Nothing and Sunyataa

·期刊原文
NOTHINGNESS AND `SUUYATAA:

A COMPARISON OF HEIDEGGER AND NISHITANI
By Fred Dallmayr
Philosophy East and West
Volume 42, Number 1(January 1992)
P.37-48
(C) by University of Hawaii Press

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P.37

From the pine tree

learn of the pine tree

(Basho)

For Western readers, Heidegger seems both close and

exceedingly distant; his thought appears in some

ways home-grown and quite familiar, and in other

ways alien and strangely unfamiliar. Critics of his

work sometimes attack it as narrowly parochial or

provincial, because of its presumed rootedness in a

local habitat (the Black Forest region) yet critics

(sometimes the same ones) also object to its

aloofness, unintelligibility, and penchant for

"mysticism"--charges which (more than personal bias)

reflect a sense of cultural rupture. Heidegger

himself would hardly have been surprised by this

conflicting reception. In his "Vom Wesen des

Grundes" he described human Dasein as a creature of

"distance" or farness, a distance which alone could

nurture a true closeness to things and fellow

beings. Likewise, in his comments on Holderlin, he

portrayed "homecoming" not as a retreat into a

native habitat but as a journey homeward through the

most distant peregrinations. These considerations

apply to his own philosophical journey, particularly

to his much-discussed "overcoming" of Western

metaphysics-which by no means equals its simple

erasure. Without encouraging a cultural leap,

Heidegger's "overcoming" led him into distant and

alien terrain, and ultimately in the direction of

Eastern culture and thought--a culture which Kitaro

Nishida, the founder of the so-called Kyoto School,

has circumscribed as "the urge to see the form of

the formless, and hear the sound of the

soundless."(1) Attentiveness to this far-off sound,

I believe, is at the heart of Heidegger's distance

and seeming aloofness. More than any other Western

thinker in the twentieth century, his thought is

culturally decentered, lodged at the crossroads of

East and West---and thus at the site of a possible

or impending global dialogue.

In the present pages I want to explore one facet

of this dialogue, namely, the relationship between

Heidegger and Zen Buddhism, as the latter is

represented or articulated by Keiji Nishitani. The

choice of this facet is not fortuitous. A leading

representative of the Kyoto School and a former

pupil of Nishida, Nishitani has also been a close

student of Heidegger's work and refers in his

publications frequently to the latter's teachings.

For his own part, Heidegger was not unfamiliar with

the Kyoto School, having become acquainted with its

activities through visits by Count Shuzo Kuki, a

contemporary of Nishitani and, like him, a pupil or

associate of Nishida. References to the same Count

Kuki, one may note,

P.38

are interspersed throughout the "Dialogue on

Language" (or dialogue with a Japanese) contained in

Unterwegs zur Sprache.(2) Given the extensive life

work of Keiii Nishitani, my discussion in the

following will have to be selective and

circumscribed--in a manner which hopefully does not

truncate the richness of his insights. For

English-speaking readers, the major publication

available in translation is Religion and

Nothingness, a study which, I believe, ably reflects

the core of Nishitani's Buddhist outlook and which I

have chosen therefore as my guiding text. Again, my

ambition is not to present a comprehensive review;

instead, I shall focus on one crucial theme which

permeates the entire study and which is central both

to Heidegger's philosophy and to Zen Buddhism: the

theme of nothingness, emptiness, or `suunyataa. My

discussion shall explore affinities and differences

between Nishitani's and Heidegger's accounts--in the

hope of fostering and perhaps deepening an

understanding of the respective philosophical

orientations and thus of contributing (modestly) to

the East-West dialogue.

As is well known, nothingness or emptiness stands at

the center of all forms of Buddhist thought,

including Zen Buddhism; it is this aspect which, to

Western minds, frequently suggests an attitude of

complete withdrawal or world-denial. Yet, as one

should note, nothingness here does not simply mean

negativity or denial; far from denoting a vacuum,

the term designates the inner core of reality or the

other side of being--which carries life-affirming

and sustaining implications. It is in this sense

that the term figures in the title of Nishitani's

Religion and Nothingness. As he states in the

opening chapter, nothingness or nihility comes to

the fore whenever the routine course of our life is

disrupted by calamities or inner doubt. "When we

become a question to ourselves and when the problem

of why we exist arises," he says, "this means that

nihility has emerged from the ground of existence

and that our very existence has turned into a

question mark." Once this happens, the

taken-for-granted meaning of our life and our world

suddenly is shattered and we realize that we have

been hovering over an abyss all along. From the

vantage of ordinary meaning, what surfaces at this

point is the "meaninglessness" that "lies in wait"

