SOURCE: "Japanese Philosophy and General Semantics," in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer, 1986, pp. 181-90.

In the following essay, Takabayashi contends that Nishida's philosophy includes a system of general semantics.

Introduction

Let us start with words that have a familiar ring: "When we view the same stone, we believe that each person has the same idea. But actually it differs according to each person's characteristics and experience."⁽¹⁾

It would certainly not be difficult to imagine S. I. Hayakawa speaking about viewing the world through the prism of our past experience, insisting that each person perceives an outward world through an inward world of his own. But in fact the words quotedare those of Kitaro Nishida, written in 1901 in his A Study of Good. In Hayakawa's words, the same thesis is developed as follows:

When we consider further that each of us has different experiences, different...