Nishida Kitarō

I characterize Nishida Kitarō’s metaethical perspective throughout his work but focus especially on his later papers, most notably his writings on kōiteki chokkan, or active intuition. These include Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba (published in 1935), Kōiteki Chokkan (published in 1937), as well as Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan, published in 1945, and widely available in translation). I explore affinities between Nishida’s approach to ethics and metaethical intuitionism and sensibility theory. I then use this analysis to (...) identify a lesson that Nishida offers to contemporary metaethicists. (shrink)

This paper discusses Reiner Schürmann’s notions of ontological anarché and anarchic praxis in his readings of Heidegger and Eckhart, while bringing his philosophy of anarchy into dialogue with Zen-inspired Japanese thought. I thereby hope to shed light on his thought of anarchy in terms of what I call “an-ontology.” The inspiration for this project is the fact that Schürmann himself had practiced Zen as a young adult in France and had engaged in comparative analyses of Zen and Eckhart in his (...) earlier works. I take what Schürmann meant by the principle of anarchy as a form of praxis that precedes the theoretical bifurcation between being and non-being. A similar sort of “anarchic praxis” is recognizable in Zen and we can find comparable (an)ontological implications of such praxis in the Zen-inspired writings of the Japanese medieval thinker Dōgen and of the contemporary philosopher Nishida Kitarō. (shrink)

Resumen: Como alternativa a los múltiples acercamientos y estudios sobre la filosofía de NISHIDA Kitarõ (1870-1945), en este trabajo se quiere presentar un avance de investigación sobre una cuestión normalmente obviada en las interpretaciones de la obra del filósofo. Se querrá mostrar cómo una mirada atenta a la idea de símbolo y las menciones a la poesía simbolista en la obra de Nishida ofrecen una clave plausible para una mejor comprensión de su sistema de la autoconciencia en obras como Intuición (...) y reflexión en la autoconciencia (1917) o Los problemas de la conciencia (1920). Palabras clave: Nishida Kitarõ, Filosofía Japonesa, Autoconciencia, Poesía simbolista, Japón moderno. Abstract: As an alternative to the multiple studies about the philosophy of NISHIDA Kitarõ (1870-1945), this essay wants to present a research line about questions not normally considered in the interpretation of his philosophy. The intention is to demonstrate how a close look to the idea of “symbol” and the citations of symbolist poetry in Nishida’s works can offer a plausible key for a better comprehension of his selfconsciousness system that appears in works as Intuition and Reflection in Self-consciousness (1917) or Problems of consciousness (1920). (shrink)

Gaisi Takeuti extended Gentzen's work to higher-order case in 1950's–1960's and proved the consistency of impredicative subsystems of analysis. He has been chiefly known as a successor of Hilbert's school, but we pointed out in the previous paper that Takeuti's aimed to investigate the relationships between "minds" by carrying out his proof-theoretic project rather than proving the "reliability" of such impredicative subsystems of analysis. Moreover, as briefly explained there, his philosophical ideas can be traced back to Nishida's philosophy in Kyoto's (...) school. For the proving the consistency of such systems, it is crucial to prove the well-foundedness of ordinals called "ordinal diagrams" developed for it. Takeuti presented such arguments several times in order to show that they are admitted in his stand point. As a starting point of investigating his finitist stand point, we formulate the system of ordinal notations up to ε0 and reconstruct the well-foundedness arguments of them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and the (...) next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

In his theoretical philosophy, Immanuel Kant argues that experience comes from two sources that are radically different but equally necessary: the rule-governed activity of thinking and the givenness of sensations. He supposes that both could be traced to some common root but concludes that whatever it is, is in principle unknowable. Kant's idealist successors, J.G. Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling, each attempt to provide a unified account of experience by identifying the ultimate basis of subject and object—Fichte by referring to the (...) I's activity and Schelling by referring to the Absolute. Because we can know only appearances, an implication of Kant's transcendental inquiry, Fichte and Schelling have difficulty... (shrink)

