Kitaro Nishida started from the Jamesian concept of “pure experience,” but he was critical of his pragmatism. On the other hand, Kiyoshi Miki was generally positive toward pragmatism. Thus, understanding their relationship with pragmatism can be a key in appreciating what was at stake in Miki’s attempt to confront and overcome Nishida’s philosophy critically. However, “pragmatism” has diverse aspects that cannot be discussed in general terms. Therefore, we take the path of Shunsuke Tsurumi, who developed his unique ideas and practices based on pragmatism in postwar Japan, as the axis of reference for our consideration. 　　We begin by bringing into light Tsurumi’s criticism, manifested in the inaugural issue of “The Science of Thought” in 1946, of the optimistic view of Dewey’s social philosophy. Then, by rearranging and rereading the relevant texts by Tsurumi and some of the Kyoto School philosophers such as Risaku Mutai and Masakazu Nakai in addition to Miki, we will show that some of their ideas and practices were deeply connected with each other. The trajectories of these philosophers, who struggled with their times, are imprinted with the bitter experiences of “turning” in life and thought, and we can recognize some pregnant correspondences and intersections among them in terms of the realization of human “recalcitrance” or the duality of human nature, and the search for a “new humanism” considered all the more necessary because of such realization. We would like to take up their questions and words anew to draw a perspective map for our own engagement in the times of war.

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In this lecture, I compare and examine the philosophies of C. S. Peirce and Nishida Kitaro. I illuminate both the philosophical continuity and interpreted and criticized as his disregard for individual subjectivity. However, Nishida’s philosophy, which sees the individual self as “the creative element of the creative world,” defies such simplification. The question arises: can we equate the “shutai” that Nishida employs here with so-called “individual subjectivity” in the first place? In this paper, we will clarify that the concept of “shutai” suggested by Nishida in his latter period does not have the conventional connotation of “individuum,” but rather carries the connotation of “species.” Subsequently, we will discuss the reasons why the individual self had to be distinguished from the “shutai” in Nishida’s philosophy. Rather than seeking to deny individual subjectivity by asserting that the self is not a “shutai,” Nishida made the statement to see the creativity of the self that is not reduced to a mere “shutai.” By saying that the self is not simply a “shutai,” Nishida attempted to see the creativity and freedom of the self that is not reduced to something continuous, processual, and teleological.

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In this paper we examine physicalistic panpsychism as one of the trends of modern philosophy of mind. We regard it as modern panpsychism and put it into dialogue with the classical philosophy of panpsychism up to the first half of the 20th century. In this context, we will clarify the significance of James and Nishida as panpsychical philosophies. 　　The question of why mind, a completely different kind of mode of existence, arises from matter is the “hard problem of consciousness”, which has become a hot topic in recent years, and panpsychism was presented as one of its solutions. Panpsychism, however, has also presented problems such as opposition of mind against physical closure or difficulty in compounding units of consciousness. 　　In contrast, W. James, who is included in the panpsychism of the first half of the 20th century, positioned the physical only as the objective aspect of reality. He proposed a stream of experience prior to rational thought executing contradictory opposition between realities, and thus tried to solve the problem of combination of consciousness. We can call this a contradictory de-rationalistic panpsychism. Nishida also advocated a contradictory self-identifying panpsychism that places the action of identifying metaphysical contradictions at the root of reality. 　　While these represent solutions to some of the problems of modern panpsychism, they also leave the question of how to reconcile panpsychism with physicalism.

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The purpose of this paper is to compare Radical empiricism developed by William James (1843-1910) and the “pure experience(純粋 経験)” of Kitaro Nishida (西田幾多郎, 1870-1945) and to identify the character of facts of experience in both. Many studies comparing James and Nishida argue that James emphasized the “stuff” of experience, in contrast Nishida emphasized the fundamental system of experience. However, this view is not accurate, because it does not follow James’s intent. The original purpose of Radical empiricism is to reject the abstract methods argued by rationalism and to reveal the structure of “conjunctive relation” in experience. In this attempt, James argues that the “agent” is based on the “activity” of “the individual” or “the part” and mediates various conjunctive relations. And each “agent” can be a support for our lives without contradicting the other “agents.” This is because James had his own ideas about facts of experience. This paper compares this point with Nishida’s pure experience and discusses the causes of the difference between James’ worldview and the idea of “solo reality(唯一実在)” as Nishida thought.

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The aim of this paper is to examine the significance of the term “acting universal in a broad sense” and the role of “negativity” in Kitaro Nishida’s mid-period philosophy. To achieve this, the paper refers Nishida’s works, The Intelligible World and General Remarks. In The Intelligible World, the formation of “judgmental knowledge” is seen as the “self-determination of the universal,” and reality is discussed by tracing the transitions in the inclusion relationships among the universal. In this context, “self-awareness of the acting self” is considered as a stage of “intelligible universal” and is regarded as an “idea of truth.” Furthermore, Nishida uses the term “noetic determination” to mean the negation of the objectivity of the self, and he establishes the concept of the “wandering self” at its conclusion. However, Nishida expanded the significance of “acting determination” and considered it to define the “noetic determination” of the “intelligible universal” as a whole. As a result, in the General Remarks section, the “intelligible universal” was repositioned as the “acting universal in a narrow sense.” Therefore, this paper reveals the significance of the “wandering self” by focusing on negativity and reveals the transition to the “acting universal in a broad sense” through the “logic of self-awareness.”

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the structure of establishment of “only” and “singular” “this individual”, focusing on the concept of “individual” in Nishida Kitarō’s middle work “Determinations as Self- awareness of Nothingness” (1932). First, this paper focuses on the overlapping of “the material world” and “consciousness” and “death” and “living” and “act”, after confirming that the “individual” comes not only involve humans but also non-human things. In this way, this paper discusses the structure of establishment of individual caused by “self-determination of absolute nothingness”. Second, this paper focuses on the “body” and attempts to indicate that the aspects of “death” and “living” are in the “body” and that it is the basis of presence of the individual as “acting”. Lastly, it is confirmed that the “body” as the basis of the presence of the individual is fundamentally “irrational” and, thanks to this irrationality of the “body”, individual is established as an only and singular being. Through this consideration, this paper reveals that in Determinations as Self-awareness of Nothingness, every individual as “acting,” including non- human things, is established as “only” and “singular” “this individual”.

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