An Inquiry into the Good

Introduction

Nishida’s first book, “Zen no kenkyū”, was largely written while he taught at a higher school in Kanazawa and was published in 1911. Its four parts deal with pure experience, reality, the good and religion. Nishida takes the term “pure experience” from William James, but makes it the basis of everything: subject and object, the self and the world, are later abstractions from a unified experience. The good is understood as the realisation of the personality, and religion as the deepest form of this unity. The book is often called the first original work of modern Japanese philosophy and became popular reading among students in Japan.

Connections

Builds on

• The Principles of Psychology1890 · William James

Taken up in

• Religion and Nothingness1961 · Nishitani Keiji

Criticized in

• Philosophy as Metanoetics1946 · Tanabe Hajime