Kitaro Nishida’s Study of the Good
Kitaro Nishida, active in the early 20th century, became the first Japanese philosopher to focus on ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. Nishida’s research on the good occupied an important place in Japanese philosophy.
Goodness generally means “good,” “right,” or “worthy,” and from an ethical perspective, good is considered desirable for humans and society, while evil is considered the opposite, harmful to humans and society.
However, there are not only ethical interpretations of the good, but also religious and philosophical interpretations.
Religious interpretations of the good refer to ideas about actions and values that are considered good in religious and ethical contexts, and while different religious and philosophical traditions may have different understandings of the good, some general ideas do exist.
One religious interpretation would be a definition of the good based on religious teachings or sacred texts. According to this, the existence of God or divinity is the criterion for goodness; for example, in Christianity, the acts and values that are considered good are defined based on God’s teachings and the Ten Commandments as presented in the Bible. Similarly, in other religions, God or divine teachings are taken as moral guidelines.
There also exists a religious interpretation of goodness that emphasizes compassion for others and altruistic acts. In this view, goodness is manifested through service, love, and empathy for others. A representative example of this altruistic goodness is the Buddhist teaching, for example, in which the practice of compassion and caring is defined as an important element of goodness in various Buddhist scriptures.
Furthermore, religious interpretations of the good may be associated with the cultivation of moral virtues and good character. In this perspective, the inner transformation and growth of the individual is considered central to the pursuit of goodness; for example, Hinduism and Buddhism emphasize the cultivation of moral values and the spiritual purification of the individual.
Philosophical interpretations of the good differ from religious interpretations, which define the good based on reason and ethical principles rather than on religious teachings or sacred texts. These have the following interpretations.
- Obligational interpretation: according to obligationalist ethicists, such as Kant, the good is interpreted as being achieved through compliance with moral obligations, and individuals achieve the good by acting in accordance with universal laws, respecting others, and fulfilling their moral responsibilities.
- utilitarian interpretation: According to utilitarian philosophers, such as Bentham and Mill, the good is achieved by pursuing the maximization of happiness or pleasure. Actions and values are evaluated based on their consequences or effects, and actions that bring happiness or benefit are considered good.
- Virtue Ethics Interpretation: According to virtue ethicists such as Aristotle, the good is achieved through the development of virtue and the practice of good character. Individuals achieve the good by acquiring virtues and pursuing good character, and virtues include courage, temperance, justice, and thoughtfulness.
- Interpretation of Personal Happiness and Harmony: According to some philosophers and thinkers, the good is achieved through a state of personal happiness and harmony. According to this interpretation, goodness is the state in which an individual leads a fulfilling life based on his or her own goals and desires and maintains a balance between body and mind.
In contrast to these various interpretations of the concept of goodness, Nishida’s concept of goodness is based on modern philosophy and attempts to integrate Buddhist thought and Western philosophy from a more fundamental point. His contemplation has developed from pure empiricism, which is the philosophical logic of Zen Buddhism’s “state of nothingness,” to the theory of consciousness, which develops itself through awareness of that pure experience, to the logical theory of place as the place where consciousness exists, including that awareness, and finally to the absolutely contradictory self-identity theory in which that place is integrated in religious and moral terms. On the other hand, there is a viewpoint that interprets Nishida as viewing the same point from various angles from the beginning to the end of his life, while his thought seems to have developed chronologically at first glance, and is now quite widely accepted among researchers (especially those concerned with Zen).
His ethics is influenced by traditional Japanese values and Buddhism, and emphasizes relationships and interdependence with others. In the ethics of transcendentalism of the other, it is believed that the individual’s own growth and realization of goodness is possible through acceptance of others and pursuit of their happiness and benefit. Nishida’s conception of goodness emphasizes the realization of goodness through connections and social relationships with others, not merely through the pursuit of self-centered interests or the satisfaction of desires. Transcendentalist ethics of the other examines individual behavior and society from an ethical perspective, aiming to pursue the good along with the development of community.
