| Author Quoted | Kitaro Nishida |
| Title Quoted | Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness: Three Philosophical Essays / Kitaro Nishida ; transl. and introd. by Robert Schinzinger in collaboration with I. Koyama and T. Kojima. |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1966/01/29 |
| Imprint | Tokyo : Maruzen. 1958 |
| Quotation | "The world where innumerable individuals, negating each other, are united, is one simple world which, negating itself, expresses itself in innumerable ways," Nishida [The Unity of Opposites]. Importance of contradiction: the contradiction essential to my existence is the expression of the world's present: it is my contribution to the whole. My contradiction and my conflict are my part in the whole. They are my "place." It is in my insight and acceptance that the world creates itself anew in and through my liberty - I permit God to act in and through me, making His world (in which we are all judged and redeemed). I am thrown into contradiction: to realize it is mercy, to accept it is love, to help others do the same is compassion. All this seems like nothing, but it is creation. The contradiction is precisely that we cannot "be creativ" in some other way we would prefer (in which there would be no contradiction). Here N[ishida] is talking only of our historical self in the world of action - history ("from the formed to the forming"). not - our physical being biological self. (no creative freedom, no action - intuition). "The individual is individual only in so far as it participates in the forming of the world." 191 "Intuition separated from action is either a merely abstract idea, or mere illusion." 208 But the acceptance means also work. (Poiesis - artistic creative intuition) "Our true self is there where our consciousness negates and unites [the singular acts]." Nishida. Yet the consciousness is not the whole self or the true self. The point is that the True Self neither is the conscious "I" nor is it the "not-I." But it is not elsewhere than the "I" (which would make it "not-I"). The true self is, acts, is expressed in the meeting of "I" and "not-I." But the "I" seeks to be the True Self by being, acting, expressing itself where there is no "not-I." Yet where there is no "not-I," there is no "I" for the "I" is aware of itself by negation as well as by position. |
| Quotation Source | Learning to love: exploring solitude and freedom. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 6, 1966-1967.; Edited by Christine M. Bochen. / [San Francisco] : HarperCollins. 1997, p. 355 |
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| Notes | The Unity of Opposites is the third essay in this book |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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