The Kyoto School

First published Mon Feb 27, 2006; substantive revision Sat Dec 9, 2023

The Kyoto School (Kyōto-gakuha) is a group of20^th century Japanese philosophers who drew on theintellectual and spiritual traditions of East Asia, those ofMahāyāna Buddhism in particular, as well as on the methodsand content of Western philosophy.

After an introductory section, this article will focus on fourquestions: How should the Kyoto School be defined? What is meant byits central philosophical concept of “absolutenothingness,” and how did the Kyoto School philosophersvariously develop this Eastern inspired idea in dialogue and debatewith Western thought and with one another? What are the basics oftheir political writings, and the basis of the controversy surroundingthem? What is the legacy of the Kyoto School for cross-culturalthinking or “world philosophy”?

1. Introduction

The progenitor of the Kyoto School isNishida Kitarō^[1] (1870–1945). In the Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japanreopened to the rest of the world after more than two centuries ofnational isolation, a generation of scholars devoted themselves toimporting Western academic fields of inquiry, including“philosophy.” After many years of studying Westernphilosophy and Eastern classics, alongside a dedicated practice of ZenBuddhism, Nishida was the first major modern Japanese thinker tosuccessfully go beyond learning from the West to construct an originaland abidingly influential system of thought. This he began to do inhis maiden work,An Inquiry into the Good, published in 1911(Nishida 1990). On the basis of this work Nishida obtained a positionin the Philosophy Department of Kyoto University, where he went on toceaselessly develop his thought and to inspire subsequent generationsof original philosophers, including the two other most prominentmembers of the Kyoto School: Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) andNishitani Keiji (1900–1990).

As is reflected in the name of the School, its founding members wereassociated with Kyoto University, the most prestigious university inJapan next to Tokyo University. It is perhaps no coincidence that theSchool formed in Kyoto, the ancient capital and center of traditionalJapanese culture, rather than Tokyo, the new capital and center ofmodernization-via-Westernization. While the Kyoto School philosophersall devoted themselves to the study of Western philosophy (indeed theymade lasting contributions to the introduction of Western philosophyinto Japan), they also kept one foot firmly planted in their nativetraditions of thought. One Japanese scholar of the Kyoto School writesin this regard: “The keynote of the Kyoto school, as personseducated in the traditions of the East despite all they have learnedfrom the West, has been the attempt to bring the possibilities latentin traditional culture into encounter with Western culture”(Minamoto 1994, 217).

It would be misleading, however, if we were to think of the KyotoSchool as merely putting a Western rational mask over Easternintuitive wisdom. Nor would it be entirely accurate to think of themas simply using Western philosophical idioms and modes of thought togive modern expression to East Asian Buddhist thought. For not only isthe Western influence on their thought more than skin deep, theirphilosophies are far too original to be straightforwardly equated withpreexisting Asian thought. Insofar as they can be identified as EastAsian or Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers, this must be understoodin the sense of havingcritically andcreativelydeveloped these traditions in philosophical dialogue with Westernthought. It should be kept in mind that their primary commitment isnot to a cultural self-expression, or even to a dialogue between worldreligions, but rather to a genuinely philosophical search fortruth.

The Kyoto School has become most well known, especially in the West,for its philosophies of religion. Indeed the initial reception of theKyoto School in North America took place in university departments ofReligious Studies, where their philosophies of religion havefrequently been viewed as representative of East AsianMahāyāna Buddhism, specifically of the latter’s Zenand Shin (True Pure Land) schools.^[2] While the exchange on these terms has been fruitful, this view can bemisleading in two respects. First of all, even if, for most of theKyoto School thinkers, a philosophy of religion is the ultimatearche andtelos of their thought, it is hardly theirsole concern. They address a full array of philosophical issues:metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, logic, philosophicalanthropology, philosophy of history, philosophy of culture, philosophyof language, ethics, political theory, philosophy of art, etc.

Secondly, even when their focus is on the philosophy of religion, theyapproach this topic in a non-dogmatic and often surprisinglynon-sectarian manner, drawing on and reinterpreting, for example,Christian sources along with Buddhist ones. Even Nishitani, who did infact come to identify his thought with “the standpoint ofZen,” adamantly refused the label of a “natural theologianof Zen.” He claimed: “If I have frequently had occasion todeal with the standpoints of Buddhism, and particularly Zen Buddhism,the fundamental reason is that [the original form of reality and theoriginal countenance of human being] seem to me to appear there mostplainly and unmistakably” (NKC X, 288; Nishitani 1982, 261).

Kyoto School philosophy, therefore, should be understood neither as abody of Buddhist thought forced into the form of Western garb, nor asuniversal discourse (which the West is supposed to have invented ordiscovered) dressed up in Japanese garb. Rather, it is best understoodas a set of unique contributions from the perspective of modernJapan—that is, from a Japan that remains substantiallyundergirded by its historical layers of traditional culture at thesame time as being thoroughly remodeled by its most recent layer ofmodernization via appropriation of Western culture—to a nascentworldwide dialogue of cross-cultural philosophy.

This article will proceed as follows. In the following section, I willconsider the preliminary issues of how to define the Kyoto School andwho to include as its members. The name “Kyoto School” hasbeen used in the past, in some cases rather loosely, to refer to avariety of sets of thinkers. It is therefore necessary to begin bydiscussing the question: Just who belongs to exactly what? The thirdand central section of this article will treat what is generallyconsidered to be the central philosophical concept and contribution ofthe Kyoto School, namely, its ideas of “absolutenothingness.” After discussing the ostensible contrast between“Western being” and “Eastern nothingness,” andafter looking at some of the Buddhist and Daoist sources of the ideaof absolute nothingness, I will discuss the topological, dialectical,phenomenological, and existential philosophies of absolute nothingnessdeveloped by Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, andthe central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School, UedaShizuteru (1926–2019). The fourth section will address thepolitical controversy surrounding the wartime writings and activitiesof the Kyoto School. The first wave of attention paid to the KyotoSchool in the West in the 1980s largely ignored the political debatethat had long surrounded the School in Japan. While this lacuna inWestern scholarship was amended in the 1990s, notably with thepublication ofRude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School and theQuestion of Nationalism (Heisig & Maraldo 1994), thepolitical ventures and misadventures of the Kyoto School remain ahighly contentious subject (see Maraldo 2006 and Goto-Jones 2008). Inthe final section of this article I will return to the question of thecross-cultural legacy of the Kyoto School as a group of thinkers thatstood between—and even moved beyond—“East andWest.”

2. Identity and Membership: Who Belongs to What?

2.1 A History of External Naming

There has been considerable discussion surrounding the question of howto define the Kyoto School, and who to include as its members. By allaccounts Nishida Kitarō is the School’s originator. (Seethe entry onNishida Kitarō.) Yet it was never his intention to institute a “school”based on his own thought; in fact he is reported to have alwaysencouraged independent thinking in his students. Moreover, unlikePlato’s Academy or the Frankfurt School’s Institute forSocial Research, the Kyoto School thinkers never founded an academicinstitution or formed an official organization (at least until TheNishida Philosophy Association was founded in 2003; see the websitelisted below). Their association was initially based merely on thefact that they studied and taught at Kyoto University and developedtheir thinking under the influence of Nishida as well as in dialogueand debate with him and with one another. Indeed the name “KyotoSchool” only came into use by the “members”themselves much later, when at all.

Names do not only tell us who or what something is; they also tell uswho or what something is not. Definitions not only seek to reveal aninternal essence; they also draw a line of demarcation between insideand outside. It is thus not surprising that names and definitionsoften have their origin in labels appended from without. These labelsmay subsequently degenerate into stereotypes; or, conversely, they maybe positively appropriated and redefined by the group itself. Both ofthese processes can be seen in the history of the “KyotoSchool.”

