Nishida and Heidegger

Cont Philos Rev (2010) 42:511–553 DOI 10.1007/s11007-009-9119-8

Nishida on Heidegger Curtis A. Rigsby

Published online: 29 January 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Heidegger er and East-A East-Asia sian n thought thought have have tradit tradition ionall ally y been been strong strongly ly Abstract Heidegg correla correlated ted.. However However,, althou although gh still still largel largely y unreco unrecogniz gnized, ed, signifi significan cantt differe difference ncess betw between een the the poli politi tical cal and and me meta taph phys ysic ical al stanc stancee of Heid Heideg egger ger and and his his perce perceiv ived ed counterparts in East-Asia most certainly exist. One of the most dramatic discontinuit nuitie iess betw betwee een n East East-A -Asi sian an thou though ghtt and and Heid Heideg egge gerr is reve reveal aled ed thro throug ugh h an investigati investigation on of Kitaro ¯ Nishida’s Nishida’s own vigorous vigorous criticism criticism of Heidegger. Heidegger. Ironically, Ironically, more more than than one stud study y of Heid Heidegg egger er and and East East-A -Asi sian an thou thought ght has has submi submitt tted ed that that Nishida is that representative of East-Asian thought whose philosophy most closely resembles Heideggerian thought. In words that then and now resound discordantly within the enshrined, established view of Heidegger’s relationship to East-Asian * Note the superscript system I have devised to aid in translation. The precision of Japanese philosophic philosophical al vocabulary vocabulary does not always translate translate easily into English. English. One English English term with multiple multiple meanings, is often expressible by two or more Japanese terms with exactly one meaning each. I have added superscripts to clarify the original Japanese term where appropriate, as follows: [EXPERIENCE] experience (generic) [経験]; experiencet (intensified with possible bodily manifestation) [体験]. [HISTORY] historyg (as in the theological history of faith, cf Bultmannian theology) ( Geschichte); historyh (as in the factual history discernible by science) ( Historie). [IDEALISM] idealismr (versus realism) [観念主義]; idealismb (versus materialism/realism) [ 観念論]; idealismm (versus materialism) [唯心論]; idealismp or optimism (versus pessimism) [ 理想主義]. [MATTER] materialismm [唯物論]; matterh (as opposed to form) [質料]. [OBJECT] objecte (epistemological) [客観]; objectx (existential) [客体]; object (determinate, standing against) [対象]. [REAL] real (generic) [ 現実]; real j (especially, philosophically, as a substance) [実体]. [SPIRIT] spirit g (as in German Geist ) [精神]; spiritr (as animating force) [霊]. [SUBJECT] subject e (epistemological) [主観]; subjectx (existential, active) [主体]; subjectg (grammatical-logical) [主語]; subject matter [主題]; all translations, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s. C. A. Rigsby (&) Philosophy Department of Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. A. Rigsby Japan Committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers (International) URL: http://www.societyofchristianphilosopher http://www.societyofchristianphilosophers.com/ s.com/

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thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time… He…does not recognize that which is indispensible and decisive, namely, God.” This present study lays out for the first time in English, the significant differences between the metaphysical and political stan stance cess of Nish Nishid idaa and and Heid Heidegg egger er,, Nish Nishid ida’s a’s own own crit critiq ique ue of Heid Heideg egge ger, r, and and Heidegger’s Heidegger’s own rather dismal assessment assessment of non-Western non-Western philosophy, all of which demonstrate a remarkable, hitherto unrecognized discontinuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought. Keywords Heidegger · Nishida · Kyoto School · Nothingness · God · Karl Barth · Ethnocentrism · Nazism · East-Asian philosophy · Comparative philosophy

1 Introductio Introduction n

In the the stil stilll em emer ergi ging ng enco encount unter er betw betwee een n Heid Heidegg egger eria ian n phil philos osoph ophy, y, Japa Japane nese se thinkers, and Western comparative thought, the general consensus has traditionally been been that that a strong strong contin continuit uity y exists exists betwee between n Heideg Heidegger ger and East-As East-Asian ian thought thought.. Even in the wake of the critical shock waves generated by Victor Farıás’ 1987 book Heidegger and Nazism, and and in the the cons conseq eque uent nt scru scruti tiny ny focu focuse sed d on the the poli politi tica call thought of the Kyoto School of Modern Japanese philosophy in studies such as the 1994 anthology anthology Rude Awakenings, the perceived continuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought continues to persist. However, although still largely unrecognized, nized, signifi significan cantt differe difference ncess betwee between n the politi political cal and metaph metaphysi ysical cal stance stance of Heidegger and his perceived counterparts in East-Asia, most certainly exist. One of the most most dramat dramatic ic discon discontin tinuit uities ies betwee between n East-A East-Asia sian n though thoughtt and Heidegg Heidegger er is revealed revealed through through an investigati investigation on of Kitaro Kitaro¯ Nishida’s Nishida’s own vigorous vigorous criticism criticism of Heidegger. Ironically, more than one study of Heidegger and East-Asian thought has has subm submit itte ted d that that Nish Nishida ida is that that repr repres esent entat ativ ivee of East East-A -Asia sian n thou thought ght whos whosee philosophy most closely resembles Heideggerian thought. In words that then and now resound resound discor discordant dantly ly within within the enshri enshrined, ned, establ establishe ished d view view of Heidegg Heidegger’ er’ss relationship to East-Asian thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time.” 1 This statement was a strong impetus for Nishida’s student, Katsumi Takizawa, to first reevaluate Heideggerian philosophy, and then the Nishida Philosophy itself, from

1

Takizawa recorded this statement three times, in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976 1976), ), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). Cf endnote in [3], just before [3.1], for full statement. *TKC (1971– – The Collected Works of Katsumi Katsumi Takizawa Takizawa [滝沢克己著作集] (abbreviated TKC). (1971 1975 19 75)) Kyot Ky oto: o: Ho¯ zo¯ kan [包蔵館] (all except the t he first printing printin g of vol. vo l. 1, by So¯ gensha): vol. 1 (by So¯ gensha, 1971), 1971), vol. 4, 5, 7 (1973) (1973),, vol. vol. 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (1974) (1974),, vol. vol. 1 (origi (original nally ly publ. publ. 1971 1971 by So ¯gensha ¯gensha but republished republi shed by Ho¯ zo¯ in 1975), 2 (1975). * Inquiring of Religion [宗教を問う] (first ed, 1976 1976). ). Tokyo: To kyo: San’ichi Shobo¯ [三一書三一書房]. *Sakaguchi, Hiroshi [坂口博], ed. (1989 (1989)) Katsumi Takizawa: Timeline of Selected Works [滝沢克己:著作年譜]. Fukuoka: So¯ gensha [創言社]. =

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thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time… He…does not recognize that which is indispensible and decisive, namely, God.” This present study lays out for the first time in English, the significant differences between the metaphysical and political stan stance cess of Nish Nishid idaa and and Heid Heidegg egger er,, Nish Nishid ida’s a’s own own crit critiq ique ue of Heid Heideg egge ger, r, and and Heidegger’s Heidegger’s own rather dismal assessment assessment of non-Western non-Western philosophy, all of which demonstrate a remarkable, hitherto unrecognized discontinuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought. Keywords Heidegger · Nishida · Kyoto School · Nothingness · God · Karl Barth · Ethnocentrism · Nazism · East-Asian philosophy · Comparative philosophy

1 Introductio Introduction n

In the the stil stilll em emer ergi ging ng enco encount unter er betw betwee een n Heid Heidegg egger eria ian n phil philos osoph ophy, y, Japa Japane nese se thinkers, and Western comparative thought, the general consensus has traditionally been been that that a strong strong contin continuit uity y exists exists betwee between n Heideg Heidegger ger and East-As East-Asian ian thought thought.. Even in the wake of the critical shock waves generated by Victor Farıás’ 1987 book Heidegger and Nazism, and and in the the cons conseq eque uent nt scru scruti tiny ny focu focuse sed d on the the poli politi tica call thought of the Kyoto School of Modern Japanese philosophy in studies such as the 1994 anthology anthology Rude Awakenings, the perceived continuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought continues to persist. However, although still largely unrecognized, nized, signifi significan cantt differe difference ncess betwee between n the politi political cal and metaph metaphysi ysical cal stance stance of Heidegger and his perceived counterparts in East-Asia, most certainly exist. One of the most most dramat dramatic ic discon discontin tinuit uities ies betwee between n East-A East-Asia sian n though thoughtt and Heidegg Heidegger er is revealed revealed through through an investigati investigation on of Kitaro Kitaro¯ Nishida’s Nishida’s own vigorous vigorous criticism criticism of Heidegger. Ironically, more than one study of Heidegger and East-Asian thought has has subm submit itte ted d that that Nish Nishida ida is that that repr repres esent entat ativ ivee of East East-A -Asia sian n thou thought ght whos whosee philosophy most closely resembles Heideggerian thought. In words that then and now resound resound discor discordant dantly ly within within the enshri enshrined, ned, establ establishe ished d view view of Heidegg Heidegger’ er’ss relationship to East-Asian thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time.” 1 This statement was a strong impetus for Nishida’s student, Katsumi Takizawa, to first reevaluate Heideggerian philosophy, and then the Nishida Philosophy itself, from

1

Takizawa recorded this statement three times, in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976 1976), ), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). Cf endnote in [3], just before [3.1], for full statement. *TKC (1971– – The Collected Works of Katsumi Katsumi Takizawa Takizawa [滝沢克己著作集] (abbreviated TKC). (1971 1975 19 75)) Kyot Ky oto: o: Ho¯ zo¯ kan [包蔵館] (all except the t he first printing printin g of vol. vo l. 1, by So¯ gensha): vol. 1 (by So¯ gensha, 1971), 1971), vol. 4, 5, 7 (1973) (1973),, vol. vol. 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (1974) (1974),, vol. vol. 1 (origi (original nally ly publ. publ. 1971 1971 by So ¯gensha ¯gensha but republished republi shed by Ho¯ zo¯ in 1975), 2 (1975). * Inquiring of Religion [宗教を問う] (first ed, 1976 1976). ). Tokyo: To kyo: San’ichi Shobo¯ [三一書三一書房]. *Sakaguchi, Hiroshi [坂口博], ed. (1989 (1989)) Katsumi Takizawa: Timeline of Selected Works [滝沢克己:著作年譜]. Fukuoka: So¯ gensha [創言社]. =

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the the stand standpo poin intt that that Nish Nishida ida claim claimed ed Heid Heidegg egger er fata fatall lly y lack lacked ed,, name namely ly—t —the he 2 standpoint which recognizes the “indispensable and decisive” reality of “God.”

2 Asian Asian though thoughtt & ent enthus husias iasm m for Heidegge Heideggerr

From the beginning of Heidegger’s career up until the present, the Japanese have shown an enthusiasm for his thought, matched by a corresponding enthusiasm in Western Western compara comparativ tivee studie studiess of Heidegg Heidegger er and East-A East-Asia sian n thought thought,, and modern modern Japanese Philosophy in particular. Heidegger himself appears to have exhibited a marked appreciation of East-Asian thought and culture. 2.1 Heidegger’s Heidegger’s enthusiasm enthusiasm for Asia In a letter to the organizers organizers of the 1969 conference conference in Hawaii, Hawaii, Heidegger Heidegger encouraged encouraged hopes hopes that that his his phil philos osoph ophy y ma may y stim stimul ulat atee a deep deeper er unde unders rsta tand ndin ing g and and frui fruitfu tfull encounter between East and West, when he wrote: Again and again it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with the thinkers of what is to us the Eastern world. 3 Heidegger himself had already dialogued at length with various Japanese thinkers, includ including ing Nishida Nishida’s ’s studen student, t, Takiza Takizawa, wa, in 1965. 1965.4 In 1954, 1954, Heideg Heidegger ger issued issued the essay “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer,” which is a fictional reconstruction of a real discussion he had in the same year with Tomio Tezuka, a Japanese scholar of German literature from Tokyo University. In this 1954 essay, Heidegger references Nishida, Hajime Tanabe, and especially Shu¯ zo¯ Kuki,5 and and reca recall llss fondl fondly y vari various ous stim stimul ulat atin ing g enco encount unter erss Heid Heidegg egger er had had with with Japanese thinkers. In this essay, which is written in the form of a dialogue between Heidegger and a Japanese interlocutor, Heidegger exhibits an interest in Japanese culture culture,, and pondero ponderousl usly y consid considers ers the prospe prospects cts for interc intercult ultural ural dialog dialogue. ue. He undertakes philosophically motivated definitions of the Japanese words for “chic” (iki [粋]) and “word/language” ( kotoba [言葉]).6 He claims that his essay “What is Meta Metaph phys ysiics? cs?” and and its its leit leitmo moti tiff of Nothi othing ng ( das was “und “under erst stoo ood d das Nich Nichts ts) was immediately” by the Japanese because of their sensitivity to East-Asian Emptiness, 7 2

ibid.

3

Philosophy East and West , vol. 20, No. 3, July, 1970, p. 221; Parkes, Heidegger and Asian Thought , p. 7. *Heidegger, (1970 (1970)) 1969 letter printed in “Introduction to the Symposium and Reading of a Letter from Martin Heidegger,” by Winfield E. Nagley, in Philosophy East and West , vol. 20, no. 3, July *Parkes, Graham, ed. (1987 (1987)) Heidegger and Asian Thought . Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

4

Sakaguchi, Timeline, p. 148.

5

Heidegger Heidegger,, in On the reference ncess Nishid Nishidaa (p. 1), Tanab Tanabee (p. 5, 37), 37), and Kuki the Way Way to Lang Langua uage ge, refere (throughout “A Dialogue on Language”). *Heidegger (1971b (1971b). ). On the Way to Language. [Grn: Unterwegs zur Sprache (1959)] as translated by Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper & Row.

6

Heidegger, ibid, p. 43ff.

7

Heidegger, ibid, p. 19. Cf also Parkes in May, p. 98.

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and further claims that the Japanese have “an innate understanding” regarding the “reser “reserve” ve” which which respec respects ts the “myster “mystery” y” of langua language, ge, and which which is necess necessary ary to 8 prevent unwarranted conceptualization. Heidegger praises his Japanese dialogue comp compan anio ion, n, stat statin ing: g: “you “you are are near nearer er to the the real realit ity y of lang langua uage ge than than all all our our 9 [European] concepts.” Heidegger even said of D. T. Suzuki’s work: If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings.10 Noting Noting “Heide “Heidegge gger’s r’s consid considera erable ble intere interest st in Asian Asian thought thought,” ,” 11 Graham Graham Parkes Parkes claims that “the extent of his knowledge of Asian philosophy is not yet widely appreciated.”12 Park Parkes es goes goes so far far as to sugg sugges estt that that Heid Heideg egge ger’ r’ss noti notion onss of Noth Nothin ing g and and deat death h corr corres espon pond d clos closely ely to the the philo philoso sophy phy of mode modern rn Japa Japane nese se thought, even warranting the possibility that Heidegger himself was influenced by the so-cal so-called led Kyoto Kyoto School School which which formed formed around around Nishida Nishida’s ’s thought thought..13 Indeed, Heidegger did maintain a correspondence with Nishida’s colleague D. T. Suzuki, and and Nish Nishid ida’s a’s stude student nt Keij Keijii Nish Nishit itani ani,, a corr corres espon ponde denc ncee where wherein in Heid Heideg egge gerr 14 purs pursue ued d an inqu inquir iry y into into East East Asia Asian n thou though ght. t. Nish Nishit itani ani was was convi convinc nced ed that that Heidegger pursued this inquiry for the purpose of uncovering what the history of meta me taph phys ysic icss has has conc concea eale led, d, as Nish Nishit itan anii stat stated ed in 1976 1976 on the the occa occasi sion on of Heidegger’s death: With respect to metaphysics Heidegger wanted to go a step further and inquire into what lies beneath it. It became clear that this attempt made direct contact

Footnote 7 continued *Parkes, Graham (1996 (1996)) “Rising Sun over Black Forest,” in Reinhard May (ed.), Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: Some East Asian Influences on His Work . London: Routledge (May’s work was first published in 1989 in German. The 1996 publication was translated with a complementary essay, by Graham Parkes). Routledge, USA: Canada. 8

Heidegger, ibid, p. 50.

