Skip to main content
View expanded cover

Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy pp 77–94Cite as

Heidegger and Nishida’s Transformations of Transcendental Reflection

Part of the Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy book series (TCJP,volume 3)

Abstract

Differences aside, for both Kant and Husserl, transcendental reflection involved abstracting from our straightforward engagement with the world and thematizing the conditions of possibility for our knowledge and experience of the world. But if transcendental inquiry is characterized by such theoretical abstraction, it carries the risk of losing touch with our straightforward practical engagements with the world. In this essay, I focus on two philosophers, both influenced by Kant and Husserl, who confronted this problematic and proposed alternative ways of understanding philosophical reflection: Martin Heidegger and Nishida Kitarō. After first outlining Kant and Husserl’s respective accounts of transcendental reflection, I turn to Heidegger’s hermeneutic method employed in Being and Time (1927) and Nishida’s chorological method (I adopt John Krummel’s rendering of “basho” as “chōra”) developed around the time of his essay, “Basho” (1926). The aim of this essay is to show how Heidegger and Nishida’s views of philosophical reflection can be understood as transformations of transcendental reflection as traditionally understood, rather than simply as alternatives.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-21942-0_6
  • Chapter length: 18 pages
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
eBook
USD   109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • ISBN: 978-3-030-21942-0
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
Softcover Book
USD   149.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
Hardcover Book
USD   149.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    A prominent work that contributed greatly to this recognition is a collection of essays co-edited by Crowell and Malpas (2007).

  2. 2.

    I have provided an account of this in my Ph.D. dissertation, Transcendental Philosophy and its Transformations: Heidegger and Nishida’s critical engagements with transcendental philosophy in the later 1920s (2016). This paper is based on parts of this dissertation.

  3. 3.

    I follow the standard practice of referring to the pages of the Academy Edition. These are given in both the English and the German versions on which I draw.

  4. 4.

    E.g. Schnädelbach (1977) and Mohanty (1985).

  5. 5.

    For citations from works by Husserl and Heidegger, I have given the pagination from the original German first followed by a slash and pagination from the English translation, wherever available.

  6. 6.

    I have given the pagination from the original German first followed by a slash and pagination from the English translation.

  7. 7.

    Crowell (2001) also points out that formal indication is a kind of reflective method: the “method of formal indication does ‘repeat’ the self-interpretation of life, but it differs from a mere going-along-with lived life because it is an explicitly cognitive-illuminative self-recollection (reflection) and is oriented toward evident (intuitive) self-having” (127).

  8. 8.

    The page number is from the online version of the article accessible from his personal website.

  9. 9.

    Cf. SZ: 85/117–118. Lafont further argues that Heidegger’s notion of the a priori as “always already” means, at most, that it is unquestionable from within by those who share the historically contingent projection. See also: (Lafont 2005: 265–284).

  10. 10.

    All translations from Japanese sources are mine. All works by Nishida are cited from the Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō] (abbreviated as “NKZ”). The abbreviation is followed by volume and page number.

  11. 11.

    In my article from 2011, “Later Nishida on Self-awareness: Have I lost myself yet?” I presented Nishida’s later account of jikaku in contrast to the phenomenological and higher-order accounts of self-awareness. There, I argued that Nishida ultimately challenges the phenomenological analysis (most famously offered by Sartre) that consciousness is necessarily positionally aware of an object and non-positionally (pre-reflectively) aware of itself. According to Nishida, in pure experience, one is merely intransitively conscious and not positionally aware of anything. In other words, “there is a mode of experience devoid of any sense of differentiation, even of a minimal sort” (206). One of the aims of the article was to show that Nishida’s philosophy has much to offer to contemporary debates on self-awareness, both in the phenomenological and analytic traditions.

  12. 12.

    Nishida raises this example in his early writing, “Fragmentary Notes on Pure Experience” published posthumously. Though the exact years in which these notes were written are unknown, they were supposedly written around the time of the An Inquiry into the Good (1911). Cf. NKZ XVI: 267–572. See also the afterword written by Yamauchi Tokuryū (673–674).

  13. 13.

    Since it is somewhat inevitable that we employ the language of the subject-object framework in describing experience that is beyond it, I put quotation marks around the subject (I, we, me, us, etc.) and object (flower, reality, etc.) when I am speaking about experience at the level of absolute nothingness.

  14. 14.

    Ueda specifically describes such “kaku” as the awakening to one’s true mode of being in the clearing (1991: 372).

  15. 15.

    “Ekōhenshō” (回光返照) is a phrase that appears in the Zen Buddhist text, The Record of Linji (Rinzairoku). The meaning of the phrase is: turning the light in upon myself. Sasaki (2009) explains that “[t]he phrase may be said to describe the essence of Buddhist meditation – to take the mind, ordinarily occupied entirely with discursive thought and external phenomena, and direct it inward toward the source of the mind’s activities” (266).

  16. 16.

