西田幾多郎と鈴木大拙 --生誕一五〇年を記念して

Abstract

Nishida Kitarō and Suzuki Daisetsu were born in 1870 in Ishikawa prefecture. They had a close relationship and substantial influences on each other until their death. Daisetsu emphasized in his early writings that Zen was essentially different from philosophy or logic, but he paid in his late works his attention to the relationship between Zen and logic under the influence of Nishida’s philosophy. He advanced consequently what is called the ‘logic of Soku-hi (logic of is/not)’. He expected that Zen would play a much more prominent role in the world by providing a philosophical foundation to it. Nishida threw himself by contrast into the philosophical disputations in the West and tackled them with energy, but he tried to comprehend the true constitution of the actual world, on the other hand, by logically polishing the tradition- al thought in the East also by getting a clue from Daisetsu’s ‘logic of Soku-hi’. This expectation of Daisetsu and the challenge of Nishida are not completed. They still remain for us today an expectation and a challenge. We can say that it is our assignment that Daisetsu and Nishida gave us to consider what they mean in our time and how we can perform them.