In this paper, I argue that later Nishida's analysis of self-awareness (jikaku) provides a new perspective on the nature of self-awareness as understood in the philosophical literature today. I argue that the contemporary literature deals with two kinds of self-awareness; the higher-order theory understands self-awareness to be an objectified awareness and the phenomenological tradition generally understands self-awareness to be, at least primarily, a non-objectified awareness. In light of this, I first give an account of Nishida's ?acting-intuition? with reference to the (...) ?historical body.? Then I argue that later Nishida's analysis of self-awareness depicts the inadequacy of the two kinds of self-awareness as both being stuck in the subject-object dichotomy which, according to Nishida, is but one mode of experience, namely the mode of difference. Nishida provides an account that ultimately foregrounds the experiential mode of unity that negates any sense of differentiation between the subject and object. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate Kitarō Nishida's characterization of what he refers to as the 'self-contradictory' body. First, I clarify the conceptual relation between the self-contradictory body and Nishida's notion of 'acting-intuition'. I next look at Nishida's analysis of acting-intuition and the self-contradictory body as it pertains to our personal, sensorimotor engagement with the world and things in it, as well as to our bodily immersion within the intersubjective and social world. Along the way, I argue that Nishida develops a (...) rich and exceedingly current way of thinking through different facets of embodiment and interpersonal relatedness. I further argue that Nishida's work provides compelling reasons to foreground the mutually implicative, co-emergent nature of embodied self and world in our theorizing about the nature of self and experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Nishida’s later work on the historical world and religious transformation in an effort to clarify his political writings during the Pacific War. It sheds new light on the debate over the interpretation of Nishida’s wartime actions through reflection on a brief interaction Nishida had with the student Kiyoshi Kato during World War II. Shinran’s influence on Nishida will also be analyzed to reveal that the moral and religious insufficiency of the practitioner is a key aspect of his (...) view of religious consciousness. Considering Nishida’s view of religious transformation together with his political writings and his interaction with Kato will lead to a deeper understanding of his view of history. (shrink)

Both Nishida Kitarō and Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote extensively about artistic expression in their early works, yet in the last period of their careers that consideration is put mostly aside as they engage more directly with abstract ontological concerns. As this happens, a curiously overlooked concept becomes prominent in their writings, namely “faith.” While Merleau-Ponty’s is a “perceptual faith”, and Nishida’s is, broadly speaking, a religious faith, neither is strictly secular nor spiritual, yet both entail a remarkably similar ontology of the (...) motor-perceptual body. Unfortunately, their lives ended before they could fully develop these philosophically problematic concepts.... (shrink)

In Merleau-Ponty and Nishida, Adam Loughnane initiates a dialogue between two of the twentieth century's most important phenomenologists from the Eastern and Western philosophical worlds. Loughnane guides the reader through the complexities and innovations of Nishida's and Merleau-Ponty's theories of artistic expression and their rarely explored concepts of faith. The intricacies of both philosophers' views are illuminated by analyses of artists, including Cézanne, Sesshū, Rodin, Hasegawa, and other major figures of European, Chinese, and Japanese art history, who enact a radical (...) form of expression that Loughnane calls the practice of "motor-perceptual faith." He argues that the artist's motor-perceptual body, as poetically articulated in Nishida's and Merleau-Ponty's early works, enacts a form of faith that can be parsed in the final writings of both philosophers. The concept of faith is enlarged through its enactment by the artist, while the concept of artistic expression is broadened by casting it as a motor-perceptual conception of faith. Merleau-Ponty and Nishida is an exciting new intercultural reading of these philosophers' writings that opens up under-explored areas of their projects. It forms an important conceptual bridge between the two, while challenging distinctions between art, philosophy, and religion, and ultimately philosophy East and West. (shrink)

This article will examine the phase of Nishida’s thought in which he turns to the historical world and present the benefits of this turn to his overall philosophical project. In “The Philosophy of History in the ‘Later’ Nishida,” Woo-Sung Huh claims that Nishida Kitaro’s attempt to integrate history into his earlier writings on self-consciousness is a “wrong turn.” I will demonstrate how Huh’s criticism of Nishida’s writings on history stems from Huh’s own ontological assumption that consciousness and the historical world (...) occupy distinct realms. Leveling this criticism against Nishida causes the reader to miss Nishida’s greatest insight, namely that there is no such distinction; there is only one reality of consciousness and materiality. Nishida’s emphasis on the historical world makes his earlier claim that consciousness is inseparable from things more robust. I will argue that by expanding his earlier focus on consciousness to include the formative power of created physical objects and human bodies on consciousness, Nishida’s philosophy is actually strengthened. (shrink)