Nishitani Keiji

1. Introducción. 2. Modernización, tradicionalismo y sincretismo en el pensamiento japonés contemporáneo. 3. Liberalismo, conservatismo y primeras corrientes socialistas y feministas (1868-1912): La modernidad filosófica en el Japón Meiji. El debate en torno al término «filosofía». Imperialismo e ilustración. Contexto del liberal-conservatismo. Los reformistas de Meirokusha: liberalismo, gradualismo y evolucionismo social. Conservadurismo: reacción a los peligros de la occidentalización y a la pérdida de identidad. Los prematuros movimientos socialistas, anarquistas y feministas. 4. Subjetividad e ideología (1912-1945): Kitaro Nishida y la (...) pluralidad filosófica en el interior y más allá de la Escuela de Kioto. La significación de Nishida en el panorama filosófico japonés del siglo XX. La denominación de la «Escuela»: Tosaka y su descripción de la «filosofía de la escuela de Kioto». La experiencia pura nishidiana y el paradigma del «no-yo». El cuestionamiento nishidiano de los presupuestos de la epistemología en Estudio sobre el Bien. La filosofía nishidiana del no-yo, la iluminación y sus problemas éticos. La investigación crítica y el análisis del poder ideológico: Tosaka. 5. Pensar la postguerra: memoria y superación del ultranacionalismo. Superación del vacío a través del arrepentimiento: Tanabe. Superación del vacío a través de la comprensión del nihilismo: Nishitani. La autopsia filosófico-política del ultranacionalismo japonés: Maruyama. Movimientos y orientaciones posteriores a los años 1950. Panorama. Filosofía y denuncia del patriarcado y el nacionalismo: Ueno. Transcrítica y república mundial: Karatani. 6. Nota final. (shrink)

This paper discusses the notion of disimagination a translation of the German word Entbildung, which was devised by Meister Eckhart as a reinterpretation of the Neoplatonic categories of abstraction (aphairesis) and negation (apophasis)in connection with Nishitani Keiji's standpoint of emptiness. Nishitani proposes a nonsubjective, nonrepresentational, and nonconceptual type of knowledge to avoid the problem of representation implied in the modern subjective self-consciousness that prevents our access to the reality of things. It is argued that what he calls a knowing of (...) non-knowing can be understood as a transposition of the problematics of aphairesis to a new context, that of the formless form. The ontology of images in the creative process, both cosmic and artistic, is examined from Nishitani's identification of likeness and suchness on the field of emptiness. It is suggested that the resulting denial of the traditional distinction between being and appearance approaches a critique closer to postfoundational metaphysics and, like disimagination, aims at an ascetic movement of self-negation and detachment from words and images that leads, in turn, to a creative and playful use of language free of representation. (shrink)

Our starting point is a remark made by an art historian, Charles Carman, to the theorist of art Norman Bryson regarding his interpretation of the Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji's standpoint of emptiness. Bryson claims that Nishitani's standpoint supports his contrast between Western and non-Western gaze. On the contrary, Carman sees Nishitani's standpoint closer to the Renaissance theory of vision as found in Alberti and Nicholas von Cues and so not as opposite to Western tradition as a whole but to a (...) major trend of it. Our suggestion here is that while Nishitani's standpoint illustrates an Asian way of thinking, at the same time it sheds light upon Western assumptions. Therefore, it constitutes a demonstration of how much it can be significant to integrate non-European cultures into the philosophical and art theory discussions in order to broaden our understanding of the discipline of aesthetics. (shrink)

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity. …Recent scholarship has provided a useful framework for interpreting the work of the Kyoto School philosopher Keiji Nishitani, through a comparative analysis of his critical relation to Friedrich Nietzsche.1 (...) No doubt Nishitani's lifelong attention to Nietzsche's writings had a substantial impact on the development of his thought. However, mapping the contours of this relationship is somewhat complicated by the fact that Nishitani was... (shrink)

A partire dalla seconda metà del 1800, dopo secoli di indifferenza e di isolamento, la cultura giapponese scopre la tradizione filosofica occidentale. Si inaugura una feconda stagione di traduzioni di classici, di viaggi in Occidente, che segnerà profondamente lo sviluppo della filosofia giapponese nel Novecento. In questo contesto di grande fermento, il pensiero di Keiji Nishitani risente profondamente dell’incontro con il Cristianesimo, con gli esistenzialisti europei e con Nietzsche, in particolare; suggestioni che si intrecciano in lui con la grande tradizione (...) filosofica orientale dello zen. Cuore della sua filosofia è la scoperta dell’aspetto insensato e tragico della vita: tale supremo atto di negazione del significato dell’esistenza costituisce il punto di partenza per una nuova, più alta consapevolezza della vita, per una definitiva liberazione da tale negatività e per il risveglio della coscienza religiosa. (shrink)

