The Kyoto School: An Introduction

by Robert E. Carter, Thomas P. Kasulis (Foreword)

This book provides a much-needed introduction to the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy. Robert E. Carter focuses on four influential Japanese the three most important members of the Kyoto School (Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji), and a fourth (Watsuji Tetsurō), who was, at most, an associate member of the school. Each of these thinkers wrestled systematically with the Eastern idea of "nothingness," albeit from very different perspectives.Many Western scholars, students, and serious general readers are intrigued by this school of thought, which reflects Japan's engagement with the West. A number of works by various thinkers associated with the Kyoto School are now available in English, but these works are often difficult to grasp for those not already well-versed in the philosophical and historical context. Carter's book provides an accessible yet substantive introduction to the school and offers an East-West dialogue that enriches our understanding of Japanese thought while also shedding light on our own assumptions, habits of thought, and prejudices.

Genres: Philosophy, Japan, Nonfiction, Zen, Buddhism

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

090118: clear, concise, introduction to the work of philosophers known as 'Kyoto school', all Japanese thinkers who learned much 'western' philosophy in order to integrate, express, engage, with particular Japanese thought on 'the way', mostly zen, in which the purpose of thought is directed to individual transformation, enlightenment, in this world, in a way close to, influenced/ing religious practices...

central contention is that in western thought the central, motivating, value, is 'being' in all its forms (apparent, absolute, relative) and in eastern thought it is 'nothingness' in all its forms (relative, nihilist, absolute), and how zen and Buddhist thought quotes, works with, the evaluation of reality as 'empty' or 'emptiness' (interdependence of nature rather than essence) famous quote of 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form'... and this 'foundation' (abyss) is source of all that ‘is’...

Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani, are the three main members of the ‘school’, with Wasuji added, influenced by Buddhist thought, either following it, translating, expanding and making philosophical interpretation of essential insights, in nsd or rejecting in tana, critiquing in nst moving from self-power to other-power, asserting absolute emptiness is awareness of human mind, skepticism that this is possible without power of 'faith', from mind and existential concepts to social/space in response to heidegger's focus on time, while this is introducing thoughts it is indicated there are many volumes yet to be translated to English...

i come to this intro with a lot of reading of phenomenonology and see a lot of merleau-ponty in the idea that it is not the varying intellect that need be engaged, empowered, enlightened, but the body, by some practices, intuition, acts- this notes also that if a philosophy does not lead to new and lasting existential change it is no more than 'intellectual gymnastics'... i come to this also having read on Buddhism and Zen, so it is very easy to follow these thoughts as philosophy rather than limited to 'western' concepts of religion, the only problem will be finding more translations of authors here noted, and as always any book that inspires reading another book is a five to me...

more What the Buddha Thought
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Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings
Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis
Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation
Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood Through Continental, Japanese, and Feminist Philosophies
Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions
Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School
Nishida And Western Philosophy

more
What the Buddha Thought
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment
Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings
Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis
Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation
Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions
After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age
Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School
Nishida And Western Philosophy
Buddhism: A Philosophical Approach
What the Buddha Thought
Wisdom Beyond Words: The Buddhist Vision of Ultimate Reality
Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction
An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy
Why I Am Not a Buddhist
Why I Am a Buddhist: No-Nonsense Buddhism with Red Meat and Whiskey

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Class A philosophy. Fascinating introduction to a few seminal Japanese philosophers without any critical engagement of the broader context. 
Following the collapse of the Tokugawa Shouganate, the new Meiji government was eager to modernize according to the advances which had led the West to conquer the world. Those advances were not obvious beyond industrial technology. Social and cultural technology was also crucial but which ones? The only thing which was off the table was the Emperor, everything else was negotiable. This included even the most outrageous things like the Japanese language and their traditional religion. To this purpose, large numbers of upwardly mobile young men were sent to the western nations to study at their universities, learn their military and industrial technology and assimilate to their culture. These men would go on to form the core of the Meiji State. Part of what they learned in the West was that the modern state must promote an ethnic supremacism which viewed the rest of the world with, at best, a sense of paternalism. Paradoxically, the adoption of foreign ways included Western prejudices which distained the foreign. The notion of the "primitive oriental" was taken up with the Sea of Japan becoming an uncrossable chasm dividing civilization from savagery. This was called the "Escape from Asia" or Datsuaron. All of this left Buddhism in a shaky position. It was at once the most widely dispersed set of religious traditions in Japan with a pedigree going back as far as the esteemed emperor Shotoku as well as undeniably foreign and dreadfully Asian. It was in this period that the various Shinto traditions were consolidated into a new religion. Japan could finally claim to have a state church (like the English or Prussians) which was Japanese and just Japanese. Buddhism needed to articulate that it was modern, westernized, completely Japanese and could buttress the emperor system at least as well. 
I've just read an introduction to these thinkers so it goes without saying I am no expert, but it sure looks to me like this is the project they were embarking on. Treating them as disembodied totems communicating a sort of essentialized spirit of Japanese wisdom ignores this context and renders them unintelligible. Even the environmental racism is derivative from Western models. 
This book is very interesting and informative but if it's all you have it can only misinform. It is a stridently apologetic work that needs to be read with a critical eye.

