The Philosophy of history in the "later" Nishida: A Philosophic turn
By Woo-Sung Huh
Philosophy East & West
vol. 40 no. 3
pp. 343-374
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
p. 343
I. INTRODUCTION
This essay on the philosophy of history of Nishida
Kitaro (1870-1945) begins from my conviction that
Nishida in his writings pursued two main lines of
thought, almost equally pervasive and persistent.
These lines are the development of a philosophy of
self-consciousness in his pre-1931 corpus and the
philosophy of history-politics in his later writings.
Both philosophies are essentially ontologies, by
virtue of what Nishida calls the application of forms
of self-consciousness (jikaku no keishiki(a)).(1)
These forms function in almost every phase of
Nishida's philosophy, with the notable exception of
his discussion of the sciences, and in the main
include activity, self-determination, actuality,
one-qua-many logic, and immanent-qua-transcendent
logic. Of course, Nishida did not begin his
philosophic enterprise with a clear awareness of
these forms of self-consciousness and with an intent
to apply them variously. Rather, his understanding of
the forms was the result of an enormous struggle to
give full reality to the phenomena of consciousness.
Nishida finally arrived at a full grasp of these
forms only in his mature theory of
self-consciousness, around 1929 or 1930. Then, in
what I call the turn in Nishida's philosophy, he
extended their application to nonconscious phenomena,
such as the historical epoch and the state.
Whatever Nishida applied the forms of
self-consciousness to was ascribed, in virtue of this
application, full reality in Nishida's texts. In
general, these forms are applied in turn to pure
experience, to artistic creation, to acts of
self-consciousness, to the historical epoch, to the
state, and to the emperor. The extension of his forms
from acts of self-consciousness to the historical
epoch occurred about 1931 and is the most decisive
shift in Nishida's philosophy, because it paved the
way for his return to a world which he had once
rejected and called transitory. This turn signifies
not only that the applications of these forms are
turned from conscious phenomena to nonconscious
phenomena, it also reflects Nishida's own critical
stance toward his earlier religious-soteriological
philosophy.
The first formulation of the philosophy of
self-consciousness can be traced back as far as 1904,
with its culmination occurring in volume 5 of Nishida
Kitaro zenshuu (Nishida's Complete Works) . The
philosophy of history consequently begins with a few
essays written in 1931 and 1932 and evolves into a
systematic philosophy of history, which eventually
coalesces with his political conceptions. During the
period of the formulation of the philosophy of
self-consciousness, we find Nishida arguing for the
supremacy of the soteriological or religious world of
inner man (home interior), against what he calls the
world of external man (home exterior). This approach
thus gives less reality to the historical world and
remains fundamentally an internalism, centering on
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acts of self-consciousness. However, Nishida changes
this position when he grants similar reality to the
historical epoch. He thereby abolishes the once
sharply held dichotomy between home interior and home
exterior. This turn enables Nishida to pronounce the
absoluteness of each epoch instead of the
absoluteness of each act of self-consciousness, and
the self-determination of an epoch instead of the
self-determination of self-consciousness ("History"
12:62). As an extension or exemplification of his
philosophy of history, he then discusses various
political notions such as national polity and the
state.
In one of the most important essays showing this
turn, "Concerning Self-consciousness, " Nishida
clearly indicates that in that essay and in previous
essays which deal with the historical world, he is
"directly unifying self-consciousness and the
historical world" (10: 515) . This short passage
reveals not only Nishida's intent, but also his
assumption that the forms of self-consciousness,
primarily distilled from his discussion of artistic
creation and conscious phenomena, are applicable to
nonconscious phenomena. A key question for evaluating
Nishida's entire texts, then, is whether an act of
self-consciousness and a historical epoch are indeed
similar enough that this "direct union" is possible,
as Nishida clearly assumed.
Unfortunately, this question has not been
squarely faced, either by Nishida or in the secondary
literature. To begin with, Nishida's discourse of
history-politics has often been neglected or treated
inadequately by scholars. As if Nishida foresaw the
reception of his philosophy of history in the
academic community, he wrote, in 1945, immediately
prior to his death, the essay "Watakushi no ronri ni
tsuite" (Concerning My Logic), often called his
zep-pitsu, or "final words." It starts with this
remark: "As a result of many years of study, I
believe I have clarified the form of thought seen
from the perspective of the historically active self
(rekishiteki koiteki jiko(b)), or the logic of the
historically formative act (rekishiteki keisei sayo
no ronri(c))" (12:265). Nishida also laments that his
previous logic was established from the perspective
of the abstract and conscious self (ishikiteki
jiko(d)) and that people had taken his logic as
religious experience, but not as a logic (12:
265-266). This additional remark suggests Nishida's
own accusation against contemporary scholarship for
misunderstanding his logic as being limited to
religious experience. To repudiate this common
misconception, he started his final words with the
pronouncement of his logic as historically formative.
Moreover, it appears here that the form of thought or
logic refers to "forms of self-consciousness," and
that the rejected perspective of the conscious self
may include his own earlier philosophy of
self-consciousness,
With this preliminary understanding of the
general movement of Nishida's philosophy, in this
article I shall examine how Nishida's philosophy of
self-consciousness turns to philosophy of history, by
contrasting the different meanings given to "forms of
self-consciousness" in both philosophies. First, I
shall explore the nature of the philosophy of
self-consciousness, and then I
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shall analyze a few essays written in 1931 and 1932
in which many key aspects of the philosophy of
history are laid out. Third, I shall elucidate these
aspects in their position in Nishida's fully
established philosophy of history. Finally, I shall
examine the legitimacy of Nishida's enterprise of
uniting the forms of self-consciousness and
historical reality.
II. MATURE THEORY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
According to Nishida's mature, or most radical
theory, self-consciousness is not only a particular
state of consciousness (5: 425) , it is its
"fundamental form" (5:433).(2) The complete form of
self-consciousness is "self's seeing itself in
itself," which involves three moments: "seeing,"
"itself," and "in itself" (5:433).(3) "Seeing itself
in itself" is deemed religious salvation, as Nishida
once employed the Buddhist term gedatsu(e) to signify
this salvation (5:179). Self-consciousness. according
to Nishida's characterization, is active or
self-determinative, self-cognitive, self-intentional,
instantaneous, unique and complete, joyful, and
religious.
Active and Self-determinative
The foremost character of self-consciousness is its
activity. The claim that self-consciousness is not
passive but active, is almost omnipresent in all of
Nishida's texts belonging to the philosophy of
self-consciousness. This active nature is emphasized
by the numerous active forms of verbs: seeing,
acting, moving, determining, illuminating,
reflecting. "conscious-ing" (ishiki-suru). All these
active forms of verbs are carefully and constantly
opposed to their passive forms: seen, acted,
determined, illuminated, reflected, "conscioused"
(ishiki-sareta) . Nishida associates the terms
"noesis" and "noema," independently of Husserlian
understanding. with the "seeing" and "seen" aspects
of consciousness.(4)
One of the most important characteristics of the
activity of self-consciousness for Nishida's logic of
place (basho(f)) is that it is "self-determining
(jiko-gentei(g)) or self-forming (jiko-keisei(h)) or
causa sui." "Gentei-suru" and "keisei-suru"
literally mean "to determine" or "to limit," and "to
form" or "to shape," respectively. Nishida argues:
"The true self must be self-determination. The deeper
the sense of self-determination becomes, the deeper
the consciousness of self-consciousness (jikaku no
ishiki(i)) becomes" (5:355).
The notion of place is concomitant with
self-determination or activity. Self-determination
entails the rejection of determination by others,
whether it is a Platonic universal, theistic God, or
Hegelian Spirit. A self-determining entity cannot be
located in something other than itself. Nishida thus
often called place "the place of nothingness"
("Basho," 4: 243, 244) and thus the only possibility
for a self-determinative act of self-consciousness is
to locate itself in itself. In other words, "self's
seeing itself in itself" means that each act
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of self-consciousness is located in itself. The third
"in itself" element is expressed by the notion of
basho (place). Therefore, the logic of basho is the
logic which safeguards the full reality of each act
of self-consciousness. Thus, Nishida argued, "True
place (basho) is like a mirror in which self
illuminates its own image or shines itself" (4: 226).
This notion of place, after the turn, shifts to
include a new meaning, that is, a historical place,
or a public place which is historical reality.
The forms of self-determination also include the
concept of free will. For instance, Nishida defines
free will as "self-determination which sees absolute
nothingness" (5: 379). Hence, insofar as our selves
are in any sense objectified, free will is
inconceivable. This free will is directly connected
to the notion of creativity, or creation ex nihilo.
In the philosophy of self-consciousness, contrary to
the position in his philosophy of history, Nishida
maintains a firm belief in the existence of creation
ex nihilo (mu yori u(j)). Its most important examples
are the changes of consciousness (16:442). Creativity
and freedom are also understood as liberation from
environmental determination and the necessary
determination of the past (6: 369). This radical
understanding of creativity and freedom will be
changed in the philosophy of history, as the latter
emphasizes the givenness of a specific historical
world and the existence of the surrounding world.
Self-knowing
Self-consciousness is cognitive, indeed, self-knowing
(jichi(k) ) (4: 300) . In the theory of
self-consciousness, "all knowing is the [self's]
illuminating itself in itself, or the self sees self
[in itself]. This is the most complete form of
knowing" (4: 132) .(5) The frequent formulas of
seeing-qua-acting and acting-qua-seeing refer to this
self-knowing. On the basis of this ultimate form of
knowing, Nishida sharply criticizes knowledge, which
presupposes a subject-object dichotomy. For instance,
Nishida argues: "We must distinguish at least two
fundamentally different directions: one is that of
knowing objects, another that of self-consciousness"
(4: 293) . Moreover, the qualitative difference
between these two levels is too wide to move from one
to another (6: 144).
Self-intentional or Self-content
In Nishida's mature theory, self-consciousness is
object-less. It is not intentional or other-directed,
but self-directed. Nishida defines "intending" as the
"constitution (kosei(l)) of self-content in itself"
(5: 149). That consciousness which becomes conscious
of itself is that which takes as its essential
feature not "simple intending" but
"self-consciousness" (5: 149-150). Nishida repeats,
"What is intended must be self-content (jiko
naiyo(m)) which is illuminating in itself" (5:431).
Intellectual self, another name for objectified self,
is treated most harshly by Nishida, on the ground
that it requires something
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transcendent (choetsuteki(n) ) , not given by
consciousness itself, and hence is intentional (5:
127). Nishida here seems to argue that only when
self-consciousness loses its own content and
degenerates into the intellectual self whose main
function is simply "mirroring" or "representing,"
does it then take the nature of intentionality, which
needs a transcendent object.
