Philosophy and Religion in Nishida

In Dialogue with Hartshorne, Takizawa, and Thomas

Abstract

In discussing our theme “Philosophy and Religion in Nishida”my responsibility is to clarify it from the Christian perspective. To tackle the issue properly, let me take up as my critical-comparative means of analysis the thoughts of three unique Christian thinkers : famous American process philosopher Charles Hartshorne who represents Whitehead’s thought as his first disciple, my teacher Katsumi Takizawa, and Thomas Aquinas whose analogical scheme of thought I studied as a viable framework of comparative philosophy of religion in my Ph. D. dissertation entitled “God and Analogy : In Search of a New Possibility of Natural Theology”(Claremont Graduate School, 1981). Appearing to be of crucial importance in this regard are Hartshorne’s neo-classical theism and panentheism, Takizawa’s concern with what he calls “the Proto-factum Immanuel,”and Aquinas’s scheme of theological analogy including four modes of analogy with the famous idea of Analogia Entis at its core. I will approach Nishida’s philosophy appearing in An Inquiry into the Good, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness, and The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview in line with Shizuteru Ueda’s famous elucidation of the dictum “I want to explain all things on the basis of pure experience as the sole reality.” I will end up with the discovery of a triadic thinking throughout his philosophical career involving these volumes.