An Inquiry into the Good

1. Introduction

An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū, 1911) is Nishida Kitarō’s first major philosophical work and is widely regarded as the founding text of modern Japanese philosophy and the Kyoto School. The book proposes that philosophy should begin from pure experience (junsui keiken), a form of immediate awareness prior to the distinction between subject and object. From this starting point, Nishida systematically reconsiders knowledge, reality, selfhood, ethics, and religion in order to clarify what it means to speak of the Good (zen).

The work is structured as a three-part treatise—on pure experience, on reality, and on the good—that moves from an analysis of the most basic layer of experience to increasingly comprehensive accounts of the world and of value. Rather than offering a purely theoretical psychology or an abstract moral system, Nishida aims to show how ordinary perception, scientific knowledge, moral action, and religious life all presuppose a more fundamental, unified field of experience.

Interpreters typically read the book as an attempt to mediate between several tensions characteristic of early twentieth‑century Japan: between empiricism and idealism, science and religion, and Western philosophy and East Asian thought. Some regard it as primarily an epistemological or psychological study, others as an early form of metaphysics or even a proto–philosophy of religion. Despite such divergent readings, there is broad agreement that its central contribution lies in articulating a non-dual conception of experience that seeks to overcome entrenched subject–object dualism.

This entry surveys the background, structure, key ideas, and scholarly debates surrounding An Inquiry into the Good, drawing on both Japanese and international secondary literature while distinguishing Nishida’s own positions from later reinterpretations.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

Nishida composed An Inquiry into the Good during Japan’s late Meiji period, a time of intense social change and intellectual experimentation. Rapid modernization and state‑driven Westernization placed imported European sciences and philosophies alongside long‑standing Confucian, Buddhist, and Shintō traditions.

Meiji Intellectual Landscape

Japanese philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was shaped by:

University and Public Discourse

Philosophy (tetsugaku) had been institutionalized only a few decades earlier. Scholars such as Inoue Enryō and Inoue Tetsujirō sought to systematize knowledge and defend a state-aligned moral order, while others experimented with liberal, Christian, or socialist ideas. Within this environment, Nishida and his peers at higher schools and imperial universities explored ways to appropriate Western thought without abandoning East Asian insights.

Immediate Theoretical Background

Commentators emphasize three particularly salient influences:

• Experimental psychology and Jamesian empiricism, which encouraged treating experience as data for philosophical reflection.
• Neo‑Kantianism, which foregrounded questions about the foundations of knowledge yet, in Nishida’s view, started from already conceptualized experience.
• Zen practice and Buddhist non-dualism, which offered models of immediate, undivided awareness and selflessness.

An Inquiry into the Good can thus be situated at the crossroads of these currents: it attempts to formulate a philosophical foundation that is scientifically respectable, conversant with European debates, and continuous with East Asian religious experience.

3. Author and Composition of An Inquiry into the Good

Nishida Kitarō’s Early Life and Formation

Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) was born in rural Ishikawa Prefecture. His education combined traditional Confucian and Buddhist elements with modern curricula at higher schools. He studied briefly under Inoue Tetsujirō in Tokyo but did not follow a conventional academic trajectory; instead, he worked as a teacher at the Fourth Higher School in Kanazawa.

Biographical studies (notably by Michiko Yusa) highlight several formative experiences:

• Engagement with Zen practice at various temples, including Myōshinji, fostering familiarity with meditative experience and non-dual discourse.
• Independent reading of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Bergson, and William James, largely in translation or secondary sources.
• A period of personal crisis and illness in the late 1890s, during which he kept extensive notebooks that later fed into his first book.

Path to the Book

Scholars generally agree that the central themes of An Inquiry into the Good crystallized around 1902–1907, while Nishida was teaching in Kanazawa. He circulated essays and lecture notes on psychology and ethics that already contained the notion of “pure experience.” Drafts were revised further after he took up a position at Kyoto Imperial University in 1909.

The composition process, as reconstructed from notebooks and later recollections, appears to involve:

1. Psychological studies of consciousness and attention.
2. A shift toward systematic reflection on experience as such.
3. Integration of ethical and religious concerns into a more comprehensive framework.

Authorial Aims

In prefaces and correspondence, Nishida characterizes the book as an attempt to provide a rigorous foundation for philosophy in lived experience, against what he viewed as overly abstract or merely formal approaches. Commentators disagree about whether he aimed primarily at:

• A science‑like philosophy continuous with experimental psychology, or
• A metaphysical system grounded in a quasi‑religious notion of ultimate reality.

These differing reconstructions of his intent shape much of the secondary debate about how to read the work.

4. Publication History and Textual Tradition

Initial Publication

An Inquiry into the Good was first published in 1911 by Kōbundō in Tokyo. The book did not carry a formal dedication but included a preface in which Nishida explained his desire to ground philosophy in “pure experience.” Contemporary accounts indicate that the first edition was modest in size but quickly drew attention within academic circles.

Subsequent Japanese Editions

The text has gone through multiple Japanese printings and scholarly editions. The Iwanami Bunko edition is widely treated as the standard reference in contemporary scholarship, as it incorporates corrections and authorial revisions from later printings.

Manuscript materials—including notebooks and partial drafts—survive and have been used by researchers to clarify difficult passages and to trace development of key concepts. There is no known alternative authorial version that would fundamentally alter the received text.

Translations and Global Transmission

The Anglophone reception began with V. H. Viglielmo’s 1960 translation, published by Yale University Press, which made the work accessible but used terminology some later scholars found misleading or dated. The 1990 Abe & Ives translation, also from Yale, is often treated as the definitive English version, combining revised terminology with an extensive introduction by David A. Dilworth.

Other partial translations and excerpts have appeared in anthologies, notably Najita and Dilworth’s Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy, which contextualizes selected passages.

Textual Issues

Textual debates focus less on variant readings than on terminological equivalence across languages. Translators and commentators discuss, for example, how best to render junsui keiken, jiga, and zettai, and whether consistent English terms can capture their shifting functions within the work. These issues inform interpretive disagreements about whether Nishida’s early philosophy is best categorized as empiricist, idealist, phenomenological, or religious.

5. Structure and Organization of the Work

An Inquiry into the Good is organized into three main parts—“Pure Experience,” “Reality,” and “The Good”—each subdivided into chapters that progressively expand the scope of inquiry.

Overall Architecture

Progression of Themes

Within Part I, Nishida examines phenomena such as perception, thought, and emotion to show how they can be understood as modifications or articulations of pure experience. Chapters include critical engagements with empiricism and rationalism, leading to his rejection of a fixed subject–object dualism.

Part II transitions from experience to ontological and psychological questions. It analyzes how conceptualization and judgment carve up pure experience into distinct objects and how the self emerges as an active center of will and knowledge. Later chapters address causality, freedom, and the structure of the world as a dynamic unity.

Part III turns to ethical and religious dimensions. Early chapters discuss pleasure, happiness, and moral value in relation to self‑realization. Subsequent chapters develop the notions of universal will, unity with the whole, and religious consciousness, culminating in an account of the absolute and the highest form of the Good.

Stylistic and Expository Features

The work alternates between conceptual analysis, critical discussion of other thinkers, and phenomenological descriptions of everyday and religious experience. Readers have noted a movement from more psychological language in early chapters to more explicitly metaphysical and religious language in later sections, a shift that plays a significant role in how the book’s overall unity is interpreted.

6. The Concept of Pure Experience

Definition and Basic Character

Nishida introduces pure experience (junsui keiken) at the outset as the most immediate mode of awareness, prior to the differentiation of subject and object. A frequently cited passage describes it as the moment when “knowing and its object are completely unified.” In such experience, one does not yet oppose “I” to “world”; there is only the lived occurrence itself.

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In pure experience, one does not yet think, ‘I see a color’; one simply sees.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, ch. 1 (paraphrased)

Pure experience is thus characterized as:

• Pre‑reflective: Occurring before conceptual judgment or linguistic articulation.
• Non‑dual: Lacking the separation between knower and known.
• Concrete and particular: Given as this immediate, singular experience, not as an abstract universal.