Temporal
As far as the temporal aspect of self-consciousness
is concerned, time is an instant, and an act of
consciousness is instantaneous being. An act of
self-consciousness is not only simply eternal but
also temporal: eternal in the sense that each moment
of time touches the absolute, temporal in the sense
that it is momentarily acting. This understanding of
the temporal character of self-consciousness is
variously expressed by Nishida: the discontinuity of
continuity, the self-determination of eternal now,
and the present's determination of present itself.
All these expressions of and arguments for temporal
existence are meant to establish the fact that lived
time, better expressed as living time, consists of
each moment. absolutely independent from both
preceding and following moments. The uniquely acting
and truly present self-consciousness will not allow
anything substantial or potential to dictate itself.
Nishida forcefully commands us "not to think that
there is in any sense a potential which is underlying
the self" because "there is self-consciousness only
when present determines itself" (12: 77-78). Another
characteristic of Nishida's discussion of time is his
connection of "discontinuous continuity" to the
notion of spatial or circular.(6) These two
metaphors, space and circle, may have helped him
visualize the fullness and completeness of each
moment. The spatial element seems to be employed to
signify that each moment is a complete and absolute
world, independent from other moments. On the basis
of this spatial characteristic of temporal fullness,
Nishida repudiates the pure duration of Bergson. The
indivisibility of pure duration is not sufficient to
express the "discontinuous aspect" of each act of
self-consciousness, or moment of true life. Thus,
Nishida argues that pure duration does not show a
discontinuous aspect, or absolute negation (7: 82),
nor does it show true death (6: 356) or true concrete
life (7: 131).(7)
One-quo-Many
Each act of self-consciousness is both
individualistic and universal. The fact that each act
of self-consciousness is individualistic and unique
is the basis on which Nishida distinguishes mental
phenomena from natural phenomena, for only the former
"possesses a direction to individualization" (3:
403). Contrary to this, "that which is common to
everyone and can be repeated any number of times, is
not reality" (3: 444-445) . This notion of
individuality is related to both "reality" and
"creativity": "The reason individual (kojinteki(o))
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consciousness, compared to communal consciousness
(kyodo ishiki(p)), which is a kind of simultaneous
existence, possesses true reality as a continuous
unity is that it is creative" (3: 407).(8)
The uniqueness of acts of self-consciousness
becomes the characteristic mark of human existence,
distinguishing it from animal life, because "within
the consciousness of an animal, which acts by
instinct, there functions only a kind of racial self
(shuzokuga(q) ) , which cannot yet be called an
individual self (koseiga(r))" (3: 403-404).
Nishida also believed that he needed the notion
of universality for individuality. One often sees
passages similar to the following in Nishida's text:
"In self-consciousness there will be a unity... of
the universal and the particular. What we call self
refers to this point" (4: 83). This relation between
"individual" and "universal" may be put into the most
important logical apparatus in Nishida's philosophy:
one-qua-many and many-qua-one logic. As a matter of
fact, this logic is applied in every dissolution of
the many dichotomies embedded in either subject-logic
or object-logic, which in turn are based upon the
Platonic and Aristotelian logic of "One over Many."
Emotional Aspect of Self-consciousness
At one place Nishida names "self's seeing its own
content" as "feeling self-consciousness" (kanjoteki
jikaku(s)) (5: 138), or "emotional consciousness"
(joiteki ishiki(t)) (5: 274). He further argues,
"seeing the self is joy and losing it is sadness" (5:
275). Almost paraphrasing a passage from On the
Trinity of Augustine, Nishida argued for the trinity
of man. "In self-consciousness, `I, '
`self-knowledge, ' and `self-love' are identical"
(12:116).(9) One has to emphasize that his arguments
for the trinity of human existence all are concerned
with homo interior. "The human sciences of homo
interior are based upon the emotional
self-consciousness" (12: 23). We thus see one of the
fundamental characteristics of Nishida's philosophy
of self-consciousness: its personal content, its
emphasis upon human interiority (naka(u)) and homo
interior. All these phrases represent or signify the
fundamentally soteriological character of Nishida's
philosophy of self-consciousness.
Religiosity
"Self's seeing itself in itself" is seen as awakening
or salvation. One of Nishida's earliest usages of
religious-soteriological meaning is found in part 4,
"Religion," in A Study of Good. In this context.
"religious demand is the demand with regard to the
self; it is demand concerning the life of the self."
In the same section, arguing for the ultimacy of the
religious concern, Nishida identifies the religious
demand as the demand for the unity of consciousness
(1:172).
Here Nishida also believes that the communal
consciousness is an expression or part of the demand
for the unity of consciousness. But this communal
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consciousness loses its primacy to the religious
demand. because the religious demand for the unity of
consciousness is "the ultimate point" of the demand
for the unity of consciousness (1: 171). The usage of
"religious, " understood as the unity of the
individual consciousness rather than communal
consciousness, developed into one of the most
distinctive features of the philosophy of
self-consciousness. However, the concept of communal
consciousness reappears in the philosophy of history
in the form of "the spirit of an epoch," "species
mediation," and especially in the notions of the
state and people.
III. THE TURN
To examine the emergence of Nishida's philosophy of
history, it is necessary to understand precisely how
the notion of history was previously treated in the
philosophy of self-consciousness.
In part 4 of the essay "Ippansha no jiko gentei"
(The Self-determination of the Universal) (written in
1929), in volume 5, which I think is one of the
earlier discussions of historical reality in the
context of the mature theory of
self-consciousness, (10) Nishida discusses the
historical self, historical determination, and
historical content, as well as their individuality
and nonrationality. A careful reading reveals,
however, that Nishida always places "religious
experience" or the "seeing" aspect of
self-consciousness at the foundation of historical
self or reality.
In this pre-turn essay, based upon a sharp
distinction between the two levels of
self-consciousness and historical self, Nishida
argues: "Historical content can be seen as the
noematic or expressive content of noetic
determination of the self which sees its own
nothingness" (5:400-401). This is one of the first
places where Nishida identifies "historical content"
as the noematic content of noetic determination of
the self.
In reminding us of the forms of
self-consciousness, Nishida argues: "Historical
reality is established by the self-conscious forms
(jikakuteki keishiki). In other words, it must be
self-conscious reality" (5: 398) . He argues:
"Historical self-consciousness (rekishiteki
jikaku(v)) is grounded in noetic determination which
sees nothingness, hence it cannot see itself and its
concrete noema. This is why history is understood as
irrational" (5: 398) . Despite his positive
understanding of historical reality as self-conscious
reality, he grounds historical self-consciousness in
noetic determination. which is nothingness,
nonsubstantial, and also the basis of the
irrationality of history.
In this essay, Nishida is firmly convinced that
religious or existential self-consciousness underlies
the historical aspect of human existence. Hence, at
this stage Nishida is still emphatic:
Historical self (rekishiteki jiko(w)) is merely seen
in the realm of expression ....As far as the self
which was born at a specific epoch (jidai) is
determined noematically, it is ruled by the spirit of
epoch.... [But] there is, at the bottom of the self,
something which transcends history. At the bottom of
our
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activity, there is absolutely deeper self in the
direction of noesis....It is self-determination of
self which sees nothingness. Instinct, society or
history are merely images of this self in the
noematic plane, they are merely seen self.
(5:401-402)
In all these quotations, the historical world, as
well as the expressive world, is merely seen. It is
certainly deemed less ontologically real, since "at
the foundation of historical determination, there is
already noematic determination in the
self-consciousness of absolute nothingness" (5:409).
That something deeper than history, historical
activity, is called "inner life" (naiteki seimei(x))
(5: 413) or "religious life" (5: 414).(11) For
Nishida the inner self, noetic determination, and
noetic meaning of the self-consciousness of absolute
nothingness are identical (5:462). As a consequence,
the world of personality, the locus of personal
freedom, is outside (soto(y)) the historical world
(5: 336). Quite differently from the later position
of the philosophy of history, Nishida here attacks
the notion of the spirit of the epoch (jidai
seishin(z)), because it is merely an abstract and
noematic content and a general form [Gestalt] common
to various idealistic contents in an epoch (5: 399).
Thus understood, before the turn, the
self-consciousness of absolute nothingness always has
ontological priority over historical reality, which
can have any reality only to the extent that it is
grounded in the noetic aspect of self-consciousness.
The philosophy of self-consciousness and its emphasis
on temporal existence, together with its negation or
disparagement of historical existence, are strongly
reaffirmed in the very important essay "Ningengaku"
(Human Studies) (12: 18-30), which was published in
August 1930.
In "Human Studies," for example, Nishida argues
for internal human existence beyond historical
existence, because "if we are seen as simply
historical existence, then the significance of a
truly free human being would be lost. A merely
historical human study is not a true human study.
True human studies are not the human studies of the
external human being (homo exterior) but of the inner
human being (homo interior)" (12: 20). Believing that
historical existence generally is understood as
belonging to homo exterior,(12) Nishida emphasizes,
"What is truly being in its deepest sense must be
internal human being" (naiteki ningen(aa)) (12:20).
Moreover, the foundation of the external human being
should be sought in the internal human being. The
historical self (rekishiteki jiko) is transcended by
the individualistic self (kojinteki ningen(ab)) (12:
27). Philosophy is "the science of self-reflection of
the internal human being" (12: 30). He further
emphasizes that the most immediate (chokusetsu ni
shite(ac) ) and concrete reality (gutaiteki naru
jijitsu(ad) ) is individualistic or personalistic
(jinkakuteki(ae)) (12: 29). What is that which is
personalistic? It is "self-conscious determination in
which self, as nothingness, sees itself" (12: 29). In
short, in the philosophy of self-consciousness.
Nishida made a sharp distinction between homo
exterior and homo interior, assigning authentic human
existence only to the latter.
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However, the main idea of this essay will be
recanted by Nishida later, when the sole supremacy of
the existential or religious thinking is challenged
by the firm establishment of the philosophy of
history. In 1937, when the philosophy of history was
well under way, Nishida collected, in a single volume
entitled Zoku keiken to shisaku (Sequel to Experience
and Thought) (12: 5-195) , some of his essays
previously published in 1930-1931, and in so doing,
he added a short but valuable assessment at the end
of each essay:
In this essay [Human Studies], the world of history
was considered as external, in contradiction to the
internal human being. I thought the internal human
being was concrete (gutaiteki). The historical world
was understood only in the ordinary sense. But I do
not think in this way any longer. The internal human
being exists in the historical world. If I hereafter
wrote "Human Studies," then it would be very much
different from this essay. Human being is historical
human being; it must be the creative element of a
creative world. The thought of a human being
represented in the Trinity of Augustine is the human
study which sees human beings from the perspective of
the transcendent God. This must be reexamined rather
as the human study of historical human being. I think
that when I wrote this essay my focal point was homo
interior. (12: 30)
In this passage, Nishida holds that human studies
should be based not upon homo interior but upon the
historical human being. Moreover, the locus of
concreteness and creativity are neither the internal
human being nor artistic creation, but the historical
human being. The ordinary manner in which the
historical world has been dealt with should be
reoriented. He also rejects the Trinity of Augustine
from the new perspective of the
immanent-quatranscendent logic. This passage also
implies that Nishida would criticize his own earlier
trinity of "I," self-knowledge, and self-love, all of
which are identical in self-consciousness.
