The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō (review)

The publication of Robert Wargo's The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō represents a truly significant moment in the development of Nishida studies. The book elucidates a key transition in the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), a transition that lays the foundation for much that follows in the latter phases of his philosophical undertakings. It traces the middle period of his work centered on the years 1913–30, during which he moved from his initial focus on pure experience to his later focus on the basho or place of absolute nothingness and ultimately his religious worldview in which he speaks of God and of Buddha.

The Logic of Nothingness is organized into an introduction, five chapters, conclusion, and a translation from Nishida's works included in an appendix. Following a brief introduction outlining the historical context of Nishida's logic and the main themes addressed by Wargo's treatment, the five chapters take up specific philosophical issues in a precise, well-ordered sequence, with helpful summaries at the end of each.

"Chapter 1: Nishida's Predecessors" lays out the foundational problem of establishing a philosophical standpoint that accounts for the polar dichotomies of mind and matter, subject and predicate, unity and multiplicity, and the like. In particular, Wargo focuses on the work of the so-called two Inoues, Enryō (1859–1919) and Tetsujirō (1855–1944), unrelated, who helped to define the problem of foundational standpoints understood in Western terms but addressed by Buddhist-based logic, in particular that of the Madhyamika or Middle Way.

"Chapter 2: The First Attempts: Radical Empiricism and Voluntarism" examines Nishida's early attempts to address the problem of standpoint first through the category and logic of pure experience and then through that of absolute will. These proposed solutions, the former influenced by William James and the latter by Neo-Kantians, Johann G. Fichte, and Henri Bergson, while seen as necessary stages and significant in themselves, ultimately fail due to their lack of logical completeness.

"Chapter 3: Consciousness and the Mystical Foundations of Realism" traces the key turn in Nishida's philosophy through consciousness to nothingness as the transition to the logic of basho. This chapter also contains an explication of the Zen Buddhist view of nothingness, in light of the work of Nishida's colleague and Zen layman Hisamatsu Shin'ichi (pp. 75–89).

"Chapter 4: The Concept of Basho" and "Chapter 5: The Logic of Basho" elucidate the logical structure, epistemological framework, and metaphysical ramifications of this notion of basho.

The conclusion recapitulates key themes, frames the entire work in terms of the philosophical problem of completeness, and considers potential pitfalls and shortcomings of Nishida's treatment of the problem. The appendix contains a translation of Nishida's "General Summary" from his Ippansha no jikakuteki taikei (The system of self-consciousness of the universal).

A great deal of research on Nishida, both sympathetic and critical, has focused on his notions of pure experience and the basho of absolute nothingness. Furthermore, as Wargo notes, these ideas are often discussed in terms of Nishida's thought as an attempt at a modern explication of Zen Buddhism (p. 5). By focusing on the often overlooked transition from the one to the other, The Logic of Nothingness fills a major lacuna in Nishida studies. Yet, it does much more than fill in the gap in a story whose conclusion is supposedly already known as Nishida's "Zen philosophy of nothingness."

First of all, it defines Nishida's place within the trajectory of Japanese philosophy, as it relates to the earlier work of figures such as Inoue Enryō and Inoue Tetsujirō, showing that Nishida was not so much explaining Zen Buddhism for Western philosophers, but taking up problems of Japanese philosophy as they developed in Japan.

Furthermore, Wargo reframes Nishida's philosophy within a larger problem of philosophical logic known as the problem of...