An Inquiry into the Good. Part II, Chapters 8–10. Part III, Chapter 1 / Translation from Japanese, Introductory Article and Commentaries by S. Kapranov

This publication presents the Ukrainian translation of chapters 8–10 of the second part and chapter 1 of the third part of the work Zen-no Kenkyu (The Study of the Good) by Nishida Kitaro, a prominent Japanese philosopher of the 20th century, the founder of modern Japanese philosophy. In these chapters, Nishida completes his analysis of the concept of reality, starting from the concept of pure experience, which was introduced and explained in detail in the first part of the work. Chapter 8 examines the concept of nature. In it, Nishida criticizes the idea of nature as a purely material objective reality – it is, in his opinion, nothing more than an abstract concept. He rejects the mechanistic reductionism characteristic of contemporary natural science. Nature, the philosopher believes, should be considered as a concrete reality given in direct experience. Nature, like its individual phenomena, has a kind of self, which can be intuitively understood by artists. Chapter 9 is devoted to the spirit. According to Nishida, “subjective spirit separated from objective nature” is likewise an abstraction. The spirit is the “unifying activity of reality”, it exists in everything, but in inanimate natural phenomena and even in plants it has not yet manifested itself. According to Nishida, evolution consists in ever greater actualizations of the spirit. Further developing the dialectic of objective and subjective, the Japanese philosopher claims that at the highest stage of development, the spirit becomes objective: in order to know the truth, one must get rid of one’s subjective self. Very much in the spirit of Zen Buddhism, though without mentioning it, Nishida says that the greatest individuals are those who have gotten rid of the self. Chapter 10 concludes the second part of the book, in which Nishida examines the concept of God. Such a concept was new for Japanese thought of the Meiji era. Nishida considers the concept of God to be universal for all eras and cultures. He examines the three known proofs of God’s existence – cosmological, teleological, and moral – but criticizes them all. According to Nishida, the real proof of the existence of God should be sought in the depths of our soul, in our direct experience. The apophatic theology of Nicholas of Cusa and the Christian mysticism of Jacob Böhme are close to Nishida. The third part begins with a chapter dedicated to the notion of conduct.