The name “Kyoto School,” in fact, originated from without;or, more precisely speaking, it originated from the fringes of theSchool itself. Tosaka Jun (1900–1945), a student of Nishida andTanabe, coined the expression in 1932 in reference to Nishida, Tanabeand Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) as purportedly representative ofthe epitome of “bourgeois philosophy in Japan” (see Heisig2001, 4). Tosaka’s own developing thought had an explicitlymaterialist and Marxist orientation (see Tosaka 2014), and in hisarticle he criticized the School as promulgating a bourgeois idealismthat ignores material historical conditions and issues of socialpraxis. Tosaka’s critique had an impact on the subsequentdevelopment of the Kyoto School’s philosophies, and ironicallyTosaka himself is today considered by some to belong, together withMiki, to the “left wing” of the Kyoto School (see Hattori2004).

The second significant moment in the naming (or“labeling”) of the Kyoto School came more clearly fromwithout, and in an even more politically charged context. As Nishitaniwas to recollect years later: “The name ‘KyotoSchool’ is a name journalists used in connection withdiscussions that friends of mine and I held immediately before andduring the war” (NKC XI, 207; see Heisig 2001, 277). Nishitaniis referring here to a series of symposia that addressed the questionof the meaning and direction of the Pacific War and another symposiumon the question of “overcoming modernity.” Thesecontroversial symposia will be discussed in subsection 4.3 of thisarticle. In his retrospective comments, penned in 1977, Nishitani goeson to say that by that time the name “Kyoto School” hadcome to be used by Americans and others to “indicate purely aschool of thought.”

Since the 1970s the name “Kyoto School” has graduallyrecovered its underlying philosophical ring, which for several decadesin Japan (especially outside of Kyoto) had been drowned out by itspolitical overtones. This recovery happened first of all in the West,where scholars neglected the political controversies in theirenthusiastic reception of the School’s philosophies of religion.While the political controversies returned with a vengeance to Westernacademia a couple of decades later, in a kind of pendulum swing to thehypercritical, the initial positive attention from the West had bythen helped to rehabilitate the image of the Kyoto School back home inJapan.

Fujita Masakatsu suggests that the question of defining the identityof the Kyoto School has often been a more pressing issue for Westernscholars than for the Japanese themselves. He speculates that thereare two reasons for this. One is that the Kyoto School never reallyhad any noteworthy competing schools of original thought within Japanwith which to contrast itself, and over against which to explicitlydefine its own identity. The second reason is that, while Westernerstend to draw out and focus on the shared general characteristics ofthe School’s thinkers, usually in contrast with the generalcharacteristics of Western thought, for Japanese scholars of the KyotoSchool the differences between the various thinkers often appear insharper relief than do their shared commonalities (Fujita 2001,ii).

In any case, just as the formation of the Kyoto School’s ideastook place between Western and East Asian horizons of thought, so hasthe scholarly study and, to some extent, even the defining of theKyoto School taken place between scholars in Japan on the one hand andthose in Europe and North America on the other. Since one of thecommon characteristics of the Kyoto School philosophers is theirattempt to set Japan and their own thought in the context of the widerworld, it is fitting that, with the increasingly international studyof the Kyoto School, their thought is finally becoming what it alwaysintended to be, namely, “Japanese philosophy in the world”(see Heisig 2004; Fujita & Davis 2005; Davis & Schroeder &Wirth 2011).

2.2 The Question of Definition

At the start of the twenty-first century, two important volumesappeared in Japanese with the name “Kyoto School” in theirtitles:The Philosophy of the Kyoto School, edited by FujitaMasakatsu (2001; translated into English as Fujita 2018), whichconsists of an anthology of texts by eight Kyoto School thinkerstogether with an essay on each one by a contemporary scholar; andThe Thought of the Kyoto School, edited by ŌhashiRyōsuke (2004), which contains five essays detailing thecontroversial history of the name “Kyoto School” as wellas seven essays on potential contributions of their thought to variousfields of contemporary philosophy. While the two books complement oneother in many respects, they nevertheless suggest somewhat differentapproaches to defining the school.

Fujita agrees with Takeda Atsushi’s working definition of theKyoto School as: “the intellectual network that was centered onNishida and Tanabe, and mutually formed by those who were directlyinfluenced in both a personal and scholarly manner by them”(Fujita 2001, ii and 234–35). Accordingly, Fujita’s bookfeatures such thinkers as Tosaka and Miki, as well as unanimouslyaccepted figures such as Hisamatsu Shinichi (1889–1980) andNishitani. As Fujita points out, the relatively open definition of theKyoto School as such a scholarly and interpersonal“network” has the advantage of highlighting the mutualityof the flow of influence between its members, as well as the fact that“membership” in the unofficial group did not precludeserious disagreement with the thought of Nishida or Tanabe. Whilecritical exchanges did sometimes lead to severed personal relations(e.g., Nishida and Tanabe infamously stopped speaking to one another),this was not always the case (e.g., Nishitani and Tosaka remained ongood personal terms despite their political and philosophicaldifferences). In either case mutual criticism was philosophicallytaken seriously, and it frequently provided impetus to furtherdevelopments in each member’s thought. In this sense, accordingto Fujita, an acceptance of mutual criticism could well be consideredone of the defining characteristics of the School.

One point made by Tosaka early on, a point often repeated today, isthat without Tanabe’scritical appropriation ofNishida’s thought there would be no tradition of the KyotoSchool; we would have only successors of “NishidianPhilosophy” and not a genuine school of mutually related yetindependent thinkers. The question remains, however, just howindependent a thinker can be with respect to Nishida’s thoughtand still be considered a member of the School. For even whensubsequent figures in the School sharply questioned certain aspects ofNishida’s thought, they tended at the same time to appropriateand creatively develop other shared concepts and motifs. A movement ofself-critical development can in fact be seen in the ceaselessprogression of Nishida’s own thinking. Nishida consideredhimself to be a “miner of ore” who never managed to stayput in one stage of development long enough to refine the ideas he hadunearthed (Nishida 1958, vii; on the development of Nishida’sthought, see Fujita 2020 and the entry on Nishida Kitarō).

Hence the Kyoto School, like many other vibrant schools of thought,should be seen as a cluster of original thinkers who, while notuncritically subscribing to any prescribed dogma, nevertheless came toshare, and debate, a number of common motifs as well as basic conceptsand terminology. As we shall see, the most fundamental of their sharedand disputed concepts is that of “absolute nothingness,” aconcept that has, in fact, most often been used as a thematic axis fordefining the School.

In contrast to Fujita, Ōhashi explicitly questions theappropriateness of defining the Kyoto School merely in terms of anetwork of personal and scholarly relations. According to Ōhashi,in order for a group of thinkers to form a genuine“school” of philosophy, “there must be the commonpossession or formation of a thought” (Ōhashi 2004, 9). ForŌhashi, this common thought of the Kyoto School is that ofabsolute nothingness, and he accordingly suggests the following as adefinition of the School: “a group of philosophers spanningseveral generations who developed their thought in several areas ofphilosophy with the idea of ‘nothingness’ as abasis” (ibid., 10; see Ōhashi 2001, 13). While he doesinclude Hattori Kenji’s essay on the “left wing of theKyoto School” as the opening chapter of hisThe Thought ofthe Kyoto School, previously Ōhashi explicitly excluded Mikifrom the School on account of his principally Marxists orientations(Ōhashi 1990, 12). However, we should note that while Miki didnot maintain a strict adherence to Marxism (see Curley 2020 andKrummel’s introduction to Miki 2024), he did maintain a closerelationship with Nishida, with whom he published several dialogues inthe 1930s. Not only was Miki one of the former students who inspiredNishida to take an interest in Marxism during this period, butMiki’s own mature philosophical anthropology and philosophy ofsociety and history remained influenced by Nishida. Indeed, in hisunfinished magnum opus,The Logic of Imagination (Miki 2024),while explicitly engaging with the texts of Dewey, Hume, andespecially Kant, Miki sets forth the Nishida-inspired idea that acreative “nothingness is what transcends the subjective and theobjective and envelopes them” (quoted in Fujita 2011, 315).

