Running head: CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !1 · Running head: CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !1 Critique of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji Niklas Söderman Tallinn University, School

Running head: CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !1

Critique of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji

Niklas Söderman

Tallinn University, School of Humanities

Author’s Accepted Manuscript

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Niklas Söderman (2018) Critique of modernity in the philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, Asian

Philosophy, 28:3, 224-240, DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2018.1512462

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2018.1512462

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https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2018.1512462

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CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !2

Abstract

This article analyses Nishitani Keiji’s persistent critique of modernity and how it intertwines

with other issues—such as nihilism, science and religion—in his philosophy. While Nishitani

gained some notoriety for his views on overcoming modernity during WWII, this article will

look at his relationship with the issue more in the scope of his whole philosophical career.

Pulling together various strands that weave through Nishitani’s treatment of modernity, its

relation to nihilism and his views for overcoming both, we find that it motivates his themes of

Heideggerian critique of technology and Nietzschean redemption of tradition that combine

with a reverse-Hegelian search for an originary ground that is grasped via existential

realisation revealed through religious praxis. However, Nishitani’s approach raises some

problematic questions on the social level due to the way it conceptualises modernity through a

Nietzschean lens that leaves little room for modernity as a social and political phenomenon.

Keywords: Kyoto School, nihilism, existentialism, Heidegger, Nietzsche


Critique of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji

The Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji’s (1900-1990) thought evolved significantly

over his career, but a number of topics remained central to his thinking for extended periods.

Of these, his existential grappling with the problem of nihilism has perhaps overshadowed an

enduring concern with modernity and its effects, although the two are almost inextricably

linked in his thinking. It was a concern he shared with a number of his Kyoto School

colleagues, starting from the 1930s’ increasingly politicised atmosphere through the war years

and all the way to his later writings in the 1960s and 1970s. Nishitani worked on the issue of

modernity initially from a distinctly Japanese perspective as a problem imported into Japan

from the West, but as his thought developed, he turned towards a more existentialist and

Buddhist approach, and problematised the issue increasingly on the individual level.

This article focuses on the topic of modernity in Nishitani’s thought, both as an

explicit philosophical concern and as an implicit issue connected to different areas of his

thought. As mentioned above, Nishitani’s interest in modernity is tied closely to his concern

with nihilism, but it is not limited to it; it also connects to his philosophy on science,

technology, religion, and authenticity, as well as to his views on socio-political issues, both

those that are explicit and those that remain implicit in his philosophy. Modernity thus

functions as a key concept to Nishitani’s philosophy, and his critical attention to it highlights

the often unspoken social views and presuppositions underpinning his thought. Before we get

there, though, it will be first necessary to define what Nishitani is talking about when he talks

about ‘modernity’.


Nishitani’s modernity

While talk about modernity in relation to Nishitani may first call to mind his connection

to the notorious 1942 Symposium on Overcoming Modernity, this article will not concentrate

on Nishitani’s views on modernity prior to the end of WWII, as much of this matter has been

covered in Rude Awakenings (Heisig & Maraldo, 1995), by Parkes (2008, 2011), Goto-Jones

(2005), Davis (2008), as well as by Calichman (2008). Here, much of the focus is on how

Nishitani’s critique of modernity developed in his later writing, particularly in the period

spanning from the 1949 publication of Nihirizumu (translated as The Self-Overcoming of

Nihilism, 1990) to the 1961 publication of Shūkyō to wa nanika (translated as Religion and

Nothingness, 1983) and the decade or so after it. That said, it is still necessary to address

Nishitani’s earlier views to understand how his thought later developed, and this is

particularly important for analysing the problematic political entanglements in his approach to

modernity, as well as for understanding his fraught relationship with the idea of modernity

itself.

To begin with, there is a marked difference in Nishitani’s conception of modernity

between his earlier and later writings. In Nishitani’s contribution to the 1942 symposium, his

paper (Nishitani, 2008) traces the roots of modernity to Renaissance, Reformation and the

birth of natural science, identifying the problem of modernity as stemming from a lack of a

common social and cultural ground, echoing the symposium’s theme of increasing

specialisation and separation of the different branches of knowledge. Nishitani saw the

modernity in Japan as grounded in European elements, but pointed out that these elements

were introduced separately from each other and any commonality they had shared prior to

importation had fragmented already in the West (Nishitani, 2008, p. 51). 1

For an analysis of Nishitani’s symposium paper, see Lin, 2014, p. 492-495.1


After WWII, the idea of ”overcoming modernity” came to be perceived as wartime

propaganda, making discussion on the issue impossible until around the 1960s, when the

stigma began to fade (Minamoto, 1995, p. 198). Nishitani, however, did not entirely let go of

the idea after the war, but instead the implicit idea of overcoming nihilism contained in the

idea of overcoming modernity came to the fore in his work, while the idea of overcoming

modernity receded into the background, but still remained an implicit theme. In his later

works, Nishitani treats modernity mostly in relation to the Enlightenment and especially to

Nietzsche’s conception of modernity in rationalisation of society. This shift of perspective is

connected to Nishitani’s philosophical focus moving towards a more existentialist perspective

and issues of nihilism. In Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani tends to equate ”modern” with

”secular” and connected to issues related to science, while modern historical consciousness is

tied to history as a discipline of modern science. Meanwhile, the awakened subjectivity of

modern people is seen as characterised by subjectivized atheism, which initially was

comprised of materialism, scientific rationalism, and belief in linear progress of society. By

the mid-20th century, however, this ”progress atheism” is seen to have developed further into

an awareness of meaninglessness in a materialistic and mechanistic world, as rationalisation

of human existence reached a point of absolute reason and ”laid bare the nihility at its own

ground” (Nishitani, 1983, p. 135), leading to nihilism at individual level and the problem of

nihilism on the cultural level.