1. Introducción. 2. Modernización, tradicionalismo y sincretismo en el pensamiento japonés contemporáneo. 3. Liberalismo, conservatismo y primeras corrientes socialistas y feministas (1868-1912): La modernidad filosófica en el Japón Meiji. El debate en torno al término «filosofía». Imperialismo e ilustración. Contexto del liberal-conservatismo. Los reformistas de Meirokusha: liberalismo, gradualismo y evolucionismo social. Conservadurismo: reacción a los peligros de la occidentalización y a la pérdida de identidad. Los prematuros movimientos socialistas, anarquistas y feministas. 4. Subjetividad e ideología (1912-1945): Kitaro Nishida y la (...) pluralidad filosófica en el interior y más allá de la Escuela de Kioto. La significación de Nishida en el panorama filosófico japonés del siglo XX. La denominación de la «Escuela»: Tosaka y su descripción de la «filosofía de la escuela de Kioto». La experiencia pura nishidiana y el paradigma del «no-yo». El cuestionamiento nishidiano de los presupuestos de la epistemología en Estudio sobre el Bien. La filosofía nishidiana del no-yo, la iluminación y sus problemas éticos. La investigación crítica y el análisis del poder ideológico: Tosaka. 5. Pensar la postguerra: memoria y superación del ultranacionalismo. Superación del vacío a través del arrepentimiento: Tanabe. Superación del vacío a través de la comprensión del nihilismo: Nishitani. La autopsia filosófico-política del ultranacionalismo japonés: Maruyama. Movimientos y orientaciones posteriores a los años 1950. Panorama. Filosofía y denuncia del patriarcado y el nacionalismo: Ueno. Transcrítica y república mundial: Karatani. 6. Nota final. (shrink)

Gaisi Takeuti (1926–2017) is one of the most distinguished logicians in proof theory after Hilbert and Gentzen. He extensively extended Hilbert's program in the sense that he formulated Gentzen's sequent calculus, conjectured that cut-elimination holds for it (Takeuti's conjecture), and obtained several stunning results in the 1950–60s towards the solution of his conjecture. Though he has been known chiefly as a great mathematician, he wrote many papers in English and Japanese where he expressed his philosophical thoughts. In particular, he used (...) several keywords such as "active intuition" and "self-reflection" from Nishida's philosophy. In this paper, we aim to describe a general outline of our project to investigate Takeuti's philosophy of mathematics. In particular, after reviewing Takeuti's proof-theoretic results briefly, we describe some key elements in Takeuti's texts. By explaining these texts, we point out the connection between Takeuti's proof theory and Nishida's philosophy and explain the future goals of our project. (shrink)

A chapter in the book, Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation, edited by Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames, and published by University of Hawaii Press. In this chapter I present a phenomenological ontology of place vis-a-vis horizon and also alterity (otherness), discussing related themes in Heidegger, Kitaro Nishida, Shizuteru Ueda, Otto Bollnow, Karl Jaspers, Ed Casey, Günter Figal, Bernhard Waldenfels, and others. Wherever we are we are implaced, delimited in our being-in-the-world constituted by a horizon that implaces us, (...) not only literally but semantically and ontologically. Whether we take place in its semantic sense or as ontological, I underscore its duplicity—taking off from Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of two-fold being-in-the-world—as on the one hand demarcating a realm of determinacy, our ontological finitude or our social imaginary world, and on the other hand through its horizonal nature as pointing to an indeterminacy or exteriority that demarcates or delimits that realm, finitizing us. That latter may be characterized as an excess irreducible to semantic or ontological determination or as a nothing or a-meaning. Hence place with its horizon implies the interface of meaning and a-meaning, nomos and anomy, principles and anarché, in Nishidian terms being and the nothing (mu), in Heideggerian terms unconcealment and concealment or world and earth. Thus the horizon that constitutes place entails both finitude and openness, allowing for alterity and alteration, whereby the determinations within place are never fixed, secure, or guaranteed. In demarcating a place, the horizon always points to a yonder beyond the place, its other. In its very contact with the unassmilable or irreducible, the line of demarcation is itself thus unpredictable in its fluctuations. The place determined within the nothing or the clearing of unconcealment amidst the concealed will thus always be provisional despite any appearance or claims to the contrary. Its determination is indeterminate. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a possible a/theological response to what Nietzsche called the ‘death of God’—or Hölderlin’s and Heidegger’s ‘flight of the gods’—through a juxtaposition of the Christian-Pauline concept of kenōsis and the ancient Greek-Platonic notion of chōra, and by taking Nishida Kitarō’s appropriations of these concepts as a clue and starting point. Nishida refers to chōra in 1926 to initiate his philosophy of place and then makes reference to kenōsis in 1945 in his final work that culminates—without necessarily (...) completing—his oeuvre. What he had thereby accomplished is an inversion of Platonism resulting in the collapse of the transcendent/immanent—idea/genesis and by implication the Heaven/Earth—dichotomy. I then unpack the ethical implication of this kenotic chōra Nishida has left us with. It suggests from us a certain response to the desacralization or secularization of the world. I shall build upon this suggestion and unfold its implications by drawing from a variety of sources, starting with Nishida but including others, such as Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Gianni Vattimo, Reiner Schürmann, Mark Taylor, Jürgen Moltmann, and other philosophical and theological sources. (shrink)

