Nishida Kitarō and Chinese Philosophy. 2: Debt and Distance
Abstract
Th is paper is the second part of a general study on the relationship between Nishida
and Chinese philosophy. In the fi rst, I explored the extent to which Nishida’s
philosophy was infl uenced, directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly,
historically and conceptually, by materials coming from the intellectual horizon
of Chinese thought. I concentrate here on Nishida’s own position toward what
he understood by “Chinese philosophy.” Is this philosophy, so suggestive for
Nishida, promoted to a central place in his work or not, and if so, in what sense
might we take this idea of “centrality” as specifi cally Chinese? In setting forth
several archetypes of Chinese thought present in Nishida’s philosophy, the focus
of this article falls on the methodological, logical and metaphysical contrasts we
can identify between the Japanese philosopher and Chinese philosophy as his
underground intellectual sources.