China & East Asia · 1900–1990
Nishitani Keiji
Kyoto School thinker of nihilism and emptiness
Argued that modern nihilism can only be overcome by passing through nothingness to the standpoint of emptiness (śūnyatā). He attended Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg in 1937–39.
Life and thought
Nishitani Keiji was born in 1900 in Ishikawa prefecture. Illness and his father’s early death marked his youth, and he found his questions in Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Zen. He studied under Nishida in Kyoto and attended Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg from 1937 to 1939. His part in wartime discussions of Japan’s “world-historical” mission led the occupation authorities to bar him from teaching for several years. Reinstated, he taught the philosophy of religion at Kyoto and became the school’s leading voice abroad; he died in 1990.
His theme was nihilism. Modern science and the loss of faith in God leave a “field of nihility” beneath everything, an abyss that most people avoid looking into. Nietzsche showed the way partway, by facing it; but Nishitani held that one must go through nihility to the standpoint of emptiness (śūnyatā), where a thing is no longer an object set over against a self but shows itself as what it is, on its own ground. Religion, on this view, is a transformation of how the self stands in this world. His Religion and Nothingness opened a long dialogue with Christian theology.
Works
Teachers
1870–1945Nishida KitarōFounder of the Kyoto School1889–1976Martin HeideggerNishitani attended Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg from 1937 to 1939.Shaped by
1844–1900Friedrich NietzscheGerman philologist who diagnosed the death of GodMeanwhile, in other traditions
1895–1973Max HorkheimerDirector of the Frankfurt Institute who defined critical theory1898–1979Herbert MarcuseFrankfurt School exile who became the New Left’s philosopher1900–2002Hans-Georg GadamerHeidegger’s student, who made hermeneutics a philosophy of understanding1900–1976Gilbert RyleOxford philosopher who mocked the “ghost in the machine”1902–1994Karl PopperViennese-born philosopher of science and defender of the open society1903–1969Theodor W. AdornoFrankfurt philosopher, music theorist and critic of the culture industryOn the record
Nishitani’s 1949 book is given as “The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism” (《虚无主义》).
The 1949 book (Tokyo: Kōbundō) is titled simply Nihirizumu (Nihilism); “The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism” is the title of Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara’s English translation (SUNY Press, 1990). His 1961 Shūkyō to wa nanika (What Is Religion?) is known in English as Religion and Nothingness, translated by Jan Van Bragt (1982).
Sources: Wikipedia, “Keiji Nishitani” (list of collected works) · Kyushu University Library catalogue, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (原タイトル: ニヒリズム) · SUNY Press, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism