Nishida, teaching at a Kanazawa high school, builds a philosophy on 'pure experience,' the unbroken moment before subject and object divide. From that base he works through the nature of reality, the good as the unity of the self, and religion as the deepest union with God.
Books mentioned in An Inquiry into the Good (26)
The Republic by Plato: “In his famous work The Republic, Plato equates the organization of the human mind with the organization of the state, and says that the state governed by reason is the highest good for both state and individual. [auto-translated]”
Symposium by Plato: “In his famous Symposium, Plato says that 'love is the longing of that which is lacking to return to its original wholeness.' [auto-translated]”
Tannisho by Yuien: “The Tannisho likewise says, 'Even the nembutsu I recite while striving in my own heart for rebirth is practiced as my own effort (self-power).' Nishida cites it to show that chanting merely to gain rebirth is not true religious feeling. [auto-translated]”
Personality, Human and Divine by J. R. Illingworth: “Illingworth, in Personality Human and Divine, says: 'A personality necessarily seeks other personalities; in other personalities the self finds the satisfaction of its whole personality; love is thus an indispensable mark of personality.' [auto-translated]”
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: “Here I cannot help recalling a passage from Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. [auto-translated]”
Principles of Psychology by William James: “Just as a geometer imagines one triangle and uses it to stand for all triangles, the representative element of a concept is, when present, only a kind of feeling (James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Chap. VII). [auto-translated]”
A World of Pure Experience by William James: “Even the so-called fringe of consciousness, once admitted among the facts of immediate experience, brings in the consciousness of relations between experienced facts, just like sensation and perception (James, A World of Pure Experience). [auto-translated]”
Grundriss der Psychologie by Wilhelm Wundt: “The term experience is not clearly defined; Wundt, for instance, calls knowledge inferred from experience 'indirect experience' and treats physics and chemistry as sciences of indirect experience (Wundt, Grundriss der Psychologie). [auto-translated]”
Logik by Wilhelm Wundt: “As Wundt said, every judgment arises from the analysis of a complex representation (Wundt, Logik, Bd. I, Abs. III, Kap. 1). [auto-translated]”
Analytic Psychology by G. F. Stout: “Even when it is a reproduction of past consciousness, once it is unified in present consciousness and becomes an element with a new meaning, it can no longer be called identical with the past consciousness (Stout, Analytic Psychology, Vol. II, p. 45). [auto-translated]”
Manual of Psychology by G. F. Stout: “As when one desperately climbs a cliff, or a musician plays a practiced piece, it may be called a continuous train of perception (Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 252). [auto-translated]”
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer: “This is why the will is always in the present (Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, section 54). [auto-translated]”
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke: “As Locke said that even in demonstrative knowledge each step requires intuitive proof, at the base of every judgment in a chain there must always be a fact of pure experience (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Chap. II). [auto-translated]”
Studies in Logical Theory by John Dewey: “Gore holds that the relation between an image and its meaning is the same as that between a stimulus and its response (Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory). [auto-translated]”
Science of Logic by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: “Hegel too says that the universal is the soul of the concrete (Hegel, Science of Logic, III, p. 37). [auto-translated]”
Personal Idealism by Henry Sturt: “As Schiller and others argue, even an axiom originally developed from practical use, and in its genesis is no different from our mere wishes (Sturt, Personal Idealism, p. 92). [auto-translated]”
Introduction to Philosophy by Wilhelm Jerusalem: “As Jerusalem and others hold, the scientific notion that forces act upon the external world must be regarded as an analogy drawn from our own will (Jerusalem, Introduction to Philosophy, section 27). [auto-translated]”
The Gods of Greece by Friedrich Schiller: “Thunder was the wrath of Zeus on Mount Olympus, and the cuckoo's cry was Philomela's age-old grief (see Schiller, The Gods of Greece). [auto-translated]”
De Docta Ignorantia by Nicholas of Cusa: “God is, as Nicholas of Cusa and others said, the negation of everything; nothing affirmable or graspable is God, for what can be grasped is already finite (De Docta Ignorantia, Cap. 24). [auto-translated]”
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Like Faust returning to his lonely study late at night after a walk in the fields, following great anguish about life, in quiet nights and a peaceful heart this feeling spontaneously stirs (Goethe, Faust, Part One, Study). [auto-translated]”
The World and the Individual by Josiah Royce: “Royce too says, 'The existence of nature is bound up with the belief in the existence of our fellows' (Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, Lect. IV). [auto-translated]”
Ethics by Baruch Spinoza: “In God knowing is acting and acting is knowing, and reality is directly God's thought and also His will (see Spinoza, Ethics, I, Prop. 17, Scholium). [auto-translated]”
The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo: “Augustine also says, 'God's will is unchanging; He does not will at one time and not at another, much less reverse an earlier decision later' (The Confessions, XII. 15). [auto-translated]”
Die Philosophie des heiligen Augustinus by Storz: “Thus what Augustine said, that God beholds all things in an unchanging intuition and that God is at rest in motion and in motion at rest, can also be understood (Storz, Die Philosophie des heiligen Augustinus, section 20). [auto-translated]”
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: “One could cite endless such experiences of religious mystics (James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lect. XVI, XVII). [auto-translated]”
The Doctrine of the Mean by Zisi: “That the mean is good is Aristotle's view, and in the East it also appears in the book The Doctrine of the Mean. [auto-translated]”