While the problem of nihilism sprung from recognition of a fundamental crisis in

modern Europe as a result of a seismic shift in Western metaphysics, Nishitani also saw it as a

universal crisis both in a spatial sense of how Western culture was spreading around the globe

and in a temporal sense that similar crises would occur alongside similar shifts within a

culture (NKC 8, p. 175-176). While much of his thinking revolved around the problem of


nihilism in his later career, mostly fading away only after the writing of Religion and

Nothingness, he did not grapple all that directly with the issue of nihilism prior to writing The

Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Before that, his focus was more on how the crisis of the

European civilisation manifested in the problem of modernity and how it challenged Japan,

resulting in an approach that centred on socio-cultural and political issues caused by this

cultural shift. It was after the war that he began to concentrate more on the existential and

religious aspects of the cultural shift, addressing the problem of nihilism as an issue of socio-

cultural and individual existence. There was, however, little change in the underlying drive of

his work throughout this period from his youth to his sixties. He kept working on the problem

of nihilism from various angles, and his project of overcoming nihilism by passing through it

is also an overcoming of modernity by passing through modernity; the difference is in the

focus, as nihilism lies at the individual, existential root of the problem of modernity, while

modernity as a cultural shift caused the emergence of the problem of nihilism as a cultural

phenomenon.

Based on these considerations, Nishitani’s approach to modernity can be divided

roughly into two dimensions, first dealing with subjective aspects of modernity and the

second with social ones. This article will first look at modernity in relation to the individual,

where Nishitani sees it both as a crisis for the self and an opportunity for an existential

breakthrough. After this, discussion will shift to modernity in relation to society as a historical

process, where the crux of the problem for Nishitani lies in the relationship between science

and religion. Towards the end of the article, attention will be given to the issue of authenticity

in relation to Nishitani’s views on modernity and his thought in general, after which

discussion turns to some of the main problems involved in Nishitani critical approach to

modernity.


Nihilistic Emptiness of Modernity and the Individual

It is useful to note that there are at least three aspects to the question of nihilism when

discussing Nishitani’s take on it and its relation to his views on modernity. First is that of

nihility itself, or the temporal basis of everything and its eventually unavoidable annihilation.

The second is that of nihilism, which can broadly be interpreted as a response to the

realisation of nihility. This means that it can take a number of forms, and since humans have

had to deal with the concept of death as long as they have been able to conceive it as relevant

to their own existence, potentially there are any number of ways to conceptualise it. While

nihilism can become institutionalised, it is at the root tied to a subjective experience of the

radical finitude of one’s own existence. The ’institutionalisation’ depends on what context that

experience is placed by the surrounding social world: for example, Christianity and many

other religions contextualise it in terms of an afterlife and a higher level of being reliant on the

concept of God. However, if nihility is not safely contextualised by society and existential

encounter with it cannot be avoided, nihility becomes an existential problem for the self. And

if the reach of nihility is extended to all phenomena, it suddenly unmoors values that anchor

human existence and identity, setting the self adrift. And as even the sense of self begins to

crumble under the inexorable progress of nihility, the subjective self is cast into an abyss with

seemingly no way out.

This was the existential threat the Western world came to face in the modern era as the

dominant paradigm of existence shifted from a Christian-Platonic worldview to a scientific

one. This resulted in a progressive delegitimisation of the prior metaphysical view of the

world and knocked off supports from the social contextualisation of nihility, thus bringing the

problem of nihilism to the fore as an ontological crisis. It is this Western crisis and problem of

nihilism that Nishitani concentrates on in many of his writings, having found that it had

arrived to Japan as an uninvited guest accompanying the nation’s Westernisation. In this


sense, what is referred to as the problem of nihilism should be made distinct from the

concepts of nihilism and nihility as a third aspect of the issue, and in the context of Nishitani’s

philosophical studies, it refers to this idea of an existentialist crisis in modern Western culture.

Despite the society-wide implications of the problem of nihilism, Nishitani insists (NKC 8, p.

3-4) on the necessity of an involved, experiential approach to both existentialism and

nihilism, as the latter is for him first of all a problem of the self, and becomes only such a

problem when the self becomes a problem. To unpack this idea a little, Nishitani is saying that

the issues related to nihilism can only be grasped when they are grasped from within one’s

own existence, when you begin to question the ground of your own existence. A previously

stable-appearing ground—values, social relations, etc.—is suddenly thrust into question, and

as you realise that the features you thought were central to your sense of self are in fact not

there, you may begin to question other things and come to see how they are equally ephemeral

constructions. The existential questioning expands with this experience of nihility at the

ground of the self, casting all the pillars supporting the self into doubt, until one cannot

separate the self that is doing the questioning from what is questioned. Thus, the self itself

becomes the question, or as Nishitani says, by being thrown into nihility, the self is revealed

to itself (NKC 8, p. 5).

It is due to the necessity of this kind of existential appropriation of the issue why

Nishitani insists that when the problem of nihilism is posed apart from the self or as a general

social problem, it loses the genuine connection that makes it such a special problem apart

from others (NKC 8, p. 4), rendering the heart of the problem inaccessible. Still, calling

nihilism first of all a problem of the self might sound odd as Nishitani repeatedly insists that

the problem of nihilism is the central issue facing the modern society. This underlines how for

Nishitani, social is personal: his concentration is on the individual, viewing social issues

mostly as something extrapolated on the basis of the self, and thus his nihilism is existential,


not social or ethical. For him, the problem of nihilism must be solved on a personal level, if it

is to be solved at all.

