Nishida Kitaro is a translation of essays
Nishitani wrote about his teacher between 1936 and 1968. This series of
meditation by one master on another provides a remarkable, living portrait of
Nishida the person and conveys the excitement he aroused in his students.
Focusing on Nishida’s maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good, Nishitani
penetrates to the core of his thought and presents it in language that is a
marvel of clarity. The collection’s concluding section, which deals with
Nishida’s critics, stands out for its lucidity and fairness (amazon) (kindle 2018-12-27)
The Philosophy of the Kyoto School, ed. by Masakatsu Fujita, Robert Chapeskie (Translator), John W. M.
Krummel (Translator), Springer, 2018
The main purpose of this book is to offer to philosophers
and students abroad who show a great interest in Japanese philosophy and the
philosophy of the Kyoto school major texts of the leading philosophers. This
interest has surely developed out of a desire to obtain from the thought of
these philosophers, who stood within the interstice between East and West, a
clue to reassessing the issues of philosophy from the ground up or to drawing
new creative possibilities.
The present condition seems to be,
however, that the material made available to further realize this kind of
intellectual dialogue is far too scarce. This book is intended to be of some
help in this regard.
The book presents selected texts of
representative philosophers of the Kyoto school such as Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe
Hajime, Miki Kiyoshi, Nishitani Keiji, and others who best illustrate the
characteristics of this school, and works that together portray its image as a
whole. Those who are interested in Japanese philosophy or specifically the philosophy
of the Kyoto School can survey a comprehensive representation from this book.
These texts are, of course, quite
difficult and cannot be well understood without sufficient preliminary
knowledge. Expository essays have therefore been included after each text to
provide guidance. In each of these commentaries a scholar of our time with deep
understanding of the philosopher in question has provided an account of his
life, intellectual journey, and the significance of the text included here.
From this book will emerge a new dialogue of ideas that in turn will
engender new developments in philosophy, thereby further expanding the network
of philosophical thought worldwide. (amazon) (kindle available, too expensive, wait for other sources, eg FJU library, or Google play)
Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual
Biography of Nishida Kitarō, by Michiko Yusa, University of Hawaii Press, 2002
This is the
definitive work on the first and greatest of Japan's twentieth-century
philosophers, Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945). Interspersed throughout the narrative
of Nishida's life and thought is a generous selection of the philosopher's own
essays, letters, and short presentations, newly translated into English. (amazon) (ebook accessible via Google play)
The Kyoto School: An Introduction, by Robert E. Carter, Thomas P.
Kasulis (Foreword), SUNY
Press, 2013
An accessible discussion of the thought of key figures of the Kyoto
School of Japanese philosophy. (amazon) (kindle 2016-7-27)
