When we hear the term "Japanese philosophy" we think of Zen Buddhism or the Shinto scriptures. Yet one of the great 20th century interpreters of Western philosophy, Nishida Kitaro, lived and wrote in the Japanese islands all his life, laboring at an ultimate synthesis of oriental thought and Western hermeneutics. To be sure, Nishida's aim was to understand his own cultural influences in relation to the Western world. What distinguished him, however, was his passion for rendering oriental metaphysics understandable in the language of Western philosophy, and his attempts to contrast the paradoxicality of Buddhist logic with the logical strategies of Aristotle, Kant, or Hegel. Featured in this book is an interpretation of Nishida's writings. Professor Carter focuses on the Japanese thinker's notion of "basho," a concept of nothingness as field, place or topos as borrowed from Plato's Tim'us. Expounding on the logical foundations and archaic elements in Nishida's work, and carefully explaining Nishida's critical approach to the questions of God, religion and morality, and pure existence, this discerning book offers students of Western philosophy and oriental thought alike a highly readable introduction to the teachings of a true world philosopher.

Introduces the work and thought of Nishida Kitar-o, a Japanese who was one of the 20th century's most profound interpreters of Oriental metaphysics in the language Western philosophy. Expounds his approach to God, religion, morality, and pure experience, with chapters on the logic of basho, self-contradictory identity, God and nothingness, action intuition, and values and feeling. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Nishida Kitarô, Japan's premier modern philosopher, was born in 1870 and grew to intellectual maturity in the final decades of the Meiji period (1868–1912). He achieved recognition as Japan's leading establishment philosopher during his tenure as professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. After his retirement in 1927, and until his death in 1945, Nishida published a continuous stream of original essays that can best be described as intercivilizational, a meeting point of East and West. His final essay, "The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview," completed in the last few months before his death, is a summation of his philosophy of religion and has come to be regarded as the foundational text of the Kyoto school. It is one of the few places in his writings where Nishida draws openly and freely on East Asian Buddhist sources as analogs of his own ideas. Here Nishida argues for the existential primordiality of the religious consciousness against Kant, while also critically engaging the thought of such authors as Aristotle, the Christian Neo-Platonists, Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, Barth, and Tillich. He makes it clear that he is also indebted to Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Dostoievsky as well as to Nâgârjuna, the Ch'an masters, Shinran, Dôgen, and other Buddhist thinkers. This book--a translation of the most seminal work of Nishida's career--also includes a translation of his "Last Writing" (Zeppitsu), written just two days before his death.

Studies of Nishida Kitaro's thought in Western languages have tended to overlook two key areas: first, the influence of the generation of Japanese philosophers who preceded Nishida; and second, the logic of basho (place), the cornerstone of Nishida's mature philosophical system. "The Logic of Nothingness" addresses both of these topics.

'Certainly one of the most promising theological statements of our time.' --The Christian Century 'Not for the timid, this brilliant book calls for nothing short of the overthrow of patriarchy itself.' --The Village Voice

This is the definitive work on the first and greatest of Japan's twentieth-century philosophers, Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945). Interspersed throughout the narrative of Nishida's life and thought is a generous selection of the philosopher's own essays, letters, and short presentations, newly translated into English.

Contrary to popular opinion, God is not a Supreme Being, but the exact opposite - Absolute Nothingness. In fact, the entire reason that people suffer is because they are attached to 'being', and fail to understand that Non-being is the very basis of existence itself. In the immortal words of the Tao Te Ching, "All things are born of being; being is born of Nothingness." Nothingness is not barren oblivion, nor the opposite of life and 'being'; rather, it is the creative, fertile, and boundless principle that serves as the source and ground of beingness itself. Empty and vast, Nothingness is pregnant with limitless potential and fecundity. In theistic terms, Nothingness is God. Rooted in the teachings of the world's greatest sages, such as Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Adi Shankaracarya, Meister Eckhart, and Nisargadatta Maharaj, "God is Nothingness" explores how Non-being is indeed the root of all existence. Even more valuably, the book reveals how to actually awaken to Nothingness-how to realize God.

In Encounter with Enlightenment, Robert E. Carter puts forth the East, and specifically Japan, as a source of possible solutions to the world's social, economic, and environmental problems. Not only is the book a sustained scholarly analysis of both the religious and philosophical roots of Japan's distinctive ethical approach to life, but it also provides the Western reader with a context for understanding Eastern values—values that although familiar to the West tend to be deemphasized. Encounter with Enlightenment begins a horizontal fusion between East and West, and establishes a common ground for mutual understanding and for working toward an ethical approach that could resolve some of the earth's difficulties.

Nishida Kitaro's reformulation of the major issues of Western philosophy from a Zen standpoint of "absolute nothingness" and "absolutely contradictory self-identity" represents the boldest speculative enterprise of modern Japan, continued today by his successors in the "Kyoto School" of philosophy. This English translation of Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness evokes the movement and flavor of the original, clarifies its obscurities, and eliminates the repetitions. It sheds new light on the philosopher's career, revealing a long struggle with such thinkers as Cohen, Natorp, Husserl, Fichte, and Bergson, that ended with Nishida's break from the basic ontological assumptions of the West. Throughout labyrinthine arguments, Nishida never loses sight of his theme: the irreducibility and unobjectifiability of the act of self-consciousness which constitutes the self. Extensive annotation is provided for the first time in any edition of Nishida's work. Historians of Japanese philosophy and culture, and all those interested in the interaction of Eastern and Western thought-forms, now have a document which highlights many of the cultural, psychological, and intellectual dynamics that have shaped Japanese intellectual life in one of its most fascinating and ambitious manifestations.