Theorizing forgiveness from Nishida Kitarō’s account of love

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present paper begins with an investigation of Nishida Kitarō’s discussion of love in Zen no Kenkyū. Nishida claims that love is a deep union of subject and object, where the self is casted off and unites with the other. In other words, love is the expression of the self dissolving into the other, in which the self negates itself in order to further the other’s awakening to no-self. This paper then argues that we can carve out an account of forgiveness based on Nishida’s view of love. That if forgiveness is a practice of a higher form of love, then love, as the groundwork of a self-contradictory standpoint, is nothing other than the practice of forgiveness, and forgiveness is nothing other than repeated acts of love. Contemporary human life is one of co-existence, but conflict and divisions seem to be more of the rule of the day, which speaks to the importance of recovering the lost art of forgiveness. This paper seeks to re-assert forgiveness, as drawn from Nishida’s view of love, in the attempt to heal and address the fragmentation that prevents dialogue between warring factions.