at the bottom of everyday, routine engagements and

activities; in Zen Buddhist terms, a nagging sense

of nihility brings the "restless, forward-advancing

pace of life" to a halt and, instead, "turns the

light to what is directly underfoot." Both

religiously and philosophically, this experience of

rupture or disruption, this stepping back to see

what is underfoot, may be described as a turning or

conversion. In Nishitani's words: "This fundamental

conversion in life is occasioned by the opening up

of the horizon of nihility at the ground of life. It

is nothing less than a conversion from the

self-centered (or mancentered) mode of being, which

always asks what use things have for us

P.39

(or for man), to an attitude that asks for what

purpose we ourselves (or Man) exist."(3)

According to Nishitani, the turn to nothingness

as emptiness is slow and arduous and occurs over

several successive steps. The first step of human

awareness is the standpoint of sense-perception and

rational analysis---a standpoint familiar to Western

readers from the traditions of empiricism and

rationalism. For Nishitani, these traditions are

predicated on the separation or juxtaposition of

consciousness and world, that is, on the

subject-object division pervading particularly

modern Western thought. To confront the world in

this manner, he writes, means "to look at things

without from a field within the self"; it means

assuming "a position vis-a-vis things from which

self and things remain fundamentally separated from

one another"-a position he variously calls the

"field of consciousness" or "field of reason." This

position was epitomized and made canonical in the

thought of Descartes with his categorial distinction

between res cogitans (or consciousness) and res

extensa (or extended matter). On the one hand, he

notes, Descartes established the ego cogito as "a

reality that is beyond all doubt," while on the

other hand, things in the natural world "came to

appear as bearing no living connection with the

internal ego" and thus resembled "the cold and

lifeless world of death." As the study adds, this

division and the treatment of the world as lifeless

mechanism came to furnish the foundation for natural

science and for modern scientific technology; for,

from the vantage of the cogito, the world of nature

was bound to look "like so much raw material"

available for human control and exploitation.

Although modern natural science seeks to uncover the

objective and invariant "laws of nature," these laws

are not independent of the cogito and its designs to

enhance its self-preservation. "The significance of

man operating in accord with the laws of nature, as

well as of the laws of nature becoming manifest

through and as the work of man," we read, is most

thoroughly visible in "a technology dependent on

machinery." It is in this domain where "knowledge

and purposive activity" work in closest unity, that

"the fog lifts" from modern science: "Machines and

mechanical technology are man's ultimate embodiment

and appropriation of the laws of nature."(4)

In Nishitani's view, Descartes' skepticism or

doubt was only partially radical: because it

accepted as given, or left unexplored, the status

and meaning of the cogito and its relation to the

world. Once this acceptance is canceled, once the

cogito is no longer seen as a substance (or res),

the path is opened to a deeper radicalism, to the

level of a non-substantive subjectivity positing the

world and itself out of its own nothingness. In his

words, this path leads to "the ground of the

subjectivity of the cogito," on a plane where "the

orientation of the subject to its ground is more

radical and thoroughgoing than it is with the

cogito."

p.40

According to Religion and Nothingness, this path has

been opened up chiefly by modern existentialism with

its focus on alienated existence and the abyss of

self-constitution. "This way of thinking about the

cogito, " we read, "is 'existential' thinking."

Radical reflection of this kind penetrates deeper

than "the self-evidence of self-consciousness

clinging to itself"; rather, it yields an awareness

that "can only emerge in the reality of an Existent

that oversteps the limits of being." In

existentialist terminology, this overstepping or

transgressing is the hallmark of "ecstasy" or the

ek-static quality of existence--a quality which

radically subjectifies nothingness. From this deeper

vantage, the study observes, nothingness is "shifted

to the side of the subject itself, and the freedom

or autonomy of the subject is said to be a function

of existence (Existenz) stepping over itself into

the midst of nihility." Nishitani calls the domain

opened up by existential questioning the "field of

nihility," a field closely connected with the modern

(Western) problem of nihilism. "Only when the self

breaks through the field of consciousness, the field

of beings," he writes, "and stands on the ground of

nihility is it able to achieve a subjectivity that

can in no way be objectified." At this point,

"nihility appears as the ground of everything that

exists"; as a corollary, consciousness with its

separation of inside and outside is "surpassed

subjectively," so that nihility also "opens up the

ground of the within and the without."(5)

