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Religion and Nothingness
English, Japanese (translation)
317 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
126 people are currently reading
2872 people want to read
About the author
Keiji Nishitani
44 books84 followersKeiji Nishitani was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Kitaro Nishida. In 1924 Nishitani received a Ph.D. from Kyoto University for his dissertation Das Ideale und das Reale bei Schelling und Bergson.
He studied under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1937-9.
He held the principal Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Kyoto University from 1943 until becoming Emeritus in 1964. He then taught philosophy and religion at Otani University.
At various times Nishitani was a visiting professor in the United States and Europe.
According to James Heisig, after being banned from holding any public position by the United States Occupation authorities in July 1946, Nishitani refrained from drawing "practical social conscience into philosophical and religious ideas, preferring to think about the insight of the individual rather than the reform of the social order."
He studied under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1937-9.
He held the principal Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Kyoto University from 1943 until becoming Emeritus in 1964. He then taught philosophy and religion at Otani University.
At various times Nishitani was a visiting professor in the United States and Europe.
According to James Heisig, after being banned from holding any public position by the United States Occupation authorities in July 1946, Nishitani refrained from drawing "practical social conscience into philosophical and religious ideas, preferring to think about the insight of the individual rather than the reform of the social order."
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 16, 2011
Telling Japanese I had spent years studying their culture earned me no points, telling them I had read this book had them looking at me w/awe and admiration. Nishitani is one of the foremost Japanese philosophers and this is NOT an easy read, it makes Foucault look like child's play. In fact according to my professor (one of the foremost scholars on the topic at the time, he has now passed away) I was one of the only student in the class to understand it, and that was because my boyfriend at the time was a Ph.D student in Buddhism and he spent hours trying to make me understand it. Nishtani does NOT use straight-line western logic, but rather circular/fuzzy logic that consists of grays -- the sort of stuff that advanced physics is now starting to accept as a more accurate portrayal of the universe. This is not a book you read once and put down, its the sort where you read it, re-read it, and then go over it with a fine tooth comb de-constructing single paragraphs.
September 16, 2014
This book has single-handedly changed or enhanced my perspective on a number of things, not to mention introduce a whole slew of new ideas or ways of thinking about old ideas to me as well. Trying to unpack a dense book like this into a review is nigh impossible, so I'll just list willy-nilly topics he broaches off the top of my head:
- A person is only truly ready for religion when they have reached a state of nihilism; the question stops being "what can religion do for me", because nihilism strips the importance of the ego, and instead becomes more of an exploration of the self-in-relation-to-itself-and-to-others.
- A gentle (but stinging) rebuff of Sartrean atheistic existentialism (it takes as its endpoint what is actually the half-way point).
- He addresses the nature of the divides between science and philosophy and religion.
- There is perhaps a small reworking of Kantian ontology.
- The inherent dangers of the historicity of western religions.
- An extremely intriguing attempt to convey into words the typically ineffable aspect of zen awakening, and the ontological underpinnings of how such a mode of being can finally close off the insurmountable chasm between the unreflective self and the reflective self, while simultaneously creating something of an ontologically-intrinsic ethics.
- Attempts to show how every modern religion/philosophy/secular schemata undermines itself by being based on some form of will as opposed to absolute nothingness.
As you can see, this is some heavy philosophy wankery. It's dense, often caused me to flail my arms about in abject confusion, and may have taken me a few months to tackle, but I seriously enjoyed the hell out of this book.
- A person is only truly ready for religion when they have reached a state of nihilism; the question stops being "what can religion do for me", because nihilism strips the importance of the ego, and instead becomes more of an exploration of the self-in-relation-to-itself-and-to-others.
- A gentle (but stinging) rebuff of Sartrean atheistic existentialism (it takes as its endpoint what is actually the half-way point).
- He addresses the nature of the divides between science and philosophy and religion.
- There is perhaps a small reworking of Kantian ontology.
- The inherent dangers of the historicity of western religions.
- An extremely intriguing attempt to convey into words the typically ineffable aspect of zen awakening, and the ontological underpinnings of how such a mode of being can finally close off the insurmountable chasm between the unreflective self and the reflective self, while simultaneously creating something of an ontologically-intrinsic ethics.
- Attempts to show how every modern religion/philosophy/secular schemata undermines itself by being based on some form of will as opposed to absolute nothingness.
As you can see, this is some heavy philosophy wankery. It's dense, often caused me to flail my arms about in abject confusion, and may have taken me a few months to tackle, but I seriously enjoyed the hell out of this book.
April 16, 2019
Nihilism is a historically situated problematic in the Western philosophical tradition as much as it is a kind of virtual ground beneath our everyday interactions that constantly threatens to make an unwelcome appearance. According to Keiji Nishitani, the only way to overcome nihilism is to brave through its purgatory flames.
In Religion and Nothingness, he entrusts nothingness with the task of reorienting the Dasein to the direction of overcoming nihilism's double negation (the annihilation of the content of meaning and the annihilation of any transcendent frame of reference from which this content is derived).
But this overcoming does not connote a return to plain old theism whose transcendent authority has suffered heavy defeat at the hands of nihilistic techno-science.
Nor does it express a nostalgic desire to reinvigorate the world with meaning.
However, it does involve taking up a certain religious, or more specifically, existential-phenomenological attitude in persisting in the very banality of our lives.
This is radically different from philosophical reflection with its air of theoretical detachment that betrays the lived urgency of daily life into which we are continually being thrown.
For Nishitani, following the footsteps of late Heidegger (Der Spiegel), thought of religion as the only level at which authentic encounter with being can take place.
The field of this encounter is nothingness or sunyata, as the self-emptying emptiness that allows things to become manifest in their own “suchness”.
It is the end-point of nihilism, which having thus butchered open the transcendent order, is now in turn being butchered open by a more elemental ground that is always-already beneath us, and to which we must “step back”.
The movement transpires across three fields: we begin with the belief in the transcendent order, followed by a dismal awareness of the groundlessness and the unreality of the world which we have taken from granted, which in turn is followed by a nullification of this nihility in the radically open horizon of absolute nothingness in which the boundary between interiority and exteriority is dissolved.
As such, it is matter not of transcending our current life but of “trans-descending” to the absolute near side, which because it is nearer to us than our own subjective ego, is simultaneously very distant from us. Like the Tao, which is everywhere and so nowhere in particular, sunyata is concealed in its very disclosedness and disclosed in its very hiddenness.
My only complaint is that Nishitani repeats himself often and heavily.
