Nishida Kitarō | Archive 00001 | Philosophy | Shard 00002 | Excerpt
Self-Determination of the Expressive Self, ⸹ 1 | May 1930
Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward | Rev. 2026
1
To say that we think something must be to say that we determine it conceptually; to determine things through universal concepts is what we call knowing. But what is it to say that something is conceptually determined? That which is thinkable as conceptual content is precisely expressive content borne by language; conceptual content is the specific semantic content of linguistic expression. In order to judge things, we must first speak of them, but this requires agreement between meaning and proposition, themselves. In this sense, judgement is thinkable as truthful verbal expression concerning things.
I must first try thinking that which we call expression. Expression is generally thinkable as that which bears subjective semantic content as objective existence. Speech, for example, is thinkable as the physiological emission of sound, but it is more than this; speech must be the expression of thought. We can think the unity of meaning and existence within expression in terms of any of the various points between such things as the simple sign and the work of art. If we can think signs and works of art together as expression, then we can also broadly think such things as a society’s customs, practices, and institutions as forms of expression. But how is it that these forms of expressive content avail themselves to consciousness? It goes without saying that everything which directly presents itself to consciousness is that which expresses itself, so we can probably even say that that which we call the I is thinkable as expression. And if we are at all justified in thinking the I as objective existence, and if it also has subjective meaning as content, then we must first ask how something like this is possible. I think that in order to understand that which we call expressive being that has existence as an attribute, which is to say semantic being, we must try to think on the basis of something like the self-determination of the active self. Let us not think that that which we call objective existence expresses itself simply by virtue the fact that it has semantic content. Insofar as it takes the external world as the ground of self-realization, that which sees the external as the internal must be the standpoint of the active self. Just as the body is a tool of self-realization without which self-realization would have no expressive significance, things outside the body deploy it as a conduit through which they appear as tools of self-realization seeking complete objectivization, and this in such a way that it is thinkable that, in that moment wherein the subject is absorbed by the interior of the object, objective being as such expresses its own content. I think it is possible to think even something like Hegel’s notion of “objective spirit” in this sense. When we sacrifice the self at the ground of the self-awareness of the active self and take up the standpoint of the self that is seen as nothingness, we find that everything that is is that which becomes self-aware and self-expressive, and this standpoint enables us all the more aptly to say that that which is thought as the so-called conscious self is nothing more than the self that is seen as expression.
If we take that which we call expression in terms of our above observations, then what we call judgement must be a matter of things, themselves, speaking about things; it must be for objective being to speak subjective-objective content. When the self becomes that which sees as nothingness, it is on the basis of such a self that all that is seen is that which speaks self. It is thinkable that, at the limit of the noētic awareness of this self which sees as nothingness, objective being speaks objective being itself and that the true logos is its language. What we call objective thought is simply the meaning of the noēmatic determination that results from our active-awareness; it is for that which we call objective thought to speak without that which speaks. When we approach things from the standpoint of the active self, we conceptualize them as tools, so that the world tends to appear as a place of intention-realization [1]. But within the standpoint of the self-awareness of nothingness, the seen becomes that which expresses itself; that is, it is here that there obtains the meaning of the self seen in all its specificity. Everything that lies within the field of expression is meaningful as a seen self, so we can think that it has both noētic and noēmatic tendencies. Those things that lie at the limit of such noētic determination are things that can be thought as things, and we can think that the noētic awareness that determines such things is thought. When the seen self loses the meaning of self, it becomes a thing; that which, in losing the meaning of such noēmatic determination while retaining the meaning of its noētic determination is that which we can think as thing.
If it happens as we stated above that the meaning of something like that which we call expressive determination lies in the conscious determination of the active self that sees as nothingness and that even that which we call thought is signified by the active self, then the possibility of conceptually determining things, which again is to say knowing them, must be conditioned by the conscious determination of the active self. If consciousness arises from the self seeing the self from a standpoint within the self, then to say that things are conceptually determined must be to say that self speaks self through the expressive self. When the expressive self sees the self-itsef as nothingness, that which is seen becomes that which expresses the self-itself; it becomes that which speaks the self-itself, which is to say that it must be that which gives the seen self its meaning. Because the self that sees as nothingness is fundamentally that which cannot be seen, we tend to think that things are simply situated, but the conscience that speaks self from a standpoint within the self is precisely that which is thinkable as that place which is determined by the fact that something is therein situated.
[1] Against “the realization of intention” [「意志の実現」], this is perhaps better read in the compound sense in which Nishida presents the idea of “intention-realization” [「意志実現」], indicating an unfolding of parallel processes. *Additionally archived at Binghamton University Libraries, The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB): https://orb.binghamton.edu/comparative_literature_fac/14/. Revision © 2026 Christopher Southward; All Rights Reserved.
