Nishida Kitaro 1870 – 1945
Nishida Kitaro was a Japanese philosopher and the founder of the Kyoto School. Bringing the resources of European philosophy, particularly German idealism and phenomenology, into dialogue with Mahayana Buddhism and Zen, he sought to articulate a distinctively East Asian philosophy in modern conceptual terms. His first major work, An Inquiry into the Good, took pure experience prior to the subject-object distinction as its starting point, and his later thought developed the logic of place and the standpoint of absolute nothingness. He shaped the trajectory of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Japanese
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Buddhism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Nishida Kitaro:
“Pure experience is prior to the distinction between subject and object.”
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Attributed to Nishida Kitaro:
“To know a thing is, in the deepest sense, to identify with it.”
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Attributed to Nishida Kitaro:
“True self-awareness is to see oneself in the face of absolute nothingness.”
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Attributed to Nishida Kitaro:
“The world of acting individuals is a world of contradictory self-identity.”
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Attributed to Nishida Kitaro:
“To love something is the deepest form of knowing it.”