N i 'ISHIDA KITARO 99FRR , 1870-1945, widely recognized as Japan's foremost modern philosopher, wrote Bi no Setsumei !SoA, 'An Explanation of Beauty', in 1900, eleven years before publishing his first major work, Zen no Kenkyu QoOfJE, 'A Study of Good'.' As one of his first original essays, Bi no Setsumei presents an initial formulation of certain ideas and themes characteristic of what has since become known as Nishida tetsugaku FHV*, or 'Nishida philosophy'. Bi no Setsumei holds additional interest for scholars insofar as it fills a gap in our knowledge of Nishida's early intellectual development. As Valdo H. Viglielmo notes, although Nishida regularly kept a personal diary as well as correspondence with close friends, rather mysteriously there are no journal or letters for the entire year of 1900.2 His journal breaks off abruptly on 3 October 1899 and is not resumed until 1 January 1901. Furthermore, aside from Bi no Setsumei, Nishida produced no other philosophical works during this period. Hence the significance of Bi no Setsumei is further increased in that it is the only surviving document from this hiatus in the otherwise carefully recorded life and thought of Nishida's early years. At the philosophical level of discourse, Bi no Setsumei represents an original essay on the nature of beauty that synthesizes principles derived from both Western and Japanese aesthetics. Nishida begins the essay with an effort to formulate an adequate definition of 'beauty', or bi. First he directs his critical remarks against the identification of the 'sense of beauty' with a merely hedonic kind of 'pleasure' (kairaku 9+), arguing that there are many
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Odin et al. (1987) studied this question.