Resumen: El texto presenta algunos de los aspectos centrales del análisis epistemológico y metafísico en la filosofía temprana de NISHIDA Kitarō (1870-1945), para luego explorar cómo determinadas dificultades intrínsecas a su teoría de la conciencia y la subjetividad están íntimamente relacionadas con una serie de problemas de alcance ético y político. Al discutir la filosofía práctica que se deriva de la conceptualización del yo nishidiana, se contrasta hasta qué punto sostienen a un sujeto moderno replegado sobre sí, fortificado en su (...) interioridad, distanciado del afuera-mundo. Así, en línea con la sospecha expresada por Adorno, se comprueba si es posible encontrar una función ideológica en la doctrina de la conciencia del filósofo japonés. Palabras clave: Nishida Kitarō, Filosofía japonesa, conciencia, subjetividad, ética Abstract: The text introduces some central aspects of the epistemological and metaphysical analysis from NISHIDA Kitarō’s (1870-1945) early philosophy to explore how some intrinsic difficulties inherent to his theory of consciousness and subjectivity are intimately related with ethical and political problems. After discussing the type of practical philosophy derived from his “self” conceptualization, the text contrasts philosophically the arguments that sustain a modern subject turned in on itself, fortified in its interiority, distanced from the outside-world. Thus, in line with the suspicion expressed by Adorno, if it is possible to find an ideological function in the doctrine of consciousness of the Japanese philosopher. Keywords: Nishida Kitarō, Japanese Philosophy, consciousness, subjectivity, ethics . (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article opens with a discussion of recent theoretical and methodological innovations in the field of comparative philosophy. In this regard, I propose and explain a new possible method of contrasting particular aspects of divergent philosophical texts or discourses and denote it as a ‘philosophy of sublation’. Then, the paper provides a concrete example for such a post-comparative method of reasoning, I will try to apply a ‘sublation philosophy’ approach for a reinterpretation of certain aspects of the complex philosophical intersections (...) between modern Japanese and Chinese philosophies through the lens of a contrastive analysis of Nishida Kitarō’s and Mou Zongsan’s dialectical thought. In this way, I hope to shed some new light upon some general questions regarding different models of dialectics. (shrink)

This essay considers the relation between two fundamentally different notions of place—the Greek concept of χώρα and the Japanese concept of basho 場所—in an effort to address the question of a possible “other beginning” to philosophy by rethinking the relation between nature and the elemental. Taking up a cross-cultural comparative approach, ancient through contemporary Eastern and Western sources are considered. Central to this endeavor is reflection on the concept of the between through an engagement between, on the one hand, Plato, (...) Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Edward Casey, and John Sallis, and on the other, Eihei Dōgen, Nishida Kitarō, and Watsuji Tetsurō. (shrink)