As portrayed in the study, the leading

representatives of subjective existentialism are

Nietzsche and Sartre, with Nietzsche being the more

radical of the two. Both thinkers, Nishitani notes,

show similar tendencies: "In each of them atheism is

bound up with existentialism" which means that

atheism or nothingness has been "subjectivized" and

nihility has become "the field of the so-called

ekstasis of self-existence." Yet, between the! two,

he adds, Nietzsche's position is "far more

comprehensive and penetrating" than Sartre's, due to

the latter's identification of existentialism with a

subjective humanism. Sartre, we are told, describes

existence as a human "project," namely, as the

project of continually going beyond the self or

continually "overstepping" oneself. Thus, he

recognizes a mode of transcendence or

self-transcendence which has the "form of ekstasis,

a standing-outside-of-oneself." However, this

ekstasis remains grounded in human

subjectivity--which reconnects his thought with the

Cartesian ego (despite a shift from theism to

atheism). Together with Descartes, he shares the

belief in the ego or cogito as basic warrant of

cognitive truth. Thus, whatever transcendence

Sartre's position may allow for "remains glued to

the ego." While considering nothingness to be "the

ground of the subject," he nonetheless presents it

"like a wall at the bottom of the ego or like a

springboard underfoot of the cogito," thus turning

it into a principle shutting the ego up within

itself." By contrast, Nietzsche much more resolutely

sought to transgress the ego. As shown in his mature

works, Nishitani observes, Nietzsche

P.41

attempted "to Posit a new way of being human beyond

the frame of the 'human', to forge a new form of the

human from the 'far side', beyond the limits of

man-centered existence, from 'beyond good and

evil'." This direction was clearly evident in his

image of the "overman" seen as the embodiment of the

doctrine that "man is something that shall be

overcome." Consequently, he adds, it was chiefly and

centrally in Nietzsche's work that atheism achieved

"its truly radical subjectivization" and that

nihility acquired "a transcendent quality by

becoming the field of the ecstasy of self-being."(6)

Yet, no matter how radicalized, subjectivity and

subjectivization for Nishitani do not constitute the

endpoint of relentless doubt. What still needs to

happen, he points out, is a radical questioning of

subjectivity itself and of its ecstatic nihility;

only through such questioning is it possible to

reach the level of "absolute emptiness" or

`suunyataa--which is the heart of Buddhist thought.

Buddhism, he writes, goes beyond the previous

positions in speaking of "the emptiness of the

nihilizing view" by which it means "that 'absolute

emptiness' in which nihilizing emptiness would

itself be emptied." From the vantage of this

emptiness, both the field of consciousness with its

separation of inside and outside and the nihility

grounded in ecstatic self-being can for the first

time "be overstepped" or left behind---in favor of a

sphere which is "the true noground (Ungrund)."

Buddhism thematizes as gateway to this no-ground the

experience of the "Great Doubt" where the

distinction between doubter and doubted drops away

and where the self turns into or becomes doubt

itself. In the tradition of Zen, this passage is

known as "the doubt of samaadhi (concentration),"

which, in turn, is closely linked with the "Great

Death" and the achievement of the non-ego

(anaatman). In Western philosophical and religious

thought, the same passage was most perceptively

envisaged by Meister Eckhart with his distinction

between Cod and godhead and his equation of the

latter with "absolute nothingness" which is also

seen as the matrix or field of "our absolute

deathsive-life." The nothingness of godhead

envisaged by Eckhart, Nishitani comments, "must be

said to be still more profound than the nihility

that contemporary existentialism has put in the

place of God"; in existentialist terms, nihility

appears "as the ground of self-being and renders it

ecstatic, but this ecstasy is not yet the absolute

negation of being and thus does not open up to

absolute nothingness." This reservation applies even

to Nietzsche's work. His later thought, it is true,

adumbrates distinctly the standpoint of "an absolute

negation-sive-affirmation." Yet, his "absolute

affirmation or Ja-sagen" finds expression in

confusing formulas like "life" or "will to

power"--which brings into view the difference

between life-affirmation as a power "forcing its way

through nihility to gush forth" and life as

"absolute death-sive-life."(7)