In Religion and Nothingness, he entrusts nothingness with the task of reorienting the Dasein to the direction of overcoming nihilism's double negation (the annihilation of the content of meaning and the annihilation of any transcendent frame of reference from which this content is derived).
But this overcoming does not connote a return to plain old theism whose transcendent authority has suffered heavy defeat at the hands of nihilistic techno-science.
Nor does it express a nostalgic desire to reinvigorate the world with meaning.
However, it does involve taking up a certain religious, or more specifically, existential-phenomenological attitude in persisting in the very banality of our lives.
This is radically different from philosophical reflection with its air of theoretical detachment that betrays the lived urgency of daily life into which we are continually being thrown.
For Nishitani, following the footsteps of late Heidegger (Der Spiegel), thought of religion as the only level at which authentic encounter with being can take place.
The field of this encounter is nothingness or sunyata, as the self-emptying emptiness that allows things to become manifest in their own “suchness”.
It is the end-point of nihilism, which having thus butchered open the transcendent order, is now in turn being butchered open by a more elemental ground that is always-already beneath us, and to which we must “step back”.
The movement transpires across three fields: we begin with the belief in the transcendent order, followed by a dismal awareness of the groundlessness and the unreality of the world which we have taken from granted, which in turn is followed by a nullification of this nihility in the radically open horizon of absolute nothingness in which the boundary between interiority and exteriority is dissolved.
As such, it is matter not of transcending our current life but of “trans-descending” to the absolute near side, which because it is nearer to us than our own subjective ego, is simultaneously very distant from us. Like the Tao, which is everywhere and so nowhere in particular, sunyata is concealed in its very disclosedness and disclosed in its very hiddenness.
My only complaint is that Nishitani repeats himself often and heavily.
August 21, 2017
Put in the most concise terms possible, this book is Keiji Nishitani’s attempt to repeat with difference (in the Kierkegaardian sense taken up by Heidegger) the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna’s account of “sunyata” (translated as emptiness and nothingness in different places throughout this work) in a new context that includes European existentialism (especially Nietzsche and Heidegger) and Zen Buddhism. Many works of comparative philosophy take the straightforward approach of using one philosophical tradition to shed light on another, Nishitani’s angle, while obviously grounded in Japanese thought in general, seeks to move deeper and engage multiple traditions to truly plum the depths of the epistemological and ontological implications of sunyata.
Part of the immensely important Kyoto School of philosophy, this work has suffered from the same lack of philosophical attention in Western circles that has attended upon the school in general. This translation is from 1982 and is the most recent to have been undertaken in English, and the introduction clearly illustrates how much has happened in the comparative and continental scenes since then. For instance, the introduction brings up a comparison of Nishitani and Derrida’s relationship to Western metaphysics as a promising possibility that has yet to be engaged, which sounds quaint given the hegemonic and institutionalized position of deconstructive philosophy in academia since that time (cf. Buddhisms and Deconstructions, edited by Jin Y. Park for a promising selection of some of the comparative work that has begun in a similar vein). Even groundbreaking contemporary engagements between critical theory and Buddhism such as Nothing:Three Inquiries into Buddhism from last year give insufficient place to Nishitani and the Kyoto school as critical forerunners of this kind of comparative approach. Perhaps other areas of comparative studies need to catch up to the breadth of comparative religious studies in that regard, maybe taking the lead from Nishitani himself in appreciating the dividing line between philosophy and religion as porous and contingent.
Why is it worthwhile to engage more fully with Nishitani? Hopefully the following sketch of some of what I’ve gleaned from the work will make that evident.
For one thing, good comparative philosophy can be remarkably apt in elucidating difficulties in a given tradition. In this case Nishitani’s unique perspective on Western philosophy helped clarify the basic outline of the Western take on the human subject as it changed from Descartes, to Kant, and philosophy after in a way I have yet to see in introductory works on philosophy from a Western perspective themselves. This is partially because the idea of sunyata (another way of defining the term is simply as an extension of the classical Buddhist idea of interdependence in an epistemological register to the extent that it points to how no meaning exists in a way that transcends specific contexts) provides a useful tool not readily available to Western thinkers by which to throw into specific relief the ways in which Western subjectivity grounds itself on auto-teleological principles. The Buddhist tradition that calls into question whether anything is self-sustaining, especially the notion of individual selfhood, allows Nishitani to give us an outside perspective on just how dramatic and totalizing are the claims that the Western subject makes for itself.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this work for me was Nishitani’s existential de-metaphysic-ized account of reincarnation. In chapter 6, “Sunyata and History” Nishitani observes,
"The notion of karma is usually linked to the notions of transmigration and metempsychosis. And along with this goes talk of such things as a “former world” or “former lives” before one was born, and an “afterworld” or “afterlife” that begins at death. In addition, various theories have been proposed from a number of different angles(even the biological) regarding the causality of karma as it extends over the “three world-times” (the third being the present). The explanation for this is not hard to come by. Our being-in-time is essentially tangled up with an infinity in such a way that we, as inmates of the world-nexus, are endlessly driven to be doing something and to be entering into relation with others. What is more, we come to the awareness that, even within this infinite causal kinship, we can never take leave of the basic home-ground of the self itself. It follows as a matter of course, then, that this awareness of existence, by partaking of that infinity, will naturally go beyond the short-term framework of the life of this world to embrace the unlimited openness of the before and the after as well…the essential meaning of a mythical representation can only be grasped when we interpret it so as to bring the content of that representation back to the home-ground of our existence in the present. In fact, mythical representations in general are born of the wish to ask after the home-ground of human Dasein; they contain a kind of intuition of the essence (Wesensschau) of being-in-the-world. In interpreting the existential meaning of transmigration…the finitude of man is existentially grasped as an infinite finitude; that it is grasped in the horizon of a world that also embraces species other than man; and that it is grasped at the most basic level of sheer being-in-the-world, stripped of all specific differences whatsoever." (243)
Notice that Nishitani has not commented on the literal aspect of whether transmigration of souls actually happens or not, but sees in the heart of the tradition the human response to living in a temporal world alongside other beings. At this level reincarnation ceases to be merely a metaphysical religious belief about the nature of the soul and universe and becomes a potent entryway by which to engage with the individuals relationship and responsibility to history and society, among other things. Given this approach I must mention in passing that I’ve seen few other engagements with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence that attain the nuance and depth of Nishitani’s.
