Kitaro Nishida

Kitaro Nishida and his philosophy

Having been born in the third year of theMeiji Era,
Nishida waspresentedwith a newly unique opportunity to
contemplateeasternphilosophicalissues in the freshlight
thatwesternphilosophyshoneon them. Nishida's original
and creative philosophy,incorporating ideas of
bothZenand westernphilosophy,was aimed at bringing the
East and West closer. Throughout hislifetime,Nishida
published a number of books and essays including "
AnInquiryinto the Good" and "TheLogicof the Place of
Nothingness and the Religious Worldview." Taken as
awhole, Nishida’s life work was the foundation for
theKyoto Schoolof Philosophyand the inspiration forthe
original thinking of his disciples. The mostfamous
concept in Nishida'sphilosophy is the logic of basho
(Japanese:場所; usually translated as "place" or"topos
"), a non-dualisticconcretelogic, meant to overcome
the inadequacy of the subject-objectdistinctionessential
to the subject logic ofAristotleand the predicatelogic
ofKant, through theaffirmationof what he calls the "
absolutely contradictory self-identity", adynamic
tensionof opposites that, unlike the dialectical logic
ofHegel, does not resolve in asynthesis, butrather
defines its proper subject by maintaining the tension
between affirmationand negation as opposite poles or
perspectives.(from:Wikipedia)

Nishida Kitaro was the most significant and influential Japanese philosopherof the twentieth-century. His work is pathbreaking in several respects: itestablished in Japan the creative discipline of philosophy as practiced inEurope and North America; it enriched that discipline by infusing Anglo-Europeanphilosophy with Asian sources of thought; it provided a new basis forphilosophical treatments of East Asian Buddhist thought; and it produced noveltheories of self and world with rich implications for contemporaryphilosophizing. Nishida's work is also frustrating for its repetitive and oftenobscure style, exceedingly abstract formulations, and detailed but frequentlydead-end investigations. Nishida once said of his work, “I have always been aminer of ore; I have never managed to refine it” (Nishida 1958, Preface). Aconcise presentation of his achievements therefore will require extensiveselection, interpretation and clarification.(from STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY)