comparative & continental philosophy, Vol. 6 No.

2, November, 2014, 143–157

Nishida and the Historical World: An

Examination of Active Intuition, the
Body, and Time
Elizabeth McManaman Grosz
McDaniel College, USA

This article will examine the phase of Nishida’s thought in which he turns to
the historical world and present the benefits of this turn to his overall
philosophical project. In ‘‘The Philosophy of History in the ‘Later’ Nishida,’’
Woo-Sung Huh claims that Nishida Kitaro’s attempt to integrate history into
his earlier writings on self-consciousness is a ‘‘wrong turn.’’ I will
demonstrate how Huh’s criticism of Nishida’s writings on history stems
from Huh’s own ontological assumption that consciousness and the
historical world occupy distinct realms. Leveling this criticism against
Nishida causes the reader to miss Nishida’s greatest insight, namely that
there is no such distinction; there is only one reality of consciousness and
materiality. Nishida’s emphasis on the historical world makes his earlier
claim that consciousness is inseparable from things more robust. I will argue
that by expanding his earlier focus on consciousness to include the formative
power of created physical objects and human bodies on consciousness,
Nishida’s philosophy is actually strengthened.

keywords Nishida Kitaro-, Japanese philosophy, active intuition, body, history,

historical world, self

Introduction
Nishida Kitaro- (1870–1945) first included the historical world in his writings in
the early 1930s as a response to his colleagues’ (Tanabe Hajime and students
Tosaka Jun and Miki Kiyoshi) criticism that he was neglecting the formative
powers that history, society, and culture have on the reality of the self. Up until this
point he had largely ignored history and human actions in his ontology and
focused instead on self-awareness (Maraldo 2010). Nishida’s philosophical project
has always centered on his quest to restore unity to the divisions between subject
and object born through reflection. Turning to the historical world allowed
Nishida to illustrate this relationship from a more concrete standpoint. Nishida

ß W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2014 DOI 10.1179/1757063814Z.00000000038

144 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

came to focus on the fact that we are above all beings who are actively involved in
the world. This means that human beings are acting subjects who are both created
and creating. Our identities are a mutual determination of consciousness and
world.
As such, the body becomes a key point of investigation for Nishida in his
writings on history. The profundity of these writings lies in his claim that time
comes alive through the body; it is the body that makes history concrete.1 The
body unifies the realms of spirit and matter through itself. Time is only real when it
is lived by a human being. Broadly, Nishida’s works on history are guided by the
desire to further develop his theory of the absolute interpenetration of self and
world through detailing how social structures and past events act on the self and
how each point in time is a determination of the shared ground of absolute
nothingness.
In ‘‘The Philosophy of History in the ‘Later’’ Nishida,’’ Woo-Sung Huh claims
that Nishida’s attempt to integrate history into his earlier writings on self-
consciousness is a ‘‘wrong turn’’ (Huh 1990, 368). Huh’s criticism of Nishida’s
writings on history stems from Huh’s own ontological assumption that
consciousness and the historical world occupy distinct realms. Leveling this
criticism against Nishida causes the reader to miss Nishida’s greatest insight,
namely that there is no such distinction. There is rather ‘‘only a single reality’’ of
consciousness and materiality. In contrast to Huh’s belief that Nishida’s later work
is a sharp departure from his earlier work, I agree with John Maraldo that
Nishida’s philosophical project from 1911–1945 is unified by a few themes that
are developed in detail over the years. Such themes include pure experience (junsui
keiken 純粋経験), place (basho 場所), and active intuition (ko- iteki chokkan 行為
的直観) (Maraldo 2010). While James Heisig in Philosophers of Nothingness does
not call Nishida’s inclusion of the historical world in his philosophy a ‘‘wrong
turn’’ like Huh, he writes that ‘‘one should not expect much in the way of insight
on problems of history and morality from Nishida’’ (Heisig 2001, 71). I agree with
Heisig that if we expect Nishida’s philosophy of history to investigate inequalities
throughout history, then his works will surely disappoint us. While Nishida’s
philosophy does not fruitfully discuss real world conflicts, his writings on history
succeed in providing a framework for including the material world and human
actions in his until then highly abstract ontology.
Nishida’s emphasis on the historical world makes his earlier claim that
consciousness is inseparable from things more robust. By expanding his earlier
focus on consciousness to include the formative power of ‘‘created physical
objects’’ and human bodies on consciousness, Nishida’s philosophy is actually
strengthened. While his earlier works developed the noetic, Nishida later comes to
give equal weight to the noematic (historical reality) (Nishida 1990, xxxiii; NKZ
1965- 1: 7);2 both come to be seen as determining each other, as evident in his
assertion ‘‘we are made by making’’ (Nishida 1998a, 41; NKZ 14: 271). This

1
For a useful discussion of the place of the body in Nishida’s writings on the historical world, see James Heisig,
Philosophers of Nothingness, 68–72.
2
This is the preface to the third edition, written in 1936.
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 145

paper will present Nishida’s views on history and expose the benefits of his
addition of the historical world to his overall philosophical project. Additionally, it
will address two of the criticisms that Huh makes regarding Nishida’s later work
which are as follows: 1) Nishida’s ontology is a type of internalism and 2) he
commits a ‘‘category mistake’’ when he infuses ‘‘nonconscious phenomena’’ like
the historical world and epoch with his work on self-consciousness (1990, 367–
368).

Opposition, unity, and pure experience

We will begin by examining two key concepts, which Nishida introduces in his
earliest work, An Inquiry into the Good (1911), namely, pure experience (junsui
keiken 純粋経験) and the relation between unity and opposition.3 These concepts
ground his entire philosophy, making his later work on history consistent with his
early formulations. Nishida’s goal in An Inquiry into the Good is to articulate a
theory of one unified reality that sublates the absolute difference between subject
and object, and provides a middle position between idealism and materialism
(Nishida 1990, 65; NKZ 1: 79). Nishida’s student, Nishitani Keiji, characterizes
Nishida’s project in An Inquiry into the Good as an attempt to ‘‘…restore unity at
a deeper level to the standpoints of speculation, experience, and Existenz that have
become cut off from one another in Western philosophy’’ (Nishitani 1991, 34). For
Nishida, there is ‘‘no distinction between spirit and matter, only a single reality of
mind-in-things and things-in-mind…’’ (1991, 121).
Nishida’s single reality, however, is comprised of both unity and opposition, or
more precisely, oppositions that occur within a unity. Using the color red as an
example, in order for red to have an identity, there must be other colors that oppose
red (Nishida 1990, 56–57; NKZ 1: 67–69). Red’s identity is created through its
difference from other colors. Therefore, its very identity is tied to the existence of the
opposing colors. In other words, the other colors are somehow contained within the
definition of the color red. In this sense, knowledge of a being’s identity is only
possible when things are opposed; if everything was undifferentiated one would be
unable to speak of identities and knowledge would be impossible.
While these oppositions exist, each thing is not entirely independent. Nishida
writes that opposing things ‘‘… must be unified; they must be part of the
development of one reality through differentiation’’ (1990, 64; NKZ 1: 77). Thus,
the opposing things must share a common ground. Nishida describes this ground
as unifying activity, or consciousness (1990, 56; NKZ 1: 68). Consciousness is
utterly inseparable from the various things of the world and the things of the world
are inseparable from consciousness. Here we are introduced to the beginnings of
his idea of the self-identity of absolute contradictories (zettai mujunteki jiko dôitsu
絶対矛 盾 的 自己同 一). Red and blue, self and world, are opposing realities that
depend on each other for their existence. In this sense they maintain a unity, but it
is a unity that preserves their difference.

3
In his later works, Nishida will use the term self-identity of absolute contradictories (zettai mujunteki jiko dôitsu 絶
対矛 盾 的 自己同 一).
146 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

What does it mean that things are unified while maintaining their individuality?
Broadly, Nishida is resisting the idea that any existing thing is sustained through
itself and thus has a private, separate reality from the rest of the world. Instead, the
true nature of reality is closer to the Buddhist concept of dependent co-origination
(prati-tyasamutpada) which states that entities arise and depend on each other in
order to exist (see Garfield, 1995). However, such interdependence is only possible
if things share a common basis. Nishida calls this shared root absolute
nothingness; it is the point that is common to both beings. Therefore, things
mutually determine each other yet ultimately they are grounded in an irrefutable
unity (One or absolute nothingness) that determines itself through the many.
While there is only one reality for Nishida, our habitual mode of interacting
with the world holds that subject and object represent two fundamentally separate
realms. Therefore, we presuppose that we have a self that stands against objects.
However, this idea is born out of reflection and neglects our originary relation to
the world where consciousness is a unifying activity that does not reflect on itself.
Nishida calls this originary relation to the world pure experience. Pure experience
occurs when consciousness blends with an object so that there is nothing left over
(no self or object) outside of the unity (Nishida 1990, 3–4; NKZ 1: 9–10). For
example, in one’s everyday mode of experience, when one sees a flower, one is
conscious of one’s perception of the flower, meaning one sets oneself against the
reality of the flower. It is my perception of the flower in this view. From the field of
pure experience, the self is completely exhausted in the perception of the flower;
there is no perception of the flower that occurs in the realm of the subject; there is
only a seamless unity between consciousness and the flower.

