Ebook: Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview

Nishida’s writings are a prism in which we can see refracted the manifaceted atmosphere of Japanese philosophy in the first half of this century. Nishida was both influenced by, and became a formative influence on, the many waves of intellectual modernization during this period. The special character of his career and works is that they bear witness to a creative assimilation of a complex range of philosophical values stemming from the confluence of Eastern and Western civilizations taking place in his own time. Indeed, together with the penetrating responses to this same interaction of cultures by some of his contemporaries— notably, such literary giants as Natsume Sdseki (1867-1916) and Mori Ogai (1862-1922)—Nishida’s works reflect a level of serious intercivilizational encounter in the twentieth century which perhaps still has no counterpart in our own occidental culture. To the reader of Nishida’s writings, it becomes immediately evident that his philosophical discourse extends beyond the confines of regional studies, challenging the insularity of a merely Asian or a merely Western cultural bias, to say nothing of the methodological prejudices of particular academic settings.