西田の新資料「倫理学講義ノート」における人格の問題

抄録

In An Inquiry into the Good, Nishida accords great significance to personality, seeing it as the root of all value and as one of the concepts central to ethics grounded in a theory of pure experience. “Personality is the basis of all value, and in the universe only personality possesses absolute value.” (NKZ1, 122.) On the other hand, when he contends that “The sphere of consciousness is never limited to the individual person, for the individual person is no more than a small system within consciousness” (NKZ1, 32), Nishida makes an impersonalist argument against limiting the scope of consciousness and life to the individual personality. Using the newly discovered ‘Lecture Notes on Ethics’ as a guide, in this paper I will seek not only to clarify the implications and scope of Nishida’s theory of personality but also to examine the position that the concept of personality has in his theory of pure experience.