Among Western scholars, John Maraldo has most thoroughly probed thequestion of Kyoto School identity and membership. He isolates sixcriteria that scholars have used to include and exclude thinkers fromthe Kyoto School: (1) connection with Nishida; (2) association withKyoto University; (3) stance toward Japanese and Eastern intellectualtraditions; (4) stance toward the interrelated matters of Marxism, thenation state, and the Pacific War; (5) stance toward Buddhism andtoward religion in general; and (6) stance toward the notion ofabsolute nothingness. Maraldo shows how each one of these criteriahave been used in various ways, consciously or unconsciously, sincethe 1930s to either promote the philosophical significance ordisparage the political ideology of the Kyoto School (Maraldo 2005,33–38).

I would add two more related and interrelated criteria. One is anessentiallyambivalent stance (i.e., neither simple rejectionnor simple acceptance) toward Western philosophy and the West ingeneral. For example, Nishida and others undertake a criticalreception of Western ontology in order to develop an Easternmeontology or “logic of nothingness,” and attempt tocombine a Western “logic of things” with an Eastern“logic of heart-mind.” I will discuss such issues insection 3 of this article.

Another criterion that could be used to define the School is anessentiallyambivalent attitude toward Western modernity (ortoward modernization as Westernization). A critical stance toward aunilateral globalization of Western modernity, a stance which at thesame time accepts in part its unavoidability and in some respects evenaffirms its necessity, was expressed with the idea being discussed atthe time of “overcoming modernity.”According to KyotoSchool philosophers, this overcoming would take placenot byretreating from Western modernity (as some romantic and conservativethinkers asserted), but rather by goingthrough and beyondit. This going through and beyond, moreover, would not simply be amatter of going further down the road of linear progress; it wouldentail a hermeneutical as well as ultimately a (me)ontological andexistential re-gress, a radical “step back.” For KyotoSchool philosophers such as Nishitani, a critical and creativeretrieval of the traditions of East Asia, those of East AsianMahāyāna Buddhism in particular, is thought to enable theradical religious and philosophical “trans-descendence”necessary to move through and beyond the limits and problems ofWestern modernity (see Nishitani 2008; Nishitani 1990, 173–81;Davis 2004).

This idea of “overcoming modernity” has proven to be bothone of the more provocative and controversial aspects of theirthought. For some it promises to contribute an important East Asianperspective to debates over postmodernism in philosophy andpostcolonialism in culture studies. Yet because the KyotoSchool’s ideas of “overcoming modernity” developedin conjunction with their wartime political theories, theories whichtypically saw the nation of Japan as playing a key role in thehistorical movement through and beyond Western modernity, it has alsoproven to be one of the most criticized aspects of their thought. (Itis noteworthy in this regard that many postwar Japanese proponents of[Western] postmodernism eschewed making the connection between theiradoption of recent Western self-criticism of modernity/Eurocentrismand the Kyoto School’s earlier critique of these. A noteworthyexceptions is Nakamura Yūjirō, and the neo-Marxistphenomenologist Hiromatsu Wataru also surprised Japanese academia byreviving interest in this aspect of the Kyoto School’s legacy.)In any case, it is true that even after the Kyoto School ceasedformulating the idea of overcoming modernity in political terms,elements of the idea live on in their postwar philosophies of religionand culture. Hence, a radical problematization of Western modernitycan be considered an important aspect of their identity as a school ofthought.

Another significant Western contributor to the question of the KyotoSchool’s identity is James Heisig, who succeeded Jan Van Bragtas the head of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture inNagoya, an institute which has for several decades now been at thecenter of international research on the Kyoto School. In his book,Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School,Heisig suggests that we follow the lead of Takeuchi Yoshinori(1913–2002) and define the School by “triangulating”it around the three leading figures of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani(Heisig 2001, 3–7 and 275–78).

It is indeed these three figures that form the core of what has becomeknown as the Kyoto School, and in this article I will accordinglyfocus my attention primarily on them, as well as at times on UedaShizuteru, the leading figure of the third generation of the School.It should nevertheless be kept in mind that these are only four of amuch wider group of original thinkers, some squarely within and somemore or less on the periphery of the Kyoto School.

2.3 Members and Associates

Ōhashi Ryōsuke’s thesis, advanced already in hislandmark German anthology,Die Philosophie derKyōto-Schule (1990, revised edition 2012; see alsoŌhashi and Akitomi 2018), is that the Kyoto School should beunderstood as a group of thinkers involved in a pluralistic yetcooperative and sustained attempt to think on the basis of an idea of“nothingness” or “absolute nothingness.” Thisdistinguishes their thought from that of traditional Western onto-logybased on the concept of “being.” With this definition inmind, Ōhashi lists the central members of the Kyoto Schoolaccording to generation as follows: Nishida and Tanabe make up thefirst generation; Hisamatsu, Nishitani, Kōsaka Masaaki(1900–1969), Shimomura Toratarō (1900–1995),Kōyama Iwao (1905–1993), and Suzuki Shigetaka(1907–1988) make up the second generation; and TakeuchiYoshinori (1913–2002), Tsujimura Kōichi (1922–2010),and Ueda Shizuteru make up the third generation. Elsewhere he alsosuggests that the psychologist Kimura Bin (b. 1931) could beconsidered part of the third generation of the School, particularly ifwe shift the criterion of definition from interpersonal relations to agenealogy of thought (Ōhashi 2004, 9).

Ueda developed an original philosophy of Zen in relation to MeisterEckhart and Nishida. Takeuchi wrote important works on the philosophyof religion from a Shin Buddhist perspective. Tsujimura, who studiedunder Heidegger as well as under Hisamatsu and Nishitani, hasprovocatively and influentially written on Heidegger’s thoughtfrom a Zen and Kyoto School perspective. Abe Masao (1915–2006),a former student of Hisamatsu’s, was an important representativeof the Kyoto School and contributor to inter-religious dialogue inNorth America, although he is somewhat less well known in Japanitself. If we were to view the Kyoto School as living past its thirdgeneration, Ōhashi Ryōsuke (b. 1944), a prolific philosopherin his own right, whose works in both Japanese and German address abroad range of philosophical issues, would undoubtedly count as acentral figure of its fourth generation. Other recent affiliates ofthe School, who could be seen as belonging to its fourth generation,include Hase Shōtō, Horio Tsutomu, Ōmine Akira, FujitaMasakatsu, Mori Tetsurō, Hanaoka (Kawamura) Eiko, MatsumuraHideo, Nakaoka Narifumi, Okada Katsuaki, and Keta Masako. If theSchool shows promise of living on to future generations, it is withcurrently active Japanese scholars such as Akitomi Katsuya, MinobeHitoshi, Itabashi Yūjin, Uehara Mayuko, Inoue Katsuhito, MineHideki, Kosaka Kunitsugu, Tanaka Yū, and Tanaka Kyūbun, andas well as with a number of Japanese and non-Japanese philosophersliving outside of Japan, some of whom have studied and workedextensively with members of the third and fourth generations of theSchool.

We appear to be at a turning point in the history of the Kyoto School,as is reflected in current retrospective attempts to define it. WithUeda’s and then Hase’s retirements from Kyoto University,on the one hand, and with the creation in 1996 of a Department of theHistory of Japanese Philosophy at Kyoto University (see the websitelisted below) under the head of Fujita Masakatsu and now Uehara Mayukoon the other, the Kyoto School is becoming as much an object ofscholarship as it is a living tradition. However, as with most schoolsof philosophy, the line between critical scholarship and creativedevelopment is hardly a clear one, and in practice the retrospectivestudy of the Kyoto School often blends together with its furtherunfolding as a still vibrant school of thought.

