3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Am But Mad North-West-West, February 23, 2008
This review is from: Nishida Kitaro (Nanzan Studies in Religion and Culture) (Hardcover)
Nishida Kitaro--revered by some and reviled by others, not only is he arguably Japan's foremost original philosopher of the twentieth century but the man and his highly complex and innovative thought have gradually come to be highly influential, inspirational, and controversial beyond as well. That this is so is attested to by a number of fine English-language studies, but none of them can quite claim the distinction of having been written by yet another major Japanese philosopher, Nishida's former pupil and successor of sorts in fact, as can this plainly-titled essay selection by Nishitani Keiji.
The book is divided into two parts of surprisingly unequal length. The first part (chapters 1-4) comprises about 25% of the whole and is dedicated to Nishitani's reflections and memories on the life and personality of Nishida--what he was like as an individual, as a mentor, as a senior colleague, and so on. For anyone who has ever tried to struggle through Nishida's work, Nishitani's account of coming across a book by the then mostly unknown thinker at a used bookstore in Kanda and of being both deeply moved and mightily perplexed by what he read should ring familiar. And something of the modern angst and youthful anxiety that led the young Nishitani to pursue philosophy under Nishida's direction also comes across rather powerfully. These vivid personal accounts and priceless glimpses of academic life at Kyoto University in early twentieth-century Japan were by far the more engaging aspect of this book for me.
The second part, about 75% of the book (chapters 5-10), is more straightforwardly hardcore philosophy, with Nishitani attempting to explicate Nishida's thought, especially as it's found in Nishida's first masterpiece "An Inquiry Into the Good", and unpack it a bit for the philosophically-inclined reader as well as responding to critiques of Nishida's thought by Yamanouchi Tokuryu, Takahashi Satomi, and especially Nishitani's fellow pupil Tanabe Hajime. I won't kid you, some of this is pretty tough-going for those without a solid academic background in the subject, and I for one didn't follow it all completely by any means. Still, some of Nishida's ideas in "Inquiry" actually seemed a bit clearer to me after Nishitani's discussion, so with hard work and concentration there was indeed a substantial payoff even for a philosophical neophyte such as myself.
In any case, for anyone interested in these two philosophers and the Kyoto School, this is a priceless study or set of studies rather, and it's a fine if sometimes challenging source for those exploring modern Japanese cultural history more generally. That said, it might perhaps be a bit disorienting as an introduction, but I would highly recommend it as a companion volume to Nishida's
An Inquiry into the Good or to James Heisig's excellent intro to Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani,
Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture).
P.S. The contents of the book are as follows:
1. Nishida, My Teacher
2. Nishida's Personality and Thought
3. Nishida's Diaries
4. Rooting Philosophy in the Japanese Soil
5. Nishida's Place in the History of Philosophy
6. "An Inquiry into the Good": Pure Experience
7. "An Inquiry into the Good": Truth and the Self
8. "An Inquiry into the Good": God
9. "The Philosophies of Nishida and Tanabe
10. Questioning Nishida: Reflections on Three Critics
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