9


10

William Barrett, p. xi in “Zen for the West,” the Introduction to Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings, by Daisetz T. Suzuki. Barrett’s entire statement is as follows: A German friend of Heidegger told me that one day when he visited Heidegger he found him reading one of Suzuki’s books; “If I understand this man correctly,” Heidegger remarked, “this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings.” This remark may be the slightly exaggerated enthusiasm of a man under the impact of a book in which he recognizes some of his own thoughts; certainly Heidegger’s philosophy in its tone and temper and sources is Western to its core, and there is much in him that is not in Zen, but also very much more in Zen that is not in Heidegger; and yet the points of correspondence between between the two, despite despite their disparate disparate sources, are startling startling enough. For what, after all, is Heidegger Heidegger’s ’s final message but that Western philosophy is a great error, the result of the dichotomizing intellect that has cut man off from unity with Being itself and from his own Being. *Barrett, William (1956 (1956)) “Zen for the West” in the Introduction (pp. iii–xx) of Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings, by Daisetz T. Suzuki. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. 11

Parkes, p. 6.

12

Parkes, p. 5.

13

Parkes in May, Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, p. 81.

14

Parkes in May, pp. 99–102.

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with Eastern insights, such as those of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Zen Buddhism. For this reason Heidegger used to question me about Zen Buddhism. 15 In regards to Heidegger’s more general interests in East-Asian thought, it should be noted that in 1946 he began a translation of Laozi’s Daodejing with the Chinese Christian thinker Paul Shih-yi Hsiao. Parkes claims that such encounters by Heidegger with Laozi and Zhuangzi influenced both the style and content of Heidegger’s post Being and Time thought, so as to move toward a greater appreciation of the poetic. 16 2.2 Japanese enthusiasm for Heidegger Parkes has also noted that: Heidegger’s interest in Asian thought has generated considerable reciprocal interest in his work on the part of the Oriental philosophical world. 17 Indeed, Japanese enthusiasm for Heidegger’s thought has roots as early as the 1920s. Kyoto School associates Hajime Tanabe—who was personally tutored by Heidegger—and Kiyoshi Miki, had interacted with the young Heidegger in Germany in 1923, and soon after began to comment about his thought in their own writings. Because the last page or two of Heidegger’s summer lecture, “Ontology: Hermeneutics of Facticity,” were lost, “for 65 years, the sole source for Heidegger’s first words on the topic of death” were Tanabe’s lecture notes. 18 Indeed, Tanabe’s October 1924 “A New Turn in Phenomenology”19 is the first substantial commentary on Heidegger’s thought in any language. Kitaro¯ Nishida himself immediately commented on Tanabe’s article, stating in an October 2, 1924 letter to Tanabe that “Heidegger will contribute to cultural studies from the phenomenological standpoint.”20 The first translation of Heidegger’s work in Japanese, “What is Metpaphysics?,” appeared in 1930, just one year after its 21 publication in Germany. Miki Kiyoshi published essays on Heidegger in 1930 and 15

Nishitani, Keiji. “The Deep Sense of Crisis in Contemporary Culture [現代文明に深い危機感],” ¨ hl fu¨r die Krise der Yomiuri Shinbun 27 May 1976; trnsl. By Elmar Weinbayr as “Ein tiefes Gefu modernen Zivilisation,” in Buchner’s Japan und Heidegger , pp. 193–4. Translated into English and quoted by Parkes, in May, p. 101. *Buchner, Hartmut, ed (1989) Japan und Heidegger . Messkirch: Jan Thorbecke Verlag Sigmaringen. 16

Parkes in May, p. 98.

17

Parkes, p. 6.

18


19

[現象学における新しき転向] in Shiso¯ [思想] 36 Oct 1924; THZ 4:17–24.

20

NKZ 19:582, letter #2470, October 2, 1927. As quoted in Yusa, p. 198, footnote 38. Nishida received from his student Risaku Mutai, a copy of Heidegger’s Being and Time in 1927, the same year as its publication in Germany (NKZ 18:327, letter #447 to Risaku Mutai (in Freiburg), June 17, 1927; cf also NKZ 19:600, letter #2516 to Hajime Tanabe, June 20, 1927). *NKZ Nishida, Kitaro¯ (1965) The Complete Works of Kitaro Nishida [西田幾多郎全集] (abbreviated NKZ). Iwanami Shotenkan [岩波書店刊]. =

21

Seinosuke Yuasa, who studied with Heidegger in 1929, translated Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?” for publication in Japan in 1930.

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1933.22 Shu¯zo¯ Kuki, who had interacted with Heidegger in 1926 and 1927, and who was the first to introduce Jean-Paul Sartre—Kuki’s French tutor at the time 23—to Heidegger’s thought, released the 1933 work, Heidegger’s Philosophy, which was the first book length work on Heidegger’s philosophy in any language. In the same year, Tanabe summed up the thoughts of many in the Japanese intellectual community when he stated: Among contemporary German philosophers, no one has recently attracted greater attention in Japan than Martin Heidegger. … In what can only be described as the German equivalent of the Japanese “descent from heaven,” this comparatively young scholar—Heidegger at 44 has just entered his prime —was given a post normally reserved for the most senior of academic veterans. … Obviously, in these exceptional times, the man is the object of enormous expectations not only at Freiburg but also throughout the German academic community.24 Tetsuro¯ Watsuji’s Climate, which was soon to be published in 1935, although largely a critique of Heidegger’s thought, still exhibited its indebtedness to Heidegger’s brand of phenomenology and etymological speculation. Japanese enthusiasm for Heidegger continued after WWII as well, as was illustrated by the work Is Heidegger a Nihilist?,25 by Kyoto School associate Masaaki Ko¯saka. More secondary literature on Heidegger has appeared in Japanese than in any other language, including German and French. Between 1939 and 1960, no less than six different translations of Heidegger’s Being and Time appeared in Japanese.26 Heidegger’s association with the Kyoto School is especially worthy of note, as he was not only studied carefully by several of its associates, but also developed close relationships with Nishida’s close friend D. T. Suzuki, and with Keiji Nishitani, who was the successor to Nishida and Tanabe as the generally accepted head of the Kyoto School.27 Given the deep interest that Heidegger’s philosophy was causing among Japanese intellectuals, it is not surprising that Heidegger’s philosophy played a major role in Takizawa’s own graduation thesis in 1931. Takizawa also wrote a critical essay about Heidegger in 1933, shortly before meeting Nishida in person for the first time. 22

“Heidegger’s Ontology” (1930) & “Heidegger and the Destiny of Philosophy” (1933).

23

Yuasa in Parkes, p. 158. Cf also Williams, p. 81. * Williams, David (2004) Defending Japan’s Pacific War . New York: Routledge.

24

Williams’ translation, p. 181, from THZ 8:3–9 “A Philosophy of Crisis or a Crisis of Philosophy?” [ 危機の哲学か、哲学の危機か] *THZ Tanabe, Hajime (1963–1964) The Complete Works of Hajime Tanabe (田辺元全集) (abbreviated THZ). 15 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯ (筑摩書房). Tanabe, Hajime. 1963–1964. The Complete Works of Hajime Tanabe (田辺元全集) (abbreviated THZ). 15 vols. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯ (筑摩書房). =

25

Piovesana, p. 201, footnote 2. *Piovesana, Gino K., S. J. (1997). Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 1862–1996 . Richmond: Japan Library (Curzon Press Ltd). 26

Williams, p. 82.

27

Cf Yuasa in Parkes, and Parkes in May, for a good historical overview.

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It is clear that during this meeting, Heidegger was an important part of the conversation, and also evident that Takizawa himself expected to study with Heidegger, as so many of Nishida’s other colleagues and students had already done. 2.3 The Western expectation that Heidegger is a key to Japanese Philosophy Interest in Heidegger’s thought has not been limited to Japan. Western students of Heidegger and East–West comparative studies have also looked to Heidegger with great expectations as an auspicious case of a Westerner doing philosophy in a way that is especially commensurate with East-Asian thought. This is attested to by numerous publications,28 and particularly, by a symposium on “Heidegger and Eastern Thought” that was held at the University of Hawaii in 1969 to celebrate his eightieth birthday.29 The essays presented at this conference were anthologized in 1987, with an introduction which states that although the vocabulary of “traditional (Platonic/Christian) metaphysics” and “contemporary analytic philosophy” threaten to subject East-Asian texts to “gross distortion,” the language of Heideggerian philosophy is especially suited to dealing with the Asian tradition, as Parkes states: The realization has dawned recently, however, that the European Continental tradition—and existentialism and phenomenology in particular—has developed philosophical terminologies that are far more in harmony with many strains of Asian thought than are those of Anglo-American philosophy. 30 Regarding Heidegger’s significance for comparative philosophical studies and East– West dialogue, Elmar Weinmayr concurred in 1989, stating: Heidegger’s thought is…one of the few (philosophical) European advances to the place in which East Asia and Europe can creatively encounter one another.31

28

Examples of such publications setting up Heidegger as especially compatible with Eastern philosophy include: *Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen, by Steven Heine, 1985. *“Thinking in transition: Nishida Kitaro and Martin Heidegger,” Weinmayr, Elmar; Krummel, John W. M.; Berger, Douglas, in Philosophy East and West April, 2005. * Heidegger’s Hidden Sources by Reinhard May. * Heidegger and Asian Thought , a (1987) anthology ed. by Graham Parkes et al. *Heidegger figures prominently in The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, and also in Zen and Western Thought by Abe Masao. * Japan und Heidegger (in German), (1989) ed. by Buchner von Hartmut. *Japanese publications include: ハイデッガーと日本の哲学〜和辻哲郎、九鬼周造、田辺元 (嶺秀樹) 2002, 他者なき思想〜ハイデッガー問題と日本 (桑田礼彰、芥正彦;編集:浅利誠、荻野文隆). 29

Parkes, Heidegger and Asian Thought , p. 7.

30

Parkes, p. 6.

31

Weinmayr, p. 248. *Weinmayr, Elmar (2005). “Thinking in Transition: Nishida Kitaro¯ and Martin Heidegger.” (translated from the original essay in the anthology, Japan und Heidegger . Sigmaringen: Jan thorbecke Verlag, 1989). Philosophy East & West . Vol. 55, No. 2, April, pp. 232–256.

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In investigating how Heidegger’s wartime thought and political life might clarify the meaning and value of the wartime Kyoto School, David Williams even stated in 2004, that “Martin Heidegger is the greatest philosopher of our time.” 32 2.4 The Heidegger studies crisis & Japanese Philosophy The destinies of Heideggerian philosophy and modern Japanese Philosophy have been closely intertwined, not only for the good, but also for the bad. When Victor Farıás’ 1987 book Heidegger and Nazism provoked a scandal throughout the world of Heidegger scholarship—a scandal aggravated by a study of the same year which exposed the anti-Semitic editorials of deconstructionist critic Paul de Man 33—the resulting shock waves led to the 1994 anthology, Rude Awakenings, which reevaluated the wartime political ideology and activity of the Kyoto School, of which Nishida was a leading figure. Thus whereas since the 1960s, Western studies of Kyoto School thought and Zen Buddhism had focused primarily on religious and ontological themes, Farıás’ work led to a new political vantage point in the 1990s, whereby previously positive receptions transformed into highly critical assessments. James Heisig and John Maraldo note: If there is one factor we can point to as having brought the political aspect to the fore, it is the case of Martin Heidegger. In the light of new revelations of Heidegger’s associations with the German Nazi Party, affections for Heideggerian thought underwent a sea of change, and in the process, the consciousness of a generation was awakened as never before to the political consequences of supposedly apolitical philosophers and scholars. It was only a matter of time before this rude awakening was transmitted to those attracted to the philosophy of the Kyoto School, not to mention Zen Buddhism. 34 Williams concurs regarding this wave of “Japan critique” (Grn: Japanokritik ), stating: The global debate that had erupted in the 1980s over Heidegger’s politics—the so-called “Farıás Affair”—dealt a severe blow to the reputation of Kyoto School philosophy in the West. 35 Indeed, Williams notes that “The ricochet of the Farıás Affair damaged the Western commitment—moral, aesthetic, religious, and metaphysical—to Kyoto thought.” 36 Somberly keeping in view the central question of Farıás—“Is there anything in 32

Williams, p. 29.

33

Williams, p. 147.

34

Heisig and Maraldo, Rude Awakenings, pp. vii–viii. Cf Williams p. 144. Cf also Maraldo, “The Problem of World Culture,” 1995, pp. 183, 189. *Heisig, James and John Maraldo (1995) Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. *Maraldo, John C. (1995) “The Problem of World Culture: Towards an Appropriation of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nation and Culture.” The Eastern Buddhist . Volume 28, number 2, Autumn, pp. 183–197. 35

Williams, p. 129.

36

Williams, p. 141.

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Heidegger’s philosophy that would have made his involvement with the Nazis impossible?”—Jan Van Bragt, concluded in 1994 that, in a very general sense, Kyoto School philosophy is “intrinsically nationalistic,” and that further reflection upon the ramifications of this hitherto unconsidered aspect of modern Japanese thought are in order.37 Williams went onto argue in 2004 that the corresponding post-Farıás Affair question which has generated the current critical stance against modern Japanese philosophy is: “Is there anything in Nishida’s philosophy that would have kept him from becoming an ultra-nationalist?” 38 Indeed, there is a sense in which Heidegger and the members of the Kyoto School were nationalists who, in the face of opposition and competition, supported the standpoint of their respective politispheres and cultures. Although this has been perceived as a deficit by many Western scholars who take a critical stance toward Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Williams has defended the Kyoto School precisely in terms of its political objectives, calling it “an adventure in post-White thinking” which defined “the future of Asian resurgence.”39 The very title of Williams’ work of 2004— Defending Japan’s Pacific War —resoundingly proclaims this provocative thesis. Williams not only thus portrays the Kyoto School as a corrective to Western ethnocentrism, but also appeals to the commonly perceived continuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought in order to defend Heideggerian philosophy from the aftershocks of the “Farıás Affair,” as Williams states: If a German problem (Heidegger’s politics) has provoked this Japanese problem (the rediscovery of the true politics of the wartime Kyoto School), the reverse may also be true: a Japanese solution may offer a cure for our German problem.40 Thus, in summary, Williams argues on the assumption of a significant continuity between Heidegger and the Kyoto School, that restoring the reputation of the Kyoto School should correspondingly restore Heidegger’s reputation. The implication is that if there is no such continuity between Heidegger and the Kyoto School, then the merits of the Kyoto School cannot be appealed to in order to salvage Heidegger’s reputation.

3 The purported continuity between Heidegger & Nishida

Any claim that there is a general continuity of thought between Heidegger and the East-Asian traditions quickly becomes suspect upon investigation of the vast diversity representing East-Asian thought and culture. Even when purported continuities with Heidegger are limited to the Kyoto School alone, the vast differences between its members and associates militate against any purported essential similarity. For example, Shin’ichi Hisamatsu was a Zen Buddhist, Seiichi Hatano was a Christian, Hajime Tanabe and Masaaki Ko¯saka were nationalists, 37

Jan Van Bragt, in Heisig & Maraldo, Rude Awakenings, p. 243. Cf Williams, p. 141.

38

Williams, p. 141.

39

Williams, p. 91.

40

Williams, p. 130.

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Kiyoshi Miki and Jun Tosaka were Marxists and Keiji Nishitani was an existentialist of sorts. Given the vast range of options in modern Japanese philosophy, more than one study of Heidegger has narrowed the field by proposing Nishida’s life and thought as exhibiting the strongest parallels with Heidegger. However, some such studies, such as Arthur R. Luther’s ( 1982) comparison between the two thinkers, argue for a parallel between them based partly on an insufficiently clear account of Nishida’s thought.41 Given a clearer picture, in terms of both political and metaphysical stance, strong discontinuities between the two thinkers can be discerned if the comparison focuses on the early, pre-turn Heidegger. 3.1 Discontinuity between Heidegger & Nishida’s political stance In terms of the political stance of the two thinkers, Williams argues that for Nishida, “The analogy with Heidegger is close,” 42 in that both thinkers were “objectivists,” prioritizing a standpoint transcending the historical creation and political activism of “humanism” and “subjectivism.” Thus Williams distances Nishida and Heidegger from “subjectivists” like Hajime Tanabe and the Kyoto School “gang of four”— Masaaki Ko¯saka, Shigetaka Suzuki, Iwao Ko¯yama, and Keiji Nishitani—who stressed the “rational self-mastery” and “effective agency,” which is to say, “subjectivityt” (shutaisei [主体性]),43 of human beings acting as “subjects t.”44 Not only did Tanabe criticize Nishida for characterizing reality as determined by a transhistorical principle that did not do justice to the actual movements of history, 45 but 41

Arthur R. Luther’s stimulating comparison of Heidegger and Nishida in terms of an “original coming into appearance…immediately and directly experienced…” (p. 345, my italics) may characterize Nishida in more phenomenological terms than Nishida himself would have felt comfortable with. Luther’s most questionable characterizations of Nishida appear in terms of a conflation of Nishida’s thought with Buddhism. Luther concludes that for Nishida, “all sentient existents are essentially empty or void of ownbeing” (p. 353), karma is integral to cosmic processes (p. 354), and as in Hua-yan (Kegon) Buddhism, “the dependent coorigination of all factors of existence is inclusive of infinite past as well as infinite future” (p. 354). To my knowledge, Nishida himself neither adopts the concepts nor utilizes the corresponding Buddhist terms, “void of own-being” (nisvabhava) or “karma” as integral to his system. However, as Luther correctly notes, self-negation ( jiko hitei [自己否定]) is indeed integral to the Nishida Philosophy, although not necessarily in a Buddhist manner; indeed, Nishida’s notion of negation often reminds me more of Hegelian negation and Christian self-denial than Buddhist “voidness of own being.” Further, although Hajime Tanabe’s disciple Yoshinori Takeuchi (in 1963) portrayed Nishida’s philosophy of time as basically a Hua-yan Buddhist past to future/future to past mutual penetration and Western scholars such as Steve Odin (in 1982) have likewise followed this interpretation, Nishida himself in both 1932 (NKZ 6:183) and 1945 (NKZ 11:375), emphasized the irreversible structure of time. *Luther, Arthur R. 1982. “Original Emergence in Heidegger and Nishida.” Philosophy Today. Volume XXVI, Number 4/4, Winter. 42

Williams, p. 145.