From this it follows for Nishitani that religion offers solution to the problem of

nihilism, as for him religion is a personal question; quite literally, since his interpretation of

what religion is differs from what we might usually think of as religion. For Nishitani,

religion has since ancient times ”prepared the way for individuals to encounter the

self” (Nishitani, 2012, p. 67), providing a way to existential self-realisation. Nishitani was

particularly fond of quoting St. Paul’s words—”It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in

me” (Gal. 2:20)—to express this idea of one’s true and authentic identity, as it parallels the

Buddhist-philosophical view on the emptiness (śūnyatā) or dharma ultimately expressing

itself in and through the individual. Search for this kind of primordial ”being” is a quest for

authenticity of existence, and the standpoint that Nishitani articulates in Religion and

Nothingness can even be seen as going beyond this in that it dismantles all that is inauthentic

in life, to a degree that ultimately the self as an individual is lost to the self as such which is a

manifestation of emptiness—a standpoint of emptiness, as Nishitani puts it.

All this is not to say that Nishitani ignores the historical nature of nihilism, as he, for

example, notes that while nihilism is an existential problem, it is also a historical and social

phenomenon (NKC 8, p. 7). For Nishitani, nihilism is indicative of a broken value system and

a foundational upheaval of social and historical life. This view also implies the reverse,

meaning that a major social upheaval can be a cause for nihilism. Nishitani acknowledges this

and cites the mood of post-war Japan as one such instance (NKC 8, p. 6). This view seems

logical, as it seems reasonable that a major social upheaval would cause subjective anxiety on

an individual level over loss of social certainties.


Crisis as an Opening for the Great Doubt

Still, Nishitani saw the crisis induced by modernisation and Westernisation also as an

opportunity: a way for spiritual development and understanding through the birth of what Zen

Buddhism calls the Great Doubt, which indicates a foundational existential uncertainty that

can unsettle and break through habitualized modes of thinking and induce a major shift in

consciousness. In Nishitani’s view, European nihilism enabled the Japanese to become aware

of the nihility within, leading them to recognise the crisis and return to reflect on the tradition

of Asian culture, while also making it clear that there can be no return to the past as such and,

indeed, that the past would have to be either repudiated or subjected to radical criticism (NKC

8, p. 183). Thus for Nishitani, the Great Doubt acts as the key to unlock the meaning and

opportunity that nihility offers to human existence, and it is through this that we find a way

out of the nihilism. Nihilism represents for Nishitani a crisis as both the danger of reducing

human being to the infinite drive of self-will and an opportunity of exposing the roots of one’s

”primordial will” (Davis, 2011, p. 91). Once exposed, it becomes possible to cut these roots of

will and reach the standpoint of emptiness (śūnyatā). In essence, Nishitani uses mood in much

the same way as Heidegger analyses it in Being and Time (see Heidegger, 1996, p. 126-134):

to attune us to what we ordinarily fail to notice. So the anxiety and despair caused by nihilism

are used to evoke insight in a manner somewhat similar to religious techniques of altering and

transforming consciousness.

For Nishitani, the Great Doubt is the point at which nihility as the ground of the self

and all things makes itself present as a reality, with the result that self-existence and the being

of all things is turned into a single doubt (Nishitani, 1983, p. 17-18). The sense of nihility

overwhelms both reality and the self, and the distinction between what is doubted and who

doubts dissolves as the self becomes the Great Doubt in an existential transformation of


consciousness that is a major step toward overcoming dualism between the self and other.

Nishitani insists that this Doubt cannot be understood as a state of consciousness, but it is

instead the uncertainty at the ground of all things becoming a reality through the self and thus

being appropriated by the self (Nishitani, 1983, p. 18). In essence, for him it is not the

consciousness that now does the doubting, as the self itself at the basis of the consciousness is

thrown into this Doubt. This Doubt, in turn, is an expression of the reality as it is, expressed

through an individual.

Nishitani notes that in Buddhism, the Great Doubt is known as the doubt of samādhi

(Nishitani, 1983, p. 18), which is necessary for achieving the state of samādhi (meditative

absorption) that enables one to reach śūnyatā (emptiness). At the same time, he points out that

this kind of doubt means for him the basic difference between religion and philosophy, since

whereas philosophy tends to transfer this doubt and its resolution into the context of

theoretical reflection, in religion the doubt becomes a lived, existential reality for the self. But

this also means that while the Great Doubt is not something to be grasped via intellect, it can

be discussed philosophically as Nishitani does. In considering Nishitani’s delineation between

religion and philosophy, one has to bear in mind that for Nishitani, religion is a matter of self-

realisation of reality, not of faith and revelation. Thus for him, reality must be grasped

existentially, not as a philosophical abstraction, but as a lived existence of what he views as

religious practice.

Critique of Modernity and the Social

Much of Nishitani’s concern with modernity revolved around its impact on individual self-

understanding and self-realisation through the erosion of prior metaphysics, but modernity

also mediated critical changes in the social realm. There Nishitani focuses on issues of

technologization and cultural tradition, where the former meant struggle of mastery between


humans and technology, while the latter related directly to the effects of Westernisation in

Japan and more generally to a growing disconnect between networks of past meanings and

modern social structures.

Heideggerian Critique of Technologization

Nishitani’s views on science settle in with a more general attitude among the Kyoto

philosophers, who took the spread of the scientific mindset to task for representing a kind of

deceptive colonialization rather than any form of transculturalism (Heisig, 2001, p. 271).

Nishitani sees the materialist worldview informed by science and technology as both

emblematic of modernity and as part of the reason why it had turned into an existential

problem. His conviction is that the problem of nihilism lies at the root of the mutual aversion

between religion and science, and it was this idea that served as the starting point of his

philosophical engagement with the problem. Considering his views on the relation between

religion and science also serves to illuminate how he sees the problem of nihilism as having

developed and taken hold of the modern world, and how he seeks to address it. In short, the

problem for him is that while science has robbed us of a teleological world, we still

experience our existence as purposeful.

