Nishida Kitarō’s Two True Selves: Revisiting Self, Meaning, and Method in an Inquiry Into The Good

Abstract:In this contribution, I seek to highlight two different understandings of the self that can be found in Nishida Kitarō’s An Inquiry into the Good and show how they relate to one another to form a novel view of selfhood. As several scholars are already aware, Nishida appears inconsistent about how he describes terms relating to our “true” self in his early work, discussing it both as a particular state of consciousness in which unity between subject and object has been achieved and the fundamental activity that generates meaning in otherwise mute experience. While most interpreters have tended to limit themselves to mentioning only one outlook on the self or the other (or otherwise to taking the apparent inconsistency in Nishida’s earliest thought as a sign that he had yet to reach philosophical maturity), I believe this is a mistake. Indeed, as I shall argue in this contribution, Nishida’s early philosophy can only be read fruitfully if these two seemingly different interpretations of the “true self” are reconciled with one another.