L’ambiguità del mondo: La dialettica dell’interazione di Nishida Kitarō

  • Matteo Cestari University of Turin
Keywords: Nishida Kitaro, modern Japanese philosophy, dialectics, Buddhist philosophy

Abstract

The issue of dialectics has been very important in Modern Japan. In the later philosophy of Nishida Kitarō, dialectics is crucial for both the structure of his philosophy and its relationship with Buddhism, since according to him it would help define important and desirable features of Buddhist thought. Therefore, a discussion on this aspect may prove to be decisive in order to understand the overall meaning of Nishida’s thought. This essay aims at discussing the meaning and the implications of dialectics in Nishida Kitarō from the perspective of the philosophical theme of the world’s fundamental ambiguity and its linguistic consequences. Contrary to the political nature of Aristotle’s idea of the principle of non-contradiction, Nishida Kitarō aims at a contemplative approach to the ambiguous world, but falls short of facing the problem of modernity, and is therefore unable to connect the world’s ambiguity with its destructive sides. From such a perspective, his philosophy appears to be inclined to metaphysics rather than to a practical and transformative attitude.

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Author Biography

Matteo Cestari, University of Turin
Matteo Cestari studied with Massimo Raveri and Abe Masao and received his PhD at the University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari.” He is currently Associate Professor at the University of Turin, where he teaches East Asian Religions and Philosophy. He is interested in the intellectual history of East Asia from a metacritical perspective that considers a wide range of disciplines: from philosophy to the history of religions, and from cultural studies to anthropology and social theory.

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