Abstract
Nishida Kitarō’s (1870–1945) theory of pure experience outlined in An Inquiry into the Good is often uncritically accepted as the beginning of philosophy in modern Japan. While there may be good reason to accept this narrative, it is crucial that we do not do so uncritically. To the contrary, recognizing that Nishida was one philosopher among many and that his work was partially shaped by preceding philosophers in the Meiji era (1868–1912) can help us gain both a deeper understanding of both Nishida’s own thought as well as the developmental process of philosophy in modern Japan. Thus, in this contribution I would like to take one small step towards reconsidering this commonplace narrative by looking at how the thought of one central philosopher of the Meiji era, Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), helped set the stage for Nishida’s early philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
There are too many works that make this claim in some regard for me to even come close to listing all relevant examples. However, the most common narrative seems to go thus and so: “In the Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japan reopened itself to the world after more than two centuries of national isolation, a generation of scholars devoted themselves to importing Western academic fields of inquiry, including ‘philosophy.’ After many years of studying Western philosophy and Eastern classics, alongside a dedicated practice of Zen Buddhism, Nishida was the first major modern Japanese thinker to successfully go beyond learning from the West to construct his own original system of thought. This he began to do in his maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good […].” (Davis 2019)
While we will not investigate the reasoning for his belief, Shimomura Toratarō provides a classic case of this point in his denial of Nishida’s connection to other philosophers (like William James, in this case): “The concept of pure experience may have its roots in the philosophy of empiricists like James who were popular in Japan at the time. Of course, Nishida likely gained many insights and refinements from these psychological analyses and conceptual explanations. However, should we not [instead] say that his philosophy was essentially borne from his experience practicing meditation?” (Shimomura 1990, 43–4)
Information concerning Inoue’s connection to the Seikyōsha and the national preservation (kokusui hozon) movement can be found in Pyle (1969). Information related to his work on superstitions and ghost stories (more broadly speaking, his yōkaigaku) is available in sources like Josephson (2006). His role in reforming Buddhism is discussed from various perspectives in Snodgrass (2003), Okada (2005), and Kopf (2013), just as examples. Additionally, discussions of his complicated relationship with Christianity can be found in Staggs (1983) and Paramore (2009). Finally, a comprehensive introduction to Inoue’s life and work in its historical context is available in Schultzer (2019).
In Particular, Judith Snodgrass argued that Inoue’s philosophy served mainly to validate his claim that Buddhism – and not Christianity – was the religion best fitting modern Japan, stating that “[…] by denouncing it [i.e., Christianity] from the supposedly impartial stance of philosopher, Inoue enlisted the support of an audience beyond Buddhists. He did not simply dismiss it as evil but analyzed it as irrational, conceptually untenable, prescientific, deleterious to Japan. By taking the title “philosopher” Inoue was able to promote Buddhism and undermine Christian influence from a pedestal of rationality and objectivity.” (2003, 141)
To be more specific, pre-Nishida Buddhist philosophy in general has tended to receive such treatment. For example, Kosaka Kunitsugu (1995) specifically cites Inoue Enryō and Kiyozawa Manshi as being such cases of mere “syncretism” between Western philosophy and Buddhist thought. Kosaka Masaaki (1959/1999, 265–6), refers to the work of Inoue Enryō, Inoue Tetsujirō, and Miyake Setsurei as being more of a “metaphor (比喩)” or “sketch (描写)” of their respective systems than an evidence-based “demonstration (論証).”
As Nishida himself states, “[…] in the beginning I wasn’t thinking about studying philosophy. Originally, I was thinking about going into science. However, at that time [when I was in high school] I read a thin pamphlet called An Evening of Philosophical Conversation written by a man named Inoue Enryō and found it to be very interesting, and this stimulated me to start moving toward [the study of] philosophy.” (Nishida 2003, 80) Accounts of the young Nishida’s interest in An Evening of Philosophical Conversation can be found in varying sources. Kosaka (1971, 20) and Takeuchi (1970, 54–7) mention An Evening of Philosophical Conversation as the starting point of Nishida’s philosophical career. In terms of clear comparisons between the two Wargo (2005) and Shirai (2012) both provide important insights on the similarities and differences between An Evening of Philosophical Conversation and Nishida’s early philosophy.
