'PERSONA ORIGINALIS': JINKAKU' AND PERSONNE,' ACCORDING TO THE PHILOSOPHIES OF NISHIDA KITARO AND JACQUES MARITAIN (FRANCE, JAPAN)

Over against the commonly held notion that the West extols the personal, while the East, being "pre-personal" or "a-personal," suppresses it, this cross-cultural study directly delves into the "homeomorphic--functional--equivalent" of the 'person' in the thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), representing the philosophy nurtured by Buddhist wisdom, and in that of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), representing the philosophy formed in the light of Christian revelation.;Following a brief exposition of the history of the 'person' in the Buddhist East and Christian West, the lives and thought of Nishida and Maritain are presented. Epistemology and metaphysics being integral part of their views of the 'person,' philosophical systems of Nishida and Maritain are first expounded before entering into the ideas of jinkaku (held by Nishida) and personne (elucidated by Maritain).;Out of this diatopical study emerges the 'persona originalis'--a subtle depth of human experience, be it called "the original face" in the Zen tradition or imago dei in the Biblical. This is not to annihilate differences between East and West; rather it uncovers diverse realities of the 'person' lived and understood by these traditions. Nishida and Maritain consider the person to be directly sustained by the Absolute--whether it be God or Absolute Nothing. As such he is not an ego-centered individual but has his ontological 'home' in the Transcendent. The emphasis on transcendence or immanence characterizes the experience of the personal in the Christian and Buddhist contexts. Moreover, for Nishida and Maritain, it is love that makes the person what he is and that is at the core of both speculative and practical activities and of religious salvation.;This work discloses not only a 'kataphatic' trend of Buddhist thought, exemplified by Nishida, but the significance of knowledge consummating in pati divina, clearly advanced by Maritain. Appendices--an English translation of Nishida's essay, "The Logic of Basho and the Religious Worldview," and a chronology of Nishida--offer material for further studies.;Exercising diatopical hermeneutics, this study aims at a philosophy understanding between East and West--an endeavour along the line of Raimundo Panikkar.