Lastly I want to briefly mention that Nishitani provides a compelling expansion of the Heideggeran concept of “Sorge” into an intersubjective realm of consideration that shows, contra Levinas, important ethical implications that can be drawn from Heidegger’s account of care/concern. Nishitani argues that once Dasein has been rigorously engaged from the standpoint of sunyata, that one reaches a point where one has to do with all beings around one, even those not connected to oneself in an immediately intelligible manner. Joined on the egalitarian home-ground of radical emptiness, the self and others can cultivate their openness to temporality and change that is not reducible to selfishness vs. altruism, but rather a radical togetherness in which the cultivation of the self is isomorphic with the cultivation of more loving modes of intersubjective being.
Thus at the core of this heady epistemological work is a plea to strive for what Nishitani calls “an equality in love.” It’s a very difficult work, but a fine aid in the perennial existential project of attempting to find meaning in the very difficult world we live in. May all who come into contact with this review and the profound work of Nishitani find joy and if not an escape then at least a reprieve now and then from suffering.
Part of the immensely important Kyoto School of philosophy, this work has suffered from the same lack of philosophical attention in Western circles that has attended upon the school in general. This translation is from 1982 and is the most recent to have been undertaken in English, and the introduction clearly illustrates how much has happened in the comparative and continental scenes since then. For instance, the introduction brings up a comparison of Nishitani and Derrida’s relationship to Western metaphysics as a promising possibility that has yet to be engaged, which sounds quaint given the hegemonic and institutionalized position of deconstructive philosophy in academia since that time (cf. Buddhisms and Deconstructions, edited by Jin Y. Park for a promising selection of some of the comparative work that has begun in a similar vein). Even groundbreaking contemporary engagements between critical theory and Buddhism such as Nothing:Three Inquiries into Buddhism from last year give insufficient place to Nishitani and the Kyoto school as critical forerunners of this kind of comparative approach. Perhaps other areas of comparative studies need to catch up to the breadth of comparative religious studies in that regard, maybe taking the lead from Nishitani himself in appreciating the dividing line between philosophy and religion as porous and contingent.
Why is it worthwhile to engage more fully with Nishitani? Hopefully the following sketch of some of what I’ve gleaned from the work will make that evident.
For one thing, good comparative philosophy can be remarkably apt in elucidating difficulties in a given tradition. In this case Nishitani’s unique perspective on Western philosophy helped clarify the basic outline of the Western take on the human subject as it changed from Descartes, to Kant, and philosophy after in a way I have yet to see in introductory works on philosophy from a Western perspective themselves. This is partially because the idea of sunyata (another way of defining the term is simply as an extension of the classical Buddhist idea of interdependence in an epistemological register to the extent that it points to how no meaning exists in a way that transcends specific contexts) provides a useful tool not readily available to Western thinkers by which to throw into specific relief the ways in which Western subjectivity grounds itself on auto-teleological principles. The Buddhist tradition that calls into question whether anything is self-sustaining, especially the notion of individual selfhood, allows Nishitani to give us an outside perspective on just how dramatic and totalizing are the claims that the Western subject makes for itself.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this work for me was Nishitani’s existential de-metaphysic-ized account of reincarnation. In chapter 6, “Sunyata and History” Nishitani observes,
"The notion of karma is usually linked to the notions of transmigration and metempsychosis. And along with this goes talk of such things as a “former world” or “former lives” before one was born, and an “afterworld” or “afterlife” that begins at death. In addition, various theories have been proposed from a number of different angles(even the biological) regarding the causality of karma as it extends over the “three world-times” (the third being the present). The explanation for this is not hard to come by. Our being-in-time is essentially tangled up with an infinity in such a way that we, as inmates of the world-nexus, are endlessly driven to be doing something and to be entering into relation with others. What is more, we come to the awareness that, even within this infinite causal kinship, we can never take leave of the basic home-ground of the self itself. It follows as a matter of course, then, that this awareness of existence, by partaking of that infinity, will naturally go beyond the short-term framework of the life of this world to embrace the unlimited openness of the before and the after as well…the essential meaning of a mythical representation can only be grasped when we interpret it so as to bring the content of that representation back to the home-ground of our existence in the present. In fact, mythical representations in general are born of the wish to ask after the home-ground of human Dasein; they contain a kind of intuition of the essence (Wesensschau) of being-in-the-world. In interpreting the existential meaning of transmigration…the finitude of man is existentially grasped as an infinite finitude; that it is grasped in the horizon of a world that also embraces species other than man; and that it is grasped at the most basic level of sheer being-in-the-world, stripped of all specific differences whatsoever." (243)
Notice that Nishitani has not commented on the literal aspect of whether transmigration of souls actually happens or not, but sees in the heart of the tradition the human response to living in a temporal world alongside other beings. At this level reincarnation ceases to be merely a metaphysical religious belief about the nature of the soul and universe and becomes a potent entryway by which to engage with the individuals relationship and responsibility to history and society, among other things. Given this approach I must mention in passing that I’ve seen few other engagements with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence that attain the nuance and depth of Nishitani’s.
Lastly I want to briefly mention that Nishitani provides a compelling expansion of the Heideggeran concept of “Sorge” into an intersubjective realm of consideration that shows, contra Levinas, important ethical implications that can be drawn from Heidegger’s account of care/concern. Nishitani argues that once Dasein has been rigorously engaged from the standpoint of sunyata, that one reaches a point where one has to do with all beings around one, even those not connected to oneself in an immediately intelligible manner. Joined on the egalitarian home-ground of radical emptiness, the self and others can cultivate their openness to temporality and change that is not reducible to selfishness vs. altruism, but rather a radical togetherness in which the cultivation of the self is isomorphic with the cultivation of more loving modes of intersubjective being.
Thus at the core of this heady epistemological work is a plea to strive for what Nishitani calls “an equality in love.” It’s a very difficult work, but a fine aid in the perennial existential project of attempting to find meaning in the very difficult world we live in. May all who come into contact with this review and the profound work of Nishitani find joy and if not an escape then at least a reprieve now and then from suffering.
Read
December 11, 2012Basically ' Yoda reads Hegel '. Talks explictly about ' the force ' on page 150.
November 23, 2018
This is a dense book that requires repeated reading. It took me a year and more to finish but it is fun because this dude ripped Sartrean existentialism apart. The author questioned the definition of religion throughout the book in roundabout ways. That could potentially annoy lots of impatient readers so be aware of that. Lots of stuffs about Buddhism. You learn a lot about it. This book could change your worldview but you have to be patient.
June 25, 2020
Some years ago after spending time with the works of Martin Heidegger, the Deconstructionists and few others I developed a hankering to locate a philosophical tome that could help me understand the concepts of timelessness, "being", etc. within the context of Buddhism. Browsing in a bookstore one day, Nishitani's "Religion and Nothingness" stood out on the shelf, probably because the title was a kind of analogue to Heidegger's "Being and Timelessness".