The problem at this point is how to formulate

and render intelligible

P.42

emptiness as absolute death-sive-life or

negation-sive-affirmation. A central chapter in the

study, titled "Nihility and `Suunyataa," is devoted

to this question. As Nishitani observes, emptiness

or `suunyataa is "another thing altogether from the

nihility of nihilism.l As epitomized in Western

existentialism, nothingness as nihility is still

seen as a reference point of subjectivity or as

something to which existence relates; differently

put: it functions as representational correlate of

existence. By contrast, nothingness in the sense of

`suunyataa means emptiness of a kind that "empties

itself even of the standpoint that represents it as

some 'thing' that is emptiness" or to which

existence merely relates. Basically, Buddhist

`suunyataa does not denote nihilism or nihility in

the sense of a simple negation of, or antithesis to,

being; instead, it intimates the nothingness of

being or the emptiness harbored by being itself. In

Nishitani's words: "True emptiness is not to be

posited as something outside of and other than

'being'; rather, it is to be realized as something

united to and self-identical with being"---a point

captured in the phrase "being-sivenothingness." This

view has deep roots in the tradition of Mahaayaana

Buddhism with its opposition to the subject-object

split and all forms of conceptual bifurcation. "in

the context of Mahaayaana thought," he adds, "the

primary principle of which is to transcend all

duality emerging from logical analysis, the phrase

'being-sive-nothingness' requires that one take up

the stance of the 'sive' and from there view being

as being and nothingness as nothingness." From the

vantage of the sive, attachment both to (ontic)

being and to nothingness as nihility is overturned

or canceled. In this sense, `suunyataa represents

"the endpoint of an orientation to negation" by

operating a double negation (which does not yield a

bland synthesis). In terms of the study, `suunyataa

might be called "an absolute negativity," inasmuch

as it is a standpoint "that has negated and thereby

transcended nihility, which was itself a

transcendencethrough-negation of all being." Along

the same lines, emptiness can also be termed "an

abyss for the abyss of nihility."(8)

As Nishitani elaborates, Buddhist `suunyataa

coincides neither with existentialist nihilism nor

with Western-style atheism construed as denial of a

personal God. Drawing again on Meister Eckhart's

distinction between God and godhead, he sees the

latter notion as transgressing the customary

division of theism and atheism. Eckhart, he writes,

"refers to the 'essence' of Cod that is free of all

form--the complete 'image-free' (bildlos) godhead-as

'nothingness', and considers the soul to return to

itself and acquire absolute freedom only when it

becomes totally one with the 'nothingness' of

godhead. This is not mere theism, but neither, of

course, is it mere atheism." The critique of a

personalized divinity in favor of emptiness finds a

parallel in the transition from subjectivity or the

ego to a "selfhood" moored in nonbeing or

nothingness. On the level of everyday life--the

level of sense-perception and reason--existence

p.43

construes itself as a self or person, and moreover

as a self seemingly at one with itself. At this

point, selfhood or personality designates "a

self-enclosed confinement or self-entangled unity,"

one which is "shackled to its own narcissism. It is

a grasping of the self by the self, a confinement of

the self by the self that spells attachment to the

self." As previously indicated, existentialism opens

up the "abyss of nihility," but only by radicalizing

subjectivity into a mode of ecstatic

self-constitution. Moving beyond this point,

`suunyataa as emptiness involves a radical

disentanglement" from self-attachment or

subjectivity and a transgression of the latter in

favor of the non-ego. "in a word," Nishitani writes,

`suunyataa is "the field of what Buddhist teaching

calls emancipation, or what Eckhart refers to as

Abgeschiedenheit (detachment)." The same field might

also be called selfhood in a new, nonsubjectivist

sense: "True emptiness is nothing less than what

reaches awareness in all of us as our own absolute

self-nature." This paradox was well expressed in

Dogen's statement: "To learn the Buddha way is to

learn one's self; to learn one's self is to forget

one's self."(9)

It is in the context of his discussion of `suunyataa

that Nishitani also comments on Heidegger's work--in

a manner which I find dubious or at least puzzling.

