Read Online An Inquiry Into The Good Penned By Kitarō Nishida Formatted As Audio Books

For a student of Western philosophy this survey of Western philosophers from a Japanese, namely Zen, perspective is indeed interesting.
Nishida starts with Western metaphysics and ends with ethics, sprinkling East Asian as well a some South Asian religious and philosophical approaches, and ending in a synthesized or more accurately assimilated version of these approaches, known as the Kyoto school.
Not as indepth as I had thought it would be given the reviews, There are some interesting points that show consciousness in a new light, Some points seem to be handled better than others, however, An introduction to Zen is required, I think, to fully appreciate Nishida's concept of pure experience, There's a lot to say about Nishida's philosophy, I will start by saying I enjoyed partsand, and not so muchand disliked part, From the introduction, it is clear that partsandwere written first and it holds the most novel parts of his philosophy.


Nishida much like Heidegger makes ontological claims about metaphysics without much more evidence, other than stating they're equal whether you agree with them or not will affect how you experience the writing.
However, his conclusion in partis that "there is only one true good to know the true self" page, The claim is one where you cannot take the prerogative and say, 'no that is not a true good, you shouldn't look for the true self'.
It comes off as very gym broy, "we will all make it" type of deal,

Now for the bad, partis super religious and like polemic, if you already have a preestablished view on religion, this text won't change your mind at all it either reinforces your faith or alienate the reader.
Nishida makes claims such as "those who do not sin cannot truly know the love of God" page, I overall found it funny, although took away from the first three parts of the book,

Overall, the book wasn't a bad read by any means, But I found the book by googling 'Japanese modern philosopher' and bought the first result for Japanuary, so literally went in blind without even knowing who the author was or what the book was about.
I dont think I expected to like this book as much as I did, It was definitely a change of pace from the more polemical style of philosophy you get out of the western thinkers Nishida often name drops.
Whereas they tend to present their arguments in reaction to competing schools of thought, An Inquiry Into The Good is presented more like a broad survey of philosophical trends that he draws from wherever he can find insight to support his unifying project: to ground a conception of ethics in the metaphysics of “Pure Experience”.


The books structure unfolds in a similar way to Spinozas Ethics, starting with a metaphysical discussion of reality as rooted in “Pure Experience” where subject and object are one, then moving on to a kind of psychology of consciousness, before exploring the question of “The Good”, and ending on the topic of religion and God.
But Spinoza isnt the only western thinker Nishida engages with in this highly syncretic text, Hume, Hegel, Leibniz, Augustine, Christ, and even Goethe and Wilde among others figure throughout though I get the sense he was most influenced by Spinoza and Hegel and possibly most in tension with Kant.
However, Nishida doesnt just draw on the West for material Eastern thought, especially Zen Buddhism, is ever operating in the background.
Though, Im not as read up on that aspect so I cant comment much, Nishida writes clearly and in a straightforward

manner that never assumes of the reader too much familiarity with the philosophers he mentions, making it an accessible read.
This is the second time going through this book and I'm happy that I took up proper western philosophy and continued my eastern philosophy readings because it helped greatly in getting a better understanding of Nishida's train of thought.


If you have a grounding in western philosophy, eastern philosophy in particular Zen Buddhism then I think it'll have some fruitful contribution to a person's philosophical views.


I now need to tackle Nishitani, This work has a philosopher's debut“ vibe to it because it actually is, of course but there are many very interesting arguments and points that Kitaro makes here.
I'm looking forward to reading more of his work and understanding his concept of 'place' better, I encountered this book in another book called "Zen and Western Thought, " I had always wondered what a synthesis of Zen and western rationalism would look like,

The Kyoto School of philosophy, of which Nishida was a founding member, is an interesting combination of the western tradition and Zen.


I'd recommend this book if you're interested in such subjects, I'd also recommend it if you think Japanese philosophy lacks originality or is completely nonexistent, Not so.

