Nishida Kitarō and Emil Lask

Abstract

While Nishida critically engaged with the neo-Kantians (especially Cohen, Windelband and Rickert) in his earlier works, it was only later—in his 1926 essays, “Basho” and “The Neglected Problem of Consciousness”— that he engaged with Emil Lask’s philosophy. This article attempts to explicate the reason why Nishida referred to Lask during this period, viz. the period when the idea of “basho” was developed, and to clarify the nature of Lask’s influence on Nishida. The article begins with a general overview of the “last neo-Kantian”, Emil Lask’s philosophy, the focus being on the objectivist tendencies in his thought. Then, Nishida’s explicit references to Lask’s ideas—“transoppositional object”, the objectivism regarding form and the “domain category”—are analyzed. The article argues that Lask’s main influence on Nishida was not his idea of the “domain category” as such, as others have argued, but Lask’s logical objectivism, i.e. the anti-subjectivist tendencies in Lask’s thought. Finally, it is argued that Nishida appealed to Lask during this period because it resonated with one of the implications of the idea of basho—a complete turn away from the subjectivist tendencies of (neo-)Kantian philosophy.