Abstract
A salient doctrine of Neo-Confucianism is the unification of li (reason / principle). This doctrine must be taken into account in order to properly research many areas within the history of Japanese Philosophy. Nishi Amane himself, who coined the Japanese world tetsugaku in order to translate the conventional Western term Philosophy, started his career as a Neo-Confucian scholar.
Although Nishi coined the world tetsugaku, he still was not necessarily released from a Neo-Confucian view of the world. There is no doubt that Nishi intended the term tetsugaku to refer to methodologies and doctrines different than Neo-Confucianism.
However, Nishi's endeavors began as, and continued to be strongly informed by, the unification of li in the Neo-Confucian manner. To the extent that Nishi's understanding of tetsugaku did not sufficiently grasp the methods and doctrines of the Western Philosophy which he laboriously translated, he remained a Neo-Confucian scholar and did not fully attain to the title philosopher as that term came to be understood in the context of Modern Japanese Philosophy. On the other hand, Nishida Kitaro was clearly a philosopher in this sense. Nishida rejected the Neo-Confucian monism. Nishida's own tetsugaku fully maintains the autonomy of human reason. Nishida's tetsugaku further rigorously analyzes subjectivity, an analysis never really pursued by orthodox Neo-Confucianism. Nishida adheres to the action of subjective composition, which to the end constitutes the world. Nishida also distinguishes a subjective dimension and a transcendental dimension. The origin of these unique doctrines in Nishida can be located in Kant's philosophy and Buddhism.
