During the Meiji Restoration, after the end of sakoku (1853), Japan’s closed-country policy, Japanese philosophers became fascinated by European philosophy, especially German and Ancient Greek philosophy. Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) was the first Japanese philosopher of this era to articulate a philosophical “school of thought” that was distinctly his own. Known as “Nishida philosophy” or “Kyoto School philosophy,” his approach was grounded in Shin Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Ruism (a.k.a. Confucianism), Indian Buddhism (e.g. Nāgārjuna), Aristotelianism, German Idealism (e.g. Immanual Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Existentialism and Phenomenology (e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger), and American Transcendentalism and Pragmatism (e.g. William James). Nishitani Keiji was one of several of Nishida’s students that spent several years in the 1920s and 1930s studying in Germany.

In the Shōwa period, under Emperor Hirohito, rising ethno-nationalist totalitarianism produced a great deal of pressure on public figures of any kind to fall in line, and Japanese academics felt pressure to produce theories and empirical research that would support the Imperial ideology—e.g. about the racial purity or superiority of the Japanese people, or about the superiority of Japanese culture and that of other Axis cultures over other cultures. Kyoto School philosophers, with their emphasis on German philosophy combined with traditional Japanese thought, were a good fit for this political need, and played the role more or less willingly, although in their defense they did so mostly through Philosophy of History, where they considered and sometimes defended the idea that the superior understanding of Japanese and German thought would lead, in the fullness of time, to a global predominance of Japanese and German culture and/or society. Nishitani was less implicated in this service to Japanese totalitarianism than some other Kyoto School philosophers, but he was still involved enough with the regime to be banned from holding public office after the war.

Nishitani was a lifelong practicing Zen Buddhist, and held positions as a Professor of Philosophy at Kyoto University and also as a Professor of Religion at Ôtani University, a private Buddhist university. After the end of the Second World War, Nishitani undertook a focused study on the problem of nihilism in Europe, eventually resulting in his book Nihirizumu [Nihilism]. For Tuesday, we’re reading the last chapter in that book.

Reading Response A

For Tuesday’s Reading+Response, before class, please read Chapter 9 of Nishitani’s The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism [Nihirizumu] and complete a response with the following sections:

a. Words: Write down three words you learned (or learned more about) from the reading.
b. Ideas: Write down three ideas or concepts you learned about (or learned more about) from the reading
c. Prompt: Write a short response (100–200 words, minimum 100 words required) to this prompt:

in 1978, Post-colonial theorist Edward Said coined the term “Orientalism” to refer to the way that people from Anglo-European cultures often think of East Asian and Middle Eastern people and culture as an exotic, romanticized “Other” that embodies stereotyped opposites to the self-conception of Anglo-European culture. The stereotype of the Zen Buddhist master who’s very mystical and speaks in riddles and contradictions is one such Orientalist image; a projected “Other” to Anglo-European culture’s self-conception as valuing or even overvaluing scientific and logical thought and reasoning. (Nishitani was a lifelong practicing Zen Buddhist and a Professor of Religion (not Religious Studies) as well as a Professor of Philosophy, but he is an academic and writes like any other academic, confounding that Orientalist expectation.)

There is a reciprocal trend, “Occidentalism,” wherein people from East Asia or the Middle East tend to view “Western” culture and people from “The West” as a stereotyped “Other” to East Asian or Middle Eastern culture. Does Nishitani’s discussion of Europe (and by implication Anglo-European culture more generally) seem Occidentalist? What are a couple of claims he makes about “the West” that either seem off or ring true?

Reading Response B

For Thursday’s Reading+Response, before class, please read] Graham Parkes’s article “Nishitani Keiji: Practicing Philosophy as a Matter of Life and Death” and complete a response with the following sections:

a. Words: Write down three words you learned (or learned more about) from the reading.
b. Ideas: Write down three ideas or concepts you learned about (or learned more about) from the reading
c. Prompt: Write a short response (100–200 words, minimum 100 words required) to this prompt:

This article provides an overview of the parts of Nishitani’s philosophical work that are most relevant to our course. What’s one aspect of his view, or the traditions it’s grounded in, that was unfamiliar to you and seems meaningful, helpful, or just correct?

Activity

Zazen (sitting meditation) is a core practice of Zen Buddhism, and the experiences of zazen practice are core to Nishitani’s “self-overcoming of nihilism”. The goal of zazen is to sit, and to do nothing else. Thoughts or ideas may appear; don’t resist them, and don’t hold on to them. Eventually, it is possible to have something that could be called pure experience—the content of experience with no self experiencing it and no object being experienced. This is an experience of the Field of Emptiness. 

Read this guide to zazen and try it as a daily practice for a week. Maybe just 5 minutes a day; more if you want to. 

There is no submission for this assignment. If I ask you to reflect on your experience in zazen practice, or to tell me what it was like or how your experience related to the reading, I would be encouraging you to be present as a knowing subject and observer, which would undermine your ability to practice zazen. Instead, please write nothing, submit nothing, and learn nothing. Have no insights. Sit.

You will receive full credit for this assignment.