Diving into Nishitani's book was probably one of the most difficult reading journeys I have ever been on. I was not unfamiliar with Buddhism when I started to read Nishitani, and fully understood the virtual impossibilities of attempting to describe esoteric Buddhist concepts in parallel with Western concepts and somehow bringing the read to a close understanding of how they relate and just what "sunyata" and other concepts "mean".
Buddhism is replete with a massive treasure trove of ancient texts and methods - it's almost endless, but beyond all that the central concepts of Buddhism must be *experienced* to fully "understand" them. Nishitani's book got me closer to my goal than any book like it before, or since.
There are now many books from the West that expound on the principles and practice of Buddhism; some of them are very, very good, but the experience of reading (slogging, really - because Nishitani's book *demands* slow reading and most of all, attention) Religion and Nothingness was like going through an intellectual (and experiential) exercise that had a profound impact on my understanding of what and how Buddhism and esoteric Western mystical and philosophical traditions relate to each other. I will be forever grateful to Keiji Nishitani for his intellectual and spiritual insights into being human, and locating that humanity and its relation to all other things within the life of contemplation and meditation.
Again, Religion and Nothingness not an easy read; it's decidedly not a guide to meditation; it's almost as ethereal as the subject matter that it attempts to cover; it's something that one might best consider a "project" to savor. Enjoy!
Diving into Nishitani's book was probably one of the most difficult reading journeys I have ever been on. I was not unfamiliar with Buddhism when I started to read Nishitani, and fully understood the virtual impossibilities of attempting to describe esoteric Buddhist concepts in parallel with Western concepts and somehow bringing the read to a close understanding of how they relate and just what "sunyata" and other concepts "mean".
Buddhism is replete with a massive treasure trove of ancient texts and methods - it's almost endless, but beyond all that the central concepts of Buddhism must be *experienced* to fully "understand" them. Nishitani's book got me closer to my goal than any book like it before, or since.
There are now many books from the West that expound on the principles and practice of Buddhism; some of them are very, very good, but the experience of reading (slogging, really - because Nishitani's book *demands* slow reading and most of all, attention) Religion and Nothingness was like going through an intellectual (and experiential) exercise that had a profound impact on my understanding of what and how Buddhism and esoteric Western mystical and philosophical traditions relate to each other. I will be forever grateful to Keiji Nishitani for his intellectual and spiritual insights into being human, and locating that humanity and its relation to all other things within the life of contemplation and meditation.
Again, Religion and Nothingness not an easy read; it's decidedly not a guide to meditation; it's almost as ethereal as the subject matter that it attempts to cover; it's something that one might best consider a "project" to savor. Enjoy!
June 9, 2017
One needs a strong background in Mahayana Buddhism (which I do) and general continental philosophical thought from the 20th century (existentialism and some phenomenology, which I'm not as strong in when making a comparison to my knowledge of eastern thought).
No review because this will require repeat reads.
No review because this will require repeat reads.
March 17, 2024
This is a rich text that warrants careful thought and rigorous analysis. Nishitani’s writing is clear, but some of the key ideas are quite difficult to comprehend. This is probably because they are not simply propositions that can be determined as true or false but perspectives on existence that function to improve one’s participation in Life. Additionally, I am only rather recently gaining knowledge on Buddhism, so much of what he says in that regard is still quite new to my understanding. In any case, this book is very rewarding - I will certainly revisit it many times and recommend it to anyone interested in consilience between Buddhism and Christianity, existentialism or even philosophy in general.
October 27, 2021
A veritable treasury house of thought related to the fundamental question of personhood. Of course, the theme of Nishitani's magnum opus is at face value religion, but religion does not exhaust all of this magnificent books content. More existential than religious and more accessible than Kierkegaard for example this book should in all fairness be regarded as one of the most important classics of modern philosophy
November 27, 2024
I want to have a good review for this book to convey to anyone reading this that it is a worthwhile work of comparative theology, but Nishitani has so thoroughly broken my brain that I just can't figure out how to summarize what I just read in any meaningful way.
Here's an attempt: the problems raised by Nihilism (the belief that universe has no inherent meaning or transcendent order to it) aren't modern-day problems like some existentialist philosophers have imagined them to be. We didn't just get to modernity and start thinking 'woah, what if there isn't a purpose for any of *gestures broadly at everything* this.' Various religious traditions - Nishitani primarily looks at Christianity and Buddhism - have come up with a lot of theology and practices for confronting Nothingness, even if they didn't call it nihilism at the time. Nishitani credits Buddhism in particular for having the most fully formed conception of Nothingness and argues that the Zen tradition specifically leans into Nothingness as a central focus of meditation.
The main takeaway I got from this is that we shouldn't give much credence to moral panics around 'the loss of meaning' or whatever guys like Jordan Peterson blather on about to get clicks. Instead of worrying so much that 'nihilism' is going to create an apathetic or moraless world, Nishitani argues that this Nothingness is a pretty fundamental part of existence that people have wrestled with for a while, and we're lucky that we have tools in the form of contemplative spiritual practices to embrace and accept Nothingness rather than have it spoil whatever it is we have going for us as humanity.
If you do read this, just be ready for a lot of really, really difficult reading about Time. Oh my goodness. The whole second half of the book features Nishitani just having all these different traditions debate with each other about whether Time is real or not, and I could feel my brain slowly seeping out of my ears. Again, I really do think I got something from it! But, you have to be ready to be astrally projected off this planet for a couple chapters into the Void.
Here's an attempt: the problems raised by Nihilism (the belief that universe has no inherent meaning or transcendent order to it) aren't modern-day problems like some existentialist philosophers have imagined them to be. We didn't just get to modernity and start thinking 'woah, what if there isn't a purpose for any of *gestures broadly at everything* this.' Various religious traditions - Nishitani primarily looks at Christianity and Buddhism - have come up with a lot of theology and practices for confronting Nothingness, even if they didn't call it nihilism at the time. Nishitani credits Buddhism in particular for having the most fully formed conception of Nothingness and argues that the Zen tradition specifically leans into Nothingness as a central focus of meditation.
The main takeaway I got from this is that we shouldn't give much credence to moral panics around 'the loss of meaning' or whatever guys like Jordan Peterson blather on about to get clicks. Instead of worrying so much that 'nihilism' is going to create an apathetic or moraless world, Nishitani argues that this Nothingness is a pretty fundamental part of existence that people have wrestled with for a while, and we're lucky that we have tools in the form of contemplative spiritual practices to embrace and accept Nothingness rather than have it spoil whatever it is we have going for us as humanity.