[Karl Hallbjörnsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice primer and introduction to the Kyoto School. I have some trifling problems with the text pertaining to how the author often erringly uses pseudo-hegelian terms such as synthesis to negatively contrast some of the Japanese thinkers covered in the book to Hegel. With a better grasp of hegelian immanent critique he wouldn't have fallen into the lazy trap of characterizing a hegelian mediation as a synthesis that negates its constituent moments without preserving them in its own process (see discussion of the term Ningen, Loc 2565-2572 in Kindle edition). Otherwise this is a fine work and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the eastern philosophical tradition of (relative) modernity.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a clear, simple and well written introduction to the Kyoto School of philosophy.

The author, Robert E. Carter, focuses his attention on four key figures: Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keji, and Watsuji Tetsuro. The common element linking these thinkers together, he argues, is their concern with the Buddhist idea of "nothingness" and its relation to insights from Western existentialist philosophy.

In the Kyoto School we find a fascinating and exciting hybrid of Eastern and Western themes, all converging on the claim that human existence, morality, knowledge and interaction find their ultimate source in an "absolute nothingness" preceding all distinctions.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nishida Kitarō

-- p. 25: Principle of unity. "Since both material and spiritual phenomena are identical from the point of view of pure experience, these two kinds of unifying functions must ultimately be of the same sort. [...] For example, our laws of logic and mathematics are at once the basic principles by which the phenomena of the universe come into being." It seems to me a strange sort of appeal: surely each of those three statements is (at the very least) contestable. Even taking pure experience to be foundational, the principle seems to me too dogmatic to escape the criticisms that the Kyoto school itself makes of Western philosophy.

-- p. 26: Hierarchical structuring of reality. "It is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience [pure experience is prior to the distinctions of things and self, so the experience had by a self is carved out of the unity which is pure experience]. [..] The individual's experience is simply a small, distinctive sphere of limited experience within true experience." This question applies equally to Plotinus (and is one of clarification/confusion): are mice closer to God than I am? How does complexification interact with the normative structuring of reality?

-- p. 36: The qualities of God. "Pure experience, before it is carved up by the intellect, has no distinctions. But God has qualities, and is therefore more than just pure experience. Nothing, as a mere pointer or placeholder, is precisely without qualities because it is prior to all qualities and distinctions." What are God's qualities? Leah's point is valid: that some conceptualizations would swap God and nothingness in that statement, such that God is prior to nothingness and lacks any and all characterization. Further contrast with Kołakowski's Metaphysical Horror.

-- p. 45: The Self-identity of contradiction. "This is Nishida's dialectical logic of soku hi: the simultaneous acceptance of both is and is not as pertaining to the same thing. In symbolic representation, A is A; A is not A; therefore A is A. I see the mountains; I see that they are not mountains; therefore, I see the mountains anew. [...] The enlightened seer sees both aspects at once, a kind of stereoscopic vision." This is nice: I like this. And it provides a tangible framing of the ten ox-herding pictures.

-- p. 49: The nature of good and evil. "So movements toward the deeper layers of self, culminating in the realization of a bottomless self-contradictory identity as the place where absolute nothingness arises and becomes uniquely conscious of itself, is contrasted with movement away from our essential nature, which is increasingly evil (estranged) as its deeper nature becomes hidden. Delusion, the traditional cause of evil in Buddhist thought, occurs when we mistake the separate objective self for the real or deeper self." Why is differentiation--and ultimately reflection--evil? As with the principle of self-contradiction, it is (presented as) formal and too dogmatic for my taste. Obvious contrasts are with Plotinus and Nietzsche.

Tanabe Hajime

-- p. 71: Other-power. "Other-power bridges, or mediates, the opposition between self and other. The transformed self is able to express Other-power because of the mediation/intervention/facilitation of Other-power, rendering him/her a 'self that loses itself.'" Is this an instance of internalization of some `absolute reality`? But what exactly is other-power? And what of dependent origination? See also p. 74 for a partial unpacking. Speaking generally, it seems like Tanabe plays fast loose with his terminology.

-- p. 73: Metanoetics. "Proof of the existence of such power is the transformation of the self which must be given to us from outside of ourselves, since the transformation of self is not the work of self-power but of Other-power." Whence does that transformation arise? How did Buddha become Buddha? Is it a bootstrapping (realization of fundamental Oneness within ourselves) or is it really faith, as Tanabe would have it?

-- p. 82: Action and faith. "Instead, the absolute it to be known only through actions based on the faith that, through Other-power, one's actions will be mediated such that love results in the witnessing (that is, demonstrating one's transformation through one's loving actions) embodying one's faith. Such a transformation in and through one's actions is the only way that absolute nothingness is known. Only the absolute disruption of self allows proper action and guided reason to emerge, the result of allowing Other-power to be one's guide." Deserves a re-read or two. "What results from the activity of nothingness working through us is the 'action of no-action.' It is action 'performed by a subject [a self] that has been annihilated.' Through 'the conversion of death-and-resurrection, we come to realize that our true self is the self of nothingness whose being consists in acting as the mediator of nothingness.' Nothingness becomes actual only through a death-and-resurrection repeatedly realized as the 'core' of relative beings 'by means of a circular movement between the absolute and the relative.'" Stated very well, if not eloquently.