The turn to the historical world

Having examined two of the most important concepts in Nishida’s early
philosophy, this article will now turn to Nishida’s introduction of the historical
world into his work. This will allow for a critical evaluation of Huh’s claim that
Nishida’s inclusion of the historical world is a ‘‘wrong turn.’’ Nishida’s reasoning
for examining the historical world is clearly presented in the essay, ‘‘Historical
Body’’ (1937):
If what is articulated in logical form is separated from everyday experience it will be of
no use … First of all, let us think what our everyday experience really is … the real
world in which we are living is the world in which we are acting as active subjects …
our activity involves us in making things; that is to say, our world of everyday
experience is the human-historical world … It is the world in which we are born, in
which we play active roles, and in which we die. (1998a, 38; NKZ 14: 266–267)

While pure experience was his earlier attempt at overcoming the separation
between subject and object, Nishida tries to overcome the split once again through
the historical world. He writes that the academic disciplines see the world from a
‘‘reified standpoint,’’ that is, through the abstract concepts of matter or mind.
Alternatively, Nishida attempts to ground his philosophy through experience in
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 147

the everyday world (1998a, 38; NKZ 14: 266–267) as the realms of subject and
object are abstractions added to experience, born in part through language.
In particular, Nishida draws attention to human beings as acting beings. Human
beings are engaged in production (e.g. making food, books, art, buildings,
children, etc.). What is produced then becomes a ‘‘public’’ or ‘‘historical thing,’’
and is thus capable of acting on its producer and the wider community. Nishida
writes: ‘‘So to make simultaneously entails being made, both in the productive
interaction with the thing made and subsequent to that interaction … we are—so
to speak—made by making’’ (1998a, 40; NKZ 14: 270). Modes of production
throughout time construct our identities. Our bodies are produced by our parents,
and the institutions and man-made buildings and objects that surround us make up
our world. Furthermore, the historical world is one in which we are ‘‘actively
involved’’ (1998a, 40; NKZ 14: 271). Thus, if we want to speak of the identity of a
person, we must locate it between the ideal and the material realms. We act on the
world by transforming our ideas into actions and physical objects that become
public. The world of things, made by other subjects, acts on us as well. Therefore,
we are ‘‘made’’ by our own ‘‘making’’ and the ‘‘making’’ of others. ‘‘Active
involvement’’ means that ontologically we exist as the self-identity of absolute
contradictories; we exist as a mutual determination of consciousness and world.
The historical world determines us in quite a particular way depending on the
culture and time period that we are born into: ‘‘As individual items in the world,
the self of each of us … is not born into the world accidentally but traditionally,
that is to say socially, in an historically specific way’’ (cited in Jacinto 1995, 140;
NKZ 10: 293–294). Agustin Jacinto writes, ‘‘That is to say, our subjective ‘self’ is
itself a particular historical reality in which we participate, something already
made that we inherit in order to make it over’’ (1995, 140). Thus, the individual is
already formed in a sense when she is born into a particular culture. Tradition
becomes a tool by which we can understand the present through the past. History
itself is grounded in tradition. As acting subjects we go on to transform what is
given into something new which then becomes something public, capable of
affecting others.
Nishida often uses the example of an artist and her work to illustrate the
connection between ‘‘made’’ and ‘‘making’’ (1998a, 40; NKZ 14: 270).4 An artist
is born into a particular time frame which determines the techniques she is taught.
This long history of style acts on her. Yet she can also transform the traditional
forms through the creation of a new work. This work in turn shapes her identity;
in other words, the work is integrated into her identity. Nishida emphasizes that
the human being is homo faber; production is an integral part of human existence
(2012a, 158; NKZ 8: 366). He writes, ‘‘The individual self is a singularity … it is a
point of production (2012c, 69; NKZ 8: 114–115).
Having thematized the historical world as an interaction between subject and
object or the ‘‘made’’ and the ‘‘making,’’ Nishida describes the body as the
mediator between consciousness and the physical world:

4
For other places where Nishida discusses artistic creation, see Nishida 2012b, 55, 109.
148 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

The external world is the world that utterly negates our selves … It is the world of law,
the world of universals. It is the world of external mediation. Thereby, even the self
must be rendered utterly objective … our selves actually exist because in one aspect
they are of the external world; that is, because we possess bodies … therefore, when we
consider the world of acting things, and the fact that we are in a world of acting things,
we are already not in a merely internal world but in a world that is constituted as
inside-qua-outside, outside-qua-inside … (2012b, 69–70; NKZ 8: 115)

That is, the body is a subject in that we act on the world through it, yet it is also an
object in that it is acted on by other subjects. For Nishida, the body is part of the
fundamentally creative world. Bodies create things that are both spatial and
temporal. The body is made (born) and it goes on to create life that will extend
beyond it. Therefore, Nishida speaks of the body as a material locus for history
itself; it makes history concrete. Heisig writes:
Concreteness is supplied by means of what he calls the ‘‘historical body,’’ which …
mediate[s] between consciousness and the world in active intuition to make it the
mediator of history … It means that the body gives concreteness to historical life, and
that the historical world gives the body an arena in which to work. (2001, 68)