Function in the System

Pure experience serves multiple roles:

1. Epistemological ground: All knowledge is said to arise from and refer back to pure experience. Later conceptual distinctions are idealizations of this original unity.
2. Ontological clue: Many interpreters argue that Nishida treats pure experience not only as a psychological fact but as revealing the fundamental nature of reality as such.
3. Methodological starting point: The analysis begins from what is taken to be indubitable—immediate experience—rather than from preconceived theories or metaphysical assumptions.

Comparative and Critical Aspects

Nishida explicitly contrasts pure experience with:

Interpretive Debates

Commentators disagree about whether pure experience should be read:

• Psychologically, as an empirical description of early stages of cognition.
• Phenomenologically, as a methodological reduction to lived immediacy.
• Metaphysically, as the ultimate reality in which all distinctions are internal moments.

This ambiguity is central to subsequent criticisms and developments of Nishida’s thought.

7. Nishida’s Theory of Reality and the Self

Building on pure experience, Nishida develops a view of reality as an internally related whole and of the self as a self-determining activity within that whole.

Reality as an Internally Related Whole

From the standpoint of pure experience, the world does not consist of isolated objects externally related in space and time. Rather, distinctions between things arise through acts of conceptualization and judgment that abstract from a more primordial unity. Nishida thus portrays reality as:

• Dynamic and processual: A continuous self‑developing activity rather than a static collection of substances.
• Internally related: Parts exist only through their relations within the whole.
• Ordered yet non‑mechanistic: Causality is reconceived as expressions of the self‑unfolding of the whole, not mere external pushes and pulls.

Some interpreters liken this to forms of absolute idealism, while others stress its proximity to process metaphysics or Buddhist conceptions of dependent co‑arising.

The Self as Self‑Determining Activity

Nishida denies that the self (jiga) is a fixed, substance‑like entity. Instead, he understands it as:

• A locus where the world becomes self‑aware: The self is a focal point within pure experience where the whole reflects upon itself.
• Historical and developmental: It emerges and transforms through concrete activities—knowing, willing, feeling.
• Self‑determining: Through will, the self determines its own actions, giving rise to freedom and responsibility.

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The self is not a thing that has experience; it is an activity that arises within experience.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part II (paraphrased)

Knowledge, Will, and Freedom

In Part II, Nishida analyzes how knowledge abstracts aspects of reality, while will embodies the active direction of the self. Freedom, on this view, is not mere arbitrariness but the capacity of the self to determine itself in accordance with its place within the larger whole of reality.

Interpretive Variations

Scholars differ on how to classify this theory:

These divergent readings influence assessments of how well Nishida accounts for individuality, conflict, and otherness.

8. Ethics and the Nature of the Good

From Experience to Value

In Part III, Nishida turns explicitly to ethics and the Good (zen). Rather than grounding morality in external rules or subjective preferences, he seeks to derive value from the same experiential basis that underlies knowledge and reality. Feeling and will are analyzed as dimensions of experience that disclose the value-laden character of the world.

The Good as Self‑Realization in Unity with the Whole

Nishida defines the Good as the fullest form of self‑realization: the self becomes most itself when it recognizes and enacts its role as a locus of the whole of reality. Moral action is thus:

• Self‑determining: Arising from the inner activity of the self, not merely from external compulsion.
• Non‑egoistic: Transcending private desires by aligning with a more universal standpoint.
• Relational: Oriented toward the whole of reality and, by implication, toward other selves.

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The true self is that which unites with the whole; in such unity lies the Good.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part III (paraphrased)

Critique of Ethical Theories

Nishida engages with several Western ethical positions:

He instead promotes a view where ethical value emerges from the unfolding of pure experience into a self-aware unity of knowledge, will, and feeling.

Stages and Depths of Morality

Commentators often identify an implicit gradation in Nishida’s account:

1. Natural desires and pleasures: Immediate but limited forms of satisfaction.
2. Social and cultural norms: Higher, but still partial, expressions of value.
3. Ethical self‑awareness: Recognition of oneself as a member of a larger whole.
4. Religious realization: The deepest level, where the Good is fully realized in relation to the absolute.

The last stage leads directly into his discussion of religious consciousness, which he treats as the culmination—not the negation—of moral life.

