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The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 37, Spring 2009, pp.
44-65(Article)
For additional information about this article
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JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 37, 2009.
Copyright 2009 The Pennsylvania State University, University
Park, PA.
44
Dancing Through Nothing
Nietzsche, the Kyoto School, and Transcendence
BRIAN SCHROEDER
I should only believe in a God who knew how to dance. And when I
saw my Devil I found him serious, thorough, deep, and solemn: it
was the Spirit of
Heavinessthrough him do all things fall. Not with wrath but with
laughter does one kill. Come, let us kill the Spirit of
Heaviness!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Z :I On Reading and Writing
Here lies the secret of Nietzsches Dionysus: on the outside we
see a strong and heroic figure who does not shrink even from a
religion of Satan,
but on the inside, beneath the exterior garments, lies the heart
of a sage overflowing with infinite love.
Tanabe Hajime, Philosophy as Metanoetics
The most remarkable feature of Nietzsches religion may be the
sound of laughter that echoes through it. He teaches that one can
laugh
from the ground of the soul, or rather that the souls groundless
ground is laughter itself.
Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
Nietzsche and the Early Kyoto School
Among the Western thinkers who have most influenced the thinking
of the so-called Kyoto school, especially the philosophies of
Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji, Nietzsche clearly stands in the
forefront. 1 His proclamation of the death of God, the greatest of
events, signals also the demise of traditional conceptions of
divinity, self, subjectivity, and transcendence. In full response
to Nietzsches herald call for a revaluation of all values, in their
respective ways Tanabe and Nishitani advance nonmetaphysical,
nontheistic conceptions of transcendence and the self. One finds in
them a language freed from many Western metaphysical
presuppositions, yet wholly capable of engaging that
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 45
very metaphysical tradition from a new hermeneutical
perspective, all the while advancing their own cultural,
philosophical, and religious commitments and inquiries. They
recognize in Nietzsches thinking an attempt to develop a genuine
world philosophythat is, a thinking that is not conditioned by and
thus confined to the strictures of the predominantly rational
metaphysics that had heretofore characterized the movement of
Western reflection. Nietzsche thought that few contemporary and
future readers (for at least the following century) would be able
to understand his philosophical vision, as they were too
constrained culturally and linguistically by the very metaphysics
he sought to subvert and overcome. Visionary though he was,
however, he could not foresee the emergence of the thinking one
finds in the Kyoto school, which in its own way is likewise
concerned to develop a world thinking. 2
The Kyoto school, which has the distinction of formulating the
first genu-inely comparative philosophy of religion, is
characterized primarily by its active engagement with post-Kantian
European thinking. Taking its point of departure from the thinking
of Nishida Kitaro (18701945), widely consid-ered modern Japans
first original philosopher, the Kyoto school came into its own via
Nishidas students and successors, Tanabe Hajime (18851961) and
Nishitani Keiji (19001990), who through their original
contributions helped shape and solidify the schools early identity
by their association with contemporary European thinking of the
day. Both Tanabe and Nishitani studied in Germany during the years
between the first and second world wars (Tanabe in 192224,
Nishitani in 193639), engaging the history of Western thought from
its ancient through to its modern expressions, with particular
focus on Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx,
Nietzsche, and Bergson, mediated by direct encounters with Husserl
and especially Heidegger, the very thinkers with whom Nishida had
sent them to study. Upon returning to Japan, they commenced the
work for which the Kyoto school is primarily known: the interaction
of European and East Asian thinking.
In contrast to the tendency in modern Western thinking to
separate philosophi-cal and religious discourse, Asian philosophy
is and has always been generally religious in orientation. This is
no less true of the early Kyoto school, whose distinguishing
characteristic was its adoption of a decidedly religious
orientation at a time when the major currents of European thinking,
such as existentialism and phenomenology, were moving away from
such a stance. This led many of the thinkers associated with the
Kyoto school also to engage seriously the Western theological
tradition. Conversely, this engagement exercised a significant
influ-ence on certain currents of twentieth-century radical
theology, exhibited by an unprecedented openness to and interaction
with non-Western traditions, particu-larly Buddhism, in an attempt
to move beyond the pale of comparison by actively incorporating
fundamental insights of Buddhism as a means to deepening their own
metaphysical and ethical grounds.
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46 BRIAN SCHROEDER
Pioneers in establishing a cross-cultural dialogue based on an
essentially comparative approach, the Kyoto school philosophers
nevertheless generally assert the superiority of the East Asian
tradition over that of the European (primar-ily with respect to the
question of the status of nothingness and the overcoming of
nihilism, construed as the fundamental problem of contemporary
thought and culture). And while the thinking of the Kyoto school is
diverse and resists any particular identification (indeed, there
are some associated with the Kyoto school who resist that very
nomenclature), several basic themes emerged that have since molded
and facilitated its reception in the West: its trenchant analysis
and critique of nihilism as the fundamental problem of the
contemporary era, its unique interpretation of the individual
existent, its recognition of the death of God, and, most important
for the purpose of the present essay, its rethinking of the meaning
of transcendence.
Kenosis and Nothingness
For Nishitani, as well as for Tanabe, the issue is
straightforward, according to Jan Van Bragt: The West has nowhere
to go but in the direction of the Eastern (Buddhist) ideal, but it
cannot do so except from its own Western (Christian) premises. 3
Taking this bold statement as a starting point, let us consider the
revaluation of what may well be the greatest casualty of both
radical theology and postmodern thinking, namely, the concept of
transcendence. Certainly no other concept has been so thoroughly
assaulted in the past two centuries, often with justification. The
contemporary focus on immanence as opposed to transcen-dence has
provoked many progressive thinkers to dismiss transcendence as the
vestige of an oppressive past metaphysics, with the unfortunate
consequence of their becoming closed to the potential and actual
power that a revalued notion of transcendence can bring. Although
transcendence is not a concept one normally associates with
Nietzsche, both Tanabe and Nishitani offer readings of his
phi-losophy that help them to advance their own reinterpretations
of transcendence. And even if their philosophical approaches differ
fundamentally, they share significant similarities due to their
common Buddhist orientation as mediated through their incorporation
of certain Christian theological concepts.
While few philosophers today would identify Nietzsche as a
radical theo-logical thinkerthat is, as one in continuity with the
intellectual and prophetic currents of ChristianityNietzsches
thinking is in fact deeply theological at heart, and the death of
God is his most profound and misunderstood theologi-cal
observation. The kenotic theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer, for one,
has long argued this position, having recognized early on, along
with several others, the Kyoto schools important contribution in
helping to inspire a new theology by means of its insights into
such topics as transcendence, dialectic, God, and
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 47
kenosis , stemming from their various Buddhist perspectives. 4
The kenosis or self- emptying of the Godhead that constitutes the
initial movement of the death of God has been virtually ignored or
suppressed by Christian imaginative and theological consciousness,
not to mention by philosophy, resulting in the pre-dominance of
traditional or orthodox conceptions of transcendence and of Being
as divine entity. This is what many, if not most, consider God, and
certainly Nietzsches pronouncement of the death of God implies the
impossibility or, stated otherwise, the nothingness of such
transcendence.
Many, if not most, equate or at least connect the notions of
transcendence and God. According to Nietzsche, God is the will to
nothingness pronounced holy ( A 18). Precisely at this juncture,
though, Tanabe takes a significant point of departure from
Nietzsche, distinguishing the Buddhist will of nothingness from the
Nietzschean will to nothingness. Tanabe writes: The will of
nothingness is not a will to noth-ingness that wills nothingness as
its goal. The will to nothingness may be a will to being, but this
is not the case with the will of nothingness, since the latter is
not a will engaged in the quest for nothingness by itself. It is a
will that seeks no-thing by simultaneously abandoning its own
immediate will and being made to abandon its every immediate
desire. This is the very process that takes place in the awakening
to Buddhahood. 5 This insightful passage underscores that there are
diverse ways of interpreting nothingness that overlap and
illuminate one another. An important question is whether and to
what extent Nietzsches philosophy remains confined to the very
metaphysics that he seeks to overcome ( berwinden ) and just how
much Buddhist thinking, especially Zen, signals such an overcoming
or breakthrough ( Durchbruch ). The nothingness that becomes
present in the kenosis of the death of God inverts or, rather,
radically immanentizes the movement of transcendence, con-joining
the abstraction of pure thought with the concretion of lived
experience.
Absolute Nothingness and the Death of God
The Kyoto school first recognized that what conjoins the East
and the West philosophically is precisely the issue of nihilism;
how the two traditions approach and deal with the question is what
separates them. A crucial difference is that between a Buddhist
conception of time, which is, according to Nishitani, at once
circular and rectilinear, and the thought of the eternal
recurrence, which Nietzsche calls the most extreme form of
nihilism: the nothing (the meaning-less), eternally. The European
form of Buddhism ( WP 55). 6 Nietzsche is, to be sure,
fundamentally a Western thinker, but his thinking also marks the
Wests deepest moment of radical transformationthe death of Godand
it is here that Tanabe and Nishitani can recognize him as a kindred
spirit.
Both Tanabe and Nishitani retain the prominent concept of
absolute nothingness (Jp. zettai mu, mattaku mu ) from the
teachings of their mentor
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48 BRIAN SCHROEDER
Nishida Kitaro, albeit refining and extending it in unique and
at times mutually informative ways. 7 This concept derives from and
is practically synonymous with the key Mahayana, especially
Madhyamika, Buddhist term sunyata (Jp. ku ). The various forms of
Buddhism that flowered in East Asia, particularly Chan and Zen, in
large measure resulted from interaction between Indian Mahayana and
Chinese Daoism. The standpoint of absolute nothingness reflects the
move-ment of Dao: doing nondoing or acting nonacting (Ch. wei wuwei
), the spontaneous, unconditioned way of natural existence. The
simultaneous unity and difference of all entities, absolute
nothingness or emptiness, does not mean nonbeing in the sense of
the conceptual opposite of being. There is neither a temporal nor a
spatial disjunction expressed in the difference between absolute
nothingness and being or between absolute nothingness and the
relative nothing-ness of nonbeing. Absolute nothingness is the
standpoint (Jp. tachiba )not the ground ( Grund )from which all
that is and is not emerges as it is grasped by the non-egocentric
self. After Nishitanis critical appropriation of it, the term
standpoint assumed an important role for some in the Kyoto school,
including Tanabe, as it denotes a fundamentally spatial
orientation, not a purely conceptual one. The term ground is not
adequate to express absolute nothingness, as it is precisely the
dominance of reason, or metaphysics, that is called into question
insofar as reason postulates the dualism of subject and object.
This dualism denotes the field of consciousness, therein
reinforcing the sovereign status of the I, the egoistic self that
must be broken through in order to actualize the fundamental
standpoint of non-ego or no-self (Sk. anatman ; Jp. muga ). 8 As an
Existenz of non-ego, says Nishitani, being, doing, and becoming in
time all emerge into their nature on the field of emptiness which
is their absolute negation. And on this field [Jp. ba ] constant
doing is constant non-doing. 9
Borrowing the terminology of Nicolas Cusanus, absolute
nothingness is the absoluta coincidentia oppositorum in and through
which the present moment is unfolded [ explicata ] by time, for
nothing is found in time except the now. 10 Absolute nothingness
signifies the fundamental unity that encloses all differ-entiation
(though, according to Tanabe, this standpoint is only reached
dialecti-cally). The field of bottomlessness or the None in
contrast to, and beyond the One, absolute nothingness is not the
negation that grounds nihilism but, to use a key term employed by
Nishida, the locus or place (Jp. basho ) wherein there is nothing
that is not present; 11 in other words, everything exists on its
own as it is. In Cusanuss thinking, God is the simultaneous center
and noncenter, the absolute maximum and absolute minimum, the
infinite ground and finite limitation of all that is. Similarly,
claims Nishitani, on the field of sunyata, the center is everywhere
. Each thing in its own selfness shows the mode of being of the
center of all things. Each and every thing becomes the center of
all things and, in that sense, becomes an absolute center. This is
the absolute uniqueness of things, their reality. . . . Only on the
field of sunyata can the totality of things,
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 49
each of which is absolutely unique and an absolute center of all
things, at the same time be gathered into one. 12 The field of
sunyata (Jp. ku no ba ), though not the ground of being, is
nevertheless the locus of the circuminsessional relationship
wherein each thing is on the home-ground of every other thing even
as it remains on its own home-ground. 13 Only on this home-ground
(Jp. moto ) is it possible to apprehend true self-centeredness [as]
a selfless self-centeredness: the self-centeredness of a self that
is not a self. 14 In short, says Nishitani, emptiness is self. 15
To realize non-ego is to locate oneself not as a fixed identity but
as a process in the greater process of existence, a drop in the sea
apart from which the drop could not be. Non-ego is thus neither an
ontological nor an epistemological position; it only has meaning in
the context of the movement toward self-realization, or nirvana ,
which is possible only from the standpoint of absolute
nothingness.
Nihilism and Paradoxical Ambiguity
Early in his intellectual formation Nishitani follows Nietzsches
appraisal of nihilism and the ressentiment that both engenders and
issues forth from it. The nothingness that attends nihilism,
however, is not absolute nothingness but, rather, relative
nothingnessthat is, a concept of nothingness relative to the
concept of being. According to Nishitani, Nietzsche approaches the
absolute nothingness of Zen Buddhism philosophically, but even his
apprehension of the nothing is that of a relative absolute
nothingness insofar as he remains tied to a standpoint of will. 16
Commenting on both Nietzsche and Heraclitus (whom Nietzsche holds
in highest esteem among the Presocratics), Nishitani writes: They
do not contain the other-centeredness by which they become empty
and make all others their master. . . . They cannot be said to have
arrived at the authentic self-centeredness of absolute emptiness
that holds all dharmas in its grip, that, master wherever it is,
makes wherever it is true. However one looks at it, theirs remains
a standpoint of will, not the standpoint of sunyata . 17 Given that
Nishitani was studying with Heidegger just when the latter was
deeply immersed in Nietzsches philosophy, it is no wonder that
Nishitani should reflect Heideggers influential interpretation of
Nietzsche as the last metaphysician on the grounds that his
philosophy culminates a trajectory of thinking beginning with
Descartes in its radical subjectivization of the will to power as
the will to will. 18
Although the stance of the will to power allows us to say that
our self is, in fact, that, we cannot say that that in itself is,
in fact, our self, writes Nishitani: In other words, although one
can speak of a self that is not a self , one cannot yet speak of a
self that is not a self. This brings us to a fundamental difference
between the position of Nietzsche and the position of Zen. 19
Whether this is
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50 BRIAN SCHROEDER
truly reflective of Nietzsches position is debatable, as
concepts such as the will, ego, soul, and even self are highly
problematized in his philosophy (see TI Errors 3; WP 488). In any
event, this issue will not be resolved here. Nevertheless,
Nishitani does maintain that the notion of an absolute nothingness
has never been truly grasped by the Western philosophical
tradition, including Heidegger, though he acknowledges the
advancements of both Nietzsche and Heidegger on this question. Only
the mystical thinking of Meister Eckhart and his student Jakob
Bhme, who were indirect influences on Nietzsche and Heidegger,
approaches the apprehension (not comprehension) of absolute
nothingness, an apprehension of the Godhead ( Gottheit ) of God (
Gott ) expressed as the ground-less ( Ungrund ) or abyss ( Abgrund
). 20
Tanabe also recognizes this but rejects mysticism as a possible
way suited to ordinary, ignorant persons such as [himself]. 21 Both
Nishitani and Tanabe want to develop this mystical apprehension in
the language of philosophyfor Tanabe, in the realm of dialectics;
for Nishitani, in the realm of existential phe-nomenology and
hermeneuticsthereby giving greater philosophical clarity to an
otherwise somewhat hermetic discourse. Put another way, each is
con-cerned with developing a philosophy that engages theology and
Buddhology, and each proceeds from the field of nihility to advance
the relative nihilism of existential atheism in order to arrive at
a fundamentally nontheistic religious standpointabsolute
nothingness.
For Nietzsche, nihilism is an ominous threat because it is a
reactive form of the will to power: a will to nothingness, an
aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental
presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will ( GM III:28).
Nietzsche recognizes nihilism as both ambiguous and a normal
condition and classifies it in two main types: active and passive.
Active nihilism denotes an increased power of the spirit, whereas
passive nihilism, exemplified by Buddhism, represents a worn out,
exhausted spirit ( WP 2223). This is a view that Nietzsche held
even in his early writing, contrasting the perspective of artistic
affirmation, exemplified by the gods Apollo and Dionysus, to a
Buddhist negation of the will ( BT 7). Tanabe can recognize the
historical context of Europe that prompted Nietzsche to proclaim
the doctrine of the will to power as an active nihilism that could
redeem Europe, 22 and Nishitani can observe that ironically, it was
not in his nihilistic view of Buddhism but in such ideas as amor
fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche
came closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahayana. 23
Regardless, Nietzsches assessment of Buddhism as a passive form of
nihilism is arguably the result of his misunderstanding the concept
of nirvana and interpreting compassion (Sk. karuna ) as pity (
Mitleid [ WP 64]). There is no indication in Nietzsches critique
that he is aware of the distinction between Theravada and Mahayana,
and therefore the subtleties in Mahayana attending the concepts of
compassion and dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada ) were
lost on him. 24
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 51
Nishitani and Tanabe are aware of Nietzsches limited
understanding of Buddhism, especially in its expression as Zen. 25
From this Nishitani concludes that Nietzsche is unable, due to his
contextual linguistic and cultural constraints, to fully grasp or
realize the essence of nihility as merely the relativizing of
absolute nothingness. While Nietzsche is able to locate the I-ego
as a grammatical construct, a fiction, a play on words ( TI Errors
3), he is unable to grasp nothingness absolutely, as his thinking
remains locked in the relativity of the language of
affirmation/negation and active/reactive. Hence Nishitani
pronounces Nietzsches construal of nothingness as the most reaching
account thus produced in Western thinking, a relative absolute
nothingness, but one that nevertheless falls short of the Zen
Buddhist apprehension of an absolute nothingness that not only
dissolves all relativity but paradoxically makes the difference of
relativity possible in the first place. Is one to surmise that
Nishitani is claiming that the thought of paradox eludes Nietzsche,
that his remains bound to the very metaphysics that he seeks to
overcome? 26
The notion of absolute nothingness is implicit in the paradox of
dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada ), or what the Buddha
called the Middle Way. Another member of the Kyoto school, Abe
Masao, decisively frames the question of this paradox with respect
to the relation between transcendence and immanence and also the
nihilism of metaphysical dualism:
The Middle Way breaks through dipolarity; it is the overcoming
of dipolarity itself. In this sense the Buddhist notion of the
Middle Way is quite different from the Aristotelian idea of mesotes
. The interdependence which is implied in the Buddhist doctrine of
dependent co-origination is neither transcendence nor immanence nor
a middle position which is of dipolar nature and in which
transcendence and immanence as two poles are directly interacting
with each other. To realize the Middle Way even such a middle
position must be overcome; because, however dynamic the middle
point may be, it is involved in the duality of transcendence and
immanence. A complete overcoming of dipolarity, including the
middle point which attempts to function as a mediator between the
two conflicting poles, is essential for the realization of the
Middle Way and dependent co-origination. 27
Is the paradox of dependent origination implicit, even if
unrecognized and therefore unrealized, in Nietzsches crucial
observation of the ambiguity of nihilism? Does the ambiguity of
nihilism reflect a fundamentally dialectical relation between its
active and passive expressions? Does this ambiguity not only allow
for but also make possible for Nietzsche the very transformation of
a debilitating nihilism into one that is consummate and ecstatic (
WP 1055), an active nihilism that enables the actualization of
self-overcomingthe future, absolutely affirmative, bermenschliche
will? Could this be a revalued or reimagined thought of
transcendencea transcendence of transcendence and immanence
altogether? These questions will be addressed later.
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52 BRIAN SCHROEDER
Absolute Nothingness and Power
Tanabes philosophy is dialectical in its approach and bears many
affinities with Hegels speculative dialectics, especially the
concept of mediation. Yet Tanabe shares Nietzsches refusal of any
metaphysical teleology. 28 Still, it is only through dialectical
thinking, Tanabe argues, that one can arrive at the standpoint of
absolute nothingness.
Tanabes name for the absolute is Other-power (Jp. tariki ),
which has nothing to do with a transcendent other or the entity
God. Rather, since this absolute is the negation and
transformationthat is, conversion [metanoesis]of everything
relative, it may be defined as absolute nothingness. 29 Tanabe
elaborates the meaning of Other-power, a notion that he borrows
from Shinran (11731262), the founder of True Pure Land (Jp. Jodo
Shin-shu) Buddhism: When we speak of Other-power, the Other is
absolute precisely because it is nothingness, that is, nothingness
in the sense of absolute transformation. It is because of its
genuine passivity and lack of acting selfhood that it is termed
absolute Other-power. Other-power is absolute Other-power only
because it acts through the mediation of the self-power of the
relative that confronts it as other. Only to that extent is
genuine, absolute Other-power mediated by self-power. In this way,
the absolute becomes absolute mediation. 30 Absolute nothingness is
absolute transforma-tion as well as the necessary condition for
absolute transformation. Succinctly stated: Nothingness means
transformation. 31 For Tanabe, self-transformation is possible via
the mediation of Other-power, which in turn is absolute only
because of its mediation by the relational relativity of self-power
(Jp. jiriki ).