Time comes alive through the body, not the world. Everything in the world is both
made and making. Yet, history only exists for human beings who have
consciousness and bodies. Human beings hold the past in memory and project
the future. In the ‘‘Historical Body’’ Nishida writes ‘‘Spirit is temporal and matter
is spatial … [they] contradict each other, signifying separate domains. But the
concrete world itself is temporal and spatial at the same time’’ (1998a, 53; NKZ
14: 291). Going back to the language of his early works, consciousness unifies
oppositions. However, the body here unifies the realm of spirit and matter through
itself. History becomes embodied and the world provides a space of bodies,
including one’s own body for one to ‘‘work’’ with.
These ideas should become clearer through a discussion of Nishida’s concept of
active intuition (ko- iteki chokkan 行為的直観) which is yet another way to express
the mutual determination of self and world:
By employing the logic of objects, we can abstractly conceive of an individual as a
being in itself and then attribute its activities to it—that is, we can treat [it] as the
grammatical subject of its predicates. But a thing’s activities already entail its
involvement with its environment. And yet, this involvement cannot be properly
rendered as the attributes possessed by the thing itself … The various acts of our
individual selves … must be conceived of as the self-determinations of the world seen
as a living space … active intuition is the basis of thinking in the form of concrete logic.
(Nishida 1998b, 68; NKZ 9: 328–329)

It is easy to envision the subject as an agent, which acts on things. However, Nishida
emphasizes that when we examine the nature of activity, the agency of the historical
world is revealed. Returning to the example of the artist, the work of art does not
issue entirely from the artist’s subjectivity. On the contrary, the artist is inspired by
the world and passively receives this inspiration (Nishida 1998a, 39–40; NKZ 14:
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 149

268–270). In a sense, we may think of the intuitions of the world as content for the
self, which the self works with and transforms and is in turn made by.5 This interplay
is what Nishida calls active intuition; it is the foundation of ‘‘concrete logic,’’ which
must be employed in order to capture the reality of action. While Nishida uses the
terms subject and world in order to clarify the relation between the two, we should
remember that in real experience there are no subjective and objective realms; there
is simply the acting subject in the world. Given this, Nishida’s formulation of active
intuition effectively illustrates the thorough interdependence of these realms in the
fashioning of the identity of the subject, or reality as a whole, i.e. the self-identity of
absolute contradictories. We also see how the body is the mediator between
consciousness and the world; the world’s actions on the self always occur through
the body.
More broadly, the historical world itself is the mediator between subject and
object. Nishida writes:
The acting thing is always an acting thing vis-à-vis the whole; indeed, what acts is at
the same time enacted. The subject of acting is necessarily always a dialectical subject.
Even the most infinitesimal movement must be a historical event. (2012c, 71; NKZ 8:
118)

This passage is another way of describing how activity issues from the
interpenetration of self and world. Nishida’s concept of a field or place (basho
場所), which arose in the middle period of his philosophical project,6 is helpful in
visualizing this activity as it replaces language of the ‘‘subject’’ with the new notion
of a ‘‘field’’ of consciousness. Any remnant of the identity of a being as closed off,
atomistic, or self-directing is eradicated by the concept of basho. In ‘‘Logic and
Life’’ (1936), Nishida makes the acting ‘‘dialectical subject’’ more concrete:
Society is not the [mere] collection of individual persons. On the other hand, neither is
it sheer material force nor mere authority. That which Durkheim calls social fact can
not be reduced to the psychological relationships among individual persons but neither
is it something transcendent. It has to be formed by historical life. And so our acting
self, as the operative element of the historical world, is acting insofar as it is social. And
society exists only insofar as we intuit through acting. (2012a, 157; NKZ 8: 364)

Here Nishida demonstrates how the historical world is a place that exists as the
interrelation of social historical practices and the individual. The realm of culture
does not shape the individual in a one-directional manner. Just as time comes alive
through the body, social discourses and practices gain life through the action of

5
See Nishida, ‘‘The Historical Body’’: ‘‘Activity, as I have just said, must be a productive transaction; and so in
productivity subjectivity becomes objectivity and makes things, and at the same time that which is made makes that
which makes. It is one transactional process. This is the reason an adequate articulation of the meaning of productivity
becomes impossible in the framework in which subjectivity and objectivity are first separated and opposed’’ (1998a,
41; NKZ 14: 271).
6
Nishida expands his discussion of the absolute interpenetration of self and world through his notion of place (basho
場所 ). Explaining the groundless ground that determines the self, he writes ‘‘… it must be what I call a place. For
example, the universal which stands over against the I must include the Thou. Therefore it has the function of
determining the I. And including the Thou must mean that it includes the I as well. Therefore, the true universal which
determines the person must be a self-determining place, and must mean the self determination of the place itself’’
(1970a, 51; NKZ 7: 101).
150 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