As he correctly remarks, Heidegger, since his early

writings, effected a close connection of being and

nothingness: "In Heidegger's terms, the being of

beings discloses itself in the nullifying of

nothingness (das Nichts nichtet)." He also sensibly

and persuasively differentiates this conception from

Sartre's mode of existentialism "insofar as Sartre

locates subjectivity at the standpoint of the

Cartesian ego, his nothingness is not even the

'death' of which Heidegger speaks, the mode of being

of this ego is not a 'being unto death'." Despite

these perceptive remarks, the study in the end ties

Heidegger to existentialist nihility or nihilism,

that is, to a view which still treats nothingness as

negativity and as something outside of existence. In

Heidegger's work, we read, nothingness is still

being viewed "from the bias of self-existence as the

groundlessness (Grundlosigkeit) of existence lying

at the ground of self-existence" and thus as

something "lying outside of the 'existence' of the

self." This view, Nishitani asserts, is evident in

Heidegger's talk of self-existence as "held

suspended in nothingness"-despite the "fundamental

difference of his standpoint from other brands of

contemporary existentialism or nihilism." As he

grants, the notion of a suspension in nothingness

marks "a great step forward" in the conception of

self-existence as "existencein -ecstasy."

Nonetheless, the step falls short of reaching

`suunyataa: "In Heidegger's case, traces of the

representation of nothingness as some 'thing' that

is nothingness still remain."(10)

These comments can hardly be reconciled with

Heidegger's texts. From his early period, I believe,

his writings sought to extricate them-

p.44

selves--by and large successfully--from the equation

of nothingness with negativity or a realm "outside"

being and existence. As articulated in Being and

Time, the notion of "being-unto-death" did not

designate a terminal point or a sphere beyond life,

but an intrinsic possibility and defining character

of human existence itself. As Heidegger wrote at the

time: "As the end of Dasein or existence, death is

Dasein's innermost possibility"--where possibility

does not mean a theoretical or practical option

which Dasein might or might not choose, but rather

an inner latency or potential steadily permeating

life from the beginning. "Poised toward this

possibility, " he added, "Dasein discovers its

innermost potentiality of being in which the very

being of Dasein is at stake." As one may also

recall, Being and Time contained a strong critique

of the modern reliance on subjectivity and the

cogito--a critique which in many ways resembled

Nishitani's. Taking a broad historical view,

Heidegger's remarks spanned the tradition of modern

thought from Descartes over Kant to Husserl (and the

beginning of existentialism). While acknowledging

the power of Cartesian doubt, Heidegger challenged

as dubious the basic Cartesian starting point,

namely, the ego as a thinking substance. "With the

principle 'cogito ergo sum'," he wrote, "Descartes

claimed that he was putting philosophy on a new and

secure footing; but what he left undetermined in

this 'radical' departure was the mode of being of

the res cogitans or--more precisely--the ontological

meaning of the 'sum'." A similar half-heartedness,

in his view, was operative in Kantian philosophy,

despite its comparative refinement of critical

reflection. While exposing previous misconceptions

and confusions, Kant likewise neglected to undertake

a "prior ontological analysis of the subjectivity of

the subject"; although demonstrating the

"unenability of the ontic thesis regarding a psychic

substance, " he refrained from offering an

"ontological interpretation of selfhood." In

attenuated form, the same defect was still evident

in Husserl's treatment of subjectivity and in

Scheler's (quasi-existentialist) notion of

personality. Irrespective of the differences between

Husserl and Scheler, Heidegger observed, they concur

at least negatively in this respect: "They no longer

raise the question of the 'being of a person'."(11)

Antisubjectivism (as a gateway to nonbeing)

remained a persistent theme in Heidegger's evolving

opus. While in Being and Time, nothingness was still

viewed mainly from the vantage of Dasein--which may

be the basis for Nishitani's objections--the issue

was steadily radicalized in subsequent writings, in

a manner pointing (in my view) toward the field of

`suunyataa. A crucial marker along this road was the

essay "What is Metaphysics?" written shortly after

the publication of Being and Time. As is well known,

metaphysics in that essay was placed in contrast to

the outlook of modern science (deriving from

Descartes) with its focus on the res extensa as an

empirically given domain--and its consequent neglect

of nothingness. "Nothingness," Heidegger observed,

"is absolutely re-

P.45

jected by science and abandoned as null and

void"--which means that "science wishes to know

nothing of nothing(ness)." In terms of the essay,

nothingness was not simply a synonym for negation or

negativity. Instead of being a derivative of

negation or the semantic "not," Heidegger insisted

that nothingness is "more original than the 'not'

and negation." From the vantage of Dasein,

nothingness was encountered in the state of "dread"

