Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy by Morisato Takeshi;

Author:Morisato, Takeshi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

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Tanabe Hajime and the Problems of the Philosophy of Religion

A trilogy of faith: Two layers to Tanabe’s later works on the philosophy of religion

There are two interrelated layers in Tanabe’s later works on the philosophy of religion. The first pertains to Tanabe’s approach to religion from the side of philosophy and the second pertains to his reconfiguration of philosophy in its openness to religion. With regard to the first, Tanabe argues in various occasions that his lifelong engagement with the history of Western philosophy (extending from Plato to Heidegger) has culminated in the painful conclusion that philosophy must face its destruction at the end of its self-inquiry, especially when it tries to claim its knowledge of itself as the absolute truth or to achieve this end of philosophical knowing only through itself. Tanabe calls this realization that philosophy cannot stand on its own reason alone “absolute critique” and shows that this radical self-critique of philosophy anticipates the constitution of “absolute dialectic” as the most comprehensive framework in which we can achieve (or more precisely be granted with) the philosophical awareness of the ultimate. Although the Japanese thinker makes these points in relation to the whole history of Western philosophy, it is important to note here that the term “absolute critique” implicates a critical stance mostly aimed at Kant’s critique of reason, while “absolute dialectic” also denotes a kind of thinking that goes beyond the limitations of Hegel’s dialectic. With regard to the most important term in his philosophy of religion, that is, “metanoetics,” it is also important for us to bear in mind that Tanabe sometimes refers both to “absolute critique” and “absolute dialectic” under the general rubric of “metanoesis,” and yet, at other times, he discusses the act of metanoesis as the necessary condition for the possibility of “absolute critique,” which subsequently leads to the constitution of the “absolute dialectic.” Thus, in the following, I will, first, explain what Tanabe means by the term “absolute critique,” second, show how it leads to the “absolute dialectic” as that which maintains philosophical openness to religious faith, and finally, demonstrate how the notion of metanoetics, along with its core concepts, constitutes and characterizes Tanabe’s philosophy of religion.

From the absolute critique to the absolute dialectic: The death and resurrection of reason

Tanabe explains that absolute critique represents the “theoretical side of metanoetics” and describes the intellectual path through which one could reach the “inevitable consequence of philosophical inquiries pursued as the critique of reason.”1 What this theoretical side of metanoetics essentially signifies is the downfall of philosophical inquiries based solely on the autonomy of reason, as well as the subsequent freedom of philosophy from its obsession with the self-identity of reason. This movement from the deconstruction to a reconstruction of philosophy or from the breakdown to a breakthrough of reason can be best seen in Tanabe’s critical stance toward the historical development of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.

Tanabe admits in ELP that Kant’s critique of reason is far more radical than Descartes’s methodological

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