Consequently, in many respects, this short note
convinces me that Nishida became sharply critical of
the internalism of his earlier position giving
primacy to self-consciousness over historical
existence.
Expression (Hyogen)(af) and Body Before the Turn
The change clearly expressed in "Human Studies" and
elsewhere does not occur abruptly. Rather, it results
from careful preparation, part of which is to expand
and give a higher ontological status to the realm of
expression. One principal development involves
Nishida's understanding of the locus of expression:
the main locus of expression in his earlier
philosophy is in artistic creation, whereas its
proper locus in the philosophy of history is
primarily the historical world. Finally, even the
political world is included as an expressive
world.(13)
Philosophically, this reflects the movement from
a sharply dichotomous position between the "seeing"
(noetic) world and "seen" (noematic) world, with
which the expressive world is identified, to a
position which grants equal reality to expressive or
noematic worlds. This movement finally reaches the
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position that all human existence occurs in the
expressive, that is, historical-political, world.
Consider this passage revealing how the world of
expression took shape in the philosophy of
self-consciousness:
Active self can be found in its [self-consciousness
of the absolute nothingness] noetic direction and
"expression" in its noematic direction. But the
active self cannot noematically determine its own
content because it, as nothingness, has the sense of
its own noetic determination. Therefore the active
self in its broader sense must be divided into two
parts: the part facing noematic aspect and the part
facing noetic aspect. (5: 451-452)
In this passage, Nishida initially seems to confirm
the position of the mature theory of
self-consciousness that the active self cannot
noematically determine its own content, but can only
be found in the noetic direction. However, in order
to make room for the expressive world, Nishida here
divides "active self" into two aspects: noetic and
noematic. This division gives some reality to the
noematic aspect. Considering that immediately after
his most mature and radical formulation of
self-consciousness Nishida shows a concern for the
noematic world, it appears that the true motive of
this passage is to introduce an "intermediary world"
which provides a possibility for mitigating his
radical internalism or emphasis on homo interior and
his strong focus on consciousness. He gives more
reality to external nonconscious phenomena. Because
of this mediating function, I consider the
development of the notion of expression to be one of
the most important preparations for Nishida's later
turn to the philosophy of history.
Another significant aspect of Nishida's theory of
expression is his view of the inseparability of
expression and body, which is the theoretical basis
for giving a positive value to the idea of body in
Nishida's text. This line of thinking, developing
through the notion of the bodily determination of
self-consciousness, eventually culminates in the
notion of historical body.
Prior to this positive view, however, Nishida's
earlier texts contain many passages giving a rather
negative value to the body. For example, in 5: 336
Nishida contrasts noetic determination with bodily
determination, which is here identified with noematic
determination. One of the favorite examples of bodily
determination of self-consciousness, in the
philosophy of self-consciousness, is artistic
creation.(14) The link made between expression and
body is inherited by the notion of historical body,
whose locus is historical space and the state. As the
notion of expression fully matures in the philosophy
of history, so too does the notion of body culminate
in the notion of historical body.
Traditionally it has been understood that Nishida
turned from the social world to the inner world for
the solace arising from the practice of Zen
meditation, and on the basis of that experience
developed his philosophy.(15) I agree with many other
scholars that his earlier philosophy is intimately
related to his biography. In a letter (no. 26, 18:
41-42) which was written in
p. 353
1896, Nishida employed the term "transitory world"
(ukiyo(ag) ) for the surrounding world, including
family life (18: 41). In response to this experience
of ukiyo, Nishida removed himself from the
sociopolitical world, and moved into the world of
certain, indubitable self's seeing itself in itself,
an absolutely self-sufficient or self-determinative
world.
By virtue of his philosophy of history, Nishida
is going to return to the world he once deserted and
called transitory. But this time. the transitory
world does not remain transitory. It takes on full
reality and becomes as divinelike as an individual
act of self-consciousness. His returning to ukiyo is
possible only after this world is secured as an
ontologically real world or religious world by the
application of the forms of self-consciousness. In
that newly born world, there is an almost perfect
harmony or unity between individuals and state, in a
way similar to Hegel's argument in Reason in History.
Hence, the state becomes the divine Idea as it exists
on earth.(16)
The Significance of "History" (12: 31-63)
It was in 1931 that Nishida made the most important
turn in the overall developing of his philosophy.
This turn actually was expressed in a few essays,
including "Rekishi" (History) (published in August
1931) . Together with this essay, five others
published in the same year reveal how keenly Nishida
was aware of the problem of time and history.(17)
"History" is the earliest essay in which we can
notice all the essential features of what I call the
turn in Nishida's philosophy: the integration of the
notion of expression and the historical world and its
inseparability from the notion of body, the
applications of some key forms of self-consciousness
to a historical epoch, seminal ideas of acting
intuition, and even his fondness for the phrase "each
epoch is immediate to God" of Leopold von Ranke
(1795-1886).(18)
As to the almost total integration of the notion
of expression and the historical world, Nishida's
definition of history here eloquently confirms this:
"But history is not so-called inner sensation, such
as what we think or feel in our minds. It must be
externalized conscious contents through action. It
must be the contents of expression in its broader
sense" (12: 35). "Therefore, we are born and die in
history. No hero would escape being the historical
product" (12: 36). The marriage between the notion of
expression and history is reemphasized in this essay:
"History may be called the self-conscious process of
that which expresses itself....One may argue that our
true self exists in history, and we have a true
self-consciousness in history" (12: 47).
In this essay, Nishida's analysis is still based
upon his distinction between noetic and noematic
directions, calling the first the
"self-determination of love" and the latter the
"self-determination of time" (12: 42). The important
point, however, is that even though the
self-determination of time is grounded in the
self-determination of love, it has its own positive
reality. Also Nishida here relates the notion of
action to the "externalization" of our
p. 354
thoughts and feelings. "The acting self reveals
itself by self-expression" (12: 43). This usage of
"action" here leads Nishida to coin the term "acting
intuition, " one of the key concepts for his
self-criticism of his own earlier "conscious-ism" or
"internalism."
Unlike the ordinary sense of history mentioned
above, true history for Nishida must be one which has
"the meaning in which present determines present"
(12: 47).
If history is taken to mean "the determination of
eternal now," as I have argued above, then our
self-consciousness as the determination of
nothingness ...must be deemed the idealistic content
which unifies each epoch in historical determination
(rekishiteki gentei(ah)), or the spirit of the epoch.
As the temporal determination is seen from the
perspective of the present's determination of
present, so each and every epoch is the absolute,
from which our entire life is seen and determined.
(12: 50)
In this passage, one of the forms of
self-consciousness, the determination of the eternal
now, is employed to explain "history" and "epoch."
The "spirit of the epoch, " previously rejected, is
raised to full ontological status by the form of
determination of the eternal now.
Then Nishida relates true history to society and
to "all of humanity." "True history, as the
determination of nothingness which includes time,
proceeds through the self-consciousness of society.
Therein there must be something called all of
humanity" (12: 51-52). Here in this passage, Nishida
relates self-consciousness, true history, society,
and all of humanity. Perhaps it is at this juncture
that the philosophical link between history and
politics is made in Nishida's texts, culminating in
historical-political thinking. Thus it is easy for
Nishida to quote the following passage, which may be
called the motto of his philosophy of history, from
"On the Epochs of Modern History," by Leopold von
Ranke, whom Nishida called the great historian:
"Every epoch is immediate to God, and its worth is
not at all based on what derives from it but rests in
its own existence, in its own self" (12: 61).(19)
His "turn" enabled Nishida to pronounce "the
absoluteness of each epoch" and the
"self-determination of epoch" (12: 62). Anyone can
become a "historical man" (rekishijin(ai)) (12: 47)
or "historian" (rekishika(aj)) (12: 55) upon taking
the position of the present's self-determination.
The essay "Self-Love, Other-Love, and Dialectic"
(published in February and March 1932; 6: 260-299)
clearly argues that the immediate and most direct
world for us, wherein we are living, is not the
so-called material world or conscious world: "We are
living in the world of activity (koi(ak)) in its
broader sense and in the expressive world. We are
concretely historical man" (6:266). According to this
passage, the world of activity, or expressive world,
and the historical world seem to signify one and the
same world, which is neither the material world nor
the conscious world. Along the same line, Nishida
argues, "What is immediate as determination of
nothingness, must
p. 355
both determine itself and have the meaning of
expression" (6: 266). Moreover, this passage also
recants his earlier position as to the locus of
immediacy, by holding that the "immediate" or most
direct world must have the meaning of expression. In
this manner, Nishida rejected his previous
understanding of "conscious world" and expanded it to
include historical world. Hence, "we are historical
man."
Another important point made in this essay is its
emphasis on the notion of body in relation to the
notion of expression (6: 262-263). "True self lies
neither in the cortex of the brain, as a physiologist
says, nor in the consciousness, as a psychologist
argues. It, as the bodily self (shintaiteki
jiko(al)) which actively determines itself, resides
in the broader sense of history" (6: 266). More
significantly, the notions of personality and
sublimated body are employed in order to refer to the
same notion (6: 268). Finally in this essay the
notion of bodily self in history culminates in the
concept of historical body: "We can be free only as
historical reality. There is a free man underneath
the present's self-determination of itself. The free
man must have historical body (rekishiteki
shintai(am)) (6: 293).(20)
Although it is unclear whether the consciousness
rejected in 6: 266 refers to his mature philosophy of
self-consciousness, it is not only quite possible but
also consistent that all these new emphases on active
determination and "bodily self in history" or
historical body are rejections of the internalism or
"consciousness-ism" embodied in his mature theory of
self-consciousness.
Later, in the essay entitled "Inochi no tetsugaku
ni tsuite" (Concerning the Philosophy of Life)
(published in 1932, 6: 428-451), history is itself
called "Thou" (6: 444), and, in a very Rankean
passage, Nishida argues in favor of the historical
world:
There must be the meaning of creation of value when
we face God through history. We are determined both
in and through history. The God, apart from
historical determination, who faces abstractly
individual selves, is simply transcendent God and is
not true God....I and You, residing in history,
determined by history, are the creation of God. (6:
427)
Here again, as in his pre-turn philosophy, a
transcendent God is rejected as the true God, but on
different grounds. In the philosophy of
self-consciousness a transcendent God was rejected on
the basis that each act of self-consciousness is
itself the locus of divinity in humanity. Here the
true God is realized in historical determination,
that is, in and through history. This clearly
portends the later divine character given to a
historical epoch, and thus leads Nishida to give a
new interpretation to the notion of
"self-determination of the eternal now." Both his
rejection of any transcendent God and his notion of
"historical determination" are important because they
are the grounds by which Nishida repudiates any sharp
dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms
of this historical world, and by which he argues for
fuller ontological status for history. The God who is
separated
p. 356
from the historical world is seen as not a true God.