43

Williams, p. 68.

44

Williams, p. 110. The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre would define “subjectivism” as pointing to the fact that “man has a greater dignity than a stone,” and as having two meanings, namely, “that an individual chooses and makes himself; and…that it is impossible for man to transcend human subjectivity.” “The Humanism of Existentialism” (1945), in the context of Sartre’s explanation of “Atheistic existentialism.” 45

Maraldo, “The Problem of World Culture: Towards an Appropriation of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nation and Culture,” p. 185.

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in early Autumn of 1933, Tanabe also similarly criticized Heidegger’s Freiburg Rectoral address of May 3 of the same year. Thus in 1933, Tanabe claimed critically, that for Heidegger: …knowing is a creature born out of powerlessness. This is why the Greeks called it “ theorı´ a”… Armed only with the awareness of the powerlessness of knowledge, is it possible to establish, positively, with this principle alone, the foundations for a metaphysics of the nation-state? 46 That is, Tanabe felt that Heidegger’s Aristotelean commitment to a philosophical methodology of mere “theorıá”—disengaged and disinterested contemplation— which during the Middle Ages “degenerated into the handmaiden of theology,” is incapable of the Platonic invocation to historical awareness and political action. Thus by way of Tanabe’s critique, both Heidegger and Nishida are united as adherents to political objectivism, which is to say, a standpoint whereby individual human beings are objects grounded in a reality greater than the effective agency of historical production, and are thereby maximally distanced from the political engagement demanded by subjectivism. Tanabe’s critiques of the objectivism he detected in Heidegger and Nishida thus lend considerable support to the thesis of a continuity between the two thinkers. 47 However, despite the continuity between the two thinkers as perceived by Tanabe and Williams, there are also significant differences between Heidegger and Nishida. The differences between them were greatest in 1933, which is the year that Nishida sent off his student Takizawa to Germany, and the differences remained strong until the year of Nishida’s death in 1945, which is one year before the culmination of Heidegger’s “turn” (Kehre) represented by the 1946 essay “Letter on Humanism,” wherein he locates the error of Western philosophy in a “metaphysics of presence” dominated by the “will to power” of active subjects seeking “planetary domination of technique.” Although the later Heidegger clearly prioritized the letting go (Gelassenheit ) of self-assertion, the Heidegger of the 1927 work Being and Time and the 1933 Rektoratsrede—which is to say, the Heidegger most familiar to Nishida—had strong subjectivist tendencies. On the one hand, the later Heidegger would warn of the inauthenticity of self-assertion aimed at future-oriented “progress” and “technology,” and would correspondingly affirm the authenticity of the subtle disclosure of truth ( ale¯ theia) as given in the past and cultivated by Greek thought. However, on the other hand, the early Heidegger conversely warned of the inauthenticity of the past-oriented “thrownness” ( Geworfenheit ) of “the They” (das Man), who in making no attempt to face the future and its implications of authenticity, constantly threaten to rob human beings ( Dasein) of their selfautonomy, responsibility, and choice. Heidegger’s early “subjectivism” reverberates

46

Williams, pp. 182–183. Tanabe’s article on Heidegger, “Philosophy of Crisis, or a Crisis of Philosophy?,” appeared in a three-part series printed in the Asahi Newspaper in early Autumn of 1933. Tanabe had recently issued a similar critique of Nishida’s philosophy in May, 1930, in the article, “Looking Up to Nishida’s Teachings.” 47

Williams characterizes Tanabe’s critique of Nishida as a criticism against “objectivism” (cf Williams, p. 116), and indeed characterizes both Heidegger and Nishida as “objectivists” (pp. 130, 135, 146).

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clearly in a statement he made in 1933—a statement which exhibits his choiceoriented and future-oriented philosophical terminology of the period: The German people must choose its future, and this future is bound to the Fu¨hrer… There is only one will to the full existence ( Dasein) of the State. The Fu¨hrer has awakened this will in the entire people… 48 Evidently, from Nishida’s 1931 essay “History” onward, culminating in his notion of “active-intuition,” Nishida himself became increasingly interested in the concrete, socio-political creation of history. However, in both theory and practice, Nishida never exhibited the same degree of subjectivist activism as Heidegger. Even more significantly, from the beginning to the end of his career, Nishida maintained a rather detached stance toward political matters which later commentators would call “resistive cooperation” ( hantaiseiteki kyo¯ ryoku [反体制的協力]).49 Although this stance worked indirectly to affirm the official policies of wartime Japan, it is not comparable to Heidegger’s vigorous participation in political affairs and enthusiastic support for the Nazi party in 1933, the year of his Rectorship at Freiburg University and the year of Takizawa’s study in Germany. Indeed, in private, Nishida was highly critical of the political regime of wartime Japan. 50 Although Williams argues for a strong continuity between Heidegger and Nishida, he does not carefully note the difference between the early and the later Heidegger. Further, Williams’ location of a continuity between the two thinkers seems to assume the position of the later Heidegger. However, it is precisely the philosophical subjectivism and political activity of the early Heidegger that led to critical reassessment of his life and thought, and consequently, to a critical reassessment of the Kyoto School. Indeed, it is precisely this subjectivist strain of the early Heidegger that has led many to make a distinction between his political life and his philosophy, thus affirming only the value of the latter in an attempt to salvage it. Although Williams claims that “distinguishing the man from the ideas, the politics from the philosophy, does not work as philosophy,” 51 and that to make this distinction is “the hoariest cliche´ in the entire controversy over Heidegger,” 52 Williams himself nevertheless appears to resort to this “cliche´ ” by claiming that the “ethical–political critics of Heidegger often seem to have lost sight of the metaphysical horizon” and that “This appears to be equally true of the political

48 49

Heidegger. “German Men and Women!”, Freiburger Studentenzeitung, 10 Nov (1933). ¯ hashi’s term for the “Cooperative resistance” (hantaiseiteki kyo¯ ryoku [反体制的協力]) is Ryo¯suke O

wartime political stance taken by several members of the Kyoto School, including Nishida, a stance characterized by “negotiating a reorientation by means of immanent critique or cooperative correction.” I would like to acknowledge Bret Davis for making this information available online at ¯ hashi, Ryo¯suke. The Kyoto School and the http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/ . Cf also O Japanese Navy [京都学派と日本海軍], Kyoto: PHP Shinsho, 2001, p. 20ff. 50

Cf Michiko Yusa’s biography of Nishida. *Yusa, Michiko (2002) Zen & Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. 51

Williams, p. 150.

52

Williams, p. 156.

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critics of the wartime Kyoto School.” 53 Indeed, Williams himself praises the ability to draw “a firm distinction between the philosophic discourse proper and the realm of political opinion,” 54 and thus even Williams takes the stance of “distinguishing the man from the ideas, the politics from the philosophy.” Whether or not Williams is correct in his claim that “metaphysics is not about moral backbone,” 55 he has not provided a satisfactory account of the continuity between the wartime political philosophies of Heidegger and Nishida. If the wartime political thought of Heidegger and Nishida does not exhibit significant continuity, then perhaps a stronger continuity can be located in their ontological explorations on “the metaphysical horizon.” 3.2 Discontinuity between Heidegger & Nishida’s metaphysical stance In terms of the metaphysical stance of the two thinkers, Elmar Weinmayr noted in 1989: Nishida and Heidegger both…point to the derivativeness of the subjecthood of man as well as the objecthood of things from a prior openness of reality as a whole, that is to say, the subject-object relation is embedded in a deep. structure embracing them and initially making their relation possible. 56 Thus, Nishida’s all-encompassing Place or Topos ( basho [場所]) exhibits significant similarities with Heidegger’s “Being” ( Sein), which is manifest as an “openness” (Offenheit ) and acts as a “clearing” ( Lichtung) for the beings within it, thus providing “light” ( Licht ) for human beings ( Dasein) to encounter the emerging truth (aleˆ theia) of Being. Nishida’s account of the relationship between the infinite Topos and the finite individuals situated within it ( oite aru mono [於いてあるもの]), also exhibits significant similarities with Heidegger’s account of the “ontological difference” between Being ( Sein) and beings (Seiendes), whereby on the one hand, Being enables a genuine encounter between beings and elicits a sense of care (Sorge) among them, and on the other hand, beings themselves derive their significance from Being. Indeed, Nishida’s account of the relationship between the “Absolute Topos of Nothingness” and the individuals situated within it, as a “contradictory self-identity” (mujunteki jikodo¯ itsu [矛盾的自己同一]), and his account of the manifestation of “Nothingness” as a “transcendence and-yet immanence” (naizai soku cho¯ etsu [内在即超越]), exhibits significant similarities with Heidegger’s characterization of the manifestation of Being as a simultaneous absence and yet presence. Heidegger’s preoccupation with the “question of Being” ( das Seinsfrage), which extended from the beginning to the end of his career, indicates that what the term “Being” represents, was of paramount importance for him, and the same was true of the notion of “Topos” or “Nothingness” for Nishida. Nishida often characterized his 53

Williams, p. 137.

54

Williams, p. 161.

55

Williams, p. 146.

56

Weinmayr, p. 234.

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understanding of the referent of terms such as “Topos,” “Nothingness,” and the “Absolute,” as “God.” Heidegger was less inclined to characterize “Being” as “God,” and indeed rarely touched upon the issue of “God.” Just as with Nishida’s view of “God,” there is a lack of consensus and clarity regarding Heidegger’s own view of God. Of course, it has been noted that Heidegger’s ontological difference between Being and beings shares affinities with the theistic difference between God and creatures, and also that Heidegger’s aim to rid philosophy of all metaphysical theology does not necessitate the rejection of God, but may actually clear the way for a genuine encounter with God. 57 In the late 1950s, Heidegger implied this by distinguishing “the divine God ( der go¨ ttlicher Gott )” from “the god of philosophy.58 However, although Heidegger himself references God and the holy in his own work without rejecting such notions, his lack of clarity regarding the notion of God has commonly led to the appellation of his position as “agnostic.” Indeed, in printed translations of Heidegger’s notion of “ Sein” or “Being,” some scholars do not use a capital “B” in order “to avoid making Sein sound like some absolute or metaphysical principle that rules over other ‘beings’.” 59 Emphasizing the difference between Heidegger’s “b-eing” and the theistic God, Weinmayr emphasizes that Heidegger is not interested in some: …law standing above all beings, for example a highest conjoining (Verfu¨ gung) of a universally “destined transience” to which beings are subjugated.60 Weinmayr explains that to seek such an all-encompassing trans-historical law is a symptom of the modern problem of the “oblivion of Being” ( Seinsvergessenheit ) whereby “The modern subject desires that which fits ( fu¨ gt ) the highest and most universal being, because it is unconjoined (unverfu¨ gten) and not conjoinable (unverfu¨ gbaren)…”61 Heidegger’s discontinuity with Nishida comes clearly into view here, because Nishida’s Topos is easily characterized as “the highest and most universal” reality, fully “absolute” as the “Topos of Absolute Nothingness” or “God.” Of course, Nishida’s etymological appeal to relevant Sino-Japanese morphemes in order to characterize the “Absolute” ( zettai [絶対]) as that which has “severed” ( zet [絶]) all “opposition” (- tai [対]),62 implies a radical immanence and continuity of the Absolute with all finite things and thus contrasts with the radical transcendence implied by the corresponding Indo-European morphemes (Ltn: ab-solvere), 57

Kovacs, pp. 20–21, 24. *Kovacs, George (1990) The Question of God in Heidegger’s Phenomenology. (Part of the Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. James M. Edie). Illinois: Northwestern University Press. 58

Heidegger, “Identita¨t und Differenz” (Identity and Difference) (1957), p. 71, my translation. *Heidegger (1971a) Identity and Difference. [translation by Joan Stambaugh from Identita¨ t und Differenz (1955–1957)]. New York: Harper & Row. 59

Krummel and Berger in Weinmayr, p. 251, footnote 6.

60

Weinmayr, p. 237. For ease of comprehension, I replaced the singular generic “a being” with the plural “beings.” 61

Weinmayr, p. 238.

62

NKZ 11:396.

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which indicate a “setting free” ( solvere) “from” (ab) or an “unconjoinability” (Unverfu¨ gbarkeit ) with all finite things. However, both Sino-Japanese and IndoEuropean morphemes can generate the same end result in that maximal universality is achieved in both cases, whether through the Sino-Japanese immanence in all finite things or through the Indo-European transcendence from all finite things. It is important to note that Heidegger’s account of Being, which is perhaps that notion in his thought that most closely approximates the notion of “God,” changes throughout the course of Heidegger’s career. Thus Heidegger’s later account of Being more closely parallels the traditional notion of “God” than Heidegger’s early account of Being, as Michael Inwood explains: In [Heidegger’s 1927 work,] Being and Time, “Being ‘is’ only in the understanding” [of individual beings]. If there were no Dasein [i.e. human beings], there would be no Being, but there would be beings… Later [in the development of Heidegger’s thought]…Being…has become…more like God…[in that] what human beings do depends on Being itself… Being does not depend on human beings, as in Being and Time, but creates human beings as its abode. 63 Tokiyuki Nobuhara correspondingly noted in 1992, that for the post-turn Heidegger, Dasein’s authentic existence began to be coterminous with Dasein’s devotion or correspondence (Entsprechung) to the ultimate reality as the “verifying truth” ( die Wahrung der Wahrheit ).64 Rolf von Eckartsberg and Ronald S. Valle, in 1981, in the context of a comparison between Heideggerian philosophy and “the major Eastern spiritual traditions,” have even identified Heidegger’s Being with a “higher, transpersonal God- or theo-dimension” which is “the source of legitimation and validation of our activities.”65 Thus whereas for the early Heidegger, human beings are a precondition for Being, for the later Heidegger, the reverse is the case. Therefore, it can be said that in the early Heidegger—the Heidegger of whom Nishida was most familiar—the notion of “God” is maximally absent. 63

Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, pp. 72–73. “Man” changed to “human beings.” *Inwood, Michael (1999) The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries: A Heidegger Dictionary. Massachusetts: Blackwell. 64

Nobuhara, “Portraying Authentic Existence,” part I, pp. 61–62. *Nobuhara, Tokiyuki (1992–1993) “Portraying ‘Authentic Existence’ by the Method of Analogy: Toward the Creative Uses of the Analogy of Attribution Duorum Ad Tertium for Comparative Philosophy of Religion.” Bulletin of Keiwa College. Part I No. 1 Feb 28, 1992 (pp. 61–82); Part II No. 2 February 28, 1993 (pp. 27–50); Part III No. 3 Feb 28, 1994 (pp. 1–19). 65

Von Eckartsberg and Valle (1981) p. 289: There has been emerging among consciousness-oriented psychologists an increasing recognition that our personal and collective relationship to the world (man-world-relationships) has to be lived under the inspiration and auspices of some higher, transpersonal power of divinity, of ultimate Being, as the source of legitimation and validation of our activities. This higher, transpersonal God- or theo-dimension is variously spoken of and conceptualized in different traditions. We want to select and compare Heidegger’s work on the Western philosophical tradition of metaphysics and ontology with the major Eastern spiritual traditions, because they bear some striking similarities in their emphasis on a transcendent dimension, the theo-dimension, in human consciousness. *Von Eckhartsberg, Rolf, & Ronald S. Valle. 1981. “Heideggerian Thinking and the Eastern Mind.” (chapter 14, pp. 287–311) Metaphors of Consciousness. New York & London: Plenum Press.

