Abstract

In Nishida’s thought of acting intuition various motifs of his philosophy come together. Two points are brought to the fore: The overcoming of the substantial distinction between body and consciousness and a dynamised understanding of reality developed from the paradigm of processes of artistic creation. In the first part the horizon of Nishida’s philosophy is outlined with respect to Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. In the second part, key positions Nishida developed before bringing up his idea of acting intuition will be taken into account. The third part focuses on the idea of acting intuition. In the fourth part, the grammatical form of the middle voice in Japanese language is discussed in the context of Nishida’s use of language as a form of acting intuition. The last part discusses the implications of Nishida’s artistic experience as a calligrapher in East Asian tradition for his approach to philosophy.