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Buddhism as Self-Overcoming of Nihilism?
Questions on Nishitani and Ziporyn

Buddhism as Self-Overcoming of Nihilism?

Golem
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Posted 10/04/07 - 12:22 PM: Subject: Buddhism as Self-Overcoming of Nihilism?	#1
Recently read two books that have me intrigued but confused. One is by Keiji Nishitani, of the Kyoto School of Japanese philsoophy: "The Self Overcoming of Nihilism" I understood this well because of my background in European thought--it mainly concerns continental thinkers of the nineteenth and 20th centuries. But it hinted toward some interesting ideas which led me to his other book, "Religion and Nothingness," which blew my mind. He presents Sartre and Heidegger's notions of Nothing as not radical enough. Nihilism overcomes itself when it moves from "relative nothingness" to "absolute nothingness" which derives from some East Asian Buddhist ideas. This led me to Brook Ziporyn's "Being and Ambiguity," which is an astonishing tour de force, the first time I've seen Buddhist philosophy that really takes hold of Western philosophy and adds some profound Buddhist ideas which open up what previously seemed to me to be hopeless problems. Ziporyn discusses Nishitani, but I did not understand this section of his book, and I'm looking for help here. My take is that Ziporyn is also dealing with a "self-overcoming of nihilism," a way that radical nihilism and nothingness reverses and coincides with its opposite, but he is working from the Tiantai school of Buddhism while Nishitani seems to come out of Zen thought. I'm a bit confused, though excited and intrigued. Any comments either on nihilism or on N. or Z. would be much appreciated.

enkidu
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Posted 10/04/07 - 02:55 PM:	#2
I don't know whether I will be of much help here since I have neither read Nishitani nor Ziporyn, but I have read a bit of Nishida and it seems that Nishitani somehow starts from the same framework, so I will try my best. From the Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, John Maraldo wrote about Nishitani in the chapter about Contemporean Japanese Philosophy the following: The aware nihilism of Nietzsche and the existentialists, who propose that we stand steadfast on nihilum and affirm living in the midst of meaninglessness, is not an adequate solution. Nishitani radicalizes the problem by proclaiming that the self, the world and all things are indeed empty of autonomous being, but that by awakening to this very emptiness and interdependence we realize our freedom and utter uniqueness. This solution is explicitely a Buddhist one, but Nishitani refines the classical Mahayana philosophy of emptiness (sunyata) here by relating it to technology and to history. His recourse to "emptiness" is an implicit critique of Nishida's "absolute emptiness", in which lurks the danger of nothingness again: nothing underlying subject and substance, reason bankrupt, and no way to connect the objectivity of science with the personal dimension of religion. The "field of emptiness" embraces the impersonal aspects of self, God and world that allow for objectivity, as well as the personal foundations of science in human conviction. Well, again, not having read Nishitani, I don't know how far I can judge his philosophy from this short summary, especially since his opposition to Nishida is said to be implicit. But I don't understand Nishida as falling into the danger of nihilism, since he sees the negation of the self, not as an ultimate end but as the condition of its existence, of its being-and-acting-in-the-world; in the "About Descartes'philosophy" he, for instance wrote: The self exists where it negates itself. It is not however a simple negation but an absolute one whereby the self becomes unified to what is absolutely other In another essay "About self enlightenment", Nishida identifies the foundation of science in the "acting intuition of our poietic self", and we just saw that the poiesis of the self comes from its absolute negation. I don't see any nihilism in that, and maybe Nishitani just built on this idea of "absolute negation" that he may express as a move from "relative nothingness" to "absolute nothingness". Hope this helps, if anything, maybe you can have a look at Nishida.
"The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know." L. Wittgenstein - The Blue Book "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes" - you know who

Golem
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Posted 10/05/07 - 12:07 AM:	#3
Thanks, Enkidu. I will try the Nishida. Based on what you say here, it's hard to see where the "implicit" critique might lie. I didn't understand Nishitani's "field of emptiness" as a supplement to the coincidence between the being and negation of the self ("the self exists where it negates itself," ala Nishida), but just as another way of describing it. For Nishitani at least this applies to all things, not only to the self--this is one of the most powerful parts of the book, for my money: "the fire does not burn itself," that what a thing "is" to the extent that it is knowable as a something--the essence of any particular entity as apprehend by the senses and defined by reason--is necessarily negated by what it is "to itself", that its operation on other things in the world is what-it-is, but this what-it-is is the opposite of what it is to itself, i.e., what allows it to so act. As you say, this already seems to provide an unproblematic bridge out into the world, e.g., of history and science, though Nishitani's handling of, say, technology, is fascinatingly convoluted, though I think a lot of it is warmed over Heidegger. In any case, as you say, if we define nihilism with Nietzsche--"the highest values undermine themselves"--it seems Nishitani would say: the highest values are realized by undermining themselves.... Ziporyn pushes precisely this "fire does not burn itself" point one step further. His point is that we have three aspects here: "burning-of-others," "non-burning-of-itself," and the "identity of burning and non-burning" where the third alone constitutes the real being of the fire; the same negation/affirmation/both structure applies to all entities. But Ziporyn's point is that this means that the third of these in some sense "transcends" the other two, which stand as "less real" extremes as compared to the second-order "neither-nor" that they really are, the identity of the negation/affirmation itself. Here there is a residual metaphysical structure which could indeed lead to a Nietzschean type of nihilism, i.e., a true world as opposed to the world apparent to our reason and senses. Instead, Z. devises a system where each of the three is the whole: affirmation-only, or negation-only, or both-only. Any of the three is a manner of presencing of all three, precisely because the absence of any is the way in which its presence operates. He calls this their "asness": negation is present and functions "as" affirmation, affirmation is present and functions "as" negation, etc. The implications are rather huge! It is fascinating to see the way he teases them out (it's also a very humorous book: in fact, "the joke" is one of Ziporyn's primary structural metaphors, replacing the "fire" metaphor in Nishitani).