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4 Nishida’s negative assessment of Heidegger

Whatever positive evaluations of Heidegger might have been suggested by Nishida’s favorable 1924 remark to Tanabe—“Heidegger will contribute to cultural studies from the phenomenological standpoint” 66—and by the strong interest that Nishida’s associates such as Miki, Tanabe, and Kuki had shown in the great German philosopher, Nishida’s overall assessment of Heidegger was not as Weinmayr suggests, just an ambivalent posture expressed in a “few places” wherein “Appreciation and critical distance are mixed.” 67 To the contrary, Nishida’s overall assessment of Heidegger was overwhelmingly negative. 68 Indeed, given a broader picture of Nishida’s view of Heidegger, it can be said that Nishida’s overall assessment of Heidegger can be summarized bluntly in the uninhibited statement made by the father of the Kyoto School to the young Takizawa in October 1933: “Heidegger is not worth your time.” 69 In the same year of 1933, Nishida repeated his negative assessment of Heidegger—although in a much more restrained manner —in a December 19 letter to Go¯ichi Miyake, who had studied with Heidegger at Freiburg from 1929 to 1931. Politely assuring Miyake of the value of his study in Germany, Nishida stated: I respect Heidegger’s work, but it cannot answer the deep problems of substance ( jittai [実体]) and life ( jinsei [人生]).70 In his statement to Takizawa, Nishida explained clearly what does provide the solution to “the problems of substance and life”—a solution lacking in Heidegger, at least in early Heideggerian philosophy. Thus Nishida expressed his solution and also his reason for rejecting Heidegger’s thought, in the following words: Heidegger…focuses only on such themes as “Angst” and “death,” and although he often relies upon Pascal and Kierkegaard, he does not recognize that which is indispensable and decisive, namely, God. 71 66

NKZ 19:582, letter #2470, October 2, 1927. As quoted in Yusa, p. 198, footnote 38.

67

Weinmayr, p. 233. The full statement reads: Nishida himself played hardly any role in the direct and immediate dissemination and reception of Heideggerian philosophy in Japan. Indeed, only a few publications of Heidegger’s works are found in his library, but nothing can be said of any reference to Heidegger. Appreciation and critical distance are mixed in the few places where Nishida talks about Heidegger. 68

Even the statements by Nishida about Heidegger, which Weinmayr himself examines, are all negative, pp. 233–234. 69

Takizawa recorded this statement three times, in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). 70

NKZ 18:489, letter #824, December 19, 1933. (trns. Rigsby) Referenced by Yusa, p. 257. Nishida’s term “substance” ( jittai [実体]) can be understood in a colloquial sense or in a philosophically nuanced sense. If Nishida has the philosophical sense in mind—which is to say, “substance” as the unifier and organizer of various properties—then this statement may be a criticism of Heidegger’s account of Being and its insufficiencies in portraying the universal, all-encompassing Absolute which Nishida embraced. Nishida’s Absolute—the Topos of Absolute Nothingness—unifies and determines all concrete individuals and the properties they exhibit. 71

Takizawa makes this statement three times, in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timeline p. 164).

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Given that the later Heidegger would himself propose formulations of Being which are closer to the traditional notion of God, and also given that the later Heidegger would also adhere more solidly to socio-political objectivism in the manner of the Nishida Philosophy, Nishida’s 1933 assessment of Heidegger most likely applies only to pre-turn Heideggerian thought. At the same time, just as the pre-turn Heideggerian standpoint, which tended to be restricted to a political and phenomenological subjectivism, worked toward breaking the continuity of his thought with Nishida, Nishida’s own negative assessment of Heidegger suggests a significant discontinuity between the two thinkers. In Nishida’s own words, the “decisive” deficit in Heidegger’s thought is failure to “recognize God”—the ultimate Reality which Nishida interchangeably calls the “Absolute,” the absolute Place or “Topos,” and “Nothingness.” Thus Nishida’s criticism of Heidegger is conversely constituted and motivated by Nishida’s account of God’s essential character, which can be summarized in the following six points: (1) first, God’s transcendence which provides a ground for mathematics and a standpoint which is not affected by the vicissitudes of contingent phenomena, (2) second, God’s prevention of ethno-centrism, (3) third, God’s affirmation of individual and cultural autonomy, (4) fourth, God’s immanence which affirms the significance of sociohistorical life, (5) fifth, God’s prevention of Nihilism, and (6) sixth, the clear recognition of the reality of God provided by Christian thought. 4.1 God’s trans-historical, universal, & necessary character From the beginning to the end of his career, Nishida attempted to attain a standpoint locating that necessary ground upon which contingent, historical actuality is dependent. According to Nishida, this ground is not only given in immediate experience, but is the a priori basis for all the varied forms of experience. Consequently, it was clear to him that certain formal and metaphysical truths do not change, no matter the current historical time or cultural space. Nishida understood these unchanging truths to be grounded in God and not in any one finite sociohistorical subject. For Nishida, phenomenology, whether Heideggerian or Husserlian, cannot provide an all-encompassing, stable standpoint, because it is restricted to the contingent finitude of human subjects. Nishida stressed the trans-historical character of his standpoint in a letter of September 22, 1940, to Takizawa, stating:

Footnote 71 continued I propose the following harmony of Takizawa’s three accounts, avoiding repetition and yet providing all of the information which he records of Nishida’s statement: Lately, Heidegger is famous in Japan. However, Heidegger is not worth your time ( tsumaranu mono da). He focuses only on such themes as “Angst” and “death,” and although he often relies upon Pascal and Kierkegaard, he does not recognize that which is indispensable (kanjin no [肝心]) and decisive (ketteiteki na nanika [決定的な何か]), namely, God (goddo / kami [ゴッド・神]). There is no philosopher in Germany now that I would recommend, as it appears that there is currently no philosopher of import there. However, in Germany, recently, the theologians are vastly more interesting than the philosophers. There are theologians such as Barth, Brunner, and Gogarten, but the most solid among them is Barth. It would be good to study under him if you can. However, unfortunately, it appears as if he may have been expelled by the Nazis and is no longer in Germany.

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I argue from a more basic standpoint than so-called social science (shakaikagaku [社会科学]). I think there is a lot of truth in social science. However, rather than believe this standpoint so easily as is done nowadays, shouldn’t we reflect and examine even more deeply? 72 Nishida stressed in a letter of July 2, 1934, to the young Heideggerian Go¯ichi Miyake, that a properly philosophical standpoint must account for the transhistorical character of mathematical truths, and thus stated: It is interesting to apply a current Heideggerian view to mathematics and so on, thus taking a historical viewpoint. However, can this method really provide a philosophical rationale ( Begru¨ ndung) for mathematics? 73 Indeed, it would appear that if there is any field of inquiry not affected by historical contingencies, and which is even manifest of necessity within historical contingencies, mathematics would present a prime candidate for such a field of inquiry. This is certainly a conviction held by many philosophers from Plato to Spinoza to Russell. Nishida’s own view is that “Mathematics is extremely universal as the selfdetermination of pure thought.”74 Nishida’s own conviction that mathematics cannot be reduced to historical contingency remained strong to the end of his career, as is exhibited in his 1945 essay “The Philosophical Foundation of Mathematics” wherein he states: “I propose that numbers exist by themselves and act by themselves.”75 It seems that the young Miyake took Nishida’s stern rejection of the historicization of mathematics seriously, as the mature Miyake went onto follow the mathematical thought of Bertrand Russell. 76 Nishida had more in mind than just mathematics in his appeal to the young Miyake to locate a standpoint grounded upon what is universal and necessary. In contrast to a standpoint grounded in the contingencies of the “philosophy of history” then popular in the Kyoto School itself, Nishida strongly urged Miyake to consider the standpoint of the all-encompassing Absolute Place or Topos that is the core of Nishida Philosophy, as Nishida wrote to Miyake on March 20, 1942: The philosophy of history has engulfed many people, but so few have endeavored to consider my topological logic ( toposuteki ronri [トポス的論理]) … I truly hope you also will consider this endeavor. I think you also carry a heavy responsibility.77

72

NKZ 19:128; letter#1488; September 22, 1940.

73

NKZ 18:497; letter #846, July 2, 1934. Yusa suggests that this letter should be dated 1933, p. 385, footnote 53. 74

NKZ 7:400. Cf Dilworth’s translation on p. 218. *Nishida, Kitaro¯. 1987. Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (trnsl. By David A. Dilworth), Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. 75

NKZ 11:237; Nishida also states herein that “All logic exists by itself and acts by itself…” Nishida’s essay: [数学の哲学的基礎附け], first appeared in [ 哲学研究　第345号,1945] (NKZ 11:237ff). 76

Piovesana, p. 221.

77

NKZ 19: 189–190, letter #1648, March 20, 1942.

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In 1969, the mature Takizawa would himself write a critique of Miyake’s Heideggerian stance of historicist phenomenology. According to Takizawa, Miyake claims that by “pursuing a phenomenological reflection ( gensho¯ gakuteki hansei [現象学的反省]) of human beings,” a viewpoint can be attained by which the self can be rid of all inauthenticity ( giman [欺瞞]).78 Claiming that Miyake’s viewpoint grounds itself in the historical contingent and fallible conditions of human existence which themselves prevent authenticity, Takizawa argues that “in order to improve real society and its way of life, including the nation and its politicians,” a viewpoint which recognizes the necessary Base ( dodai [土台]) grounding the contingent features of human existence must be attained. 79 Indeed, in this critique of Miyake, Takizawa notes the failure of the early Heidegger—and even Nishida—to clearly locate this Base which transcends human subjectivity and historical existence, and which by its transcendence provides a viewpoint that makes the critique of human existence possible.80 Takizawa’s mature philosophy agreed with Nishida in locating a universal and necessary Base upon which all contingent phenomena are dependent. Just as the mature Takizawa would do, Nishida identified this all-encompassing Base or “Nothingness” as “God.” As early as 1927, in a letter to Risaku Mutai who was studying under Heidegger in Freiburg, Nishida opposed Heideggerian philosophy by characterizing this ultimate reality in personalistic terms, stating: I do not particularly object if you opt to consider Heidegger’s Being ( On) as being situated within the noetic dimension of my “self-realization of Nothingness.” However, rather than characterizing [Nothingness] as what is expressed ( Ausdruck ), it must be characterized as what expresses ( ausdru¨ cken) the self. In other words, Being ( On) should completely have the character of an “I” ( Ich).81 For Nishida, ultimate Reality—whether called “Nothingness” or “Being”—is not primarily what is expressed within human subjects in the manner of early Heideggerian phenomenology, but is rather the creative Power that “expresses” and forms human beings in the first place. This trans-historical and trans-subjective Power is what Nishida calls “God.” Following in this trajectory of the Nishida Philosophy, the mature Takizawa also stressed the same “unmanipulatability” (Grn: Unverfu¨ gbarkeit , Jpn: hishudansei [非手段性]) of Absolute reality by claiming that no matter how human beings may try, they are unable to alter the nature of God’s relationship with contingent phenomena. Further, following in the trajectory of Nishida Philosophy to characterize God in terms of mathematical truths, Takizawa refers to the Divine-human relationship as the “Archimedean Point” 78

Takizawa, from “Phenomenology and Dialectics: Regarding Go¯ichi Miyake’s book, Human Existence,” a 1969 essay later printed in (1987) The Decoding Coordinates, p. 136. Takizawa, Katsumi (1987) The Decoding Coordinates: Philosophy, Literature, Education [読解の座標: 哲学・文学・教育]. Japan: So¯gensha [創言社]. 79

Takizawa, ibid, p. 148.

80

Takizawa, ibid, p. 135.

81

NKZ 18:321, letter #432, January 30, 1927, to Risaku Mutai (in Freiburg).

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(arukimedesuteki itten [アルキメデス的一点]), the “Fulcrum” ( shiten [支点]), and the “vanishing Point of all forms” (issai no keizo¯ no vanishingu pointo [一切の形像のバニシング・ポイント]).82 Evidently, in terms of Nishida’s criticism of Heidegger, God’s trans-historical, universal, and necessary character suggests the negative ramification that all ethno-centrisms and ethno-exclusivisms must be rejected, and correspondingly the positive ramification that the autonomy of all finite individuals and groups is affirmed. 4.2 God prevents Ethno-centrism and Ethno-exclusivism Nishida’s characterization of “God” as a trans-historical “Nothingness” works to prevent the absolutization of any finite individuals or special interest groups, which are inevitably finite and distinctively “formed beings” clearly distinguishable from the all-encompassing “formless” Nothingness of ultimate Reality. Thus Nishida’s philosophy consists of a stance which rejects the ethno-centric and ethno-exclusive undercurrents that represented Heidegger’s political activism of 1933. This year was not only the year in which Nishida sharedhisnegative assessment of Heideggerian philosophy with the young Takizawa, but was also the year in which Heideggger enthusiastically supported the Nazi Party in his position as Rector of Freiburg University. Unfortunate highlights of this period of Heidegger’s life include his refusal to protest the nation-wide burning of books with “un-German” ideas, his silence in the face of the ill-treatment of his former mentor Husserl due solely to Husserl’s Jewish ancestry, Heidegger’s furnishing of economic support to ethnocentric military groups such as the SS and SA and corresponding termination of all such support to Jewish students, and finally his premeditated success in destroying the careers of the pacifist chemist Hermann Staundinger, the Catholic antiNazi philosopher Max Mu¨ller, and the student of American philosophy, Eduard Baumgarten. Although Heidegger did not hold to the official anti-Jewish Nazi policy based on biological racism, he clearly held to an ethnocentrism and ethno-exclusivism privileging German language, culture, and rootedness ( Bodensta¨ ndigkeit ) in the soil of Middle-Europe ( Mitteleuropa), thus condemning the Jews for their rootless ( bodenlos) self-identity based on diaspora and migration.83 Evidently sensing sufficient kinship with Nazi ideology to make its general ethno-centric and ethno-exclusive focus his own, Heidegger nearly absolutized the place of German culture by closely associating it with his own version of absolute reality, stating: “the ‘Fatherland’ is Being [ Seyn] itself.”84

82

These semi-mathematical expressions can be found, respectively, in #1 Thelle, p. 73; Ulrich & Yagi, p. 157; #2 TKC 7:322; #3 TKC 7:324. *Luz, Ulrich and Yagi, Seiichi, ed. (1973) Gott in Japan: Ansto¨ sse zum Gespra¨ ch mit japanischen Philosophen, Theologen, Schriftstellern. Mu¨nchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag. * Thelle, Notto R (1975) “A Barthian Thinker Between Buddhism And Christianity: Takizawa Katsumi”. Japanese Religions. Vol. 8, October, pp. 54–86. 83

Bambach, p. 53. *Bambach, Charles (2003) Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 84

Heidegger. Ho¨ lderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein.” Winter Semester 1934/35; Ed. By Susanne Ziegler. 1989. Cf Bambach, p. 55.

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This dimension of Heidegger’s life and thought did not go unnoticed by Nishida and his Japanese associates. 85 Indeed, Nishida’s 1933 condemnation of Heidegger as shared with the young Takizawa, makes it clear that Nishida was keenly aware of the forceful measures taken by the Nazis in order to subdue all those who did not share their vision. Nishida’s knowledge about Karl Barth’s strong resistance to National Socialism is apparent in Nishida’s words: “unfortunately, it appears as if Barth may have been expelled by the Nazis and is no longer in Germany.” 86 Nishida’s strong affirmation of Barthian theology in the same train of thought—“Barth is vastly more interesting that the current philosophers in Germany”—may very well be intricately related to Nishida’s own opposition to the Nazis. Although Nishida was generally aloof from political issues and controversy—a posture exemplified in what later commentators called “resistive cooperation” ( hantaiseiteki kyo¯ ryoku [反体制的協力])87—he did speak out against German National Socialism. In an interview printed in the May 28 1933 issue of the Yomiuri Newspaper , Nishida spoke of the dangerous worldwide phenomenon of totalitarian rule which threatened to “crush high culture.” Nishida pointed out in this interview the irony of Nazi anti-Semitism, noting that the two most influential ideological forces of the contemporary world had been developed by Jews: capitalism by David Ricardo and communism by Karl Marx. In particular, Nishida noted how impoverished the world would be without great Jewish scholars such as Bergson and Einstein.88 Just four months after Heidegger’s inaugural address, Nishida’s successor Tanabe responded by writing an article dated September 5 and published in the October 4–6, 1933 issues of the Asahi Newspaper . Noting Heidegger’s recent entrance into the Nazi party and the dismissal of Jewish scholars from teaching posts, Tanabe’s article, “Is it a Philosophy of Crisis or a Crisis of Philosophy?,”89 mirrored Nishida’s displeasure by hinting at Heidegger’s “championing [of] the racial significance of German academia.”90 The Kyoto School associate Kiyoshi Miki in particular became sharply critical of Heidegger after Heidegger’s rectoral address.91 Miki also joined leading Japanese journalists and intellectuals in writing letters to the press in order to condemn the May 10, 1933 Nazi celebration of

85

Yuasa in Parkes, p. 254.