It is also important to point out that today in Japan the Kyoto Schoolis not only studied in Kyoto. Since the appearance of Tokyo-basedphilosopher Nakamura Yūjiō’s first book on Nishida in1983, Nishida and the Kyoto School have increasingly receivedattention from scholars and students in areas of Japan beyond Kyoto.Worth special mention in this regard is Kosaka Kunitsugu, whose lucidand prolific scholarship on Nishida and others has done a great dealfor the sympathetic yet sober textual analysis of the Kyoto School.The creation of the Nishida Philosophy Association in 2003 (see thewebsite listed below) has helped inaugurate a new era of cooperativeexchange between scholars from various areas of Japan as well as fromabroad.

One final point on the question of membership: consideration shouldalso be given to those who could be referred to as “relatedthinkers” or “associate members” of the KyotoSchool. The widest understandings (or misunderstandings^[3]) of the Kyoto School include in it a number of thinkers who have amore or less peripheral relation to the inner circle of the School.For example, there is the case of the well-known Zen scholar andthinker, D. T. Suzuki (Suzuki Daisetsu) (1870–1966). Suzukimaintained a long personal relationship with Nishida since their daysas schoolmates. He not only helped introduce the young Nishida to thepractice of Zen, his articulation of Mahāyāna Buddhistthought is also acknowledged by Nishida as having influenced theformation of certain key ideas in his last essay on the philosophy ofreligion (see Nishida 1987, 70, 85–86, 108, 122–23). ButSuzuki—who is justifiably famous in his own right for, amongother things, helping introduce Zen to the West—was neithertrained as an academic philosopher nor associated with KyotoUniversity; and thus he is perhaps best thought of as a “closelyrelated thinker” to the School.

There are also the noteworthy cases of Watsuji Tetsurō(1889–1960) and Kuki Shūzō (1888–1941). Both ofthese philosophers were brought to Kyoto University by Nishida, andboth developed philosophies which were more or less influenced byNishida’s thought (see Maraldo 2005, 34 and 52). And yet, boththeir ideas and their activities remained too independent to countthem among the inner circle of the School. It should be kept in mind,however, that these two “associates” in particular arefirst rate philosophers in their own right, whose original workoutshines that of many of the less original though full-fledgedmembers of the School. Watsuji’s novel theory of “cultureand climate” (fūdo), together with his major workon the ethics of “betweenness” (aidagara), andKuki’s combination of logical rigor and existential insight inhis major writings on the problem of contingency, together with hisprovocative works on Japanese aesthetics (notably his hermeneuticalphenomenology of “iki”), have each made lastingcontributions to philosophy and are worthy of international scholarlyattention (see the entry on Watsuji Tetsurō; McCarthy 2020;Mayeda 2020).

Finally, there is the matter of thinkers who have developed theirideas more or less under the influence of Nishida and other members ofthe Kyoto School. A complete list of this group of “influencedthinkers” would be long, but it would include such names asTakahashi Satomi, Takizawa Katsumi, Mutai Risaku, Yuasa Yasuo, KimuraBin, Sakabe Megumi, Nakamura Yūjirō, and Noe Keiichi. Anumber of non-philosophers, such as the world-famous architectAndō Tadao (Tadao Ando), who designed the Ishikawa Nishida KitaroMuseum of Philosophy (see the website listed below), have also beeninfluenced by Nishida and the Kyoto School.

3. Absolute Nothingness: Giving Philosophical Form to the Formless

Having discussed issues of definition and membership of the KyotoSchool, we are now prepared to pursue the question of what unifiestheir thought as a school of philosophy. I will here follow thesuggestion of Ōhashi, Nishitani, and other representatives of theKyoto School itself, and focus on the shared—and at timesdisputed—idea of “absolute nothingness” (zettai-mu).^[4]

3.1 Western Being vs. Eastern Nothingness? Ontology vs. Meontology?

Nishitani wrote the following with regard to Nishida and Tanabe:“[Their] philosophies share a distinctive and common basis thatsets them apart from traditional Western philosophy: absolutenothingness. … Clearly the idea of absolute nothingness came toawareness in the spirituality of the East; but the fact that it hasalso been posited as a foundation for philosophical thought representsa new step virtually without counterpart in the history of Westernphilosophy” (NKC IX, 225–26; Nishitani 1991, 161).

“First philosophy” in the Western tradition is ontology,which asks the question of “being qua being,” and tends toanswer this question either in terms of the most universal“being-ness” or in terms of the “highestbeing.” For Aristotle, the primary category of being is“substance,” ambiguously thought in its primary sense asthe particular entity (e.g. Socrates) and in its secondary sense theuniversal that makes that entity what it is (e.g. human being), andthe highest being was thought to be the “unmoved mover.”Greek ontology later influenced the Christian theological tradition tothink of God as the “highest being,” such that the dualthreads of the Western tradition were woven together as what Heideggercalls “onto-theology.” Hence, the fundamentalphilosophical question of the onto-theological mainstream of the Westis, “What is being?” On the other hand, thecounter-question which the Kyoto School finds in the East is,“What is nothingness?” In place of an ontology, firstphilosophy in the East is more often a “meontology”: aphilosophy of non-being or nothingness.

Perhaps we should say “mu-logy” rather than“meontology”; for, strictly speaking, the Greekmeon, “non-being,” should be translated intoJapanese ashi-u. What I am translating as“nothingnesss,”mu, is written with a singlecharacter rather than as a negation (hi) of being(u). This is crucial since the nothingness with which theyare concerned is not the simple negation or privation of being. It iscloser to what Heidegger means by “being.” Attentive towhat he calls the “ontological difference” between being(das Sein) and beings (das Seiende), Heidegger notesthat with respect to beings, understood as determinate things, beingcan only appear as “no-thing.” We fail to attend to theno-thing of being when we think only of things, and especially when wethink of thinking as a mere calculation of predetermined beings.Heidegger thus calls “the nothing” (das Nichts)the “veil of being.” Being cannot but appear to us asnothing, insofar as we know only of beings. Yet it isdasSein ordas Nichts which grants an open place, aclearing (Lichtung), for beings to show themselves in thefirst place. But this clearing lets beings be by withdrawing itselffrom view. Just as “nature (phusis) loves tohide” (Heraclitus), being lets determinate beings come topresence by withdrawing its indeterminate abundance into absence orself-concealment (see Heidegger 1975, Vol. 9, 103–22; and Vol.65, 246–47).

Tanabe studied with Heidegger in the early 1920s. (In fact, uponreturning to Japan in 1924, Tanabe was the first scholar in the worldto write an article on Heidegger’s thought.) When he later wrotethe following, Tanabe no doubt had Heidegger’s 1929 “Whatis Metaphysics?” lecture in mind: “All science needs totake some entity or other as its object of study. The point of contactis always in being, not in nothing. The discipline that has to do withnothingness is philosophy” (THZ VI, 156; see Heisig 2001,121).

Heidegger was of course not the first Western philosopher to ask afterthat which is radically other than beings or “beyondbeing” as such.^[5] For example, Tanabe could have also found support for the idea thatphilosophy investigates nothingness in the following passage fromHegel: “Das Erste der Philosophie aber ist, dasabsolute Nichts zu erdenken” [Yet the first task ofphilosophy is to conceive ofabsolute nothingness] (quotedfrom Hegel’s “Glauben und Wissen” in Ōhashi1984, 203). The Kyoto School might even be thought of as recovering asuggestion from one of the first Presocratic philosophers,Anaximander: namely, to think finite beings as determinations, ordelimitations, of “the indefinite” or “theunlimited” (to apeiron).

