Abstract
In this article, I attempt to throw some light on the basic structure of self-awareness (jikaku), which is one of the central concepts in the philosophy of Nishida, according to his early essay “Logical Understanding and Mathematical Understanding” published in 1912. Nishida puts forward a theory of logical development of experience which can be considered as the prototype of self-awareness. Here we can see Nishida’s incorporation of ideas drawn from Rickert’s and Sigwart’s logical thinking, Royce’s self-representative system and Dedekind’s definition of infinity into his own system of self-awareness. We focus on Nishida’s Rickert-interpretation. It is my view that merely an infinite self-representive or a self-mirroring system cannot explain all the aspects of Nishida’s self-awareness for missing the intuition of the whole, which is the core of the system. This ultimate whole which absolute free will intuits is the totality of being (on) and non-being (me on). I try to clarify its meaning according to Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s productive imagination (produktive Einbildungskraft). The article is divided into four sections. After a brief introduction of the theme and method of the article (section one), I try to reconstruct Nishida’s argumentations in logical understanding (section two) and mathematical understanding (section three). Finally in the last section (section four), I discuss some insights of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s productive imagination, and attempt to expound possible horizons opened by Nishida in his discussion of the “Absolute Free Will.”