I just picked up a copy of Tanabe Hajime's
Philosophy of Metanoetics and, reading the preface, was struck by the frankness with which he acknowledged his own political and ethical failure as an intellectual, and also of course a certain resonance with our current situation here in the US.
In my case, metanoesis was aroused because I had been driven to the limits of my philosophical position as I confronted the desperate straits into which my country had fallen. My distress resulted not only from my own personal inability to execute my responsibilities as a philosopher at the time but also from my feeling the responsibility that each of my fellow Japanese had to assume in his or her particular situation. Naturally I was indignant at the militarists and the government authorities for having duped the people and suppressed criticism among them, for having had the audacity to pursue the most irrational of policies in violation of international law, causing our nation to be stripped of its honor before the rest of the world. But in the strict sense we Japanese are all responsible for the failure and disgrace since we were unable to restrain the reckless ways of the government and the militarists. After those who are directly to be blamed for the disasters that befell Japan, the leaders in the world of social and political thought are most responsible. There is no excusing the standpoint of the innocent bystander so often adopted by members of the intelligentsia.
Tanabe's
Metanoetics stands out as both the most political and the most religiously-minded work of the Kyoto School. Well, I'm hardly an expert, and one could argue for example that Abe's work is religious in the deepest sense, but Tanabe's embrace of Shinran Buddhism and unequivocal argument that the "logic" of compassion is religious in nature set his work apart.
What to make of this turn? There's definitely a parallel with the Frankfurters, but ultimately less cynically, and if you were to compare say Tanabe and Adorno, it would be easy to see that Tanabe, although he has a negative view of the nature of existence, is ultimately moving in an opposite direction. Hannah Arendt would be a more apt comparison, but when it comes to religiousity in The Human Condition there is none really, except maybe in some quirky classicist sense that some humanists are prone to. Both authors, Tanabe and Arendt, seem to me to share a similar understanding of the human, one that carries with it an imperitive to act responsibly towards and alongside one's fellow human beings.
Oh, the human. That's obvious. So what is it about facism that poses such a challenge to the human? Is it the perpetual warfare? Or is a more pervasive destruction of human integrity, of the integrity of the social fabric, including the openness of communication? Is there something unique to facism which undermines the practice of compassion, more so than vanilla militarism, as it were, or any other form of political oppression?
That last question. I suppose some people will object to the characterization of the Bush administration as fascist. Personally I don't have the inclination to draw out the distinctions between facsism, totalitarianism, Ur-facsism, fascism-lite, neofacsism, Hyper-fascism (Superfascism for our French friends) etc. There is a need for specifities and delineations, but however you end up defining it, the policies of the Bush administration, foreign and domestic, are making it difficult to practice humanism in any meaningful sense. Indeed, even the espousal of certain kinds of compassionate ideals has become politically dangerous. Right now, as Bush is in Japan making light of the UN and international law, intellectuals need to be critically re-examining their own habits of thought and assesing their adequacy or suitedness for meeting the exigencies we face. Doing nothing, hoping the whole thing will blow over is not going to cut it, is in fact grossly irresponsible. However you come to understand the kinship between the Dubya, the PNAC poster boy, and facsism, the threat to human freedom and decency remains.
So what to make of Tanabe's metanoetics? At the moment I'm leary of the religious angle and worry that it represents an unnecessary retreat for the philosopher. But I have yet to finish the book, and it will take me some time to absorb.