SEIJI TAKEDA PHILOSOPHY SITE
ー Toward A Global Philosophical Renaissance
The New Phenomenological Movement in Japan ー
…… This site introduces the philosophy of Seiji Takeda, a Japanese philosopher who develops phenomenology, proposed by Husserl, as a principle of thought for pursuing the essence of human meaning and value. (Site administrator)
ABOUT SEIJI TAKEDA
……This page introduces the biography of the philosopher Seiji Takeda.
ABOUT SEIJI TAKEDA
Biography
Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan. He studied literature and politics at Waseda University in Tokyo and was active as a prominent literary critic for almost a decade from 1980. Later developed a deep interest in Western philosophy and concentrated on philosophical researches. He published many important books on philosophy while teaching this subject at Meiji-gakuin University from 1986 and Waseda University from 2005. He is currently an emeritus professor at Waseda University. He has also taught at Shizenkan University Graduate School of Leadership and Innovation.
His major philosophical achievements can be divided into two categories: first, introductory writings that gently unpack difficult philosophical texts for the general reader and make philosophical ideas accessible. The other category includes full-fledged philosophical books that incorporate the results of his years of philosophical research. In particular, his unique and profound understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology is unsurpassed, and his Introduction to Phenomenology, published in 1989, is still an all-time bestseller among books on phenomenology.
In 2017, he published a major work, The Philosophy of Desire (the first and second volumes) which can be regarded as the culmination of his philosophical achievements. Drawing on the philosophy of Husserl and Nietzsche, he set out an unprecedented new conception of philosophy. The first book is about the fundamental theory of ‘meaning’, and the second about that of ‘value’. These two will soon be followed by the third, which deals with social philosophy, and the fourth with ethics and existential philosophy.