individuals. The historical world contains countless already formed physical

objects, social structures, and ideas. Yet the human subject reaches ahead to the
future out of the already formed world when she creates. This reaching toward the
future is done out of the already formed historical world. The historical world is
the site of the weaving together of matter and spirit, of aspects that were never
separate to begin with, but nevertheless create new configurations in history.
Nishida writes that it is the space wherein the world ‘‘transcends’’ itself through
the human being’s ability to be self-aware (1987, 84; NKZ 11: 417). The human
being and the world fully interpenetrate each other; the human is ‘‘a creative
element in a creative world,’’ (Nishida 2012a, 145; NKZ 8: 343) meaning that
which is made also makes. Both subject and object are active and passive as they
shape each other; for Nishida, ‘‘what is creative is what is self-contradictory’’
(2012a, 146; NKZ 8: 346).
Nishida also highlights the fact that everything stands on absolute nothingness
(1987, 19; NKZ 11: 397). Therefore, past determinations and future possibilities
are bound together in nothingness. However, if the foundation of all things is
‘‘absolute nothingness,’’ don’t individual identities become mere formal distinc-
tions? Mateo Cestari writes:
Individuals have no self-nature, it is their constitutional interrelation (i.e., their self-
negating nature) which makes them as they are. According to Nishida, the self is
thoroughly itself through a self-negation, i.e., through a constitutional openness to the
world, while the world is thoroughly itself, through self-determination in the direction
of the self, which makes the world concrete in the self. (1998, 190)

Here, Cestari points to the places where Nishida emphasizes the passive side of
what forms an identity. This ‘‘openness to the world’’ allows the world to
determine the self while the world becomes itself through the self. The world
becomes ‘‘concrete in the self’’ because through the self, the world takes on a
particular time. Apart from subjects, the world is always indeterminate ‘‘absolute
nothingness.’’ Nishida calls this interrelatedness ‘‘expression’’:
When we become creative as elements of the creative world, things do not remain
merely tools but become expressions. Things become the expression of life. The world
is determining itself via expression, that is, it continues forming itself. We go on
intuiting by acting, that is, we are dialectically determining our own self. Intuition
means that historical life dialectically determines itself. Our life is thus both historical
and social. (2012a, 56–7; NKZ 8: 364)

At every turn, the world is expressed through the self and the self is expressed
through the world.
Beyond a description of the intersection between self and world in identity,
active intuition is used to refer to the awareness of this interrelation. Nishida also
uses the phrases ‘‘knowing by becoming’’ or ‘‘becoming a thing’’ to refer to this
awareness (1987, 89; NKZ 11: 424).7 ‘‘Knowing by becoming’’ is a move by
which one grasps an object in the present. Past and future blend completely with

7
For a useful discussion of this concept see Heisig 2001, 53–55.
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 151

the present. It is difficult to understand what Nishida means by these phrases

without appealing to his own Zen practice. The goal of seated meditation (zazen)
is to develop awareness that is not dualistic. For example, the twentieth-century
Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, gives an example of hearing a blue jay while reading
inside. He states that while the person who acts from a ‘‘primitive understanding
of being’’ might think about the blue jay as an entity that exists entirely apart from
him, the person who possesses Zen awareness does not see a division between the
blue jay and himself. Such a person would experience the blue jay as being ‘‘right
here.’’ Suzuki says, ‘‘When you are not disturbed by the blue jay … the blue jay
will come right into your heart, and you will be a blue jay, and blue jay will [be]
reading something.’’8 This idea of direct perception, ‘‘knowing by becoming’’ or
‘‘becoming a thing,’’ was introduced in Nishida’s early work and is another way of
describing pure experience. However, Nishida focuses more on the role of time in
connection with ‘‘knowing by becoming’’ in later works.
While Nishida’s initial formulations of pure experience in An Inquiry into the
Good appear consistent with his concept of grasping an object in the present, part
of the importance of Nishida’s work on history stems from his assertion that
history becomes the window through which we can know absolute nothingness.
We can only approach it through the particularity of a being’s individual history.
In his last work, ‘‘The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview’’ (1945),
Nishida writes:
Religious relationship consists in the contradictory self-identity of what utterly
transcends our self and establishes it (what is utterly transcendent and yet is the source
of the self), and the utterly unique, individual, and volitional self. It consists in the
contradictory self-identity of the thoroughly transcendent and the thoroughly
immanent. This relationship cannot be considered simply from without, objectively,
or from within, subjectively. It has to be apprehended in the historical world, in
relation to the self-determination of the absolute present. (1987, 96; NKZ 11: 433).

Here Nishida stresses that a ‘‘religious relationship’’ or ‘‘knowing by becoming’’

takes place in and is aided by the historical world. The self of a thing is grounded
in absolute nothingness but its particularity, its history, is not insignificant. While
the past, the future, and the present cannot be separated in the eternal now,
ignoring a thing’s historicity misses a thing’s immanence and misses the fact that
human beings and objects in the world have unique past experiences. Just like the
Mahayana Buddhist two-fold truth that form and emptiness reflect two aspects of
the same world,9 Nishida writes that ‘‘religious relationship’’ requires that one
know a thing’s historicity (its form) as well as its ground in absolute nothingness
(its emptiness).
‘‘Knowing by becoming’’ is true self-awareness where the two movements,
world to self (e.g. desire, sense perception) and self to world (acting, transforming)

