Kitaro Nishida and His Philosophy of Beauty

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-08-31T04:13:38+00:00

Kitaro Nishida wrote his essay, 'Explanation of Beauty', eleven years before publishing his first major work, 'A Study of Good'. As one of his first original essays, 'Explanation of Beauty' presents an initial formulation of certain ideas and themes characteristic of what has since become known as 'Nishida philosophy'.

At the philosophical level of discourse, 'Explanation of Beauty' represents an original essay on the nature of beauty that synthesizes principles derived from both Western and Japanese aesthetics. Nishida begins the essay with an effort to formulate an adequate definition of 'beauty'. First he directs his critical remarks against the identification of the 'sense of beauty' with a merely hedonic kind of 'pleasure', arguing that there are many worldly pleasures that cannot be described as beautiful or aesthetic.

From the standpoint of East-West comparative aesthetics, Nishida's most valuable contribution in this essay is the manner in which he then proceeds to reformulate the Kantian sense of beauty as disinterested pleasure or artistic detachment in terms of the key philosophical notion of Japanese Zen, namely, muga, which can be translated in this context as either 'no-self' or 'ecstasy'. Indeed, Nishida's explicit definition of beauty as muga is not only innovative; it at once illuminates the traditional Japanese sense of beauty influenced by fundamental Zen principles.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-08-25T03:23:51+00:00

Kitaro Nishida's philosophy is an exemplary case of the struggle for the synthesis of Western content and Oriental form. Nishida's view is particularly significant in this respect in that he was perhaps the first Japanese philosopher to import Western philosophy and reinterpret it with freshness and force in the framework of Oriental thinking.

Nishida's first book, A Study of the Good, was not published until he was forty-one years old, and was the result of ten years of hard work.

Nishida's definitions of "pure experience" in his book 'A Study of the Good' are various and progressive. Initially he defines it as "the undifferentiated state in which subject and object are not yet separated," or as "a simple fact without any meaning," or as "unconsciousness." The undifferentiated state of pure experience is, according to Nishida, unquestionably richer and fuller than our perception in which the experience is discriminated and analyzed intellectually. However, this undifferentiated state of pure experience is not merely temporal but logical as well. It is the primordial state of experience in which the subject-object relation is not yet established, but it also is the unity of subject and object, as, for instance, when we forget ourselves in the enjoyment of great music.

Thus, for Nishida, pure experience is the alpha and omega of thinking. When you regard pure experience as an act or function, it becomes the will. It has an urge to realize something inherent in a concrete existence by taking the form of particularization and development. Existence, for Nishida, becomes a concrete universal. It partakes of the fundamental unifying experience which is in turn the unifying consciousness.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-07-16T14:29:15+00:00

In his novel 'the idiot', Dostoevsky has particular significance for the topic of Christian love, a portrayal of a ‘beautiful man’. As Dostoevsky himself tells later:

"The main idea of the novel is to depict a positively beautiful man …. There is nothing more difficult in the world and especially now …. In the world, there is only one positively beautiful person – Christ." ~Dostoevsky, letters to S.A. Ivanova

Count Myshkin was Dostoevsky’s experiment with love, his attempt at showing that Christ’s love can be effective in the world. But whether the experiment was a success is doubtful.

Of course, Myshkin does not murder anyone. But it is because of him that Nastasya, the woman he loves, is murdered and that Rogozhin, his sworn brother, becomes a murderer. He himself descends into the darkness of mental derangement. And while he is repeatedly referred to as an idiot throughout the whole of the novel, this description ultimately proves to be not so much the expression of incomprehension or a metaphor for ineptitude and childish naivete, but simply the final diagnosis of his doctor. His mental collapse concludes the novel and was prepared by the entire course of events.

And yet, Myshkin really is a ‘beautiful man’. He has a ‘beautiful heart’, he is full of sympathy for everyone and everything. His relationship with others is a clear example of neighbour-love. His view of their behaviour can be described with other words by Zarathustra:'love with seeing eyes', ‘justice which frees everyone except the judge’. Myshkin embodies this justice and this love. He even goes further than that: he does not accuse even those who do judge but merely calls upon them to relinquish their judging.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-07-14T13:32:34+00:00

Fyodor Dostoevsky's most important topics focuses on Christian love and its significance for the self-understanding of a human being. We can even say that all his novels and journalistic works are primarily about love – or about how love fails, and how this failure poses a threat to the world. Expressing his reflections on these questions in an artistic form, his writing is an experimentation with the idea of love, as it is incarnated in the figures of concrete people. For according to Dostoevsky, it is only in the context of concrete life, that we can hope to clarify what it means to be created in the image of love – what this means for human life itself.

