Information AboutWatsuji Tetsuro |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT TETSURO WATSUJI | |
| 1889 births | |
| 1960 deaths | |
| people from hyōgo prefecture | |
| japanese philosophers | |
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LIFE Watsuji was born in Himeji , Hyogo Prefecture . In his early writings (between 1913 and 1915) he introduced the work of Soren Kierkegaard to Japan, as well as working on Friedrich Nietzsche , but in 1918 he turned against this earlier position, criticising Western philosophical Individualism , and attacking its influence on Japanese thought and life. This led to a study of the roots of Japanese culture, including Japanese Buddhist Art , and notably the work of the mediæval Zen Buddhist Dogen . In 1925 Watsuji became professor of ethics at Kyoto University , joining the other leading philosophers of the time, Nishida and Tanabe . He held the university's chair in ethics from 1934 until 1949. During World War II his ethical theories (which claimed the superiority of Japanese approaches to and understanding of human nature and ethics, and argued for the negation of self) provided support for certain nationalistic, military factions — a fact which, after the war, he said that he regretted. Watsuji died at the age of seventy-one, his philosophical influence in Japan continuing long after his death. WORK Watsuji's three main works were his two-volume 1954 ''History of Japanese Ethical Thought'', his three-volume ''Rinrigaku'' (''Ethics''), first published in 1937, 1942, and 1949, and his 1935 ''Fudo''. The last of these develops his most distinctive thought. In it, Watsuji argues for an essential relationship between climate and other environmental factors and the nature of human cultures, and he distinguished three types of culture: pastoral, desert, and monsoon. (The French philosopher Montesquieu had developed a theory along similar lines, though with very different conclusions.) WRITINGS
English translations
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