8
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi - Sandokai - Sound and Noise, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v5pHNyCAJXUXE.
9
For a discussion of the variety of ways that the relation between form and emptiness is described in Mahayana
Buddhism, see Davis (2013).
152 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

are unified. In ‘‘The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview’’ Nishida calls
this self-awareness ‘‘the ordinary standpoint’’:
The standpoint of religion consists of a radical appropriation of the standpoint of the
eternal past and the future of the historical world, the standpoint where the beginning
and the end of human beings meet, the standpoint which is the deepest and the
shallowest, the furthest and the nearest, the maximum and the minimum—that is, the
ordinary standpoint. To be religiously aware means that we human beings never lose
sight of the source of human existence … In each step we take, we are eschatologically
connected with the beginning and the end of the world. (1987, 111–112; NKZ 11: 453)

This standpoint has its root in the ‘‘eternal now,’’ which is the source of all things.
The ‘‘absolute present’’ lies within every moment. While time is constantly being
distinguished by past, present, and future, it is actually continuous because there is
no absolute boundary between each moment. Therefore, history is not something
‘‘past’’ for Nishida. He states that the ‘‘eternal future exists in the very depths of
history.’’ Time is not merely linear; it is also discontinuous. Nishida speaks of the
discontinuity of continuity as the past falling away in the present and the future
commencing in the present (cited in Cunningham 2007, 183–184; NKZ 7: 230).
Therefore, ‘‘time becomes extinct moment by moment, and moment by moment, it
is born’’ (cited in Cunningham 2007, 211). Time is the ‘‘self-determination of
absolute nothingness …’’ (cited in Cunningham 2007, 210; NKZ 7: 447).
Therefore, time breaks up or opposes the continuous flow of the ‘‘eternal now.’’
Time, however, is a phenomenon of the human being’s relation to the world.
Nishida writes that the self is something ‘‘thoroughly self-expressive’’ which
acts:
But it does not act merely spatially as if it were mere matter; nor does it act merely non-
spatially, i.e. temporally, as if it were the spirit or consciousness. The self acts creatively
as the self-determination of the absolute present in the contradictory self-identity of
time and space. (1987, 84; NKZ 11: 416)

Nishida’s phrase ‘‘knowing by becoming’’ is helpful here. The self is the world
knowing itself. The self reflects the world in itself, i.e. it is determined by the
world. Yet, the self also ‘‘transcends itself’’ in ‘‘knowing’’ (Nishida 1987, 84; NKZ
11: 417). So, as we saw earlier, we can say that the world transcends itself in
knowing. Self-awareness is located in this transcendence. Nishida asserts that we
become truly ‘‘historical,’’ and thus religious, when we dwell in the ‘‘absolute
present.’’ Nishida’s references to Leopold van Ranke help explain why this is a
‘‘religious’’ move. Huh notes that Nishida often quotes Ranke’s phrase ‘‘every
epoch is immediate to God’’ (Huh 1990, 356). If we put this into Nishida’s
language, it would be: absolute nothingness is always eschatologically present.
Thus, the one (absolute nothingness) is always capable of being grasped in the
particular (moment, self).
Yet, what exactly is absolute nothingness? Nishida quotes Makabe no Heishiro:
‘‘Having thoroughly penetrated the Dharmakaya [the realm of absolute truth], I
found that there was not any thing there, just this Makabe no Heishiro’’ (1987, 89;
NKZ 11: 423–424). Nishida cautions against picturing ‘‘nothingness’’ as some
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 153

thing to be attained. Instead, only the non-objectified self is found. He also alludes
to Dogen’s phrase ‘‘to pursue oneself is to forget oneself.’’ The negation of the self
here does not mean a detachment to life; it means ‘‘total involvement of oneself’’ in
life to the point where the self exhausts itself in ‘‘becoming a thing’’ (1987, 89;
NKZ 11: 424). When the subjective and the objective are unified it becomes clear
that the creative world and the creative self are in themselves both passive and
active. We cannot unequivocally decide whether the self or the world is making or
being made because both are made and make each other simultaneously in the
‘‘eternal now.’’
While we have briefly examined the ‘‘eternal now,’’ we will now turn to
Nishida’s extension of this term to the epoch, which is a ‘‘determination’’ of the
eternal now. Huh writes that Nishida’s ideas relating to self-consciousness are
applied to the epoch. Referencing Nishida, Huh writes ‘‘‘An epoch determines
itself’ becomes equivalent to the ‘present determines itself’’’ (1990, 362). Nishida
does not specify the length of epochs but he does state that they arise and fall as
individuals do (that is discontinuously). Citing Ranke, Nishida writes:
The historical epoch, as Ranke has already told us, cannot be seen as the simple result
of the previous epoch nor as the preparation for the following epoch. It has its own
independent meaning. (cited in Huh 1990, 362; NKZ 10: 380)