Moreover, as Kyoto School thinkers frequently do point out, Christiannegative theologians and mystics, most notably Meister Eckhart, attimes make use of the notion of “the nothing” to refer tothat which transcends all concepts and all oppositions. For Eckhart,“nothing” (niht) was one way of indicating the“Godhead” (gōtheit) beyond “God”delimited as a personal being (see Eckehart 1963, 328).Nihthere is an expression, at the limits of language, which attempts toindicate “the nothingness of indistinct fullness from which flow… all oppositions and relations” (Schürmann 1978,168). Eckhart speaks of a breakthrough, not only beyond the ego, butalso beyond God Himself, a breakthrough, that is, to an abyssalGodhead understood as “the silent desert into which nodistinction ever gazed, of Father, Son, or Holy Ghost” (Eckehart1963, 316). Analogously, Nishida writes that “when we trulyenter thoroughly into the consciousness of absolute nothingness, thereis neither I nor God” (NKZ V, 182; see Nishida 1958, 137).

Nishitani affirms Eckhart’s intimations of a Godhead of absolutenothingness, even though he notes that this is “markedly distantfrom orthodox Christian faith,” which limits the concept ofnothingness to the relative nothingness expressed in thenihilum ofcreatio ex nihilo, that is, to theabsolute privation of being out of which the highest being createslesser beings (NKC X, 75; Nishitani 1982, 66; also see NKC VII). YetNishitani’s student and Eckhart scholar Ueda Shizuteru, despiteprofound appreciation for Eckhart’s thought and its nearness toZen, argues in the end that Eckhart’s nothingness, like that ofnegative theology in general, still points to an inexpressibly higherbeing (see USS VIII, 146). Critically adaptingHeidegger’s expression, we might say that the nothing is stillunderstood as “the veil” of this inexpressibly higherbeing. Both Nishitani and Ueda ultimately look to Zen for anothingness so absolute that, in thoroughly negating any traces ofopposition to beings (i.e., as a higher being transcending worldlybeings), it is paradoxically found fully in the concrete facts andactivities of the here and now (see USS VIII, 5ff.).

Ōhashi stresses, however, that neither the Buddhist tradition northe Kyoto School should be thought of as having a patent on theradical “thinking of nothingness.” In fact, he argues,“this thought slowly came to the fore within Western philosophyitself,” a process that indeed set the stage for Kyoto Schoolcontributions to contemporary philosophy (Ōhashi 2004,12–13). Nishitani had already explored a number of resonantnotions of nothingness, not only in the Neoplatonic and Christianmystical traditions, but also in 19^th and 20^thcentury Western philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger (see NKCVIII; Nishitani 1990). And yet, here again Nishitani finds residues ofan ontological bias, where a kind of “relativenothingness” is posited as either a simple negation of or as aveil for being. Nishitani ultimately concludes that Nietzschesucceeded only in expressing a “standpoint of relative absolutenothingness”; and even in Heidegger, he critically suggests,“traces of the representation of nothingness as some‘thing’ that is nothingness still remain” (NKC X, 75and 108; Nishitani 1982, 66 and 96).^[6]

In any case, it is fair to say that the Kyoto School thinkersgenerally consider the purest sources for the idea of absolutenothingness to lie in the traditions of Asia. Hisamatsu went so far asto speak of absolute nothingness as “oriental nothingness”(Hisamatsu 1960); though it is important to bear in mind that hisclaim is that this idea was first clearlydiscovered in thetraditions of Asia. Absolute nothingness is by no means only relevantto Asian cultures, anymore than in 1500 CE the earth was only round inthe West. Moreover, if theidea of absolute nothingness“came to awareness in the spirituality of the East,” asNishitani says, thephilosophy of absolute nothingness isgenerally considered to be the Kyoto School’s own contributionto the contemporary world of thought opened up by the meeting ofEastern and Western traditions.

Nishida—who could hardly be accused of underestimating whatJapan had to learn from Western philosophy—also spoke at timesin very general terms of Eastern nothingness in contrast with Westernbeing. In his essay, “The Types of Culture of the ClassicalPeriods of East and West Seen from a Metaphysical Perspective,”he wrote: “How then are we to distinguish between the types ofculture of the West and East from a metaphysical point of view? Ithink we can do this by dividing them into that [i.e., the culture ofthe West] which considers the ground of reality to be being, and that[i.e., the culture of the East] which considers this ground to benothingness.” In Greek philosophy, he goes on to say,“that which has form and determination was regarded as thereal”; or even, as in Plato, reality, that which has true being,was understood as the Forms. Judeo-Christian culture, howeverradically different in various ways it was from Greek culture, anddespite negative theology’s indications of aDeusabsconditus as a kind of nothingness, nevertheless primarilyconsidered theperson of God as “the most perfectbeing” to be the basis of reality. In radical contrast to boththe Greek and Judeo-Christian origins of Western culture, Indianculture, like that of China and Japan, took “the profoundestidea of nothingness as its basis” (NKZ VII, 429–33; seeNishida 1970, 237–40).

In the closing lines of the preface to his 1926 book,From ThatWhich Acts to That Which Sees, a book many scholars view as thebeginning of “Nishida Philosophy” proper, we find thefollowing famous and programmatic lines: “It goes without sayingthat there is much to admire, and much to learn from, in theimpressive achievements of Western culture, which thought form asbeing and the giving of form as good. However, does there not liehidden at the base of our Eastern culture, preserved and passed downby our ancestors for several thousand years, something which sees theform of the formless and hears the voice of the voiceless? Our heartsand minds endlessly seek this something; and it is my wish to providethis quest with a philosophical foundation” (NKZ IV, 6).

3.2 The Buddhist and Daoist Background for the Idea of Absolute Nothingness

Before looking more specifically at how Nishida and other members ofthe Kyoto School attempt to give philosophical form to the formless,it will be helpful to look at some of the threads in Easterntraditions on which the Kyoto School thinkers are explicitly andimplicitly drawing as they weave their texts on absolutenothingness.

Their explicit references are primarily to MahāyānaBuddhism, especially to the East Asian Buddhist schools of Zen(predominantly the Rinzai tradition but also notably Dōgen ofSōtō) and Pure Land (predominantly Shinran’s Shin)Buddhism. The key Sanskrit term in Mahāyāna Buddhism here isśūnyatā (“emptiness”;kū in Japanese). With the noteworthy exception of thelater Nishitani, however, the Kyoto School tends to favor the Chineseglyphmu (“nothingness”;wu in Chinese),which is found predominantly in Zen, and which reflects the earlyattempt to “match terms” with Daoism in the translationand interpretive development of Buddhism in China. Let us brieflyexamine both of these Asian sources for the Kyoto School’sphilosophies of absolute nothingness,śūnyatāandwu/mu.^[7]

In Mahāyāna Buddhismśūnyatā refersfirst of all to the fact that all things come into being in“interdependent origination” (Sanskrit:pratītya-samutpāda; Japanese:engi), andthey are therefore “empty” of any independent substantialself-nature or “own-being” (Sanskrit:svabhāva). This thought is closely tied to the basicBuddhist thesis of “no-ego” (Sanskrit:anātman; Japanese:muga). All beings, includingthe ego, are interconnected and in flux. Psychologically,śūnyatā refers also to the releasement fromallattachment to beings, from all reification and willfulappropriation of them. Such attachments are both based on and in turnsupport the primary attachment to the fabricated ego, since the egoboth strives to possess and is unwittingly possessed by itsreification of beings. To awaken to the emptiness of all things, totheir lack of substantial own-being or egoity (Japanese:shogyōmuga), therefore, is to free oneself from both anego-centered and reified view of things as well as from the illusionof the substantial ego itself.