In section 2 of "The Logic of Place and the Religious
Worldview" (1945) , Nishida will call this
transcendent God objectified God, and will thereby
reject Karl Earth's notion of the transcendent God.
In this manner, in several essays written in 1931
and 1932, beginning with "History," we can see a full
integration of the expressive world and historical
reality. Nishida shifts from a primacy of
consciousness to give similar primacy to history,
which was previously held as a less ontologically
real world but which now is given full ontological
status.(2l) The significance of these essays does not
stop here, since his emphasis upon history strongly
implies a criticism of the internalism of his own
mature theory of self-consciousness.
The essay "History, " marking Nishida's most
significant turn, did not present the full
implications of the philosophy of history, as all of
Nishida's philosophical developments evolved slowly.
The best example of its gradual establishment can be
seen later in Nishida's complete rejection of the
notion of noetic aspect. For instance, in its
republication, Nishida gives us this following
reflection at the end of "History," six years after
its first appearance in Shiso:
In this essay, I have already maintained that we
exist in the historical world. But I also argued in
those days that the foundation of the historical
world is always self-consciousness, love, or
something noetic. I could not but hold this kind of
view. Although I do not say that this view is
erroneous, it cannot avoid being abstract
(chuushoteki(an)). (12:63)
This passage confirms that in the essay
"History," Nishida already held a philosophy of
historical existence. But he later became
dissatisfied with the fact that he had not been
radical enough, in still grounding the historical
world in "self-consciousness, love, or something
noetic." This link is rejected as "abstract." a
criticism particularly directed to a passage in which
Nishida distinguished noematic self-determination of
time from neotic self-determination of love (12: 42).
Nishida felt that this kind of language was still a
relic of the philosophy of self-consciousness. At
least since that moment, any deep-rooted hierarchy
between noetic and noematic aspects is banished
forever from Nishida's texts.
IV. MATURE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
In order to understand Nishida's philosophy of
history and its criticism of the philosophy of
self-consciousness, it is important to consider
Ranke, because it was with Ranke that Nishida felt
the most intimate tie in his thinking on the
historical epoch and the state. He may be the only
Western thinker who was never outgrown or deserted by
Nishida. Since 1919, when Nishida quoted for the
first time Ranke's celebrated phrase "Every epoch is
immediate to God" (Jede Epoche ist unmittelbar zur
Gott),(22) he never changed his fondness for this
phrase and for Ranke's general view of a historical
epoch and the state.
p. 357
Even in a few places in his letters, Nishida revealed
a great ethusiasm for Ranke.(23) Nishida's thinking
on history and politics was permeated by the phrase
"every epoch is immediate to God," for at least his
last ten years (1935-1945), which roughly corresponds
to the period when the essays of volumes 8-11 were
published. Hence, this phrase is to be taken as the
main theme of the philosophy of history, in contrast
to "self's seeing itself in itself," the leitmotif of
the philosophy of self-consciousness.
Nishida's turn to philosophy of history in
essence means that all the earlier key terms are
historicized and at the same time given full reality
by application of the forms of self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is changed into historical
self-consciousness, individual becomes historical
individual, activity becomes historical activity, and
place becomes historical or public place. In this
manner, history itself becomes divine, reaching the
status enjoyed previously only by each act of
self-consciousness, or by the "internal human being."
For example, the notion of epoch is upgraded. It
becomes the foundation of such political conceptions
as nation (minzoku(ao)), state, and the emperor. At
that point we may call Nishida's thought
historical-political philosophy.(24)
In the philosophy of self-consciousness, the
notion of individual refers to each act of
self-consciousness. whereas in the philosophy of
history, the concept is applied to several entities,
giving them full ontological status: to begin with,
an epoch, state (kokka(ap) ) , society, species
(shu(aq)), and individual carrying the task of the
epoch. Among these, "epoch" appears to be the most
important notion, considering its frequent occurrence
in his writings on the philosophy of history.
Self-determinative and Active
In the first essay of volume 8, "Sekai no jiko doitsu
to renzoku" (Self-identity and Continuity of the
World), Nishida grants the same self-determinative
character to "epochs" as he did to acts of
self-consciousness.(25) He argues in effect that a
previous epoch cannot be the cause of a following one
in the self-determination of eternal now, nor can a
following epoch act as the purpose (telos) of a
previous one, because what resides in the historical
present is considered particularistic
self-determination. The duration of each epoch does
not seem to matter to Nishida, insofar as each and
every epoch is conceived as an ontological event or
unit. No matter how long it is, each epoch has the
same ontological value. In particular, Nishida
evidently deemed his own time an ontologically real
unit, or an epoch.
The notion of acting intuition, together with its
criticism of the internalism of the mature of
self-consciousness, is thematically dealt with in the
1937 essay "Koiteki chokkan"(ar) (Acting Intuition)
(8: 541-571) and other essays in volume 8. According
to Nishida, historical life requires both activity
and intuition as well. He fears a passive
interpretation of the concept of intuition:
p. 358
"Intuition is [erroneously] seen as self's absorption
(botsunyuu(as) ) into things, and hence therein
activity will disappear" (8: 542).(26) Furthermore,
he insists that as long as our activity is
historical, then our activity is itself intuitive as
well. Hence intuition is not necessarily passive,
although self's absorption into things or the status
of ecstasy (kokotsu(at) ) is a certain sort of
passivity, losing historical activity (8: 541-542).
This essay shows that Nishida attempted to return to
the historical world by his new emphasis on the
active aspect of acting intuition.
Although there are familiar phrases from the
philosophy of self-consciousness, such as
"acting-qua-seeing" and "seeing-qua-acting" (8: 318,
8: 407), they "must be deemed in the world of
historical reality" (8: 407). This understanding of
"acting" did not exist in the acting-qua-seeing of
self-consciousness.(27) The notion of action is newly
employed to mitigate the passivity embedded in those
notions which primarily relate to consciousness.
Seeing-qua-acting as understood here should not only
be distinguished from the seeing-qua-acting of the
philosophy of self-consciousness, but also be taken
as a criticism of the internalism of that earlier
seeing-qua-acting.
Another aspect of acting intuition is its
essential relationship to the concept of body, or
historical body. In this way, "bodily acting" is not
a subjective fact, but "subjective and objective
historical fact" (8: 344). Moreover, the concept of
body is deeply related to the concreteness of a
specific time and place (basho). Nishida explains
that preserving the body is identical to remaining in
a specific place and time of the historical world (8:
346).
In volume 11, Nishida calls body "the tool of
world spirit" and "the bodily organ of historical
life" (11:334).(28) By such passages describing body
as the necessary medium of historical life, he may
mean that one is supposed to follow historical duty
with body and mind, because our true self resides in
the historical and practical self. Nishida argues
that there is no practice except for historical
activity (11: 168). Then, interestingly enough. he
cites Dogen in order to support the fact that we
grasp true self in the negation of the abstract and
conscious self, that is, in "shinjin ichinyo"(au)
(the unity of body-mind) (11: 168). It is important
to note that Nishida's citation of Dogen and the
unity of body-mind must be placed in the context of
the philosophy of history.(29)
Unknowability, of an Epoch
After the turn, acting occurs in the historical
place, and is related to the uniqueness and
unknowability of the historical epoch. If there is no
universal law underlying each historical epoch, then
there is no way to have a cognition of it. Nishida
cannot help but agree with Ranke that the law of
development of historical nature must go beyond human
thought (8: 89). In volume 8, Nishida repeats again
and again Ranke's dictum: "Every epoch is immediate
to God, and its worth is not at all based on what
derives from it but rests in its
p. 359
own existence, in its own self."(30) In this sense,
the history of philosophy as a search for any
underlying principles cannot be a legitimate subject
in Nishida's philosophy of history.
Nishida opposes Wilhelm Dilthey's (1833-1911)
conception of the historical world as an object of
understanding, rather than that which determines
personal action (7: 179). In contrast to Nishida,
Dilthey takes the notion of understanding as the core
of human sciences and requires general knowledge at
every stage of operation--even when focusing upon
individual persons. Dilthey argues:
Beyond all reproduction and stylization of the
factual and singular, thought (Denken) strives to
arrive at knowledge of the essential and necessary:
it strives to understand (verstehen) the structural
coherence of the individual life and social life. We
only gain control over social life to the extent that
we grasp and employ regularity and coherence
(Regelmassigkeit und Zusammenhang). The logical form
in which such regularities are expressed are
propositions whose subjects are general, just as
their predicates.(31)
According to this passage, human thought
essentially strives to find structural coherence and
regularity both in individual life and social life,
and it needs an appropriate logical form, which may
be expressed as "one-over-many," the antithesis to
Nishida's logic of one-qua-many. Together with this
logic, Nishida's emphasis upon the present's
determination of present epoch disallows any
possibility of understanding structural coherence and
regularity. Indeed, because of his radical notion of
discontinuous continuity, a historical epoch will
have no such coherence and regularity to begin with.
The logical character of "universal" in Nishida's
one-qua-many logic has nothing to do with the concept
of understanding or historical knowledge, but is
required to emphasize the individuality of a
historical epoch. Consequently, Nishida does not deal
with the question of "universals" embedded in the
structure of historical thought and knowledge.
Historical Mediation and Historical Constitution
In the philosophy of history. in contrast to
self-constitution and self-content, he employed the
term "historical constitution" (rekishiteki
koseisayo(av)) (8: 550), and introduced the concepts
"historical mediation" (10: 123) and "external
mediation." For instance, the philosophy of history
takes "historical world" as both "external and
internal" (8: 534). The historical world, including
its best examples, the state and the emperor, being
also internal, is not something which stands over
against the self, and thus it transcends merely being
an object of cognition.
As to the meaning of external mediation, let us
examine another passage: "Facing the aspect of the
past of the world, we can always think of the
environmental world. What appears in reality is
already what has existed. What exists must he deemed
to be externally mediated....The species
p. 360
life...must be the one which is environmentally
managed" (8: 536). "The past," "the environment,"
"what has existed," or "what is given"--these are the
main images of externality, and they are all very
close to the description of historical reality or
historical determination. Elsewhere, we find a ground
for this interpretation:
But the fact that history moved from what is
individualistic to what is individualistic does not
mean that it is the movement from something spiritual
(seishinteki(aw)) to another spiritual. Nor does it
mean that the foundation of the world is spiritual.
In it [history] there always exists the world of what
has been formed. It is deemed the world of absolutely
external mediation, or what has been absolutely
determined and changes itself self-contradictorily,
including its self-negation, (8: 561)
According to this passage, the world includes what
has been formed and is seen as the world of external
mediation. "What has been formed" is also seen as
"the historical reality which has been given"
(tsutaerareta rekishiteki genjitsu(ax) ) (8: 562) .
