Viewing The Development Of "Pure Experience" From The Position Of "Self-consciousness"

Nishida Kitaro, a Japanese philosopher and thinker, is the founder of Japanesephilosophy in the true sense, and also the forerunner of the Kyoto School. Nishidaphilosophy combines of Eastern thought tradition and Western philosophy resources,forming a unique philosophical style. This thesis studies the writings in the twostages of early Nishida philosophy, his stand conversion from the first to the secondstage and the relationship of the main concepts in the two major works.The major work in the first stage of early Nishida philosophy is "A study of theGood". This book propounded a theory of "pure experience" and attracted theattention of Japanese scholars with praises and questions soon after the theory’spresentation. Takahashi Satomi, the contemporary of Nishida, made a series ofcriticism about the problems existing in "A study of the Good" in regard to thecontradiction and ambiguity of the concept of pure experience and the distinctionbetween facts and senses of phenomena of consciousness. These criticisms formed apositive dialogue with Nishida and become a direct factor which promoted Nishida’sideological development. During the transition from the first stage to the second one,Nishida was influenced both by neo-Kantian schools and Bergson’s philosophy.Besides, Nishida also pursued self-transcendence in his deep thought. These factorsaltogether contribute to Nishida’s stand conversion from the position of "pureexperience" to the position of "self-consciousness" in early Nishida philosophy.The establishment of the position of "self-consciousness" in the second stage ofearly Nishida philosophy is marked by the second major work "Intuition andReflection in the Consciousness of the Self". In this book, Nishida used fourimportant concepts which were "intuition","reflection","will of absolute freedom"and "self-consciousness". And because of the initially formation of the whole idea ofNishida and the direct narrative elaboration style in "A study of the Good", pureexperience, the main concept of this book, is with contradiction and ambiguity. Thisthesis analyses specifically the five meanings of this concept in "A study of the Good". These five meanings later developed into the four main concepts in "Intuitionand Reflection in the Consciousness of the Self" of the second stage of early Nishidaphilosophy. This thesis analyses the association of the four concepts with the fivemeanings of pure experience in detail and describes the pattern of "pure experience"from the position of "self-consciousness".This thesis also focuses on the problem of "solipsism", which appeared as thecrux of the era that Nishida was living in and which Nishida wanted to solve in hisphilosophy. Nishida tried to achieve the detaching and transcending of solipsism inthe work "A study of the Good". This thesis discusses the success and inadequacy ofearly Nishida philosophy with respect to the detachment and transcendent ofsolipsism, and preliminarily points out the links between early Nishida philosophyand the middle or late Nishida philosophy.