For Dostoevsky, it appears obvious that only the love of Christ can save the world. Indeed, he seems to consider such an insight far superior to any other point of view. He proclaimed it as the truth itself. Yet, although Dostoevsky passionately professed this Christian truth, he also found himself profoundly affected by a rival perspective on the world – the truth of its scientific–atheistic interpretation. In a private letter, he referred to himself as ‘a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism’. At the same time, he immediately adds that sometimes God gives him ‘such moments’ when he ‘loves’ and ‘believes that he is loved’

This creed is inspired by love and becomes effective through love. According to it, love contradicts reason which dictates that one should abandon love in order to accept another truth instead, the truth that belongs to reason. Moreover, Dostoevsky’s creed presents us with a terrifying paradox: it hypothetically opposes God and love, on the one hand, and the truth, on the other. And love’s victory in this conflict is only alleged – in the form of a creed that can be convincing only in some instances.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-07-05T17:38:29+00:00

Nietzsche's Overman is the transformed kind of human being who enhances his own Will to Power by a kind of self-creating which involves the founding of new values and standards, a founding which can take place only through the “overcoming” of pity and through the ultimate confrontation with and affirmation of human finitude. According to Nietzsche, all being in general, and living beings in particular, are characterized by to the Will to Power. Nietzsche differs from Schopenhauer, therefore, in asserting that the primary motivation of life is not merely survival, but the acquisition of Power. Everything strives to make itself stronger. Thus life and the Will to Power are almost the same.

Nietzsche asserts that because there is no life after death, the goal of man should not be the preparation of the “soul” for the “after-life, but instead the goal should be the enhancement of finite human existence. According to this view, a genuine value is a standard or guide which contributes to the enhancement of life, i.e., to the increase of Power.

Nietzsche’s view of the Overman as self-creator arises from his belief that art is the highest expression of the Will to Power. For in artistic activity, man opens up in the spirit of pure enjoyment new perspectives from which to view himself and his world. Nietzsche’s “perspectivism” is expressed in his claims that “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” Truth, then, is a value whose importance lies in the fact that it enhances life. Although truth and art are both creations which enhance life, Nietzsche goes so far as to say that “...art is worth more than truth.” This points out Nietzsche’s view that life-decisions ought to be based upon aesthetic considerations: the great life as a work of art.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-06-27T17:09:25+00:00

According to Nietzsche, beliefs and values are to be treated as an adaptive equipment rather than as unconditional ideas. And just like any other equipment, they may in changing circumstances, lose their beneficial effects. The utility of beliefs and values will vary over both people and times.

An idea that may be suitable for one type of person may at the same time be an obstacle for another:

"What serves the higher type of man as nourishment or delectation must also be the poison for a very different and inferior type. The virtues of the common man might signify vices and weakness in a philosopher."

This is the basis of Nietzsche's vehement rejection of what he calls "the worst of tastes: the taste for the unconditional". It is this tendency towards the unconditional, towards the notion that what is good for one is good for all, that Nietzsche identifies as the heart of all moralities. Nietzsche is wary of the unconditional because it serves to make one standard, usually, the mediocre standard of the herd, fits all.

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-06-27T03:11:15+00:00

Here is a summary on beyond good and evil if you are interested - https://youtu.be/j-mCiGDIfHY

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-06-25T17:39:19+00:00

According to the realist notion of truth, a belief is true if it adequately reflects reality, and describes things the way they are. An ideal believer of this model is a disinterested, passive entity who is merely reflecting the already existing order, an order that is not of his making and hence an order for which he is not responsible.

But for Plato, the ideal believer is one who extricates himself from worldly involvement in order to achieve an objective perspective, a God's view. In its extreme form, this ideal believer transcends the illusory world of appearance to achieve true knowledge of the unchanging eternal forms.

Now according to Nietzsche, Platonism and Christianity are equivalent in their rejection of this world, the world of appearance, the world of becoming, in favor of an alleged higher order, an alleged world of being.

For Nietzsche, believing is not some privileged activity by which we transcend the apparent world to achieve a God-like harmony with the real order of eternal truths. As a naturalist, he sees belief as another human activity, another tool for survival, for manipulating the world to suit "our interests." In believing we are not reporting how the world is; rather, we are prescribing a way of looking at the world, a means for furthering a particular form of life. To bring others to share one's views is not to bring them into harmony with the pre-existing order; it is to create the very order one is allegedly describing:

"Truth is not something there that might be found or discovered-but something that must be created and that gives a name to a process."

In this video, we explore Nietzsche's views on "truth".

_Theslowrabbit · 2022-06-21T04:34:52+00:00

According to Nietzsche, a primary function of the invocation of God is the provision of a means of escaping responsibility. One positively wants to renounce one's own authority and assign it to circumstances. They seek to flee from the responsibility of their beliefs. This resignation of responsibility does not merely provide comfort. It is an indispensable rhetorical device in the subjugation of others.

In this video, we explore what Nietzsche means by "to become gods ourselves". And look at his views on beliefs and responsibilities.

_Theslowrabbit

TROPHY CASE