Kitarō Nishida

Kitarō Nishida (, 1870 - 1945) is a Japanese philosopher, founder of the École of Kyōto , a philosophical school Japanese, which sought to marry Western philosophy with spirituality resulting from the Far-Eastern traditions. It introduced the Phénoménologie Husserl with the Japan. Its direct disciples are Hajime Tanabe and Keiji Nishitani.

Following the importation on the Japanese ground of Western philosophy at the time of the Era Meiji, the project of Nishida consisted in looking further into the intuitions of the Eastern thought through the framework and the vocabulary of Western philosophy (Hegel, Husserl, etc). It is a question of overcoming the Western thought by the Eastern thought in order to create a really universal thought. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the success or the failure of its project is prone to controversy in the contemporary literature.

The Zen, which it practiced intensively, have a considerable influence on its thought. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki was a friend of Nishida. They met during their youth, before Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki does not become one of the most respected scholars of its time concerning the thought Zen, particularly after it settled with the the United States.

Its disciple and another influential thinker of the School of Kyōto, Nishitani Keiji, wrote a intellectual biography of its intellectual guide, sobrement entitled: Kitarō Nishida .

Studies on the Good (善の研究)

“Studies on the Good” is the first work of Nishida, which he wrote at the end Ère Meiji. This work presents a complete philosophical system centered on the concept of pure experiment (jap.: junsui keiken). Nishida takes again in fact the concept of pure experiment to the Western psychologists of the XIXe century such as Wilhem Wundt or William James. But if it borrows this term from psychology, it is in order to reinterpret it within the framework of the thought Zen. However, if it is clearly influenced by its practice of this form of Méditation, it never speaks about it explicitly in its work: it quotes any technical term, nor no thinker, resulting from this sect of the Bouddhisme. In this first work, its project seems to be thus all to reformulate in the vocabulary of Western philosophy.

The pure experiment is at the same time the departure of its work and the point towards which all the reflections of the Japanese philosopher turn over. It is about an experiment which is before any differentiation between the subject and the object, before very thought reflexive. It is about an immediate attention to reality such as it is.

This work would have is enough to position Nishida like a major thinker of its time. However its work continued during long years and its system was directed towards the concepts of Logic of the Place (in Japanese: Basho)…

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