An Inquiry into the Good

Nishida's first book and the founding work of the Kyoto School, in four parts. Part I introduces 'pure experience', experience as it is before it is divided into a knowing subject and a known object, a notion that draws on William James and is often linked with Zen practice. Part II builds a metaphysics on this basis, arguing that reality is a single activity that differentiates and unifies itself. Part III turns to ethics: after reviewing theories of the good, Nishida argues that the good is the realisation of the self, understood as the unifying force of consciousness, and that this coincides with the unity of reality. Part IV presents religion as the deepest form of this realisation, culminating in love.

It is the first major attempt to build a modern systematic philosophy from both Western and East Asian sources, and it shaped twentieth-century Japanese thought.