Abstract

The Influence of Chinese Sources on the Formation of Philosophy in the Tokyo School: Focusing on Kuwaki Gen’yoku Nakajima Takahiro The Background of Kuwaki Gen’yoku After the first generation of Inoue Tetsujirō (1856–1944) and his colleagues at Tokyo Imperial University, the second generation was represented by Kuwaki Gen’yoku (1874–1946). Kuwaki was a generation educated in the midst of the establishment of philosophy as an academic discipline, and he was a little younger than Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945). When Raphael von Koebel (1848–1923) retired in 1914, Kuwaki moved from Kyoto Imperial University to become a professor at Tokyo Imperial University to succeed him. In the same year, Nishida Kitarō became a professor of philosophy from a professor of religious studies at Kyoto Imperial University, where Kuwaki had been a professor of philosophy. This is the reason why two of them were called “The Kuwaki of the East and the Nishida of the West.” Today, however, Kuwaki can hardly be compared to Nishida’s reputation. The fact that his complete works were aborted after the first volume was published speaks for itself, despite the fact that he had published many works. Nevertheless, as the fact that he continued to teach for more than twenty years until 1935 (Nishida retired in 1928) shows, his influence was no small one, and he was even named one of the most popular philosophers of his time. Kuwaki is said to have been strongly influenced by the neo-Kantian school. This was behind the liberalism, idealism, and culturalism that colored the Taishō Democracy. Kuwaki was also a member of the Reimei-kai, which was also a symbol of Taishō Democracy, and he believed that we should move toward culturalism rather than [End Page 31] militarism. As far as this is concerned, Kuwaki is somewhat separated from the nationalism and statism of Inoue Tetsujirō. However, it was during his time as an exchange student between 1907 and 1909 that Kuwaki entered the neo-Kantian school, and he accepted it as the modern ideology of his time. Previous studies on Kuwaki Gen’yoku have concentrated on aspects such as his neo-Kantian philosophy and culturalism, and few have touched on his research on Chinese and Japanese philosophy. This paper will focus on Kuwaki’s discussions of Chinese and Japanese philosophy and will then attempt to clarify his framework of Western philosophy as well. Kuwaki and Chinese Philosophy With this background of German philosophy, it may seem that there is little relationship between Kuwaki and Chinese philosophy. However, considering the contents of Journal of Philosophy (Tetsugaku Zasshi) and the situation surrounding the philosophy of the University of Tokyo at that time, it was an urgent issue not only how to incorporate European philosophy, especially German philosophy, but also how to philosophically discuss the thoughts of China and Japan. Kuwaki has not discussed much about Chinese philosophy, but I would like to take up two important papers. One is “Xunzi’s Logic Theory” (“Junshi no ronri-setsu”), the first appearance of which was in Waseda Gakuhō in 1898, and later in Outline of Philosophy (Tetsugaku gairon) published by Tokyo Senmon Gakkō Shuppanbu in 1900 and Essay of History of Philosophy (Tetsugakushi sakki) published by Oyama Shoten in 1943. The other is “Overview of the Development of Ancient Chinese Logical Thought” (“Shina kodai ronri shisō hattatsu no gaisetsu”), the first appearance of which was in Journal of Philosophy (Tetsugaku Zasshi) in 1900, and later in Outline of Philosophy (Tetsugaku gairon) published by Tokyo Senmon Gakkō Shuppanbu in 1900 and Essay of History of Philosophy (Tetsugakushi sakki) published by Oyama Shoten in 1943. “Xunzi’s Logic Theory” (“Junshi no ronri-setsu”) deals with the rectification of names in the Xunzi. Kuwaki struggled to use “Logic Theory” instead of “Logic” and argued that there was a theory [End Page 32] that was similar to Aristotle and his successors on logic, although it is difficult to define it as logic itself. Kuwaki overlapped the Xunzi with Greek philosophy and said that “logic theory in the Xunzi was between Socrates and Aristotle” (Kuwaki 1943a, 321). He analyzed the rectification of names; for example, regarding “real name,” he interpreted it as...