If death is an ever-present opening, the other side of that opening so to speak is the absolute. To die is to stand vis-à-vis the absolute. In the discussion of the “I- Thou” relation, this term appeared as the absolute other in one's interior; here it shifts to the absolute in contradistinction to finite beings. Nishida calls it God as well, but makes clear that he is not referring to a personal, transcendent being. If transcendence is involved, it is a going beyond by going within. He also implies that it is not synonymous with absolute nothingness. If nothingness as opposed to being is implied, it is in the verbal sense of self-negating. The absolute arises through its own self-negation and inclusion of the relative self. [..] Nishida admits that his notion of an absolute totally embracing the relative, even in its diabolical forms, is more in tune with a Mahayana Buddhist tradition than with the Christian sources that inspired him. To express the relation between a God and the relative finite self, Nishida introduces a new term, “inverse correlation”(gyaku taiō). This relation is another instance of opposites held together in a unity, a kind of “self-identity of contradictories,” but this time not a symmetrical one. The more one faces one's death, the negation of one's life as an individual, the more acutely one is self-aware as an individual. The closer the finite self approaches God the stronger the difference between them becomes. This peculiar kind of relation implies that God and the relative self are inseparable but never dissolve into one another. If their distinction entails an undifferentiated source of their difference, an absolute nothingness, then the more that source is emphasized the stronger the distinction holds.



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A quote saved on Dec. 1, 2013.

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