ABSTRACT

To think is to gamble. In The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, Dale complains that Nishida’s ‘subject-object ontology’ not only helped to pave the way for the scientific absurdities of Nihonjin-ron but also contributed intellectually to Japan’s plunge into fascism and world war.3 This argument wraps the Kyoto School in political controversy but at a philosophic price. To the degree that Nishida was a philosopher of his time, Dale’s criticism implies the rejection of an entire generation or phase in modern philosophy, Western and Japanese. The attempt to think beyond the subject-versusobject conundrum involved thinkers as diverse and important as Bergson, Croce, Husserl and William James. Nishida was in very good company.