The concept of self-power is characteristic of the philosophy of
Zen adopted by Nishida and Nishitani. Self-power and Other-power
are perhaps best interpreted respectively as internal affectivity
and external affectivity. In other words, self-power is the
becoming-external of the interior egoistic will that manifests
itself as action. Conversely, Other-power is the affectivity
exerted on the ego-self to the point of shattering the unity of the
individual will, thereby calling the self to question the extent of
its own sovereign freedom. This is the realization of
self-awareness (Jp. jikaku ) on which is predicated metanoesis. 32
It is critical to note that Other-power is not to be construed in
terms that might suggest the volunta-ristic imposition of another
will on the self, even though Other-power is associ-ated with
infinity. 33 Other-power is radically passive and real only insofar
as it is perceived by the I-self and allowed to destabilize or
break through the resistances of the egoistic will. Though often
construed as diametrically opposed, according to Tanabe, what is
impossible with jiriki becomes possible with tariki , though both
tariki and jiriki remain complementary to one another. 34 With
respect to the Western tradition metanoetics seeks a middle path
between existentialism, exemplified primarily in the philosophies
of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and the philosophy of freedom, as found
in Schelling. 35
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 53
The self-overcoming ( Selbstberwindung ) that Nietzsche
advocates is solely a matter of self-power, on Tanabes reading;
therefore, it is an affirmation and nega-tion only of being, not of
nothingness. Moreover, since Nietzsches philosophy lacks the
concepts of nothingness and negation[, it] naturally fails to
produce a sense of true discontinuity or authentic transcendence,
and cannot escape direct ongoing immanence. That is why, despite
similarities in motivation and structure, there are inevitable
differences between the orientation of Nietzsches thought and the
way of metanoetics. 36 These differences and similarities are
reflected in Tanabes construal of Nietzsches most terrible and
liberating thoughtthe eternal recurrence. Nevertheless, it is
evident that for Nietzsche, Tanabe, and Nishitani what is at stake
is nothing less than the radical overcom-ing or transformation of
radical nihilism and selfa nonmetaphysical ecstatic transcendence,
to use a phrase employed by Nishitani. 37
Will to Power and Absolute Negation
Is the will to power, wherein the egoistic self is overcome to
make way for a completely new self, tantamount to the actualization
of the Buddhist non-ego that makes possible the emergence of the
true self ? This rests in part on the degree of value that one
assigns to existence. Even though Buddhist philosophy as a whole
affirms being as illusory in the sense of being absolutely
transient, existence as Buddha nature is fully meaningful as it is.
But because existence has for so long in the West been assigned
value in relation to a transcendent origin, from a God now dead,
for Nietzsche, value, meaning, and truth are only now able to be
actually affirmed, created, because there is no meaning in itself
to which being can lay claim.
Closed to the standpoint of absolute nothingness, Nietzsche
tried to make absolute being the basic principle of philosophy,
writes Tanabe: He took the idealistic standpoint of reason
represented by Kant and converted it into a factual standpoint of
life. In place of the metanoetic negation of reason that sees
reason as the manifestation of absolute nothingness, he offered an
affir-mation of life whose basic essence consists in the will to
power that seeks to place all things under the control of the self.
. . . He forgot that the philosophical position he was espousing is
possible only through the absolute negation of reason. Simply to
negate reason and reject the abstraction of concepts results only
in doing away with philosophy itself. 38 This interpretation is
somewhat idiosyncratic and difficult to sustain, especially when
considering Nietzsches declaration that life itself is the will to
power and thus subordinates the self to it , not the other way
around: This world is the will to powerand nothing besides! And you
yourself are also this will to powerand nothing besides! ( WP
1067). But what exactly does the absolute negation of reason mean
for Tanabe? From
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54 BRIAN SCHROEDER
the standpoint of metanoetics, it can only mean the complete
submission of the self to Other-power. Yet as Tanabe emphasizes
time and again, self-power qua Other-power necessarily entails
Other-power qua self-power. The dialectic is fundamentally
reciprocal; moreover, this is necessitated by the standpoint of
absolute nothingness. Tanabes critique of Nietzsche only holds if
his premise is true that the Nietzschean self is the full and
actual embodiment of the will to power and that the will to power
is solely at the service of the self.
If Tanabe is on target in apprehending that Nietzsche does not
effect an absolute negation of reason in his thinking, perhaps it
is because, as Nishitani phrases it, seen from the standpoint of
the Great Will, human reason, the prin-ciple of secularism, is
nothing more than an instrument of the flesh; or, rather, the flesh
itself is the Great Reason. For the flesh is more elemental than
reason and, as such, belongs to the whole man. 39 Here, however,
reason is a transfigured reason, a resurrected reason that is the
fullness of interdependent existence, a fullness that
simultaneously negates and affirms the self, but now the self as
the expression of the will to power, not as a will to will. This
radical trans-formation is made possible only through the
historical event in consciousness of the death of God. Through this
death all nihilism is ecstatically converted in the thought of the
eternal recurrence, which takes the form of a religion for
Nietzsche: the will to power. Indeed, he refers to the eternal
recurrence as a prophecy ( WP 1057), as a divine mode of thinking.
It is the religion in which sinany distance separating God and
manis abolished: precisely this is the glad tidings. Blessedness is
not promised, it is not tied to conditions: it is the only
realitythe rest is a sign with which to speak of it ( A 33).
On the plane of Buddhist thought, the affirmation of becoming as
eternal recurrence releases one from samsara through its
simultaneous dialectical negation and affirmation as nirvana . What
for Buddhism was affirmation via acceptance as endurance (passive
nihilism) is for Nietzsche, who radically transfigures Christianity
through the affirmation of the death of God, affirma-tion via
destruction as the maximization of relative strength (active
nihilism [ WP 23; emphasis added]).
Eternal Recurrence and Transcendence
Even though Nietzsches thought of the eternal recurrence differs
markedly from the recurrence of world processes found in mythical
religions, and thus cannot be characterized as ahistorical,
Nishitani contends that the ecstatic transcendence of the bermensch
, while avoiding the Christian eschatological fulfillment of
history (the second coming of Christ), is nevertheless
transhistorical in pre-serving the infinity of time only at the
cost of historys inability to discharge its full historicity. 40
This is a powerful critique, particularly because it reads
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 55
Nietzsche in full continuity with the Western theological
tradition. However, it is precisely at this level that Nishitanis
interpretation, despite recognizing the fundamentally
eschatological orientation of the bermensch , fails to grasp the
apocalyptic, which is to say, the radical theological significance
of the death of God. 41 Nietzsches thought of the eternal
recurrence, predicated on the death of God, signals a break with
the archaic concept of eternal return, inasmuch as historical time
is now the only time, irreversible and forward moving but only so
as the absolute fullness of time. 42 The eternal recurrence as
apocalypse is the absolute embodiment of the kenosis (or discharge)
of the transcendent Godhead in and as history. From the perspective
of radical theology, this is concrete actuality, the
once-and-for-all historical event of the death of God. This reading
strongly challenges Nishitanis concern that the eternal recur-rence
fails to fully radicalize history because its sense of historicity
is grounded transhistorically by the bermensch .
In the eternal return, time moves both forward and backward,
endlessly creating, destroying, and re-creating itself but all the
while remaining bound in its infinite reversibility to an absolute
primordial beginning. The death of God signifies a dual movement of
diremption and conjoining: a break with the past but also a new
nonmetaphysical unity, a bonding of transcendence and immanence, of
infinity and finitude, of eternity and space-time. This is evinced
most prominently in Nietzsches vision of the eternal recurrence,
wherein time is conceived and experienced as irreversible and
forward moving, thereby real-izing what is impossible for a purely
primordial thinking, namely, the radical dimension of futurity. At
the heart of this teaching is the relation between the apocalyptic
and the eschatological.
