Nishida Kitaro
Nishida Kitaro (西田 幾多郎 Nishida Kitarō; 1870, Ishikawa Prefecture – 1945) was a prominent Japanese philosopher, founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from The University of Tokyo during the Meiji Era in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth High School of Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1899 and later became professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. Nishida retired in 1927. Later in his retirement, in 1940, he was awarded the Cultural Medal of Honor. Nishida Kitaro died at the age of seventy-five of a renal infection. His grave is located at Reiun'in, a temple in the Myoshin-ji compound in Kyoto.
Philosophy
Having been born in the third year of the Meiji Era, Nishida was presented with a newly unique opportunity to contemplate eastern philosophical issues in the fresh light that western philosophy shined on them. Nishida's original and creative philosophy, incorporating ideas of both Zen and western philosophy, was aimed at bringing the East and West closer. Throughout his lifetime, Nishida published a number of books and essays including An Inquiry into the Good and "The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview." Taken as a whole, Nishida’s life work was the foundation for the Kyoto School of Philosophy and the inspiration for the original thinking of his disciples. The most famous concept in Nishida's philosophy is the logic of basho (Japanese: 場所; usually translated to other languages as place or topos).
Notable disciples
- Tanabe Hajime
- Nishitani Keiji
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Partial bibliography
- An Inquiry Into the Good (ISBN 0-300-052332-), Nishida Kitaro, Translated by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives
- Last Writings (ISBN 0-824-81554-8), Nishida Kitaro, Translated by David Dilworth
Secondary resources
- Zen & Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro (ISBN 0-824-82459-8), Michiko Yusa
- Philosophers of Nothingness (ISBN 0-824-82481-4), James Heisig
- Nishida Kitaro (ISBN 0-520-073649-), Nishitani Keiji
- The Logic Of Nothingness: A Study Of Nishida Kitaro (ISBN 0-824-82969-7), Robert J. J. Wargo
External links
- entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
fr:Kitarō Nishida ja:西田幾多郎
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