Nishitani sought to reconcile this contradiction. In the past, a teleological worldview

provided a clear place for human existence, but Nishitani is unequivocal about the destruction

of the metaphysical ground from which teleological systems in religion and philosophy have

traditionally emerged (cf. Nishitani, 2004, p. 114). Meanwhile, he sees that the worldview

opened by science is unable to offer a place for human existence, since it cannot articulate

what it means to be human, as meaning in the existential sense is something not accounted for

by a materialist view. Such existential meaning is a question of religion for him, at least in the

sense that he defines religion, but religion cannot pose a challenge to science unless it


radically re-examines its own basis in dated metaphysics. For him, one of philosophy’s

fundamental tasks in modern times is to provide a way to resolve the conflict between science

and religion, but he found that philosophical efforts to that effect had not been free of

teleological assumptions, and the results had been less than satisfying (Nishitani, 2004. p.

113-114). In short, he sees both religion and science as given and unavoidable, but finds it

necessary for religion to accommodate the critique issuing from the scientific perspective,

while also challenging the limitations of that perspective in accounting for existential reality.

There is also of a theme of naturalness running through Nishitani’s approach and

critique of science. He underlines how the scientific perspective normalises a separation

between humans and what is natural. Such alienation from nature means weakening of the

self, and in terms of modern rationalisation, it contributes to a general process of

mechanisation that Nishitani sees as gradually destroying genuine relationships and turning

everyone and everything into an ”it,” the ”I” included. This kind of reification runs counter to

Kant’s warning against treating people as means rather than ends, and Nishitani follows

Buddhist logic in expanding the Kantian view to include all phenomena. There is an apparent

influence of Heidegger’s critique of technologization here in seeing how technology leads us

to view nature and others, even ourselves, as mere resources. In response to this situation,

Nishitani sought remedy from Japanese tradition and Buddhism in the sense of a Nietzschean

redemption of tradition. Through this possibility of redemption, what Nishitani called

mechanisation of the world reveals a potentially salutary aspect, as it sets the stage for the full

development of nihilism by forcing people to face the full reality of their existence. The

problem, however, is that this development has been stymied by a world split in two between

the subjective and the objective views, or what he saw as religious and scientific views of the

world. The human has been separated from nature and nature has been objectified by science,

while what it means to be human is left unquestioned and ignored by papering over the abyss


over which one’s existence hangs suspended. Abe notes that this is why the problem of

religion and science is a central issue for Nishitani, as the advance of science has revealed that

abyss and given rise to a religious quest to recover the meaning of human life (Abe, 1989, p.

35-36). Thus, overcoming the problem of nihilism requires also resolving the problem of

religion and science. Nishitani himself states this quite directly: ”The problem of religion and

science is the most fundamental problem facing contemporary man” (Nishitani, 1983, p. 46).

Returning to the idea of mechanisation, we can see that Nishitani criticises how a

scientific worldview leads humans to internalise a technologically constructed model of

ourselves and thereby lose sight of their authentic freedom (see also Stenson, 1989, p. 123). It

might be more accurate to see this process as that of internalising metaphors based on

technology and industrialisation, which appears in Nishitani’s Heideggerian concern that

technology as the incarnation of human freedom in machines and instruments is turning

around to become incarnation of machines and instruments in man’s understanding of

himself, to which the scientific perspective remains methodologically blind (Stenson, 1989, p.

125). In other words, Nishitani sees technology as representing human transcendence over

instinct through appropriation and application of natural laws, with knowledge advancing

through technological labor and technology correspondingly developing through advancement

of knowledge (Nishitani, 1983, p. 81-82). For him, this is a unique contribution of humans,

with machines functioning as their ultimate embodiment in the world. Machines display the

rule of natural law in its purest form, but at the same time, they actualise human freedom that

applies those laws as purposive human agency is fully incorporated into nature and human

control over nature is radicalised—subordination thus entailing emancipation, as Nishitani

notes (Nishitani, 1983, p. 83).

Nishitani’s concern, like Heidegger’s, is that this process of control has been reversing

in the 20th century, with humans becoming increasingly controlled by technology. He sees


this as tendency toward mechanisation, and considers it a basic feature of the modern cultural

crisis (Nishitani, 1983, p. 85) . As he puts it, ”laws of nature rule over man in the very process 2

of becoming manifest through the work of man” (Nishitani, 1983, p. 86), meaning that the

Enlightenment ideal of rationalisation has turned against ourselves in the sense that the

rationalisation, which was seen as granting us autonomy and control over nature, has

progressed to the point that it now strips us of both by laying bare how humans are

themselves subject to the same natural laws. Now, the process of mechanisation erodes

meaningful agency from our existence and reveals the nihility at the ground of one’s being.

In this way, Nishitani offers his analysis of a sense of alienation at the heart of

modernisation and its accompanying technologization along the same concerns as Heidegger

presented. He finds that this alienation (fuelled by the Enlightenment idea of rationalisation

representing human progress) turns into a process that leads to nihility and nihilism, either in

an overt or in unconscious fashion. Faced with this situation, it is only through grounding

oneself directly on this revealed nihility that one can achieve freedom from the laws of nature

(Nishitani, 1983, p. 85). This necessary appropriation of nihility as one’s ground means that

nihilism takes the form of unrestrained will, which is another aspect of the modern crisis of

culture for Nishitani. There is irony in the paradox how humans—having through their

conscious subservience to natural laws and rational use of nature freed themselves of most

constraints set by nature—now find themselves captive and subordinate to this law of infinite

desire (Gilkey, 1989, p. 57). It is the same infinite drive that Heidegger calls ”a will to will”

released by secularisation (see e.g. Heidegger, 1977, p. 78-79; Nishitani, 1983, p. 226-227) , 3

whereby each field of human endeavour has become autotelic and autonomous, an end unto

See also Nishitani, 1960, p. 14-16 on mechanisation and rationalisation of human life as de-2

humanisation and de-rationalisation of human existence

Also refers to Nietzsche’s idea of will rather willing Nothing than not willing (On the 3

Genealogy of Morals III:1).


itself. This, in turn, means that these endeavours are also rendered ultimately aimless, as they

are no longer subject to any higher goal.

