抄録
This paper examines Kitaro Nishida’s theory of freedom, using as a guide newly discovered materials（a notebook titled ‘Gedanken’ and ‘Lecture Notes on Ethics［Rinrigakukenkyunoto］’）from before and after “An Inquiry into the Good［Zen no Kenkyu］”.
Nishida opposed both determinism and non-determinism, and proposed the idea of “necessary freedom［hitsuzentekijiyu］” as freedom to follow one’s own internal necessity. What was the background of this proposal, and what were its possibilities? Using unpublished notebooks as a clue, this paper first shows that Nishida’s theory of freedom was developed in the context of the Japanese tradition of spiritual cultivation derived from Zen Buddhism and Confucianism, which regard a free state of consciousness as a morally ideal state of man. We then examine Nishida’s theory of necessary freedom from three perspectives: criticism of nondeterminism, criticism of determinism, and the claim of freedom as a morally ideal state. This examination reveals that Nishida theorized freedom theory through his acceptance of Bergson’s “Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,” and also shows that Nishida’s theorization is based on ideas that imply selflessness. First, Nishida denies that the subject of choice transcends the psychic process; second, he asserts that the self as a psychic process is continually changing. Further, in viewing freedom─the moral ideal state─as a concentration of the entire consciousness, he associates it with the state of selflessness in terms of the elimination of partial consciousness.