Attraverso un serrato confronto con i principali pensatori occidentali, da Kierkegaard a Schopenhauer, da Dostoevskij a Nietzsche, da Stirner a Heidegger, Nishitani propone una lettura del nichilismo tesa a evidenziarne l’inaggirabilità. Un momento esemplare del dialogo interculturale che la filosofia giapponese contemporanea ha voluto stabilire con il pensiero occidentale. Il pensiero e l’opera di Nishitani Keiji, uno dei massimi esponenti della scuola filosofica di Kyoto, costituiscono un importante momento di confronto tra la metafisica occidentale e il buddhismo zen nell’epoca del (...) dominio planetario della tecnica. Docente universitario e conferenziere internazionale, Nishitani ha pubblicato un vasto corpus di testi filosofici piò volte tradotti nelle principali lingue occidentali. (shrink)

This essay compares Scheler’s view of the person in his last period with the views of Keiji Nishitani, a Buddhist representative of the Kyoto School of phenomenology. Scheler eschewed a “substantialist” concept of the person, as did Nishitani in view of the Buddhist “non-self” doctrine. Both had experienced spiritual crises in their lives. Why did Nishitani turn to the Buddhist concept of “absolute nothingness”? Why did Scheler turn from theism to pantheism? Both saw traditional Christianity and its understanding of the (...) person as intellectually inadequate, though for different reasons. Nishitani focuses on the inadequacies of secondary influences in the Western concept of person, while Scheler focuses on problems of theodicy stemming from the problem of evil and of volition as the source of evil. Both abandon the Christian meaning of personhood. (shrink)

El artículo inicia con un análisis respecto a la posición de Nishitani en la escuela de Kioto y el peso de la misma en la filosofía occidental. Análogamente, la intención del texto es favorecer la distinción entre los conceptos de nihilidad y vacuidad, ambos presentes en Nishitani, particularmente en su concepción sobre la religión; en tal sentido, se aborda la función de la vivencia de nihilidad y la inapropiada estrategia religiosa de eludir la vivencia de la vacuidad, con lo cual (...) se obstaculiza la experiencia trascendental auténtica. Contrariamente, se propone que cuando la religión es un camino facultativo, orienta a la noción de una nada absoluta o una nada de la Deidad, preámbulo obligado para la comprensión de la filosofía espiritual de Nishitani. (shrink)

We may understand natural science as part of the attempt by human beings to understand themselves and their place in the world in which they find themselves. In this sense, as Karl Rahner has suggested, natural science flows naturally into anthropology. Consciously or unconsciously, science is always part of the drive to self-understanding. In an age of religious pluralism like ours, Christian faith in Asia is also brought face to face with the living reality of other religions, and that, too, (...) cannot but affect how we understand our shared humanity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article reviews the current literature on the relationship of the Kyoto School philosopher Keiji Nishitani to Nietzsche's writings. In particular, I respond to Bret Davis's treatment of the relationship between the two thinkers in his 2011 article: “Nishitani after Nietzsche: From the Death of God to the Great Death of the Will.” Through recourse to Nishitani's treatment of Nietzsche in The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism as well as his later work Religion and Nothingness, I dispute the claim that Nishitani's (...) eventual dissatisfaction with Nietzsche's philosophy is based on a negative assessment of will to power. I then show that it is primarily on the issue of time rather than that of will that Nishitani ultimately takes issue with Nietzsche's mature philosophical standpoint. Finally, I outline a possible response to Nishitani's criticisms from the perspective of Nietzsche's thought. (shrink)

