The Transformation of the‘transcendental’

On the phenomenology of medium and image in Nishida and Heidegger

Abstract

Provided that philosophy is fundamental knowledge of the relation between world and spirit, it must be a radical reflection that includes not only the object of inquiry, but also the knowledge itself and its origin, which is transcendental thinking. Both Heidegger and Nishida, facing critical change in the traditional European sciences in general, were engaged in the rethinking and revival of the possibilities for the philosophical foundation of knowledge, the former based on the existential activities of life, and the latter on the ‘pure experience’ as base of all realities. In contemporary philosophy, these two insights are realized to have affinity with each other in the aspect of phenomenology. Hence, for the purpose of comparing the two creative philosophers, it is indispensable to take the problem of phenomenology into consideration, especially its thier deep investigation of the ‘medium’, through which phenomena show themselves. What is called ‘Dasein’ by Heidegger, ‘pure experience’ by Nishida, is nothing but the central sphere that conceives the whole reality and pure knowledge about it. The proximity of their modes of thinking, furthermore, extends to the dimension of fundamental and transcendental reflection on the occurrence of the unity of reality and spirit. Indicating such a thinking process, which would finally lead to the formation of transcendental speculation as ‘image’, is the aim of this article.