Nishida Kitaro (西田 幾多郎; 1870, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan - 1945) was a prominent Buddhist philosopher and founder of the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from The University of Tokyo during the Meiji Era in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth High School of Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1899 and later became professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. Nishida retired in 1927. Later in his retirement, in 1940, he was awarded the Cultural Medal of Honor . Nishida Kitaro died at the age of seventy-five of a renal infection. His grave is located at Reiun'in , a temple in the Myoshinji compound in Kyoto.
Philosophy
Having been born in the third year of the Meiji Era, Nishida was presented with a newly unique opportunity to contemplate eastern philosophical issues in the fresh light that western philosophy shined on them. Nishida's original and creative philosophy, incorporating ideas of both Zen and western philosophy, was aimed at bringing the East closer to the West. 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.The most notable concept in Nishida's philosophy is the logic of topos or the logic of locus.
Notable Disciples
Further Reading
Primary Resources
- An Inquiry Into the Good (ISBN 0300052332), Nishida Kitaro, Translated by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives
- Last Writings (ISBN 0824815548), Nishida Kitaro, Translated by David Dilworth
Secondary Resources