This study aims on clarifying a relational structure of society and individual in the philosophy of Kitaro Nishida, especially focusing on his early work titled “Society and Individual”. In Taisho era, when Japan was under crisis of human survivability challenged by political and economic disturbances after the World War, natural disasters and prevailing poverty in transitional democratization and capitalisation, ‘society' became one of the focal topic among scholars. On the other hand, the past criticisms stirred against Nishida before and after (...) the World War II have found a main problem of Nishida philosophy in a scarcity of "process" description between individuality and absolute nothingness in his absolute dialectical logic. This exploration investigates the notion of ‘society' in the early Nishida's philosophy, which depicts society and individual as a fractal structure, accepting plurality of subjects and constant confliction among meanings and wills. Through demarcating the sense of ‘society,' the author attempts to spot a light on the misunderstandings in the past criticisms against Nishida and on his unique perspective of society and individual in the modernizing period of Japan. (shrink)

Eco-phenomenology developed from the effort of a number of continentally-oriented philosophers exploring the thought of decisive authors in the phenomenological tradition, such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, with the purpose of offering a different insight into environmental issues than those predominant in Anglo-American philosophy. This initiative has proceeded not only from Western scholars but has had a resonance also in the distant philosophical tradition of Japan. The present contribution seeks to deepen the thought of a central figure for Japanese phenomenology: (...) Nishida Kitaro. Nishida, indeed, was the first to introduce Husserlian thought in Japan and to seriously dialogue with the German phenomenologist from a Zen-oriented point of view. The purpose of this effort is to throw light on the theoretical origins of modern Japanese phenomenological thought, in order to grasp also its differences with Western eco-phenomenology, as led by Nishida’s Buddhist reading of Husserl’s works. (shrink)

The search for the backbone of the types of rationality inherent in different cultures keeps on to be an open problem, which remains relevant to the need of closer intercultural interaction in the global world. At the same time, the analysis of the logic of language as the basis for the study of rationality types continues to occupy an important place. Meanwhile, the studies of grammatical structures and language models from the point of view of their connection to a certain (...) type of thinking and influence on the method of philosophizing are still quantitatively inferior to the researches of lexical aspects. Expansion of this type of research with the involvement of a diverse cultural material over time will allow us to reach the level of establishing regularities of a more general nature. This article contributes to the development of this issue. The author deals with the approaches to the defnition of the paradigm of Japanese rationality proposed by researchers of grammatical features of the Japanese language, on the one hand, and the “logic of place” concept and the “absolutely contradictory identity” principle of prominent philosopher Nishida Kitaro, on the other hand. A special attention is drawn to the structural similarity of the grammatical form highlighted by linguists, in which the decisive role belongs to the predicate, and to Nishida’s logical model reflecting specifcs of subject-predicate relationship as well as perception of opposition in terms of “contradictory self-identity.” In the conclusion of the article, the author demonstrates the relationship of this model with the certain idea of subject, the type of epistemology overcoming dualism, the processual and cosmocentric comprehension of the world that can be traced in Nishida’s statements. (shrink)

Nishida Kitarō1, the founder of the Kyoto school of philosophy, often stated that his philosophy of Absolute Nothingness, which had in part been inspired by Zen Buddhism, was not a kind of mysticism. In his last unfinished essay, Watakushi no ronri ni tsuite he complained that his logic of absolutely contradictory self-identity had not been understood by the academic world, and its meaning had been distorted. Nishida decided that the only way of clarifying his philosophical standpoint was to redefine the (...) concepts of 'mind' and 'logic' by showing the relation of the philosophy of Absolute Nothingness to the... (shrink)