Be prepared for slowgoing reading, however, One of the many paradoxes of Zen, is that something so easy, can be pretty difficult, James Austin was asked a similar question on why/how he could writepages on Zen, on a subject that by defintion defies defintion.
Zen teaches you to live with contradictions, This was probably the hardest book I have ever read, I might as well been reading it in the original Japanese, I felt it is definitely worthwhile, but I am not familiar enough with philosophy to fully comprehend Nishida, He takes the European philisophers and then changes them to fit the Eastern Philosophies, Great stuff. Very similar to the Upanishads, the nondualist schools, and the rest of Indian philosophy sitelinkagree Really bad, Constant usemention errors don't help, Prejudicial view of science and adherence to concepts like human nature and essentialism in favor of religious sentiments is there to slap you on every page.
This book is unsuccessful attempt at combining mainly German Idealism, James' pragmatism and Zen Buddhism, It doesn't quite work out, The amount of sheer nonsense I have read here is astounding for one of the greatest Japanese philosophers, Just one of the "perls of wisdom":
"Some scholars think that certain simple, independent constituents such as the atoms expounded by atomists are fundamental reality.
Such constituents are abstract concepts formulated for the sake of explanation, and they cannot actually exist, " Chapter.
There you have it, atoms are abstract concepts that don't exist, Somebody should tell the scientists,
I have read Art and Morality by Nishida and that was a decent book, that was actually interesting and had a unique approach to the topics mentioned in the title, but this is.
really, really bad book.
I'm taking into account that Nishida wrote this in couple of years before, but the constant and blatant prejudice toward the science of even his time in favor of religion is astounding.

Argh! Such a peculiar book, I read it over the span of many months, and didnt really get into it, Eastern thought expressed in Western language, Very difficult to follow at times, Though as far as I can judge its quite good, And somehow I cant wait to read it again, to gain a better understanding, Some previous knowledge of both Eastern and Western philosophies really helps, Check the index at the end to see which philosophers are most discussed, And GOOD LUCK! Nishida shows a profound knowledge of Western philosophy and synthesizes it with Eastern and Buddhist thought, The main argument of the book is that subject and object are falsely considered to be seperate, since they are both sides of the same, one reality which we can experience directly when we realize the unifying aspect of consciousness that lies beneath it and when it corresponds to the unifying force in nature, which results in objective knowledge, which is one with volition and feeling, expressed in our will.


Other philosophies, the author argues, see consiousness as passive and as seperated from objective facts, while on the contrary it is our consiousness that unifies and manifests all reality.


It is living in accordance to this reality that should be exhibited in good conduct,

Nishida critiques also the main disciplines in ethics, stating that it is not intuition, reason or consequences that represent the good, but acting in accordance with direct experience, meaning we should forego the self and all its subjective assumptions and realize everything is part of one consciousness.


The arguments of Nishida are in some sense original and offer a nice alternative to some dominant epistemological and ethical schools of thought, yet in my view they at the same time contain a lot of metaphysical assumptions which I sometimes had a hard time to comprehend.
Perhaps more knowledge of Eastern and Buddhist thought would have helped with that, An Inquiry into the Good represented the foundation of Nishidas philosophyreflecting both his deep study of Zen Buddhism and his thorough analysis of Western philosophyand established its author as the foremost Japanese philosopher of this century.
In this important new translation, two scholarsone Japanese and one Americanhave worked together to present a lucid and accurate rendition of Nishidas ideas.

 


"The translators do an admirable job of adhering to the cadence of the original while avoiding unidiomatic, verbatim constructions.
"John C. Maraldo, Philosophy East and West










"More accurate and critical than the first translation into English of Nishida's earliest book.
. .  . An important addition to library collections of twentiethcentury philosophy, Japanese intellectual history, and contemporary Buddhist thought, "Choice 

"A welcome new translation of a work by probably the most original and influential of modern Japanese philosophers.
"Hidé Ishiguro, Times Literary Supplement 
 
"Undoubtedly the most important work for anyone in the West interested in understanding modern Japanese thought.
This work premiered Japanese philosophy as modern but has also shown unusual staying power, In the late twentieth century Japanese thinkers, both religious and secular, insist on its importance and relevance, "William R. La Fleur, University of Pennsylvania




,