However, an epoch is not a disembodied occurrence. Returning to the idea of

active intuition, where desires act on us and we act upon them, the self’s acting is
an ‘‘‘externalization’ of our thoughts and feelings. While in the case of an
individual, each action is a determination of ‘‘absolute nothingness,’’ epochs seem
to be the sum of individual actions. Heisig notes that Nishida’s interest in historical
worlds is in their embodiment of ‘‘absolute nothingness’’ and their singular,
eschatological existence. The determination of the moment is related to the
beginning and the end of time in that epochs have a beginning which determines
individuals’ actions, yet individuals also strive to move beyond these determina-
tions and thus comport themselves toward the future. These two poles are brought
together in the present (Heisig 2001, 68–69).
In order to clarify Nishida’s use of the term eschatology and the historical world,
we will turn to Eric Cunningham’s Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida,
Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton:
When Nishida writes that ‘‘each one of our actions is historical and eschatologisch, as
the self determination of the absolute present,’’ he seems to imply that the dialectical
fulfillment of the self-determination of the absolute present, which is to say, of the
historical world itself, is the very transcendence of the historical world … The meaning
of the historical world is its own transcendence, and the meaning of time is its
dialectical fulfillment in absolute nothingness. (2007, 212)

Each moment represents the beginning and end of time and each moment is an
individual determination of the ‘‘absolute present.’’ When Cunningham states that
the ‘‘meaning of history lies in its transcendence,’’ one could say that this is
another way to express that the meaning of the past is realized when we act on it
(or transcend it) in the present, that is, when we determine the present.
154 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

Furthermore, absolute nothingness underlies every point in time. In ‘‘The Logical

Structure of the Actual World’’ (1933; see Fundamental Problems of Philosophy,
120), Nishida writes, ‘‘the eternal future exists in the very depths of history’’ (cited
in Cunningham 2007, 183–184; NKZ 7: 230). Given this, Cunningham asserts
that Nishida is able to ‘‘reestablish historical activity as taking place in the eternal
present, and exhibiting at all times the fundamental character of eschatology’’
(cited in Cunningham 2007, 183–184; NKZ 7: 230). Cunningham’s work is
important because it demonstrates how history (particularity) is not contrary to
absolute nothingness; the eternal now underlies every point in time.

Nishida’s writings on history: a ‘‘right turn’’

Upon having elucidated some of the crucial terms in Nishida’s later writings,
namely: active intuition, the historical body, and the epoch, we are in a position to
evaluate Huh’s claim that Nishida’s inclusion of the historical world was a ‘‘wrong
turn.’’ As noted above, Nishida, himself, admits that the early developments in his
thought can be interpreted as privileging interiority while neglecting the world of
things and bodies. However, his view of the inseparability of consciousness and the
world as articulated in his first major work, An Inquiry into the Good, negates the
idea of a consciousness distinct from the world. In defense of the consistency of his
philosophical project, Nishida writes:
That which I called … the world of direct or pure experience I have now come to think
of as the world of historical reality. The world of action-intuition—the world of
poiesis—is none other than the world of pure experience. (1990, xxxiii; NKZ 1: 7)

As such, the task will be to assess whether pure experience and active intuition are
indeed equivalent. Huh writes:
… Nishida’s later philosophy may be seen as his effort to overcome his earlier sharp
distinction between homo interior and homo exterior, by giving fuller reality to the
latter. But the manner in which Nishida puts away his internalism remains basically
internal, since the forms of self-consciousness themselves which he uses to overcome
that internalism are internally originated … The deeper problem is whether it is
possible to apply forms of self-consciousness, which originate in the discussion of acts
of self-consciousness to nonconscious phenomena … I would call this union a category
mistake, since acts of self-consciousness and a historical epoch are not similar enough
to be treated by similar forms of self-consciousness. (1990, 368)

Though it is correct to state that Nishida’s philosophy centers on our

consciousness of the world and that his entire philosophical system stems out of
it, Huh is making a troubling assertion. If Nishida had attempted to articulate
reality outside of consciousness, he would have succumbed to a materialist
perspective. Nishida recognized that our knowledge of the world comes from an
individual, lived perspective. Positing a ‘‘real world’’ outside of the subject that
existed before one’s life and will go on existing after one’s death is, while informed
by academic disciplines like history and science, still a conjecture according to
Nishida’s world view. His concept of the ‘‘self-identity of absolute contradictories’’
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 155