(Angst), which was not equivalent to mere anxiety or

nervousness, but rather meant a basic openness to

nonbeing. It is at this point that the essay

developed the notions of the "nihilating" quality of

nothingness (das Nichts nichtet) and of the

suspension or "suspendedness" (Hineingehaltenheit)

of Dasein in nonbeing--a suspension denoting

Dasein's exposure not to an alien domain outside of

being but to its own intrinsic abyss. "Nothingness,"

Heidegger stated, "is neither an object nor anything

that 'is' at all; it occurs neither by itself nor

'apart from' beings, as a sort of adjunct.

Nothingness is that which makes the disclosure of

being(s) as such possible for our human existence."

Sharpening this point further, he added:

"Nothingness not merely designates the conceptual

opposite of beings but is an integral part of their

essence. It is in the being of beings that the

nihilation of nothingness (das Nichten des Nichts)

occurs."(12)

A further, still more important marker on the

same road were the so-called Beitrage zur

Philosophie, written about a decade after Being and

Time (and only recently published). As Heidegger

noted in Beitrage, traditional Western thought has

tended to treat nothingness simply as negativity or

a vacuum--a view which readily gave rise either to a

"pessimistic nihilism" or to a "heroic"

counterposture (centered on will to power) .

Transgression of this traditional outlook required

an "overcoming" of this kind of nihilism or

negativism. "Nothingness," he wrote, "is neither

negative nor is it a goal or endpoint; rather, it is

the innermost trembling (Erzitterung) of being

itself and thus more real than any (ontic) being."

Seen from this vantage, nothingness denotes neither

a representational or conceptual entity nor a

propositional denial, but instead a "nihilating"

potency participating obliquely in the ongoing

happening or disclosure of being: "Non-being happens

(west) and being happens or occurs; non-being occurs

through non-happening or non-disclosure (Unwesen),

while being occurs as nihilating agency." The

relationship of being and nothingness is thus one of

mutual implication and intertwining, and not

predicated on antithesis or reciprocal exclusion. As

Heidegger queried: "What if being itself happened

through self-withdrawal and thus in the mode of

refusal? Would such a refusal be simply nothing or

rather the highest gift? And is it due to this

nihilating refusal of being itself that

'nothingness' acquires that enabling potency on

which all doing or creating depends? " In

articulating the relation of being and nothingness,

Beitrage approximated the "sive" postulated by

Nishitani as

P.46

characteristic of the field of `suunyataa (and

surfacing in expressions like "life-sive-death,"

"negation-sive-affirmation"). In Heidegger's sense,

sive meant neither a radical disjuncture nor a

smooth blending but rather a chasm or discordant

mutuality: "And finally, regarding the Yes and

No-where do both originate together with their

distinction and contrast? Differently phrased: Who

founded the difference between affirmation and

negation, and the 'And' relating affirmation and

negation?"(13)

In light of these and similar textual passages,

Nishitani's critical objections can scarcely be

sustained. Heidegger's thought, one may say,

departed not only from scientific objectivism but

also from existentialist nihilism (as defined in

Religion and Nothingness) with its separation of

subjectivity and nonbeing. More importantly,

Nishitani's own presentation seems to depend

strongly on something like Heidegger's notion of

"ontological difference" and of the discordant

juncture of being and nothingness. In the absence of

these notions, fear, his portrayal of `suunyataa

often appears strained or confusing and even

perilously close to metaphysical bifurcations (of

inside and outside, within and without) . As

previously indicated, genuine emptiness is said to

be "united to and self-identical with being." At the

same time, however, `suunyataa is also depicted as

an "absolute transcendence of being," in that it

"absolutely denies and distances itself from any

standpoint shackled in any way whatsoever to being."