Nietzschean Redemption of Living Tradition

Nishitani’s attitude towards science can be viewed as conflicted: on one hand, he sees

it as a necessary part of our life, but on the other hand it also demands us to kick away the

underpinnings that make life bearable for many of us (NKC 8, p. 217). Thus nihilism as an

end result seems inevitable, as one cannot remain in the traditional world, while the new

mechanised world offers no place for humans. But it is here that a theme of redemption in The

Self-Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness comes into play. Although the

past metaphysical ground is gone, people still need what it once provided, so Nishitani sees

that it is necessary to recover the core of the past to support us in the future.

Looking at the historical situation Nishitani found himself in, he is quite direct in

pointing out how Westernisation in Japan in late 19th and early 20th century resulted in

widespread disdain towards one’s own roots, while on the other hand, what he calls ”national

moral energy” resulted in a backlash of exclusionist nationalism, where connection to 4

historical continuity was lost in a different way (NKC 8, p. 180). These were the two sides of

the social and intellectual circumstances Nishitani found himself trying to navigate. His

approach was both to seek to respect tradition and to redeem what is valuable in it, while

facing the future as it is, along with the inevitable changes that it brings. In this respect,

Nishitani takes partly his cues from Nietzsche, whom he also sees as stressing a sense of

responsibility towards the ancestors (NKC 8, p. 180; Nietzsche, Gay Science 337). This view

informs Nishitani’s own attitude toward the past, together with the idea of redeeming and

revitalising what is good in a tradition (see also Parkes, 1990, p. xxiv-xxv) or, perhaps more

After Leopold von Ranke’s idea of moralische energie as a social ethic driving nations.4


exactly, recovering the authentic root of a tradition in what it seeks to express. This kind of

Nietzschean redemption of tradition came to form a significant theme in Nishitani’s

philosophy.

Nishitani’s efforts to counter the nihilistic abyss opened by secularisation and

mechanisation in modern society aim to overcome the dehumanisation involved in these

processes and find a path towards interconnectedness with each other, the world, and our

ultimate source. Even without accounting for Nishitani’s cultural background, it is perhaps

unsurprising that he would be explicit on the potential value of Buddhism in addressing

spiritual problems resulting from modernisation, since Buddhist philosophy has been face-to-

face with nihilism since its foundation. But Nishitani also argues that before Buddhism can

help, it must first recover from its own inertia and rediscover its spiritual foundation behind

form and social custom (for example, see Nishitani, 1960, p. 21) to find a new position

towards ”the historical and social aspects of human existence” (Nishitani, 1960, p. 22).

Religion and Nothingness can be read partly as Nishitani’s argument for such a change and an

effort to develop the ideas of Buddhism in concert with insights from Western philosophy and

theology, merging and appropriating these different streams as a philosophical position

distinctly his own.

As Nishitani’s drive to renew Buddhism suggests, he is critical of how religion in

modern times has devolved into a social custom, since this renders it unable to answer the

existential needs he sees it should aim to fulfil, which in a social sense is the overcoming or at

least safe contextualisation of nihilism. In this sense, Nishitani’s project to overcome nihilism

is also an effort to revive the significance of religion in contemporary times in response to

modern spiritual crisis. This does lead to some unexamined bias: although Nishitani defines

religion in such a different way from most traditional views that it can indeed be seen as


necessary, he also tends to blur out the difference between his own outlook and the general

view of religion, particularly in his critique towards modernity and scientism on behalf of

religion in general. He does not really concede that religion might be a loaded concept, so

there is a sense in his writing that he defends the relevance of religion for the modern world

first, and secondary to that, calls for radical overhaul of what religion actually means—which

requires deconstructing ceremony and dogma to their origins and reconstructing religion as

praxis to enable people to live authentically in the present (for example, see Nishitani, 2006,

p. 26-29).

A central concern for Nishitani on religion in Japan was that Buddhism has not really

modernised, meaning that its traditions had not been revitalised as part of the double

movement of modernisation and reflection on the past that had affected other areas of Japan’s

society. Nishitani notes that this back-and-forth movement in cultural evolution had been

normal as Japan adopted, adapted, and became accustomed to changes wrought by

Westernisation, and he also thought that it was this process that contributed to Japan’s cultural

vitality (Nishitani, 2006, p. 34-35). The nationalistic pride he felt about Japan is evident in

how he sees the strength of Japan’s own cultural tradition as having been instrumental in its

ability to ”adopt Western culture at a high level,” unlike ”other Eastern countries such as

China, India, and so forth” (2006, p. 35). Regardless of how Nishitani’s interpretation of

Japan’s development in comparison to its neighbours should now be judged, it informed his

view of the necessity to temper modernisation with revitalisation of tradition. For him,

modernisation remains by itself a process that remedies some problems while introducing

others, and as such it is necessary eventually to transcend it. This is tied to how Nishitani

identifies modernisation specifically with the globalising influence of the Western civilisation,

so it might be more accurate to call it ”Westernisation” or ”Western modernisation” instead.

This modern Western framework, in Nishitani’s view, is not necessarily equipped by itself to


respond to truly universal issues of humanity, as it is remains culturally tied to a limited

interpretation of the world despite its universalist aspirations (see Nishitani, 2006, p. 36-37).

It should be noted that this is a something of a later view of Nishitani’s from the 1970s

or so. His views on modernity evolved over his philosophical career, and even if he did not

dispute the benefits wrought by Western modernisation, he perhaps saw it as a greater danger

during his early career than later on, as evinced by his rather conciliatory comments in On

Buddhism. There he is more prepared to accept an interplay of sorts between Western

modernisation and Japanese tradition, after having had the opportunity to observe this

constant cultural double movement over the course of his life.