For all Tanabe's efforts (and talk) of making his philosophy applicable to the everyday world, I do not understand what to make of self-power and Other-power in a tangible sense.

Nishitani Keiji

-- p. 106: Oscillation. "Ueda Shizuteru suggests that figures eight and nine [of the ox-herding pictures] should not be taken in succession, but rather as co-related. They should be viewed as 'oscillating back and forth.' The two should be taken together, 'like two sides of a single sheet of paper, a paper without thickness.' Each stage infilitrates the other so that eight implies nine, and nine implies eight. The enlightened man or woman sees both at once, stereoscopically. Everything perceived exists in its suchness on the field of Śūnyatā, as Nishitani understands this." Yes, I like this! Obvious parallels with contemplation+meditation; compression+particularization; digital+analog(?); etc. Also transparency/opacity shifting.

-- p. 111-2: Meaninglessness. Nishitani sees Śūnyatā as the 'ground' for resolving the meaning crisis, methinks. "Nishitani offered a way out of this nihilism of the field of consciousness, which leaves us forever trapped within our own subjective consciousness. He does this by substituting 'the field of Śūnyatā' for the field of consciousness." Huh? "The Great Doubt brings us to our emotional and intellectual knees, for nothing that we know will dispel our awareness of meaninglessness." I am not sure whether I agree with this. "Śūnyatā is an emptiness that even empties itself, a nihilism which empties nihilism. In doing so, nihilism itself is transcended, and self and the world reappear in their suchness, in their true depths." Yes--but are metanoetic transformations necessarily emotionally-crushing? What exactly does it mean to 'bring us to our emotional knees'?

Watsuji Tetsuro

Quite unimpressed with Watsuji -- but that's likely a product of my own interests. Academics interested in understanding society in its multifaceted and dynamical nature should read this! In particular, I feel strong connections with the relational political ecology approach applied to power dynamics, vulnerability, state positionality and loyalty, financialization, etc.

[Brandon Rees · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book has given me many fresh ideas that pair well with the building of my own personal philosophy. I have given it such a high rating because of the personal timing that this book had, coming at precisely the right time to have maximum impact. The Kyoto school was truly inspired and insightful in particular I found myself concurring with Nishida and Nishitani. The distinction of Self-power versus Other-power which Tanabe raises is one that I feel deeply. Whilst striving to be sincerely good am I taken up with arrogance in thinking this is attainable through my own effort? Though I am inclined to agree with Nishida’s perspective that on the level of kensho the self having become a non-self acts solely out of love which is the best and deepest way to know another being. Although of course much of their philosophy is only confirmable through experience hence “metanoetics” it inspires me that such an experience is in fact attainable. I think that whoever you side with the marker of absolute nothingness is an incredible contribution to global philosophy that offers a flip side of Heidegger’s Zein — Being, yet which I must agree seems to explore deeper though it appears even more incomprehensible.
Hopefully with diligent practise I might one day have a deeper understanding of what these three thinkers were pointing to but for now I shall set my sights on reading their translated works in the future!

[h’]

"The task of both philosophy and religion is to encourage each of us to live up to our potential."

This is a good and comprehensible introduction to this school of thought that left it's impact on the philosophical scene. And while I certainly don't agree with most of it's methods and ideology, the recognition of human's weakness shown by it's scholars is what kept me interested.

It can be seen that all of Kyoto School's scholars (discussed in the book) inevitably reach the same conclusions, following different paths and with different emphasis and interpretations of this result. You can choose a way of mystical Zen, a Shinran based on human sin, Nihilism, or an ethical social approach, to reach The state of "nothingness" which is a broad and wide term, that can be best described as a mere pointer to what lays behind the world, according to them. But it is what is done and after arriving there that somehow agreeable upon. A new born - selfless self, acting on ethics and morals, a way for a higher potential.

[Daniel Bashir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one a few months ago now, nice introduction to some of the key thinkers of the school e.g. Nishida Nishitani also fun that he included Watsuji Tetsuro but more of a general intro. I think it gave me some basic background to dig further into what I'm actually interested (e.g. Nishitani contra Nietzsche or anyone in this school contra like Hegel/Schelling on grounding / ineffability/articulation of experience ?) so good as a general intro, but perhaps not as substantive as I'm looking for to dive into some of these things. I hear Heisig is maybe better or might just end up diving into Religion & Nothingness idk

[Keelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice introduction that promotes the importance of intercultural dialogue and provides great sources for further study.

[Anisha]

nothingness is in all forms, makes all forms and transcends all forms.
big big net. finger pointing to moon 🌙

[Xochi Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great introduction to the three figure heads of the Kyoto school. this is a fantastic refernece book to have at hand when diving deeper into these thinkers.