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Keiji Nishitani

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(Redirected from Nishitani Keiji) Japanese university professor, scholar, and Kyoto School philosopher
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Keiji Nishitani
西谷 啓治
Born(1900-02-27)February 27, 1900
Ishikawa, Japan
DiedNovember 24, 1990(1990-11-24) (aged 90)
Kyoto, Japan
Nationality Japanese
Alma materKyoto Imperial University
Notable workReligion and Nothingness
EraContemporary philosophy
Region
SchoolKyoto School
InstitutionsKyoto Imperial University
Main interestsPhilosophy of religion, nihilism, nothingness, emptiness, mysticism
The Kyoto School of Philosophy
at Kyoto University
Topics
Individuals
Historical background

Keiji Nishitani (西谷 啓治, Nishitani Keiji, February 27, 1900 – November 24, 1990) was a Japanese philosopher. He was a scholar of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Kitarō Nishida. In 1924, Nishitani received his doctorate from Kyoto Imperial University for his dissertation "Das Ideale und das Reale bei Schelling und Bergson". He studied under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1937 to 1939.

Career

Nishitani held the principal Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Kyoto University from 1943 until becoming emeritus in 1964. He then taught philosophy and religion at Ōtani University. At various times Nishitani was a visiting professor in the United States and Europe.

According to James Heisig, after being banned from holding any public position by the United States Occupation authorities in July 1946, Nishitani refrained from drawing "practical social conscience into philosophical and religious ideas, preferring to think about the insight of the individual rather than the reform of the social order."

In James Heisig's Philosophers of Nothingness Nishitani is quoted as saying "The fundamental problem of my life … has always been, to put it simply, the overcoming of nihilism through nihilism."

Thought

On Heisig's reading, Nishitani's philosophy had a distinctive religious and subjective bent, drawing Nishitani close to existentialists and mystics, most notably Søren Kierkegaard and Meister Eckhart, rather than to the scholars and theologians who aimed at systematic elaborations of thought. Heisig further argues that Nishitani, "the stylistic superior of Nishida," brought Zen poetry, religion, literature, and philosophy organically together in his work to help lay the difficult foundations for a breaking free of the Japanese language, in a similar way to Blaise Pascal or Friedrich Nietzsche. Heisig argues that, unlike Nishida who had supposedly focused on building a philosophical system and who towards the end of his career began to focus on political philosophy, Nishitani focused on delineating a standpoint "from which he could enlighten a broader range of topics," and wrote more on Buddhist themes towards the end of his career.

In works such as Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani focuses on the Buddhist term Śūnyatā (emptiness/nothingness) and its relation to Western nihilism. To contrast with the Western idea of nihility as the absence of meaning Nishitani's Śūnyatā relates to the acceptance of anatta, one of the three Right Understandings in the Noble Eightfold Path and the rejection of the ego in order to recognize the Pratītyasamutpāda, to be one with everything. Stating: "All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing." However, Nishitani always wrote and understood himself as a philosopher akin in spirit to Nishida insofar as the teacher—always bent upon fundamental problems of ordinary life—sought to revive a path of life walked already by ancient predecessors, most notably in the Zen tradition. Nor can Heisig's reading of Nishitani as "existentialist" convince in the face of Nishitani's critique of existentialism—a critique that walked, in its essential orientation, in the footsteps of Nishida's "Investigation of the Good" (Zen no Kenkyū).

Among the many works authored by Nishitani in Japanese, are the following titles: Divinity and Absolute Negation (Kami to zettai Mu; 1948), Examining Aristotle (Arisutoteresu ronkō; 1948); Religion, Politics, and Culture (Shūkyō to seiji to bunka; 1949); Modern Society's Various Problems and Religion (Gendai shakai no shomondai to shūkyō; 1951); Regarding Buddhism (Bukkyō ni tsuite; 1982); Nishida Kitaro: The Man and the Thought (Nishida Kitarō, sono hito to shisō; 1985); The Standpoint of Zen (Zen no tachiba; 1986); Between Religion and Non-Religion (Shūkyō to hishūkyō no aida; 1996). His written works have been edited into a 26-volume collection Nishitani Keiji Chosakushū (1986-1995). A more exhaustive list of works is accessible on the Japanese version of the present wikipage.

