Throughout his life the philosopher Nishida Kitaro　(1870-1945) made references to art in his writings. On occasion the references were quite slight and on　other occasions more profound. I think we can infer from this that art had a certain importance in the formation of his philosophy. It is helpful to divide the development of Nishida's philosophy into four periods. The First Stage, J unsui-keiken (pure experience) refers to the immediate or intuitive apprehension of the world about us. In the Second Stage, Jikaku (self-awareness) Nishida deals with self-awareness in the apprehended world, here Nishida was considerably influenced by the famous scholar of aesthetics K. Fiedler (1841 -95). Turning logically from this comes the Third Stage, Basho (place) here Nishida concludes that true selfawareness occurs when one sees oneself as one really is, as a place (Basho) existing in the greater or deeper'place'of the apprehended surrounding world. The Fourth Stage flows naturally from this as the Bensyohoteki-sekai or dialectical world which is the world questioned and examined in relation to these first three principles, that is pure immediate experience, to which is added self-awareness refined to Basho in the philosopher, which eventually leads to a new viewpoint on the actual world. It is when we come to the Fourth Stage that we find the principal influence on Nishida changes, partially leaving behind the theories of K. Fiedler and becoming increasing influenced by the work of J. Harrison (185 0| 1928) whose theories on reality and the historical world may have caused this change in emphasis. Nevertheless the theories of K. Fiedler remained important in relation to Art Theory. I believe that the third Basho stage is the most important in understanding the development of his idea s. Historically scholars have also believed that. However they have so far tended to neglect the r elation between Nishida's thought and art on this Third Stage, attaching far more importance to the second and fourth periods. But for me the Third Stage re , mains probably significant, revealing as it does a process of fundamental change between thought and art.

抄録全体を表示

The Turn in Nishida's Philosophy of Others Nishida's philosophy of others has been often criticized for identifying self with others. Especially, his paper I and You has been. However, exactly in the paper, Nishida's philosophy of others takes a 180 degree turn. It is, as it were, the turn from sympathetic identification to response relations with others. Therefore, concerning after the paper, the criticisms are beside the point, even though they are right to the point before the paper. In this thesis, I make clear the substance and tracks of the turn. But, the criticisms seem to have the grounds even in the paper. In fact, the paper has a lot of words which suggest that he identifies self with others. However, if you examine the true meaning of those words faithfully, you find that they mean diverse sides of response relations. In short, he finds immediate encounter with others not in the direction of sympathy or empathy, but in the direction of birth of Itself. It is well-known that Nishida uses the concept of he. I prove that Nishida thinks the response relations between self and others can be realized only where they are open to him (a third party)

抄録全体を表示

Scince Nishida's thought is greatly affected by his practice of Zen Buddism, some people often regerd him as a speculative metaphysician. This way of looking contains some truth, but it fails the very important point to see. In this article insist that the essential intention of Nisida's philosophycal work is oriented toward the concrete reality of the world. By Nishida, the world of concrete reality is the historical-social world, in which we act, live and die. That's why the idea of life is frequently mentioned in his late works. Life represents the concretness of the world. Nishida argues that real social facts such as folks or nations must be treated as life. On the analogy of J. S. Haldane's physiology, Nishida insists that the species should be considered as self of the maintaining subject in the historical-social world. Being inspired by Haldane's holistic conception of life, Nishida conceptualizes the historical-social species, whose ideal form (paradeigma) is embodied in social acts. But there is a serious misunderstanding in Nishida's argument. Biologically, self-maintaining function cannot be found in species, but in a concrete, individual organism. My conclusion is that Nishida contradicts himself because of this inappropriate interpretation of Haldane's concept of life.

抄録全体を表示

Although absolute contradictory self-identity is one of the most fundamental notions in the philosophy of Nishida, it is also notorious for its ambivalence. Actually, because Nishida uses this term in different senses and in various applications, it appears that it cannot avoid the charge of ambivalence. However, this essay considers the possibility that this very ambivalence can be taken as favorable. That is, this essay suggests that fields which have tended to be thought of as separate, actually overlap each other. This essay draws special attention to the fact that, among the various aspects of absolute contradictory self-identity which he formulates, Nishida develops formulations in both the religious world and the historical world. In general, it is often assumed that the religious world and the historical world are two completely different worlds; the former is assumed to be completely transcendent from the latter. But Nishida's notion of absolute contradictory self-identity can put this assumption into question. This essay claims that if one examines this notion carefully, then one will find that its very ambivalence demonstrate that these two worlds are intimately related and overlapping.

抄録全体を表示

The Summary presented paper deals with three subjects. The first point to be made is that Nishida Kitaro and A. N. Whitehead share the same origin, called the fact of pure experience or immediate experience, in spite of no direct academic exchange between them. They regard the pure experience as the sole starting-point of any thought in which the reality discloses itself as a non-dualistic unity. The problem they face there is whether they can describe the insight gained in that experience. They solve it by reaching at the same idea that the reality expresses itself and its self-expression takes form of a sort of logic. The second point is to show that their conclusions are different from each other. At the beginning, both philosophers regard the fact of pure experience as a flux. And then, they formulate it into the idea of process. Nevertheless, because the pure experience refuses any seat to the substantial self, which is still held in the idea of process, Nishida abandons this idea and searches for a deeper logic. It is a sort of topology that implies a paradoxical content. He finds our own selves in their vanishing point, in which our relative selves encounter with the absolute. In contrast, Whitehead searches for the emerging point of our own selves in his immediate experience. His conclusion puts no emphasis on the idea of nothingness but evidently on that of process. The third point suggests the possibility to construe Whitehead's philosophy not only as a process philosophy but also as a topological philosophy comparable to Nishida's. As Nishida watches the vanishing point of our own selves in order to reveal the depth of reality, Whitehead describes the perishing of actual entities in order to discover the principle of universal relativity of the universe. To perish is to be objectified, and to be objectified is to be present in another, and the presence in another is the main subject of topology. In conclusion, we can say that Nishida's approach to the reality and that of Whitehead are complement to each other.

抄録全体を表示