| Nishitani Keiji, a religious philosopher of the Japanese Kyoto School, defines emptiness as an existential position from which to overcome the negativity embodied in modern nihilism. While drawing upon Zen Buddhism for his fundamental insights, he reformulates them in the language of Western philosophy. The pursuit of this eclectic approach leads Nishitani into a number of contradictions, which he ascribes to the inherent limitations of rational thought. While this ascription is generally accepted, a rational explanation for the contradictions is sought in the Hegelian philosophy of mind. Nishitani explicitly disagrees with Hegel on many points, but he tacitly shares some of latter's important metaphysical assumptions and interests. These include the concern to uphold the true selfhood that lies beneath the subject-object distinction and to show that the distinction is not ultimate but provisory. Similar to Hegel, Nishitani also offers a model of developmental phases through which the mind is to achieve such selfhood. These commonalities make the Hegelian perspective suitable for an extended interpretation of Nishitani's ideas. Part I, "Introduction," presents Nishitani's and Hegel's basic tenets. Part II, "A Dialectic of Development," outlines a methodology, derived from the Hegelian dialectic, for approaching mental development. Part III, "Negativity as Estrangement," discusses negativity, alienation, and nihilism in relation to naive positivism. Part IV, "Negativity Contained," applies the methodology introduced in Part II in an attempt to establish a theoretical foundation of emptiness as a successor to negativism. Part V, "Negativity as Deliverance," examines Nishitani's proposal for overcoming nihilism and compares it with the equivalent theories by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Part VI, "Controversies and Conclusions," looks at the problematic areas of the theory of development, evaluates Nishitani's critique of Hegel, and offers general conclusions. An Appendix, "Emptiness in Buddhism," helps put Nishitani's conception of emptiness in historical context. |