86

This quote is my own harmony of three statements made by Takizawa, found in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). 87 ¯ hashi’s term for the “Cooperative resistance” (hantaiseiteki kyo¯ ryoku [反体制的協力]) is Ryo¯suke O wartime political stance taken by several members of the Kyoto School, including Nishida, a stance characterized by “negotiating a reorientation by means of immanent critique or cooperative correction.” I would like to acknowledge Bret Davis for making this information available online at ¯ hashi, Ryo¯suke. The Kyoto School and the http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/ . Cf also O Japanese Navy [京都学派と日本海軍], Kyoto: PHP Shinsho, 2001, p. 20ff. 88

Yomiuri Newspaper [ 読売新聞] May 28, 1933, reprinted in Asami Hiroshi, “Fukkoku sanpen” pp. 139–40. Referenced in Yusa, Biography, p. 255, footnote 34. 89

THZ 8:3–9 [危機の哲学か、哲学の危機か]. Cf Yusa p. 254. Cf Williams, p. 113.

90

Parkes in May, p. 109, footnote 13; German translation in Buchnor’s Japan und Heidegger pp.139– 145 by Elmar Weinbayr. Cf also Williams’ translation pp. 181–183. 91


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the burning of “un-German” books.92 Thus Miki also criticized the ethno-centric and ethno-exclusive undercurrents in Heidegger by writing: Heidegger seems to be seeking a principle for the nationalistic unity of Germany in blood, earth and destiny—in the realm of pathos, in which there is no discernable objective principle. 93 What Miki refers to in this statement as “objective principle” and elsewhere as “Logos,”94 Nishida seems to equate with “God.” Nishida’s own characterization of God as the “formless” all-encompassing Place or “Topos” correspondingly works against its conflation with any particular “blood and soil.” Of course, as wartime pressures began to mount in Japan, Nishida himself closely associated the ultimate reality of “Nothingness” with Japanese or “Eastern” culture—even to the point of conveying a “chauvinististic” outlook 95—but Nishida’s broader socio-historical metaphysics of “global-world formationism” ( sekaiteki sekai keiseishugi [世界的世界形成主義]) also suggests that he was able to avoid the degree of ethno-centrism and ethno-exclusivism conveyed by Heidegger. 4.3 God’s affirmation of philosophical and cultural autonomy Nishida apparently held that if the all-encompassing God which grounds all life and unifies all phenomena does not —by way of its transcendence and formlessness— impose any specific form upon those finite, personal individuals situated within it, then they consequently should enjoy a freedom from regulation and a marked autonomy. In the same letter of December 19, 1933 to the young Heideggerian Go¯ichi Miyake, in which Nishida had disparaged Heidegger’s philosophy with the words—“Heidegger’s work…cannot answer the deep problems of substance and life”—Nishida also stressed the need for the Japanese to think for themselves, as he stated: Japanese scholars devour books by German thinkers, borrow their methods, and use them skillfully, without, however, being truly sustained by their serious philosophical reflections. If this continues to be the practice, the Japanese will forever remain emulators. How could we expect to see a philosophical system that is born out of the depth of our own lives? Japanese thinkers need to engage in the mutual exchange of their views, read what their colleagues write, and establish a Publikum, a public forum. A philosophical tradition is not something that is established by the work of one single individual, but it takes a community of thinkers. 96 92

Yusa, Biography, p. 254.

93

Quoted by Yuasa in Parkes, pp. 161–162.

94


95

Cf Dilworth’s discussion, “Nishida’s Logic of the East” in Last Writings, p. 129.

96

NKZ 18:489, letter #824, December 19, 1933. As translated by Yusa, pp. 257–8. Days later, on New Years Day 1934, Nishida drove this same point home by composing a famous waka poem: “People are people; I am I; Unperturbed; I go on the path; which I take” (NKZ 17:496: Hito wa hito, ware wa ware nari, tonikaku ni, ware yuku michi wo, ware wa yuku nari).

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The fact that Nishida’s demand for the autonomy of Japanese thinkers and a warning against a philosophy that “is established by the work of one single individual,” occurred in the same context as his rejection of Heideggerian philosophy, warrants careful consideration. Indeed, Heidegger, in his inaugural address at Freiburg University—also in 1933—enthusiastically proclaimed “the end of the much celebrated academic freedom” amidst the flames of state-sanctioned book burnings. Nishida once again wrote to Miyake on July 2, 1934 stressing the importance that Japanese people think for themselves.97 Nishida also commiserated with Takizawa in letters of 1940, regarding the importance of philosophical autonomy and how rare its successful exercise seemed to be in Japan. 98 Heidegger’s own account of the history of philosophy as a progressive oblivion of Being (Seinsvergessenheit ) suggests prima facie that because Western thinkers have lost touch with the rootedness ( Bodensta¨ ndigkeit ) of human existence ( Dasein) in its home ( Heimat ) of Being (Sein), perhaps non-Western thinkers can aid in revealing the truth (Grk: ale¯ theia) that has been forgotten in the West. In 1955, Heidegger himself suggested as much, in what Elmar Weinmayr has called “one of the few passages wherein Heidegger expresses himself explicitly in the direction of an intercultural conversation.”99 Thus Heidegger notes that the greatness of the challenge facing the modern age suggests that the West is not “able on its own” to achieve the “planetary thinking” necessary for building according to a “more originary calling” which overcomes nihilism, as Heidegger states: [P]lanetary building will encounter issues to which those involved are today nowhere equal. This is equally true for both the language of Europe and that of East Asia, and it is true above all for the realm of possible dialogue between them. Neither is able on its own to open or to found this realm. 100 Indeed, in 1954, Heidegger branded “the successes of [European] rationality…[a] delusion,”101 and wondered “whether it is necessary and rightful for Eastasians to chase after the European conceptual systems.” 102 Heidegger was puzzled as to why East Asian thinkers “did not call back to mind the venerable beginnings” of their “own thinking, instead of chasing ever more greedily after the latest novelties in European philosophy.103 Statements such as these, together with Heidegger’s statements that Japanese readers “immediately understood” his thought, would seem to indicate that Heidegger considered Japanese thinkers to be fully qualified for the purpose forming what Nishida had called “a community of thinkers” in full and 97

NKZ 18:, letter #846, July 2, 1934. Yusa suggests that this letter should be dated 1933, p. 385, footnote 53. 98

NKZ 19:160; letter #1570; April 23, 1941. NKZ 19:161; letter #1572; May 3, 1941.

99

Weinmayr, p. 248.

100

Heidegger, “On the Question of Being” (1955), from the English language anthology, Pathmarks, ¨ nger. p. 321. Heidegger wrote this essay in honor of, and addressed to, his friend Ernst Ju *Heidegger (1998) Pathmarks. [translation of Wegmarken. Frankfurt/M.: V. Klostermann, 1976]. New York: Cambridge University Press. 101

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 16.

102

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 3. (Cf the original Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 87).

103

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 37. (Cf the original Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 131).

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equal cooperation with the West, with the aim of jointly overcoming the oblivion of Being in philosophy. However, Heidegger made it clear in a September 23, 1966 interview—published in 1976 in Der Spiegel, posthumously at his request 104—that the problem facing the West and purportedly portrayed so vividly by Nietzsche105 would not be ameliorated by the aid of “Zen Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world.” As Heidegger states: The…conflict between the dionysian and the apollonian, the holy passion and the sober account [as described by Nietzsche], is a concealed stylistic law of the historical destiny of the Germans… With this conflict…Nietzsche [has] set a question mark before the Germans’ task to find their essence historically… I am convinced that a [solution] can only be prepared from the same place in the world where the modern technological world originated. It cannot come about by the adoption of Zen Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world. 106 In fact, Heidegger not only thus claims negatively that East Asian thought is incapable of addressing the problem of “the modern technological world,” but claims positively that the only tradition fully capable of addressing this problem is the German tradition. Noting that “the modern technological world” must be “transcended (aufgehoben),” Heidegger claims that the Germans have a special qualification for this change by way of “the special inner relationship between the German language and the thinking of the Greeks.” Heidegger goes onto state confidently: This has been confirmed to me again and again today by the French. When they begin to think they speak German. They insist that they could not get through with their own language [even with] all of their rationality when they are attempting to understand it in the origin of its essence… It would be good if this…would be taken seriously on a large scale and if it would finally be 104

Sheehan, “Heidegger and the Nazis,” p. 42. *Sheehan, Thomas (1998) “Heidegger and the Nazis.” The New York Review of Books, vol. 35, no. 10, June 16, pp. 38–47. 105

It is ironic that Heidegger invokes Nietzsche here to support the threefold thesis that only the Germans are specially qualified for philosophy, that this qualification is due to the special relationship between the Germans and the Greeks, and that the special philosophical mission of the Graeco-German trajectory was fatally violated by Latin influence. Nietzsche was adamant that the Greeks were not a single race, nor the first originary culture, nor the only truly earth-bound humans. For him, this interpretive approach is based on “an utterly castrated and mendacious study of the classical world” (Arrowsmith, p. 329/Nietzsche 8:19; Cf Bambach, p. 218). Rather, according to Nietzsche, Greek culture was the product of synthesis between various Asian, Near Eastern, and Hellenic influences, as Nietzsche states: Earliest inhabiting of Greek soil: people of Mongolian origin, worshippers of trees and snakes. A fringe of Semites along the coast. Thracians here and there. The Greeks took all of these elements into their own bloodstream, along with gods and myths (several of the Odysseus stories are Mongolian)… What are “racially pure” Greeks? Can’t we simply suppose that Italic peoples, mixed with Thracian and Semitic elements, became Greek? (Arrowsmith, p. 387/Nietzsche 8:96; Cf Bambach, p. 218). 106

Neske & Kettering, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism (1990), pp. 62–63. ¨ nther & Kettering, Emil (eds). 1990. Martin Heidegger and National Socialism. *Neske, Gu (Translated from the original German by Lisa Harries). New York: Paragon House.

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considered what a momentous transformation Greek thinking suffered when it was translated into Roman Latin, an event that still bars our way today to sufficient reflection on the fundamental words of Greek thinking. 107 If the problem of “the modern technological world” is indeed a global problem, and if as Heidegger suggests, this problem can only be addressed by a Graeco-German primal language (die Ursprache)108 and the philosophical tradition embodied by it, then what room is left for non-Western developments to contribute to a global philosophical discussion? If those within philosophical traditions embodied in Romance languages—the French tradition given here by Heidegger being just one example—are unable “with all of their rationality” to address the problem of “the modern technological world,” and if they must even speak German themselves as Heidegger claims, in order to “begin to think,” then it comes as no surprise that Heidegger excluded “Eastern experiences of the world” from the project of transcending the problem—a project which for him is “the specific destiny of the Germans.” Heidegger thus carried on the trajectory of his nationalistic predecessor, Johann G. Fichte, who stated: “other races [which is to say, non-German races,] speak a language which has movement only on the surface but is dead at the root.”109 Premonitions of this ethnocentric conclusion of 1966 may even be seen in Heidegger’s 1954 “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer,” wherein Heidegger, conspicuously noting the affinity of the Greek and German languages, states to his fictional Japanese interlocutor: “Our thinking today is charged with the task to think what the Greeks have thought in an even more Greek manner.”110 In this same context, Heidegger’s statement that “the nature of language remains something altogether different for the East Asian and for the European peoples,”111 appears prima facie to warn of the “danger” of too easily 107

Neske and Kettering, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism (1990), p. 63.

108

As early as 1955, in a lecture on November 18, Heidegger proposed that “the precondition of the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world” can be nothing other than “a dialogue with the Greek thinkers and their language” (“Science and Reflection” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, p. 158; cf p x for lecture date). Nishida was also intensely sensitive to the significance of the German and Greek cultures. He wrote large sections of his diary in German. In his 1934 Sequel to the Basic Problems of Philosophy, Nishida even stated: “I believe that our Japanese culture has features which especially resemble the Greek cultural form” (NKZ 7:443). Nishida associates the Japanese and Greek cultures because they both have an “immanent worldview” and both prioritize the aesthetic. However, Nishida qualifies the correspondence between the Japanese and Greek cultures by noting that Buddhism, which constitutes an important part of Japanese culture, adheres to a “transcendent worldview” as does Christianity (NKZ 7:442; Dilworth’s translation p. 247). *Heidegger (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row. 109

Johann G. Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation) [1808] (Hamburg: Meiner, 1978), p. 72; Quoted and explained in Bambach p. 55. 110

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 39. Heidegger’s identification of Greek and German language occurs on p. 46, where he suggests etymological affinities between Greek charis (“grace”) on the one hand, and Greek tiktousa and German dichten (“versify,” but meaning “bring forward” according to Heidegger) on the other hand. 111

Heidegger, ibid, p. 23; cf also p. 5, where Heidegger claims that Europeans and Eastasians dwell in different houses of Being.

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conflating Japanese and Western experiences and interpretations of the world. However, Heidegger’s strict distinction between East Asian and European reflections of reality, and especially his identification of German language with the philosophical language of the Greeks, more likely threatens to prevent full recognition of the capability of non-Western thinkers to autonomously participate in a genuine project of philosophy. Thus, what on the surface may look like respect for non-Western traditions may actually have the converse effect of ethnic exclusion, as is suggested by Heidegger’s statement: The name “aesthetics” and what it names grow out of European thinking, out of philosophy. Consequently, aesthetic consideration must ultimately remain alien to East-Asian thinking. 112 In 1973, just three years before his death, Heidegger claimed even more clearly that the only philosophy is European philosophy, stating that “there is no other, neither a Chinese nor an Indian philosophy.”113 Heidegger’s equation of “European thinking” and “philosophy” is often repeated performatively even today in Japan, where on the one hand, it is common to apply the term “tetsugaku” [哲学], or “philosophy,” only to European philosophy and occasionally to modern Japanese philosophy, and on the other hand, the term “shiso¯ ” [思想], or “thought,” to pre-modern Japanese intellectual history, which is to say, Japanese thought before Western contact. In this context of contrastive use, the term “tetsugaku” tends to suggest greater rigor and seriousness than “ shiso¯ .” Nishida always referred to his own project as “ tetsugaku,” and stressed that Japanese thinkers must develop “ tetsugaku” autonomously. It is worthy of note that Nishida himself had written the article for the heading “Philosophy” ( tetsugaku) in the voluminous 1912 edition of the Iwanami Dictionary of Philosophy (iwanami tetsugaku jiten [岩波哲学辞典]). Although Nishida in this article explicitly examines by name the philosophical ideas of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Locke, Wilhelm Windelband, Bergson, and other Western thinkers, Nishida nevertheless proposes a definition of philosophy in terms of the unification of the sciences and the unifying power of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, in the language of his own 1911 masterwork, An Inquiry Into the Good .114 Nishida challenged the Heideggerian Miyake in a letter of July 2, 1934, stating, “if we do not attempt to alter conventional thinking at its base, then we cannot develop a new philosophy ( tetsugaku).”115 Even while noting the differences in rhetoric and trajectory between Western philosophy and Japanese philosophy, Nishida still stressed a solid base uniting all philosophical projects, as he stated in 1940: 112

Heidegger, ibid, p. 2. My italics.

113

Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, p. 224. (Cf the original Was heisst Denken?, p. 136). *(1968) What is Called Thinking? [Grn: Was heisst Denken? (1973)]. New York: Harper and Row.

114

Kitaro¯ Nishida: article under the heading “Philosophy” in the 1912 Iwanami Dictionary of Philosophy [岩波哲学辞典], pp. 667–668. 115

NKZ 18:497–498, letter #846, July 2, 1934. Yusa suggests that this letter should be dated 1933, p. 385, footnote 53,but I have followed the NKZ format.

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I am not saying that there are two kinds ( nishu [二種]) of logic (ronri [論理]), Western and Eastern. There must be only one logic. 116 European leanings toward ethnocentrism and ethno-exclusivism as exemplified by 117 Heidegger, did not go unnoticed by Nishida and his associates. Nishida, his successor Tanabe, and Nishida’s close associate Kiyoshi Miki, would all make public statements in 1933 and onward condemning German ethnocentrism. 118 For example, Nishida himself stated in 1937: The Europeans are inclined to regard their own present culture as the only highly developed one and the best. They tend to believe that other peoples, if they are to make progress in their development, must become just like themselves. I regard this as petty conceit. The primordial form of historical culture is, in my view, richer. 119 It appears that Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, the Chinese scholar who in 1946 began a collaborative translation with Heidegger of Laozi’s Daodejing, may have felt a similar apprehension about Heidegger’s privileging of the Western tradition to the effect that Heideggerian themes would be read into the text in an unwarranted manner. In 1987, Hsiao reflected upon the translation effort as follows: I have to admit this—I could not during our work together get free from a slight anxiety that Heidegger’s notes might perhaps go beyond what is called for in a translation. As an interpreter and mediator this tendency unsettled me.120 116

NKZ 12:289; from The Problem of Japanese Culture [日本文化の問題] (1940).