Here I am using “phenomena-soku-reality (現象即実在)” to refer to the broader tendency in Meiji philosophy to provide an ontology that does not presuppose any “thing-in-itself” or mind-independent world behind conscious phenomena. Funayama Shinichi (1959/1965) in particular claimed Inoue’s An Evening of Philosophical Conversation to be the first substantial contribution to this movement. While I would largely agree with Funayama here, two points require caution. First, Inoue Enryō himself did not use this term to refer to his own philosophy. The term phenomena-soku-reality properly belongs to his contemporary, Inoue Tetsujirō. As such, we cannot easily assume Inoue Enryō and Inoue Tetsujirō are endorsing the same theory. Second, in line with the spirt of this paper, it is important not to assume that Inoue Enryō appeared out of nowhere. Indeed, Inoue Enryō, as well as all other authors commonly associated with phenomena-soku-reality took classes from Hara Tanzan at Tokyo University, whose reading of the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana has been understood as a proto-typical version of trends in Meiji philosophy (See Watabe 1998).
Here we should take their respective allegiances with a grain of salt. In particular, the “materialism” in this dialogue is, as Shirai Masato has argued, perhaps something closer to a dualist position than what we typically refer to as materialism. (Shirai 2012, 102)
This play on words works on two levels. As one can see even in English, Enyū and Ryōchū both make up half of “Enryō”, both in terms of writing the name out and in terms of his system of thought). Additionally, we must also remember that the characters for Enryō’s very name means “completion”. Thus, the teacher Enryō-sensei, who has gone past one-sided or overly simplified extremes, has been able to reach a more total or complete view of reality.
IES 1: 45
This may be visible in Inoue’s response to critics claiming that the seemingly all-knowing teacher being named Enryō is a sign of hubris. According to Inoue himself, these dialogues are marked by his attempt to describe this middle path without endorsing any of the old or biased positions of yore. I would thus argue that Inoue’s struggle was an internal one, in which he allowed these positions to combat one another until there was nothing left but the middle path. (IES 1: 48–9)
Inoue explains this view on the development of the history of philosophy by using modern Western philosophy as an example in An Introduction to the Vitalization of Buddhism (1887): “What are the theories that comprise modern philosophy? We could say they are materialism, idealism, or logicism (唯理). […] In the beginning, Locke advocated empiricism. Then Leibniz advocated substantialism (本体論) before Kant came to synthesize these positions. Those like Hume tended to be biased toward materialism while those like Berkeley tended to be biased toward idealism. This led to Reid syncretizing the two positions with his mind-body dualism. While Fichte took the subject and Schelling the object [as primary], Hegel harmonized their positions. The German school thus became biased toward speculation (空理) while the Scottish school was biased toward common-sense. He who synthesized these two positions was Cousin in France. Spencer feared becoming biased toward either the knowable or the unknowable and thus tried to make a divide between them. Modern philosophy has thus been unable to escape from these [biased] theories. Hence, [modern philosophers] all run toward one extreme theory, and while they may desire to find a balance (中正を保持せんと欲して), they have been unable to achieve this goal.” (IES 3: 361) A more detailed account about how Inoue understood the history of philosophy is available in Godart (2004).
“In the establishment of reality, then, both a unity at the base of reality and mutual opposition or contradiction are necessary. […] When these contradictions disappear, reality disappears as well. On a fundamental level, contradiction and unity are simply two views of the same thing. Because there is unity there is contradiction, and because there is contradiction there is unity.” (Nishida 1990, 56)
“It is usually thought that subject and object are realities that can exist independently of each other and that phenomena of consciousness arise through their activity, which leads to the idea that there are two realities: mind and matter. This is a total mistake. The notions of subject and object derive from two different ways of looking at a single fact, as does the distinction between mind and matter.” (Nishida 1990, 49)
Those interested in a more exhaustive discussion of how similar Inoue and Nishida are should look at Shirai (2012).