If you do read this, just be ready for a lot of really, really difficult reading about Time. Oh my goodness. The whole second half of the book features Nishitani just having all these different traditions debate with each other about whether Time is real or not, and I could feel my brain slowly seeping out of my ears. Again, I really do think I got something from it! But, you have to be ready to be astrally projected off this planet for a couple chapters into the Void.
November 26, 2019
Frankly, having completed my first read-through, I probably grasped less than half of what was said. Nishitani studied under Heidegger and was also a student of Zen; my understanding of both these bodies of thought is primitive. However, what I understood resonated with me, to the core at moments. Next time I read Religion and Nothingness, I may try to articulate what I glean.
March 2, 2021
Este libro me va a ayudar a encontrar a una Ista Salvaje
July 25, 2021
A Heuristic Kyoto school reflection on the possibility of a reconciliation between Middle Age Japanese Buddhism and modern occidentalism thought.
September 20, 2023
This was a book that came to my attention after being highly recommended by the cognitive scientist John Verveake. I can now see why he has repeatedly sung its praises. Religion and Nothingness is a very profound book indeed. It's one of those ones where it cuts so deep at the issue at hand that you are left with very little to say other than to just read it and see for yourself. What I can say though, is that Nishitani's writing style is very Heideggerian and takes a while to get used to.
This book is an attempt to take us beyond ourselves as a self and also the world as it appears to us. In this sense, it straddles Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in trying to force us past the linguistic conceptualisation of the world and the self and to come to a mode of being beyond the view from the self-enclosed self-model to bring into view a more holistic understanding of the interpenetration of being itself. It is a way of getting past the subject-object distinction which has been deeply entrenched in Western thought since the time of René Descartes.
To me, the central theme running through the book speaks to the paradoxical nature of reality which we find in almost all serious religions, philosophies, wisdom traditions and at the bedrock of the scientific understanding of reality. The Tao is offered as a way of understanding the paradoxical nature of reality in the East, just as the ancient Greek world brought forward Heraclitus' notion of the flux of being and modern physics was turned on its head upon the inception of quantum mechanics and the unsettling discovery of wave/particle duality which lies at the heart of what we call 'matter'.
Nishitani argues that Nietzsche was one of the few great Western thinkers who was able to get as far as the point of 'Nothingness' and to recognise it as a field of infinite depth, but rather than pushing beyond this field of nihility and into what is known in Buddhism as Śūnyatā, Nietzsche rested on the realisation of Nihilism. From my understanding, it is this resting on the ground of absolute Nihilism that lies at the root of much of the meaning crisis in today's world and it seems many very important thinkers of this age are converging on this meta-problem. For instance, most of us have either directly experienced or at least know of someone who has attended a class, watched a video, listened to a podcast or read a book which has portrayed what it is to be human as nothing but an agglomeration of atoms. Then many reductionists feel obligated to go further and state that since each atom is primarily empty space then we by extension are mostly empty space or nothing. And when this reductionist view is pushed to its extreme we have to come to the realisation that since subatomic particles are in fact really just quantum probability distributions in some unknown quasi-real state-space which at best sounds like some sort of Platonic hyper-dimension and at worst an inaccessible spiritual realm of pure potential yet to be made manifest by the wave function collapse by the observer. Either way, absolute reductionism leads to this conundrum and it seems that Nishitani is strongly suggesting that to reconcile this notion of quantum reality and 'bedrock' physics, we cannot stop where Nietzsche did. We must push beyond that point where a deeper and more absolute view comes about and this view is at heart a true paradox that has to be accepted.
I believe this book does a very good job of trying to convey a deeply paradoxical way of understanding 'Being' in a manner that the Western mind can absorb. It is by no means an easy task, and there were certainly many moments while reading that you have to re-read certain passages and let them stir in your mind before the meaning behind them seemed to break through. I think this is more indicative of the inadequacy of Western thinking at piercing deeper levels of understanding, rather than it being due to what we perceive as obscure, quasi-mystical obfuscating language.
This will definitely need to be re-read a few times, but I think that it would be necessary to have some reading and a moderate understanding of the phenomenologists and existentialists before embarking on this ontological adventure.
This book is an attempt to take us beyond ourselves as a self and also the world as it appears to us. In this sense, it straddles Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in trying to force us past the linguistic conceptualisation of the world and the self and to come to a mode of being beyond the view from the self-enclosed self-model to bring into view a more holistic understanding of the interpenetration of being itself. It is a way of getting past the subject-object distinction which has been deeply entrenched in Western thought since the time of René Descartes.
To me, the central theme running through the book speaks to the paradoxical nature of reality which we find in almost all serious religions, philosophies, wisdom traditions and at the bedrock of the scientific understanding of reality. The Tao is offered as a way of understanding the paradoxical nature of reality in the East, just as the ancient Greek world brought forward Heraclitus' notion of the flux of being and modern physics was turned on its head upon the inception of quantum mechanics and the unsettling discovery of wave/particle duality which lies at the heart of what we call 'matter'.
Nishitani argues that Nietzsche was one of the few great Western thinkers who was able to get as far as the point of 'Nothingness' and to recognise it as a field of infinite depth, but rather than pushing beyond this field of nihility and into what is known in Buddhism as Śūnyatā, Nietzsche rested on the realisation of Nihilism. From my understanding, it is this resting on the ground of absolute Nihilism that lies at the root of much of the meaning crisis in today's world and it seems many very important thinkers of this age are converging on this meta-problem. For instance, most of us have either directly experienced or at least know of someone who has attended a class, watched a video, listened to a podcast or read a book which has portrayed what it is to be human as nothing but an agglomeration of atoms. Then many reductionists feel obligated to go further and state that since each atom is primarily empty space then we by extension are mostly empty space or nothing. And when this reductionist view is pushed to its extreme we have to come to the realisation that since subatomic particles are in fact really just quantum probability distributions in some unknown quasi-real state-space which at best sounds like some sort of Platonic hyper-dimension and at worst an inaccessible spiritual realm of pure potential yet to be made manifest by the wave function collapse by the observer. Either way, absolute reductionism leads to this conundrum and it seems that Nishitani is strongly suggesting that to reconcile this notion of quantum reality and 'bedrock' physics, we cannot stop where Nietzsche did. We must push beyond that point where a deeper and more absolute view comes about and this view is at heart a true paradox that has to be accepted.
I believe this book does a very good job of trying to convey a deeply paradoxical way of understanding 'Being' in a manner that the Western mind can absorb. It is by no means an easy task, and there were certainly many moments while reading that you have to re-read certain passages and let them stir in your mind before the meaning behind them seemed to break through. I think this is more indicative of the inadequacy of Western thinking at piercing deeper levels of understanding, rather than it being due to what we perceive as obscure, quasi-mystical obfuscating language.