Nishida Kitarō, the cofounder and central figure of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. Nishida’s second generation Kyoto School descendant and current representative of the Kyoto School, Ueda Shizuteru, furthered this concept to understand both place and implacement in terms of a twofold world or twofold horizon. Nishida initially understood the self in its unobjectifiability as a kind of place wherein subject and object correlate. But this placial self came to be seen as itself (...) implaced within a contextualizing place wherein it can interact with things in the world and with other subjects in an “I-thou” relationship, but which ultimately is further implaced in an abyssal place of absolute nothing. He developed this understanding of place in terms of the socio-historical world and ultimately in terms of the divinity that negates itself in kenōsis to make room for the world of many. Roughly speaking and in a variety of versions, Nishida takes the system of places to involve the following: the place of beings or objects, the place that is consciousness, the place that is the world of human interactivity, and finally the place of absolute nothing. Ueda on the other hand, focuses on the twofold structure of place itself as involving the twofold structure of the horizon of experience. We are implaced in the world that in turn is implaced in a boundless openness. Our place is twofold in that there is the world of significances on this side of its horizon and the a-meaning of the nothing beyond its horizon. While Nishida formulates the system of places in terms of place of being, place of relative nothing, and place of absolute nothing, Ueda uses the fraction symbol as world/open expanse to convey his idea of “world amidst the open expanse.” I will explore this legacy of place as Nishida first formulated it and then as developed more recently by Ueda. While doing so I will also discuss each of their relations to phenomenology. Nishida was developing his theory of place cotemporaneous to the careers of Husserl and Heidegger. While he was aware of their work, it was only to a limited extent and he was quite critical of both thinkers and phenomenology in general. On the other hand, Ueda is quite knowledgeable of the phenomenological movement of Europe, having studied under Nishida’s student, Nishitani Keiji, who had studied under Heidegger and, himself, having studied in Germany. He incorporates the insights of Husserl, Heidegger, Bollnow, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Eliade, and others, in developing his own understanding of place. What both Nishida and Ueda offer vis-à-vis a phenomenology of place is a sophisticated analysis of that other to being that place as defined and limited must assume: what Nishida calls the absolute nothing (zettai mu) and what Ueda calls the open expanse (kokū). I will then end by looking at the implications these ideas have for our current situation of globalization in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Two major twentieth century philosophers, of East and West, for whom the nothing is a significant concept are Nishida Kitarō and Martin Heidegger. Nishida’s basic concept is the absolute nothing upon which the being of all is predicated. Heidegger, on the other hand, thematizes the nothing as the ulterior aspect of being. Both are responding to Western metaphysics that tends to substantialize being and dichotomize the real. Ironically, however, while Nishida regarded Heidegger as still trapped within the confines of Western (...) metaphysics with its tendency to objectify, Heidegger’s impression of Nishida was that he is too Western, that is, metaphysical. Yet neither was too familiar with the other’s philosophical work as a whole. I thus compare and assess Nishida’s and Heidegger’s discussions of the nothing in their attempts to undermine traditional metaphysics while examining lingering assumptions about the Nishida–Heidegger relationship. Neither Nishida nor Heidegger means by “nothing” a literal nothing, but rather that which permits beings in their relative determinacy to be what they are and wherein or whereby we find ourselves always already in our comportment to beings. Nishida characterizes this as a place that negates itself to give rise to, or make room for, beings. For Heidegger, being as an event that clears room for beings, releasing each into its own, is not a being, hence nothing. We may also contrast them on the basis of the language they employ in discussing the nothing. Yet each seemed to have had an intuitive grasp of an un/ground, foundational to experience and being. And in fact their paths cross in their respective critiques of Western substantialism, where they offer as an alterantive to that substantialist ontology, in different ways, what I call anontology. (shrink)

