Tetsuro Watsuji

Watsuji Tetsuro (Japanese和 辻 哲 郎); ( Born March 1, 1889 in Himeji, † December 26, 1960 ) was a Japanese philosopher, who also worked on cultural and intellectual history topics.

Early years

Watsuji was born the son of a doctor in Himeji. In his youth he was interested in poetry and Western literature. At times, he was co-editor of a literary magazine and wrote his own poems and dramas. For philosophy, he began to be interested, though his interest in literature lasted the rest of his life in high school.

With his early writings ( 1913-1915 ) he made known the work of Søren Kierkegaard in Japan. During this time his interest in Friedrich Nietzsche falls. From 1918 Watsuji sees Western philosophy mainly in a negative light, especially because of her attested individualism and criticizes its influence on Japanese thinking. This drew his attention to the roots of Japanese culture and Japanese Buddhist art, particularly his work with the Zen Buddhists Dogen has to be mentioned. He was influenced in those years by Natsume Soseki, a famous Japanese writer and contemporaries Watsujis.

Academic career

In the early 1920s, Watsuji taught at the University of Tokyo, at Hosei University, at the Keio University and at the Tsuda Eigaku - juku. At that time he began to also deal with hermeneutics.

1925 Watsuji Professor of Ethics at the University of Kyoto, which he got together with the other leading Japanese philosophers of those years, Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Hajime. The Department of Ethics, he held from 1934 to 1949.

The written during the Second World War ethical writings are characterized by a tendency to understand the people award the Japanese approaches basic superiority, which supported the nationalistic and militaristic tendencies of the time. Later Watsuji regretted his comments.

Watsuji died in 1961 at 71 years. He was buried in the cemetery of the temple Tokei -ji. In his honor, the Watsuji Tetsuro - Culture Prize is awarded annually since 1988.

Work

Watsujis three main works are the two-volume history of Japanese Ethics ( 1954), the three-volume Ethics ( Rinrigaku from 1937, 1942 and 1949) and Fudo (1935 ).

When preparing its ethics Watsuji shows by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his work Being and Time influenced. While Heidegger in Being and Time, however, developed a existentialism, is strongly oriented to their own way of life of the individual, Watsuji attempted the individual to think more involved in the community by resorting to Japanese conceptions of the relationship between individual and community. However, doing so again appear to give one-sided, so that about the phenomenon of history in a completely rising in the Community individual can not be explained.

In Fudo Watsuji develops the relationship between climate and environmental factors on the one hand, and human cultures on the other. He distinguishes three classes of cultures: monsoon, desert and grassland climate.

Writings

Translations into German

Translations into other Western languages

Secondary literature

• Bianca Boteva Judge: Method transfer by Watsuji Tetsuro. An occidental - Asian proposal for working in the intercultural field. Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-88309-527-1.
• Hanspeter songs Bach: Martin Heidegger in thinking Watsuji Tetsurōs. A Japanese contribution to the philosophy of the life world. Iudicium, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89129-363-1
• John C. Maraldo: Watsuji. In: A Companion to the Philosophers. Edited by Robert L. Arrington. Blackwell, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-631-22967-1.
• Michael F. Marra: Japanese hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation. University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, 2002, ISBN 0-8248-2457-1, OCLC 237 578 040
• Graham Mayeda: Time, space and ethics in the philosophy of Watsuji Tetsuro, Kuki Shuzo and Martin Heidegger. Routledge, New York 2006, ISBN 0-415-97673-1.
• Hans Rainer Sepp, Ichirō Yamaguchi: life as a phenomenon: the Freiburg phenomenology in the East- West dialogue. King & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3213-6.