This will definitely need to be re-read a few times, but I think that it would be necessary to have some reading and a moderate understanding of the phenomenologists and existentialists before embarking on this ontological adventure.
May 15, 2025
What an interesting work this is. I came in blind, relatively, as a novice in buddhist thinking, but relatively well-studied within the western philosophy and phenomenology in particular. My meetings with eastern thought has primarily been through Taoism, and I think that did help a lot along the way, as the Zen variant of Buddhism that Nishitani seems to be most inspired by, obviously shares a lot of traits with Taoism.
All that said, my weapons against the beast declared, I went on the adventure and found so many insights, all bound up in the concept of sunyata, that I really have been moved in my thinking about the world. Or maybe rather, that I've found a sense of a language that captures some of what I've been fumbling after in western philosophy. The freedom and profound meaning that is breathed into the world and our existence by fully embracing nihilism, has always been a double edged sword that also justifies and motivates all the dumbest impulses of our species, and mobilize them against our sense of meaning and purpose in the world.
My entire outlook of the primacy of thinking over doing, is summarized by Nishitani as the closing paragraph of the book:
"Only in the field of emptiness does all of this [true equality] become possible. Unless the thoughts and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field, the sorts of problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved''.
Through the elaborate discussion on how the concept of time differs in western (eschatological) and eastern (recurrent) time, and how it directly affects our thinking of meaning, Nishitani skillfully shows how the self-referential goal of progress is never a goal, as much as an insatiable debt to ourselves that we are forever stuck in, always renewing our 'loan' with every action, as the only option is to 'become', more and more.
In the same way, and ringing with echoes of Heideggers concept of the Scaffold (Gestell??), he shows us how the 'essensialistic' drive of technology and science, is a drive to fix reality in its place, and by doing so, replace its being, the particularity of every thing, every being, with the very thing that erases its particularity. It is a uniformity of reality, into its least vibrant and least real expression, that is then imposed into our very idea of what our world is made of.
Through this lens, nothingness is nihility, not sunyata.
There are many more excellent points, and many of them are much less concerned with 'correcting' thinking, like the stuff I've outline above. Rather it is as much an existential inquiry into the self, and to me, one that helped me through a lot of confusion in my own life. I can't say that I have at all internalized / realized what I've come to think about, but it has certainly open up a field of thought that I think I needed to get access to. I am not done with the insight provided here, at all...
A fair warning though, this book is a complicated reading experience. Nishitani is thorough and precise, but sometimes to a fault, where the slight nuances between concepts are discussed at the same time, and you find yourself thinking that you've reached an understanding, only to be told, that this (seemingly quite alien) way of understanding something you thought you knew, is actually his way of approaching what you knew, to enlighten that understanding, and to then deconstruct it from the field of sunyata. Yes, it hurts the little brain, and it keeps it on its toes. I had a lot of success with reading paragraphs aloud, as it helps ordering the thought, to give it intonation (to me).
What a rambling review... if you're at all interested in the book, I sincerely hope you'll take up the challenge!
All that said, my weapons against the beast declared, I went on the adventure and found so many insights, all bound up in the concept of sunyata, that I really have been moved in my thinking about the world. Or maybe rather, that I've found a sense of a language that captures some of what I've been fumbling after in western philosophy. The freedom and profound meaning that is breathed into the world and our existence by fully embracing nihilism, has always been a double edged sword that also justifies and motivates all the dumbest impulses of our species, and mobilize them against our sense of meaning and purpose in the world.
My entire outlook of the primacy of thinking over doing, is summarized by Nishitani as the closing paragraph of the book:
"Only in the field of emptiness does all of this [true equality] become possible. Unless the thoughts and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field, the sorts of problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved''.
Through the elaborate discussion on how the concept of time differs in western (eschatological) and eastern (recurrent) time, and how it directly affects our thinking of meaning, Nishitani skillfully shows how the self-referential goal of progress is never a goal, as much as an insatiable debt to ourselves that we are forever stuck in, always renewing our 'loan' with every action, as the only option is to 'become', more and more.
In the same way, and ringing with echoes of Heideggers concept of the Scaffold (Gestell??), he shows us how the 'essensialistic' drive of technology and science, is a drive to fix reality in its place, and by doing so, replace its being, the particularity of every thing, every being, with the very thing that erases its particularity. It is a uniformity of reality, into its least vibrant and least real expression, that is then imposed into our very idea of what our world is made of.
Through this lens, nothingness is nihility, not sunyata.
There are many more excellent points, and many of them are much less concerned with 'correcting' thinking, like the stuff I've outline above. Rather it is as much an existential inquiry into the self, and to me, one that helped me through a lot of confusion in my own life. I can't say that I have at all internalized / realized what I've come to think about, but it has certainly open up a field of thought that I think I needed to get access to. I am not done with the insight provided here, at all...
A fair warning though, this book is a complicated reading experience. Nishitani is thorough and precise, but sometimes to a fault, where the slight nuances between concepts are discussed at the same time, and you find yourself thinking that you've reached an understanding, only to be told, that this (seemingly quite alien) way of understanding something you thought you knew, is actually his way of approaching what you knew, to enlighten that understanding, and to then deconstruct it from the field of sunyata. Yes, it hurts the little brain, and it keeps it on its toes. I had a lot of success with reading paragraphs aloud, as it helps ordering the thought, to give it intonation (to me).
What a rambling review... if you're at all interested in the book, I sincerely hope you'll take up the challenge!
June 6, 2025
★★★★★ Turn the Dial to 11
Religion and Nothingness may be the most transformative book I have ever read. I won’t know for sure until some time has passed, but right now, it feels that way. Whether the world that Nishitani opens up for me remains—or fades—will be revealed in the months and years ahead.
The impact of this book didn’t happen in a vacuum. Many of its core themes have been part of my inner life for a long time. From my years of meditation, I have been increasingly aware of the illusory nature of the self. I have also had increasing awareness of the toxic supremacy of the individual in the modern world and how our culture underappreciates the impact of relationships on our own view of the world. But Nishitani brings all of this together with breathtaking clarity and philosophical rigor.
Reading him, I no longer feel alone in trying to piece together a worldview from fragments. His description of reality is magisterial, encompassing, and strangely intimate. It’s an alien vision for anyone raised in the post-Enlightenment West—yet for me, it’s a landscape that feels suddenly accessible, even familiar.