This article compares the theory of knowledge of Fichte with that of the Japanese Philosopher Kitaro Nishida and brings out an essential correspondence between them. Both philosophers are not satisfied with the usual epistemology which is based on the contraposition of subject and object, and consider it necessary to go beyond the scheme of the contraposition because it covers the truth of knowledge. They both diagnose that the scheme of contraposition stems from the objectification by the I, and suggest that (...) the objectifying I should be nullified. According to the view that the I can be nullified only by the I itself, they take the selfnullification of the I as their theme. They think that the I does not vanish by selfnullification, but rather touches its own life which by its nature cannot be objectified. The Absolute of Fichte as well as the absolute Nothing of Nishida are characterizable as an unobjectifiable life which can be reached only by the selfnullification of the I.Dieser Aufsatz vergleicht die Wissenslehre Fichtes mit der des japanischen Philosophen Kitaro Nishida und hebt eine wesentliche Gemeinsamkeit zwischen beiden hervor. Die beiden Philosophen sind mit gängiger Erkenntnistheorie, die auf der substantiellen Gegenüberstellung von Subjekt und Objekt gründet, nicht zufrieden und halten es für nötig, über dieses Schema der Gegenüberstellung hinauszugehen, weil es die Wahrheit des Wissens verhüllt. Sie stellen gemeinsam fest, dass das Schema aus der Objektivierung durch das Ich stammt, und denken, dass das objektivierende Ich vernichtet werden soll. Aufgrund der Ansicht, dass das Ich nur durch das Ich selbst vernichtet werden kann, machen sie die Selbstvernichtung des Ich zum Thema. Durch die Selbstvernichtung des Ich verschwindet das Ich nach ihnen jedoch nicht, sondern vielmehr berührt es dadurch sein eigenes Leben, das seiner Natur nach nicht objektiviert werden kann. Sowohl „das Absolute“ bei Fichte als auch „das absolute Nichts“ bei Nishida sind als ein unobjektivierbares, nur durch die Selbstvernichtung des Ich erreichbares Leben zu charakterisieren. (shrink)

Paradoxical Utterances. An Approximation about Nishida’s Use of Heraclitus’ Fragments in An Inquiry into the Good (1911) -/- The paper discusses the use of Heraclitus’ ideas in Nishida Kitarõ early work, An inquiry into the Good (1911), in order to show how both thinkers, distant in time and philosophical tradition, coincide in present the formative process of reality, defending a common principle that impulses the process (named logos and “pure experience”). It also discusses how these principles can be feasible strategies (...) to escape from a substance-based ontology, but resulting in linguistic paradoxical assertions, able to show the possibility for an identity of opposites. (shrink)

Nishida Kitarō's account of authorship and artistic production constitutes the focus of this essay.1 Its general thesis is that Nishida's keen attention to the subjective qua objective, active qua intuitive intersection can be used to articulate a new, bidirectional account of artistic production. This essay uses this bidirectional account to engage critically with those unidirectional interpretive procedures grounded in the life or death of the Author.2 It takes up the former as it privileges the subjective conditions of production, reducing text (...) and historical moment to a derivative of the "Author" and its life, and the latter as it privileges the objective conditions of production, subsuming text and author into... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this study, I examine the Confucian influence upon An Inquiry into the Good, the first publication of Nishida Kitarō. Nishida’s student Kōsaka Masaaki depicts his mentor’s conception of the good in terms of realising the 'Mandate of Heaven'. Taking this to be indicative of the importance of Confucianism for Nishida’s early thought, I compare his philosophy of pure experience and ethical project of ‘self-realisation’ with corresponding ideas found in the Confucian corpus. I especially focus on the Great Learning and (...) Doctrine of the Mean as interpreted by the Neo-Confucian Wang Yang-Ming. This study builds upon the pioneering work of Michel Dalissier, Dermott Walsh and David Williams on the Kyoto School and Confucianism. My portrayal of Confucianism is indebted to the ‘philosophical’ translations of Roger Ames, David Hall and Henry Rosemont, Jr., which bring into relief the tradition’s ‘relational ontology’ that Graham Parkes teaches is shared by the Kyoto School. (shrink)

