Keiji Nishitani

Keiji Nishitani (西谷 啓治, Nishitani Keiji, February 27, 1900 – November 24, 1990) 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."^[1]

Thought

On Heisig's reading, Nishitani's philosophy had a distinctive religious and subjective bent, drawing Nishitani close to existentialists and mystics, most notably Søren Kierkegaard and Meister Eckhart, rather than to the scholars and theologians who aimed at systematic elaborations of thought. Heisig further argues that Nishitani, "the stylistic superior of Nishida," brought Zen poetry, religion, literature, and philosophy organically together in his work to help lay the difficult foundations for a breaking free of the Japanese language, in a similar way to Blaise Pascal or Friedrich Nietzsche.^[1] Furthermore, Heisig argues that, unlike Nishida, who had supposedly focused on building a philosophical system and who, towards the end of his career, began to focus on political philosophy, Nishitani focused on delineating a standpoint "from which he could enlighten a broader range of topics," and wrote more on Buddhist themes towards the end of his career.^[1] However, Nishitani always wrote and understood himself as a philosopher akin in spirit to Nishida insofar as the teacher—always bent upon fundamental problems of ordinary life—sought to revive a path of life walked already by ancient predecessors, most notably in the Zen tradition. Nor can Heisig's reading of Nishitani as "existentialist" convince in the face of Nishitani's critique of existentialism—a critique that walked, in its essential orientation, in the footsteps of Nishida's "Investigation of the Good" (Zen no Kenkyuu).

Among the many works authored by Nishitani in Japanese, are the following titles: Divinity and Absolute Negation (Kami to zettai Mu; 1948), Examining Aristotle (Arisutoteresu ronkao; 1948); Religion, Politics, and Culture (Shuukyou to seiji to bunka; 1949); Modern Society's Various Problems and Religion (Gendai shakai no shomondai to shuukyou; 1951); Regarding Buddhism (Bukkyou ni tsuite; 1982); Nishida Kitaro: The Man and the Thought (Nishida Kitarou, sono hito to shisou; 1985); The Standpoint of Zen (Zen no tachiba; 1986); Between Religion and Non-Religion (Shuukyou to hishuukyou no aida; 1996). A more exhaustive list of works is accessible on the Japanese version of the present wikipage.

Bibliography

• Religion and Nothingness (ISBN 0-520-04946-2), Nishitani Keiji, Translated by Jan Van Bragt
• The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (Modern Japanese Philosophy Series), Nishitani Keiji
• The Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji 1900-1990 (ISBN 0-7734-2930-1), Nishitani Keiji, Translated by Jonathan Morris Augustine and Yamamoto Seisaku

Works in English

• Religion and Nothingness
• several essays in Frederick Franck, The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries

Notes

References

• Philosophers of Nothingness (ISBN 0-8248-2481-4), James Heisig

External links

• Quotations related to Keiji Nishitani at Wikiquote