Abstract
Nishida Kitarô (1870 - 1945) was a cross-border philosopher influenced by the philosophy of German Idealism as well as anglo-saxon thinkers. Nishida was also influenced by his middle-school friend Daisetzu Suzuki.
Aside from his philosophical works, Nishida left more than about 280 calligraphies; signs of his constant practice in Zen. A lot of them show us his own self-expression (hyôgen 表現) about the kanji mu無 - nothingness.
His main idea in the early period, which is the focus here, was to overcome the subject-object distinction of western philosophy. In William Jame's understanding of Pure Experience he found a description of a consciousness-level that is characterised by a state that is not yet split into subjective and objective judgement.
Furthermore Nothingness (mu 無) is a space in which both, subject and object, form a unit by dialectically neutralizing each other. The process of acting creates the "self" through itself and all things we conduct we do by our self-imagination.
Our self acts through reflecting imaginations, which need the space of nothingness to see a reflection of the things themselves. This movement is an active process of building and rebuilding our own self which Nishida calls the "self-identity of absolute contradictories" (mujunteki jikodôitsu).
This transfer, that all imaginations are empty and we just follow constructions of our self. This lecture picks up the term Pure Experience and transfer its meaning into Nishida's calligraphies.
It tries to get a first insight into the process of self-imagination as well as the meaning of reality. How do we create reality and why is the pure reality a formless form?