Moreover, one has to note that this external
mediation is placed against a sort of spiritualism,
according to which every movement and the foundation
of the world itself are considered to be spiritual.
Perhaps both the transformation of self-content
into historical mediation and the introduction of
external mediation enabled Nishida to distinguish
historical constitution or historical making from
intuitive equanimity, by which he may refer to the
same phenomena as internal salvation.
Those who consider historical constitution, taking
acting intuition as its foundation, do not claim that
the aim of life resides in "intuitive equanimity"
(chokkanteki seishi(ay)). Our aim absolutely resides
in historical constitution. In other words, human
existence resides in historical making (rekishiteki
seisaku(az)), (8: 550)
It is not clear what is meant by intuitive
equanimity. But it is arguable that this comes very
close to the aforementioned "separation from the
world" and "self's absorption into things." Intuitive
equanimity, absorption, and ecstasy are all very near
what he called gedatsu in the philosophy of
self-consciousness.
In adjusting the concept of place (basho) after
the turn, Nishida employs the notion "historical
space" (rekishiteki kuukan(ba)), which is called
public place (oyake no basho(bb)) (10: 98) and which
has social-historical determination. Nishida also
argues that the self-determination of place has a
creative significance, and "must have the meaning of
social and historical determination" (7:170-171).(32)
Being of the Place
The emphasis upon "what has been given as historical
reality" and historical space allows the concept of
"being of the place" (bashoteki u(bc)), to express
all
p. 361
the new developments that follow Nishida's turn: the
ideas that each individual is historically mediated
and that historical reality is given as "something"
(atta mono(bd)) (8: 576), not as "nothing." In this
sense, consider the following passage: "Therefore,
the self-identity of place, that is, what I call
"being of the place" (bashoteki u) must mean that
place determines place itself in the manner in which
the immanent is transcendent and the transcendent is
immanent.... Therefore, I call it the
self-determination of nothingness" (10: 480) .
Historical place as public place cannot be called the
place of absolute nothingness, but being of the
place, referring to absolute being. Although Nishida
employs the same term, "the self-determination of
nothingness," one cannot take it to mean what it did
in the explication of acts of self-consciousness.
Perhaps this "nothingess" here is nothingness in the
sense that it guarantees the absoluteness of
historical reality, through the application of such
forms of self-consciousness as self-determination and
immanent-qua-transcendent logic.
Moreover, "being of the place" also forces
Nishida to change his view on the notion of creation
ex nihilo, which becomes impossible in the philosophy
of history, because "what has been given" is
"something," not "nothing." "Creation is not creation
ex nihilo. What happens must be what has existed
(atta mono) " (8: 576) .(33) Even in this new
philosophy Nishida still does not negate the
"determining aspect" or "creative aspect" of the
historical world,(34) but his new emphasis seems to
fall upon the givenness of a historical environment.
In sum, external mediation and bashoteki u are
associated here with "the historical reality which
has been given," as the material stuff on which we
must exert our formative activity. This
anti-internalism argues against the earlier position
in the philosophy of self-consciousness described by
the doctrine of self-content or self-mediation. Thus
in part Nishida's introduction of and emphasis upon
something external, externality, or historical
mediation may be his own intentional objection to the
self-content theory of his earlier internalism.(35)
In view of Nishida's logic of the
absolute-qua-relative and his rejection of Barth's
notion of a transcendent God, one has to recognize
that Nishida's later characterization of the logic of
basho as "historical" is greatly different from the
logic of basho of self-consciousness: "My theology of
the logic of place (bashoteki ronriteki shingaku(be))
is neither theistic nor deistic, neither spiritual
nor natural. It is historical (rekishiteki) "
(11:406). This passage clearly leads us again to
Nishida's own awareness of "the direct union of
self-consciousness and the historical world," and to
his religious-historical thinking, uniting earlier
self-consciousness logic and his later philosophy of
history.(36) And the logic of place here cannot be
taken to mean that of the philosophy of
self-consciousness.
p. 362
Temporality
The transformation of temporality between
philosophies of self-consciousness and history is
quite simple and clear: "An epoch determines itself"
is equivalent to "present determines itself" (8:
452). With this simple equation, the discontinuity of
continuity is applied to historical epochs, causing
an epoch to share the same ontological features of
each temporal act of self-consciousness. In this
connection, Nishida explains:
In the depth of the historical world, it is
impossible to think of something substantial. The
world of fact which determines itself without any
determinant, determines itself individually. That is,
it forms itself individually. ..Hence, history does
not have its substance in the past, nor any purpose
in the future....The historical world, as the
self-determination of absolute present, always takes
its task in the present. What unifies history must be
this task (Ranke's Tendenz). (10: 380)(37)
In this passage, as with the self-determination
of the absolute present in each act of
self-consciousness, the independence of each epoch
from both the previous and following epochs is
emphasized. Thus, Nishida completely rejects the
possibility of any sort of underlying law or
principle, or anything substantial in the depths of
the historical world which may decide its course by
the subsumption of the epoch. At this point, Nishida
cites Ranke to confirm this equation: "The historical
epoch, as Ranke has already told us, cannot be seen
as the simple result of the previous epoch nor as the
preparation for the following epoch. It has its own
independent meaning" (10: 380).
Following this line of thought, in another essay,
Nishida argues for a close affinity between
Mahaayaana Buddhism and Rankean thought. In "Yotei
chowa o tebiki to shite shukyo tetsugaku e" (Towards
the Religious Philosophy through Pre-established
Harmony),(38) he states: "From this standpoint of
present's determining present itself, each moment is
the beginning and end of the world. Even historians
think each point in the historical world is a
beginning (Ranke)" (11:132). But Nishida laments,
"Unfortunately, today's Buddhists forget this kind of
authentic meaning of Mahaayaana." Therefore, "Eastern
culture must revive itself on this standpoint and
give new light to the world culture" (11:132). He
then immediately argues in religious-political
language: "Our national polity (kokutai(bf)) as the
self-determination of absolute present is the
standard of historical activity (rekishiteki koi) in
this respect. This sort of true spirit of the
Mahaayaana is kept alive only in Japan in the East"
(11: 132-133).
The most astonishing move made by Nishida here
seems the way in which he directly links Ranke and
what he calls the authentic meaning of Mahaayaana
Buddhism. His religious-political language finally
reached out to include even the Mahaayaana tradition.
In the philosophy of self-consciousness, the
"spatial" is a metaphor which
p. 363
does not imply spatial extension. In philosophy of
history, however, it refers not only to a logical
character of absoluteness, but to extensive
spatiality. It refers to a specific place, for
example, Japan. Although the first sense of space has
nothing to do with the second one, the metaphor of
spatiality helps Nishida bring together the previous
absoluteness and a specific regional place. Moreover,
from this new understanding of the spatiality of
time, Nishida revists the elan vital Of Bergson and
repeats his criticism of its lack of a spatial
aspect. But this time the ground of his criticism is
an actual geographical sense of space, not the
logical character of self-consciousness.(39)
One-qua-Many Logic
As was the case with the philosophy of
self-consciousness, so one individual cannot be
called a genuine individual in the philosophy of
history: "`A' exists by facing, `B'; `B' exists by
facing `A.' This is what is meant by saving that an
individual can become individual by facing other
individuals" (8: 88). This logic is applicable both
to the epoch and to the state. For example, Nishida
argues, "What is social and historical is not simply
general but is both individualistic and universal. It
must exist as the self-determination of the
dialectical universal" (7: 232-233, trans. Dilworth,
p. 121). In "National Polity" (kokutai), Nishida
argues for the necessity of individual-qua-universal
logic and rejects the standpoint of abstract logic in
which the whole and individuals oppose each other,
asserting that from the standpoint of the historical
creation, both directions must become one (12: 398).
When the notion of a plurality of individuals is
applied to nations, however, it seems that Nishida
bends this logic, because Japan does not remain an
individual but becomes the center of Asian countries.
This is exemplified by his support of the campaign
for the Co-Prosperity Sphere of Greater East Asia
(Dai-Toa kyoeiken(bg)).(40)
Furthermore, in order to be individualistic
(koseiteki(bh)) one's existence is supposed to assume
the task of one's own epoch, or the task of the
people. A people (minzoku) or an individual (kojin)
cannot become individualistic unless they assume the
epoch, because "assuming the epoch' (jidai o ninau
mono(bi) is considered to be individualistic" (8:
574). Note that the notion "individualistic" is newly
employed in the philosophy of history to emphasize
the fact that any individual (ko(bj) ) which is
separated from the species formation (shuteki
keisei(bk)) is nor a living thing (8: 528).
Previously in the philosophy of
self-consciousness, a sharp distinction between
racial self and individual self was made on the
ground that each unique act of self-consciousness has
individuality. But Nishida here emphasizes "species
formation, " even though the species of species
formation is quite different from the earlier racial
self, which was refuted as animalistic and lacking in
individuality. The species, the state, and the epoch
do not subsume
p. 364
the historical individual, who is supposed to assume
or carry the epoch. Rather, applying the one-to-many
logical form of self-consciousness, the unity of a
historical individual and a historical epoch is
emphasized.
Nishida's turn thus affected his understanding of
the relationship between individual and epoch. In
most cases, his earlier position on the
irreducibility of individual to racial self is
transformed into a new position in which an intimate
relationship, or a sort of unity, obtains between, on
the one hand, the historical individual and, on the
other hand, the species or the state. However, this
explanation does not mean that there has in fact ever
been such a unity between Japanese citizen and state.
Rather this sort of metaphysical explanation of the
unity of a citizen and nation has been understood by
many scholars as a tool of fascism.(41)
Politics
One of the important consequences of the neglect of
Nishida's philosophy of history is the neglect of his
political thinking, or the taking of it as extraneous
to Nishida's philosophy. Unlike in the philosophy of
self-consciousness, in the philosophy of history,
Nishida showed a firm conviction regarding the close
relationship between philosophy and politics.
"Philosophy cannot leave politics and politics cannot
leave philosophy" (12: 393).(42) One has to note that
in his concept of politics the notions of whole and
harmony have primary importance. For instance,
"politics is the art by which the society as a whole
maintains itself" (12: 329). In another key passage,
he argues: "Politics is essentially...the art of the
whole as historical species. It is not a simple
morality....Aiming to achieve the human formation as
historical species, politics must be absolutely
moral" (12: 330).
As a result of the emphasis on harmony, unity,
and the whole, he does not discuss conflict or
tension among different groups in a polity, or
politics as the art of solving that conflict or
tension. He rarely confronts the possibility of
conflicts or tension in national politics. His
absolute notions of state and emperor lead him to
define politics as "the art of the whole as
historical species." Thus, in light of this
understanding of the unity of religion and politics,
one has to be extremely careful not to be blinded by
Nishida's usage of familiar religious-soteriological
language and thereby miss his discourse on history
and politics. We must note that this sort of
discourse represents a religious-historical line of
thought in the "later" Nishida, and that this
religious language, greatly different from its usage
in the philosophy of self-consciousness, is political
and cannot be internalistic.