Is it possible to think of eschatology as the transcendence, or
overcoming, of transcendence? Would such a transcendence be also
simultaneously a tran-scendence of immanence or at least of any
prior conceptions thereof ? In its most radical interpretation, the
death of God is the complete deconstruction of all operative or
previously known conceptions of totality, whether conceived in
terms of a pure transcendence, a pure immanence, or some
intertwining of transcendence and immanence. Is eschatology then a
transcendence of every possible totality and the simultaneous death
of God and death of the subject? Could this simultaneous death make
possible an infinite responsibility to total-ity, such as one
encounters in Nietzsche, that does not render either the Other
abstract or the ego-self sovereign? But if the death of God is
finally also the transcendence, and thus destruction, of totality,
then is the infinite responsibility that one finds, for instance,
in the Buddhist bodhisattva ideal itself a negation of totality
that destroys every possible totality or at least dissolves the
hold of totality in each and every moment that infinite
responsibility is recognized? Nietzsches understanding of
responsibility, which ushers in a new conception of infinity
alongside a new justice ( GS 289), is just such an affirmation of
totality,
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56 BRIAN SCHROEDER
one that is also, and by virtue of, an affirmation of nihilism
or the dissolution of totality. Such a sense of responsibility is
grounded, or rather ungrounded, on the affirmation of the
apocalyptic death of God, the death of transcendence itself a
divine way of thinking ( WP 15)and on the eschatological
embodi-ment of that affirmation and responsibilitythe bermensch .
43 Now the mantle of responsibility lies solely and fully on the
shoulders of humanity and is of a purple that will fade with time
but for that reason must be continually dyed and mended. 44
Critical Transcendence and Embodiment
The minjung mask dance, an old Buddhist ritual, the significance
of which has been revitalized by contemporary Korean liberation
theology, serves as a model of an existential, embodied approach
for realizing transcendence. A difficult term to translate, minjung
is a combination of two Chinese words min (people) and jung
(masses)and appropriately applies to any individual or group of
individu-als that are oppressed either politically, socially, or
economically, through the prejudices of sex, race, color,
nationality, or creed. The minjung aspire to what Hyun Young-hak
calls critical transcendence, a concept that signifies both
negation and going beyond. 45 Nishitani describes transcendence in
a similar manner, linking it to absolute nothingness, which
represents the endpoint of an orientation to negation. It can be
termed an absolute negativity , inasmuch as it is a standpoint that
has negated and thereby transcended nihility, which was itself the
transcendence-through-negation of all being. It can also be termed
an absolute transcendence of being , as it absolutely denies and
distances itself from any standpoint shackled in any way whatsoever
to being. 46 In other words, only from the standpoint of non-ego on
the field of emptiness is it possible to simultaneously enact the
absolute negation requisite for an absolute transcen-dence of
existence as it is here and now so as precisely to be fully
embodied in the here and now. 47
The minjung experience a critical transcendence as they
participate in the mask dance. In the nineteenth century the mask
dance was transformed into a play performed for the sake of the
minjung . In the dance, the villagers are able to vent their
frustration and rage toward their oppressors. The mask dance takes
the form of a sociopolitical satire in which the minjung are able
to poke fun at and ridicule their rulers, both political and
religious, as well as themselves and their own fate in the world,
thereby displacing the negative, destructive internal energies
associated with the nihilistic feelings of social and political
powerlessness. Hyun writes:
In and through the mask dance, the minjung , the ordinary folks,
experience and express a critical transcendence over this world and
laugh at its absurdity . . . the
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 57
minjung lament their lot but do it with humor. They laugh at and
make fun of their own fate in this world, thereby transcending
their own conditions. They find themselves standing over and beyond
the entire world, which includes not only the rulers and leaders
but also themselves and their own religion. They not only see
correctly the reality of the world, which neither the rulers nor
leaders can see because of their obsession with or separation from
the world, but also envision another reality over against and
beyond this one which neither the rulers or leaders can see either.
48
In the mask dance, a sense of objectivity is thus afforded to
the minjung . This objectivity or critical transcendence is not
given to the people from the outside; it emerges from the
experience of the minjung themselves.
One of the central concerns of the minjung is the utilization of
the energy manifest in the critical transcendence of the mask dance
for bringing about the state of justice. The conscientization of
the minjung about their oppression, which explodes into reality in
the dance, provides the necessary impetus for the transformation of
a potentially self-destructive energy (Kr. han ) into a viable
praxis. 49
What is critically transcended in the mask dance is han : the
accumulated, suppressed, unresolved sense of resentment and revenge
against the injustices suffered by the minjung . 50 The force or
energy of han can manifest itself in two ways: either as a
destructive negating force or as a positive affirming force. It is
the latter that the minjung hope to channel and utilize for the
purpose of social transformation. Han is characterized primarily as
a feeling; it is not a mere theoretical concept. It is embodied
feeling that may express itself artistically as in the mask dance
or, in the words of minjung theorist Suh Nam-dong, as a tendency
for social revolution brought on by a feeling with a tenacity of
will for life. 51
Han can manifest itself as fearful han , as a destructive,
violent, vengeful force capable of negating to the point of
self-destruction. In order to transform han into an affirmative
force, the critical transcendence afforded to the minjung needs to
be actualized. This is accomplished through the mechanism of dan ,
meaning literally to cut. Accumulated han must therefore be met
with continu-ous dan . 52 Dan is self-denial, a detachment of
oneself from the vicious circle of han . What is denied, though, is
not the yearning for individual rights and freedoms or the place of
the individual in society; rather, dan is a willful commitment to
place unselfishly the needs of the society, of the minjung as a
whole, before the needs of individual existence. Dan does not
signify the complete negation of the individual ego or will.
Rather, dan both preserves and negates the individual self, thereby
making community a genuine possibility. According to Nishitani,
Lack of selfishness is what is meant by non-ego, or emptiness (
sunyata ). 53 In terms of praxis, in order to reverse the
oppressive structure of top-down politics, there must be a denial
of the sovereignty of the individual will in order to realize the
greater subjecthood of the community.
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58 BRIAN SCHROEDER
Neither han nor dan is a once-and-for-all event; rather, they
are part of a process that functions as a release valve at times
for the built-up pressure of accumulated resentment, anger, and
even hatred and at other times as a fuel for social transformation
or praxis. There is a fundamental unity between han and dan that
allows han to be transfigured by dan , thus raising han to a
higher, more positive level of power.
Does the play between han and dan offer a key insight toward
tackling the problem of nihilism? Han and ressentiment are two
names for the same phe-nomenon, yet they differ insofar as han is
recognized and understood by the minjung (hence the development of
the mechanism of dan ), whereas ressentiment develops, for the most
part, without being detected until it is too late. This is due
largely to the individualistic nature of ressentiment , which
follows suit with the Western history of ideas, reinforced in the
Enlightenment ideals that to this day still govern much social,
ethical, and political discourse.
Nihilism and Self-Overcoming
The way to overcome the nihilism attending the thought of
eternal recurrence, Zarathustra declares, is through laughter and
dance, an embodied activity of Yes-saying ( Ja-sagen ). Only thus
is the reactive egoistic consciousness overcome while
simultaneously affirmed anew as the active will to power. As
Maurice Blanchot incisively observes, Nihilism would be identical
with the will to overcome nihilism absolutely . 54 Nihilism is
overcome then in its very affirmation, not in the extreme nihility
of pure negation. But what form will such an affirmation take?
