Kitarô Nishida

• Familienname: Nishida, jap. 西田
• Vorname: Kitarô, jap. 幾多郎
• Japanische Schreibweise mit dem Familiennamen voran: Nishida Kitarô 西田幾多郎

Finally, in the thought of Nishida Kitarô and the Kyoto school the fully enlightened selfless self or emptied self of Zen Buddhism is analyzed precisely as a social self located in the betweenness of I-Thou relations of intersubjectivity in the spatial basho or locus of absolute Nothingness. (SO-TSS 435)

"The dialectical universal" is another expression of the "place" in which concrete entities exist. In regard to Nishida's concept of "place", what is often at issue among critics and commentators is the relationship between "the things that are in place" (oite aru mono) and "the place in which things are" (oite aru basho). Tanabe critically interprets Nishida's "place of nothingness" as a place that embraces everything and makes them indistinct. But the following quotation from Nishida indicates that this is not the case. "That one thing and another thing determine each other, or that one thing and another thing act on each other, is a matter of place ... determining itself. And that the place determines itself is a matter of one thing and another thing acting on each other" (NKZ 8: 16). Nishida argues here that the mutual activity of "things that are in place" and the self-determination of the "place in which things are" are not two different events. This means that there is no "place" which exists in itself apart from the action of "things that are in place". As is evident in Nishida's repeated use of the phrase "appearance qua reality" (see, for example, NKZ 9: 104), phenomena that appear in this world are for Nishida that only reality; there is no metaphysical "place" in the sense of a substantial noumenal reality existing behind the phenomenal appearance of "things that are in place".

Tanabe interpreted "place" as something substantial to which the manifold of beings are reductively homogenized, but "place" in the context of Nishida's thought never functions in such a manner. The ultimate function of Nishida's "place" is rather only to let "things that are in place" be as they are, or to let them act as they act. This is precisely the reason why the place is called "nothingness." (Sugimoto Kôchi S. 61f. In: Davis, Bret W./ Schroeder, Brian/ Wirth, Jason M. (Hg.) (2011): Japanese and Continental Philosophy. Bloomington & Indianapolis.)

Denkt man nun das Ich als Einheit eines Aktes, dann trennt man es gleichzeitig vom Nicht-Ich, um es zu identifizieren. Nun muss es aber etwas geben, das "das Gegenüberstehen von ich und Nicht-ich in sich umfasst und die so genannten Bewusstseinsphänomene in seinem Inneren zustande kommen lässt." (Nishida 1999: 72f) Dieses Umfassende nennt Nishida in Anlehnung an ein Wort aus Platons Timaios Ort (basho). Karl Jaspers, der in Hinsicht auf die intellektuelle Analysierbarkeit des obigen Sachverhalts skeptischer war, verfolgte dennoch einen ähnlichen Gedanken: "Was hat dieses jeden Augenblick gegenwärtige Geheimnis der Subjekt-Objekt-Spaltung zu bedeuten? Offenbar doch, dass das Sein im Ganzen weder Objekt noch Subjekt sein kann, sondern das Umgreifende sein muss, das in der dieser Spaltung zur Erscheinung kommt." (Jaspers 1971: 25) (Frank Koren-Wilhelmer (2008): Auf der Spur des Du. Personalität zwischen Immanenz und Transzendenz bei Martin Buber und Kitaro Nishida. Wien. S. 113)

Nishida's philosophy of absolute nothingness developed the ideas of "place" rather than "substance", "contradictory self-identity" rather than the "principle of identity", a "movement from a place preceding the subject/object split to a unification of the mutual opposition of subject-and-object" rather than "dualism of subject and object", and a thoughtful cultivation of the reason inherent in sensibility rather than the supposition of a strict division between reason and sensibility. Such are the indications that can be gleaned from Nishida for a developing new principals of philosophical thought. (Ueda Shizutera in JaCP 25)

Keine negative Ontologie sondern Topologie

Nishida lässt es nicht mit dem bloßen Hinweis auf eine negative Ontologie bewenden. Erfahrung und Bewusstsein seien als feldhafte Einheit zu verstehen, aus der heraus erst das Ich den Dingen gegenübergestellt werden könne. Diese feldhafte Einheit repräsentiert den dialektischen Aufbau der Realität als Einheit und Opposition, als notwendigen Widerspruch. (FKW-AdSdD 115)

• Siehe: Ort, Feld

Details zum Lebenslauf siehe hier:

• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishida_Kitar%C5%8D