A twentieth-century Japanese philosophical movement centered at Kyoto University, founded by Nishida Kitaro and carried on by Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji and later successors. The school developed a systematic philosophy of absolute nothingness (zettai-mu), a groundless ground or place (basho) in which being and its opposition to non-being both arise, synthesizing Mahayana Buddhist and Zen concepts with the European philosophical tradition, chiefly German idealism and phenomenology, into original and, at the time, unprecedented work.
Facts
Disputed
Start Year1911 marks the publication of Nishida Kitaro's An Inquiry into the Good, which secured his position at Kyoto University and is usually treated as the school's founding work; there was no single formal founding date or charter. Founded Date1911 marks Nishida Kitaro's An Inquiry into the Good; some accounts instead date the school from his 1913 appointment at Kyoto University. Connections
Associated With
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In Branch
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Open Questions
Traditions Founded
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Sources
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. The Kyoto School
The Kyoto School is a group of 20th century Japanese philosophers who drew on the intellectual and spiritual traditions of East Asia, those of Mahayana Buddhism in particular, as well as on the methods and content of Western philosophy.
- In Branch: Metaphysics
- In Category: Schools of Philosophy
- Associated With: Nishida Kitaro
View the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
When Did the Kyoto School End?
The Kyoto School's own reference literature treats it as an ongoing intellectual tradition rather than a closed historical episode: founder Nishida Kitaro died in 1945, the year of Japan's surrender, yet later thinkers such as Keiji Nishitani continued the school's project for decades afterward, so encyclopedic treatments decline to name a single end date.
What would resolve this Scholarly consensus on whether the school's identity is tied to a specific institutional marker, such as Nishida Kitaro's death in 1945, the same year Japan surrendered, or extends through the later generations, Nishitani and Tanabe's students among them, who continued the school's project for decades afterward under the same name.
Intellectual history of modern Japan, history of philosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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