A Review of the Kyoto School: An Introduction

The Kyoto School: An Introduction. By Robert E. Carter. Albany: SUNY, 2013, ISBN: 9781438445427 (paperback), $24.95. In this book, Robert Carter, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Trent University in Canada, introduces the works of four major Japanese philosophers: Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, and Watsuji Tetsuro. His aim is to make the present selection accessible even to those who possess either minimal or no knowledge of the Kyoto School's thinkers. For the former, Carter provides many citations with references for future research. For the latter, Carter includes a glossary of terms (173-181) to help the novice to navigate the text with greater ease. Carter's expertise in the synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas enhances the accessibility of this text for any Western reader. In addition, his role as a director of the Interdisciplinary program at the Trent University clearly shows his attuned sensitivity to such cultural idiosyncrasies. To better situate his discussion, Carter begins by providing a brief historical overview and notes that Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) was transformed from an isolated society into an advanced society accompanied by intellectual development. The Kyoto School highlights this intellectual advancement. The four thinkers discussed in this book adopted an approach that built a foundation for the ability to adopt, integrate, but also expand and transform certain Western thoughts into uniquely Japanese system of thought. To address the uniqueness of the Kyoto School philosophy, Carter recalls James Heisig's insight that the Kyoto School philosophy is in fact a tradition of the interpretations of Nishida's works. This tradition sets itself apart from the Western tradition by avoiding any dichotomy between religion and philosophy. The absence of this dichotomy alerts the Western reader to the Western nature of the term "religion" itself. Carter points out that the so-called "religions" of the East were placed into a predefined category according to imposed Western conceptions. Religion is defined without a typical recourse to "belief' but rather in terms of "consciousness transformation" which is perplexing for the Western reader. Carter stipulates his own definition of philosophy and how it fits into the Japanese delineation by stating: "philosophy is, at the very least, thinking that both is rigorous and consistent, leading to clarity. If such thinking leads to self-transformation, then it is in line with what the Japanese believe philosophy ought to be" (6). Borrowing from Carter's definition of philosophy, his exposition of the thought of the four philosophers discussed in this selection is "rigorous and consistent, leading to clarity." In Chapter one, Carter addresses the thoughts of Nishida Kitaro. To unpack Japanese thought and make it accessible to the Western world, Nishida discusses it in Western terms. The Kyoto school was born out of this initiative. To understand Nishida's thought requires elucidation of his central concepts that, in some cases, relate to Western influences. William James' concept of "pure experience" is one of these influences. Carter demonstrates that Nishida extrapolates James's concept of pure experience by arguing that it is available to anyone engaged in a culture of "the meditative art" (20). The influence of Henri Bergson's "immediate experience" is exemplified in Nishida's articulations of intuition. Nishida is drawn to Bergson's insistence that intuition is more valuable than thinking, which has the tendency to fragmentize and de-emphasize one's whole experience. Nishida does not refute the intellectual experience but transforms it into a unified experience enhanced by one's intuition that he terms "'intellectual intuition' or direct seeing" (28). Yet, Carter warns not to surmise that, for Nishida, pure experience means abandoning intellect. He explains that for Nishida, pure experience is always a unity and its unifying power leads him to adopt the "metaphysics of becoming," according to which "the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm; and the reverse also holds" (25). …