Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
Reality is the self-determination of the absolute Nothing — the basho ("place") in which every individual finds and loses itself
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Late (Nishida's final completed essay, written months before his death)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Non-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Undefined |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Non-local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Variable |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Variable |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
The "eternal now" (eien no ima) in which the self determines itself — temporal succession is the self-articulation of an unchanging present.
Space
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
The basho ("place") is not geometric but the dialectical ground in which subject and object arise together.
Matter
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
Material individuals are real but as self-determinations of the absolute nothing — neither self-sufficient substances nor mere appearances.
Observer
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
The "self" is itself a basho — a place in which the absolute determines itself; observer and observed mutually constitute one another in religious experience.
Energy
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
Energy as the dynamic of self-negation and mutual-determination — the absolute as ceaseless creative activity.
Information
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview
The dialectical pattern of basho-logic itself — every determination is the determination of the indeterminate.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Nishida's late essay was composed in the closing months of the Pacific War; some critics (Sharf, Faure) have read the universalist Buddhist-idealist synthesis as politically equivocal — its silence on the war and on Japanese militarism makes it complicit, even if Nishida himself was an opponent of the militarists. Others (Heisig, Davis) defend the essay's philosophical achievement as separable from its historical setting. The translation problems are also notorious: basho, mu, jikaku each lack clean English equivalents.