Phenomenology and the Kyoto School implement an interaction among cultures1 that is not limited to illustrating Western philosophy wxith exotic similes. Insofar as my position is concerned, I will start out with phenomenology in order to study Nishida's work, trying on the one hand to understand the meaning that he gives to nothingness in relation to the Merleau-Pontian concept of creux in order, on the other hand, to enlarge reason and philosophy.To achieve this, I shall establish a comparison of the (...) two thinkers that will help to shed light on their conceptions, while at the same time demonstrating the efficacy of thinking the unthoughts or negativities indicating a... (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro is a well-known Japanese philosopher whose work is marked by attempts to combine the world outlooks of the national spiritual tradition with elements of European philosophical thought. The article analyzes Nishida’s views on culture that are an independent part of his original philosophical theory. Religion, art, morality, science are the ideal forms of being in the historical world. The work of a scientist or artist is a manifestation of the formative activity of a person. The historical world as (...) the “sphere of absolute nothingness” is the final point of the introspection of “nothingness,” where reality comprehends the identity of its opposites through human activity. Nothingness, or “Emptiness,” in the East Asian tradition has another, dynamic, dimension – these are the relations between people and the relations between man and the cosmos, or Nature, which are not perceived by rough human feelings and not comprehended by equally rough mind. Nishida stressed that for Japan the issue of the authenticity of the national foundations of culture, separated from Chinese and Indian influences, has a clearly positive answer in the aesthetic sphere: in the field of traditional poetics. The traditional aesthetics of Japan reflects the archetypal structure of the national culture. All world cultures have a common prototype, but each of them is a deviation, one-sidedness of this prototype. In the West, a culture of the form triumphed, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. In Japan, on the contrary, the culture was characterized by fluidity, processability, formlessness. In fact, Nishida is one of founding fathers of modern Japanese cultural studies. (shrink)

This introductory chapter on concepts of Japanese philosophy and the concomitant approaches to this subject contains 1) a brief critical overview of the term's history and its impact on the definition of the field and 2) a short presentation of the ensuing chapters, which create a sustained dialogue on how to understand Japanese philosophy and how to delineate its his history.

The formation of the discipline of intercultural philosophy reveals its “karmic aspects,” in which dynamic encounters of scholars and students lay its future courses and clear unexpected paths. What was it like for a Japanese female Junior Year Abroad Exchange student to be in the American academic environment in the early 1970s, and her subsequent experience at the University of California Santa Barbara? A slice of her early memories, as well as her observations regarding the present and future of Japanese (...) philosophy and intercultural philosophy in Japan and in the global context are presented in this essay, in which, while Raimon Panikkar and Ninian Smart figure largely, Nishida Kitarō is also significantly in the picture. The essay is a “conversation” with an invisible interlocutor. (shrink)

In Nishida Kitarō's work, allusions to East Asian philosophy abound. For this reason many researchers have commonly assumed that Nishida's logic evolved under the strong influence of East Asian thought, including Zen Buddhism. I do not deny such influences altogether, but nonetheless wish to present in this essay a different perspective. The following statement Nishida made in 1938 offers a good starting point: "I am not saying that there are two kinds of logic, Western logic and Eastern logic. Logic must (...) be one".1 Nishida's lifelong quest for the universal system atic logic that these words hint at requires greater attention in interpreting his accomplishments. As I shall argue below, Nishida's famous... (shrink)

Nous nous proposons dans cette intervention de structurer synchroniquement trois moments philosophiques d’origines differentes : l’intuition agissante chez Kitarō Nishida, la dialectique de la mediation absolue chez Hajime Tanabe et la philosophie de l’individuation chez Gilbert Simondon, dans un contexte de reflexion philosophique sur la nature de la vie humaine. Les trois moments semblent susceptibles de se croiser, se critiquer et se completer dans un terrain transductif au sens ou l’entend Simondon. C’est ce nouveau terrain que nous entendons defricher afin (...) d’ouvrir une perspective ou un individu humain se transforme en agent responsable d’un transhumanisme a travers le processus de l’individuation dynamique et transindividuelle, laquelle nous preparerait a l’emergence du posthumain dans un futur proche. (shrink)

Both Nishida Kitarō and Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote extensively about artistic expression in their early works, yet in the last period of their careers that consideration is put mostly aside as they engage more directly with abstract ontological concerns. As this happens, a curiously overlooked concept becomes prominent in their writings, namely “faith.” While Merleau-Ponty’s is a “perceptual faith”, and Nishida’s is, broadly speaking, a religious faith, neither is strictly secular nor spiritual, yet both entail a remarkably similar ontology of the (...) motor-perceptual body. Unfortunately, their lives ended before they could fully develop these philosophically problematic concepts.... (shrink)