117

Yomiuri Newspaper [ 読売新聞] May 28, 1933, reprinted in Asami Hiroshi, “Fukkoku sanpen” pp. 139–40. Referenced in Yusa, Biography, p. 255, footnote 34. 118

THZ 8:3–9 [危機の哲学か、哲学の危機か]; Cf Yusa p. 254. Parkes in May, p. 109, footnote 13; German translation in Buchnor’s Japan und Heidegger pp. 139–145 by Elmar Weinbayr. Parkes in May, p. 81. Yuasa in Parkes, p. 254. 119

NKZ 12:390–391. Translation as given by Weinmayr, p. 232. Nishida repeats this conclusion in his 1940 work, The Problem of Japanese Culture, wherein he states: Is logic (ronri [論理]) nothing but the way of things are seen within contemporary Western culture? Is the way of seeing things in Eastern culture merely an undeveloped form of the way of seeing things within contemporary Western culture? … I feel no reluctance in recognizing contemporary Western logic as the systematic development of a great logic. However, must I learn this first of all as world logic? Is it possible to separate even Western logic…from a special manifestation ( tokushuso¯ [特殊相]) of historical life? It would appear that formal abstract logic is the same everywhere. However, it would appear that concrete logic (gutaiteki ronri [具体的論理]), as a form of concrete thought ( chishiki [知識]), cannot be separated from its special manifestation as historical life. Is the trajectory ( yukue [行方]) of Western culture the one and only trajectory (NKZ 12:287, my translation). 120

Hsiao in Parkes, p. 98. Heidegger’s response to the calling off of the collaborative Laozi translation can be seen in his August 6, 1949 letter to Jaspers. Jaspers had suggested in a previous letter that Heidegger’s philosophy may have been inspired by Asian ideas. Heidegger responded in his own letter as follows: What you [Jaspers] say about Asian ideas seizes my attention (ist aufregend ): …Where I am unfamiliar with the language I remain skeptical; and I become all the more so when the Chinese [scholar Paul Hsiao], who is himself a Christian theologian and philosopher, translated a few verses of Laozi with me. Through questioning I learned how completely alien that kind of language is; we then abandoned the attempt… The resonances presumably have a quite different root…

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Heidegger’s ponderous definition in 1954 of the Japanese word “iki” [粋] as “grace,” and his consequent portrayal of Ho¯nen’s faith as being directed toward meditation on “iki,” may provide a clue as to what Hsiao meant by going “beyond what is called for in a translation.” Indeed, “ iki” is commonly translated in English as “chic” and was historically connected to artistic and stylistic sensibilities of the Edo period (1603–1608) and culture, a far cry from Ho¯nen’s (1133–1212) religious admonition to have faith in the mercy of Amida Buddha. Of course, it is likely that Heidegger’s aim in 1954 was merely to use the names of significant Japanese thinkers and ideas in a completely fictitious manner—and thus with no intention of representing them accurately—in order to set up a methodological framework for considering the nature of language in general. It should be noted that however inaccurate Heidegger’s 1954 account of “ iki” may be, it still comes close to matching his account of relevant Graeco-German meditations on “grace,” thus suggesting that Japanese thinkers can approximate in their own projects what Europeans have endeavored in the project of “philosophy.” Heidegger’s fictional Japanese interlocutor seems hopeful in this direction, stating to Heidegger most propitiously that, “when I ask you about hermeneutics, and when you ask me what our word is for what you call language, we ask each other the Same.”121 Still hopeful, but less propitiously, the Japanese interlocutor also states to Heidegger: “From a great distance…I sense a deeply concealed kinship with our thinking,” but adds inconclusively “because your path of thinking and its language are so wholly other.” 122 Heidegger himself seems less hopeful, stating: I do not yet see whether…European-Western saying and Eastasian saying will enter into dialogue such that in it there sings something that wells up from a single source.123 Heidegger’s aim in 1954 appears to be the recognition of the uniqueness of nonWestern experience, and correspondingly the avoidance of premature Westernizing interpretations of non-Western experience. Indeed, prima facie, such Westernization appears to be the “danger” that Heidegger warns of, in his admonition not to “touch” what defines the dialogue between East and West. 124 However, when Heidegger himself attempts to “touch,” however gingerly, the meaning of Japanese culture by defining “iki,” his definition is sufficiently inaccurate so as to lessen the credibility of his methodological framework for considering the nature of language and dialogue in general. The sort of disciplined

Footnote 120 continued (Parkes in May, pp. 101–2. I altered Parkes’ translation by substituting “seizes my attention” for “is exciting,” because the original German “aufregend ” can mean either “exciting” or “annoying.”). 121

Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language” (1954) (in On the Way to Language) p. 30.

122

Heidegger, ibid, p. 24, pp. 40–41.

123

Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language” (1954) (in On the Way to Language), p. 8; quoted also by Parkes in Heidegger and Asian Thought , p. 1. 124

Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language” (in On the Way to Language), p. 3ff (regarding the “danger” of prematurely concluding that one understands the other), p. 22 (“we must not touch [what is defining our dialogue]”).

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reflection on non-Western thought that Heidegger appears to have in mind for such a lofty project would seem to demand a more rigorous examination and accurate explanation of the few explicitly Japanese ideas that Heidegger actually brings into print. Heidegger often stressed the difference between Western and non-Western views of the world, in statements such as “we Europeans presumably dwell in an entirely different house than East Asians.” 125 East–West difference was particularly manifest to Heidegger in the area of language, which for him, is significantly “the house of Being.” At least from the 1950s, he often lamented that he knew nothing of Asian languages—a knowledge of which would presumably work toward establishing his suggestion of a radical difference between East and West. However, despite the nearly 20 years in which he referenced the lack of Euro-American scholarship in non-Western languages, and despite his own obvious interest in etymology and original texts, Heidegger himself did not extend any effort to learn a non-Western language.126 Perhaps Heidegger’s own lack of effort to engage EastAsian thought more seriously on its own terms is related to his theory of language. In contrast to a view of language as a vehicle for dialogue or communication across cultures, Heidegger, in 1959, proposed the definition, “language is monologue”127 such that “language speaks solely with itself alone.” 128 The fact that Heidegger declined both to be present and also to write an opening statement for the 1969 Heidegger and Eastern Thought symposium in Hawaii—even though he complied with a number of similar requests for symposia celebrating his original thought in 1969, 1974, and 1976—suggests that Heidegger himself was not particularly interested in the sort of dialogue that would provide East-Asians an equal voice with his own.129 Further, the fact that Heidegger only rarely references the non-Western world— with the possible exception of India—would seem to indicate a general lack of interest in the world outside of Europe and America. Heidegger’s numerous 125

Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language” (1954), p. 5. Cf Ma & van Brakel, p. 555, footnote 63. Heidegger reinforced his suggestion of East–West difference when he devaluated Karl Jasper’s suggestion of 1949 that Heideggerian philosophy demonstrates “remarkable “resonsnaces” with Asian thought. Heidegger’s own conclusion was: “the resonances presumably have an entirely different root.” Cf Ma & van Brakel, p. 533, quoting Four Seminars (2003). *Ma, Lin and Jaap van Brakel (2006) “Heidegger’s Comportment Toward East–West Dialogue.” Philosophy East and West . Volume 56, number 4, October, pp. 519–566. 126

Ma & van Brakel, on pages 536–7, examine various statements by Heidegger between 1955 and 1969, by which he lamented his ignorance of non-Western languages. 127

Heidegger, “The Way to Language” (1959), p. 134.

128

Heidegger, “The Way to Language” (1959), p. 111.

129

Ma & van Brakel, p. 546, quoting Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910–1976), pp. 721–722. Heidegger wrote in a letter of July 4, 1969, to the Hawaii symposium organizer, Winfield E. Nagley: “Now in regard to the words of welcome and introduction for which you ask, I have to appeal to your kindness to excuse me for not honoring your request.” Nagley did not publish this section of the letter in Philosophy East and West , vol. 20, no. 3, July 1970, which covered the conference. A section of the letter which Nagley did include from Heidegger’s letter reads as follows: “Again and again, it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with the thinkers of what is to us the Eastern world. The greatest difficulty in this enterprise always lies, as far as I can see, in the fact that with few exceptions, there is no command of the Eastern languages either in Europe or in the United States,” p. 221.

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references to “Asia” ( das Asien) never refer to East-Asia, and may not refer to any entity beyond the fringes of Europe. When in the 1930s and 1940s, he describes the “confrontation” (die Auseinandersetzung) with “Asia,” “Asia”—as a collective bound by the “mythical” and condemned to “fate” (Ltn: fatum)—is an entity to be “overcome” by the Greeks and presumably also by the Germans. 130 In 1936, he even portrayed the “historical Dasein” of the Germans as “facing a stark Either-Or salvation for Europe,” which in order to “overcome its own rootlessness,” entails “shielding European people from the Asiatic.” 131 When in the 1940s he expounds upon Friedrich Ho¨lderlin’s theme of the “homecoming” ( die Heimkehr ) , it is the Greeks in the East or “Morning land” ( das Morgenland ) who represent “Asia,” from which Germans return to their own country in the West or “Evening land” ( das Abendland ).132 Even in a rare exception of 1943, “Asia” refers to “where the Indies are,”133 thus clearly negating the inclusion of China or Japan, which represent those traditions for which most interest has been shown in anticipation of a dialogue between Heidegger and the non-Western world. It is in Heidegger’s few references to the “East-Asian” ( ostasiatisch) world from the 1950s onward that intentions for a genuine dialogue between his thought and the traditions of China and Japan may possibly be found.134 However, Heidegger’s insistence that “philosophy” is “European thinking” and thereby “alien to East-Asian thinking” 135 appears to constitute a general trajectory in his thought leading to his 1966 conclusion that the solution to the global problem posed by “the modern technological world…cannot come about by…Eastern experiences of the world,” but rather must be addressed as “the historical destiny of the Germans.” 136 In 1953, Heidegger stated to Nishida’s close friend D. T. Suzuki that “Nishida is Western.”137 Ironically, given Heidegger’s privileging of the Graeco-German primal language, this statement may have been the highest possible compliment he could have paid to Nishida. For Nishida, such an assessment of genuine philosophy as “Western” would deny non-Westerners the opportunity of doing genuine philosophy autonomously and cooperatively on equal terms with Europeans. Most likely, such concerns were partly behind Nishida’s negative assessment of Heidegger in October 1933, and would thus place Nishida in agreement with Karl Jasper’s 1945 assessment of the Heideggerian philosophy as 130

Ma and van Brakel, p. 528.

131

Ma and van Brakel, p. 530, quoting Heidegger’s April 8, 1936 lecture on “Europe and German Philosophy” (Europa und die Deutsche Philosophie) in Gander, Hans-Helmuth, Europa und die Philosophie (1993), p. 31. In 1952, Heidegger also portrayed post-WWI Europe as “a plaything…for the immense native strength of the Eastern peoples” (Ma & Brakel, p. 531, quoting What is Called Thinking? (1968), p. 67/71). 132


133

Ma and; van Brakel, p. 529, quoting “Die Einzigkeit des Dichters” (1943) in Zu Ho¨ lderlin— Griechenlandreisen (2000), pp. 35–44. 134


135

Heidegger, ibid, p. 2. My italics.

136

Neske and Kettering, Martin Heidegger and National Socialism (1990), pp. 62–63.

137

Parkes in May, pp. 99–100, quoting D. T. Suzuki, “Erinnerung an einen Besuch bei Martin Heidegger,” in Buchner, ed., Japan und Heidegger , 169–72.

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“unfree, dictatorial, and incapable of communication.”138 For Nishida, the negation of special privilege to any specific individual such as Heidegger or cultural group such as a purported Graeco-German primal culture, would appear to be enabled by the formlessness of God and God’s ultimate transcendence from any particular thisworldly form.139 4.4 God’s immanence in history The trans-historical character of Nishida’s philosophy was well known in Japan, but it is precisely this character which came most vigorously under attack, by both Marxists and Nationalists. Partly in response to such criticisms, and evidently from his 1931 essay “History” onwards, Nishida increasingly demonstrated sensitivity to the socio-historical standpoint, 140 and correspondingly emphasized the immanence of God in history. Indeed, Takizawa’s first essay of 1933, which was highly acclaimed by Nishida himself, 141 begins with the sentence: “Nishida Philosophy is from beginning to end consistently a philosophy of the active self” ( ko¯ iteki jiko [行為的自己]).142 Just as Nishida himself was constantly criticized for a perceived lack of sensitivity to the socio-historical dimension,143 Nishida’s stance toward Heidegger resembled the stances of Tanabe, Tetsuro¯ Watsuji, and Kiyoshi Miki, that Heideggerian philosophy fails to sufficiently deal with concrete history. Indeed, the vast majority of Nishida’s explicit criticisms of Heidegger take this form, as is clear especially in Nishida’s works of 1932, 1933, and 1944. Nishida’s criticisms of this sort can be summarized in the following claims.

138

Karl Jaspers, from a letter he wrote in December 1945 to the de-Nazification committee at Freiburg University, reviewing Heidegger’s case after the war. Quoted in The Heidegger Controversy, ed. Richard Wolin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 144–151. Also quoted in Hiroshi Nara, p. 149 (Mikkelsen’s article), cf note 7 on p. 149. *Nara, Hiroshi (2004) The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shu¯ zo¯ (with a translation of Iki no ko¯ zo¯ ). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 139

This conclusion—that Nishida’s recommendation of “autonomy” to Japanese scholars is derived from his idea of God—is not explicit in Nishida’s own words. However, I suggest that this conclusion is well warranted because for him, clearly, (1) God’s character, which is to say, the character of Absolute Nothingness, is formless, in contrast to the formed determinations of finite human beings, and (2) selfrealized human beings attain continuity with God and thus can be said to attain a formlessness, freedom, or transcendence from worldly determinations which is analogous to the Divine formlessness. For Nishida, “God is the foundational concept of religion” (NKZ 11:372) and “the pinnacle of learning and morality can in fact be reached only by entering the realm of religion” (NKZ 1:172–173). 140

Huh, p. 368, cf also p. 343 etc. My italics. *Huh, Woo-Sung. “The philosophy of history in the ‘later’ Nishida: A philosophic turn,” pp. 343–374. Philosophy East and West . Ed. Roger T. Ames. Vol. XL, No. 3, July (1990) 141

NKZ 18:473, letter #782, August 22, 1933.

142

TKC 1:197.