Beyond the Individual and the Social: A Reverse-Hegelian Dialectic

Thomas Kasulis has highlighted the Hegelian undercurrent in the Kyoto School’s

philosophy and its development of the logic of place through which the place of absolute

nothingness as the ultimate ground can always find a position for other major philosophical

systems within a more inclusive whole (Kasulis, 2009, p. 229-230). In order to do this, the

Kyoto School’s logic reverses the direction of the Hegelian dialectic, so instead of looking for

synthesis as a direction of dialectical movement, they look for the ground from which the

opposing positions emerge. This fundamental non-dualism is often articulated through a logic

like Nishida Kitarō’s logic of place, conceiving a kind of a field from which abstraction into

opposites emerges and to which phenomena return when their apparent oppositions are

dissolved, making this field the root of ”enlightenment” as well as something that cannot be

achieved through conceptualisation, but only through praxis. This ties into a central feature of

Japanese thinking that is important to the Kyoto School—the prioritisation of experience

above reason, and connecting knowledge to praxis. Reason is taken to be a secondary level of

consciousness, underneath which lies direct experience and existential understanding. Via this


understanding, philosophy is seen as able to analyse the whole trajectory of awareness and its

basic structure, while religion provides the fundamental insight through praxis into the nature

of existence that then serves as the foundation on which philosophical analysis rests (see

Carter, 2013, p. 6-7).

In relation to issues of modernity, Nishitani uses this orientation towards an originary

ground to resolve the contradiction between science and religion. Following Hegel, he points

out that the scientific enterprise is based on ”certainty” rather than ”truth,” and when the first

starts to slip towards the second, the problem of scientism raises its head, meaning that

scientific enterprise is shifted to the position of a philosophical discourse, with scientific

rationality acting as the standard for a system of value (Nishitani, 2004, p. 112). Nishitani 5

thus emphasises that belief in science rests itself on a metaphysical belief and quasi-Christian

faith (NKC 8, p. 214). He points out that scientific enterprise appears in two distinct forms—

the first is that of objective certainty based on factual knowledge, while the other is a

subjective conviction of the efficacy of science—and he elaborates further that the nature of

scientific enterprise does not provide a basis on which one could seek to combine these two

forms (Nishitani, 2004, p. 111). This step requires a move into the realm of philosophy and

acceptance of a metaphysical foundation on which the scientific enterprise and its validity

rest. Thus Nishitani insists that the essence of science is not in itself ”scientific,” but instead

falls outside the scope of science as the metaphysical ground of science (Nishitani, 2004, p.

115). It is here that science can unite with religion, and it is from here that Nishitani envisions

the possibility of a new starting point for both of them (Nishitani 2004, p. 116). This would

It should be noted that in discussing this kind of dogmatic approach to science, Nishitani 5

was in effect debating with general folk and positivist views of his own period, while later views from the side of science and philosophy of science tend to be more nuanced; for example, both Popper’s and Kuhn’s views were still new when the essay referenced above was published in 1965.


require grasping them existentially rather than intellectually, accepting them as a problem of

one’s own existence. For science, this requires existentialization of science, while religion 6

would have to be radically demythologised to reclaim the essence of its traditions. It is 7

through these processes that a common ground can be found, which Nishitani locates in the

religiosity of Zen Buddhism and specifically in the field of emptiness, where

”demythologisation of the mythical and existentialization of the scientific belong to one and

the same process” (Nishitani 2004, p. 120). This provides a standpoint beyond the

mechanistic and teleological views of the world, both of which Nishitani found unsatisfactory

for describing the existential reality. It also represents consummation of the reverse-Hegelian

process typical for the Kyoto School, finding the originary ground that can provide a

harmonious foundation of apparently antithetical elements. As Robinson notes, the conflict

between science and religion in Nishitani’s view is based on an illusion on both sides: in

religion, it is based in anthropocentrism that ”clings to a dead God instead of exploring the

deeper religious implications of a truly universal God,” while in science it is based in an

anthropocentric perspective claiming a mechanistic universe while refusing to recognise

either the purposefulness of the perspective’s own quest for knowledge or the egocentric

standpoint from which such claims are made (Robinson, 1989, p. 107). For Nishitani, the two

standpoints of science and religion are both paths that seek to understand the reality at their

basis, and for him this fundamental reality is what he calls emptiness. Science seeks it in an

Meaning internalising the full effects of the scientific view of the world, namely the nihilism 6

it entails. As Nishitani sees it, science remains unable to attain its essence (which is no longer scientific) while it remains immanent to the world, viewing it from within, and doing so requires attainment of self-transcendence through science appropriating itself existentially and becoming ”ecstatic” in the sense of standing outside of itself (Nishitani, 2004, p. 128-129). The idea here is much the same as Heidegger’s idea of ontological difference and all science requiring an ontological basis.

Here Nishitani is referring to Rudolf Bultmann’s existential demythologisation as a means to 7

return the existential meaning to mythical imageries (Lin, 2014, p. 496).


ostensibly objective and religion in a subjective manner, but for Nishitani it can only be

grasped existentially in a non-dualistic manner.

An important aspect of this search for an originary ground is the idea of ”naturalness”

in Nishitani’s philosophy, which connects thematically with it in the sense that an awareness

of what is ”natural” implicitly calls for a return to what is the natural state of being—be this

the standpoint of emptiness achieved by discarding all other standpoints, the harmonious

union of science and religion, or a return to the purified root of tradition. The unarticulated

ideal behind this seems to be a world as one, encompassing all contradictions and standpoints,

which can be found waiting behind all man-made obfuscations. This kind of idea of

naturalness and aim toward it functions as something of a given in Nishitani’s philosophy,

exhibiting the Kyoto School’s tendency towards the reverse-Hegelian search for the originary

ground. The idea of authentic naturalness in Nishitani also ties in with Nietzsche’s view that

Christian metaphysics falsely treat the real world in its naturalness as abhorrent, while

insisting on the veracity and sacralisation of its own idea of higher existence that then leads to

denaturalisation of values based on natural instincts as non-values in the Christian framework

(see e.g. Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo “Why I Am Destiny” ch. 7 and The Antichrist ch. 5).

