Seiichi Hatano

Who was Seiichi Hatano?

Seiichi Hatano was a Japanese philosopher, best known for his work in the philosophy of religion dealing mostly with eastern religion but also western philosophical thoughts in theological aspects of Christianity.

Hatano was born in Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, and educated at Tokyo Imperial University, from which he graduated in 1899. He was very influential in stimulating the study in Japan of Western philosophy and religion, both through his teaching, and through his early writings. These included An Outline of the History of Western Philosophy, The Origins of Christianity, and A Study of Spinoza. The last of these was originally written in German and only translated into Japanese in 1910. It was reprinted after WW2.

He opposed a positivist approach to religion, arguing that though rationality underpinned religious beliefs, it depended upon an autonomous form of experience to discover at least partial truth.

He died in Tokyo at the age of seventy-three.