Yet, if the movement of negation stops here at a one-sided negation ofbeing (i.e., at negation of the illusory independent substantialreality of things and the ego), then the idea of“emptiness” is not itself emptied.^[8] That would leave us with either a pessimistic nihilism or,ironically, a reified view of emptiness itself. These are what theBuddhist tradition calls “emptiness-sickness” (Japanese:kūbyō). True emptiness must be understood todynamically negate the very opposition of being and (relative)nothingness (see Nakamura 1975, Vol. 1, 278). Hence, inMahāyāna we find an explicit return—through a“great negation” of a reified misunderstanding ofbeing—to a “great affirmation” of a non-reifiedunderstanding of being. Emptiness thoroughly understood is nothingseparate from or opposed to “being” properly understood.As the often chanted lines of theHeart Sutra put it:“[phenomenal] form is emptiness; emptiness is also [phenomenal]form; emptiness is no other than form; form is no other thanemptiness” (see Bercholz & Kohn 1993, 155). The famousMahāyāna Buddhist philosopher ofśūnyatā Nāgārjuna (ca. 150–250CE) went so far as to provocatively state: “The limits (i.e.,realm) ofnirvāna are the limits ofsamsāra. Between the two, also, there is not theslightest difference whatsoever” (Inada 1993, 158). In otherwords,nirvāna is neither a nihilistic extinction of nora transcendent escape from the phenomenal world(samsāra); it is rather an enlightened manner ofbeing-in-the-world here and now (see Garfield 1995, 332). This radicalreaffirmation of the phenomenal world was particularly stressed inEast Asian developments of Mahāyāna Buddhism, where we findsuch remarkably affirmative phrases as: “true emptiness,marvelous being” (Japanese:shinkū-myōu).

Even though he never disavows the term Nishida coined, “absolutenothingness” (zettai-mu), in his mature writingsNishitani explicitly employs the Mahāyāna term“emptiness” (śūnyatā,kū) in his attempt to think a way beyond both theexacerbated attachment to being and the reactive nihilism thattogether plague the modern world (see Ueda 2011a). Nishitani writes asfollows: On the one hand, emptiness can be termed “an absolutenegativity, inasmuch as it is a standpoint that has negated andthereby transcended nihility, which was itself thetranscendence-through-negation of all being.” In this sense,“emptiness can well be described as ‘outside’ of andabsolutely ‘other’ than the standpoint shackled to being,provided we avoid the misconception that emptiness is some‘thing’ distinct from being and subsisting‘outside’ it.” On the other hand, then, emptiness istruly emptiness “only when it empties itself even of thestandpoint that represents it as some ‘thing’ that isemptiness. … [True emptiness] is to be realized as somethingunited to and self-identical with being” (NKC X, 109–10;Nishitani 1982, 97). Following in the wake of Nishida’stopological thinking of absolute nothingness (see subsection 3.3below), Nishitani also thinks of emptiness as a “place” or“field” (ba) wherein beings can appear as theytruly are in their proper basis or “home-ground”(moto).

The idea of a nothingness that radically transcends, or underlies,both being and its simple negation can also be traced back topre-Buddhist Chinese thought. A Chinese scholar laments thephilosophical ambiguity inherent in the Chinese characterwu(nothingness). He writes that “in Chinese‘wu’ can mean both the contrasting pair of‘you’ [i.e., ‘being’] and themetaphysical source of both ‘you’ and‘wu’” (Zhang 2002, 150). In the terminologyof the Kyoto School, the former sense ofwu (mu inJapanese) is a matter of “relative nothingness,” while thelatter sense is akin to what they call “absolutenothingness.” The latter sense ofwu is expressed inchapter 40 of theDaodejing as follows: “The myriadthings under heaven are generated from being. Being is generated fromnothingness (wu).” This unnamable non-dualistic sourceof all being and relative non-being is also referred to as the Way(dao). Of the latter it is said, in chapter 14 of theDaodejing: “It is called the shapeless shape, the imageof no-thing” (see Izutsu 2001, 50–51 and 104). It is nothard to link this thought with Nishida’s professed intention ofgiving philosophical foundation to the “form of theformless” that he maintained lies at the heart of the traditionsof the East.

In the Daoist tradition we also find an idea of nothingness used inthe context of radically emptying the mind in order to attune thefinite self to the in-finite^[9] rhythm of the Way. TheZhuangzi speaks in this regard of thepractice of “sitting down and forgetting everything” andof “being empty like a mirror” (see Watson 1968, 90 and97). When Zen talks of returning to one’s “original facebefore one’s parents were born,” we find the Daoist ideasof “forgetting the ego” and “returning to theroot” combined with the Mahāyāna Buddhist notion ofthe “original purity of the mind.” The original brightnessand purity of the mind, which lies hidden beneath the clouds ofdefiling passion, is also frequently expressed in Mahāyānatexts with the analogy of a mirror that is able to spontaneouslyreflect the world without egoistic discriminations.

Zen presumably inherits this analogy of the original mind as mirrorfrom both Mahāyāna and Daoist sources. In the traditionaledition ofThe Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch,however, all residues of dualistic discrimination—includingthose that remain even in the notion of a mirror that needs to becontinually wiped clean of impurities—are swept away in thefamous lines: “Originally there is not a single thing”(Chinese:benlai wu-yi-wu; Japanese:honraimu-ichi-motsu). In this quintessential Zen expression are weddedtogether the meontological and psychological senses ofwu/mu: a rejection of an ontology of independentsubstances, a declaration of an originary (self-negating) nothingness,and an expression of a radical freedom from egoistic attachment aswell as freedom for spontaneous creativity and compassion.

In Zen we find the Mahāyāna Buddhist notion of emptiness andthe Daoist notion of nothingness fully intertwined and developed intoa practice of living both completely unattached and completely engagedin the world of “true emptiness, marvelous being.” In thefamouswu ormu kōan that opens theGateless Barrier, Wumen (Mumon) urges those who wish to reachenlightenment, that is, those who wish to pass through the“barrier of the gate of nothingness,” to concentrate theirentire life force on thiswu (mu), taking care tounderstand it neither as “nihilistic nothingness” nor“in terms of being and non-being” (Nishimura 1994, 22; seeCleary 1999, 71). This was the kōan that Nishida finally passedafter nearly a decade of intense practice of Zen (see Yusa 2002,45ff.). And as Nishida confided many years later to Nishitani, it wasfrom early on his “impossible desire” to somehow bring Zenand philosophy together (NKZ XIX, 224–25). Even more than didNishida, several subsequent Kyoto School philosophers, most notablyNishitani, Hisamatsu, Abe, and Ueda, explicitly endeavored to bringthe practice as well as the thought of Zen into relation withphilosophy (see Davis 2021; 2022, 275–89).

3.3 Nishida’s Topology of Absolute Nothingness

Besides contrasting Western being with Eastern nothingness, in hislater writings Nishida also at times makes a broad distinction betweena Western “logic of things” and an Eastern “logic ofthe heart-mind (kokoro).” While Western thought tendsto begin with an objective logic of substances (be these physical ormental), he claims that in Buddhism one can find the germ of a logicof the heart-mind, even if traditionally this remained largely at thelevel of an expression of personal experience rather than being fullydeveloped into a genuinely philosophical logic (see Nishida 1964,356). Scholars of Buddhism may object that it was Nishida’s ownknowledge of Buddhism that remained too much at the level of personalexperience, rather than the sophisticated discourses of Abhidharma,Mādhyamaka, Yogācāra, Tiantai, and Huayan traditions ofBuddhist philosophy themselves.

