The Kyoto School was a philosophical movement primarily active in the first half of the 20th century. Centered at Kyoto University, they attempted to combine Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, with a special emphasis on Zen and Buddhism. Nishida Kitaro, the school's founder, is most known for his work An Inquiry into the Good. Nishitani Keiji, one of Nishida's main disciples, would become the doyen in the post-war period. Nishitani's works, such as his Religion and Nothingness, primarily dealt with the Western notion of nihilism, ala Nietzsche, and Eastern notions of nothingness, as found in the Buddhist idea of sunyata and the Zen idea of mu. Today, there is a great deal of critical research into the school's role prior to and during the Second World War. There is also a great deal of criticism concerning the school's rather idealized and ahistorical understanding of the "East" and "Buddhism/Zen." It should be noted that although Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki is often linked with the Kyoto school -- and, indeed, was close to Nishida -- he is not considered a member.
Hence the KyotoSchool, perhaps like any vibrant school of thought, should be seen as a cluster of original thinkers who, while not uncritically subscribing to any prescribed dogma, nevertheless came to share, and dispute, a number of common concerns as well as basic concepts and terminology.
Yet because the KyotoSchool's ideas of “overcoming modernity” developed in conjunction with their wartime political theories, theories which typically saw the nation of Japan as playing a key role in the historical movement through and beyond Western modernity, it has also proven to be one of the more often criticized aspects of their thought.
However, as with most schools of philosophy, the line between critical scholarship and creative appropriation is hardly a clear one, and in practice the retrospective study of the KyotoSchool often blends together with its further development as a vibrant school of thought.
The KyotoSchool was a philosophical movement primarily active in the first half of the 20th century.
Centered at Kyoto University, they attempted to combine Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, with a special emphasis on Zen and Buddhism.
There is also a great deal of criticism concerning the school's rather idealized and ahistorical understanding of the "East" and "Buddhism/Zen." It should be noted that although Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki is often linked with the Kyotoschool -- and, indeed, was close to Nishida -- he is not considered a member.
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