Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro Second Edition

I am new to Nishida and wanted an introduction that was accessible. This was, but there are two caveats. First you should have some intellectual mileage logged in western philosophy. As for myself I had studied it in college some 25 years ago and kept up with it to some degree off and on since then in my theological reading. Secondly, you are going to need to be patient, read slowly, reread and keep going until you get the point trying to be made. Some of this takes some time. I found myself getting bogged down and lost in the weeds at times, and I had to stop, go back, underline what I didn't understand, look up some additional resources to help clarify concepts or define terms I wasn't familiar with. The rewards are great. I have been dual belonging to Christianity and Buddhism now for several months. Some concepts in Buddhism were hard to "get". The nice thing about Nishida is he tried to express eastern thought in western terms. I think this has helped me understand better what I was struggling with as packaged soley in eastern terms. I am also a long standing student of Meister Eckhart. I found myself,as I was reading Nishida, thinking of Eckhart's "God beyond god." Reading Nishida enriched my interest in Eckhart.

For myself, this was a very interesting and informative book. Carter attempts to lay out the philosopy of Nishida Kitaro in a graspable fashion... no easy task... I must say, however, that I was only able to slog through this book because of my own interest in the subject... Carter could have seriously used a good editor, although I expect it must have been difficult to find an editor who was sufficiently ruthless and at the same time sensitive to the difficulty of what Carter was trying to do, let alone wrap his or her brain around the subject... a more closely edited version of this book could have been great... as it is, the stark contrast between the quality and clarity of Thomas Kasulis' forward and the body of the book reflects poorly on Carter. As I said, however, the book's got a lot of good stuff to offer, and stuff that I have not been able to find elswhere (although I have yet to read the several more English language books on Kitaro that have come out since this)... It has a lot of good stuff to offer IF you can get to it... The book does, however, have one unexcusable flaw: Chapter Seven. In chapter seven, Carter suddenly shifts from abstract-to-the-the-point-of-being-incomprehensible to "concrete", by relating his discussion to an idealized "Japanese" world in a way that is as... er... bizzare... as it is fanciful. He seems wrapped up in a weird picture-postcard view of "the Japanese" (a term he beats utterly to death) that, for me, utterly undermined the authority of his arguments. By the time he quoted James Clavell's "Shogun" (albiet in a footnote) to illustrate the importance of non-intellectuallized "pure experience" to "the Japanese", I was ready to throw this book in the trash. I didn't, however, and got a lot of good food for thought, or rather, perspectives on thought and non-thought, from it.

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The Nothingness Beyond God is an introduction into the existential/ phenomenological philosophy of Nishida Kitaro. It is not an easy book to get through but if you like philosophy, have a degree in it, or like to challenge yourself this book will leave you with a transformed worldview.It is written in a way to bring to light the work of another; Robert E. Carter does well in structuring and enlightening us on how Nishida's philosophy should work.This is a philosophical text and is paced as well as a philosophical text can be, but in the end can lead you to having to force yourself to continue until finished.I would recommend this book for anyone who likes to challenge their own mode of thinking or just likes to challenge themselves intellectually. Existential Phenomenology is often overlooked because of it's complexity and this is a great shame because there is so much about life we can learn from it.

In The Nothingness Beyond God, Robert Carter, from a Western perspective and using a comparative approach, provides a detailed exposition and analysis of the philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, a major Japanese philosopher of the last century. This book represents a significant introduction of Nishida's philosophy to the West, and is considered to be preeminent in the field.Carter pursues the central theme of 'nothingness' by elaborating on a number of Nishida's major concepts, including `pure experience,' the `logic of Basho' (place), `self-contradictory identity,' `action intuition,' and the relationship between religion, morality, values, ethics, and feeling.While extremely important, Nishida's works does tend to be rather difficult. Since this particular book is an academic publication intended primarily for an academic audience, it should come as no surprise that some of the material can be challenging. Nevertheless, while expounding a most difficult subject, the book remains highly readable and is full of compelling insights into the Oriental perspective in general, and Japanese philosophy in particular, insights that are accessible to virtually anyone willing to put forth some effort.As a long-time student of Oriental philosophy, I whole-heartedly recommend Carter's book to those with a similar interest. This is a powerful book which is well written and likely to make a significant contribution to the reader's appreciation of Eastern culture.