enkidu
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Posted 10/05/07 - 06:48 AM:	#4
From what you wrote, it seems Ziporyn may somehow be closer to Nishida than was Nishitani. About the "identity of the negation/affirmation itself": That is a buddhist concept, or at least a consequence of one that may shed some light on the "field of emptiness" you have a problem with. It relates to the law of dependent origination or conditionned coproduction, this law is only possible when we assume the universe to have no fixed substance, though it must have a temporal substract, and I believe it is this substract that Nishitani designs by "field of emptiness". And it is only through this ontological interdependence that the identity of the negation/affirmation is possible. Here maybe, it is interesting to develop a bit about the translation from the original japanese from Nishida; in Japanese, Nishida wrote: "zettai no hitei soku kotei" The difficulty here is to translate the word "soku", it signifies the identity of absolute negation (zettai no hitei) and absolute affirmation (zettai no kotei), but this identity is stronger than a casual coincidence, it seems to say that the dichotomy between absolute negation and absolute affirmation is a false one, an illusory one. This is what Z. seems to call "asness", but the japanese also carries the sense of a simultaneity, the word "soku" in current japanese actually means "instant" or "impromptu", and having seen that time is so central in buddhist thought, being the sole definer of the "field of emptiness", this simultaneity necessarily becomes ontological. So indeed "each of the three is the whole: affirmation-only, or negation-only, or both-only", because the dichotomy (or the trichotomy, here), is not valid, it merely is illusory, foundational maybe of a language, but ultimately, this language misrepresents the reality of the world, at least in some regard, or rather to take Nishida's words, this language will account for the actualities that are the manifestation of the self-determination of the emptiness as basho. "basho" being a japanese word that means location or place, which is better left in japanese, since Nishida developped a logic specific to this notion, that is best seen in his essay "I and You". To summarize it in a very succinct way, I would just say that it claims that the world as a whole, including the self, self-determines itself by an absolute negation of itself, and this determination is historical, the essay details this process with regard to the self (though the dichotomy between self and the world is somewhat also invalid). Lastly, an advise about reading Nishida, I don't know the english translations so I can't give you one I like, but try to get one with a detailed introduction and with a thorough discussion of the japanese terms Nishida employed, he created them and they therefore must be translated with the greatest care to keep all the polysemy they have in japanese. The translator should refrain from any systematic translation of a given term, since it may well be that this ought to be translated in one way in one place and differently in another place, and ideally, he should inform the reader whenever such a problematic term is encountered in the text and explain his choice. My translation is in french, and the translator does all that, even providing the japanese script which is helpful if you have some knowledge of it, so if you read french I can give you the reference. Edited by enkidu on 10/05/07 - 01:48 PM
"The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know." L. Wittgenstein - The Blue Book "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes" - you know who

Golem
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Posted 10/07/07 - 06:57 AM:	#5
Thanks, this is very clarifying. Unfortunately I have no competence in either Japanese or French, so I will have to take my chances with an English translation, with the qualifications you specify. Your remarks on the "temporal" implication of the "field" idea, and indeed of "soku," are very helpful. My Nishitani translation has a glossary with some relevant remarks on the soku--he uses Spinoza's "sive" for this, which is rather ingenious, though I agree with your sense that Ziporyn may have gotten a little closer to the full reversibility of all three terms, and the way they each instantiate the other two. Z.'s take on the question of time is a little more complicated, I'm not really sure if it lines up exactly with the sense of "impromptu," but there is an element of radical temporalizaiton involved, the instant as the field itself, which is perhaps endemic to Buddhist thought--as you say, the temporalization becomes ontological. Dogen seems relevant to this. In any case, I'll go back to the Nishitani with your remarks on time and "basho" in mind, and try to get a hold of a decent version of Nishida, particularly "I and You." Thanks again for your help in pointing the direction.

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