Abstract: This article examines the reception of Kantian ethics, which introduced a new concept of the person as an end in itself in Japan in the 1890s. Three texts by Nishida Kitarô (1870-1945) will be discussed: first, “Kanto rinri gaku” (Kant’s Ethics) from 1893, then “Gurîn shi rinri tetsugakuno tai”, which retraces in 1895 the main line of Thomas Hill Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), and finally, “Rinri gaku sôan” (the preparatory notebook of ethics) written in 1905 and 1906.
