In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness as (...) the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

In recent years several books by major figures in Japan's modern philosophical tradition have appeared in English, exciting readers by their explorations of the borderlands between philosophy and religion. What has been wanting, however, is a book in a Western language to elucidate the life and thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Japan's first philosopher of world stature and the originator of what has come to be called the Kyoto School. No one is more qualified to write such a book than (...) Nishitani Keiji, whose lifetime coincides with the rise and flowering of the Kyoto School and whose own critical contribution to Japanese thought has been so important. _Nishida Kitaro_ is a translation of essays Nishitani wrote about his teacher from 1936 to 1968 and published as a book in 1985. This series of meditations by one master on another provides a remarkable, living portrait of Nishida the person and conveys the enthusiasm he aroused in his students. Examining Nishida's most important work, _An Inquiry into the Good_, Nishitani penetrates to the core of his thought and presents it in language that is a marvel of clarity. (shrink)

In contemporary nihilism the nihility stretches, so to speak, into the site of God’s being, and in this way becomes an abyss. And upon this godless nihility that has become an abyss, all life, not only biological life and souls, but even spiritual and personal life, manifests the form of something fundamentally meaningless. At the same time, it is furthermore claimed that human beings can only truly become free and independent and become true subjects when they resolutely ground themselves upon (...) this abyssal nihility. (shrink)

1. Kaze no kokoro -- 2. Jitsugetsu kokyō.

Prenant acte de la fondation aristotélicienne de la métaphysique comme science de l’être en tant qu’être, Nishitani interroge la posture philosophique qui, sous-jacente à ce geste initial, le détermine de l’intérieur. En fait, c’est la conception même de la philosophie, comprise comme pensée objectivante et analytique, que remet en question Nishitani en retraçant la genèse de la question de l’être chez les prédécesseurs d’Aristote. Et c’est à l’aune de cette question de l’être qu’il réévalue l’héritage aristotélicien de l’ousia, (...) et plus spécialement le rapport de l’essence et de l’existence à l’être-vrai à l’intérieur de cette question de l’être. (shrink)

Dans cet article publié deux ans après la parution de son maître ouvrage, Qu’est-ce que la religion? , auquel il est fait allusion dans les dernières lignes, Nishitani jette un regard rétrospectif sur son parcours philosophique. Plutôt que de rédiger un essai autobiographique, l’auteur y adopte une perspective analytique sur sa propre démarche et s’efforce d’expliciter la position philosophique qui est la sienne, qu’il a forgée très tôt dans sa carrière et à partir de laquelle il faut comprendre sa (...) pratique de la philosophie. Tout l’intérêt de ce texte réside dans la jonction qu’il établit entre les préoccupations du jeune Nishitani pour la question du nihilisme et ses réflexions de maturité, imprégnées de l’héritage spirituel du bouddhisme. (shrink)

The following presents an excerpt from Nishitani Keiji’s “Prajña and Reason” (1979), which can be considered Nishitani’s last attempt to make his case for the importance of the “standpoint of śūnyatā (‘emptiness’)” in confrontation with the history of Western philosophy. The translator’s preface situates “Prajña and Reason” (1) in Nishitani’s oeuvre and (2) in the context of his broader reception of Western thought, before (3) outlining the place of the excerpt within the full study. The translation (...) here excerpts section six and a portion of the final section seven. Where the prior sections develop and motivate his unified interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel (from the Differenzschrift to the Encyclopedia), in this excerpt, Nishitani diagnoses a problem in the relationships between the domains of Absolute Spirit, specifically, philosophy and religion. As argued in the translator’s preface, the arch of this study points to the contributions that religion (and art) make in evincing “living activity,” a “Knowing” that, while perhaps “un-Scientific” and, in that way, a “not-Knowing,” is for all that “Truthful.”. (shrink)

Nishitani Keiji elaborated the celebrated concept of nihility (虚無) in his seminal work Religion and Nothingness. In this paper, I discuss this concept of nihility in relation to the Christian cross and the theological concept of kenosis. After briefly recapitulating the context and function of the theological concept of kenosis, I show how the notion of nihility is particularly apt to problematize the Christian cross from Nishitani’s Mahayana Buddhist standpoint of emptiness (空). Furthermore, I make use of (...) the concept of nihility to shed some light on one of the earliest texts of Nishitani, in which he expressly engages with Christianity and the Christian cross. Read along this line of continuous development in Nishitani’s thinking, his early and critical reflections on the Christian cross can serve to illustrate what is at stake when Nishitani later attempts to show nihility as a preliminary experience; an experience which must be overcome for the subject to reach the experience of true emptiness. I thereby suggest that Nishitani’s early critique of the worship or adoration of the crucified God anticipates and exemplifies the later generalized move beyond the “field of nihility” (虚無の場) unto the field of emptiness (空の場). Thus, I demonstrate how, from his Buddhist standpoint, Nishitani articulates a profound challenge to any Christian theology of the cross. (shrink)

