Nishida Kitarō (stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy) / quote 4 of 19
Self and other
Nishida maintains, the individual precisely as distinct entails a plurality of interrelated individuals. Where his previous analysis of individual self-awareness described it as a self- reflection of the universal of self-awareness, his description now incorporated the dimension of recognition. My recognition of you as not me makes me who I am, and your recognition of me as not-you makes you who you are. Each is a relative other to the self. [..] My personal self-awareness arises not when I recognize my identity through memory, for example, nor simply when I encounter an other I; rather it arises in experiencing the groundlessness of my own existence, in recognizing what is absolutely other to a substantial self-same self. Recognizing the absolute other within constitutes not simply a reflexive self-awareness but a self-awakening, a realizing of the “true self.” (Nishida's term jikaku translates as self-awakening, a Buddhist reading he undoubtedly intends, as well as self-awareness.) Nishida allows for the Buddhist view that there is actually no self to awaken by referring to the self-awakening of absolute nothingness; its awakening is the awakening of the “true self.” [..] In the end, then, Nishida denies the substantiality of the self and rejects both the radical alterity of other persons and the transcendence of an absolute other, in the guise of God for example.