国家・時間・歴史主義 --前期の田辺哲学の最終局面--

Abstract

In this paper, I would like to examine how historicism is found in Tanabe Hajime’s discourse of nation-state (国家), with a focus on the two very important writings in his early philosophy, namely, “The Logic of National Existence” (「国家的存在の論理」, published in 1939) and “Eternal, History and Action” (「永遠・歴史・行為」, published in 1940). While “the logic of species” is considered as a nationalistic turn of Tanabe’s philosophy, which induces the concept of “repentance” (懺悔) in his later stage of philosophy, the relationships between “nation-state” and “historicism” should be traced back to the above mentioned articles. Although the concept of “nation-state” was widely discussed in “The Logic of National Existence”, the concern of “Eternal, History and Action” is neither social existence (社会存在) nor national existence (国家存在), but the question of time. Hence, the article, “Eternal, History and Action”, cannot be regarded as an extension of “the logic of species”. However, after the publication of Philosophy as Metanoetics (『懺悔道としての哲学』) in 1946, gensō (還相) has become the most important concept of Tanabe’s philosophy, which is related to the discussion of time and historicism. In addition, in the book, The Historicistic Development of Mathematics and Physics (『数理の歴史主義展開』) published in 1954, the standpoint of “historicist ontology of time” (歴史主義的時間存在論) was thoroughly examined, which in fact was firstly addressed in the article, “Eternal, History and Action”. In other words, instead of overemphasizing the importance of “logic of species” for the nationalistic turn of Tanabe’s philosophy, we should not overlook the very last phase of his early philosophy, especially the essay, “The Logic of National Existence” and the piece of work, “Eternal, History and Action” that published a year after.