This paper provides a reading of Nishitani’s philosophy of culture. It argues that the advent of nihilism is the logical conclusion of what will be called the “fracturing of culture” in which philosophy and religion lose their creative force to revitalize a cultural tradition as the sense of being-in-time that forms the historical life of a historical world. Section two sets out the paradoxical nature of Nishitani’s philosophy of culture as both a transcendental and existential project. Section three (...) draws attention to the fact that a concept of culture always belongs to a concrete culture as part of its own understanding of itself. Section four interprets the advent of nihilism in terms of a crisis of culture that ensues from the loss of the existential understanding of history that grounds a cultural world, that forms the standpoint of a historical event of worlding, the historical life that we are. Section five examines Nishitani’s project in terms of the reappropriation of a lost tradition through an existential receptive reinterpretation of Buddhism. Section six argues that for Nishitani the advent of nihilism comes about as a result of the negation of myth by science and thus the overcoming of nihilism comes about through the recollection of myth. Section seven determines the nature of myth for Nishitani through a comparison with Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s understanding of myth. Three elements of myth are focused on: 1) myth as an existential confrontation with being-in-the-world; 2) this existential being-in-the-world forms an existential being-in-time; and 3) myth is the position of the imagination, a thinking by means of form-images [keizō 形像] (Bild, image). Section seven considers the difference between Cassirer’s and Nishitani’s respective accounts of myth. Section nine examines the nature and function of philosophy, science, and religion in terms of their relation to myth and in terms of how they understand interdependent origination. Section, ten ends the paper by considering what is called the “fracturing” of culture and the advent of nihilism. (shrink)

Abstract: This article examines Nishitani Keiji’s standpoint of emptiness as it is found in his work Religion and Nothingness. Since the term “emptiness” (kū 空) is here a way to point out to ultimate reality, this use of a negative language is regarded as an expression of a non-dualistic thought, in debt with Nishida’s philosophy and Zen Buddhism spiritual tradition as well as a viewpoint akin to apophatism in Christian mysticism.

In the paper/chapter, I examine Nishitani's appropriation of Buddhist thought as a response to nihilism and I regard his stance as an 'anontology' (neither ontology nor meontology), a neologism I've applied in my discussions of Nishida in other works as well.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Dialectics of Emptiness: Overcoming Nihilism and Combatting Mechanization in Nishitani Keiji’s Postwar ThoughtGriffin WernerIn his postwar writings on nihilism in modernity, Nishitani Keiji (1900–90) does not explicitly articulate the structure of the relationship between the mechanization of the world and nihilism. Instead, he discusses mechanization with respect to his critique of modern worldviews such as atheism, scientism, and liberalism and how they have (...) contributed to the advent of nihilism and the loss of human autonomy in modern Europe and Japan.1 According to Nishitani, before the advent of scientism and the subsequent progression of unfettered technological development, pre-Western-Enlightenment and pre-Meiji-period worldviews consisted of a fundamental embodied connection between a people or culture and their spiritual traditions. In Europe’s case, due to the death of God and the subsequent shift from a Christian worldview to an atheistic and scientistic one, a historical period of nihilism began. Modern mechanistic worldviews like Descartes’s, Nishitani argues, present the world as consisting of dead matter that is fundamentally separated from the indubitable ego. No longer is the world considered to be “alive” in the sense of there being a fundamental connection between human life and the living, breathing world around it. Rather, from the perspective of the ego, the modern world is simply a cold and lifeless world of dead machines.As discussed in Religion and Nothingness, the development of structurally Cartesian worldviews led to or caused the advent of nihilism in Europe. Consequently, European culture lost its cultural ground in Christianity and individuals lost their foundational meaning which supported their understanding of themselves in relation [End Page 129] to others, the world, and a transcendent God. As Japan began to modernize, or, arguably, “Westernize,” it inherited a Cartesian-like worldview and, over time, subsequently lost touch with its traditional philosophical and religious ground as well. As a result, the modern period of nihilism began in both Europe and Japan as both peoples lost touch with the traditional meaning that supported them.While this description between mechanization and nihilism implies a causal relationship, I argue that the relationship between nihilism and the mechanization of the world can be more accurately articulated in terms of a dialectical relationship. In the modern context, not only does the mechanization of the world lead to or exacerbate a culture’s plunge into nihilism or an individual’s confrontation with the abyss of nihility, but nihilism also reinforces and exacerbates the mechanization of the world. As partners in this dialectical oscillation, each reinforces the other as one (culture or person) continuously spirals deeper and deeper into meaninglessness, ultimately to the culminating point that Nishitani calls the “mechanization of man.”2Just as Nishitani argues that the problem of nihilism can only be solved by way of radicalizing nihilism to the “field of emptiness,” the structural oscillation between nihilism and mechanization will continue at the levels of the individual and the culture unless nihilism and mechanization are overcome. However, rather than only overcoming nihilism to reach emptiness in the individual, and that leading to social and political change, I argue that overcoming the dialectical tension between nihilism and mechanization will require a “dialectics of emptiness.” Such a dialectic will combat nihilism and mechanization with a mutually reinforcing tension between personal transformation, which overcomes nihilism by way of stepping back to the field of emptiness, and socio-political transformation by way of a politics of emptiness. Solving the problem of nihilism in modernity—insofar as it is always already in relation to mechanization—will require more than individual existential confrontation and transformation. Through one’s individual overcoming of nihilism, one must also aim to “empty” those institutions which contribute to the mechanization of the world. While Nishitani highlights the individual’s religious quest as the impetus for the social and political change necessary to overcome the problem of nihilism at the cultural level, an analysis of how that might be done and what [End Page 130] may be politically necessary in order to do so is missing from his thought.As such, my aim in this article is twofold: I attempt to shed light on the structure of nihilism and... (shrink)