Abstract

“The Self-determination of the Eternal Now” is a central essay on an issue that preoccupied Nishida throughout his life, that of time and, correspondingly, the true self. His analysis of temporality is a significant contribution to contemporary philosophy. Taking his inspiration from Plato and Augustine on that topic, Nishida deepened significantly his “logic of basho” (場所的論理 bashoteki ronri) (field) and reinterpreted, in return, temporality as “encompassing”. For him, everything that exists is located in time, which is the fundamental form of reality. But time is located in the present. From this premiss, Nishida widened again his perspective in establishing that the present itself is located in the self. In fact, the true self is precisely the present itself. The most encompassing stage is the eternal now, in which time rotates. The consequence of Nishida’s “encompassing” temporality is a conception of the present that emphasizes the connection to history, as well as the insistence on the fundamental and ethical self, and on the topic of otherness.