At its heart, Nishitani’s philosophy is a religious quest without God. Almost every foundation of Western thought is inverted: the self is non-self, things are non-things, true reality is emptiness and real understanding comes from a place prior to thought—prior even to comprehension. This is not a philosophy that can be grasped in ordinary conceptual terms. Like the Christian tradition of negative theology, or Zen koans, Nishitani points us toward what is by stripping away what is not.
I’ve long been drawn to Eastern perspectives, but usually through Western writers like Hermann Hesse or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nishitani is different. He was a Japanese Zen Buddhist who went to Europe, studied with Heidegger, and steeped himself in Nietzsche. If western writers explain the buddhist perspective at a surface level with language, Nishitani does it with a 3-D painting that soaks into my mind and body.
This book is difficult. I spent over 100 hours with it, and needed the help of ChatGPT to make real sense of it. I genuinely don’t think I could have grasped its insights on my own. I’m hesitant to recommend it broadly as I think it won't make any sense unless the reader is in a certain mindframe.
But if you are in that mindframe, and you take the time, Religion and Nothingness is a world-shattering, radiant kaleidoscope of insight.
“The heart and mind of this shadowy man,
At all occasions is to me most familiar.
From long ago mysteriously wondrous,
It is neither I nor someone else.”
- Gasan Jōseki
Religion and Nothingness may be the most transformative book I have ever read. I won’t know for sure until some time has passed, but right now, it feels that way. Whether the world that Nishitani opens up for me remains—or fades—will be revealed in the months and years ahead.
The impact of this book didn’t happen in a vacuum. Many of its core themes have been part of my inner life for a long time. From my years of meditation, I have been increasingly aware of the illusory nature of the self. I have also had increasing awareness of the toxic supremacy of the individual in the modern world and how our culture underappreciates the impact of relationships on our own view of the world. But Nishitani brings all of this together with breathtaking clarity and philosophical rigor.
Reading him, I no longer feel alone in trying to piece together a worldview from fragments. His description of reality is magisterial, encompassing, and strangely intimate. It’s an alien vision for anyone raised in the post-Enlightenment West—yet for me, it’s a landscape that feels suddenly accessible, even familiar.
At its heart, Nishitani’s philosophy is a religious quest without God. Almost every foundation of Western thought is inverted: the self is non-self, things are non-things, true reality is emptiness and real understanding comes from a place prior to thought—prior even to comprehension. This is not a philosophy that can be grasped in ordinary conceptual terms. Like the Christian tradition of negative theology, or Zen koans, Nishitani points us toward what is by stripping away what is not.
I’ve long been drawn to Eastern perspectives, but usually through Western writers like Hermann Hesse or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nishitani is different. He was a Japanese Zen Buddhist who went to Europe, studied with Heidegger, and steeped himself in Nietzsche. If western writers explain the buddhist perspective at a surface level with language, Nishitani does it with a 3-D painting that soaks into my mind and body.
This book is difficult. I spent over 100 hours with it, and needed the help of ChatGPT to make real sense of it. I genuinely don’t think I could have grasped its insights on my own. I’m hesitant to recommend it broadly as I think it won't make any sense unless the reader is in a certain mindframe.
But if you are in that mindframe, and you take the time, Religion and Nothingness is a world-shattering, radiant kaleidoscope of insight.
“The heart and mind of this shadowy man,
At all occasions is to me most familiar.
From long ago mysteriously wondrous,
It is neither I nor someone else.”
- Gasan Jōseki
February 20, 2025
To understand this book required being in a certain state of mind, for me. It is dense with meaning, rhetorical flourishes, and new vocabulary centered on the experience of the Buddhist concept of sunyata, or the void, or nothingness, or ____.
This is Descartes Meditations if he went one step further in denial of the ego, and then worked upwards in the context of nothingness. His dialogue with Western thought and nihilism serves as an important antidote to the things we are dealing with. Problems of religion and science, of our own agencies, God, practice, ontology, and making the world from these backdrops.
Like any good master, he defines the problem, tells us where it came from, and then uses the acceptance of that problem to move through and transcend the problem. This too in the context of ancient poetry.
Ironically, it is as if he said nothing at all. The world remains the same, but the awareness of the void from which everything emerges is now present. There are sentences, paragraphs, and methods of writing that seem meant to directly play with your mind, down to his embedding of quotes, poems, and other things. Nishitani has such an intense and direct relationship with the reader which shifts throughout the book. Ultimately, he places us in a stasis of love and equanimity, not as
solution, but as the inevitable result of our trajectories.
However, getting there was a journey. The dialogue with nothingness, nihilism, is stressful and tumultuous. There were times where I lost myself, where I found myself again, where I realized there was no point in finding myself, where I realized that "I" was hardly a distinction after all.
Not to skip to the end, but this quote is really important and speaks to Nishitani's view of our fundamental nature and the nature of the dhamma and God, despite the existence of non-existence, and indeed, because of it.
"On the field of emptiness, then, all our work takes on the character of play. When our doing-being-becoming, when our existence, our behavior, and our life each emerges into its respective nature from its outermost extreme, that is, when they emerge from the point where non-ego is self into their own suchness, they have already cast off the character of having any why or wherefore."
This is Descartes Meditations if he went one step further in denial of the ego, and then worked upwards in the context of nothingness. His dialogue with Western thought and nihilism serves as an important antidote to the things we are dealing with. Problems of religion and science, of our own agencies, God, practice, ontology, and making the world from these backdrops.
Like any good master, he defines the problem, tells us where it came from, and then uses the acceptance of that problem to move through and transcend the problem. This too in the context of ancient poetry.
Ironically, it is as if he said nothing at all. The world remains the same, but the awareness of the void from which everything emerges is now present. There are sentences, paragraphs, and methods of writing that seem meant to directly play with your mind, down to his embedding of quotes, poems, and other things. Nishitani has such an intense and direct relationship with the reader which shifts throughout the book. Ultimately, he places us in a stasis of love and equanimity, not as
solution, but as the inevitable result of our trajectories.
However, getting there was a journey. The dialogue with nothingness, nihilism, is stressful and tumultuous. There were times where I lost myself, where I found myself again, where I realized there was no point in finding myself, where I realized that "I" was hardly a distinction after all.
Not to skip to the end, but this quote is really important and speaks to Nishitani's view of our fundamental nature and the nature of the dhamma and God, despite the existence of non-existence, and indeed, because of it.
"On the field of emptiness, then, all our work takes on the character of play. When our doing-being-becoming, when our existence, our behavior, and our life each emerges into its respective nature from its outermost extreme, that is, when they emerge from the point where non-ego is self into their own suchness, they have already cast off the character of having any why or wherefore."
