Nishida's Understanding of the Historical Body and the Transcendence of the Body

Abstract

Later Nishida found a clue about how to analyze the structure of the human being that acts in the world of historical reality within the problem of the body. Nishida noticed that the human being possesses a body and makes things outside of himself by using it as a tool. This implies, on the one hand, that he has creative freedom, which other animals do not possess. However, on the other hand it is precisely because of this freedom that man cannot but come into conflict with the external world and suffer from the contradiction between the self and the world. Another of Nishida's remarkable ideas on the body is that the human being cannot be defined merely as a bodily being, but that it is connected to the dimension of that which transcends the body. In this essay the author attempts to clarify Nishida's unique idea on that which transcends the body and to examine how bodily action and the action of the body that transcends the body are related. This contemplation offers suggestions about how one is to understand Nishida's thoughts on religious practice. The author's considerations are based on Nishida's interpretation of the words of the Zen master Pao­chi of Pan­shan, which Nishida learned from D.T.Suzuki.