Nishitani locates in Nietzsche a religious laughter, which
invites comparison with the same in Zen Buddhism: A paradigmatic
example of a religion that has attained the stage of being able to
laugh is Zen Buddhism, the history of which also reverberates with
laughter of different kinds. 55 Is this laughter the very
affirmation that will overcome nihilism? Both Zen Buddhisms sense
of play and Zarathustras dancing levity expose the ego, the I, the
self, for the illusion and trickster that it is and in so doing
overcome the ignorance (Sk. avidya ) that promotes so much
suffering (Sk. dukkha ) in the first place. Indeed, even a thinker
as serious as Tanabe (in both tone and subject matter, not to
mention personal life) recognizes that the egoism that lies
directly on the surface of Nietzsches will to power is nothing more
than a disguise. Though the mask be that of a devil, the reality is
that of a sage. 56 The expression of the Great Affirmation of
Buddhism bears close affinity to Nietzsches affirmation of the
seeming nihility of the eternal recurrence. But if Nishitani could
state in his early writing that the will to power as amor fati
represents an essentially affirmative, creative perspec-tive, he
later qualified his stance and correlated the eternal recurrence
with the
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 59
mythical idea of an unending transmigration that would deny the
possibility of an absolute freedom or creativity, implying only an
ecstatic transcendence to nihility. 57 In a crucial passage,
Nishitani writes:
With Nietzsche we find a turnabout on this nihilism that results
in the standpoint of Eternal Recurrence as a disclosure of the Will
to Power. . . . Nevertheless, insofar as the Will to Power comes
down in my analysis to a worldview of Eternal Recurrence, it is my
view that the meaning it gives to history as its last and final
ground, on the field of ecstatic transcendence, is only based on a
negative pole. Yet we must not overlook the positive pole in
Nietzsches thought. Within the perspective available from the
standpoint of the Will to Power, all meaning in history that had
been transformed into meaninglessness in nihility was tentatively
restored in an affirmative manner in conjunction with the
reaffirmation of all world interpretations as attempts of the Will
to Power to posit values. The standpoint of the Will to Power and
Eternal Recurrence is a standpoint of the Great Affirmation, which
could only appear after a nihilistic Great Negation. 58
Despite their similarities, Nishitani locates a certain type of
nihilism in Nietzsche that is not completely vanquished inasmuch as
time is confined to the negative pole of historical time. In other
words, according to Nishitani, Nietzsche strives for the release of
time from the nihility of historical temporality, a release that
overcomes the nihilistic hypothetical transcendent unity posited
over against becoming. Yet while he locates a radical difference
and alterity within space-time, Nietzsche fails to realize the
simultaneous oneness and uniqueness of all entities, namely,
absolute nothingness. In this sense, Nishitani maintains,
Nietzsches thinking remains confined to the standpoint of a
relative absolute nihilism.
Are Nishitanis absolute transcendence of being and Nietzsches
self- overcoming of ressentiment one and the same? On Nishitanis
account, non-ego is actualized as self-denial, whereas for
Nietzsche self-overcoming is the affirma-tion of the illusory
nature of the ego and the nihility of the eternal recurrence. 59
Are they so far apart at this point? Nietzsches pronouncement of
the death of God also marks the death of the self and ushers in the
carnivalesque play of postmodernity. 60 Ressentiment is overcome or
ecstatically transcended through the playfulness of donning masks,
of creating anew identities and meaning for life. Seen from the
field of absolute nothingness, non-ego (Sk. anatman )the true self
manifest in dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada )means
every self, since there is no persisting substantial individual
self. The self is a mask, and every mask, as Nietzsche states, is
merely a mask for other masks, an infinite procession of masks with
ultimately nothing behind them. In this sense, claims Nishitani,
the field of emptiness is a field of absolute transcen-dence . . .
[and] at the same time an absolute immanence. 61 The play of the
mask is like the play of Zen, the standpoint where non-ego is self,
where the true self emerges into its nature from non-ego. 62 To
embrace the element of the mask, as Nietzsche recognizes, is to
affirm that existence is a constructed reality and because of that
is able to be transformed and ecstatically transcended. Thus
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60 BRIAN SCHROEDER
are laughter, satire, and irony grasped as essential and
necessary for breaking through the paralyzing effect of nihilistic
ressentiment and effecting, accord-ing to Tanabes interpretation, a
radical conversion of both self and culture, a metanoesis
predicated not only on a profound realization of ones limitations
but equally on the joy of an absolute Yes-saying, possible only in
the light of Gods death.
Great Affirmation and Ecstatic Trans-descendence
Whether in Zarathustras laughter, the minjung mask dance, or Zen
practice, the transcendence of ethical or compassionate being
emerges as at once an accumulation of strength and a renunciation
of it. 63 Is this the point, as Nishitani seems to contend, where
the Zen Buddhist ethic breaks with Nietzsches ethic of revaluation
based on the will to power? Or is Zarathustra in his unique way
also a master of Zen? Even Tanabe, who refuses the path of
Nietzsche and the Zen masters due to a kind of self-centered
elitism that makes it impossible for them to pass beyond into the
freedom of absolute nothingness by renouncing and letting go even
of the noble self, is able to recognize that the way of Zen, which
seeks to awaken people to the Buddha nature latent within them, is
close to the thought of Zarathustra here in its teaching of the
will to power and affirms in a move undoubtedly surprising to most
Western readers Nietzsches proclamation of the bermensch as
evocative of the Buddhist bodhisattva-ideal. 64
What is most striking in the end is that Tanabe and Nishitani
recognized long before most Western readers that the embodiment of
active will to power in Nietzsche is not that of a tyrannical will
but, rather, of a will determined by what Zen knows as self-power.
65 Both Tanabe and Nishitani ultimately refuse Nietzsches
philosophy on the grounds of being too firmly rooted in a
conception of self as will and therefore of being. If this is so,
then could it be that Nietzsches revalued notion of self is the
very expression of ecstatic transcendence, of what Nishitani
incisively terms ecstatic trans-descendencethat is, the affirmation
of transcendence in immanence? 66
If a hallmark of the philosophy of the future ( GS 289, 343, 372
[and also of radical theology and what Schelling called
philosophical religion]) is the pro-gression toward a genuine world
thinking, one that not only opens itself to other world
perspectives but also grounds and reveals itself in the immanence
of this worldly existence, then it is imperative that the concept
of transcendence not be relegated to the graveyard of obsolete
metaphysical jargon. Rather, if it is to be truly transformative
and meaningful for a postmetaphysical world, then transcendence
needs to be fully and absolutely actualized or, in other words,
embodied. This does not mean, however, that Zen or Buddhism
presents, as Hisamatsu Shinichi writes, some kind of [human]
deificationa nave figment of the modern
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imaginationnor does it posit a transcendent God, as does
dialectical theology. The critical focus of Zen is the affirmation
of the sacred in [humankind] by retrieving the sacred from the
realm of the transcendent and returning it to that of human
subjectivity. Zen is not simply a rational position. It is a
rational position paradoxically identical with the nonrational. It
is not simply an immanent position, but one of transcendental
immanence. Zen and Mahayana Buddhism must be seen in this light. 67
In thinkers such as Nietzsche, Tanabe, and Nishitani, one finds not
only the theoretical resources but also the will to ecstatically
trans-descend the nihilistic abyss left by the death of God. In
such ecstasy is made possible the Great Affirmation of an absolute
Yes-saying to life here and now, but an affirmation inseparable
from the equally great responsibility to the Earth and its
inhabitants that ensues from the metanoesis of self-overcoming.