143

Kopf, pp. 73–74, 84, 95ff. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness (2001), p. 4. *Kopf, Gereon (2004) “Between Identity and Difference: Three Ways of Reading Nishida’s Nondualism.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture) 31/1:73–103. *Heisig, James (2001) Philosophers of Nothingness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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*Heidegger’s standpoint is merely “predicative” and expressive, lacking genuine “subjectiveg” and practical interest. 144 *Heidegger’s Being provides no opportunity for the self to know itself through action,145 because Heidegger’s Being is fatally separated from the self. 146 *Heideggerian phenomenology can only see the historical activity of selfrealization “from the outside.” 147 *Heidegger as a phenomenologist fatally prioritizes epistemology over metaphysics, and fatally posits a trans-temporal Logos of Being grounded in a motionless Greek metaphysics.148 *Heidegger, by following Dilthey, reduces the historical world to an object of cognition and consequently fails to recognize concrete, dialectical action. 149 *Heidegger’s philosophy only focuses on the subjectivee and temporal, and consequently lacks an objective and spatial dimension. 150 144

NKZ 6:165, from The Self-realizational Determination of Nothingness (1932): Heidegger’s understanding (ryo¯ kai [了解]) can comprehend a sort of active determination ( ko¯ iteki gentei [行為的限定]), but it is an action that that has lost self-realization. His world of understanding is merely a world of possibility and cannot generate the present. It is a world of the mere predicative aspect of self-determination. 145

NKZ 6:168, from The Self-realizational Determination of Nothingness (1932): Heidegger’s Being may be similar to that which precedes the opposition of subject and object (shukaku tairitsu izen no mono [主客対立以前のもの]), but Heidegger’s Being does not see the self itself factually. His understanding (ryo¯ kai [了解]) is an imperfect self-realization, and is merely action wherein, so to speak, expression has lost the self ( jiko [自己]). The true self is not merely what understands itself, but must know itself factually through action. 146

NKZ 6:172–173, from The Self-realizational Determination of Nothingness (1932): [T]he basis (kontei [根柢]) of knowledge [must be found] in “cogito ergo sum” [which means] the selfdetermination of the expressive self [and correspondingly] the self-realization of Absolute Nothingness. It is not like Heidegger’s Being, which merely expresses and understands (ryo¯kai [了解]) the self itself, … [but fails to] see (miru [見る]) the self itself through action. I am not what is situated “there” ( soko ni), but I am what resides “here” ( koko ni). 147

NKZ 6:179, from The Self-realizational Determination of Nothingness (1932): Hermeneutical phenomenology, which sees the self from Being, may be scientific, but it is not philosophical. … It cannot discard the phenomenological standpoint…which…sees (miru [見る]) the standpoint of the self-realization of the active self from the outside. Heidegger’s standpoint, which sees the self-determinative fact of understanding [has this problem]. 148

NKZ 7:79; Dilworth’s translation, p. 40, from Basic Problems of Philosophy: The Active World (1933). 149

NKZ 7:179–180, Dilworth’s translation, pp. 94–95, from Basic Problems of Philosophy: The Active World (1933): [M]etaphysical problems are prior to epistemological questions. The opposition between subject and object (shukaku no tairitsu [主客の対立]) already implies a standpoint which transcends that opposition. Thus…it is necessary to return again to the standpoint of Logos and to clarify the logical structure of true “Being.” This in turn requires a return to Greek philosophy. Heidegger’s Existenz-philosophie has such a purpose. But needless to say, the reality of modern physical science cannot be grounded in terms of Greek metaphysics. That which moves and acts in time cannot be included within reality taken as trans-temporal Logos. Even though Heidegger’s idea of existence is historical, it is without movement or action and consequently his concept of time does not avoid being one of potential time. 150

NKZ 11:173, from “Regarding the Philosophy of Descartes” [ デカルト哲学について] (1944): [Following recent Western philosophical trends,] our country [of Japan] became completely epistemological. … Phenomenology…is unable to avoid intellectualism (chishikironteki [知識論理的]). Even Heidegger’s ontology cannot transcend the standpoint of the subjectivee self. [Inquiry must

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Thus Nishida joined several Japanese voices 151 in criticizing Heidegger’s failure to demonstrate sufficient sensitivity to the socio-historical dimension. Nishida was in agreement with Tanabe’s 1933 claim that Heidegger’s emphasis on “theorıá” resulted in a “powerlessness” to genuinely “establish…the foundations for a metaphysics of the nation-state.”152 Nishida was in agreement with Tetsuro¯ Watsuji’s 1935 claim that Heidegger’s emphasis on time prevented a recognition of the spatio-social dimension that is etymologically revealed in the East-Asian tradition as a “betweenness” ( aidagara/“GEN-hei” [間柄])153 constituting human beings (nin-GEN [人間]), who not only live in the temporal ( son [存]) but also the spatial ( zai [在]) dimension of existence (son-zai [存在]).154 Nishida was in agreement with Kiyoshi Miki, who after becoming disillusioned with Heidegger due to Heidegger’s close affiliation with National Socialism, felt that Heideggerian philosophy cannot be “contemporary” because its notion of Dasein remains in the standpoint of individual subjective life without any social aspect, and that this tendency was maximally manifest in an escapism into the philosophy of art after Heidegger’s unsuccessful attempts to act as the philosophical spokesperson for the Nazi party.155 For Nishida, it could be said that all of the ways Heidegger fails to deal with the concreteness of socio-historical activity, are due to an insufficient recognition of God’s immanence in the world.

Footnote 150 continued proceed] from subjectivee to objectivee… I have come to a dead end within recent subjectivist e philosophy, and I believe we face a time wherein we must rethink [philosophy] at its basis (kontei [根柢]). The historical world must not only be thoroughly temporal, but also thoroughly spatial. 151

In addition to the voices of Tanabe, Watsuji, and Miki, Takizawa’s colleague To¯ru Suzuki, himself deeply influenced by phenomenology, criticized even the later Heidegger’s account of Being and beings for not being logical, objectivee, or factual (sachlich) [論理的・客観的・即事的]. Rather, for Suzuki, Heidegger is one-sided by being merely intuitive [感覚的・感性的], and thereby does not even provide an opportunity for the irreversibility [不逆的契機の看過] whereby finite and individual subjective intuition is irreversibly dependent upon the logical, objective, and factual. Shibata, The World of Katsumi Takizawa: Immanuel, p. 82. * Shibata, Shu¯ [柴田秀] (2001) The World of Katsumi Takizawa: Immanuel [滝沢克己の世界:インマヌエル]. Tokyo: Shunju¯nsha [春秋社]. 152

Williams, pp. 182–183. Tanabe’s article on Heidegger, “Philosophy of Crisis, or a Crisis of Philosophy?,” appeared in a three-part series printed in the Asahi Newspaper in early Autumn of 1933. Tanabe had recently issued a similar critique of Nishida’s philosophy in May, 1930, in the article, “Looking Up to Nishida’s Teachings.”. 153

Note that the standard reading for [間柄] is “aidagara.” I have included the unconventional reading “gen-hei” set off by quotes, with the “gen” underlined and capitalized, in order to highlight its connection to “ningen” [人間]. 154

In his 1935 work Climate, Watsuji himself follows a Heideggerian approach by etymologically explaining the philosophical roots of Japanese culture, excavating not only a temporal “continuation” (son [存]) but also a spatial “locatedness” ( zai [在]) in East-Asian “existence” ( sonzai [存在]). The very title of Watsuji’s book, Climate ( fu¯ do [風土])—literally, a compound constituted by the elemental words “wind” (kaze, fu¯ - [風]) and “earth” (tsuchi, -do [土])—implies in its original Chinese-Japanese meaning, both the natural physical environment and the human social environment as conditioned by the surrounding natural physical environment. 155

Yuasa in Parkes, pp. 160, 162.

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4.5 God prevents Nihilism Evidently, for Nishida, a recognition of God prevents Nihilism. Indeed, in his private 1933 criticism of Heidegger’s failure to recognize “what is indispensable and decisive, namely, God,” Nishida explained: “Heidegger…focuses only on such themes as ‘Angst’ and ‘death.’” 156 In the same year, Nishida repeated this criticism indirectly in print, stating: In this world…which both nourishes and kills us…, we can both be conceived of as “thrown” as Heidegger says, and can also be conceived of as “projected” (kikakuteki [企画的]). In this world, our bodies (shintai [身体]) can be conceived of as individuals ( kobutsu [個物]) which both determine themselves and which stand in a relationship of mutual determination with the outside world (gaikai [外界]).157 It appears that Nishida considered Heidegger’s view to be one-sided, focusing only on “Angst,” “death,” and “thrownness,” without acknowledging the “well-ordered” (kikakuteki [企画的]) side of human existence wherein the solidifying process of “determination” (gentei [限定]) takes place. Nishida’s view parallels the view of his prote´ ge´ Tanabe, who, in his 1948 edition copy of “What is Metaphysics?,” wrote extensive marginalia claiming that Heidegger’s conception of Nothing ( das Nichts) is a mere negation of being and a nihilistic Nothing ( nihilistisches Nichts). Parkes notes that Tanabe’s assessment is ironic given that Heidegger himself had protested “the nihilistic misinterpretation” of his work which was prevalent in Europe at the time. 158 Indeed, despite the fact that Kyoto School leaders Tanabe and Nishida themselves considered Heidegger’s thought nihilistic, a further irony is that Heidegger himself represents modern Japanese thinkers as eschewing the nihilistic misinterpretation of Heideggerian philosophy. The Japanese interlocutor in Heidegger’s “A Dialogue on Language” equates the Heideggerian Nothing ( das Nichts) with East-Asian Emptiness, stating: For this reason we in Japan understood at once your lecture “What is Metaphysics?”…—We marvel to this day how the Europeans could lapse into interpreting as nihilistic the Nothing of which you speak in the lecture. To us, emptiness is the loftiest name for what you mean to say with the word “Being”…159 On the other hand, Karl Barth, who became Takizawa’s teacher as Nishida had requested, and who was himself a critic of Heidegger, was sensitive enough to

156

Takizawa repeats this statement three times, in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). 157

NKZ 7:118; Dilworth, p. 60. Basic Problems of Philosophy: The Active World (1933). Nishida here refers, respectively, to Heideggger’s original German “Geworfenheit” and “Entwurf.” 158

Parkes in May, p. 115, footnote 83.

159

Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 19. The original translation “nothingness” has been replaced in order to harmonize with the term “Nothingness,” selected in this study to represent Heidegger’s account of das Nichts.

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Heidegger’s real intentions in order to avoid this “nihilistic misinterpretation,” as Barth states: Heidegger is not and never was a “Nihilist.” His statement that man is the 160 “locum tenens [place holder] for Nothing” can be interpreted positively… [F]or him Nothing is not a dreadful, horrible, dark abyss but something fruitful and salutary and radiant.161 In Barth’s own examination of the motif of Nothing—which he himself termed “Nihility” (das Nichtige)—Barth wrote an extensive commentary on Heidegger’s thought in comparison with several other relevant philosophers, especially JeanPaul Sartre. The gist of Barth’s conclusion is that Heidegger, on the one hand, rightly increases awareness of the Angst and despair constituting Nihility, but on the other hand, due to an inability to discern clearly the reality of God, comes fatally close to conflating this Nihility with the good which might provide hope and a solution to the problem.162 The criticisms of Barth and Nishida are evidently in agreement by explaining the reality of God as the solution to Angst and despair. Ironically, although Nishida practically levels the charge of Nihilism against Heidegger, Nishida himself framed his own thought in radically negativistic terms such as “Nothingness,” “self-negation,” and the dialectics of “death.” Indeed, Nishida stated that the beginning of philosophy is not Aristotle’s wonder, but rather “the deep sorrow (hiai [悲哀]) of life.”163 Nevertheless, Nishida’s criticism of Heidegger and his corresponding promotion of Barthian theology, which stresses the power of joy and humor, suggest that Nishida was seeking after a more positive formulation. The stress on radiant life and overflowing joy which is to be found in Takizawa’s mature thought, can be seen as directly addressing this quest of Nishida, as Tamotsu Maeda writes: In his photographs, Nishida forms his lips into a straight line as he looks seriously into the camera. What is striking about Takizawa’s photographs is his smile. …At the base of Nishida’s philosophy is “sorrow.” For Takizawa, doing philosophy is “to feel a blessing in the existence of things.” 164 On the other hand, even if Nishida never fully explored the themes of joy and lifetransformation in the midst of worldly frustrations, it is nevertheless possible to discern the trajectory of a more robust response to Nihilism in his thought. Evidently, for Nishida, on the one hand, the trans-historical and necessary character of God suggests that God is not overcome by the Angst and despair constituting the vicissitudes of worldly life, and on the other hand, God’s immanence suggests that human beings can find solace from these causes of Nihilism and renewed 160

CD III 3, p. 339. *CD Barth, Karl (1963) Church Dogmatics. English ed. of Kirchliche Dogmatik , Ed. G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance. T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh. =

161

CD III 3, p. 347.

162

CD III 3, pp. 340, 345, 347.

163

NKZ 6:26, from [無の自覚的限定].

164

From the Katsumi Takizawa Association webpage: www.takizawakatsumi.com.

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life-direction even within this world, by recognizing the reality of God as unshifting and dependable. 4.6 The reality of God is well-attested to by Christian thinkers Nishida’s colleague Kiyoshi Miki characterized Heidegger as “originally Christian” and considered Heidegger’s eschatological account of human beings as “ Dasein” to be following the trajectory set by the Christian thinkers Augustine, Pascal, and Kierkegaard.165 Reflecting back on early Christian inspirations of his work, Heidegger himself called the Bible “the Book of books,” and credited his discovery of hermeneutics to his theological studies, stating that “Without this theological background, I should never have come upon the path of thinking.”166 Nishida himself noted Heidegger’s debt to Christian thought, and appears to have been deeply interested in this connection. As early as 1921, in a letter to the phenomenologist Tokuryu ¯ Yamauchi, who himself would become a Heidegger scholar, Nishida appears to indicate such an interest when he wrote of Heidegger’s connection to the Christian thinker, Duns Scotus, stating: About Heidegger, I know that he wrote his dissertation on Duns Scotus, but I haven’t read it. I did take note of it because I felt that we may still learn from Duns Scotus.167 By 1933, Nishida was clearly disappointed in Heidegger for not paying proper attention to the Divinity constituting the apex of Christian thought. Nishida’s disappointment is clear in his statement of the same year, that although “Heidegger…focuses on such themes as ‘Angst’ and ‘death’…and often relies upon Pascal and Kierkegaard,” he nevertheless “does not recognize what is indispensable and decisive, namely, God.” 168 Thus for Nishida, Heidegger’s failure to recognize the reality of God, was tantamount to a failure to discern the greatest contribution of Christian thought. Heidegger claimed that “Our dialogue speaks… out of a thinking respect of the past,” 169 and that the openness required for inquiry and dialogue could avoid mere noncommittal disinterest “by paying heed to the doctrines of past thinkers, and always let them, too, take part in our dialogue.” 170 In decisive points of this dialogue with the past, much to Nishida’s chagrin, it appears that Heidegger had primarily Greek and not Christian thinkers, in mind. In contrast, Nishida, even in his first major work of 1911, explicitly engaged and affirmed Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Duns 165


166

Heidegger, On the Way to Language (1959), pp. 9–10.

167

NKZ 18:239–40; letter #302; November 28, 1921. Quoted in Yusa p. 178, footnote 26. Heidegger’s dissertation: “Duns Scotus’ Doctrine of Categories and the Theory of Meaning” (cf Heidegger’s On the Way to Language, p. 6). 168

This From three statements made by Takizawa, found in TKC 1:441, TKC 2:521–2, and Inquiring of Religion (1976), p. 87, (the last source being reprinted in Sakaguchi’s Katsumi Takizawa Timline p. 164). 169


170


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Scotus, Pascal, Eckhart, and Cusanus. 171 Nishida was not alone among his Japanese associates in his fascination with Christian thought. Takizawa and Kiyoshi Miki 172 were both positively stimulated by Blaise Pascal, thus following Nishida, who was particularly fascinated with Pascal’s account of each human being as a “thinking reed” (kangaeru ashi [考える葦])173 which stands in a dynamic relationship of continuity and discontinuity with God. The enthusiasm of Japanese thinkers for Kierkegaard was even greater, evidenced in studies by Miki, 174 Hajime Tanabe,175 Tetsuro¯ Watsuji,176 and even Keiji Nishitani, 177 thus following Nishida, who confessed that he was “being moved by” Kierkegaard. 178 Even Karl Barth in his early theology exhibited a deep debt to Kierkegaardian thought. For Christian thinkers such as Duns Scotus, Pascal, or Kierkegaard, the reality of God—which Nishida called “indispensable and decisive”—was at the apex of their thought, but the same could not be said for Heidegger.

5 Takizawa’s own criticism of Heidegger

Although Nishida’s negative assessment of Heidegger discouraged Nishida’s student Katsumi Takizawa from considering Heideggerian philosophy in great depth, Takizawa continually revisited Heideggerian thought throughout his career.179 In particular, Takizawa’s debate throughout the decade of the 1960s 171

All of these theologians appear explicitly in Nishida’s first major publication in 1911, An Inquiry into the Good . 172

Yuasa in Parkes, p. 159. From Miki’s 1926 [パスカルに於ける人間の研究].

173

NKZ 1:117. From An Inquiry into the Good , 1911.

174

Miki in MKZ 10:220–228 [キェルケゴールと現代]. *Miki, Kiyoshi (1968) The Complete Works of Kiyoshi Miki [三木清全集] (abbreviated MKZ). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店]. 175

Tanabe in THZ 11:607–617 [キェルケゴールの宗教哲学], note that Tanabe pays special attention to Kierkegaard also in his book Philosophy as Metanoetics [懺悔道としての哲学] (THZ 9). 176

Piovesana, pp. 132, 205.

177

NKC 8. *NKC Nishitani, Keiji (1995) The Collected Works of Keiji Nishitani [西谷啓治著作集] (abbreviated NKC). Tokyo: So¯bunsha [創文社]. =

178

These letters of February 1940 appear in NKZ 19:100–101: February 7 to Mutai, letter #1410; February 9 to Hisamatsu, letter #1411; February 12 to Yanagida, letter #1414. 179

Even before his first meeting with Nishida in October 1933, the young Takizawa was already very familiar with Heideggerian thought. Heidegger featured prominently in Takizawa’s 1931 graduation thesis, and Takizawa completed an essay on Heidegger in September 1933, just before meeting with Nishida. In his first critique of Barth in 1935 and also in his first critique of Nishida in 1936, Takizawa engaged Heidegger’s philosophy. Takizawa also touched on the problem of technology, which was of great interest to the later Heidegger. In his 1974 The Tannisho¯ and the Contemporary World , Takizawa writes that, according to modern socialism (shiminshugi [市民主義]): “From the beginning, human beings construct themselves as subjectsx, relating themselves together for the purpose of using other natural entities (shizen no mono [自然の物]).” In the end, Takizawa credits Marx as having seen most clearly the social implications of technology (p. 174; cf also Forum of Ideas [思想のひろば] (2002) vol. 14, “Heidegger, Shinran, Katsumi Takizawa,” by Tetsunari Fukui, pp. 20–28). * Fukui, Tetsunari (2002) “Heidegger, Shinran, Katsumi Takizawa,” Shiso¯ no Hiroba (Forum of Ideas) [思想のひろば], vol. 14, pp. 20–28.

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with Seiichi Yagi, the student of the Heideggerian Rudolf Bultmann, brought Takizawa into vigorous interaction with Heidegger’s philosophy. In 1965, Takizawa even dialogued with Heidegger in person, in Germany. 180 Takizawa defended Heidegger against the criticism—as leveled by Tanabe, Miki, Watsuji, and Nishida—that Heideggerian philosophy is a mere individualism with no appreciation of social concerns. As early as 1933, Takizawa argued that Heidegger’s “world of tools” is inherently connected to society. Takizawa argued further that although the Heideggerian advocation to cast off the control of the world (sekai no shihai wo dassuru [世界の支配を脱する]) may appear to promote individualism, Heidegger intends that even the world of economics and politics should become a problem for which we have care (Grn: Besorgen, Jpn: koryo [顧慮]) and concern (Grn: Fu¨ rsorge, Jpn: hairyo [配慮]).181 On the other hand, Takizawa claimed that the origin and basis ( kontei [根柢]) of the death by which we attain “absolute responsibility,” is not clear in Heidegger. It is this lack of clarity that easily leads to the misinterpretation that Heidegger’s casting off the control of the world entails individualism. Takizawa noted that Heidegger’s failure to give an account of the origin and basis of things may be due to Heidegger’s commitment to phenomenology, according to which the task of philosophy is to clarify appearances rather than to explain the origin and basis of appearances. Following Nishida, Takizawa stressed an all-encompassing standpoint, enabled by the spatial dimension of time which Heidegger did not clearly recognize, as Takizawa stated: [T]here must be a spatial determination at the basis of time which encompasses all things. To borrow Heidegger’s terminology, there must be a World of worlds. 182 The deficit in Heidegger is appropriately amended, according to Takizawa, through a full recognition of the Absolute Nothingness which is the origin and basis of all things, as Takizawa states: The absolute Fact ( jijitsu [事実]) itself, of the true Moment of absolute death and-yet life is formed for the first time as a self-realizational determination of what Professor Nishida calls Absolute Nothingness, which means seeing the Absolute Other in the self, and seeing the self in the Absolute Other. Nishida claims that philosophy begins from the self-reflection ( jisei [自省]) of prescriptive183 (to¯ iteki [当為的]) consciousness itself. 184 Although Takizawa’s characterization of the ultimate origin and basis of all things in Kierkegaardian terms as the “true Moment” evidences a Kierkegaardian inspiration shared with both Heidegger and Nishida, for Takizawa, Heidegger had 180

Sakaguchi, p. 148.

181

TKC 1:324–325, from “Dasein and the Mission and Limitations of Philosophy in Heidegger” (1933).

182

TKC 1:328.

183

I translate Takizawa’s term here, “ to¯ iteki ishiki” [当為的意識], as “prescriptive consciousness.” The term “to¯ i” [当為] is commonly used to translate German “ Sollen” or “ought.” 184

TKC 1:328.

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failed where Nishida had succeeded, to recognize this “Moment” as the ultimate reality of God. Takizawa’s critique of Heidegger was sharpened after studying in 1934 with Barth, who himself leveled an extensive critique against Heidegger. Just as Takizawa in 1933 criticized Heidegger’s lack of clarity regarding the origin and basis of death and time, Barth criticized Heidegger’s lack of clarity regarding Nihility, noting that Heidegger as early as 1929 accepted the Hegelian identification of nothing with being.185 Heidegger correspondingly altered the conventional notion of Nothing according to which ex nihilo nihil fit [from nothing, nothing emerges], and introduced as substitute, a new notion of Nothing as ex nihilo ens qua ens fit [from Nothing, Being emerges as Being].186 Barth claimed that the resulting ambiguity of Heidegger’s Nothing makes Nothing play the roles of both God and evil. In particular, according to Barth, Heidegger’s Nothing is a “mythological fabrication” introduced to stand in, rather poorly, for the functions that only God can successfully perform, as Barth states: In Heidegger Nothing is actually the pseudonym which conceals the Godhead… We have seen that it is the whence and whither of transcendence, the basis and pure content of human science. We have seen that “pure Being and pure Nothing are one and the same,” and that ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit . …God is not dead, but…a substitute is provided and therefore He is suppressed… In Heidegger’s thought, Nothing seems lacking in none of the essential features of the conventional figure of God (aseity, uniqueness, omnipotence…, infinity etc.)…187 On the other hand, the fact that Heidegger’s Nothing also assumes the role of the dark side of human existence obfuscates the terrible sting of genuine Nihility, which is to say, the corruption and ruin of evil. Barth states: The Nothing of Heidegger…is not real Nihility, but is comparatively innocuous as compared with it. The concept of real Nihility is in no sense ambivalent. … The sickness unto death in which man is confronted by real Nihility [manifests itself rather in]…relativity, inferiority, subjugation and vitiation…, and…in spite of its nature, it can be subordinated to the service of Being [by way of the redirective Providence of God]… [If Heidegger recognized this about Nihility, he] could not have conceived of its identification with Being… He would have realized that to [equate Nihility with Being] is to proclaim the demonic to be the principle of all being and existence.188 Barth concludes that despite Heidegger’s efforts to address from a fresh perspective the errors of the previous generation, which is to say, the errors of Modernism, 185

CD III, 3, p. 347.

186

CD III, 3, p. 335.

187

CD III, 3, pp. 343–344.

188

CD III, 3, p. 348.

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Heidegger nevertheless falls prey to these very errors by making the word of finite, fallible human beings central and by obscuring the Word of the infinite, infallible God, who graciously shares light to those who are humble enough to discern it. Classifying Heidegger with Sartre and other secularist existentialists as representing a stance which absolutizes the finite human subject, Barth thus concludes: The one thing that has not been affected, let alone broken, by the upheaval of the age—and it cannot be effected by purely secular upheavals—is the selfreliant assurance of the ego cogito [i.e. the “I think”] as the presupposition of their whole systems. From the standpoint of the ego cogito true Nihility cannot be discerned…189 Just after studying with Barth, Takizawa himself wrote a brief criticism of Heidegger in 1936, claiming similarly, in language reminiscent of Kiyoshi Miki’s philosophy: In the case of the incarnation of the [divine] Logos—the Word of God—an [improper] emphasis on [human] ethos is most especially impermissible. [Such an improper emphasis] will lead to Heideggerian existentialism and a religious-human reduction of eschatology (Grn: religio¨ s-menschliche Verku¨ r zung der Eschatologie, Jpn: shu¯ kyo¯ teki ningenteki waisho¯ ka [宗教的人間的矮小化]) in the manner of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976). There is nothing more dangerous in the world than a mistaken “epistemological” or vague reduction.190 In 1972, Takizawa reaffirmed his early criticisms of Heidegger, but noted that Heidegger’s so-called “turn” (Grn: die Kehre, Jpn: tenkai [転回]) exempted later Heideggerian philosophy from some points of the early criticisms, particularly, the charge that Heideggerian philosophy is a naı¨ve individualism.191 Barth, on the other hand, saw a strong continuity between the early and the later Heidegger, and took Heidegger’s post-“turn” path of “older philosophy, gnosticism, and mysticism,” “the dimension of the Holy,” and purported “affirmation of Being” ( das Lichten des Seins), all to be mere a mere restatement of Heidegger’s ultimate conflation of God and evil.192 Given Takizawa’s similar criticism of Nishida and Zen—that such standpoints entail ambiguities resulting in a conflation of good with evil, as well as a conflation of the Absolute with the relative—Takizawa would probably agree with Barth regarding Heidegger’s treatment of God and evil. Takizawa thought that the greatest contribution of Barthian theology was a recognition that contingent phenomena are irreversibly dependent upon God for existence, moral direction, and soteriological transformation. It was from this 189

CD III, 3, p. 346.

190

Takizawa, Basic Problems of Nishida Philosophy, p. 50. *(2004) Basic Problems of Nishida Philosophy [西田哲学の根本問題]. (ed. & commentary by Takayoshi Kobayashi [小林孝吉]). Tokyo: Kobayashi Bunko [こぶし文庫]. [First published by To¯ko¯shoin [刀江書院] in 1936), published again in the Collected Works of Katsumi Takizawa, 1972. 191

TKC 1:333.

192

CD III, 3, p. 348.

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standpoint of the irreversibility of the Divine-creaturely relation that Takizawa would level his own critique of Nishida in 1936. Japanese commentators of Nishida such as To¯ru Suzuki and D. T. Suzuki’s student, the Zen Buddhist monk Ryo¯min Akizuki, were convinced that Nishida’s final formulation of the relationship between the Absolute and contingent phenomena as an “inverse-response” (gyakutaio¯ [逆対応]) in 1945 was Nishida’s direct response to Takizawa’s Barthian-inspired critique of 1936.193 Indeed, the notion of “inverse-response” recognizes that there are ways in which contingent phenomena are irreversibly dependent upon the Absolute. In Nishida’s words after Takizawa’s critique, human beings are the “image of God” and not vice versa. 194 It can be said that Takizawa’s affirmation of this “irreversibility” ( fukagyakusei [不可逆性]) in the Divinecreaturely relationship is the telos of the trajectory constituting Nishida’s 1933 criticism that Heideggerian philosophy fatally lacks God. The post-turn Heidegger himself can also be said to have sensed the impetus generating Takizawa’s affirmation of “irreversibility,” in that the later Heidegger subordinated human beings to Being, in contrast to the early Heidegger’s converse subordination of Being to Dasein, which is to say, to finite human existence. 195

193

Consider the conclusions of Ryo¯min Akizuki, To¯ru Suzuki, and Tamotsu Maeda: ~Ryo¯min Akizuki writes in: → When the Dharma Appears Clearly (1990) pp. 88–89: I have formerly stated that the ‘logic of inverse correspondence’ of Professor Nishida’s later years can be seen as Nishida’s response to Professor Takizawa’s critique of Nishida’s monism. Akizuki, 1990, pp. 88–89 *(1990). When the Dharma Appears Clearly: The Religio-Philosophical Dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity [ダンマが露になるとき:仏教とキリスト教の宗教哲学的対話]. Tokyo: Seidosha [青土社]. → Absolute Nothingness and Topos: Suzuki Zen and Nishida Philosophy, 1996, p. 360: Due to Mutai’s essay [about inverse-response]…, I arrived at the core of the logic of Nishida Philosophy, [which is the notion of inverse-response]. I believe this [core] was the response of Nishida himself to the simple and frank query of Takizawa as Nishida’s disciple. Takizawa’s query, which I touched upon beforehand, was ‘whether it is accurate to express this kind of movement of dialectical reality monistically, [as the self-determination of the dialectical universal]. (Akizuki is quoting from page 46–47 of Takizawa’s Basic Problems of Nishida Philosophy.) *(1996) Absolute Nothingness and Topos: Suzuki Zen and Nishida Philosophy [絶対無と場所:鈴木禅学と西田哲学]. Tokyo: Seidosha [青土社]. ~To ¯ru Suzuki writes in his commentary on Takizawa TKC 5 in the appendix, p. 7: [T]he later Nishida Philosophy may be said to have provided an answer to Takizawa’s criticism. Therefore, Takizawa’s elucidation and inquiry in Basic Problems of Nishida Philosophy…refers to the early and middle Nishida and not the later. ~Tamotsu Maeda writes on the Takizawa Association Webpage (www.takizawakatsumi.com): …it can be said that Nishida responded to the criticisms of Takizawa through his religious work Topological Logic and the Religious Worldview. 194

NKZ 19:46, letter #1281, September 21, 1938, to Katsumi Takizawa. Cf also NKZ 11:372, from Topological Logic and the Religious Worldview (1945). 195

Inwood, pp. 72–73.

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References Akizuki, Ryo¯min. 1996. Absolute Nothingness and Topos: Suzuki Zen and Nishida Philosophy [ 絶対無と場所:鈴木禅学と西田哲学]. Tokyo: Seidosha [青土社]. Akizuki, Ryo ¯min, with Seiichi, Yagi. 1990. When the Dharma Appears Clearly: The ReligioPhilosophical Dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity [ダンマが露になるとき:仏教とキリスト教の宗教哲学的対話]. Tokyo: Seidosha [青土社]. Bambach, Charles. 2003. Heidegger’s roots: Nietzsche, national socialism, and the greeks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Barrett, William. 1956. “Zen for the West” in the introduction. In Zen Buddhism: selected writings, ed. Daisetz T. Suzuki, iii–xx. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Barth, Karl. 1963. Church Dogmatics. English ed. of Kirchliche Dogmatik , Ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh. Buchner, Hartmut (ed.). 1989. Japan und Heidegger . Messkirch: Jan Thorbecke Verlag Sigmaringen. Dilworth, David A. 1987. Last Writings: Nothingness and the religious worldview. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Fukui, Tetsunari. 2002. “Heidegger, Shinran, Katsumi Takizawa,” Shiso¯ no Hiroba (Forum of Ideas) [思想のひろば], vol. 14, pp. 20–28. Heidegger, Martin. 1933. November 10. “German men and women!”, Freiburger Studentenzeitung. Germany. Heidegger, Martin. 1968. What is Called Thinking? [Grn: Was heisst Denken? (1973)]. New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, Martin. 1970. 1969 letter printed in “Introduction to the Symposium and Reading of a Letter from Martin Heidegger,” by Winfield E. Nagley, in Philosophy East and West , vol. 20, no. 3, July. Heidegger, Martin. 1971a. Identity and Difference. [translation by Joan Stambaugh from Identita¨ t und Differenz (1955–1957)]. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin. 1971b. On the way to language. [Grn: Unterwegs zur Sprache (1959)] as (trans: Peter D. Hertz). New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The question concerning technology and other essays. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, Martin. 1998. Pathmarks. [translation of Wegmarken. Frankfurt/M.: V. Klostermann, 1976]. New York: Cambridge University Press. Heisig, James. 2001. Philosophers of nothingness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Heisig, James, and John Maraldo. 1995. Rude awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto school, and the question of nationalism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Huh, Woo-Sung. 1990.The philosophy of history in the ‘later’ Nishida: A philosophic turn, pp. 343–374. Philosophy East and West . ed. Roger T. Ames. Vol. XL, No. 3. Inwood, Michael. 1999. The Blackwell philosopher dictionaries: A Heidegger dictionary. Massachusetts: Blackwell. Kopf, Gereon. 2004. Between identity and difference: three ways of reading Nishida’s non-dualism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture) 31(1): 73–103. Kovacs, George. 1990. The question of God in Heidegger’s phenomenology. (Part of the Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. James M. Edie). Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Luther, Arthur R. 1982. Original emergence in Heidegger and Nishida. Philosophy Today. Volume XXVI, Number 4/4, Winter. Luz, Ulrich, and Seiichi Yagi (eds.). 1973. Gott in Japan: Ansto¨ sse zum Gespra¨ ch mit japanischen Philosophen, Theologen, Schriftstellern. Mu¨nchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag. Ma, Lin, and van Brakel Jaap. 2006. Heidegger’s comportment toward east-west dialogue. Philosophy East and West 56(4): 519–566. Maraldo, John C. 1995. The problem of world culture: towards an appropriation of Nishida’s philosophy of nation and culture. The Eastern Buddhist 28(2): 183–197. Autumn. May, Reinhard. 1996. Heidegger’s Hidden sources. (First published in 1989 in German. Translated with a complementary essay: Graham Parkes). Routledge, USA: Canada. Miki, Kiyoshi. 1968. The complete works of Kiyoshi Miki [ 三木清全集] (abbreviated MKZ). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten [岩波書店].

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