Abstract
- Nishida Kitarō Museum of Philosophy, Ishikawa-ken, Japan
My dissertation presents a critical conceptual-analytical
study of Nishida Kitarō's (1870-1945) philosophy of the subject. The object of
criticism henceforth is Nishida's conceptualization of an identical, reality
constituting notion of a subject and/or self consciousness. He develops this
notion of a subject in his early epistemological works of 1911-1931 from the
standpoint of Bergsonian intuitionism and a critical neo-Kantianism. His a
priori supposition of the subject’s identity and the „primordial unity“ of
subject and object is discussed under aspects of transcendental philosophy as
well as conceptual logic. Nishida’s argument for a non-substantial subject
which he maintains by virtue of the hypostasis of its non-logicism and absolute
immanence is the promary focus. In my understanding, his argument paradoxically
leads to the subject’s reifying „overcoming“. Nishida’s „way to ideology“ as a
structural study of his 1931 turn to the discourse on history and culture in
the context of Japanese ultranationalism is also set within the problematic of
the constitution of a subject/object. A systematic analysis of the concept of
ideology tries to show that it is not his adaptation of authoritarian thinking
patterns that is „ideological“. In my view, it is rather his thinking of
immanence-relations in terms of subsumption which I regard as structurally
necessary legitimation-thinking that could be called ideological.