The first of 3 volumes of essays on Japanese philosophy, this work brings together essays that clarify its heritage and its practice, above all in the dynamic thought of Nishida Kitaro. Showing how philosophy takes shape through the translation of language and culture, the author examines the frameworks that have defined and confined Nishida’s thought and then charts new avenues of questioning Nishida and letting him question us. How should we envision the world at a time of environmental crisis, how (...) might we rethink our conceptions of history, religion and God; how is bodily awareness a way that the world knows itself, and just what can we make of Nishida'™s famous notion of nothingness—these are some of the questions that guide the meticulous explorations in this collection. (shrink)

Original title: 「生の哲學について」『西田幾多郎全集』旧版 [Alte Ausgabe: Gesammelte Werke Nishida Kitarōs]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1978, 6: 428–51; 新版 [Neue Ausgabe]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 2009, 5: 335–53.

Autoéveil. Le Système des universels (janvier 1930) est un livre essentiel pour comprendre la logique de Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945). Comme son titre l’indique, il est centré sur la série d’universels qui composent le système de pensée de celui qui est considéré comme le philosophe japonais le plus important du 20e siècle, de même que sur le thème de l’autoéveil qui marque, à des degrés divers, chacun de ces universels.

Nishidas Philosophie zeigt sich durch seine Sprachform als eine sich selbst umformende und sich dabei selbst erweiternde und ausdehnende Form des Denkens, die jedoch in ihrem Kern ein gleichbleibendes Fundament zu haben scheint. Man kann hinsichtlich dieses Fundaments oder Ursprungs sagen, dass sich die Themen seiner Philosophie zwar seit der Studie über das Gute gewandelt haben, der Ausgangspunkt seines Denkens und das, was im Grunde seines Philosophierens zur Sprache kommen will, jedoch unverändert aktuell geblieben sind. Gewandelt haben sich lediglich die (...) Formen, in denen es zur Sprache kommt, und mit ihnen die Tiefe und Intimität zwischen Nishida und dem, was er sagen will und was Nishida das Unaussprechliche oder Formlose nannte. (shrink)

This paper tries to clarify the theory of difference in terms of ji or soku ("即") that is developed by Nishida Kitarō and Mou Zongsan, comparing it with contemporary occidental Metaphysics of difference. It is known that Nishida's argument for basho or place shows a kind of hesitation between identity and difference; several Kyoto philosophers, along with recent researchers, interpret Nishida's philosophy of "absolutely contradictory identity" in terms of soku as an ontology of not identity but of difference. A similar (...) hesitation is seen in Mou Zongsan's metaphysical argument for the difference between the act- and being- strata, which leads him to affirm the "identical" completeness of yuanjiao in terms of ji. I argue that these arguments become fully intelligible only as the result of their ontology of difference that strikingly resembles Deleuze's post-Heideggerian metaphysical attempt. This interpretation also shows how far their ontological speculation in terms of ji/ soku owes to the heritage of East Asian Buddhism because the contradiction between identity and difference is most seriously explored in the Tiantai tradition. (shrink)

El artículo inicia con un análisis respecto a la posición de Nishitani en la escuela de Kioto y el peso de la misma en la filosofía occidental. Análogamente, la intención del texto es favorecer la distinción entre los conceptos de nihilidad y vacuidad, ambos presentes en Nishitani, particularmente en su concepción sobre la religión; en tal sentido, se aborda la función de la vivencia de nihilidad y la inapropiada estrategia religiosa de eludir la vivencia de la vacuidad, con lo cual (...) se obstaculiza la experiencia trascendental auténtica. Contrariamente, se propone que cuando la religión es un camino facultativo, orienta a la noción de una nada absoluta o una nada de la Deidad, preámbulo obligado para la comprensión de la filosofía espiritual de Nishitani. (shrink)