Wargo 2005, 11
“While I’m sure readers will be impressed with his clever hybrid-theory, I cannot help but personally wonder: has not Enryō-sensei [merely] attempted to mix oil and water here?” (Onishi 1887/2014, 27)
Even Nitta Yoshihiro, in his admirable attempt to push Inoue’s later philosophy in A Proposal for a New Philosophy to its upper limits, concedes in that Inoue’s work was “underdeveloped” and that, insofar as it gave no practical account of how reality differentiated itself as such, it stops at being a “contemplative” philosophy of merely looking at material reality or conscious phenomena from different perspectives. (Nitta 1989, pp. 97–8)
Wargo 2005, 31; note that this critique is also applied to the other major author associated with the broader notion of phenomena-soku-reality, Inoue Tetsujirō.
Examples of scholars who refer to this possibility: Funayama (1959/1965), Nitta (1989), and Wargo (2005). Maraldo (2017) mentions in passing a difference in critical method between those like Inoue and those like Nishida and Onishi Hajime. Moreover, as we shall mention again later, Itabashi (2004) also makes similar arguments for difference in methodological rigor in his discussion of Nishida and Inoue Tetsujirō.
A brief summary of this structure could be given as follows: Pure experience is defined as being equivalent to direct experience before any distinctions have been made (i.e., between subject and object or mind and matter). This claim refers not only to a psychological state of being unaware of such differences, but rather to the ontological fact that there must be an underlying unity in experience. Yet, as change inevitably occurs within experience, rifts open up within this underlying unity. This creates a constant process in which pure experience is simultaneously being made to distinguish itself into oppositions (such as subject and object) and reclaim its original unified state. Whether it be in the form of the volitional subject uniting with the object they desire through action or the epistemic subject unifying disjointed experience about an object they know nothing about through judgment, the very structure of experience is thus that it oscillates between rupture (as a result of change) and reunification. However, it is this very process that generates context in pure experience and – thus – makes it possible to identify subject/object, mind/matter, or self/other as perspectives within pure experience.
This is indicated by the oft-cited reminder from Nishida himself at the beginning of An Inquiry into the Good’s new edition in which he states “[t]hat which I called in the present book the world of direct or pure experience I have now come to think of as the world of historical reality. The world of action-intuition – the world of poiesis – is none other than the world of pure experience.” (Nishida 1990, xxxiii).
Nishida 1990, 16
Itabashi (2004) highlights in particular the struggles that Inoue Tetsujirō had in grounding any objective claim to philosophical knowledge in comparison with Nishida and his use of pure experience as a standard for truth.
Consider, for instance, Nishida’s statement that “True reality, like the true meaning of art, is not something that can be transmitted from one person to another. All we can transmit is an abstract shell. We may think that by means of the same language we understand the same thing, but to some extent the content necessarily differs.” (Nishida 1990, 51–2)
Naturally, the word implicit may appear out of place or not sufficiently justified here. However, a brief reminder that the early Nishida’s understood universals as “seeds” implicit in experience that are drawn out as concretely in the individual as consciousness develops itself. The upshot of this is that Nishida’s essences and universals can connect “by themselves” to a certain degree. For example, several experiences of individual red objects draw out the underlying pattern we refer to as red. Yet, crucially, this does not imply a pre-given notion of redness that stands prior to experience, for doing so presupposes that these red objects have been put in touch with each other in what Nishida refers to as the “network of consciousness.”
A useful reconstruction of precisely how and why Nishida succumbed to psychologism (as well as the problems this presents to his philosophy) is available in Mitsuhara (2018).
References
Abbreviations and Complete Works
IES (1987) 『井上円了選集』[Selected Works of Inoue Enryō]. Tokyo, Toyo University Press.
Davis, Bret W. (2019). “The Kyoto School”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/kyoto-school/>. Accessed December 29, 2019.
Funayama, Shinichi 船山信一. 1959/1965. 『明治哲学史研究』 [Research on Meiji Philosophy]. Kyoto: Minerva Shobo.