In any case, in the development of Nishida’s thought,“being” is thought of in terms of the objectivity ofdeterminate things, “relative nothingness” is understoodas a mere privation or simple negation of being, and an envelopingsense of “nothingness” is provisionally associated with akind of transcendental subjectivity of consciousness or theheart-mind. Ultimately, however, Nishida comes to posit absolutenothingness as the “place” (basho) that embracesboth subjective (noetic) and objective (noematic) dimensionsof reality. Thus, he relegates not only privation of being but alsosubjective nothingness, in the sense of the “field ofconsciousness,” to a type of “relative nothingness.”^[10]

In 1934 Nishida writes: “Reality is being and at the same timenothingness; it is being-and-nothingness [u-soku-mu],nothingness-and-being; it is both subjective and objective, noetic andnoematic. Reality is the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, andthus the self-identity of what is absolutely contradictory. Or rather,it is not that [the separate spheres of] subjectivity and objectivitycome to unite, and then we first have reality. [The opposition of]subjectivity and objectivity must instead be thought from out of adynamically dialectical reality that is self-determining” (NKZVII, 441; see Nishida 1970, 29). Reality, as the dialectical“self-determination of absolute nothingness,” is inNishida’s later works understood as a dynamic “identity ofthe absolute contradiction” between subjective (relative)nothingness and objective being. Absolute nothingness is the temporaland spatial “place” wherein individual persons and thingsdetermine one another in their mutual interactions.

The “place of absolute nothingess” (zettai-mu nobasho) first became the central concept of Nishida’sthought in the mid-1920s, though he continued to develop and rethinkthe idea up until his last completed essay in 1945, “The Logicof Place and the Religious Worldview.” Nishida first explicitlyworked out an idea of absolute nothingness in his 1926 book,FromThat Which Acts to That Which Sees (NKZ IV), a book whichinaugurated his middle-period of thought. In this work, which includesan important essay entitled “Place”(“Basho”), Nishida’s topological reasoningdevelops in rough outline as follows^[11]:

Just as all events must “take place” somewhere, all beingsmust be situated in some place. Beings always exist in relation toother beings, and any relation requires a third term, namely, theplace or medium wherein they are related. In other words, for A and Bto be related, there must be some place, C, in which their relation issituated. To begin with, we can understand this C as the spatial“context” in which objects are situated in relation to oneanother. But the context in which things are defined is more thanspatial; a thing is not only here as opposed to there. Things aredetermined according to a number of criteria, each of which operateswithin its own field of judgment. Hence, the place C can be furtherunderstood as a “category” of judgment, such as thequality “color.” Red and blue are revealed, and contrastedwith one another, as colors within the same color field.

In order to let concrete things reveal themselves yet more fully,however, we should think of C as “consciousness.” Ourminds are able to correlate various categories of judgment, such ascolor, size, shape, location, etc., and therefore to perceiveindividual things as composed of unique combinations of variousqualities and relations. For example, we are conscious of a certainthing as a round, soft, red, sweet, apple sitting on a table. Thefield of consciousness is the field in which these differentcategories are unified in the perception and judgment of the qualitiesof a particular thing in relation to other particular things and theirqualities.

Ultimately, however, there is a crucial limit to the subjective“field of consciousness.” As Kant demonstrated, subjectiveconsciousness cannot reflect things as they are in themselves, butonly as they appear when schematized according to subjectivecategories. What, then, is the ultimate place wherein the encounterbetween subjects and objects takes place, wherein persons and thingscoexist? According to Nishida, this must be the place wherein personsand things not only undergo changes in accidental categoricalqualities, but wherein they essentially and existentially “cometo be and pass away.” It is the place, not just of intellectualjudgments, but of birth and death. This ultimate “groundlessground,” which “envelops” all beings, yet which doesso in such a way that lets them contain their own principle ofself-determination, Nishida calls “the place of truenothingness.” Although in no sense a determinate being, neitheris this place of true or absolute nothingness a mere static vacuity.It must be thought of as both the epistemic source of consciousnessand the ontological origin of beings.

Although Nishida comes to the idea of the place of absolutenothingness most directly through his confrontations with Kant andNeo-Kantianism, he does not shy from thinking this place inmetaphysical as well as epistemological terms: nothingness is notmerely a reflective, but is also a creative principle (NKZ IV,238–39). As he writes much later, “absolute nothingness atonce transcends everything and is that by which everything isconstituted” (NKZ IX, 6). And yet, Nishida repeatedly tells usthat, as no-thing outside of or other than the place of the coming tobe and passing away of truly individual beings, absolute nothingnessisnot to be thought of as a “transcendentbeing.” Nor is it to be understood as the processional unfoldingof a “potential being,” that is to say, as a kind ofHegelian “world Spirit” with its own cunning reason atwork behind the scenes of its historical march towardself-realization. The absolute, according to Nishida, must be thoughtof as nothingness in order to distinguish it from all ontologies thatwould reduce the uniqueness and autonomy of truly individual beingseither to a transcendent being or to an underlying mechanical orteleological process.

One of the driving concerns behind Nishida’s repeated insistencethat the absolute be thought of in the meontological terms of aformless, indeterminate place of absolute nothingness, is that onlytherein can self-determining and irreducibly singular individuals begiven their due. All ontologies of universal being fail to allow forthe existence of the “true individual,” or for the genuineencounter between such individuals. Since “there is no universal[of being] whatsoever that subsumes the I and the thou” (NKZ VI,381), the locus of genuine interpersonal encounter must be thought ofin terms of the place of absolute nothingness (see Davis 2014).

It should be pointed out that the Japanese term for“absolute,”zettai, literally means a“severing of opposition,” which implies the sense of“without an opposing other.” The contrasting term issōtai, which indicates “relativity” in theliteral sense of “mutual opposition.” The true absolutemust embrace, rather than stand over against, the relative. Theabsolute, therefore, must not oppose itself to relative beings;rather, its self-determination must be such as to allow their mutuallyautonomous relations to take place. According to Nishida, it is only aphilosophy of the place of absolute nothingness that can do justice tothe notion of the absolute as well as account for both the autonomyand the mutual relativity of individuals.

While on the one hand Nishida becomes increasingly concerned withallowing for radical interpersonal alterity within the place ofabsolute nothingness, on the other hand he also consistently arguesfrom early on that “consciousness” should not be thoughtto entail an unbridgeable epistemological subject-object split.Although he initially adopted, and adapted, the notion of “pureexperience” from William James and others to express thisnondual basis of knowledge (see Nishida 1990), Nishida later dropsthis expression in favor of the notion of “self-awareness”(jikaku). According to Nishida, self-awareness can be definedas a “self reflecting itself within itself” (NKZ IV, 215).^[12] Since absolute nothingness is not a “self” in the senseof a subject standing over against an object, any more than it is anego with its own interested categories of perception, theself-awareness of absolute nothingness must be that of a “seeingwithout a seer” or a “knowing without a knower.”“Since there is no-thing that reflects, it is like a mirrorreflecting the mirror itself” (ibid., 181).

In Nishida’s middle period, the paradigm for knowing is a“pure seeing” (tada miru) beyond all acting andvolition. Nishida claims that as finite individuals we can approachthis ideal by way of thoroughly negating or emptying the ego.“By truly emptying the self, the field of consciousness canreflect an object just as it is” (NKZ IV, 221). The self reachesthe place of absolute nothingness, and therefore first truly comesinto contact with other beings, by way of thoroughly emptying itselfin a movement of “immanent transcendence” that takes itbackthrough the depths of the field of consciousness.

