Kyoto School, Misc

El texto refuta que el primer documento escrito en el que se encuentra el apelativo «escuela de Kioto» corresponda al artículo que escribiera Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) publicado en 1932 con el título «La filosofía de la escuela de Kioto». Se demuestra que fue otro pensador, Tsuchida Kyōson (1891-1934), quien en su obra Pensamiento contemporáneo de Japón y China, escrita originariamente en japonés en el año 1926 y, luego, en inglés, 1927, engloba a Nishida y Tanabe bajo el nombre «escuela de (...) Kioto», por lo tanto, años antes del texto tosakaniano. La inclusión de esta fuente desapercibida se suma al asunto sobre la significación histórica de la designación de la «escuela» en vida de sus miembros más célebres, además de revelar las confluencias en ciertos juicios críticos que Tsuchida y Tosaka hicieran sobre las ideas y sistemas de los filósofos de Kioto. Capítulo de libro: Crespín Perales, Montserrat, "El eslabón desapercibido. La denominación "escuela de Kioto" en la obra de Tsuchida Kyoson (1891-1934), Pensamiento contemporáneo de Japón y China (1926, 1927)", en Crespín Perales, Montserrat, y Wirtz, Fernando (eds.), Después de la nada. Dialéctica e ideología en la filosofía japonesa contemporánea, pp. 41-86. (shrink)

Biocommunism, while not a new concept, has yet to be the subject of considerable academic research. Wróbel has most recently taken it up. Beginning with Dyer-Witheford’s suggestion of a return to Marx’s concept of species-being, or Gattungswesen,4 this essay will elaborate on the influence of this term in the early Marx and the role which the notion of species held in the Kyoto School. The essay concludes with an allusion to Agamben and Butler that aims to provide a much-needed discussion (...) about the feasibility of the term biocommunism as an improved notion of communism more suitable for the current reality. (shrink)

The paper explicates what the World War 2 era Japanese philosopher, Miki Kiyoshi, of the Kyoto School, called the logic of imagination and of forms as an ontology. I understand this ontology as ultimately an “anontology”, where novelty and creativity are predicated upon the pathos of singularity and contingency that Miki calls “the nothing” (mu). Its productive function that is technological vis-à-vis the environment involves an embodied praxis that Miki, borrowing the terms of his mentor, Nishida Kitarō, calls “enactive intuition”. (...) This productivity unfolds the historical world, on the basis of that deep pathos within us in synthesis with logos, as what can be characterized as the auto-determination of the indeterminate. But the advance of technology today takes this unfolding of the world perhaps beyond what Miki anticipated with his self-professed humanism. To make these points, the paper, for the most part, focuses on the last and longest chapter in Miki’s Logic of Imagination, where Miki discusses and appropriates Kant’s concept of imagination and its schematism from both the first and third Critiques while also showing the influences of Heidegger along with Nishida. But the originality in Miki takes his philosophy of imagination beyond these predecessors while also raising questions as to the relationship between human beings and nature and to the very meaning of “nature” (shizen) in Miki. I will also discuss post-war theories of imagination and technology coming after Miki that respond to the more recent digitization and virtualization of the real. (shrink)

Ueda writes in his Reading Nishida Kitarō (Nishida Kitarō o yomu) that to compare Heidegger’s entire thinking up to his last period with Nishida’s thought also up to his last period, including their multiple turns, would be “one of the most valuable paths to investigating the significance, potential, and problematics of Nishidian philosophy.” In this paper I examine the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru through the juxtaposition of those two thinkers, of West and of East, who prove to be significant for (...) the creative unfolding of his thought: Martin Heidegger who had inspired much of phenomenology and Continental philosophy, and Nishida Kitarō who had inspired the development of Kyoto School philosophy and much of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The Heideggerian and Nishidian streams of thought, in their “placial turns”—Nishida’s “logic of place” and Heidegger’s “topology of beyng”—meet in Ueda as he reads each in light of the other’s terminology and concepts. Through his readings and appropriations that underscore their commonalities and differences, Ueda thus develops a compelling philosophy of place, world, and horizon, a thinking of being-in-the-twofold-world. The chapter thus examines the meeting of Nishida and Heidegger in Ueda. (shrink)

This article focuses on Kyoto School philosophy’s “philosophy of world history,” during World War II, and its arguments for a multipolar world order in opposition to the older Eurocentric and colonialist world order. The idea was articulated by the second generation of the Kyoto School—Nishitani Keiji, Kōyama Iwao, Kōsaka Masaaki, and Suzuki Shigetaka—in a series of symposia held during 1941 to 1942 and titled the “The World-historical Standpoint and Japan.” While rejecting on the one hand the myopic patriotism of the (...) ultranationalists, they argued for a view to the world and its history, that in contrast to the Eurocentric view to world history, was polycentric. In terms of world politics they associated their view with the aim to construct a co-prosperity sphere in East Asia of autonomous nations to counter European colonialism as part of a new polycentric or multipolar world order. Metaphysically this notion of a co-prosperity sphere as well as of a multipolar world was grounded in the Kyoto School’s concept of “nothingness” as an open space for autonomous but corelated subjects. During the war, these discussions came under fire by critics from the Right, and then after the war, from the Left. I will examine the potential viability of these ideas today as a polycentric world may be on the horizon that ideally would give space to difference and diversity and avoid the violence of homogenization. A comparison of their notion of the nothing with Jean-luc Nancy’s concept of the same may provide some clues. (shrink)

