Nishida Kitarō, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The question, put so plainly, invites me to say what I mean when I write hirenzoku no renzoku — and the meaning is not captured by either of the two positions it refuses. To see actuality as merely continuous — as a smooth passage from moment to moment where what comes before is simply preparatory for what comes after, and what comes after is simply the consequence of what came before — is already to have lost actuality.1
It is to view the actual from outside, from the standpoint of the intellectual self, the non-actual standpoint; and an actuality seen from outside is no longer actual at all.2 The absolute cannot be conceived without ceasing to be the absolute; in the world of historical reality we come in touch with it only by moving from actuality to actuality, and there is no absolute beyond this.3
But equally, to say that actuality is simply discontinuous, simply infinite, is to say something that is not actual either. Actuality must be thoroughly determined.4 What I mean by the continuity of discontinuity is that the historical present is the basho — the place, the locus — wherein the infinite past and the infinite future are simultaneously existent; the present determines itself, and this self-determination is what I call the self-determination of the eternal now.5
The temporal is spatial and the spatial is temporal; the many is the one and the one is the many — a dialectical continuity, what Heraclitus already glimpsed as the harmony of opposites.6 For the self, this structure is not an abstract logical formula but the very texture of existing. The self exists as the individual determination of the dialectical universal, and as such it is always a transition from moment to moment — a continuity of discontinuity.7
To pass from one moment to the next requires dying in this moment, entering into nothingness, and only through that death being connected with the following moment.8 The object of desire requires man's death in precisely this sense: it requires the negation of the present self, and yet it beckons life at the same time — which is why the desiring self is a self-contradiction, and why we live through dying.9
Hence the anxiety. At each and every step we enter into death as the continuity of discontinuity; we always face absolute nothingness, and each step is a risk.10 Only human beings have anxiety in this sense, because only human beings exist as a continuity of discontinuity rather than as a merely biological or objectively determined individual.11
And it is out of this structure that the moral ought emerges: we face negation at every step, and yet insofar as we live through dying, we face what we must do.12 The moral ought is the gravitational force in the I-Thou relationship, the road along which man lives by dying, joined with the absolute other.13 The continuity of discontinuity is therefore not a logical paradox to be resolved but the structure of historical existence itself — the shape of a world that is genuinely actual, genuinely creative, and genuinely dangerous.
To see actuality as continuous, that is, to see it merely as that which has been determined continuously in some sense, as in the continuity of time, means to see actuality as non-independent. This would be to negate the absoluteness of actuality, thus rendering it as no longer actual.3. Logic and Life, p. 164
to consider actuality merely as finite or as continuous is not to see actuality from its own standpoint but rather to see it in its relationship with others [other things]. It is to think of actuality from the standpoint of the intellectual self (the standpoint of the non-actual).3. Logic and Life, p. 164
In the world of historical reality we move on from actuality to actuality. We come in touch with the absolute. There is no absolute beyond this. An absolute conceived is not the absolute.3. Logic and Life, p. 164
I do not mean to say that actuality is simply infinite or discontinuous. Such a thing is simply not actual. Actuality must be that which has been thoroughly determined.3. Logic and Life, p. 164
The historical present refers to the basho wherein we can conceive the infinite past and future to be simultaneously existent. We ought to regard what has been determined as actual to be what has been determined by means of the relationship of synchronic existence between past and future... This is why I speak of the self-determination of the eternal now and say that the present determines itself.3. Logic and Life, p. 164
It is a dialectical continuity in the sense that the many is the one and the one is the many... It is a self-contradictory world as the self-identity of absolute opposites... Heraclitus's so-called harmony of opposites.3. Logic and Life, pp. 164–165
the self always is a transition from moment to moment, a continuity of discontinuity.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 177–178
For the individual to be connected with the following moment as the continuity of discontinuity it is necessary that he die in this moment and enter into 'nothingness'.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 176–177
The object of desire requires man's death. For it requires the negation of the present self. Moreover, we 'live through dying' only in the present. In that sense, the object of desire beckons our life as well. Consequently, the desiring self is a self-contradiction.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 176–177
Hence, at each and every step we enter into death as the continuity of discontinuity. We always face 'absolute nothingness'. Each and every step is a risk.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 176–177
But only men have anxiety. For those who live as the continuity of discontinuity, beings in this world become the objects of desire, and this world is always a world of anxiety.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 176–177
the self in such a sense faces negation, yet at the same time, in so far as we live through dying, i.e. as a continuity of discontinuity, we face the moral ought.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 177–178
The moral ought is the gravitational force in the I-Thou relationship. Even a mere self, as long as it is independent and free at every step, must be a moral ought for itself.Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, pp. 177–178