Jetzt bin ich leicht, jetzt fliege ich, jetzt sehe ich mich
unter mir, jetzt tanzt ein Gott durch mir ( Z :I Vom Lesen und
Schreiben).
Rochester Institute of [email protected]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Christa Acampora, Silvia
Benso, Claudio Ciancio, Bret
Davis, Lissa McCullough, Maurizio Pagano, and Graham Parkes for
their com-ments and editorial suggestions on this and earlier
versions of the essay. Part of this essay was published previously
as Trans-discendenza estatica. Religione e metanoesi in Nietzsche,
Tanabe, e Nishitani, trans. Silvia Benso, Annuario Filosofico 23
(2007): 397420, and is reprinted with permission.
NOTES 1. The appellation Kyoto school, which appears to have
originated sometime in the early
1930s, refers to approximately two dozen philosophers associated
with the Kyoto Imperial University and connected through their
association with the thinking of Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Hajime.
For a history and critical overview of the Kyoto school, see James
W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto
School (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001); Bret W. Davis,
The Kyoto School, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed.
Edward N. Zalta (2006),
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/.
I will follow the East Asian convention of indicating the
surname first (e.g., Nishitani Keiji), except when citing works in
which the authors name is given following the Western practice of
placing the given name before the surname.
2. See Bret W. Davis, Introducing the Kyoto School as World
Philosophy, The Eastern Buddhist 3, no. 4/2 (2002): 14270.
3. Jan Van Bragt, Translators Introduction, in Religion and
Nothingness , by Keiji Nishitani, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), xxxvii.
4. For Nishitanis views on kenosis and ekkenosis , see Keiji
Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , trans. Jan Van Bragt
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982),
25, 5859. See also Thomas J. J. Altizer, Kenosis and Sunyata in the
Contemporary BuddhistChristian Dialogue, in Masao Abe: A Zen Life
of Dialogue , ed. Donald W. Mitchell (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle,
1998), 15160; Buddhist Emptiness and the Crucifixion of God,
DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 61
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62 BRIAN SCHROEDER
in The Emptying God: A BuddhistJewishChristian Conversation ,
ed. John B. Cobb Jr. and Christopher Ives (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1990), 6978; Emptiness and God, in The Religious Philosophy of
Nishitani Keiji: The Encounter with Emptiness , ed. Taitetsu Unno
(Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989), 7081; and Buddhism and
Christianity: A Radical Christian Viewpoint, Japanese Religions 9,
no. 1 (March 1976): 111. For a comparison among Nishidas,
Nishitanis, and Altizers views of kenosis , see Steve Odin, Kenosis
as a Foundation for BuddhistChristian Dialogue: The Kenotic
Buddhology of Nishida and Nishitani of the Kyoto School in Relation
to the Kenotic Christology of Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Eastern
Buddhist 20, no. 1 (1987): 3461.
5. Tanabe Hajime, Philosophy as Metanoetics , trans. Takeuchi
Yoshinori (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1986), 119.
6. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 219. 7. The following
abbreviations will be used to designate the etymological origin of
various
important Asian terms: Ch. = Chinese, Jp. = Japanese, Kr. =
Korean, Sk. = Sanskrit. All macrons and other diacritical marks for
these terms have been removed.
8. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 9. Nishitani prefers to
translate anatman as non-ego rather than use the standard rendering
of no-self or nonself in order to more forcefully differentiate the
Buddhist notion of a self that is not a self ( Religion and
Nothingness , 216) from the ego-self of Western metaphysics,
determined in large measure by the Cartesian cogito ( Religion and
Nothingness , 300). For the sake of consistency, the term non-ego
will be used throughout this essay. A problematic term to
translate, in Buddhist thinking anatman does not denote the mere
dialectical opposite of self as nonself. T. R. V. Murti writes that
anatman is the denial of substance ( atman ), of a permanent
substantial entity impervious to change (cited in Hans Waldenfels,
Absolute Nothingness: Foundations for a BuddhistChristian Dialogue
, trans. James W. Heisig [New York: Paulist Press, 1980], 11).
Buddhism does not deny the existence of the ego-self, only that it
is originary in its individuated manifestation or is the
transcendental condition for the possibility of knowing. All beings
are interconnected and therefore exist in a state of contingent
mutual codependency or dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada
). The teaching of anatman expresses this nonhierarchical state of
differentiated unity.
9. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 252. 10. Nicolas of
Cusa, The Layman: About Mind ( Idiota de Mente ), trans. Clyde Lee
Miller
(New York: Abaris, 1979), 73. Cusanuss protomodernism (that is,
the notion of a mathematically defined universe) melds with
mysticism at this point, drawing on the conception of the eternal
now grasped by Meister Eckhart and later Kierkegaard, among others,
and revived by modern Zen thinking.
11. Nishitani Keiji, Science and Zen, trans. Richard D. Martino,
in The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its
Contemporaries , ed. Frederick Franck (Bloomington, Ind.: World
Wisdom, Inc., 2004), 125.
12. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 146. 13. Ibid., 150.
14. Ibid., 249. 15. Ibid., 151. 16. Ibid., 66. 17. Ibid., 265. 18.
See Martin Heidegger, The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead, in Off
the Beaten Path ,
ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 15799; and Who Is Nietzsches
Zarathustra? trans. Bernd Magnus, in The New Nietzsche , ed. David
B. Allison (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 6479. See also Nishitani,
Religion and Nothingness , 235.
19. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 216.
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 63
20. See ibid., 67. What stands out in Eckhart for Nishitani is
that nothingness is accorded a salvific and not an ontological
function. This point cannot be sufficiently underscored, as it is
essential for Nishitanis own attempt to reconcile the differences
between Asian and European thinking, a reconciliation that engages
not only philosophy but religion as well. On Eckharts relationship
to Zen, see Ueda Shizuteru, Nothingness in Meister Eckhart and Zen
Buddhism with Particular Reference to the Borderlands of Philosophy
and Theology, trans. James W. Heisig, in Franck, The Buddha Eye ,
15769.
21. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , 90. 22. Ibid., 104. 23.
Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism , trans. Graham
Parkes with Setsuko
Aihara (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 180.
24. Dependent origination is a fundamental metaphysical concept
common to all schools
of Buddhism. Along with the concept of karma (literally, action
or deed), it forms the Buddhist conception of causality, stating
that all phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent
nexus of cause and effect. Because all phenomena are thus
conditioned and transient or impermanent, they have no real
independent identity and thus no permanent, substantial existence,
even if to the ordinary mind this is not apparent. All phenomena
are therefore fundamentally empty (Sk. sunya ).
25. See Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , 103. 26. For a view
that Nietzsche moves beyond the standpoint of simply recognizing
the inherent
contradiction and ambiguity in Western philosophy and embraces a
paradoxical discourse, see Rogrio Miranda de Almeida, Nietzsche and
Paradox , trans. Mark S. Roberts (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2006).
27 Abe Masao, Mahayana Buddhism and Whitehead, in Zen and
Western Thought , ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1985), 157.
28 Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , lvilvii. 29. Ibid., li.
