Agustín Jacinto Zavala
pp. 39–60
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Abstract
The Study of Religion (Shūkyō-gaku) is an early text from a one-year course, 1913-1914, which Nishida Kitarō imparted only once in his academic career. In this text, apart from references to mystics and to early and medieval Christian thinkers, Nishida tries to point out the basic elements of Eastern and Western religions through the writings of xviii-xxth century authors, among them participants in the Gifford Lectures, the Bampton Lectures and Hibbert Lectures. On the other hand, Nishida tries to find the corresponding characteristics of religion in Zen and True Pure Land Buddhism. In short, Nishida’s approach to a philosophy of religion gives us an overview of the problems concerning a Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
Marcello Ghilardi
pp. 61–81
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Abstract
This essay focuses on some affinities between the thoughts of the Dominican theologian Johannes Eckhart (1260-1327) and the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945). In particular, the theme of « image » is considered as a central issue to create some links and interrelations : for both thinkers we can’t avoid the dialectics between what lies beyond thought and the inner limits means of the practice of thinking, when confronted to its highest goal — the Absolute, or God. The attitude we can witness in studying and crossing the two experiences of thought can enhance the efforts for an intercultural renewal of philosophy and theology. The truth that appears remains one, but pluralist : it can respect the difference of the religious and philosophical identifications, without claiming to bring every single specificity in one undifferentiated system, and at the same time it can take care for what lies beyond every difference.
Jacynthe Tremblay
pp. 83–102
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Abstract
Nishida Kitarō ’s interest (1870-1945) for Christian theology is above all philosophical. Through his use of theological topics, he sought to deepen his own philosophical concepts and to show that a proper understanding of religion is based on a proper understanding of his « logic of place » (場所的論理, basho-teki ronri). He thus managed to establish something very important for the understanding of the human being : the self is a place. Not limited to the status of a knowing subject classifying objects and separated from the intuitive aspects of knowledge, the self becomes the place of the encounter with God. Then, it is able to possess itself in what transcends itself, and to assert itself, as God made himself, in the self-negation, thus becoming a true self or a true individual.
Louis Roy
pp. 147–167
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Abstract
This essay presents the thought of Nishitani, philosopher and Zen practitioner, introducing the main topics on which he concentrated in his dialogue with Eckhart, Nietzsche and Heidegger : the Great Doubt (taigi), the Great Death (taishi), religion (shūkyō), concentration (samādhi, sammai), the ego (jiga), the true self (jiko), selfness (jitai), suchness (tathatā, nyojitsu), nothingness (mu), nihility (kyomu, the « hollow nothing »), and emptiness (śūnyatā, kū ; literally : heavenly openness). Nishitani understood remarkably well some important aspects of Western philosophy, which he critically related to convictions coming from his Buddhist tradition. As a consequence, this article offers an interpretation of Nishitani’s vigorous and original approach. Finally, it briefly indicates avenues of renewal for a theological enterprise that is more and more multicultural.
Nishitani Keiji
pp. 169–198
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Abstract
The influence of Nietzsche’s and Eckhart’s thoughts permeates through all the work of Nishitani. In this beautiful piece of work, written during his research stay (from 1937 to 1939) at the University of Freiburg under the guidance of Heidegger, Nishitani gives a truly original and refreshing interpretation of Eckhart’s mystic, contrasting it with the figure of Zarathustra in Nietzsche. Beyond their respective historical backgrounds and own agendas, he finds in them the same fundamental attitude, that is the deepening of what he terms the « dialectical movement of Life » (which consists in the affirmation of human through his negation) in the direction of the groundless ground sustaining all existence. By « elemental nature of Life », he means the original spring of life, which is groundless and limitless, which is without reason. Even though this is an early essay (1938), it points to some of Nishitani’s deepest insights, and outlines most of the topics to which he will later go back again and again : emptiness, knowledge of non-knowledge (as opposed to the dichotomy of subject-object), objectivity linked to the intellectual representation, far side understood as near side, and so on. Even the topic of nihilism, though not namely mentioned, is present behind the illustration of the feeling that it all comes to the same. Owing to the fact that these reflections still have the simplicity and clarity of the first formulation, it is much easier to understand their implications and connections. In a way, this essay might be seen as a prelude to the tremendous developments that nishitanian thought will undergo until the masterwork of 1961, Religion and Nothingness (『宗教とはなにか』)
Bernard Stevens
pp. 199–213
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Abstract
This paper offers an account of the way Nishitani presents the problem of evil and sin in Religion and Nothingness, trying to prove that this question has an essential role in the deepening of self-awareness towards nothingness and emptiness. In order to see Nishitani’s thought in a wider horizon, it is briefly compared to Ricoeur’s analysis of the same problem. One can then conclude that, despite the differing metaphysical standpoints of the two philosphers, they tend to agree on the question of evil because of its aporetic nature, forcing to « think more an differently ».