January 23, 2023
i had a lot of issues as i read through this book, mostly stemming from the style. i cannot solely attribute this to the translation, although this was most certainly part of it.it can also be partially attributed to the subject matter, which treats some of the deepest gray areas in philosophy. nishitani is also trying to express truthes which he stresses, repeatedly, can only be truly expressed in the form of paradoxes or blatant contradictions. he may just be correct here, but i felt that sometimes the nitty-gritty parts of his discussions were overly vague, bordering on woo-woo. i also thought he was somewhat under-generous in his treatments of modern western philosophy, to which he is doubtedless deeply indebted, and over-generous to buddhism, which he appropriates in service of staking out his own position. this kind of thing is quite common, however, and as heidegger said, probably necessary. moreover, none of this took away from the depth with which nishitani engaged these issues, and when his explanation of his alternatives clicked for me, i found it very close to the positions i find myself moving towards these days, even if i'm not sure he argued them sufficiently. beyond that, the book is teeming which food for thought and interesting references, and for these reasons i did end up liking it.
"In Nietzsche, and in more contemporary figures like Heidegger, for instance, nihilism is dealt with on the horizon of the so-called "history of being." This sort of situation does not exist in the East. Still, the East has achieved a sort of conversion from the standpoint of nihility to the standpoint of śūnyatā." 168
"...the real dignity of man seems to me to belong only to one who has been 'reborn,' only in the 'new man' that emerges in us when we are born by dying, when we break through nihility."
here are some page numbers that i am writing down because i might want to go back to them later: 16-18, 39, 70, 73, 94-98 (nothingness), 123, 135-136, 144-145(nullification), 219-221 (on time), 257-259
"In Nietzsche, and in more contemporary figures like Heidegger, for instance, nihilism is dealt with on the horizon of the so-called "history of being." This sort of situation does not exist in the East. Still, the East has achieved a sort of conversion from the standpoint of nihility to the standpoint of śūnyatā." 168
"...the real dignity of man seems to me to belong only to one who has been 'reborn,' only in the 'new man' that emerges in us when we are born by dying, when we break through nihility."
here are some page numbers that i am writing down because i might want to go back to them later: 16-18, 39, 70, 73, 94-98 (nothingness), 123, 135-136, 144-145(nullification), 219-221 (on time), 257-259
August 18, 2020
Very comprehensive, but too repetitive. Nishitani offers a nice and original form of overcoming 'nihlilism' or the believing that nothing has value. The focus on zen Buddhism as a philosophical possibility is well-done and the critic in the forgot nihil as being in most of western philosophy makes a good read to those who aren't that much into hard philosophy as they are curious on existence itself and it's questioning.
I would label as a existencialist without the romanticism of Heidegger [this comparison is not mine] and without the dramatism of the french philosophers.
The concept of God is for me one of most accurate, being weird for me the lack of acknowledge in Spinoza or the Hermetics, although he recognised the influence of Eckhart.
In any way, this is like a well mixed personal vision on existence itself: if you like the oblivion of existencialism, the metaphysics and esoterism of Buddhism and the back and forth of philosophy literature this one is for you. Dense but well-made.
I would label as a existencialist without the romanticism of Heidegger [this comparison is not mine] and without the dramatism of the french philosophers.
The concept of God is for me one of most accurate, being weird for me the lack of acknowledge in Spinoza or the Hermetics, although he recognised the influence of Eckhart.
In any way, this is like a well mixed personal vision on existence itself: if you like the oblivion of existencialism, the metaphysics and esoterism of Buddhism and the back and forth of philosophy literature this one is for you. Dense but well-made.
February 19, 2024
This book should be in the Bible.
Western philosophy has a problem with nihilism. Unfortunately, much of our philosophical tradition is ill-equipped to deal with this problem. Nishitani spend this book working through a concept called sunyata, which could present a path out. Sunyata is the emptiness emptied even of emptiness. And it is the home ground of our being.
Western philosophy has a problem with nihilism. Unfortunately, much of our philosophical tradition is ill-equipped to deal with this problem. Nishitani spend this book working through a concept called sunyata, which could present a path out. Sunyata is the emptiness emptied even of emptiness. And it is the home ground of our being.
April 19, 2023
Wow, I have so many thoughts about this text. Nishitani's analyses of Nihilism and modernity are absolutely unrivaled in accuracy. His understanding of Sunyata is unparalleled. I wish Nishitani's political project was more interesting because the rest of his philosophy is clearly fantastic.
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November 23, 2023Tạm thời drop cuốn này cho đến khi có cơ hội đọc sách giấy. Các khái niệm ở dưới "absolute nothingness, selfness, near side, substance..." đều khó theo dõi và hiểu khi đọc file PDF trên màn điện thoại
January 5, 2025
“Only on the field of emptiness does all of this become possible. Unless the thoughts and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field, the sorts of problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved.”
November 19, 2025
A truly challenging book, and I can’t claim to have understood everything, but the main ideas (which I would argue are contained in the first three essays) are transformative and unique.
May 8, 2020
A comprehensive Zen Buddhist exploration of existentialism and Western esoteric literature. Unfortunately, Nishitani writes in circles as each chapter passes, which makes me anxious of whether he is trying to argue anything or not. Most of the time, it just happens that he repeats a concept that came up earlier. Definitely some interesting concepts here, but the writing could have been much more concise and less reliant on wordplay.
August 28, 2023
One of the best books on Zen - Buddhist philosophy in general- for Westerners. Professor Nishitani is able to crack open the quite hard shell of the field of Sunyata and allow the dualist Occidental viewer a close-up of this most core Buddhist principle. Sunyata, or emptiness, transcends the rational analysis, and is therefore very difficult to explain on the „concentric circle of reason.“
But, using insights from German Idealism, Nietsche, Heidegger ( to name a few ), Professor Nishitani succeeds admirably in his task. No doubt his immersions in comparative philosophy have been a great help, but this fact doesn‘t take anything away from this enduring work: 5 stars all the way.
Professor Nishitani never comes down from his unique tower of insight, but somehow one never stops feeling his compassionate hand on one‘s shoulder.
But, using insights from German Idealism, Nietsche, Heidegger ( to name a few ), Professor Nishitani succeeds admirably in his task. No doubt his immersions in comparative philosophy have been a great help, but this fact doesn‘t take anything away from this enduring work: 5 stars all the way.
Professor Nishitani never comes down from his unique tower of insight, but somehow one never stops feeling his compassionate hand on one‘s shoulder.
August 3, 2015
Heavy going. I didn't finish it.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews