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My area of expertise is the philosophy of the Kyoto School. The Kyoto School of Philosophy refers to a network of philosophers centered around Kyoto Imperial University, which gradually took shape in the 1910s and rose to prominence from the 1930s to the early 1940s. This school is considered to have been founded by Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime. While the majority of Kyoto School research focuses on Nishida, my work has primarily centered on Tanabe’s philosophy. A distinctive feature of my research is that I have approached the Kyoto School through the lens of Tanabe’s social ontology, which lies at the core of his thought.

The Kyoto School of Philosophy is primarily known as a lineage of the “philosophy of nothingness” pioneered by Nishida. While this is indeed a defining characteristic of the school, it does not fully account for its entire scope. To address this gap in existing research, I focus on the lineage of the “philosophy of society,” which gradually became a central theme of the school after Tanabe established his social ontology in 1934. Not only Tanabe’s disciples but even Nishida himself were influenced by Tanabe’s social ontology in developing their own theories of society. This research seeks to unearth this lineage and explore its contributions to contemporary philosophical discourse on social ontology.