Kitarō Nishida


Kitarō Nishida was a Japanese moral philosopher, philosopher of mathematics and science, and religious scholar. He was the founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from the University of Tokyo during the Meiji period in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth Higher School in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1899 and later became professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. Nishida retired in 1927. In 1940, he was awarded the Order of Culture. He participated in establishing the Chiba Institute of Technology from 1940.
Nishida Kitarō died at the age of 75 of a renal infection. His cremated remains were divided in three and buried at different locations. Part of his remains were buried in the Nishida family grave in his birthplace Unoke, Ishikawa. A second grave can be found at Tōkei-ji Temple in Kamakura, where his friend D. T. Suzuki organized Nishida's funeral and was later also buried in the adjacent plot. Nishida's third grave is at Reiun'in, a temple in the Myōshin-ji compound in Kyoto.

Philosophy

Being born in the third year of the Meiji period, Nishida was presented with a new, unique opportunity to contemplate Eastern philosophical issues in the fresh light that Western philosophy shone on them. Nishida's original and creative philosophy, incorporating ideas of Zen and Western philosophy, was aimed at bringing the East and West closer. Throughout his lifetime, Nishida published a number of books and essays including An Inquiry into the Good and The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview. Taken as a whole, Nishida's life work was the foundation for the Kyoto School of philosophy and the inspiration for the original thinking of his disciples.
One of the most famous concepts in Nishida's philosophy is the logic of basho, a non-dualistic concrete logic, meant to overcome the inadequacy of the subject-object distinction essential to the subject logic of Aristotle and the predicate logic of Immanuel Kant, through the affirmation of what he calls the "absolutely contradictory self-identity", a dynamic tension of opposites that, unlike the dialectical logic of G.W.F. Hegel, does not resolve in a synthesis. Rather, it defines its proper subject by maintaining the tension between affirmation and negation as opposite poles or perspectives.
In David A. Dilworth's survey of Nishida's works, he did not mention the debut book, An Inquiry into the Good. There, Nishida writes about experience, reality, good and religion. He argues that the most profound form of experience is the pure experience. Nishida analyzes the thought, the will, the intellectual intuition, and the pure experience among them. According to Nishida's vision as well as to the essence of Asian wisdom, one craves harmony in experience, for unity.

Legacy

According to Masao Abe, "During World War II right-wing thinkers attacked him as antinationalistic for his appreciation of Western philosophy and logic. But after the war left-wing thinkers criticized his philosophy as nationalistic because of his emphasis on the traditional notion of nothingness. He recognized a kind of universality in Western philosophy and logic but did not accept that it was the only universality."
Nishida considered God “indispensable and decisive”.

List of works

Collected Works , 2nd ed., 25 Vols.
Selected Philosophical Essays ,, 3 Vols. An Inquiry into the Good , reprinted in NKZ1.Thoughts and Experiences, Vol. 1 , reprinted in NKZ1.Modern Idealist Philosophy , reprinted in NKZ12.Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness , reprinted in NKZ2.Problems of Consciousness , reprinted in NKZ2.Art and Morality , reprinted in NKZ3.From the Actor to the Seer , reprinted in NKZ3.The System of Universals According to Self-Consciousness , reprinted in NKZ4.The Determination of the Nothing by Self-Consciousness , reprinted in NKZ5.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, Vol. 1: The World of Action , reprinted in NKZ6.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, Vol. 2: The Dialectical World , reprinted in NKZ6.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1: Plans for a System of Philosophy , reprinted in NKZ7.Thoughts and Experiences, Vol. 2 , reprinted in NKZ7.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 2 , reprinted in NKZ8.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 3 , reprinted in NKZ8.Problems of Japanese Culture , reprinted in NKZ9.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 4 , reprinted in NKZ9.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 5 , reprinted in NKZ9.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 6 , reprinted in NKZ10.Philosophical Essays, Vol. 7 , reprinted in NKZ10.Thoughts and Experiences, Vol. 3 , reprinted in NKZ10.
  • Shorter Writings, reprinted in NKZ11
  • Lectures
  • Lecture Notes
  • Fragments and Notes, reprinted in NKZ16.
  • Diaries
  • Correspondence
  • Other

Translated works

English

An Inquiry into the Good, trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

French

L’Éveil à soi, trans. Jacynthe Tremblay. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003, 298 p.De ce qui agit à ce qui voit, trans. Jacynthe Tremblay. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2015, 364 p.Autoéveil. Le Système des universels, trans. Jacynthe Tremblay. Nagoya: Chisokudō Publications, 2017.

Books

English

French

  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Nishida Kitarō. Le Jeu de l’individuel et de l’universel, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2000, 334 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Introduction à la philosophie de Nishida, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007, 141 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Auto-éveil et temporalité. Les Défis posés par la philosophie de Nishida, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007, 229 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, L’Être-soi et l’être-ensemble. L’Auto-éveil comme méthode philosophique chez Nishida, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007, 194 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Je suis un lieu, Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2016, 316 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Laval Théologique et Philosophique. Philosophie Japonaise du XXe siècle, 64 pp. 233–573.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Philosophes japonais contemporains, Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2010, 492 p.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Théologiques. Les philosophes de l’École de Kyōto et la théologie 12 pp. 3–383.
  • Tremblay Jacynthe, Milieux modernes et reflets japonais. Chemins philosophiques, Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2015, 286 p..

Articles

  • Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. "Nishida and Wittgenstein: From Pure Experience to Lebensform or New Perspectives for a Philosophy of Intercultural Communication," Asian Philosophy 13,1 : 53–70.
  • Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. "The I and the Thou: A Dialogue Between Nishida Kitarō and Mikhail Bakhtin,” Japan Review 16 : 259–284.
  • Heisig, James W. and Rein Raud, eds. "Nishida’s Deodorized Basho and the Scent of Zeami’s Flower." Classical Japanese Philosophy : 247–73.
  • Heisig, James W. “Nishida’s Medieval Bent,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 31/1 : 55–72.
  • _____. “Non-I and Thou: Nishida, Buber, and the Moral Consequences of Self-Actualization,” Philosophy East and West 50: 2 : 179–207.
  • _____. “Philosophy as Spirituality: The Way of the Kyoto School,” Takeuchi Yoshinori et al., ed., Buddhist Spirituality. Volume 2: Later China, Korea, Japan, and the Modern World,, 367–88.
  • _____. “Nothing and Nowhere East and West: Nishida Kitarō and Hints of a Common Ground.” Angelaki 17/3 : 17 –30. Angelaki 17/3 : 17–30.
  • Loughnane, Adam.
  • Raud, Rein.
  • Rigsby, Curtis A. "Nishida on God, Barth and Christianity," Asian Philosophy 19, no. 2 : 119-157.