Kitarō Nishida (西田 幾多郎, Nishida Kitarō; May 19, 1870 – June 7, 1945) was a Japanese moral philosopher, philosopher of mathematics and science, and religious scholar. He was the founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from the University of Tokyo during the Meiji period in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth Higher School in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1899 and later became professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. Nishida retired in 1927. In 1940, he was awarded the Order of Culture (文化勲章, bunka kunshō). He participated in establishing the Chiba Institute of Technology (千葉工業大学) from 1940.
Nishida Kitarō died at the age of 75 of a renal infection. His cremated remains were divided up and interred at different locations. Part of his remains are interred in the Nishida family grave in his birthplace of Unoke, Ishikawa. A second grave can be found at Tōkei-ji Temple in Kamakura, where his friend D. T. Suzuki organized Nishida's funeral and was later interred in the adjacent plot. Nishida's third grave is at Reiun'in (霊雲院, Reiun'in), a temple in the Myōshin-ji compound in Kyoto.
Being born in the third year of the Meiji period, Nishida was presented with a new, unique opportunity to contemplate Eastern philosophical issues in the fresh light that Western philosophy shone on them. Nishida's original and creative philosophy, incorporating ideas of 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.
One of the most famous concepts in Nishida's philosophy is the logic of basho (Japanese: 場所; usually translated as "place" or "topos"), a non-dualistic concrete logic, meant to overcome the inadequacy of the subject-object distinction essential to the subject logic of Aristotle and the predicate logic of Immanuel Kant, through the affirmation of what he calls the "absolutely contradictory self-identity", a dynamic tension of opposites that, unlike the dialectical logic of G.W.F. Hegel, does not resolve in a synthesis. Rather, it defines its proper subject by maintaining the tension between affirmation and negation as opposite poles or perspectives.
In David A. Dilworth's survey of Nishida's works, he did not mention the debut book, An Inquiry into the Good. There, Nishida writes about experience, reality, good and religion. He argues that the most profound form of experience is the pure experience. Nishida analyzes the thought, the will, the intellectual intuition, and the pure experience among them. According to Nishida's vision as well as to the essence of Asian wisdom, one craves harmony in experience, for unity.
According to Masao Abe, "During World War II right-wing thinkers attacked him as antinationalistic for his appreciation of Western philosophy and logic. But after the war left-wing thinkers criticized his philosophy as nationalistic because of his emphasis on the traditional notion of nothingness. He recognized a kind of universality in Western philosophy and logic but did not accept that it was the only universality."
Nishida considered God "indispensable and decisive".
Collected Works [西田幾多郎全集], 2nd ed. (Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店], 2003–20), 25 Vols. [hereafter NKZ]
Selected Philosophical Essays [西田幾多郎哲学論集], (Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店], 1987–89), 3 Vols. [hereafter SPE]
An Inquiry into the Good [善の研究] (Kōdōkan [弘道館], January 1911), reprinted in NKZ1.
Thoughts and Experiences, Vol. 1 [思索と体験] (Senshōkan [千章館], March 1915), reprinted in NKZ1.
'On the Claims of Pure Logicists in Epistemology' [認識論における純論理派の主張について] (Geibun [芸文], Vol. 2, No. 8 and No. 9, August–September 1911).
'Laws' [法則] (Tetsugaku Zasshi [哲学雑誌], No. 300, February 1912).
'Logical Understanding and Mathematical Understanding' [論理の理解と数理の理解] (Geibun [芸文], Vol. 3, No. 9, September 1912).
'Natural Sciences and the Study of History" [自然科学と歴史学] (Tetsugaku Zasshi [哲学雑誌], No. 319, September 1913).
'Response to Takahashi Satomi's Criticisms of My An Inquiry into the Good' [高橋文学士の拙著『善の研究』に対する批評に答う] (Tetsugaku Zasshi [哲学雑誌], No. 308, September 1912).
'Bergson's Philosophical Method' [ベルグソンの哲学的方法論] (Geibun [芸文], Vol. 1, No. 8, August 1910).
'Bergson's Pure Duration' [ベルグソンの純粋持続](Kyōiku Gakujutsu Kai [教育学術界], Vo. 24, No. 2, November 1911).