極限概念と自覚 --西田幾多郎と田辺元の岐路--

Abstract

This paper aims to reconsider the Nishida-Tanabe “dispute” that tainted a close relationship dating back to the 1910s. Even when Tanabe began to criticize Nishida’s thought in his 1930 essay, “Looking up to the Teachings of Professor Nishida, ” he continued to respect his person. What was it, then, that make Tanabe turn away so abruptly? Part of the reason for their falling out has to do with their different understandings of self-awareness. Tanabe adopted to the idea of a “limit concept” (Grenzbegriff), which he had employed in his philosophical studies of mathematics, to interpret Nishida’s idea of self-awareness. This was the first sign of a split between them: Nishida understood self-aware- ness as real and not simply as an ideal, while Tanabe took the viewpoint of critical philosophy and saw it only as an ideal. When their disagreement came into the open in 1930, Nishida’s response was to defend his idea of self-awareness vigorously. There are four steps to our treatment of this parting of the ways. First, we will seek to clarify the meaning of self-awareness as a self-reflection of the self (自己が自己を映す) that expresses the relation between subject and object by distinguishing clearly between them. Second, we will show how the difference in their approaches to self-awareness hinges on Tanabe’s view of ideals as limit concepts. Third, we will trace this difference explicitly in Tanabe’s essay. And finally, we will attempt to illuminate what Nishida meant in a prefatory note to a collection of papers published in 1932 under the title The self-aware-determination of Nothingness when he declared that he had given “consideration” (考慮) to Tanabe’s criticisms.