Godart, Gerard Clinton. (2004). Tracing the Circle of Truth: Inoue Enryō on the History of Philosophy and Buddhism. The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. XXXVI (December), 106–133.
Itabashi, Y. 板橋勇仁. (2004). 『西田哲学の論理と方法―徹底的批評主義とは何か』[Logic and Method of Nishida Philosophy: NIshida, Fichte, and Neokantians]. Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku.
Josephson, J. Ā. (2006). When Buddhism Became a “Religion”: Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 33(1), 143–168.
Kopf, G.. (2013). The “Modern Buddhism” of Inoue Enryō. Kokusai Inoue Enryō Kenkyū, vol. 1. 25–36.
Kosaka, K. 小阪国継. (1995). 『西田幾多郎―その思想と現代―』 [Nishida Kitarō – His Thought and the Present]. Kyoto: Minerva Shobo.
Kosaka, M. 小坂正明. (1959/1999). 『明治思想史』[Meiji Intellectual History]. Ed. Minamoto Ryoen. Tokyo: Toeisha.
Kosaka, M. 小坂正明. 1971. 『西田幾多郎先生の生涯と思想』[The Life and Thought of Professor Nishida]. Tokyo: Kokusai Nihon Kenkyūjo.
Maraldo, J. C. (2017). Japanese Philosophy in the Making 1: Crossing Paths with Nishida. Nagoya: Chisokudo Publications.
Mitsuhara, T. 満原健. (2018). 「『善の研究』と心理主義」[An Inquiry into the Good and Psychologism] Nishida Tetsugakkai Nenpō, 15, 159–173.
Nishida, K. (1990). An Inquiry into the Good. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives trans., New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Nishida, H. (2003). 『西田幾多郎全集』[The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō volume 24]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten.
Nitta, Y.. 新田義弘 (1989). 「井上円了の現象即実在論」[Inoue Enryō’s Theory of Phenomena-qua-Reality] in Saitō, Shigeo ed.,『井上円了と西洋思想』[Inoue Enryō and Western Thought] (pp: 79–102). Tokyo: Toyo Daigaku Inoue Enryō Kenkyū Dainibukai.
Okada, M. (2005). Revitalization versus Unification: A Comparison of the Ideas of Inoue Enryō and Murakami Senshō The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 1 (no. 37), 28–38.
Paramore, K. (2009). Ideology and Christianity in Japan. London: Routledge.
Pyle, K. B. (1969). The new generation in Meiji Japan: problems of cultural identity, 1885–1895. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Schultzer, R. (2019). Inoue Enryō: A Philosophical Portrait. New York: SUNY Press.
Shimomura, Toratarō 下村寅太郎. 1990. 西田哲学と日本の思想 [Nishida Kitarō and Japanese Thought]. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo.
Shirai, Masato 白井雅人. 2012. 「井上円了『哲学一夕話』と西田幾多郎」 [Inoue Enryō’s An Evening of Philosophical Conversation and Nishida Kitarō]. Journal of International Philosophy, vol. 1, 101–108.
Snodgrass, J. (2003). Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Staggs, K. (1983). Defend the Nation and Love the Truth: Inoue Enryō and the Revival of Meiji Buddhism. Monumenta Nipponica, 38(3), 251–281.
Takeuchi, Yoshitomo. 竹内良知. (1970). 『西田幾多郎』[Nishida Kitarō]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai.
Wargo, R. J. J. (2005). The Logic of Nothingness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Watabe, K. 渡部清 (1998). 「仏教哲学者としての原坦山と「現象即実在論」との関係」[Hara Tanzan as a Buddhist Philosopher and his Relation to theories of Phenomena-qua-Reality] in Philosophical Studies, vol. 24, 89–113.
Acknowledgements
I would like to offer my thanks to the anonymous peer-reviewers for their helpful suggestions, as well as to Taguchi Shigeru (Hokkaido University) and Andrea Altobrando (University of Padua) for their comments on this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stone, R. The Middle Path and Pure Experience: A Re-Evaluation of the “Beginning” of Modern Japanese Philosophy. Journal East Asian Philosophy 1, 15–29 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-021-00001-w
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43493-021-00001-w