In the fifth and last section of Last Writings,
for example, one finds an explicit account of the
full integration between religion, history, and the
state. At the outset of this section, Nishida argues
that religion is not a special psychological
condition of special people; rather the term religion
must be employed to reveal the religiosity of the
historical world.
p. 365
Insofar as the self is a historical reality born from
the historical world, acting in the historical world,
and dying to the historical world, it must be
religious. We should speak in this way in respect of
the ground of the self. (11: 447, trans. 109; with
change)(43)
Nishida similarly discusses immanently transcendent
logic.
That each of our actions is eschatologisch as the
self-determination of the absolute present is what,
in my judgment, Lin-chi refers to variously as "the
total act," "The Buddha-dharma has no special place
to apply effort," and "The way of enlightenment is
the ordinary and the everyday." The interpretation of
the eschatological here is different from that of
Christianity. It is discovered in the direction, not
of the objectively transcendent, but of what I called
the immanently transcendent." (ll: 448, trans, 110)
The full integration of Buddhism and the logic of
immanent and transcendent in the context of
historical world is revealed here again. The fact
that discourses of religion and history are
inseparably coalesced in this part of Nishida's text
may contribute to much of the misreading and
overlooking of the philosophy of history. As to the
essence of religion, against his earlier definition
of religion in the first section as "the event of the
soul" (shinrei(bl) ) , Nishida argues: "Religion,
therefore, is not simply an event within the
individual consciousness. It must be the
self-consciousness of historical life" (11: 455,
trans. 115-116; with change).(44)
Furthermore, he affirms the historicity and
religiosity of a nation: "Every nation (minzoku), as
a formation of the historical world, is its own
expression of God" (11: 456, trans. 116). Indeed, the
last two pages of Last Writings, containing explicit
mention of the unity of nation and religion, start
with Nishida's own retrospective observation. "I have
touched upon the relation between nations and
religion from the fourth volume of my Philosophical
Essays [volume 10]." Then Nishida promptly proceeds
to argue, "Each nation is a world that contains the
self-expression of the absolute within itself....The
nation is religious" (11: 463, trans. 122). Nishida
even seemed to lament that a fusion between
Christianity, with God as Lord, and the nation may
easily be conceived; but this is less easily
conceived with respect to Buddhism, which in the past
has even been regarded as nonnational
(hikokkateki(bm)) (11: 464).(45)
After quoting a passage of the Sukhaavataavyuuha
Suutra, Nishida ends his Last Writings with Suzuki's
comments on this passage and his final word on the
fusion of Pure Land Buddhism and the nation:
This corrupt world (shaba) reflects the Pure Land
((jodo), and the Pure Land reflects this corrupt
world. They are mutually reflecting mirrors. This
points to the interconnectedness, or oneness
(ichinyosei), of the Pure Land and this corrupt
world, I think I am able to conceive of the nation in
these terms. The nation (kokka) must reflect (utsusu)
the Pure Land in this world. (11: 464, trans. 123;
with change)
p. 366
I interpret the term "shaba" as being very close to
or identical with the transitory world (ukiyo), which
was once negated as an improper locus for human
existence. Moreover, Nishida strongly suggests that
it is the nation which must reflect or represent the
Pure Land in the shaba. The two terms,
interconnectedness and oneness, show that unlike
Barth Nishida emphasizes the oneness or unity, rather
than a qualitative difference or tension, between the
pure Land and this shaba. By virtue of mutual
reflection between these two, the unity is
attainable. Thus, his discussion of his
religious-historical thinking in section 5 ends with
the phrase, "The nation must reflect the Pure Land in
this world," which is Nishida's final and definitive
word on the total integration of his religious and
historical thinking. If this interpretation is
tenable, then we have one more unshakable piece of
evidence by which we perceive here again how clearly
and self-consciously Nishida negated his earlier
philosophy of pure experience and Zen intuition. In
other words, as far as this discourse is concerned, I
am convinced that Nishida's historical-political
thinking, resulting in the unity of the corrupt world
and the Pure Land, flatly negates his earlier
distinction between the "transitory world" and the
world of "self's seeing itself in itself," the
indubitable and absolute world.
In sum, many of Nishida's later writings on the
surface level contain remarks and passages which look
like religious-soteriological thinking. However, each
and every section on its deeper level contains an
essential aspect of the philosophy of history, and
finally emphasizes the inseparable relationship among
religion, history, and politics. This line of
thinking seems to culminate in section 5, where the
Pure Land and the shaba (thus, the state) absolutely
coalesce into a unity.(46)
However, there are some cases in which
religiosity is not totally reducible to history or
the state. In other words, Nishida seems to argue
that the historical world is always religious but
that the converse is not true. Religion taken as the
event of the soul (shinrei) is not always compatible
with the "religious" in the claim that the state is
religious. Elsewhere, Nishida once negated the
identity of religion and state by maintaining, "the
nation is not the savior of our souls" (11: 463).
This line of thinking made Nishida argue that a
religious person and a citizen must be distinct from
each other. "If they are not, the pure development of
each will be obstructed. regressing into the medieval
identity of the two" (11: 463-464). Nishida may have
felt a Kierkegaardian contradiction between the
knight of moralty and the knight of faith, or perhaps
between his two philosophies of self-consciousness
and history. It is difficult to determine how
strongly the "later" Nishida meant to separate
soteriological concern from the historical reality,
or religious truth from the state's morality, because
the discussion here is so short. However, seen under
the weight of the texts cited here and other works
written from 1931 to 1945 and contained in volumes
6-12, this separation of religion from the state
p. 367
seems very weak in light of his overriding concern
with historical-political thinking.(47)
One of the interesting consequences of the turn
from the philosophy of self-consciousness to the
philosophy of history is the contrasting of
equanimity or serenity of individual mind with the
loyality and filial piety discussed in the philosophy
of history. Satisfaction and joy were understood as
the emotional reward of "self's seeing itself in
itself," but serenity of mind is rejected in the
historical-political line of thinking. In "Towards
the Religious Philosophy through Pre-established
Harmony," convinced that there is a unity between
religion and the state, Nishida rejects a traditional
understanding of religion as "the serenity of the
individual" (kojin no anshin(bn)), for that would be
nonnational (11: 144). For him. simply seeking self's
serenity" is selfish desire. It stands exactly
opposite to what is truly religion. Contrary to this
misunderstanding of religion, Nishida argues, "the
world of absolute present" is absolutely
"historical-formative" (11: 145) . He further
emphasizes:
Thus it [religion] must be "national"
(kokkateki(bo)). The state is simply the form of
self-forming (jiko keisei) of the historical world...
We ourselves ...must be national. True submission to
the state (kokka zuijun(bp) ) comes from true
religious self-consciousness. (11: 145)
It is not clear that the rejected serenity of mind
refers to the earlier satisfaction and joy, but
Nishida's historical-political thinking and the true
submission to the state (loyalty) have a definite
tendency to belittle or replace this sort of
satisfication. Also Nishida's rejection of his
earlier Augustinian Trinity suggests that we can
indeed take this as a rejection of such individual
satisfaction (12: 30).
Perhaps it is safe to argue that in the
philosophy of history the conceptions of self-love
and self-satisfaction become the conceptions of
"loyalty and filial piety." which may be deemed the
emotional aspects of the philosophy of history and
politics. For instance, the notion of loyalty is
understood as "the expression of pure feeling" and
"the loftiest moral ideal of Japan" (7: 443).(48)
V. CONCLUSION
Based on his conviction about the direct union of
self-consciousness and the historical world, Nishida
gives different meanings in his historical-political
philosophy to many of the forms of self-consciousness
taken from the philosophy of self-consciousness,
primarily in order to revise and criticize his
earlier internalism. The "later" Nishida's effort to
effect direct union suggests a few conclusions.
First, if one misses the real significance and
the wide scope of the direct
p. 368
union of self-consciousness and the historical world,
by overlooking Nishida's discourse on history and
politics, then one will see only the forms of
self-consciousness. As a result, when discussing the
concepts most prevalent in Nishida's later writings,
such as the notions of historical self-consciousness,
historical self, historical determination, and
historical body, one will miss the far-reaching
import of the adjective "historical." The familiar
characterization of pure experience or Zen intuition
as the motif or essence of Nishida's entire
philosophy must be amended; this reading misses both
the philosophy of history and its internal criticism
and rejection of some key aspects of the philosophy
of self-consciousness.(49)
Second, Nishida's later philosophy may be seen as
his effort to overcome his earlier sharp distinction
between homo interior and homo exterior, by giving
fuller reality to the latter. But the manner in which
Nishida puts away his internalism remains basically
internal, since the forms of self-consciousness
themselves which he uses to overcome that internalism
are internally originated. Nishida's extension of the
forms of self-consciousness to his
historical-political thinking, or his assertion of a
direct union of self-consciousness and the historical
world, is problematic. His extension of the forms of
self-consciousness in order to grant true
individuality, or true reality, to an epoch, state,
and society, is done in a somewhat arbitrary manner.
He never establishes why he gives primacy to, for
example, an epoch, or to the state, or to Japan over
other East Asian states.
Third, the deeper problem is whether it is
possible to apply forms of self-consciousness, which
originate in the discussion of acts of
self-consciousness, to nonconscious phenomena. If one
believes that these are categorically different
entities, then Nishida clearly makes a category
mistake. Nishida's direct union of self-consciousness
and the historical world fails to appreciate the
possible incompleteness of a historical epoch and the
culpability of the state. I would call this union a
category mistake, since acts of self-consciousness
and a historical epoch are not similar enough to be
treated by similar forms of self-consciousness.
Hence, Nishida's turn to the philosophy of history is
a wrong turn.
NOTES
1. In the last essay of volume 10, "Jikaku ni
tsuite" (Concerning self-consciousness) (published in
1943) , Nishida refers to the forms of
self-consciousness (jikakuteki no keishiki) (10:
479) , or the forms of self-conscious being
(jikakuteki u no keishiki) (10: 485). However, a much
earlier passage may indicate a long history for this
notion: "Historical reality is established by means
of the forms of self-consciousness (jikakuteki
keishiki)" (5: 398).
In the first citation, 10 refers to the volume
number of Nishida Kitaro zenshuu (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1965-1966) and 479 to the page number in this
volume. All subsequent citations of Nishida's works
will follow this manner of citation. All translations
are mine except when the translators are mentioned.
p. 369
2. "Self-consciousness is fundamentally the
function of consciousness" (6: 94).
3. For a similar argument, see 7: 100: "That
`self's seeing itself in itself' is the fundamental
form of all mental acts."