Nishitani is not as insistent as Nietzsche on the recovery and liberation of human

passions, but instead, it is in the field of emptiness that the idea of ”naturalness” finds its

ultimate consummation in his philosophy. There phenomena are revealed just as they are, in

truthfulness unmarred by any limited conceptualisation. This is, arguably, what science is also

seeking, and it is something that Nishitani sees ultimately within human grasp only through

non-dual, existential experience. For Nishitani, this field of emptiness is beyond both the

mechanistic and teleological views of the world, but it contains the aspects of both without

being limited to them. As such, it is what Nishitani sees as the essence of religious existence

itself, and it is from this that the other views are derived as appearances brought on by the


division of the subject from the object, while on the field ”truth (alētheia) itself” (Nishitani,

2004, p. 127; NKC 11, p. 245) is laid bare as the one true reality.

Critique of Nishitani’s Approach to Modernity

After these considerations of Nishitani’s views on modernity and its connections to other

areas of his philosophy, it seems necessary to examine critically how he formulates his

approach to and conceptualisation of modernity. Before some concluding remarks, this paper

will focus on a brief analysis on the influence of the idea of authenticity and the implicit

politics in Nishitani’s approach to modernity, as well as highlight some notable limitations in

his conceptualisation of modernity in general.

Questioning Authenticity

Although we have covered a number of aspects central to Nishitani’s critique of

modernity, there is also a common theme running through all of them: a search for

authenticity. There seems to be an underlying stratum in Nishitani’s conception of modernity

that ties to his other theme of naturalness, a thoroughgoing experience of inauthenticity that

can be overcome only by recovering an authentic state of existence, both culturally and

individually. Looking at the various aspects of modernity that Nishitani’s approach covers, we

can see how the nihilistic emptiness opens from an existential experience of inauthenticity

arising from a secularised and mechanised conception of being. Realisation of this dilemma

prompts the birth of the Great Doubt, as we come to understand the inauthenticity of our

existence and internalise that understanding. This results in a reverse-Hegelian search for an

originary ground to unify our existence with its ultimate and thus truly authentic ground. And

this search is carried out through Nietzschean redemption of what is essential (or authentic) in

a tradition, resulting in a revitalisation of religion as authentically lived praxis.


This search for authenticity also seems to be something that applies to Nishitani’s

philosophical approach in general, not just to his stance towards modernity. Van Bragt (1995,

p. 245-246) notes, however, that while the Kyoto School’s ”authentic” or ”existential”

approach to philosophy was one of its main virtues, it was also what made it vulnerable to

nationalism. As they identified as a threat the potential loss of Japanese identity resulting from

the Western modernisation, their openness to western ideas required a counterbalance from

their own heritage, meaning a tendency to approach Western ideas and systems via a stance

that defended Asian (and particularly Japanese) culture (Van Bragt, 1995, p. 246). This is why

it often seems that while Nishitani engages with both the East and the West in his thinking, he

finds that the solutions he seeks are never really found on the Western side, but are already

present in Asian culture, albeit in an incomplete form (see e.g. Van Bragt, 1995, p. 249).

Heisig also raises an important point by remarking that the West as conceived by the

Kyoto philosophers is a highly selective one, while the East they have set up against it is

similarly something of an invention (Heisig, 2001, p. 271). Cestari elaborates on this by

drawing attention to how an idea like absolute nothingness could work as an ideological tool

to construct a philosophically and religiously unified ”East” against a ”West,” contrasting

cultures of nothingness against cultures of being (Cestari, 2010, p. 323). In this sense,

absolute nothingness functions much like any other universalised concept by focusing on 8

certain interpretations or cultural notions while blocking out others in order to create an

impression of a homogenous whole. Consolidating cultural, philosophical, and religious

elements into clear categories made maintaining one’s identity easier, and nothingness became

”a matter of cultural identity, a kind of Buddhist shortcut to modern nationalistic

thought” (Cestari, 2010, p. 324).

Or emptiness (śūnyatā) as Nishitani terms it.8


We can see here the roots of nationalist tendencies in the Kyoto School’s philosophical

project, but equally, we should not interpret too much into those roots or condemn them

simply on their nationalist bias, as they can equally be framed in political terms as efforts to

resist the spread of Western hegemony. A great deal of the School’s effort was focused on

mediating between the East and the West, setting up a dialogue while maintaining a hold on

their own cultural identity. Nishitani and his compatriots in the Kyoto School sought to

develop an alternative global vision to the Western domination they saw sweeping the world,

and they thought Japan could occupy a special position in ushering in an era that would

transcend cultural specificity and imperial reach. While this position is easily interpreted as

Japan-centrism, this does not seem to have been their aim, since they did not dispute the

possibility of other countries taking a similar role, but rather pointed to the historical

developments and Japan’s relative position in Asia at the time as a nation capable of resisting

Western imperialism. Of course, this position and particularly the way they expressed it in

often racial terms is far from unproblematic, while its conception of power politics and

international relations remained undeveloped especially from a present-day perspective, but in

some ways their vision predated the present era of globalisation and even argued for a more

plural approach to its development.

Questioning the Conceptualisation of Modernity

Finally, there is still a critical remark to be said on the conceptualisation of modernity

in Nishitani’s and the Kyoto School’s philosophy in general. Stevens points out that in terms

of political philosophy, modernity as an idea has other connotations that go conspicuously and

problematically unrecognised by the Kyoto School (Stevens 2011, p. 234-235). Foremost of

all, political modernity is itself an incomplete project to emancipate mankind from

oppression, and hardly something that should need to be overcome philosophically or


existentially. This means that its ontological grounding is different from the Nietzschean

modernity that the Kyoto School and Nishitani in particular critique, and this difference

underlines the variety of ways that modernity can be interpreted as a process influencing the

society and subjectivity. It does not invalidate the efforts of the Kyoto School, but points to a

serious lacuna in their philosophy, which in turn begs the question of how such an oversight

came to be. Ignorance of this aspect of modernity led, Stevens argues, to an ideology of

overcoming modernity ”aiming explicitly at overthrowing every aspect of Western modernity,

including its sense of progress, humanism, democracy, and the rule of law” (Stevens, 2011, p.