List of works

Collected Works 26 vols. (Tokyo: Sōbunsha , 1986–95) .

CW1: Philosophy of Fundamental Subjectivity, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1940)

  • Part I: Religion and Culture
  • ‘Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart’ (Festschrift for Professor Hatano Sei’ichi , Iwanami Shoten, September 1938)
  • ‘Religion, History, Culture’ (Tetsugaku Kenkyū , No. 250, January 1937)
  • ‘Modern Consciousness and Religion’ (Keizai Ōrai , Vol. 10, No. 7, July 1935)
  • ‘Modern European Civilisation and Japan’ (Shisō , No. 215-16, April–May 1940)
  • Part II: History and Nature
  • ‘Timeliness and Untimeliness in Morality’ (Risō , No. 48, 1933)
  • ‘The Historical and the Congenital’ (Shisō , No. 109-10, June–July 1931)
  • ‘Patterns of Human Interpretation and Their Significance’ (Risō , No. 55-56, 1935)
  • ‘Individuality and Universality in Life’ (Ōtani Gakuhō , Vol. 12, No. 3, October 1931)

CW2: Philosophy of Fundamental Subjectivity, Vol. 2

  • Part III: Thought and Will
  • ‘On the Problem of Evil’ (Tetsugaku Kenkyū , No. 142, 1928)
  • ‘Schelling’s Identity Philosophy and the Will: The Real and the Ideal’ (Tetsugaku Kenkyū , No. 104-5, 1924)
  • ‘Transcendentality of the Object: Spiritualism of No Spirit’ (Shisō , No. 44, June 1925)
  • ‘Kant’s Aesthetic Ideas: The Link between Intuition and Feeling’ (Shisō , No. 51, January 1926)
  • ‘Miscellaneous Thoughts on Religion’ (Shisō , No. 77, March 1928)
  • ‘Dialectic of Religious Existence’ (Shisō , No. 159-61, August–October 1935)

CW3: Studies on Western Mysticism

  • ‘A History of Mysticism’ (Iwanami Kōza: Tetsugaku , Vol. 4, 1932)
  • ‘Mysticism’s Ethical Thought’ (Iwanami Kōza: Rinrigaku , Vol. 14, 1941)
  • ‘The Problem of Mysticism’ (Tetsugaku Kenkyū , No. 334, 1944)
  • ‘Mysticism’ (Gendai Kirisutokyō Kōza , Vol. 4, 1956)
  • ‘Plotinus’ Philosophy’ (Naganoken Suwa Tetsugakukai , Summer 1929)
  • ‘The Problem of Evil in Augustine’ (Tetsugaku , Vol. 1, No. 3, 1946)
  • ‘The Problem of Knowledge in Augustine’ (Kirisutokyō Bunka , No. 31, November 1948)
  • ‘Augustine and the Position of Contemporary Thought’ (Kirisutokyō Bunka , No. 34, March 1949)

CW4: Contemporary Society’s Problems and Religion

  • Part I: Contemporary Society’s Problems and Religion
  • Religion, Politics and Culture (Kyoto: Hōzōkan , 1949)
  • ‘Problems of Contemporary Religion’
  • Contemporary Society’s Problems and Religion (Kyoto: Hōzōkan , 1951)
  • Part II: Philosophy of World History and Historical Consciousness
  • ‘Philosophy of World History’
  • Worldview and Stateview (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1941)
  • ‘Historical Consciousness’

CW5: Aristotle Studies (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1948)

  • ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Sensation’
  • ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Imagination’
  • ‘Aristotle’s Theory of the Intellect’

