Kitaro Nishida
Born in Ishikawa Prefecture. The most important Japanese philosopher, Nishida was a professor at Kyoto University from 1910 to 1927, where he formed his own school of thought, which came to be known as the Kyoto school. In his book Zen no kenkyu (1911, tr. A Study of Good, 1960), he espoused the ideas of voluntarism in explaining his theory of "pure experience" (junsui keiken). In an effort to bring together Bergson's theory and neo-Kantism, he established his own creative blend of western and eastern thought in Hataraku mono kara miru mono e (1927, From the Acting to the Seeing). His ideas on the Buddhist concept of emptiness (mu) from a western standpoint is regarded even today as original and invaluable. The Philosophy Path (Tetsugaku no michi) in the Sakyo ward was named as such because Nishida frequented this area.



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