendo involves raising a struggle to a life-transcending level by freeing oneself from an attachment to life.[7]

List of works

Collected Works [和辻哲郎全集], 27 vols. (Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店], 1961-91) [CW].

CW1

CW2

Originally published as Katsura Imperial Villa: Reflections on Its Construction Process [桂離宮——製作過程の考察] (Chûô Kôronsha [中央公論社], 1955), it was significantly rewritten after receiving criticism from the architectural historian Ôta Hirotarô.

CW3

CW4

CW5

CW6

On Vico among others.

CW7

CW8

CW9

CW10

CW11

CW12

CW13

CW14

Published together with The National Character of the United States [アメリカの国民性]. The book was ordered banned from sale by SCAP during the US Occupation.[8]

CW15

CW16

CW17

Published together with The Way of the Imperial Subject in Japan [日本の臣道].

CW18

Unfinished work, posthumous publication.

CW19

Previously unpublished work.

CW20-24

CW25

CW26

CW27

English translations

See also

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. David A. Dilworth, et al., Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press); cited in Robert Carter, "Watsuji Tetsurô", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004.
  2. Marra, Michael F. (2002).
  3. 和辻哲郎「倫理学——人間の学としての倫理学の意義及び方法」『岩波講座——哲学第二』岩波書店、1932年、115ff. (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1913099/405)
  4. 和辻哲郎「序言」『風土——人間学的考察』岩波書店、1979年、3頁
  5. 兵庫ゆかりの作家「和辻哲郎略年譜」(https://www.artm.pref.hyogo.jp/bungaku/jousetsu/authors/a70/)
  6. The French philosopher Montesquieu had developed a theory along similar lines, though with very different conclusions.
  7. Web site: Samurai Spirit Still Animates Japan . Hosoda Haruko . Nippon . December 6, 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181111232856/https://www.nippon.com/en/column/g00009/ . November 11, 2018.
  8. 文部省社会教育局編『連合国軍総司令部から没収を命ぜられた宣伝用刊行物総目録』1949年 (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1159482/169).

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