From James to Soseki and Nishida

Two Metamorphoses of the Phenomenology of “Fringes”

Abstract

It was in James' philosophy of pure experience that Nishida Kitaro and Natsume Soseki as well found a theoretical starting-point for their seminal works in the fields of philosophy and literature respectively. This paper proposes to set up a “co-ordinate space for comparative studies” with James' phenomenological notion of “fringes” at its origin, where we can place the works of Nishida and Soseki. It is expected that, thus brought together side by side, the characteristics of their works as two independent metamorphoses of the Jamesian phenomenology of “fringes” will be brought into relief in contrast to each other ; especially, Nishida's notion of “field” will be called into question as failing to do full justice to the pluralistic implications James drew from his consideration of the phenomenon of “fringes.”