Nishida Kitaro (Volume 15)

by Keiji Nishitani

In recent years several books by major figures in Japan's modern philosophical tradition have appeared in English, exciting readers by their explorations of the borderlands between philosophy and religion. What has been wanting, however, is a book in a Western language to elucidate the life and thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Japan's first philosopher of world stature and the originator of what has come to be called the Kyoto School. No one is more qualified to write such a book than Nishitani Keiji, whose lifetime coincides with the rise and flowering of the Kyoto School and whose own critical contribution to Japanese thought has been so important.

Nishida Kitaro is a translation of essays Nishitani wrote about his teacher from 1936 to 1968 and published as a book in 1985. This series of meditations by one master on another provides a remarkable, living portrait of Nishida the person and conveys the enthusiasm he aroused in his students. Examining Nishida's most important work, An Inquiry into the Good , Nishitani penetrates to the core of his thought and presents it in language that is a marvel of clarity.

Genres: Philosophy

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Keiji Nishitani was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Kitaro Nishida. In 1924 Nishitani received a Ph.D. from Kyoto University for his dissertation Das Ideale und das Reale bei Schelling und Bergson.

He studied under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1937-9.
He held the principal Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Kyoto University from 1943 until becoming Emeritus in 1964. He then taught philosophy and religion at Otani University.

At various times Nishitani was a visiting professor in the United States and Europe.

According to James Heisig, after being banned from holding any public position by the United States Occupation authorities in July 1946, Nishitani refrained from drawing "practical social conscience into philosophical and religious ideas, preferring to think about the insight of the individual rather than the reform of the social order."

Reviews

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘place’ (basho) as the self-determination of absolute nothingness.