4. It is important to remember that the origin of
Nishida's employment of `noesis' and `noema' was not
exclusively his encountering Husserl, but also the
noesis of Greek philosophy.
5. It appears that there was a period when
Nishida searched for the possibility of self-knowing.
For example, "Consciousness at every moment includes
the possibility of reflection and opens onto the
world of knowledge" (2: 308).
6. In Nishida's text, the two abstract notions of
spatiality and circularity are usually expressed in
the adjective forms, kuukanteki and enkanteki.
7. For similar arguments, see also 6: 433, 8:
179, 8: 380, and 9: 158-159. The conception of life
in Bergson is thus neither the truly acting self nor
truly objective. Nishitani Keiji, while recognizing
the difference between pure experience and pure
duration, did not pinpoint just how Nishida saw that
distinction. He simply says: there is a great
difference between pure experience and pure duration;
the former is very volitional and subjectivistic, but
the latter is very full of life (seimeiteki)
(Nishitani Keiji, Nishida Kitaro (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo,
1985), p. 119).
8. Art and Morality, trans. David D. Dilworth and
Valdo H. Viglielmo (Honolulu: The University Press of
Hawaii, 1973). p.115.
9. See, for example, De Trinitate, book 9, Basic
Writings of Saint Augustine, ed. W. J. Oates, vol. 2
(New York: Random House, 1948), p. 789.
10. It is not the case, however, that Nishida's
first mention of history occurred in the context of
the philosophy of self-consciousness. Even before
Nishida fully developed this context, he showed a
keen interest in history. It was the individuality or
uniquenesss of mental phenomena that was primarily
responsible for this interest. However, in spite of a
number of similar references to history in volumes 1
through 3, there was neither a serious attempt to
deal with historical reality thematically, nor an
effort to place it within the context of the
philosophy of self-consciousness.
11. We can find similar arguments for this
hierarchy: "Only when one stands on the position of
absolute nothingness, does one see religious life
behind history..." (5:416). "In religious experience
there is no perceived self in any sense. And being
truly no-self, we are living in the deep inner life"
(5: 444).
12. For details, see 12: 19-20.
13. For details, see 7: 329 and 8: 210.
14. For details, see 3: 268, 307-308, and
543-545.
15. According to Suzuki Toru, for example, the
main motif of Nishida's thought was sadness. See
Nishida Kitaro no sekai (the world of Nishida)
(Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 1977), p. 15. For similar
arguments, see also Nishitani Keiji. "Nishida's
Philosophy: Its Position in the History of
Philosophy, " in Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro; and
Nakamura Yuujiro. Nishida Kitaro (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1983), pp. 42-45.
16. One may pose an important question: Why did
this turn occur? Or, why did he move from the
philosophy of self-consciousness to the philosophy of
history? Unfortunately, Nishida did not point to any
reason for this turn. I suspect that, together with
the philosophical preparations for this turn, various
not strictly philosophical pressures may have
contributed to Nishida's rethinking of his
historical-political notions. His disciples and
colleagues may have pushed Nishida to reconsider the
problem of history. (For Tanabe Hajime's possible
influence, see 7: 179.)
Second, the historical situation, the political
absolutism of the 1930s, centering on the state,
national polity, and the emperor, may have exerted a
powerful influence on Nishida, pushing him to
reexamine his previous view of the transitory world
and history and finally give a new meaning to it. One
has to admit that it is a matter of speculation as to
what extent all these factors, including the
philosophical preparations, played their respective
roles in the development of his historical-political
thinking, but one may reasonably argue that the
radical change in the national and international
scene may have had the greatest role in the emergence
of his philosophy of history.
In light of the fact that the rapidly changing
political situation is one of the several grounds of
his turn, the philosophy of history may have played a
similar personal role as did the philosophy
p. 370
of self-consciousness and pure experience, giving
solace or psychological salvation to Nishida,
saddened or horrified as he may have been by the
transitory world. His first philosophy of acts of
self-consciousness directed him to a realm which
transcends the transitory world, whereas his second
philosophy transforms it into a real, indubitable,
and certain world. In the face of great uncertainty,
his ontological assertions may have been needed in
order to defend his own psychology against uncertain,
radically changing situations. In this sense, his
entire philosophy may be seen as a personal
soteriology designed to save the troubled soul of the
philosopher Nishida. Perhaps the difference lies in
that his philosophy of self-consciousness may be said
to give solace in a negative, transcending manner,
whereas the second philosophy does so in a positive,
transforming manner.
17. The five are as follows: "Watashi no zettai
mu no jikakuteki gentei to iu mono" (What I call
self-conscious determination of absolute nothingness)
(published in February and March 1931), 6: 117-180;
"Watashi no tachiba kara mita Hegeru no benshoho"
(Hegel's dialectic from my perspective) (published in
February 1931), 12: 64-84; "Eien no ima no jiko
gentei" (Self-determination of eternal now)
(published in July 1931), 6: 181-232; "Jikanteki naru
mono oyobi hijikanteki naru mono" (The temporal and
the atemporal) (published in September 1931), 6:
233-259; and "Gete no Heikei" (Goethe's background)
(published in December 1931), 12: 138-149. Among
these essays, "History," "Hegel's Dialectic from My
Perspective," and "Goethe's Background" are included
in volume 12, which was edited and published
posthumously by the editors in 1948.
18. Even in 1931, prior to the publication of
those transitional essays, the ontological disparity
between the historical world and the self-conscious
world was maintained. One thing, however, must be
noted concerning these essays. The notion of
primordial history (Ur-geschichte; genshi rekishi) is
employed as identical to the determination of eternal
now (12: 83). Nishida used this term to refer to the
self-determination of absolute eternity and says,
"Our personality (jinkaku) is established by it" (6:
150-151). The conception of "Ur-geschichte" is again
used to refer to the eternal now, to distinguish it
from the normal sense of history (6: 215). The notion
of Urgeschichte occurs in all the 1931 essays and
seems to portend that a philosophy of history is
slowly but finally emerging.
19. The English translation is quoted from
Leopold von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of
History, ed. and trans. G. G. Iggers and Konrad von
Moltke (New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc., 1983),
p. 53.
20. Several pages later, Nishida seems to open up
a new historical world by destroying the old notion
of "individual" in order to accept a larger and
broader world:
Thus being historically means active
self-determination, that is, acting-qua-being. And it
also means that it has both the meaning of expression
in the sense of the destruction of the individual and
the meaning of "ought" in the sense of movement to
the other by means of the negation of the self. (6:
297)
For a similar argument, see 6: 299. In "Jiyuu
ishi" (Free will) (6: 300-340), Nishida also argues,
"Our individual self as historical being is living
and dying in this sort of [immediate and historical]
world" (6: 331). "True body is historical fact" (6:
330). And "true time is historical time" (6: 342).
21. The same change may be found in "Goethe's
Background": it [history] is eternal rotation in the
"now" (12: 149). Time and history are here easily put
together.
22. See, for example, 3: 189, 7: 325, and 10:
254. Notice that references to this phrase occur in
early, transitional, and late Nishida, respectively.
23. For details, see Letters 1065 and 1071 (18:
583, 586, written in 1937). These were sent to his
disciple Kosaka Masaaki.
24. As an example of how the discussion of
history is inseparably related to that of politics,
one has only to remember that Ranke presents one of
the most characteristic examples of the way in which
Prussia, from the beginning of the nineteenth
century, was able to win over adherents to its
policy. For details, see A. Guilland, Modern Germany
and Her Historians (Westport: Green-wood Press,
1970), p. 70.
25. Among other conceptions which are similarly
self-determined, Nishida includes the notion of a
generation (sedai). "A generation in history refers
to history's naturalization of itself. It
p. 371
[sedai] is established at the point of
history-qua-nature which is self-determination of the
eternal now. Here the world of expression may be said
to determine itself" (8: 196).
26. Nishida further argues: "People claim that we
are intuiting by virtue of activity and that activity
cannot be originated from intuition. This sort of
claim is possible because one considers neither the
fact that our activity is absolutely historical nor
that we, being individuals of the historical world,
are active. It is because they abstractly see the
self" (8: 542-543).
27. Based upon the unity of act and intuition as
historical life, Nishida rejects the idea that
intuition involves only consciousness: "Consciousness
(ishiki) is intuition devoid of formation, that is,
non-creative acting intuition" (8: 330) . "True
self-consciousness (jikaku) is not of consciousness
(ishiteki). It lies in true creativity" (8: 332).
28. As Nishida distinguishes the historical world
from the physical and animalistic world (9: 172), so
also does he distinguish historical body from
biological body. See also 9: 177-178 and 14: 265 ff.
29. In Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani makes
a short remark, mainly in terms of samaadhi, on
Nishida's notion of historical body. However, in the
light of the intimacy between Nishida's notion of
historical body and his philosophy of history,
Nishitani seems to have misidentified the background
of this notion. See Keiji Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1982), pp. 190-191.
30. Ranke, Theory and Practice of History, p. 53.
31. Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, p.
342. Quoted in Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The
Critique of Historical Reason (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 264.
32. For a similar argument, see also: "The
determination of place must always have the sense of
social and historical determination" (7: 164).
33. For a similar assertion, see 8: 456.
34. There are also some passages in which Nishida
retains some of his earlier emphasis on creation ex
nihilo. For example, in the essay "Concerning
Self-Consciousness," Nishida argues, "The creation of
things is established through absolute negation. And
it must include self-negation, and the movement
toward new creation" (10: 526).
35. The change in the meaning of bashoteki u in
the philosophy of history has often been disregarded
or resisted. One example may be found in David
Dilworth, trans., Last Writings: Nothingness and the
Religious Worldview (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1987) . Consider his translation of the
following passage:
Therefore the term "world" does not signify for
me that which stands over against the self, as it is
commonly understood. it signifies the concrete world
that has the logical form of a self-transforming
matrix. (11: 403, trans. p. 73; my emphasis)
The literal translation of the italicized part would
be:
It signifies the absolute being of the place (zettai
no bashoteki u).
The meaning of the first part of this passage is
clear. In general in Nishida's philosophy, the
subject-object dichotomy between self and world is
always negated. In this context of the philosophy of
history, however, the world is identified with
bashoteki u. I see no difficulty in taking the phrase
zettai no bashoteki u as emphasizing "what has been
absolutely given to us." For a similar passage,
consider also: "The true absolute being (u) must be
infinitely creative and must be historical reality
itself" (ll: 400).
36. Dilworth translates: "Hence my theology of
the absolute present is neither theistic nor
deistic--a theology neither of mere spirit nor of
mere nature. It is the theology of the existential
matrix of history itself" (11: 406, trans. p. 76).
The unnecessary addition of "existential matrix"
seems to reveal a general tendency of his reading of
the text in the direction of a religious-
soteriological understanding of the "later" Nishida,
rather than of a religious-historical philosophy.
