Q0469

“Pure experience is identical with direct experience.” — Nishida Kitaro (An Inquiry into the Good)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: An Inquiry into the Good. Theme: experience.

English

Pure experience is identical with direct experience.
Thinker Nishida Kitaro
School Kyoto School
Source An Inquiry into the Good
Theme Experience
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to An Inquiry into the Good and files it under Kyoto School. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Nishida Kitaro

Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) founded the Kyoto School at Kyoto Imperial University, forging a modern Japanese philosophy in dialogue with James, Bergson, Neo-Kantianism, and Zen practice. An Inquiry into the Good (1911) made ‘pure experience’ his early keystone; later essays develop the logic of basho (place) and absolute nothingness.

How to read this passage

Empiricists treat experience as the source of ideas; phenomenologists describe its structure; pragmatists treat it as experimental and revisable. This passage enters that discussion through experience, being.

Concepts in this quote

Experience
Experience is the lived encounter with world and self—foundation or limit for knowledge, art, and ethics.
Being
Being appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat being as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Nishida Kitaro. (n.d.). Pure experience is identical with direct experience. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0469

MLA: Nishida Kitaro. “Pure experience is identical with direct experience..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0469.

Chicago: Nishida Kitaro. “Pure experience is identical with direct experience..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0469.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “Pure experience is identical with direct experience.”?

The passage is attributed to Nishida Kitaro, An Inquiry into the Good. The archive attributes this English wording to An Inquiry into the Good and files it under Kyoto School. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Nishida Kitaro mean by experience?

Empiricists treat experience as the source of ideas; phenomenologists describe its structure; pragmatists treat it as experimental and revisable. This passage enters that discussion through experience, being.

Explore Nishida Kitaro on experience

Same thinker

More from Nishida Kitaro

  1. Pure experience is the state of experience just as it is, without the slightest addition of deliberative discrimination.
  2. To experience means to know facts just as they are.
  3. The good is the realization of personality.
  4. There must be an overturning, a radical conversion of mind, in any religion. Without it there is no religion.
  5. The religious consciousness does not arise out of our own selves; it is simultaneously the call of God or Buddha.

All quotations by Nishida Kitaro

Same theme

More on experience

  1. Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
  2. Their being is to be perceived.
  3. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other.
  4. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.
  5. Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature.

Browse the experience theme