Vincent Giraud
pp. 271–296
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Abstract
Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) proposed a profound rethinking of metaphysical themes beginning from the Buddhist conception of emptiness or nothingness (Japanese : kū ; Sanskrit : śūnyatā). Like Augustine (354-430), the supreme thinker of conversion in the West, he brought philosophical thought and religious quest into the closest possible conjunction. Indeed, the new conceptual apparatus built up by Nishitani around śūnyatā makes sense only for one able to undergo a religious conversion or turning-about, a radical decentering of one’s existence in the direction of emptiness, which yields an authentic access to being. His philosophical grasp of the essence of religion brings him into mutually illuminating proximity to Augustine, thus shedding a new light on the possible use of Buddhist categories themselves for contemporary thought.
Giancarlo Vianello
pp. 297–312
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Abstract
In the early ‘60 Ueda Shizuteru went to study in Marburg, under the tutorship of Ernst Benz. In those years his work focused on Meister Eckhart’s speculation and the comparison with Buddhism. Namely Ueda’s study reveals two different approaches to the question of nothingness. Mystics of nothingness and Buddhist śūnyatā are analyzed in their constitutive aspects. This in-depth examination will prove valuable, not only as intercultural study, but also as a contribution to the interpretation of the nihilistic context that Europe and Japan are sharing and must face. Ueda’s observations, as well as those of other authors of the Kyōto School, offer a totally different perspective in approaching the ontological and theological cruces of the western thought.
Raquel Bouso
pp. 313–339
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Abstract
In 1923 Rudolf Otto gathered a number of appendices in Das Heilige (1917) in one of which he connected Zen Buddhism and the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. The common denominator was life, as it lives without reason, lives because it lives, likewise the righteous man works for the sake of working and only then is genuinely free. When, in 1965 Shizuteru Ueda published his doctoral dissertation on Eckhart, he included a comparison with Zen returning to that topic. In light of the dichotomy action-contemplation in the Western tradition, we examine the similarities and differences between Eckhart and Zen pointed out by Ueda in this regard and its meaning for contemporary thought. In both cases the projection beyond God results in a new way of being and acting in the world : who has experienced this emptiness does not ask why, does not seek anymore, and therefore has found.
John P. Keenan
pp. 341–363
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Abstract
Abe Masao’s contribution to late twentieth-century Buddhist-Christian dialogue was important in opening new avenues of interfaith understanding. However, some clarity in this dialogue was sacrificed when Christian participants were given to believe that they encountered « the Buddhist view » in Abe’s presentations. The present article contends that in significant ways Abe represented only the Kyōto School philosophy that drew on earlier Japanese philosophers of Absolute Nothingness and their appropriation of Zen enlightenment as the locus for all religious understanding, a place where all negation and affirmation are simultaneously affirmed and denied. The present article contends that Abe’s Kyōto School philosophy does not represent the broad classical traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, wherein emptiness does not mean absolute nothingness, but the dependent arising of all places and all philosophies.
