Nishida, Husserl, and the Problem of Continuity of Objects

Nishida's pursuit of an ontology oriented to the predicate rather than the grammatical subject is a promising and challenging idea, as it overturns many conventional intuitions about objects. Both Nishida himself and his commentators note that his views suggest a new approach to the classic puzzle of continuity: that is, the puzzle as to how an object constitutes a unity as it changes properties or offers different profiles to the observer. The basis of continuity can no longer be a grammatical subject that owns its properties; the basis must instead be the predicative "place" (basho) in which the individual is situated. While interesting on its own, the notion has been criticized as being abstract and difficult to square with the phenomenology of actual experience. Here the author compares Nishida's explicit dealings with the continuity puzzle in the 1920s and early 1930s with Husserl's. As he shows, both Nishida and Husserl tend to reject what he terms "opaque" and "regressive" solutions to the puzzle and share a surprising number of intuitions. While Nishida's solution to the puzzle ultimately differs from Husserl's, the surprising commonalities paint a Nishidan picture of the phenomenal object that, while unusual, is phenomenologically sensitive, plausible, and suited to dialogue.