Abstract

The present paper aims at reconstructing the reactions to Husserl’s idealism in the writings of two of his Japanese students: Satomi Takahashi and Tomoo Otaka. While both Takahashi and Otaka hold that Husserl’s phenomenological “idealism” is ultimately not idealism at all, they argue for this claim in quite different ways. Takahashi argues that Husserl’s position is not idealist enough to establish subjective idealism, which he takes to be the Master’s intended position and which Takahashi himself favors. In contrast, Otaka finds a possibility of realism in Husserl’s position.