states that the world and consciousness interpenetrate each other. It seems that
by arguing that Nishida’s philosophy is ‘‘internal,’’ Huh is making a strong
ontological claim that there are two distinct realms, i.e. self and world. For
Nishida, all beings are relative beings whose true ground is ‘‘absolute nothingness’’
where this nothingness is internal and external, mental and material- and neither
internal nor external, neither mental nor material. However, each being’s
individuality is a unique determination of the eternal present. While Nishida
clearly philosophizes from this religious worldview, his broader claim that there is
only a single reality should be taken seriously. If one does take this claim seriously,
then there is no way to transcend the ‘‘internalism’’ of consciousness’ view of the
world by moving outside of consciousness.
In regard to Huh’s second claim, that one should not ‘‘apply forms of self-
consciousness’’ to ‘‘nonconscious phenomena’’ (an historical epoch), we should
first clarify the meaning of ‘‘epoch.’’ As Cunningham notes, up until the late 1930s
Nishida’s philosophy remained abstract and he did not attempt to discuss specific
historical and cultural events and entities (2007, 212). Yet later, as Heisig explains,
he uncharacteristically ‘‘rethinks his philosophical ideas in terms of a particular
historical culture and in the process reinforce[s] that cultural form’’ (cited in
Cunningham 2007, 212). The interpretations presented here have been based on
Nishida’s abstract notion of an ‘‘epoch’’ where it is a ‘‘determination’’ of the
eternal now. Nishida’s writings on the ‘‘historical body’’ and ‘‘expression’’ lead to
the interpretation of the epoch as a kind of bird’s eye view (initiated by human
beings of course) of individuals acting and being acted upon by their environment
and society within a certain time frame. Therefore, it is hard to agree with Huh
that the ‘‘historical epoch’’ is a nonconscious phenomenon. It’s difficult to imagine
what a nonconscious phenomenon would even be.
Huh writes:
… before the turn, the self-consciousness of absolute nothingness always has
ontological priority over historical reality, which can have any reality only to the
extent that it is grounded in the noetic aspect of self-consciousness. (1990, 350)

Nishida’s privileging of the noetic over the noema (‘‘historical reality’’) here does
not stay true to the ‘‘self-identity of absolute contradictories.’’ The inverse must
also be true, that the noetic can only be real through the noema. I believe that this
‘‘turn’’ was absolutely necessary because it tied Nishida’s philosophy to lived
experience. Self-consciousness does not occur in a vacuum; it is tied to the human
body which is situated in a historical world of objects, actors, and customs.
Therefore, in response to Huh’s claim that the ‘‘historical epoch’’ is
‘‘nonconscious,’’ the use of the word ‘‘nonconscious’’ becomes problematic. The
human being as a material being is part of the historical world and determines the
present through actions. Time cannot be considered to have an existence apart
from consciousness and consciousness cannot have an existence apart from the
body, which necessarily exists in the concrete historical world of ‘‘acting subjects.’’
Huh offers a third objection to Nishida’s later work, namely that his wartime
writings make worrisome claims regarding the unity of state and citizen and the
superiority of Japan over other Asian countries. He alludes to scholars who claim
156 ELIZABETH MCMANAMAN GROSZ

that Nishida’s wartime writings support Japanese militarism and fascism (Huh
1990, 367–368). As many readers of Nishida know, the question of Nishida’s
culpability during the Pacific War extends beyond Huh’s worries; it is a point of
contention among Nishida scholars.10 In the sequel to this article, I will take up the
question of Nishida’s wartime writings within the overall context of his writings
on the historical world (see McManaman Grosz forthcoming). There I will
demonstrate the various ways that scholars have evaluated Nishida’s wartime
writings and provide a new way to interpret Nishida’s wartime actions. My aim is
not to defend or condemn Nishida for his political writings during the Pacific War;
rather, it is to examine his actions in light of his views on history as well as to
expose the assumptions about history immanent to the way that we evaluate the
responsibility of public intellectuals during times of war.
In conclusion, contra Huh, I believe that Nishida’s writings on the historical
world strengthen his philosophy. Huh’s claim that Nishida made a ‘‘wrong turn,’’
by including history in his writings on self-consciousness, cause us to miss
Nishida’s attempt to unify the realms of consciousness and materiality. If Nishida
was intent on formulating a truly interpenetrating reality that did not collapse into
two separate realms of subject and object, then he clearly needed to further
develop the object side of the system by situating consciousness in the historical,
lived world of acting bodies. In this late phase of his thought, Nishida confronts
the criticisms that his earlier idea of pure experience was too passive by
emphasizing that the lived world is a world of acting and making. He also makes it
clear that both the self and the world are agents and objects that act on each other.
Recalling his words in the ‘‘Historical Body,’’ Nishida writes:
If what is articulated in logical form is separated from everyday experience it will be of
no use. So here—once again—let me try to philosophize from the basis of our everyday
experience. That way I may be able to give new life to my basic ideas … [And at the
end of his lecture] If the bodily self is not seen as participating in the creative process,
everything degenerates into mere subjectivity, the merely conscious, the merely
abstract—or, at the opposite pole, the merely physical. And this is the destruction of
man. (1998a, 38, 51; NKZ 14: 266–267, 287)

Ultimately, Nishida’s inclusion of the historical world is motivated by the desire

to ensure that his philosophy is existentially relevant, i.e. grounded in, and
fundamentally about, lived experience.

References
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10
For a useful collection of essays surrounding this question, see Heisig and Maraldo.
 NISHIDA AND THE HISTORICAL WORLD 157

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Notes on contributor
Correspondence to: Elizabeth McManaman Grosz. Email: egrosz@mcdaniel.edu.
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