9. Religious Consciousness and the Absolute

Religious Consciousness

In the later chapters of Part III, Nishida analyzes religious consciousness (shūkyōteki ishiki) as a deepened form of self‑awareness. It arises when the self confronts the finitude, contingency, and moral insufficiency of its own existence and seeks a standpoint beyond mere individual ego.

Religious consciousness is characterized by:

• Awareness of the absolute as the ground of self and world.
• Self‑negation: Recognition of one’s own limitations and a letting‑go of egoistic attachment.
• Transformative affirmation: A renewed affirmation of life in and through relation to the absolute.

The Absolute

Nishida uses the term absolute (zettai) to refer to ultimate reality, often described in ways that resonate with both theistic and non‑theistic (especially Mahāyāna Buddhist) traditions. The absolute is:

• Ground of the whole: The source and unity of all finite beings and events.
• Beyond finite–infinite dualism: Not simply a highest being among others, but the ultimate horizon within which all distinctions arise.
• Accessible in experience: Known not merely by inference but through transformative religious experience.

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Religion, in its deepest sense, is the self’s direct relation to the absolute.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part III (paraphrased)

Relation of Ethics and Religion

For Nishida, religious experience represents the highest realization of the Good, because:

• It brings the self into conscious, affective, and volitional unity with the ultimate ground of reality.
• It radicalizes ethical self‑negation and universalization, moving beyond partial standpoints.
• It integrates knowledge, will, and feeling in an all‑embracing standpoint.

Some commentators view this as a theological turn, while others interpret it as a consistent outgrowth of his experiential method, simply extended to its ultimate horizon.

Comparative Resonances

Scholars note parallels with:

Debates persist about whether Nishida’s notion of the absolute at this stage is best understood as personal, impersonal, or beyond such categories.

10. Philosophical Method and Use of Western and Buddhist Sources

Methodological Starting Point

Nishida’s method begins from immediate experience rather than from preconceived metaphysical or scientific frameworks. He proceeds by:

• Descriptive analysis of everyday, moral, and religious experiences.
• Critical engagement with existing philosophical theories.
• Systematic reconstruction of knowledge, reality, and value from the standpoint of pure experience.

This approach has been described as “experiential foundationalism,” though some commentators prefer to see it as an early form of phenomenology or a distinctively Nishidan method.

Engagement with Western Philosophers

Throughout the work, Nishida refers—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly—to a range of Western thinkers:

Critics sometimes argue that Nishida’s readings are selective, yet proponents see this selectivity as part of a creative, syncretic method.

Use of Buddhist and East Asian Sources

Nishida rarely cites Buddhist texts extensively, but scholars widely agree that Zen practice and Mahāyāna concepts inform his approach. Influences include:

• Non-dual awareness and the idea that enlightenment involves the collapse of subject–object distinction.
• Sunyata (emptiness) and dependent co‑arising, echoed in his emphasis on internal relatedness and the non-substantiality of the self.
• Neo‑Confucian metaphysics, particularly notions of principle (li) and vital force (qi), as background for thinking about unity and moral cultivation.

Methodological Debates

Interpretations differ on how to characterize his method:

These differing accounts affect how one assesses his use of sources and his claims to philosophical universality.

11. Key Concepts and Technical Terms

This section highlights central terms in An Inquiry into the Good, complementing the general glossary by noting their specific roles in the work.

Core Experiential Terms

• Pure experience (junsui keiken / 純粋経験)
  The pre‑reflective, non-dual awareness that serves as the starting point of Nishida’s system. All distinctions between subject and object, self and world, and even fact and value are treated as later articulations of this original unity.

• Intuition (chokkan / 直観)
  Immediate grasp of reality within pure experience, prior to conceptualization. Nishida often contrasts intuition with discursive thought, yet treats the latter as a necessary development of the former.

Self and Reality

• Self (jiga / 自我)
  Not a substance but an activity within pure experience. The self is the point at which the world becomes self‑conscious, especially through will and moral responsibility.

• Reality as whole (zentai / 全体)
  The dynamic totality within which all beings and events are internally related. Objects and individuals are moments or expressions of this whole rather than independent units.

Affective and Volitional Terms

• Feeling (kanjō / 感情)
  The affective dimension of experience that discloses value. Feeling is not purely subjective; it reveals how the world matters to the self and mediates between knowledge and will.

• Will (ishi / 意志)
  The active, self‑determining aspect of the self. Through will, pure experience becomes oriented toward ends, giving rise to moral action and freedom.

Ethical and Religious Concepts

• The Good (zen / 善)
  The highest value, defined as the full self‑realization of the self in unity with the whole of reality. For Nishida, the Good integrates knowledge, will, and feeling rather than privileging one faculty.

• Ethical self‑realization
  The process by which the self recognizes its role as a locus of the whole and aligns its will accordingly. This involves overcoming egoism and adopting a more universal standpoint.

• Religious consciousness (shūkyōteki ishiki / 宗教的意識)
  A deepened form of self‑awareness in which the self relates directly to the absolute, confronting its own finitude and transforming its orientation to life.

• Absolute (zettai / 絶対)
  The ultimate ground of self and world. In An Inquiry into the Good, the absolute is often described in ways that allow both personal (God-like) and non‑personal (Buddhist emptiness-like) interpretations.

Structural Ideas

• Subject–object dualism
  The philosophical stance that mind and world are fundamentally separate. Nishida’s project aims to overcome this by showing that both sides emerge from non-dual pure experience.

• Unity of opposites
  The idea that apparent dualities—self/other, individual/universal, finite/infinite—are ultimately moments within a deeper unity manifested in pure experience and fully realized in the Good.

These terms are interdependent; understanding any one of them typically requires situating it within Nishida’s overall progression from pure experience to reality and the Good.

12. Famous Passages and Their Interpretation

The Definition of Pure Experience

One of the most cited passages occurs at the beginning of Part I, where Nishida defines pure experience as a state in which:

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When one directly experiences one’s own state of consciousness, there is as yet neither subject nor object, and knowledge and its object are completely unified.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, ch. 1 (standard Japanese editions: pp. 1–5)

Interpreters read this as programmatic. Some emphasize its phenomenological clarity, seeing it as a description of lived immediacy (e.g., seeing a color before thinking “I see red”). Others stress its metaphysical ambition, suggesting that it reveals the fundamental structure of reality. The tension between these readings informs debates about whether the text is primarily epistemological or ontological.

Critique of the Subject–Object Split

In mid‑Part I, Nishida develops a sustained critique of views that take subject and object as given:

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The opposition of subject and object is not original; it is a product of reflection.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part I, ch. 2 (roughly pp. 10–30, paraphrased)

This passage is often linked to both Buddhist non-dualism and modern philosophy’s subject–object problematic. Some commentators argue that Nishida here anticipates later phenomenological and hermeneutic critiques of Cartesian dualism. Others note that his language can still slip into subjectivist formulations, suggesting an unresolved tension.

Will and Moral Action as Self‑Determination

In Part II, Nishida writes about moral action as an expression of the self’s own activity:

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True action is self‑determination; in it, the self realizes itself.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part II, chs. 3–4 (approx. pp. 130–170, paraphrased)

This line has been central to interpretations of his ethics of self‑realization. Supporters see it as grounding freedom and responsibility in the self’s active participation in reality. Critics worry that it risks moral subjectivism or overlooks social and political structures that shape action.

Religious Consciousness and the Absolute

In Part III, Nishida characterizes religion in terms of direct relation to the absolute:

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Religion, in its essence, is the self’s immediate unity with the absolute, attained through the negation of the ego.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, Part III, chs. 2–4 (approx. pp. 230–290, paraphrased)

This passage is pivotal for readings that present An Inquiry into the Good as a philosophy of religion. Some stress its continuity with Zen notions of self‑emptying and enlightenment; others compare it with Christian mystical union. Disagreements arise over whether “absolute” here should be taken personally, impersonally, or as transcending the dichotomy.

Concluding Reflections on the Good

In the final pages, Nishida links the Good with the realization of the whole:

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The Good is the self‑aware activity of the whole itself.

— Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, final chapter (final 20–30 pages, paraphrased)

This line has inspired monistic or idealistic interpretations, according to which individual selves are moments of a single universal life. Others caution against reading it as straightforward monism, suggesting that Nishida is gesturing toward a more complex unity that preserves individuality—a theme he later develops with the concept of “place” (basho).

13. Reception, Criticisms, and Debates

Early Reception in Japan

Upon its 1911 publication, An Inquiry into the Good quickly attracted attention within Japanese academic and intellectual circles. Some contemporaries praised its originality and systematic ambition, seeing it as a work that could stand alongside European philosophy while drawing on indigenous resources. Others found its style dense and its central concept of pure experience obscure.

The book contributed to Nishida’s appointment and rising influence at Kyoto Imperial University, where students and colleagues began to form what later came to be known as the Kyoto School.

Key Lines of Critique

Subsequent scholarship has raised several recurring criticisms:

Divergent Interpretive Traditions

Scholars have developed divergent reconstructions of the work’s core orientation:

• Phenomenological / experiential readings focus on its analysis of consciousness and see metaphysical language as secondary.
• Idealist / monistic readings treat the text as articulating a form of absolute idealism centered on the self‑development of the whole.
• Religious–philosophical readings emphasize the culminating role of religious consciousness and read the entire work as oriented toward an articulation of the absolute.

These approaches sometimes disagree on basic questions, such as whether the book should be considered primarily epistemological, metaphysical, or religious.

Later Kyoto School and Comparative Debates

Nishida’s own later developments—especially the concepts of absolute nothingness and basho (place)—have colored retrospective readings of An Inquiry into the Good. Some view the early work as a preliminary, imperfect formulation superseded by these later ideas; others argue for substantial continuity.

In comparative philosophy, debates concern how to situate Nishida relative to Husserl, Heidegger, James, and process thought, and how to understand the cross‑cultural translation of Buddhist notions into modern philosophical idioms. These discussions continue to shape the global reception of the work.

14. Recommended Editions, Translations, and Commentaries

Primary Texts

Excerpts and Related Materials

• Tetsuo Najita and David Dilworth, Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents (Greenwood Press, 1998).
  Contains excerpts from An Inquiry into the Good and related writings, along with contextual introductions helpful for situating the text within Meiji and Taishō intellectual history.

Major Commentaries and Secondary Studies

These works represent widely cited entry points into the study of An Inquiry into the Good and provide complementary perspectives: textual, historical, systematic, and comparative.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Foundational Status in Japanese Philosophy

An Inquiry into the Good is widely regarded as the foundational work of modern Japanese philosophy, marking a shift from the reception of Western thought to the production of original systematic philosophy in Japan. It provided a vocabulary—centered on pure experience, self‑realization, and the Good—that shaped academic discourse in philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history throughout the twentieth century.

Formation of the Kyoto School

The book is often taken as the inaugural text of the Kyoto School. Philosophers such as Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, and Watsuji Tetsurō engaged deeply with Nishida’s early ideas, sometimes extending, sometimes critiquing them. Key Kyoto School themes—non-dual experience, absolute nothingness, the interplay of Western and Buddhist thought—trace back in significant measure to questions first systematically formulated in this work.

Influence on Later Nishida

Within Nishida’s own corpus, An Inquiry into the Good sets the stage for later developments, including:

• The transition from pure experience to “place” (basho) and absolute nothingness as fundamental categories.
• Increased attention to historicity, culture, and society, addressing some early criticisms about individualism and abstraction.
• Further elaboration of religious philosophy, culminating in more explicit treatments of nothingness and God.

Scholars debate whether these later ideas represent a break from or a deepening of the 1911 framework.

International and Comparative Significance

Internationally, the work has become a touchstone in comparative philosophy and philosophy of religion. It is frequently discussed in relation to:

Ongoing Relevance

Contemporary scholars draw on An Inquiry into the Good in discussions of non-dual consciousness, embodiment, selfhood, and global philosophy of religion. While many of its formulations are historically situated, its attempt to articulate a non-dual, experiential foundation for philosophy continues to provoke both sympathetic development and critical reassessment, securing its place as a historically significant and still actively debated work.