In another passage, Dilworth added "human" to the
term "historical" (rekishiteki). Compare 11: 384 to
his translation (p. 57). In his translation of a
passage from 11. 388, Dilworth renders the phrase
"wareware no jiko sono mono ni chokusetsu naru
jikojishin o keiseisuru rekishiteki sekai" as "the
self-forming historical world that is immediately
expressed in the self" (p. 61; my
p. 372
emphasis). This interpretive translation, which takes
the historical world as the world which is
"immediately expressed in the self" implies an
internalization of the historical world, which
Nishida directly opposed. To introduce and establish
the externality of the historical world, or its
givenness to us, Nishida expressed here the idea that
the historical world is immediate (cho-kusetsu naru)
to the self. It cannot be in the self, but rather we
ourselves reside in or face it. In the final sentence
of this passage, the logic of place (bashoteki ronri)
is translated by Dilworth as "the logic of the
human-historical world." Since no reason is given for
this translation, I do not know why he made that
change. Like the term "existential," the change
smacks of a sort of psychological resistance to the
philosophy of the historical world and its logic and
of an unproven assumption in favor of the
religious-soteriological understanding of the "later"
Nishida.
37. For the same idea, see 7: 410.
38. This was orginally published in Shiso in
1944, a year before Nishida died.
39. For details, see 8: 189. A similar argument
is also found in 7: 15.
40. In many of his political writings, especially
in "The Principle of the New World Order" (12:
426-434), Nishida embraces and gives ontological
primacy to the principles of the New World Order and
the East Asia Go-Prosperity Sphere (Toa kyoeiken).
41. Such scholars include Arima Tatsuo and
Tsurumi Shunsuke. For details, see Arima's The
Failure of Freedom: A Portrait of Modern Japanese
Intellectuals (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1969) and Tsurumi's An Intellectual
History of Wartime Japan 1931-1945 (London: Kegan
Paul Inter., 1986).
42. "Gakumonteki hoho" (The method of science),
including this passage, was originally a public
lecture given in 1937, in which Nishida sided with
the rational spirit, excoriating the contemporary
attitude which exclusively emphasized the emotional
aspect of human spirit.
43. Dilworth renders "kontei" as "existential
ground," which contains the unnecessary adjective
"existential."
44. In view of Nishida's insistence that religion
must be the self-consciousness of historical life, I
have used the phrase "religious-historical" to
describe his later writings. This is in contrast to
his earlier philosophy of self-consciousness, which
may be called religious-soteriological. One of the
easiest ways to identify the fallacy of
soteriolization in Nishida scholarship is to
distinguish two different meanings of "religion" and
"religious" in Nishida's text: one is
religious-soteriological, the other is
religious-historical. When I speak about the turn in
Nishida's philosophy, that includes the shift from
the first sense of religion to the second. What I
call the fallacy of soteriolization usually occurs
when one overlooks the second meaning of "religion"
and "religious."
45. Dilworth renders it into "apolitical."
46. One of the most noticeable consequences of
Dilworth's tendency toward soteriological reading is
his separating the final two pages of section 5 from
the rest of it. He inserted a short line, lacking
correspondence in the text (11: 463, trans. p. 122).
The separation made by Dilworth seems to indicate
that the philosophy of history and even the
philosophy of politics are not intrinsic to Nishida's
thinking.
47. There is a sense in which the later
philosophy may be called
religious-existentiaI-historical without a
contradiction: religious in the sense that forms of
self-consciousness make all historical realities
ontologically primary; existential in that they are
not simply given as absolute principles, but as
something facing individuals; and historical in that
these realities are basically historical. At the same
time, there seems an unavoidable tension inherent in
the "later" Nishida, which did not occur in Nishida's
early philosophy, that is, between the
reiigious-existentia1 (soterioiogical) and the
religious-historical, or between arguments for
state-qua-morality and for the separation of religion
from it.
Thus, a reader of the "later" Nishida has to face
the question of how to perceive him within this
tension. Although this article may overemphasize the
historical side, one must at least recognize and
tackle the problematic character of the "later"
Nishida, which becomes possible only after the
philosophy of history-politics is dealt with
thematically.
48. Nishida seems to reveal his own resolution
for the Emperor in 7: 443, by citing an ancient poem
as he discusses different cultural forms: "Though if
I go by sea, my corpse may be tossed by the waves,
though if I go over the mountains, my corpse may be
covered over with the grass, I shall have no regrets
to die for the cause of the Emperor" (in Nishida
Kitaro's Fundamental
p. 373
Problems of Philosophy, trans. Dilworth (Tokyo:
Sophia University, 1970), p. 248). This also reminds
us of Nishida's own lecture to Emperor Hirohito,
given in January 1943. For details, see "Draft of a
Lecture to the Emperor: Concerning Philosophy of
History" (12: 267-272).
49. For this misreading, see Dilworth's two
essays on Nishida's Last Writings, which he calls the
fons et origo of the Kyoto school, "Nishida's final
essay: The Logic of Place and a Religious
World-view," Philosophy East and West 20 no. 4
(October 1970) , and "Introduction: Nishida's
Critique of the Religious Consciousness, " which
Dilworth attached as the introduction to his English
translation of Last Writings (1987). Both essays
suffer from the same neglect of Nishida's discourse
of history-politics and its intimate tie with Ranke's
thinking. In the first essay, for example, Dilworth
treats Last Writings as containing "all of these
threads of thought in one synthesis articulated from
the point of view of the meaning of the religious
consciousness" (p. 357) . In the latter essay,
Dilworth presented a similar characterization by
arguing that Nishida's four decades of work
culminated in "final form in a philosophy of
religion" (p. 6). He also maintained that Nishida's
chief contribution to twentieth-century philosophy is
in "the philosophy of religion" (p. 2). Dilworth's
employment of the term religion, however, does not
seem to include religious-historical thinking, as is
indicated by his claim that for Nishida religious
consciousness is fundamentally self-awareness (p.
16).
Moreover, in "Postscript: Nishida's Logic of the
East," preceded by his translation of "Concerning My
Logic," Dilworth nowhere mentions the key terms, "the
logic of the historically formative act" and "the
historically active self." Taking this logic as the
logic of the East and "Asian Nothingness," Dilworth
critically places Nishida's confrontational attitude
between East and West in the context of how one has
to proceed in hermeneutical discourse, which was not
Nishida's concern.
However, Dilworth does not completely disregard
Nishida's social-historical philosophy. In his
commentary essay on volume 7, "The Concrete World of
Action in Nishida's Later Thought," in Analecta
Husserliana, vol. 8, ed. Nitta and Tatematsu
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), he often discusses the
social-historical world. Dilworth correctly argues
both that the social-historical world is
self-determining and that this new development may be
a modern form of the Mahaayaana Buddhist tradition.
But it seems to me that in explaining the "radical
social-historical field" where "the personal actions
of active selves take place" (p. 253), he does not
consider the historical epoch and the state as key
social-historical fields.
Another interpretation of Nishida's
social-historical thinking is found in Dilworth and
Silverman, "A Cross-Cultural Approach to the
De-Ontological Self Paradigm, " Monist 61, no. 1
(January 1978) : 92. Nishida certainly discussed
social-historical determination and praxis, but the
de-ontological perspective spoken of in this essay
does not reflect the fact that Nishida's later
philosophy of history is the result of the
application and transformation of many forms of
self-consciousness. In addition, Dilworth improperly
claimed similarities between Sartre and Nishida.
Nishida's notions of "praxis" and "social and
historical" are essentially those of his philosophy
of history, and are very different from those of
Sartre.
Dilworth of course is not the only commentator to
"oversoteriolize" Nishida. Much of the secondary
literature commits a similar error. Here suffice it
to mention one or two examples. For instance, G. K.
Piovesana, one of the rare people who perceived the
significance of the philosophy of history,
unfortunately could not avoid soteriolizing Nishida's
later philosophy, when he focused solely upon the
religious aspect of Nishida's Last Writings, which
Piovesana called "a real statement in which the great
philosopher wanted to give a final view of his
thought." For details, see G. K. Piovesana,
Contemporary Japanese Philosophical Thought (New
York: St. John's University Press), pp. 115-116. On
Piovesana's reading, Nishida's essay opens with an
exhortation to become more religious minded (p. 116).
Of course, his term "religious minded" does not seem
to include the religious-historical connotation, as
there is no mention of the historical world, the
historical individual, or the state.
Nakamura Yujiro also dealt with Nishida's
philosophy of history. However, there are two main
points about his treatment: first, he discussed the
philosophy of history as the subsection of a larger
chapter, "The Expressive World" (Nishida Kitaro, pp.
114-118). Second, it was seen as a simple development
from Nishida's thinking on pure experience or the
logic of nothingness (ibid., p. 117). His point about
the relationship between the conception of the
historical world
p. 374
and the expressive world is insightful, but neglects
the fact that the philosophy of history is a more
deeply penetrating theme than the notion of
expression itself, and he made no attempt to relate
the philosophy of history to the political thinking
of Nishida. He correctly pointed out that Nishida's
understanding of historical body is concerned with
the absolute notion of the circular, or the vertical,
mythic notion of time, and is distanced from
"relative history" (ibid., p. 172). However, he
missed the importance of the notion of the historical
epoch, and thus showed a general indifference to
Nishida's philosophy of history, as he characterized
Nishida's philosophy as a philosophy of inner life
(naibu seimei) , an essential concept of the
religious-soteriological philosophy (ibid., p. 43).
Thus, he could not raise the question of the
appropriateness of Nishida's expansion from the inner
world to the historical world.
a 自覺や形式
b 歷史的行為的自己
c 歷史的形成作用勾論理
d 意識的自己
e 解脫
f 場所
g 自己限定
h 自己形成
i 自覺仍意識
j 無 有
k 自知
l 構成
m 自己內容
n 超越的
o 個人的
p 共同意識
q 種族我
r 個性我
s 感情的自覺
t 情意的意識
u 中
v 歷史的自覺
w 歷史的自己
x 內的生命
y 外
z 時代精神
aa 內的人間
ab 個人的人間
ac 直接
ad 具體的 事實
ae 人格的
af 表現
ag 浮 世
ah 歷史的限定
ai 歷史人
aj 歷史家
ak 行為
al 身體的自己
am 歷史的身體
an 抽象的
ao 民族
ap 國家
aq 種
ar 行為的直觀
as 沒入
at 恍惚
au 心身一如
av 歷史的構成作用
aw 精神的
ax 傳 歷史的現實
ay 直觀的靜止
az 歷史的制作
ba 歷史的空間
bb 公 場所
bc 場所的有
bd 有
be 場所的論理的神學
bf 國體
bg 大東亞共榮圈
bh 個性的
bi 時代 擔
bj 個
bk 種的形成
bl 心靈
bm 非國家的
bn 個人D安心
bo 國家的
bp 國家隨順