Philosophy as Metanoetics

Tanabe Hajime, a founding member of Japan’s famed Kyoto School of Philosophy. Philosophy as Metanoetics is the 1986 translation of a remarkable work written near the end of World War II, when Japan was succumbing to the military might of America. Its author, the Kyoto philosopher Tanabe Hajime, was thoroughly disenchanted with war, and was calling for an acknowledgment of its folly, along with an expression of sincere contrition on the part of those who had been caught up in it—himself included. This is one meaning of “metanoesis”: an act of “repentant confession.” But Tanabe was urging far more than a mere acceptance of personal responsibility for involvement in destructive patterns of action and thought. The self-examination he exhorted was deeply philosophical. For him, the term meta-noesis additionally implied a movement beyond the noetics of rationalist philosophy and religion.