30. Ibid., 18. 31. Ibid., 22. 32. The term metanoesis (literally,
from the Greek: meta , after or other than, noesis ,
rational thought) means conversion (Jp. tenkan ) or
transformation of ones attitude, thoughts, and feelings to the
point of repentance (Jp. zange ) and assumes a central and critical
importance especially for Tanabe in his later work. The very notion
of conversion or transformation draws Tanabe and Nishitani into
close proximity with Nietzsche and each other, although not
necessarily into the same standpoint.
33. See Kiyozawa Manshi, The Great Path of Absolute Other-Power,
trans. James W. Heisig, in Franck, The Buddha Eye , 24145.
34. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , 9; also see 25. 35.
Ibid., 151. 36. Ibid., 1067. 37. See Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness , 33, 55, 93, 171, 21112, 232, 24546. 38. Tanabe,
Philosophy as Metanoetics , 1079. 39. Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness , 233. 40. Ibid., 211, 213. 41. I have written
elsewhere: The terms apocalypse and eschatology are often conflated
in meaning even though in
actuality they are significantly different. Both terms convey,
however, a sense of terminus . What distinguishes their respective
meanings though is the dimension of knowledgespecifically,
knowledge of the end of history. That is to say, even though both
concepts connote a teleological dimension, only apocalypse truly
conveys this meaning insofar as it posits a telos able to be
comprehended as such. Eschatology, on the other hand, makes no
determinative proposition
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64 BRIAN SCHROEDER
regarding the nature of the end or completion of time and/or
history, or even whether it will of necessity occur. (Apocalypse,
Eschatology, and the Death of God, in Nietzsche and Levinas: After
the Death of a Certain God, ed. Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo
[New York: Columbia University Press, 2009], 236)
Also see my Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence (New
York: Routledge, 1996), 14247, for a development of these themes as
they pertain to Nietzsches philosophy.
42. On the difference between the eternal return and the eternal
recurrence, see my Blood and Stone: A Response to Altizer and
Lingis, New Nietzsche Studies 4, nos. 34 (20002001): 2941; and
Absolute Atonement, in Thinking Through the Death of God: A
Critical Companion to Thomas J. J. Altizer , ed. Lissa McCullough
and Brian Schroeder (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2004), 6587.
43. On this point, see my Can Fig Trees Grow on Mountains?
Reversing the Question of Great Politics, in Difficult Justice:
Commentaries on Levinas and Politics , ed. Asher Horowitz and Gad
Horowitz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 14871.
44. The preceding two paragraphs also appear (with some revision
here) in my Apocalypse, Eschatology, and the Death of God.
45. Hyun Young-hak, A Theological Look at the Mask Dance in
Korea, in Minjung Theology , ed. Commission on Theological Concerns
of the Christian Conference of Asia (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1981),
5054.
46. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 97. 47. The theme of
embodiment is central to Daoist, Buddhist, and Zen philosophy. On
the
relationship among Daoism, Buddhism, and the cultivation of
inner strength (Ch. chi or qi ; Jp. ki ), see Huai-Chin Nan, Tao
and Longevity: MindBody Transformation , trans. Wen Kuan Chu (York
Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1984); Yuasa Yasuo, The Body,
Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy , trans. Shigenori Nagatomo and
Monte S. Hull (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
Responding to Yuasas work and branching off Nietzsches declaration
in Zarathustra that the body is a great reason, Nagatomo
articulates a theory of bodily attunement with respect to Dogen
Kigens philosophy (a fundamental source for the Kyoto school,
especially for Nishitani and Abe) and phenomenology in Shigenori
Nagatomo, Attunement Through the Body (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1992). On the relationship between Zen and
humanism, also with reference to Dogen and phenomenology, see T. P.
Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1981), especially 14254.
48. Hyun, A Theological Look at the Mask Dance in Korea, 50. 49.
Ibid. 50. See Suh Nam-dong, Toward a Theology of Han and Historical
References for a
Theology of Minjung , in Commission on Theological Concerns of
the Christian Conference of Asia, Minjung Theology , 5568 and
17880. Also see Suh Kwang-sun David, A Biographical Sketch of an
Asian Theological Consultation, in Commission on Theological
Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia, Minjung Theology ,
2328, for an introductory commentary on Suh Nam-dongs articles.
51. Suh, Toward a Theology of Han , 58. 52. Ibid., 6465. 53.
Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 60. 54. Maurice Blanchot, The
Limits of Experience: Nihilism, in Allison, The New
Nietzsche , 126. 55. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
, 66. 56. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , 112. 57. Nishitani,
The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism , 4850; Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness ,
244, 246. 58. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 21112.
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DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 65
59. On this issue, see Graham Parkes, Nietzsche and Nishitani on
the Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, International Studies in
Philosophy 25, no. 2 (1993): 5160.
60. See Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 3451.
61. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 265. 62. Ibid., 264.
On the relation between self and mask, see Graham Parkes, Facing
the
Self with Masks: Perspectives on the Personal from Nietzsche and
the Japanese, in Self and Deception: A Cross-Cultural Philosophical
Enquiry , ed. Wimal Dissanayake and Roger Ames (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1996), 287313; and Facing the Masks:
Persona and Self in Nietzsche, Rilke, and Mishima, MOSAIC: A
Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 20, no. 3
(1987): 6579.
63. Despite its long and well-known stance on the primacy of
compassion, the question of philosophically grounding, or
articulating, an intersubjective ethics has been historically a
difficulty for Buddhist thinking. This difficulty is not lost on
thinkers such as Nishitani and Abe Masao, another figure associated
with the Kyoto school. In fact, because of Japans long interest in
this century in Western thought, this problem is more pronounced
than ever. Still, neither Nishitani nor other Kyoto school thinkers
proffer a viable solution to this problem, often finding themselves
confronted with the same barriers to resolving this issue that
existentialism and phenomenology encountered. Quoting extensively
from Abe, Hans Waldenfels summarizes his critique of Buddhist
ethics on three basic points: First, there seems to be a tendency,
especially in Zen, to not fully recognize the positive and creative
aspects of human thinking, thus leading, knowingly or not, to a
degeneration of nonthinking as a not thinking. Second, Buddhism has
failed to answer the question of the grounding of [human] ethical
responsibility and of [our] social and historical behavior. And
third, a future task for Buddhism [is] to actualize the possibility
of embracing scientific rationality in terms of Non-discriminating
Wisdom (Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness , 9697). Nishitanis task
with regard to the issue of ethics, notes Waldenfels, is to provide
an entry into this question through the standpoint of absolute
nothingness. Ultimately, however, the problem hinges on the status
of the historicity of time. For Abes views on Nietzsche, see his
Zen and Nietzsche, in LaFleur, Zen and Western Thought , 13551.
64. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics , 114, 113. Meaning
literally from the Sanskrit enlightened ( bodhi ) existence (
sattva ), this term is the central concept of Mahayana Buddhism,
referring to an awakened being ( buddha ) that compassionately
refuses to enter nirvana in order to continue to assist with the
awakening or enlightenment of other beings.
65. For an incisive treatment of the question of will, see Bret
W. Davis, Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the
Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism, Journal of Nietzsche
Studies 28 (2004): 89138.
66. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness , 17172, 17476.
Nishitani borrows the term from Takeuchi Yoshinori, another member
of the Kyoto school.
67. Hisamatsu Shinichi, Zen as the Negation of Holiness, trans.
Sally Merrill, in Franck, The Buddha Eye , 171; translation
modified slightly.
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