Philosophy as Metanoetics 3

2 Tanabe's Philosophy of Science after Metanoetics 　

Yoshiharu Hakari, one of the representative scholars of Non-Church Christianity in Japan, has propounded the thesis that grace cannot complete nature without abolishing it, thus overcoming both the Thomistic principle that gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit and the Kantian principle of the religion within the limit of mere reason. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ This thesis may be considered as the retrieval of the leit motif of Tanabe's Philosophy as Metanoetics. The completion of nature through its annihilation is considered by Tanabe as the paradox of grace. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ According to him this paradox is a fact in the transcendence of natural reason (metanoesis ) as the self-power which, through the absolute repentance (metanoia) of guilt, has experienced death-resurrection by the grace of the "Other Power", i.e. Nothingness-qua-Love. The range of metanoetics is wide enough to include both Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism; metanoetics can be viewed not only as the modern version of Shinran's Kyogyoshinsho but also as "dialectics of Christianity" because it is "the philosophy which is not a philosophy" having abolished the self-power of natural reason.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Neither is metanoetics theology nor buddhology as the dogmatic science based on any religious authority. It may also be viewed as the philosophy of religion which is not a religious philosophy based on any theological or buddhological dogmas of a particular denomination.

Keiji Nishitani points out that the unique characteristic of metanoetics consists in the absolutely critical use of "reason resurrected from death by grace", which does not come from the merely religious attitude of a penitent person.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Metanoetics has its own dialectics in order to "dig" to a deeper foundation which grounds both religion and philosophy. Nishitani recommends us to read Tanabe's books on the philosophy of science written after Metanoetics if we are to understand the full scope of the dialectic of Tanabe's philosophy as metanoetics. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

Tanabe has written many treatises on the philosophy of science after he retreated to Karuizawa; "An Essay on the Philosophy of Dynamics", "The Development of Mathematical Philosophy from the Perspective of Historicism", "A New Methodology of Theoretlcal Physlcs", "The Dialectic of Relativity Physics", etc.. Although the titles of these works do not seem to have any relevance to the philosophy of religion, Tanabe himself considered them as "summing up his lifelong philosophical thoughts". In order to understand the significance of these works, we must know what Tanabe means by " the philosophy of science" . Just as the philosophy of religion should be distinguished from theology or a religious philosophy, in the analogous way the philosophy of science in Tanabe's sense should be distinguished from "scientific philosophy" which logica1 positivists advocated in the 1930s. As Hans Reihenbach emphasized in The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, logical positivists reduced the task of philosophy to the logic of science and the linguistic analysis of moral language. ⁽⁶¹⁾ As theology and metaphysics were deprived of cognitive meanings, "scientific philosophy" in this sense tends to be ancilla scientiae which announces the end of philosophical speculations in the age of technology and science. Although the influence of logical positivism has declined , " the philosophy of science", even when distinguished from "scientific philosophy" in the above sense, means a special branch of philosophy whose task is to analyse philosophical problems of a scientific inquiry ; it is usually considered as a philosophical study which is supposed to be self-sufficient branch of quite independent of and indifferent to the problems of "the philosophy of religion."

On the contrary, Tanabe assumed that the philosophy of science is complementary with the philosophy of religion in such a way that the former mediates science with religion, whereas the latter religion with science. ⁽⁶²⁾ Both science and religion would remain incomplete without our philosophical reflections on their common but unknown foundation. In what way, then, should we seek this foundation after the Kantian critical philosophy has proven the existence of the inevitable paradoxes and antinomies involved in such trials? If we apply a scientific method to the problems of religion, or a religious criterion to the scientific discussions in the naive and unreflective manner, then the result would be disastrous both to religion and science; it is a grave mistake to assume that science supercedes religion or religion anticipates science because they do not provide competing accounts of the same subject matter. According to Tanabe, the common but unknown root of science and religion could be unearthed only when we are aware of the basic limitations of our faculties in both science and religion; he interprets the paradoxes and antinomies of "pure reason" in the Kantian sense not only as the limitations of a finite human reason, but also as that which shows the very path of historical practice through a radical self-denial of theoretical reason to the Real that mediates two incommensurables. In the essay, titled "Science, Philosophy, and Religion", Tanabe writes: ⁽⁶³⁾

The critical spirit of philosophy cannot remain in a neutral standpoint concerning the relation between science and religion. The coexistence of religion and science considered as independent of and indifferent to each other is not a satisfactory situation. Philosophy has to break through the "statics" of theoretical reason and to undertake its own ideal in a humble awareness of its own self-contradictions in the "dynamics" of historical praxis . . . Reason must affirm its own destiny to walk the way of "action-faith-witness" after having been abolished theoretically but "resurrected" practically in the depth of antinomies and paradoxes . . . . The task of philosophy is to mediate, i.e.,to establish something like analogia entis between science and religion which do not admit any direct unification.

Tanabe compares the prime task of the philosophy of science with the solving of the Koan of science in the same way that Zen practitioners concentrate themselves on solving "Koan", which means the Truth manifested as a religious paradox. In A Personal View of the Philosophy of Shobogenzo, Tanabe signifies by Koan the universal Truth that cannot be manifest without paradoxes, which has been suggested by Dogen's usage of "Genjyo Koan '' (Manifesting Truth) , thus including coincidentia oppositorum of sclence as well as of religion. ⁽⁶⁴⁾