In this sense, Nishitani asserts, emptiness can

"well be described as 'outside' of and absolutely

'other' than the standpoint shackled to

being--provided we avoid the misconception that

emptiness is some 'thing' distinct from being and

subsisting 'outside' of it." The complexity of these

comments--or their status at the verge of

traditional metaphysics--is compounded by these

additional observations: "In spite of its

transcendence of the standpoint shackled to being,

or rather because of it, emptiness can only appear

as a self-identity with being, in a relationship of

sive by which both being and emptiness are seen as

co-present from the start and structurally

inseparable from one another."(14) Attention to

Heidegger's writings, I believe, can rescue these

statements from opacity or contradiction, thereby

enhancing the persuasiveness of Nishitani's

work--just as the latter can serve to elucidate

Heidegger's exploration of being-sive-nothingness as

an ontological happening (or Ereignis).

NOTES

1 - Kitaro Nishida, A Study of Good, trans. V. H.

Viglielmo (Tokyo: Japanese Government Printing

Bureau, 1960) , p. 191. See also Martin

Heidegger, "Vom Wesen des Grundes, " in

Wegmarken(Frankfurt-

P.47

Main: Klostermann, 1967) , p. 71; and

"Heimkunft/An die Verwandten," in Erlauterungen

zu Holderlins Dichtung, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 4

(Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1981), pp. 29-30.

2 - See Heidegger, "Aus einem Gesprach von der

Sprache (Zwischen einem Japaner und einem

Fragenden) , " in Unterwegs zur Sprache

(Pfullingen: Neske, 1959) , pp. 83-155. On

Nishitani and the Kyoto School see the

"Foreword" by Winston L. King and "Translator's

Introduction" in Keiji Nishitani, Religion and

Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1982) , pp.

vii-xiv. Compare also Frederick Franck, ed., The

Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School

(New York: Crossroads, 1982) , and Hans

Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness: Foundations

for a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, trans. lames

W. Heisig (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). On

the relation of the school and of Nishitani to

Heidegger see Yasuo Yuasa, "The Encounter of

Modern Japanese Philosophy with Heidegger," and

Nishitani, "Reflections on Two Addresses by

Martin Heidegger, " in Graham Parkes, ed.,

Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 155-174

and 145-154.

3 - Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 4-5.

4 - lbid., pp. 9-11, 81-82.

5 - lbid., pp, 14-17, 67.

6 - Ibid., pp. 31, 33, 55-56. With reference to

Sartre, Nishitani further elaborates (pp.

32-33): "We may well appreciate his intentions,

but... so long as we maintain the standpoint of

self-consciousness, the tendency to take

ourselves as objects remains, no matter how much

we stress subjectivity. Moreover, even though

Sartre's theory appears to preserve the dignity

of man in his subjective autonomy and freedom,

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." The

citation in the text is to Friedrich Nietzsche,

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Waiter Kaufmann

(New York: Viking Press, 1966), p. 12.

7 - Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness pp. 18, 21,

34, 59, 63, 65-66. The difference, he adds (p.

66), can also be expressed as one "between a

nihility proclaiming that 'God is dead' and an

absolute nothingness reaching a point beyond

even 'God'"; accordingly, one might perhaps say

"that the nihility of Nietzsche's nihilism

should be called a standpoint of relative

absolute nothingness." In an intriguing

sideglance (p. 59), Nishitani brings emptiness

in connection with the Christian notions of

kenosis and ekkenosis (self-emptying): "What is

ekkenosis for the Son is kenosis for the Father.

In the East, this would be called anaatman, or

non-ego."

P.48

8 - Religion and Nothingness, pp. 95-98.

9 - Ibid., pp. 99, 103, 105-107. The reference is to

Dogen's Shobogenzo genjokoan, trans. W. Wadell

and A. Masao, in The Eastern Buddhist n.s., vol.

5 (1972): 134.

10 - Nnishitani, Religion and Nothingness pp. 33,

96, 98, 109.

11 - Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 11th ed.

(Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1967), pp. 24, 47, 250,

258-259, 263 (paragraphs 6, 9, 50, 52-53);

trans. john Maquarrie and Edward Robinson as

Being and Time (London: SCM Press, 1962), pp.

45-46, 73, 303, 307-308, 366-367.

12 - Heidegger, "What is Metaphysics?" in Waiter

Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoevsky

to Sartre (New York: Meridian, 1975), pp.

244-246, 248-251 (translation slightly changed

for purposes of clarity).

13 - Heidegger, Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom

Ereignis) , Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65

(Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1989) , pp.

246-247 (par. 129), 266-267 (pars. 145, 146).

14 - Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 97.