On Kitaro Nishida's Concept Of Wil

The central question explored in the philosophy of Nishida Kichitaro is what is the true fundamental reality and how the true reality systematically unifies all things.The answer to this question has been understood differently by Nishida at different times.Based on the three main texts of Nishida’s early period,namely The Study of the Good,Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness,and Art and Morality,this thesis seeks to clarify the essence and meaning of Nishida’s concept of will,and analyze the logical deepening of Nishida’s concept of will from the "purely empirical"position to the "self-conscious" position."The thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter introduces Nishida’s inquiry into the question of the true reality from the pure experience that is the beginning of Nishida’s philosophical position,and from the nature of pure experience and its relationship with consciousness and reality,focuses on clarifying that Nishida’s understanding of the true reality is different from the object-based understanding of reality based on the subject-object duality of modern Western philosophy.The real reality,as Nishida understands it,is the pure experience of the unity of subject and object,the unity of knowing and feeling,and the unified developmental activity of consciousness.The second chapter then addresses the question of the basis of the unity of the will that remains in the purely empirical position on the basis of the inherent necessity of the development of the will from the purely empirical position to the absolute free will from the conscious position,through the interpretation of the concept of consciousness,and the search for the true unity of intuition and reflection.In the third chapter,he reveals the essence of absolute free will,which is the root of the establishment of consciousness,and shows the fundamental connection between Nishida’s will and reality by comparing the will from the purely empirical standpoint with the absolute free will from the standpoint of consciousness.In the third chapter,the meaning of the will as the fundamental unifying force of the real is further manifested through an exploration of the relationship between the will and the true good and the beautiful.In the fourth chapter,by comparing Nishida’s will with Kant’s concept of will,it is shown why Nishida equates his absolute free will with Kant’s object-self and illustrates Nishida’s critical development of the concept of will based on Kant’s.