Hatano Seiichi (1877–1950)

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HATANO SEIICHI
(1877–1950)

Hatano Seiichi, the Japanese historian of philosophy and philosopher of religion, was born in Nagano and died in Tokyo. He studied at Tokyo University, where his thinking was formed by Raphael von Koeber, a pupil of Eduard von Hartmann. He wrote his doctoral thesis, "A Study of Spinoza" (1904), in German. In 1901 he had published Seiyo tetsugaku shiyo (Outline of the history of Western philosophy; Tokyo), a book whose scholarship established his reputation. He went to Germany in 1904 and studied under Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack and Otto Pfleiderer at Berlin for two years, then under Wilhelm Windelband at Heidelberg. He also developed his studies of Protestant theology (he had been baptized in 1902) under J. Weiss, Ernst Troeltsch, and A. Deissmann. Their lectures prepared him to be a temporary replacement for Anesaki Masaharu, Tokyo University's well-known historian of religion. From his lecture notes he published Kirisutokyō no kigen (The origin of Christianity; Tokyo, 1908). In a much later book, Genshi kirisutokyō (Primitive Christianity; Tokyo, 1950), he rose above the historicotextual criticism of his early days to present a more thorough study of the essence of Christianity. But at the beginning of the twentieth century this type of work was a novelty in Japan.

In 1917 he resigned from Waseda University, where he had taught for many years, and at the invitation of Nishida Kitarō, the leading philosopher of Japan, he joined the staff of Kyoto University; he taught there until he retired in 1947. Subsequently he became the president of Tamagawa University in Tokyo. At Kyoto he had the chair of science of religion, and from 1922 he held the chair of Christianity. Hatano developed his philosophy of religion in four books (all published in Japanese, in Tokyo): "The Essence and Fundamental Problem of Philosophy of Religion" (1920); "Philosophy of Religion" (1935); "Introduction to Philosophy of Religion" (1940); Time and Eternity (Japanese edition, 1943; English edition, 1963). His main idea is that the comparative study of religion presupposes a philosophy of religion because values are a necessary element of that science. As philosophy, religion must start from the reality of the religious experience of God; this experience is first an experience of the God of power, then a quest for the God of truth, and finally an experience of the God of love. Hatano distinguishes three kinds of time: the natural, encompassing the realm of nature; the cultural, characterized by eros; and the eternal, in which agape, or Christian love, triumphs. Original, too, are his observations on the "about-to-come" future (shōrai ) and the distant future (mirai ). The first is implicitly part of our present; it is the future we are making, the supplier of being. The second is time that will never be experienced by the subject. Clearly Hatano is much influenced by Christian ideas and takes almost nothing from the Oriental climate of thought; even so this type of philosophy of religion was and still is very influential in Japanese thought.

Bibliography

Hatano's works have been published in Japanese as Hatano Seiichi zenshū (The complete works of Hatano Seiichi), 5 vols. (Tokyo, 1949). Vols. III–V include Hatano's works on the philosophy of religion. One of his works on that subject, Toki to eien (Tokyo, 1943), has been translated by Ichiro Suzuki as Time and Eternity (Tokyo: Japanese Government Bureau, 1963). For a discussion of Hatano's thought see G. K. Piovesana's Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862–1962 (Tokyo: Enderle, 1963), pp. 123–131.