On Religion and Its Criticism : AN Inquiry on the Thought of Nishida kitaro(<Special Issue>Criticism of Religion)

Abstract

Religion has been criticized in many different ways and contexts. Religion can be criticized directly as being meaningless, but criticism of religion is not limited to such cases. It is entirely possible that arguing for the significance of religion implies criticism of religion. That is to say, talking about religion in general, and about how religion should be, can, in a sense, imply criticism of individual existing religions. We can find an example of this in the theory of religion of Nishida Kitaro. That Nishida attached great importance to religion can be clearly seen in his first book, An Inquiry into the Good. In this book, when talking about "religion," Nishida did not have any of the individual existing religions in mind, but rather how religion should be. But he argued about how religion should be while having in mind what is lacking in the concrete forms religion takes. His theory thus implied a criticism of the existing individual religions. Of course Nishida thought that the contradictory relation between the Self and the Absolute, which he calls the "contradictory correspondence," can also be found in Christianity and Buddhism. But he points out that in Christianity, the transcendental keeps an "exterior" character, in other words, that in Christianity the Self and the Absolute correspond only in an inadequate form, for stressing the transcendental character of God. Nishida recognized that the contradictory relation between the Self and the Absolute, which is realized through negation, forms the core of Buddhist belief. But on the other hand, he criticized Buddhism for sequestering itself from the world. Because Buddhism concerns itself mainly with how we can free ourselves from the bonds of our desires, it does not place much value on the truth of the actual world. Nishida thought that this passivity should be combined with activity. This passivity has to be combined with us becoming "historical individuals" in the actual world; in other words, as elements of the self-formation of the historical world, we should take part in this self-formation in a creative way.