Kyoto School is the name given to a group of philosophers who studied the thought of nothingness around Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe at Kyoto University, where this philosophical movement was created in Japan, especially from the 1920s to the end of the war. Thereafter, however, postwar scholars accused these philosophers of active war advocacy. For example, in the meeting "Japan and the Situation of World History" planned by the famous magazine Chuo-Koron in 1941, the members of Kyoto School such as Masaaki Kosaka and Keiji Nishitani, discussed the positive implications of Japan's participation in the Pacific War. Therefore, for postwar scholars and intellectuals, Kyoto School cannot be excluded from the responsibility for the affirmation of the war participation.
This type of situation surrounding Kyoto School is almost the same as that of the discipline of pedagogy. Because the postwar reformation of education began with a strong contrition for "ultra-nationalism" during the war, the accusation against Kyoto School has been more intense. But after the advent of postmodernism, pedagogy, in turn, attempted to re-evaluate the potential of the Kyoto School's principles. This reconsideration is not only an important breakthrough but also makes studying the Kyoto School more difficult. The problem is that the later Kyoto School, founded after the advent of postmodernism, differs completely from the earlier Kyoto School, which dealt with the tragedy of the Pacific War. In fact, the recent re-evaluation of the Kyoto School in the discipline of pedagogy has not addressed the matter of its responsibility for committing positively to the war. Why did this situation occur? I found that previous studies attempting to re-evaluate the Kyoto School's educational principles have a general negative attitude about its historical philosophy and do not mention its wartime ideologies. To consider what the Kyoto School is and discuss its educational philosophy in a deserving manner, this study suggested the significance of studying its historical philosophy, including the theory of the nation and ethos as the issue of education.
|