In contrast to this concept of goodness, which has various interpretations, Nishida’s concept of goodness is rooted in the concept of “transcendence of the other,” according to which, according to him, an individual’s way of life and actions depend on the other, and goodness is realized through the realization of value and meaning beyond the existence of others. Nishida argued that service to others, empathy, and acceptance of others, rather than complete self-realization and pursuit of profit, are the way to realize true goodness.
Nishida believed that goodness is not merely an ethical norm or moral principle, but rather an ethical root that lies within the human being, and he argued that goodness is felt by the “sensibility” within the human being, which is universal. He also believed that such “sensibility” is “pure experience” that transcends ethical values and ideas, and that through such pure experience man transcends himself and is connected to the wholeness of the universe.
The subject-object dualism established by modern Western philosophy, in which there is a subject who perceives and an object who is perceived, is nothing more than a product of abstraction, and in fact, the direct experience originally given to us has neither subject nor object. When we listen to music, for example, the “subject” is not grasping the “music as an object,” but rather the pure experience of subject/object separation is at the root, from which, through various judgments and abstractions, the subject/object diagram is formed.
When we reexamine the world from this standpoint, the various dichotomies of “good/evil,” “one/many,” “love/knowledge,” and “life/death,” which seem to be contradictory at first glance, are in fact aspects and functions of the “one,” and “pure experience” can be described as a function of this “one.
This way of thinking can be considered similar to Husserl’s phenomenology, which is also discussed in the special lecture “The Significance of Dialogue” from “Socrates’ Dialectic.
Nishida’s study of the good is very important in reexamining traditional Japanese ethics and philosophy, and has also influenced contemporary ethics and philosophy of mind. The book is a good book that unravels such a difficult subject. The Study of Goodness
The book discusses these in the following chapters.
Chapter 1 "Question" of Living
Western philosophy has been built on the dualism of the subject who perceives and the object who is
perceived. Kitaro Nishida, who has struggled to overcome this dualism, fundamentally reexamines the
nature of "knowledge" with his unique concept of "love. Rather than coldly rejecting the subject, he
dares to dive into the subject and immerse himself in it to grasp the essence of the subject,
calling this action "love. In this first installment, we will explore the profound speculations of
Kitaro Nishida, who overcame the limitations of modern Western philosophy and pursued a new form of
"knowledge.
Chapter 2 What is "Goodness
Traditionally, most ethics have positioned and judged good and evil based on external criteria.
However, in Nishida's original philosophy, which he developed from Eastern thought, goodness is
latent in human beings as a "potential," and it is important to realize this potential. To achieve
this, it is necessary to transcend the threshold of subject/object and "see others as oneself," and
when one truly stands on that ground, one's "personality" is realized. That is what goodness is.
In the second part of this series, we will explore the question of "what is goodness," which is at
the root of Nishida's work.
Chapter 3 "Pure Experience" and "Reality
Nishida's philosophy redefines concepts such as "love" and "goodness" through a unique way of
thinking that does not dichotomize them into subjectivity and objectivity. At the core of this
philosophy is the unique concept of "pure experience. For example, the experience of listening to
music is not a material process in which the sensory organs perceive air vibrations transmitted
from the sound source, but an experience that exists prior to anything else, before the subject
and object are separated. This is called "pure experience. When we look at the world from this
standpoint, what we have regarded as "real" is no longer a mere abstract object, but is redefined
as the "workings" of the "One" that is moving around at the base of the world. In the third article,
we will read Nishida's original concepts such as "pure experience" and "existence" in order to
recover the rich experience of human nature that has been excluded from rationalistic thinking.
Chapter 4 Beyond "Life" and "Death
Based on the "Study of the Good," Nishida further developed his own philosophy. In his later years,
he arrived at the concept of "absolute contradictory self-identity. According to Wakamatsu, this
idea that seemingly opposing things-subjectivity and objectivity, good and evil, one and many-are
in fact complementary and at the root identical, was acquired through his own experience of
bereavement with his own child. Nishida's intuition that life and death, while seemingly
contradictory, are connected in a way that transcends their opposition, gave birth to this idea.
In the fourth session, we will unravel the concept of "absolute contradictory self-identity,"
which is considered the most difficult of Nishida's philosophy, and learn the deeper meaning of
life and death for human beings and the wisdom that transcends contradictory opposition.
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