235). Saying that this was a goal of the Kyoto philosophers would overstate the case, but even

in his later writings, Nishitani is often critical of what liberal democracies see as positive

modern values like human rights (on criticism of Western notions of rights and equality, see

for example Nishitani, 1983, p. 285; Nishitani, 2012, p. 98-99), due to how these values and

goals of political modernity appear essentially as half-measures for him—or worse, as values

that further strengthen our subjective preoccupations and the hold nihilistic desire has on us.

There is something of a fundamental disconnect between these two views of modernity as to

what emancipation actually entails.

Still, the Nietzschean approach to overcoming modernity as it appears in the Kyoto

School’s writings suffers from its fair share of problems, not least of which is that it tends to

ignore the influence of socio-economic conditions in structural determination of social

development. This means that Nishitani and others are silent on a central aspect of modernity

they probably ought to have disputed, namely the capitalistic system of growth, profit and

exploitation, given that it was also a dominant rationale of Western imperialism (Stevens,

2011, p. 236). Reasons for this may be partly due to their focus on the Nietzschean

interpretation of modernity, but it may also result from an unreflective bias against critique of


capitalism, which was at the time associated with Marxism. A few Kyoto philosophers had

Leftist leanings, but Nishitani along with most of the others tended to be more or less socially

conservative, rejecting materialist ontology and even materialist considerations from much of

their philosophy.

Also relevant is the criticism of Zen and Nishida by Ichikawa Hakugen, who was

damning in his estimation of the political shortcomings of Zen Buddhism (see Stevens (2011,

p. 239-240) and especially Ives (1995) on Ichikawa’s critiques). Particularly significant is his

problematisation of the Zen Buddhist distinction between ”secular freedom” and ”absolute

freedom” (which is religious and purely ontological), whereby stressing the latter as superior

Zen Buddhism ends up fostering dismissal of the political and socio-economic affairs as of

secondary importance, promoting acceptance of socio-political status quo and suppressing

efforts to develop any kind of political or social consciousness and change. This critique

applies also to Nishitani, given his prioritisation of the absolute freedom provided by the

standpoint of emptiness and his dismissal of the materialist emancipatory projects as

misguided. Ironically, the danger here is that by ignoring the political and social dimension in

his pursuit of harmonising self-liberation, Nishitani risks reducing human existence towards

atomic individualism. He did emphasise the circuminsessional I-Thou relations on the field of

emptiness as the basis for harmonious human relationships, but pursuing this approach seems

unlikely to produce a balanced image of what being human entails in a full-scale society with

its intrinsic conflicts and contradictions. And if we accept what Ichikawa’s criticisms suggest,

these issues might well result from problems inherent in the conception of transcendent

subjectivity that underwrites Nishitani’s approach to the self. Thus modern subjectivity in

Nishitani’s philosophy is a contested matter at an individual level as well as something that

might essentially begin to break down at the social level.


Concluding Remarks

In reading Nishitani and many of his commentators, we find a view of how a nihilistic

sense of meaninglessness grounds Western and modern scientific worldview, with the

structures of society increasingly built on foundations that on closer examination yield to

nothingness. Nishitani echoes Nietzsche in the sense that both their philosophies are

radically oriented towards the self, but this also seems to lead to marked myopia over the

impact of external influences. In Nietzsche’s case this is more understandable, as social

sciences in general were only forming when he published his works. In Nishitani’s case,

however, there would already have been an extensive tradition of research and theory

available, particularly towards the later part of his career, but he never particularly amended

his position, except perhaps by paying a bit more attention to the Buddhist idea of sangha in

his later writings (for example, see Nishitani (2006) for his lectures from early 1970s). Their

exact attitude towards social issues may seem a bit difficult to pin down, but it seems to

display itself mostly as omission of social dimensions in their existential pursuit of the self.

Both Nietzsche and Nishitani ignore society as a potential locus for meaning in their search

for a more stable ground on which to base their views. Even if affirmative nihilism or śūnyatā

provide a radical new point of view on the existential level, one must wonder why this would

not also mean the resurrection of the importance of social structures in a similar light.

In a way, this evaluation of Nishitani’s views may seem rather harsh, but while

Nishitani’s analyses of the social and the political are open to critique like this, they also seem

to represent Nishitani’s thought at its weakest and least developed form, in contrast to the

more existentialist and individualistic aspects of his philosophy. In the end, for Nishitani the

social is always returned to the personal, and the issue of modernity is at its root an issue of

the self and nihilism, given form in the historical context and social structures of the society.


While Nishitani was initially focused on the problem of modernity in Japan, this gave way to

his more universal view of the problem inherent in the loss of tradition. And if Nishitani’s

earlier writings on overcoming modernity tend to be limited to the historical context of their

time, his later views on science, technology and religion are far less Japan-centric in their

scope. Nishitani’s views on modernity evolved over his philosophical career, although they

did not so much change as become less confrontational. He still remained convinced about the

necessity of overcoming the problems inherent in modernity, but more in the terms of its

cultural particularity as a Western phenomenon.


Abbreviations used in this study

NKC = Nishitani Keiji chosakushū [Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji] (1986–1995). Tokyo:

Sōbunsha. (Volume numbers are given in numerals.)

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Running head: CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !1 · Running head: CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY !1 Critique of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji Niklas Söderman Tallinn University, School