Nishitani Keiji is well known as a leading representative of the Kyoto School. His main contributions are in the field of reli­gious philosophy based on Maha-ya-na Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, as his main works Religion and Nothingness and The Standpoint of Zen indicate. It may seem incongruous to asso­ciate Nishitani’s name with a discussion on science and technology. But it was this relationship to science, that is to say, the relationship between religion and science, to which Nishitani mostly directed his (...) interests which gradually led him to the study of technology itself.In this article, I have relied on Nishitani’s main work Religion and Nothingness to ascertain how he interpreted the conflict between religion and science in relation to nihility and then consider his insights on technology. The appearance of the mechanistic view of modern science connected with mechanical technology and the ten­dency toward the mechanization of man permeate increasingly not only the social structures but the inner life of man. At the same time, the individual is transformed into a subject in pursuit of his desires with a sense of meaninglessness. The nihility which modern science and technology produced ultimately turns into “emptiness”. The main concern here is how the problems of science and technology can be understood from the standpoint of “empti­ness.” Nishitani’s work that I mentioned above, however, does not necessarily deal with this question directly. Thus, I chose another treatise from the same period, “Science and Zen”, and approached the problem of science from the standpoint of empti­ness. Nishitani quotes a Zen Buddhist discussion about the “big fire” of space. It considers the position of the real self in the big fire that extinguishes all things. This reference to the big fire in space seems metaphorical but it is also scientifically plausible. Death is also a scientific actuality in space from a certain perspective. To take this actuality seriously as a problem of existence means, “the existential­izing of science”. It means to take outer space with its face of death as a place of death in the religious sense. This has been called “the Great Death” in Zen Buddhism, which is nothing other than conversion in a religious existence. At the same time, in this essay we learn Nishitani’s perspective about nuclear power, which continues to trouble us today. We will also consider “originary imagination” in his last treatise “Kū and Soku” as a possibility for discuss­ing technology in terms of emptiness. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Nishitani Keiji’s 西谷啟治 early and late thinking, in the discourse on world history and modernity during wartime and the postwar meditation on emptiness and historicity in Religion and Nothingness. Following the first part of the analysis, I will trace Nishitani’s critical indebtedness to Heidegger’s existential-phenomenological analysis of historicity in Being and Time, and thereby analyze how Nishitani attempts to solve the aporia of modernity by recourse to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. The essay will conclude with (...) some critical remarks that discern the limits and hidden dangers in Nishitani’s philosophical project. (shrink)

El maestro zen Hakuin Ekaku enseñaba a sus seguidores que para lograr la liberación del sufrimiento debían poner en tela de juicio su propia capacidad de comprensión y al mismo tiempo dotarse de una gran confianza en la posibilidad del despertar a la verdad que persigue el budismo. Su método consistía en practicar una serie de kōan, una técnica meditativa basada en la resolución de unos casos aparentemente paradójicos o ilógicos, hasta que el practicante llegara a convertirse en una «gran (...) masa de duda». Dos siglos más tarde, el filósofo japonés Nishitani Keiji, ampliamente reconocido como uno de los miembros más destacados de la llamada Escuela de Kioto, se propuso como tarea pensar el problema del nihilismo, como fenómeno filosófico pero también histórico y existencial. Este artículo examina el modo en que Nishitani aborda el problema del nihilismo y su propuesta de resolución a partir de la influencia ejercida por el maestro Hakuin en él y, más concretamente, el papel que desempeña en su argumentación la noción zen de «gran duda». Sugerimos que el pensamiento de Nishitani se puede situar en la línea de una tradición espiritual que se halla representada en el zen de Hakuin, en la medida en que ve en la duda radical una forma de hallar la certeza, o en la negación de la negación, una afirmación absoluta. (shrink)

For Whitehead and Nishitani, a rethinking of religion necessitates a rethinking of the metaphysics that underlie one’s concept of religion. The dynamism of religion is unveiled only within the metaphysical grounding of an ontology that accommodates the philosophical preference of “becoming” as an ultimate category of reality. The novelty of Whitehead’s theory of religion lies in the process metaphysics that it presupposes. For him, religion, like the whole of reality, is inherently developing and evolving. What Nishitani offers is a rethinking (...) of Western understanding of religion by way of an Asian speculative approach grounded in Zen Buddhism. He argues that Western religion, particularly Christianity and Judaism, has succumbed to the modern predicament of nihilism, or relative nothingness. He radicalizes this same nihility towards absolute nothingness (śūnyatā). For both Whitehead and Nishitani, despite the distortion of religion by religious fundamentalists, genuine religion consolidates and points a society towards its real destiny. However, the realization of religion’s role necessitates reflexivity on its own inherent dynamism. (shrink)

Het nihilisme speelt niet alleen een rol binnen de westerse filosofie. Ook binnen de boeddhistische filosofische traditie is aandacht besteed aan deze problematiek. Het oude boeddhisme kent een heilsleer die uitmondt in nirwana, dat letterlijk ‘uitdoving’ betekent: het uitdoven van begeerte, haat en onwetendheid. In het latere mahayana-boeddhisme speelt het niets een nog grotere rol: de filosoof Nâgârjuna stelt keer op keer dat alles ‘leeg’ is : de dingen hebben geen substantie, geen eigen wezen, en bestaan niet op zichzelf. De (...) heilsleer van het mahayana-boeddhisme is gericht op het existentieel realiseren van deze sunyata. Mede vanwege deze opvattingen is het boeddhisme vanaf de negentiende eeuw in het Westen vaak gerecipieerd als een nihilisme. De boeddhistische opvattingen over sunyata zijn echter juist bedoeld om het nihilisme te overwinnen. (shrink)

This paper hopes to contribute to the contemporary East-West and Buddhist-Christian dialogues through a comparative examination of how ethics is founded upon the notion of emptiness and its analogues in the thought of two Japanese thinkers, Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) of the Kyoto School of Philosophy, Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960), and the Russian Christian existentialist Ni-kolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). By comparing and contrasting Nishitani's notion of double-negation (from the standpoint of being to the standpoint of nihility and to the standpoint of emptiness) and (...) how it forms a basis for an ethics of circuminsessional interpenetration, with Watsuji's notion of the double-negation of the individual and society in ethics, and with Berdyaev's double-negation in his three forms of ethics (ethics of law, ethics of redemption, ethics of creativeness) we shall examine the structural similarities and points of non-exclusion of "Eastern" Buddhist philosophy and "Western" Christian philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction -- Nishida -- Nishitani -- Tanabe -- The Danish parallel -- Conclusion.

The list of publications having to do with Japanese intellectual history in general and Kyoto School philosophy in particular has grown steadily over the past years, both inside and outside of Japan. This is due in no small part to the important contributions made by those whose papers are included in this volume, the proceedings of an international conference held in June 2009 at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Although much remains to be done if Japanese philosophy is to (...) shed its esoteric and exotic image in order to take its rightful place in the curriculum as one of the many valuable sources of philosophical reflection, the ongoing dialogue among veterans in the field and younger scholars reflected in these pages is as promising as it has ever been. (shrink)

Monolitna kulturološka označenja kao što je Zapad ili Istok postala su sumnjiva i puki izraz parokijalizma u eri globalizacijskih procesa. Otuda, trebalo bi biti očito da svjetska filozofija nije nešto što se može ograničavati isključivo na jednu tradiciju koja započinje sa Talesom. Ona mora biti dostatno široka da obuhvati svaki čin filozofiranja, svaki oblik traganja za mudrošću, budući da ne moramo svi biti Zapadnjaci da bismo filozofirali. -/- Kako bi dali svoj doprinos prevladavanju općenite kulture ksenofobije na pragu 21. stoljeća (...) u Bosni i Hercegovini i Balkanu općenito, dvojica su priređivača Novih granica japanske filozofije, Nevad Kahteran i James W. Heisig, uključili čitav serijal tekstova (11 eseja o japanskoj filozofskoj tradiciji), potcrtavajući ovaj nesrazmjer u pogledu unošenja azijskih prinosa te napose modela dalekoistočnjakog mišljenja u našim filozofskim seminarima, potičući druge da rade na produbljivanju ovakovrsnih susretanja i transkulturalnom dijalogu. Zapravo, ovim sveskom se sumiraju rezultati prethodna četiri sveska Nanzan Instituta (Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 1, 2, 3 i 4) te japanski prinosi pluralizmu i interkulturalnim studijama postaju dostupni u našem jeziku. (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.

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)

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)

The twelfth bi-annual symposium of the Nanzan Institute took up the problem of the philosophical tradition of Japan and how it has fared abroad. There were two principal foci of the meetings: the history and future prospects of the study and teaching of Japanese philosophy outside of Japan, and the preparation of a Sourcebook of Japanese Philosophy aimed at providing a solid anthology of Japanese philospohical resources from the earliest times up to the present. To address these two questions, 16 (...) participants from six language-groups— Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish—were invited to Nanzan to deliver papers and discuss projects of common interest, including the Sourcebook. The final day of the conference included a discussion with selected Japanese philosophers and intellectual historians at Kyoto University. (shrink)