    The original reads:「自覚とは […]「自己の居る場所」(自己が置かれている場所)に開かれて(開かれるこの出来事が覚)、その場所に照らされて(その開けが光になって)自己が見られることです。」.

References

  • Crowell, Steven G. 2001. Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Crowell, Steven, and Jeff Malpas, eds. 2007. Transcendental Heidegger. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1987 (= GA 56/57). Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie: 1. Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem. 2. Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie. In Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 56/57. Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann. English edition: Heidegger, M. 2000. Towards the Definition of Philosophy: with a transcript of the lecture course “On the nature of the university and academic study”(trans: Sadler, T.). London: The Athlone Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1993 (= SZ). Sein und Zeit. 17th edition. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993. English edition: Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herrmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm v. 2000. Hermeneutik und Reflexion: Der Begriff der Phänomenologie bei Heidegger und Husserl. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. English edition: Herrmann, F.-W. v. 2013. Hermeneutics and Reflection: Heidegger and Husserl on the Concept of Phenomenology. Trans. K. Maly. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, Edmund. 1950 (= Hua III). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie: Erstes Buch. In Hussserliana III. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English edition: Husserl, E. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book (Kersten, F.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1954 (= Hua VI). Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. In Husserliana VI. (Ed.) Walter Biemel, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English edition: Husserl, E. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (trans: Carr, D.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1956 (= Hua VII). “Kant und die Idee der Transzendentalphilosophie (1924).” In Husserliana VII. Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English edition: Husserl, E. 1974. Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy. Trans. T.E. Jr. Klein and W.E. Pohl. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5(3): 9–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ishihara, Yuko. 2011. Later Nishida on Self-Awareness: Have I Lost Myself Yet? Asian Philosophy 21 (2): 193–211.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. Transcendental Philosophy and Its Transformations: Heidegger and Nishida’s Critical Engagements with Transcendental Philosophy in the Later 1920s. PhD dissertation: University of Copenhagen, retrieved from http://curis.ku.dk/ws/files/170161777/Ph.d._afhandling_2016_Ishihara.pdf

  • Kant, Immanuel. 1954. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. English edition: Kant, I. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krummel, John W.M. 2015. Nishida Kitarō’s Chiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lafont, Cristina. 2005. Hermeneutic. In A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall, 265–284. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Heidegger and the Synthetic A Priori. In Transcendental Heidegger, 104–118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malpas, Jeff. 2016. The Beckoning of Language: Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Transformation of Thinking. In Hermeneutical Heidegger, eds. Michael Bowler and Ingo Farin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Accessible at: http://jeffmalpas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Beckoning-of-Language-Heidegger%C3%95s-H-ermeneutic-Transformation-of-Thinking.pdf. Accessed July 2016.

  • Mohanty, Jitendra N. 1985. The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Nishida, Kitarō 西田幾多郎. 1979a (= NKZ IV). From the Acting to the Seeing 働くものから見るものへ. In Complete works of Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎全集, Vol. IV, ed. Yoshishige Abe 安倍能成et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1979b (= NKZ V). The Self-aware System of Universals 一般者の自覚的体系. In Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎全集, Vol. V, ed. Yoshishige Abe 安倍能成 et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1979c (= NKZ X). Philosophical Essays, No. 4 哲学論文集 第四. In Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎全集, Vol. X, ed. Yoshishige Abe 安倍能成 et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1980 (= NKZ XVI). Fragmentary Notes on Pure Experience 純粋経験に関する断章. In Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎全集, Vol. XVI, ed. Yoshishige Abe 安倍能成 et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nishitani, Keiji. 1982. Religion and Nothingness. Trans. J. van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1948. Being and Nothingness. Trans. H.E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sasaki, Ruth F. (Trans.). 2009. The Record of Linji. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schnädelbach, Herbert. 1977. Reflexion und Diskurs. Fragen einer Logik der Philosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ueda, Shizuteru 上田閑照. 1991. Reading Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎を読む. Tokyo 東京: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店.

    Google Scholar 

  • ——— 上田閑照. 1994. Experience and jikaku: In a search for “basho” in Nishida’s philosophy 経験と自覚――西田哲学の「場所」を求めて. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, Dan. 2003. How to investigate subjectivity: Natorp and Heidegger on reflection. Continental Philosophy Review 36: 155–176.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Global Liberal Arts, Ritsumeikan University, Osaka, Japan

    Yuko Ishihara

Authors
  1. Yuko Ishihara
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

    Prof. Shigeru TAGUCHI

  2. FISPPA-Department, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, Department of Philosophy, China University of Political Science and Law, Peking, China

    Andrea ALTOBRANDO

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ishihara, Y. (2019). Heidegger and Nishida’s Transformations of Transcendental Reflection. In: TAGUCHI, S., ALTOBRANDO, A. (eds) Tetsugaku Companion to Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy. Tetsugaku Companions to Japanese Philosophy, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21942-0_6

Download citation