A chapter in the book, Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation, edited by Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames, and published by University of Hawaii Press. In this chapter I present a phenomenological ontology of place vis-a-vis horizon and also alterity (otherness), discussing related themes in Heidegger, Kitaro Nishida, Shizuteru Ueda, Otto Bollnow, Karl Jaspers, Ed Casey, Günter Figal, Bernhard Waldenfels, and others. Wherever we are we are implaced, delimited in our being-in-the-world constituted by a horizon that implaces us, (...) not only literally but semantically and ontologically. Whether we take place in its semantic sense or as ontological, I underscore its duplicity—taking off from Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of two-fold being-in-the-world—as on the one hand demarcating a realm of determinacy, our ontological finitude or our social imaginary world, and on the other hand through its horizonal nature as pointing to an indeterminacy or exteriority that demarcates or delimits that realm, finitizing us. That latter may be characterized as an excess irreducible to semantic or ontological determination or as a nothing or a-meaning. Hence place with its horizon implies the interface of meaning and a-meaning, nomos and anomy, principles and anarché, in Nishidian terms being and the nothing (mu), in Heideggerian terms unconcealment and concealment or world and earth. Thus the horizon that constitutes place entails both finitude and openness, allowing for alterity and alteration, whereby the determinations within place are never fixed, secure, or guaranteed. In demarcating a place, the horizon always points to a yonder beyond the place, its other. In its very contact with the unassmilable or irreducible, the line of demarcation is itself thus unpredictable in its fluctuations. The place determined within the nothing or the clearing of unconcealment amidst the concealed will thus always be provisional despite any appearance or claims to the contrary. Its determination is indeterminate. (shrink)

Nishida Kitarō, the cofounder and central figure of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. Nishida’s second generation Kyoto School descendant and current representative of the Kyoto School, Ueda Shizuteru, furthered this concept to understand both place and implacement in terms of a twofold world or twofold horizon. Nishida initially understood the self in its unobjectifiability as a kind of place wherein subject and object correlate. But this placial self came to be seen as itself (...) implaced within a contextualizing place wherein it can interact with things in the world and with other subjects in an “I-thou” relationship, but which ultimately is further implaced in an abyssal place of absolute nothing. He developed this understanding of place in terms of the socio-historical world and ultimately in terms of the divinity that negates itself in kenōsis to make room for the world of many. Roughly speaking and in a variety of versions, Nishida takes the system of places to involve the following: the place of beings or objects, the place that is consciousness, the place that is the world of human interactivity, and finally the place of absolute nothing. Ueda on the other hand, focuses on the twofold structure of place itself as involving the twofold structure of the horizon of experience. We are implaced in the world that in turn is implaced in a boundless openness. Our place is twofold in that there is the world of significances on this side of its horizon and the a-meaning of the nothing beyond its horizon. While Nishida formulates the system of places in terms of place of being, place of relative nothing, and place of absolute nothing, Ueda uses the fraction symbol as world/open expanse to convey his idea of “world amidst the open expanse.” I will explore this legacy of place as Nishida first formulated it and then as developed more recently by Ueda. While doing so I will also discuss each of their relations to phenomenology. Nishida was developing his theory of place cotemporaneous to the careers of Husserl and Heidegger. While he was aware of their work, it was only to a limited extent and he was quite critical of both thinkers and phenomenology in general. On the other hand, Ueda is quite knowledgeable of the phenomenological movement of Europe, having studied under Nishida’s student, Nishitani Keiji, who had studied under Heidegger and, himself, having studied in Germany. He incorporates the insights of Husserl, Heidegger, Bollnow, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Eliade, and others, in developing his own understanding of place. What both Nishida and Ueda offer vis-à-vis a phenomenology of place is a sophisticated analysis of that other to being that place as defined and limited must assume: what Nishida calls the absolute nothing (zettai mu) and what Ueda calls the open expanse (kokū). I will then end by looking at the implications these ideas have for our current situation of globalization in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This volume inquires into the relationship between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto School philosophy in relation to capitalist modernity.

Original source :「委員会の論理」『世界文化』[Culture du monde], n° 13, janvier 1936, 2–17 ; n° 14, février 1936, 16–33 ; n° 15, mars 1936, 12–25. Repris dans nmz 1 : 46–108. La version des œuvres complètes présente un certain nombre de variantes par rapport à la première publication en 1936. « La logique des comités » a été traduit en espagnol par Agustín J. Zavala. Je remercie vivement Saitō Takako pour sa relecture et ses précieuses remarques.

This article is the second translation of the preface and first chapter of Hatano Seiichi's Time and Eternity. A full translation of the text, published by Suzuki Ichiro 鈴木一郎 in 1963, is not easily accessible to most readers, while an excellent partial translation by Joseph O'Leary has recently been made accessible to a wider audience through the monumental work, Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. By providing a short historical introduction to both Hatano's life and works as a great thinker and teacher, (...) this article intends to supplement O'Leary's contribution and therefore enable more readers to gain access to the opening sections of Hatano's Time and Eternity. (shrink)

The verb κενόω means ‘to empty’ and St. Paul uses the word ἐκένωσεν writing that ‘Jesus made himself nothing’ and ‘emptied himself’. Śūnyatā is a Buddhist concept most commonly translated as emptiness, nothingness, or nonsubstantiality. An important kenosis–śūnyatā discussion was sparked by Abe Masao’s paper ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Śūnyatā’. I confront the kenosis–śūnyatā theme with Vattimo’s kenosis-based philosophy of religion. For Vattimo, kenosis refers to ‘secularization’: when strong structures such as the essence and the fulfilment of the Christian message (...) are weakened. Parallels between Abe’s and Vattimo’s thought will be demonstrated with regard to themes current in East–West comparative philosophy: reality and emptiness, the overcoming of metaphysics, the position of the Self, the human and the divine, and the relationship between science and religion. The latter point is particularly timely because since the 1990s religious fundamentalism has pushed forward a curio.. (shrink)

In the following, I would like to advance the position that it is too early to write down my own ›auto-bio-graphy.‹ For this purpose, I attempt to develop the idea of philosophy as auto-bio-graphy in three theses and to do so with the example of the philosophy of the Kyoto School so that the conception of philosophy as auto-bio-graphy can be expounded in consideration alongside some of the aspects of the philosophy of the Kyoto School.

This article compares Masao Abe's Buddhist view of ultimate reality in terms of dynamic Sunyata with certain concepts in the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb.

20世紀後半アメリカを中心にしたラディカル・エコロジーの成果と、西田幾多郎・和辻哲郎の思想の比較検証を通して、仏教的な自然・環境観が明示する“今日的意義”を提起した労作。.

Cuestiones alrededor de los intercambios filosóficos entre Japón y Europa.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao AbeJohn B. Cobb Jr.Masao Abe spent a year at the Blaisdell Institute in Claremont, 1965–1966. I was on sabbatical in Germany that year. On return I learned from many people that I had missed a great opportunity for an authentic encounter with a living Buddhist thinker who understood Christianity very well. Fortunately, he visited Claremont again, although more briefly, and this time I was able to take advantage (...) of his visit.I was, and am, convinced that Whiteheadians have much to gain from the encounter with Buddhists. At one level we can grasp and assimilate the idea of dependent origination or pratitya samutpada quite easily. For Whitehead too the ultimate reality consists in the many becoming one. For Whitehead human experience is an example of this reality and, indeed, that example is the one he most fully analyzed.On the other hand, we Whiteheadians incline to objectify the whole process. More often than with Whitehead himself, we are describing a process that is going on objectively out there. Abe taught me the difference. He liked to distinguish the perspective of the swimmer battling against the current in dangerous waters and observers on the bank. To understand that all unit events are instances of dependent origination is one thing; to experience oneself in that way is quite another. And what is especially important is to recognize that experiencing oneself is not objectifying one’s past or imagining oneself in the eyes of an observer. It is embodying the absolutely immediate, ever-changing reality that is experience now.Whitehead never thought of his ontological analysis as having direct religious importance. For him, as part of the understanding that all things are perpetually perishing, it constituted the ultimate threat to the meaningfulness of life. The religious dimension came as a response to this threat.For Abe, of course, the full existential realization of what we are, is in itself salvific in the sense of healing. It puts an end to guilt, defensiveness, and attachment, and it makes us wholly acceptant of whatever is. It leads to, or perhaps is, enlightenment, expressing itself in wisdom and compassion. Given the history of Buddhism, one must accept the profound truth in this affirmation, although, given the history of Buddhism, one must also recognize that matters are never as simple as this formulation sounds.I have spoken personally of an example of what and how I learned from Abe. This is a testimonial that can be matched by scores, perhaps hundreds, of others. Certainly [End Page 119] in our ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue group, Abe was the foremost teacher. My goal in helping to organize this group was to give my fellow Christian theologians the chance to learn from him and other Buddhists. I am proud of the extent to which, especially because of Abe’s gifts as a teacher, my purpose was fulfilled.Appreciating the truth of Buddhism, and agreeing with Abe that Christian theology through the centuries has been distorted by clinging to substantialist modes of thought, I was particularly eager to engage him in a dialogue about the relation of Buddhism and Christian process theology, in particular a Christian process theology that recognized and appreciated the spiritual value of Buddhist enlightenment. Since Abe felt that Buddhists had something to learn from Christianity about social ethics, the suggestions of Christian theology, including its process form, for modifications or developments of Buddhism were not wholly lost on him. He supervised two dissertations by Buddhists on this topic, of which I was the official advisor, one by a Zen Buddhist (Chris Ives) and the other by a Pure Land Buddhist (John Ishihara, now Yokota). He criticized fellow Buddhists in our dialogue group for not being as open to learning from their Christian dialogue partners as these partners were open to Buddhist insights. In short he supported real dialogue, always ready to share his wisdom, and encouraging openness to further development of Buddhism.None of us is perfect, or, at least, none of us fulfills what someone else would see as perfection. In my judgment Abe was unnecessarily wedded to features of his Buddhist tradition that inhibited learning from Christianity, particularly in its process... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao Abe: A Bodhisattva’s VowJames FredericksAbout ten years ago, I enjoyed a fine Japanese lunch with my friend and teacher, the late Masao Abe. I gathered with him and his wife, Ikuko, in a traditional restaurant in Kyoto. Abe Sensei had been somewhat pensive and withdrawn for most of the meal. Mrs. Abe and I had been bantering about how late the tsuyu rains had been that year and (...) the effect it was having on Kyoto’s hydrangea. Suddenly Sensei began to speak with an unusual tone of voice, as if saying something of great importance to no one in particular. “It is not enough,” he said. Mrs. Abe and I fell silent and attentive. He repeated himself in the same voice: “It is not enough.” I knew immediately what my teacher was talking about. In his old age and after a long and distinguished career of teaching and lecturing about Zen in the West, Abe Sensei was talking about a Buddhist teaching dear to his heart, “the standpoint of emptiness.” Out of politeness, I did not want to indicate that I understood his meaning so directly and sat wondering what I should say in response. Finally, I settled on something like this: “I will continue to study; Sensei, please continue to teach.” I spoke in the most formal Japanese I could muster out of respect for my teacher and friend.Sitting on the tatami mats in that restaurant in Kyoto was not the only time that Sensei has ever said “it is not enough.” In April 1942, four months after the beginning of the Pacific War, Masao Abe entered Kyoto Imperial University to study philosophy of religion. He was twenty-seven years old, buffeted by criticism for not enlisting in the military, and fearful of the power of nihilism at work in his homeland. In Kyoto, he was much attracted by the lectures of Tanabe Hajime, who was already filled with foreboding over Japan’s impending defeat and looking to Pure Land Buddhism for guidance. Tanabe’s comment “Amida is not far from here” brought Abe to weep inconsolably in the realization that it was he who was moving away from Amida even as Amida was moving toward him. Even still, Sensei would eventually find the Pure Land path “not enough” for resisting the forces of nihilism in the world and in himself.After the war, Abe joined a Zen meditation group that met at Myōshinji in Kyoto. The group was directed by Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, a Zen layman and lecturer on Buddhism at the university. In December 1951, Abe had a violent encounter with Hisamatsu that people still talk about. Zen had begun to erode Abe’s Pure Land faith and the threat of nihilism had returned in force. One evening, in great agitation, [End Page 115] Abe rose from his meditation pillow and lunged toward Hisamatsu screaming, “Is this the true self?” He was restrained briefly and then left the room. Later, Abe said in despair, “I cannot find anyplace where I can stand,” and Hisamatsu answered him straight away: “Stand right at that place where there is no place to stand.” This is what Abe Sensei called “the standpoint of emptiness.” Abe would eventually teach at great universities in the United States and Europe and become one of the leading figures in the dialogue among Buddhists and Christians. At the heart of all of this has been his unwavering commitment to expounding the standpoint of emptiness. Unwavering, that is, until that day in Kyoto over lunch when he said, “It is not enough.”Of Buddhism’s many impressive teachings, the bodhisattva ideal must be one of the most wondrous. A bodhisattva is one who, in the quest for enlightenment, has come to the threshold of nirvana itself. Ready to enter into bliss, the bodhisattva renounces nirvana and turns back to samsara. This return to samsara takes the form of a vow to work skillfully for the benefit of every sentient being. In the bodhisattva’s vow, Buddhism teaches a great and paradoxical truth. Since attachment is the birthplace of sorrow, wisdom requires that attachment be renounced. In the quest for liberation from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Masao Abe an Original Thinker?Steven HeineDuring the course of a remarkable career spanning six decades in various institutions in Japan and the West, beginning with his training under Hisamatsu Shin’ichi at Kyoto University, Masao Abe became known for several important accomplishments in disseminating Buddhist thought in comparative perspectives and global contexts. In addition to his considerable contributions to the teaching and mentoring of several dozen Western scholars of (...) Buddhist studies, a first major achievement was the translation and interpretation of eminent Zen Buddhist thinkers. Abe is especially known for his work on Dōgen, the thirteenth-century founder of the Sōtō Zen sect, and Nishida Kitarō, the leading figure in modern Japanese philosophy and originator of the Kyoto school, of which Abe is considered a prominent member. Abe’s renderings (as a cotranslator) and hermeneutic discussions of Dōgen and Nishida remain among the best and most frequently cited in those respective fields.Second, Abe gained prominence more generally as a presenter of traditional Zen Buddhist thought to the modern West. It was often said that with the passing of D. T. Suzuki in 1966, the mantle was passed to Abe, who became the leading figure playing the role of transmitter. A third accomplishment was Abe’s ever vigorous participation and lifelong commitment to interfaith dialogue, primarily involving Buddhist-Christian studies, as well as exchanges with Jewish thinkers and discussions of thematic issues, such as the encounter of religion and science or the impact of the Holocaust on comparative ethics. The hallmark of the Kyoto school is a comparison of Japanese Buddhism and Western thought. However, Abe went much further than predecessors and colleagues in seeking out and exchanging ideas with dialogue partners from among the leading theologians and philosophers of religion in the West representing a wide ranger of Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish traditions.The question that arises is whether and to what extent there may be a fourth area of accomplishment by examining whether Abe can be considered an original thinker, and, if so, what his special contribution to the Kyoto school and cross-cultural religious philosophy in a broader sense might be. Reflecting on this issue, I have often thought about an episode that took place a few years ago, when I requested permission from a journal to reprint an article in a collection of Abe’s work that I was editing for the University of Hawai‘i Press. The editor’s response in consenting to the request [End Page 131] also included the comment that he considered Abe’s contribution to Buddhist studies to be “not a secondary, but a primary source.”What did this remark mean? I believe there are two possibilities. One possibility, on the more critical side, is that Abe does not present Buddhism in an objective, historical fashion and is not worthy of being referred to as a secondary source, which in a way has more validity than what he represents. The positive side of the journal editor’s comment is that Abe’s work offers a distinctively original interpretation that is part of the ongoing construction of Buddhist thought for the modern world. Following this line of understanding, my tentative answer to the question of whether Abe is an original thinker is “yes.” A major reason for my saying this is based on the fact, of which the editor was not aware, that Abe rather late in his life was producing books in Japanese for an audience in Japan rather than the West.1In these three volumes published from 1996 to 2000, Abe began to develop what he innovatively called “sunyata-ology,” or a systematic discussion of the root meaning and far-ranging philosophical implications of the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of śūnyatā or emptiness. This term is often used interchangeably with the notion of nothingness ( Japanese: mu ), in relation to or in contrast with nihilism, nihilation, and negation. Like his Kyoto school predecessors Nishida and Keiji Nishitani, who were in turn greatly influenced by Western philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, the mission of overcoming nihilism at its root must be the central goal of modern thought, according to Abe, who believes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Thought and Legacy of Masao AbeChristopher IvesMasao Abe stands as the most important Buddhist in modern interfaith dialogue and the main transmitter of Zen thought to the West following the death of D. T. Suzuki. His most widely read work, Zen and Western Thought, edited by William LaFleur, won an award in 1987 from the American Academy of Religion as the best recent publication in the “constructive and (...) reflective” category. Abe followed that influential volume with further collections of essays edited by Steven Heine: Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, Zen and Comparative Studies, and Zen and the Modern World. Abe also wrote widely in Japanese, with his most mature thought finding expression in several volumes he published later in life: Kongen no shuppatsu (Starting from the Root), Kyogi to kyomu (Falsehood and Nihility), and Hibutsu hima (Neither Buddha nor Devil).Abe also made significant contributions to the study of the renowned Sōtō Zen thinker Dōgen (1200–1253). With Norman Waddell he translated a number of fascicles of Dōgen’s Shōbō-genzō, which appeared in The Eastern Buddhist and were then compiled as The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbō-genzō. Abe published his own essays on Dōgen, again with Heine’s editorial help, in the volume Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion. In such journals as International Philosophical Quarterly, Abe also published essays on Nishida Kitarō and other Kyoto school thinkers, and with me he translated Nishida’s seminal work, Zen no Kenkyū (An Inquiry into the Good).In the 1980s, Abe and his main Christian dialogue partner, process theologian John Cobb, started the North American Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. They were also instrumental in the founding of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Records of Abe’s dialogue with Christian and Jewish thinkers can be found in such volumes as The Emptying God, which John Cobb and I coedited, and in a follow-up volume I edited alone, Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness.In terms of his legacy, Abe may ultimately be seen less as a purely Zen thinker than as a Japanese philosopher of religion indebted to his teacher, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, the Zen and Pure Land traditions, and the Kyoto school of philosophy, while also influenced by Christian mysticism and theology, process philosophy, German idealism, and strands of existentialism and nihilism.Many people engaged in interfaith dialogue and comparative religious philosophy have benefited from Abe’s way of contrasting Non-Being and Buddhist Nothingness [End Page 103] (mu), as well as his rich treatment of Nietzsche’s nihilism, negation in Tillich’s theology, and Whitehead’s metaphysics. And I think I’m not alone in having wrestled with his claims about the reversibility of time.But central to Abe’s thought, and in all likelihood his legacy, is the Buddhist construct of śūnyatā, usually translated by him as Emptiness. Abe crafted a specific representation of śūnyatā that he repeated in a range of writings and conferences—so much so that Nagatomi Masatoshi, when he was teaching at Harvard, referred to Abe as “Mr. Sunyata.” Though at times his readers may have wanted Abe to revise or elaborate certain parts of his presentation of śūnyatā, I think we may actually have benefited from how he stuck with his discourse, for he provided us with a fairly fixed and consistent point of reference around which to organize our own thoughts, comparisons, and critiques.In terms of specifics, Abe advanced śūnyatā as the metaphysical and spiritual foundation of all religions, including monotheistic traditions, and as the optimal basis on which humanity could, while dealing with antireligious ideologies and interreligious conflict, help ground a new global community beyond nation-states. In “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” probably his most widely read essay, he makes these and related arguments after examining the Christian notion of kenosis—divine self-emptying—as a fruitful point of comparison with śūnyatā. Along the way he echoes the Buddhist call for people to “empty” themselves and thereby break through karma, turn ignorance into wisdom, and deliver themselves beyond the realm of ordinary discriminating thought—including dualistic ethical reflection—and into the depth dimension of śūnyatā.In this engagement with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unconventional Guest: Masao Abe’s Dialogue with the American AcademyWilliam R. LaFleurDuring the two years we were together at Princeton I once took Masao Abe to meet my parents, then alive and living in New Jersey. I had told them some things in advance about Abe, about Zen, and about what in Abe’s ways could at times be unconventional. My mother, I knew, would put lots of effort into preparing (...) the Sunday dinner we ate on the day of our visit. At the meal’s conclusion Abe turned to my mother and declared: “Mrs. LaFleur, this meal has been simply outrageous! ” For a moment I thought he might have meant “delicious” and had landed on the wrong word. But then I saw his smiling eyes and mouth. He had meant what he said. Everyone laughed and my mother promptly thanked him for his “compliment.”Being at times a genially unconventional guest, one who also in academic or dialogic contexts would say surprising or even unsettling things, was something at which Abe excelled. He was also unconventional in his teaching. He frustrated us when we expected the usual approach. In the book edited by Donald Mitchell I told how in 1969 at the University of Chicago Abe aggravated those of us graduate students who wanted to do a survey of all of modern Japanese philosophy; Abe forced us to stay with certain sentences in Nishida, wanting our minds to be changed. He would not budge.1Some years later at Princeton he proved to be maddeningly insistent on this. Reading The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch with graduate students in 1977 who knew some Chinese and Japanese was not for Professor Abe going to be exercise in the usual historico-textual excavation; all that was available, he said, in the introduction and notes to Philip Yampolsky’s translation of that text. He was not interested in an “objectification” that put distance between the voice speaking through the text and the person being addressed by it today. For him the ancient text must read as if written for us and for us today. With Abe as teacher the dialogic mode of the seminar room had to replicate in its own way the lecture hall of the Ta-fan Temple! But graduate students at Princeton, inured as they were to the conventional mode of textual-historical analysis, were made clearly uncomfortable by this. Therefore, hoping I might serve as a mediator, they asked me to ask Abe if we might be more historical and move on more quickly. When, with some trepidation, I transmitted this request [End Page 127] to Abe, he merely chuckled and smiled, leaving me to guess why we should expect no change in his emphasis. What follows is my attempt to unpack what was involved in this... and why it remains relevant today.Even some more recent scholars of East Asian Buddhism in our academy today resemble those graduate students back then in Princeton. They, too, have been suggesting that there was something “behind the times” or in need of being updated in the dialogic teaching mode used so brilliantly by Abe—as well as by Hisamatsu Shin’ichi and D. T. Suzuki. However, there is, I think, something both laughably conventional and arrogantly neocolonialist in these critics’ assumptions. They believe that textual and historicist methods (of which Ideologiekritik is an extension) remain something that the West still needs to teach to the non-West, that these render all other methods outdated and irrelevant, and that they can be deployed to expose what remains flawed in the way that, for instance, Japanese such as Abe study and teach Buddhism and Zen.Ironically, this presumptuous stance itself crumbles under historical and textual analysis—at least when applied to Japan. In various studies, Michael Pye has shown that Tominaga Nakamoto’s studies of Buddhist texts, historical and critical to the core, were done in the early seventeenth century and show a solid tradition of scholarship in this mode arising there without any influence from Europe. As Pye shows, interest in the plurality of religions and an early stage of a “science of religions” were present in Japan... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao Abe’s Early Spiritual Journey and his Later PhilosophyDonald W. MitchellMasao Abe was born in 1915 in Osaka, Japan. He was the third of six children, and his father was a physician. His mother was the only person in the family who practiced religion, namely, Jōdo Shinshū or Shin Buddhism. As a university student, Abe attended what is now Osaka Municipal University, where he studied economics and law. While (...) at the university, he read the Tannishō, a text by Shinran. Abe later said that he understood from that text that “self-power” was futile and the only hope for salvation was “other-power” faith in the grace of Amida Buddha. However, he also understood that this life of grace entailed the relinquishment of “self-centered calculation.” Abe felt that he was not able to set aside his ego-self and began for the first time in his life to experience the tension between Buddha and ego, or, in more Western terms, the duality of God and self. This concern led Abe into a very personal spiritual quest that would define his life and work.Given this concern, after graduation, Masao Abe wanted to attend Kyōto University to study Buddhism. Because of family issues, however, he took a position at a trading company in Kōbe, where he worked for four years. Those years were marked by a sense of meaninglessness, and in the end Abe quit his job and entered Kyōto University, where he studied Western philosophy under Tanabe Hajime, who was himself influenced by Shin Buddhism. It was during that time that Abe met Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, an associate professor at Kyōto University and a well-known and committed practitioner of Zen Buddhism.At one point, Abe took his spiritual concerns about the tension he felt between his ego-centeredness and the religious life to Hisamatsu. He asked, “I am nothing more than a lump of selfish passions. Yet, isn’t it true that in Mahāyāna Buddhism one can be saved just as one is, selfish passions and all?” Hisamatsu responded, “The very thought that there are selfish passions is a selfish passion. Originally there is no such thing.” 1 Abe understood from Hisamatsu that there was a more fundamental ground below the dualism between Buddha and ego, a ground in which this dualism is overcome and salvation from any such dualistic struggle could be found.But Abe was not ready to surrender his Pure Land religiosity. In fact, it was during [End Page 107] this time at Kyōto University that he had an experience of Amida Buddha’s grace. As Abe put it, he realized that while he thought that he was “running toward” Amida Buddha in his struggle with faith, he realized that Amida Buddha was not something to go to, but, rather, Amida was already right there with him all the time. Abe said that at that moment he threw himself on the tatami floor and wept in gratitude. It was gratitude for Amida’s presence and grace that embraced Abe just as he was, full of passions and ego. When he told Hisamatsu about this experience, Hisamatsu was very happy and never questioned Abe about his Pure Land views again.Gradually, under the influence of Hisamatsu and with his deeper study of Buddhism, Abe realized that while his Pure Land experience was valid, there was a more fundamental or original religious standpoint to be discovered. Abe still struggled with the duality between the life of Amida’s grace and embracement of Abe with his ego, and Abe’s ego-centered passions themselves. He felt, under Hisamatsu’s influence, that it might be on that more fundamental standpoint that this duality would be overcome. He also saw the undeniable realization of this original nondualistic standpoint in Hisamatsu himself, and this led him to turn more fully to Zen practice under Hisamatsu’s guidance in the context of the F.A.S. Society.Given the foundational paradigm shift Abe faced in Hisamatsu and the depth of his own struggle with the dualism still involved in his Pure Land position, Zen practice under Hisamatsu was extremely demanding for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao Abe and the Dialogue BreakthroughStephen RoweI am profoundly grateful to Masao Abe for many reasons, including his articulation of Zen and his responsiveness to my own work, but most especially for his breakthrough work on dialogue. For he, along with his Christian partner in dialogue, John B. Cobb Jr., has taken us to a new paradigm, one in which dialogue, in complementary relationship with our more particular practices (...) and traditions, can be valued as a religious practice.1 Together these two towering figures of our time have broken through the koan of abstracted universality versus incommensurable particularity, and hence opened up a possibility for the human future the significance of which cannot be overestimated.In October 1986, I had the good fortune to find myself at the Third North American Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter, the stated theme of which was “Notions of Ultimate Reality in Buddhism and Christianity.” A critical tension was evident early on in this event. Masao Abe spoke very persuasively of the “perspec-tiveless perspective” of Zen, arising from the experience of sunyata as the negation of negation or the radicalizing of Nothingness, of Zen as the affirmation of radical return. John Cobb spoke with equal persuasiveness of our inescapable particularity as historical beings, our ineluctable locatedness, and the irreducible wisdom of Israel and Greece. Both of these opposing views seemed right. How could this be so?To heighten the juxtaposition, it was equally evident that there were three large propositions on which Abe and Cobb very much agreed: first, our need of transformation; second, that this must be mutual transformation; and, third, that transformation must be in the direction of a new universality of humankind, which Cobb describes as “a global memory.” 2 How is it possible for these powerful elements of agreement to be juxtaposed with the critical tension mentioned above? Cobb and Abe, not surprisingly, have their own responses to this question,3 and we can learn from what Abe says about universality and transformation, and how his understanding of both leads him to a specifically religious valuing of the dialogical encounter with the difference that is presented by Cobb.In the paper Masao Abe presented at the 1986 event, he proposed two crucial aspects of dialogue between world religions: (1) seeking clarification of the views peculiar to one’s own tradition through allowing the different views between traditions [End Page 123] to confront one another, and (2) being “free from the peculiarity of our own traditions in order to scrutinize the notion of ultimate reality itself most fitting to our contemporary human predicament and the future of humanity.” 4 The second aspect needs to involve “a very creative and penetrating discussion in which we must be radically critical of our own tradition so that we can re-examine and regrasp the essence of our religion from the more universal and more fundamental position,” and hence “find out the truly ultimate reality for the future of humanity.” 5There is a paradox here: Abe indicates both a more universal orientation and a reappropriation of the essence of our particular traditions. The key to movement beyond paradox as frustrating antinomy to paradox as gateway to vitality is the dialogical practice, and specifically dialogue in its association with mutual transformation and the emergence of a new universality of humankind. For Abe, this turns on the understanding of “universal”:To become a “universal” world religion does not imply a monolithic religion common to East and West, but rather calls for a dynamic structure capable of freely assuming any form, oriental or occidental, according to the area in which it develops and yet without being confined to any limitation of that area. Such a dynamic realization of the “universal” world religion may become possible for Christianity and Buddhism should they genuinely regrasp their respective notions of universal salvation for all mankind.6Dialogue as locus of “dynamic realization” makes possible a new universality, which, for Abe, is based on the self-negation that leads to the awakening of the “true Self,” and “enter[ing] the third historical age of mankind, namely the age of Self-awakened cosmology.” Because “true investigation of the self is always... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam:Masao Abe (1915–2006)James FredericksProfessor Masao Abe, a pioneer in the international dialogue among Christians and Buddhists, died in Kyoto, Japan, on September 10, 2006. He was 91 years old. Professor Abe was given a quiet funeral service reserved to family and close friends, according to sources in Kyoto.After the death of his mentor D. T. Suzuki, Abe became a leading exponent of Zen in the West and a (...) driving force in the encounter between Buddhism and Christianity. Abe must be credited with much of the intellectual vitality of this dialogue, as well as its relevance to contemporary social problems.Abe was a tireless exponent of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness as the standpoint for realizing the True Self, yet was also willing to place this basic Buddhist teaching in dialogue with Christianity. Rejecting the notion that Christianity and Buddhism were either fundamentally similar or completely different, Abe saw in interreligious dialogue an opportunity for the mutual transformation of dialogue partners and pursued dialogue to help Buddhists and Christians in confronting the threat of nihilism in the modern world.In the ruins of postwar Japan, Abe began his studies with Hajime Tanabe at the University of Kyoto, a prominent figure in the Kyoto school of contemporary Zen Buddhist philosophy in Japan. But it was his encounter with Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, another philosopher of Zen at the University of Kyoto, that would be decisive for Abe's turn to Zen. In a series of Zen retreats with Hisamatsu at Myoshinji Temple in western Kyoto, Abe was forced to confront the reality of nihilism within himself and eventually resolve this problem by entering the Zen standpoint of emptiness, wherein the enlightened self arises.At age 40, Abe left Kyoto for New York to study at Union Theological Seminary with two of the most prominent Christian theologians of his day, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. This encounter began a distinguished career of teaching, writing, and, above all, dialogue with leading Christian thinkers, including David Tracy, Langdon Gilkey, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Jurgen Moltmann, and Hans Kung. Abe served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Purdue University, Claremont College, Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Hawai'i, and other schools. In Germany, [End Page 139] Abe taught at Heidelberg, Tubingen, and Munich. In addition to his many Japanese publications, Abe wrote extensively in English. These works include Zen and Western Thought, an award-winning collection of essays, and a ground-breaking reflection on Christian belief in Christ interpreted from a Buddhist perspective, "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata." This essay appeared in conjunction with responses from several Christian and Jewish theologians, making the book itself a dialogue. Abe also engaged Jewish intellectuals with his Buddhist reflection on the Holocaust.In 1984, Abe and John Cobb convened a group of Buddhist and Christian intellectuals from Japan, North America, and Europe for dialogue in depth over a sustained period of time on a number of fundamental issues. He was also a guiding influence on the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, which continues his work of dialogue today.Masao Abe is survived by his wife Ikuko Abe, his constant companion in a life of sojourn and dialogue in the West. [End Page 140]James FredericksLoyola Marymount UniversityCopyright © 2007 The University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

This paper briefly introduces and analyzes Masao Abe of contemporary religious dialogue Theoretical Issues. First of all, the world's various religions for the contemporary situation, Abe pointed out that at present the most fundamental goal of interreligious dialogue is mutual creative transformation of inter-religious, the only way religion as a whole to respond effectively to the challenges of contemporary anti-religious ideology; Second, for intra-religious diversity issues, Abe made ​​a Buddhist "three Shenfo" theory as an integration of various religions of the (...) world's diversity and unity of the working hypothesis. I believe this hypothesis to some extent, demonstrated the interaction between learning and religion into the possibility and necessity, but on the other hand reflects a degree of superiority of Buddhism, it is difficult to Buddhism and other religions truly "equal" provide a theoretical basis for the mutual transformation. This essay contains a brief introduction and analysis of Masao 'Abe's theory on interfaith dialogue. First, according to Abe, the most serious challenge faced by all religions today is the anti-religious ideologies which question the legitimacy of religion as a whole. To cope with the challenge, interfaith dialogue must go beyond mutual understanding and engage in mutual transformation. Only then the authentic meaning of religious faith can be found and religion as a whole can respond to the anti-religious forces efficiently. Second with respect of the pluralistic situation of world religions, Abe proposed the three-body doctrine in Buddhism as a working hypothesis to deal with the unity and diversity of religious pluralism. On one hand, this proposal offers a theoretical basis for the mutual learning and mutual transformation of religions . On other hand it implies a superiority of Buddhism and to some extent hinders the equal mutual transformation of Buddhism and other religions. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to examine the problem connected with treating the philosophy of the Kyoto School as Buddhist philosophy, which is a serious trend among scholars concerned with this issue. This is a serious problem, since, in my opinion, it leads to a misinterpretation of both Buddhism and the position of this school, regardless of the fact that its representatives regularly refer to Buddhist ideas. Several such references are presented in the first section. Further considerations concern (...) the analysis of the Brahmajāla Sutta, which contains a critique of 62 classes of speculative views; this makes it an interpretational point of reference for the evaluation of the eventual Buddhist character of the Kyoto School. The third section presents preliminary conclusions of the analyses; the fourth section offers valuable literature for persons interested in the philosophy of the school. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto SchoolRobert E. Carter (bio)Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. By James W. Heisig. Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xi + 380. $21.95.Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School, by James W. Heisig, is indeed a very good book. It provides a systematic interpretation and appraisal of (...) the three key figures of the Kyoto school—Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji—together with an in-depth account of the sociopolitical context in which they worked. Heisig succeeds in indicating the importance of each of these philosophers both within the Japanese context and beyond. He deftly summarizes the philosophical positions of each of the three and details the interactions between them, as well as with other philosophers of their era. The book's style is accessible, although the ideas are often dense and the analysis subtle. There are no footnotes per se, but instead a bibliographical essay is provided for each of the sixty-six sections of the book. [End Page 273]Heisig claims that the Kyoto school philosophers give the West a way into the East like none other (p. 272). They thrust Japanese philosophical and religious thought onto the world stage, revealing an East Asian perspective to the outside world, as well as to the Japanese themselves. They self-consciously attempted to articulate the distinctiveness of the Japanese mind-set in particular, and the Eastern way of thinking generally. Heisig artfully weaves the thought and times of these three thinkers together into a tapestry of understanding and insight of the highest quality.As is always the case, however, there are issues that remain which might have been dealt with, and interpretive differences to be noted. Nishida began his philosophical journey with his groundbreaking Inquiry into the Good, published in 1911.1 His goal in that work, as Heisig describes it, was to introduce the important but radically nonphilosophical language of Zen to the closed world of philosophy, and conversely to use philosophy to find a language to talk about those things that Zen had always insisted were not susceptible to rationalization. The Inquiry created a significant stir in Japan upon its publication, and Nishida's appropriation of William James' notion of pure experience appeared to span the philosophical differences East and West without smoothing over those differences.Yet Heisig's critical honesty forces him to underplay the actual lasting importance of the Inquiry. Nishida, too, later criticized the heavy psychological emphasis of the book.2 However, it seems too strong to argue, as Heisig does, that the work is a classic only because of its influence and its place in Nishida's own philosophical development (p. 41). Heisig is frank in anticipating that some will find his diminishing of the Inquiry as "irreverent." I admire his irreverence as a cautionary attempt to save us all from a bandwagon elevation of Nishida and the Kyoto school, but I think he underestimates the subtle brilliance of the book and its profound originality. To be sure, the Inquiry is a notebook of insights and ideas to be developed. Not only is experiential nonduality a focus (and with it a critique of the dogma of intentionality), but there is also the reinstatement of religion as foundational to all systematic thinking, an account of God as both immanent and transcendent (including nothingness) together with God's role in Eastern thought, and a theory of ethics based on the innate tendencies within each of us as located at the deeper, unconscious levels of our nature. Heisig concludes that the Inquiry is "less an achievement than an agenda to direct his work in the years ahead" (p. 42). It seems evident to me that this pioneering work is both an immense achievement and an agenda for a lifetime of future investigation. The richness and suggestiveness of Nishida's explorations in the Inquiry seem to me to ensure that the work is genuinely worthy of being judged a classic on its own philosophical merits.Heisig recognizes over and over again the importance of the mystical element in all three... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 117-133 [Access article in PDF] Emptiness, Kenōsis, History, and Dialogue: The Christian Response to Masao Abe's Notion of "Dynamic Śūnyatā " in the Early Years of the Abe-Cobb Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Charles B. Jones The Catholic University of America Introduction Between 1980 and 1993, the Japanese Zen scholar Masao Abe resided in the United States, teaching in various places.1 This brought him into contact with many (...) American scholars and theologians, among whom was John Cobb, a Protestant theologian then working in the area of process theology. Many of the ideas that Abe brought from Japanese Buddhism and particularly from the "Kyōtō School" of Japanese philosophy appeared to Cobb intriguingly congruent with his theological work, and the two began a series of dialogues that came to include a larger and larger circle of Christian theologians2 and (mostly Western) Buddhist scholar-practitioners. The end result was a series of informal encounters as well as a series of three formal "International Buddhist-Christian Conferences" (1980, 1984, 1987; a second series of dialogues were held without Abe's attendance starting in 1998 after a hiatus under the name "International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter"3 ). From these encounters came an impressive number of publications from Abe and from a variety of other participants in what is sometimes known as the "Abe-Cobb Encounter."The agenda, following Cobb's suggestion and vocabulary, was to allow each side to "cross over" into the other; in other words, to study and internalize the worldview of the other in as much depth as possible without converting or losing one's connection with one's home tradition, abiding in the other side as a guest. Later, one was to "cross back," come home to one's own tradition and reflect on the benefits gained in wearing the other's shoes for a time.4 This agenda, which emphasized understanding the other's worldview and concepts of ultimate reality, suited the highly intellectual style of the dialogues, focused as they were on philosophical and theological concerns. [End Page 117]Nevertheless, even given the concern to study and understand the other's philosophical standpoint, a curious disconnect emerges when one studies the literature produced in this dialogue. During the early phase of these encounters in the 1980s, each side, Buddhist and Christian, appears to have taken one text as normative for the entirety of the other's tradition. For Abe, following his predecessors in the KyōtōSchool, the emblematic textfor Christianity was avery short one: the hymn toChrist recorded by Paul in Philippians 2:6-11. He was particularly drawn to the concept of kenōsis, "emptying," which he thought might serve as a cognate for the Buddhist idea of "emptiness" (Skt: śūnyatā ). While the Christians participating in the dialogueaccepted this as a point of contact, albeit with some reservations, others have objected strenuously to this approach, saying that Abe's method of interpreting this text did not hold to responsible methods of exegesis, and at any rate the passage was much too minute to support an entire theology of God and creation.5The Christian side by and large adopted much the same strategy in coming to grips with Buddhist thought, choosing a brief text as the paradigmatic statement of the Buddhist view of ultimate reality: the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Root Stanzas on the Middle Way; hereafter the MMK) of the second-century Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. In this instance, objections from the Buddhist side were not forthcoming, because Abe himself took the MMK as a normative statement of Buddhist thought. Nevertheless, his own presentation of Buddhism, especially his key notion of "dynamic śūnyatā, " went considerably beyond Nāgārjuna's presentation and thus elicited some objections from the Christian side for not hewing to their own understanding of Nāgārjuna. Because Abe never responded to these objections directly, the misunderstanding was left unresolved... (shrink)