CW6: Philosophy of Religion

  • ‘Prolegomena to Philosophy of Religion’
  • ‘Religion and Philosophy’
  • ‘Introduction to Philosophy of Religion’
  • ‘Marxism and Religion’
  • ‘The Problem of Evil’
  • ‘Buddhism and Christianity’
  • ‘The Problem of Mythology’
  • ‘The Transethical’
  • ‘Science and Religion’

CW7: God and the Absolute Nothing

  • God and the Absolute Nothing (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1948)
  • ‘German Mysticism and German Philosophy’

CW8: Nihilism

  • Nihilism (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1949)
  • ‘Nihilism and Existence in Nietzsche’
  • Russian Nihilism (Tokyo: Kōbundō , 1949)
  • ‘Problems of Atheism’

CW9: Nishida’s Philosophy and Tanabe’s Philosophy

CW10: What Is Religion: Essays on Religion, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha , 1961)

CW11: The Standpoint of Zen: Essays on Religion, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha , 1986)

CW12: Hanshan’s Poetry (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō , 1986)

CW13: Philosophical Studies

CW14: Lectures on Philosophy, Vol. 1

CW15: Lectures on Philosophy, Vol. 2

CW16: Lectures on Religion

CW17: Lectures on Buddhism

CW18: Lectures on Zen and Jōdo

CW19: Lectures on Culture

CW20: Occasional Essays, Vol. 1

CW21: Occasional Essays, Vol. 2

CW22: Lectures on Shōbōgenzō, Vol. 1

CW23: Lectures on Shōbōgenzō, Vol. 2

CW24: Lectures at Ōtani University, Vol. 1

CW25: Lectures at Ōtani University, Vol. 2

CW26: Lectures at Ōtani University, Vol. 3

English translations

Monographs

  • Nishitani Keiji. 1982. Religion and Nothingness. Translated by Jan Van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press. (ISBN 0-520-04946-2)
  • Nishitani Keiji. 1990. The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Translated by Graham Parkes and Aihara Setsuko. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 1991. Nishida Kitarō. Translated by Yamamoto Seisaku and James W. Heisig. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2006. On Buddhism. Translated by Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2012. The Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji 1900-1990 - Lectures on Religion and Modernity. Translated by Jonathan Morris Augustine and Yamamoto Seisaku. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. (ISBN 0-7734-2930-1)

Articles

  • Nishitani Keiji. 1960. ”The Religious Situation in Present-day Japan.” Contemporary Religions in Japan, 7-24.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 1984. ”Standpoint of Zen.” Translated by John C. Maraldo. The Eastern Buddhist 17/1, 1–26.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 1989. ”Encounter with Emptiness.” In The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji (edited by Taitetsu Unno). Jain Publishing Company. 1-4.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 1990. "Religious-Philosophical Existence in Buddhism." Translated by Paul Shepherd. The Eastern Buddhist (New Series) 23, 1-17.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2004a. ”The Awakening of Self in Buddhism.” In The Buddha Eye - An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries (edited by Frederick Franck). World Wisdom: Bloomington, Indiana. 11–20.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2004b. ”The I-Thou Relation in Zen Buddhism.” In The Buddha Eye - An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries (edited by Frederick Franck). World Wisdom: Bloomington, Indiana. 39–53.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2004c. ”Science and Zen.” In The Buddha Eye - An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries (edited by Frederick Franck). World Wisdom: Bloomington, Indiana. 107–135.
  • Nishitani Keiji. 2008. ”My Views on ”Overcoming Modernity”." In Overcoming Modernity - Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (translated and edited by Richard Calichman). New York: Columbia University Press. 51-63.

Notes

  1. ^ James W. Heisig. Philosophers of Nothingness. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001.
  2. Heisig, James W. (2001). Philosophers of nothingness : an essay on the Kyoto school. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 058546359X. OCLC 53344327.
  3. "The abyss of Keiji Nishitani" by Eugene Thacker, Japan Times, 30 Apr. 2016.
  4. Nishitani, Keiji (1982). Religion and nothingness (1st paperback ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520043294. OCLC 7464711.

References

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