Born 19 May 1870 in Unoke, Ishikawa Prefecture, Nishida Kitarō was the founder of a philosophical movement later known as the Kyoto School. His thinking covered a wide range of philosophical topics. His most well-known concepts, such as the “place of absolute nothingness” or “absolutely contradictory self-identity,” spanned the boundries between classical Western philosophy and traditional Eastern thought, particularly Buddhist and Taoist. He died 7 June 1945 in Kamakura.

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Born 27 February 1900 in Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, was a student of Nishida and Tanabe. In the early part of his career he devoted himself in particular to the study of authors such as Bergson, Schelling, Nietzsche, as well as Christian mysticism and Meister Eckhart. After analyzing the phenomenon of nihilism in the West and in Japan, in the latter part of his career he continued his dialogue with philosophy, particularly Hegel, as well as engaging with Buddhist thought, especially Zen and Kegon, and Chinese thought and poetry. He died 24 November 1990 in Kyoto.

This database of Nishitani's works lists both partial and complete translations in multiple languages. Please help expand the list by contacting us here.

Born in Hiraimura, Hyogo Prefecture, on December 28, 1896 (although his birth was registered on January 5, 1897), after studying at the prestigious First High School in Tokyo, he enrolled at Kyoto University to study under Kitarō Nishida, having been deeply impressed by his book An Inquiry into the Good. From 1922 to 1925, he studied first in Germany, under Heinrich Rickert in Heidelberg and under Martin Heidegger in Marburg, where he met, among others, Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and then in France in Paris, where he began working on Pascal. In 1927, he became a professor at Hōsei University in Tokyo. Influenced by Heidegger, he began to develop a humanistic interpretation of Marx’s thought. In 1930, he was accused of aiding the Communist Party, arrested, and imprisoned for several months. Forced to leave academia, he began working as a journalist and in publishing. From 1938 to 1940, he was a member of the Shōwa Research Association, while devoting himself to the development of what would become his masterpiece, The Logic of Imagination, which remained unfinished. While working on an interpretation of Shinran’s thought, he was arrested again for political reasons in 1945. He died in prison a few days after the end of the war, on September 26, 1945, in Tokyo.