In his last completed text, “The Logic of Place and theReligious Worldview,” Nishida most fully develops the religiousimplications of the idea of absolute nothingness. There he suggeststhat absolute nothingness is the best way to understand God or theabsolute, which he defines as that which “contains its ownabsolute self-negation within itself” (NKZ XI, 397). As absolutenothingness, God is the dynamic principle of affirmation by way ofabsolute self-negation. The true absolute essentially negates itstranscendent divinity and expresses itself in the forms of the relative.^[13]

Nishida insists that this idea of God can be understood no more interms of an immanent pantheism than in terms of a transcendent theism.It may perhaps best be called “panentheism”; but forNishida this too remains a static term of “objectivelogic” and fails to capture the necessity of thinking God asboth irreducibly transcendent and thoroughly immanent. AsNishida is fond of saying, God or the Buddha is “immanentlytranscendent.” It is the paradoxical logic one finds in thePrajñāpāramitā Sutras ofMahāyāna Buddhism (i.e., what D. T. Suzuki called the“logic ofsoku-hi,” a logic of “is and isnot”) that Nishida thinks most profoundly expresses the“absolute dialectic” of the divine as the dynamicprinciple of absolute nothingness (NKZ XI, 399; see Nishida 1987,69–71).

If we as finite relative beings can and do touch the infiniteabsolute, it is only by way of a mutual self-negation. Nishida callsthis mutual self-negation “inverse correspondence”(gyakutaiō). By way of radically emptying ourselves, wecan touch that which is the radical origin of self-emptying, theabsolute as an essentially self-negating absolute nothingness.According to Nishida, an immanent principle of self-negation is, infact, the very essence of life. “True life (seimei)must contain within itself an absolute nothingness, a [principle of]absolute negation” (NKZ VIII, 341). It is such a life that cantruly be self-determining as a “creative element of a creativeworld.”

In his middle period, inaugurated by the first formulations of theidea of “the place of absolute nothingness” inFromThat Which Acts to That Which Sees, Nishida’s thought wascharacterized by a shift from his earlier voluntarism to a kind ofintuitionism of pure seeing without a seer (see NKZ IV, 3–6). Inhis later period, however, Nishida’s epistemology became muchmore dynamic and dialectical; rather than “pure seeing,”his key epistemological phrase then became“action-intuition” (kōi-teki chokkan).Although self-emptying still plays a vital role, this is understoodnot as preparation for a passive intuition, but rather as an activeprocess of “seeing a thing by becoming it.” In otherwords, intuition happens only in the midst of the dialectical processof acting upon and in turn being acted upon by things.

In his later period, the place of absolute nothingness is accordinglyreconceived much more dynamically as the “self-determination ofthe dialectical world,” a world which continually movesaccording to the principle of “from created to creating.”The absolute finds expression only in the midst of the mutualinteraction of individuals and things, and true individuals are bothdetermined by and “counter-determine” (gyaku-genteisuru) the movement of the dialectical world (see NKZ VII, 305ff.;VIII, 313–14). Although one can trace an immanent unfolding ofNishida’s thought in this direction, it is also clear that amajor impetus for his dialectical development of the idea of absolutenothingness can be found in the criticism he received from his juniorcolleague, Tanabe Hajime.

3.4 Tanabe’s Absolute Nothingness as the Other-Power of Absolute Mediation

It is Tanabe’s declaration of partial independence fromNishida’s thought in an essay written in 1930, “RequestingInstruction from Professor Nishida” (THZ IV, 305–328),that many see as the origin of the Kyoto School as more than a groupof disciples of “Nishida Philosophy.” In this essay Tanabesharply criticizes Nishida’s middle-period philosophy of the“place of absolute nothingness,” claiming that it fallsinto kind of Plotinian “emanationism” that ultimatelyrests on a religious or mystical intuition. For Tanabe, this posed twoserious problems for a genuine philosophy of absolute nothingness.

To begin with, in crossing the line between philosophical reason,based on ordinary experience, and supra-rational intuition, based onextra-ordinary religious experience, Nishida had purportedly committeda methodological transgression. Here Tanabe poses a question thatstill resounds through (some would say haunts) the halls of KyotoSchool studies to this day. As James Heisig puts it, the Kyoto Schoolthinkers in general do not share an important assumption of Westernphilosophy as a whole, namely, a “clear delineation betweenphilosophy and religion” (Heisig 2001, 13–14). This is acomplex issue, since the Western concept of “religion” wasjust as much an import to Japan as was “philosophy.” Theproblems faced and the possibilities opened up by a Zen Buddhist“philosophy of religion” in particular differ insignificant ways from a Judeo-Christian one, insofar as the formercalls for extending rational thought in the direction of a“practice of awakening” rather than in the direction of aleap of faith.

The provocative methodological issues involved in the relation betweenthe philosophical thinking and the Zen practice of some Kyoto Schoolphilosophers deserves greater attention than can be given here (seeDavis 2021; 2022a, 275–289). Let it suffice to point out herethat Tanabe too later crisscrosses the line between philosophy andreligion as much as any Kyoto School thinker, although his ShinBuddhist inclinations took him in the direction of “faith”rather than “intuition.”^[14] After this religious turn in his thinking, Tanabe claimed thatphilosophy and faith must be mediated by a personal act of metanoesis(Tanabe 2000, 34; Tanabe 1986, 29) and that, in order to develop agenuine philosophy of religion, “in the end one must have faithand become self-aware by means of religious faith” (Tanabe 2003,27).

For his part, Nishida responded to Tanabe’s early critique byaffirming that his idea of the self-awareness of absolute nothingnessdoes indeed entail the profound significance of religious experience.Yet he claims that this is neither mystical in the sense of“religious ecstasy” nor “is it thought in thedirection of substance, as is Plotinus’ One.” He deniesthe charge of emanationism, claiming that in his thought “it isnot a matter of the self-determination of being, but rather theself-determination of nothingness” (NKZ VI, 154). For Nishida,only if the absolute is thought in terms of a self-negatingnothingness, rather than in terms of a transcendent plenum of the One,is it possible to truly affirm the world of the many. The absolute isfound in the very midst of beings, not beyond them. It is“because this is absolute nothingness,” Nishida writes inthe parlance of Zen, “that the mountain is mountain, the riveris river, and all beings are just as they are” (NKZ V, 182; seeNishida 1958, 137).

But the other major concern of Tanabe’s critique of Nishida wasthat, insofar as absolute nothingness is made into an unchanging basisor enveloping “place” of a system of reality, and insofaras it is seen as transcending the dialectical interactions amongbeings, then such a philosophy ends up falling back into a metaphysicsof being after all. In order to radically think the idea of absolutenothingness, Tanabe argues, we must conceive of it rather in terms of“absolute mediation” or “absolute dialectic.”Absolute nothingness must be thought, not as an enveloping place, butas the very movement of “absolute negation,” a movementwhich originates in the self-negation of absolute nothingness itself.Tanabe writes: “Since the absolute, as nothingness, must act asan absolute mediating force, it presupposes relative being as itsmedium. In contrast with the doctrine of the creation of the worldmaintained by the theist, or the theory of emanation propounded by thepantheist, [for] historical thinking the absolute and the relative,nothingness and being, are interrelated each with the other asindispensable elements of absolute mediation” (Tanabe 2000, 27;Tanabe 1986, 23).

In this later text,Philosophy as Metanoetics, written aroundthe same time as Nishida was elaborating his own kenotic idea of aself-negating absolute nothingness, Tanabe, in a putative critique ofNishida, also writes: “Because the absolute subject ofOther-power is absolute nothingness … it must be thoroughlymediated by the relative self. In contrast to a mere‘self-identity of absolute contradictories’, only thatwhich entails the absolute existential mediation of the death andresurrection of the self can be called absolute nothingness”(Tanabe 2000, 13; Tanabe 1986, 8). Tanabe’s passing dismissal ofNishida’s terminology here is hardly convincing, since in factNishida too speaks of the absolute self-negation of absolutenothingness and of the existential death and resurrection of thefinite self. In any case, Tanabe’s philosophy as the “wayof metanoetics” (zangedō) entails a ceaselessmovement of what he calls “absolute critique,” where theself-power of finite reason again and again runs up againstantinomies, and is reborn only by way of absolute nothingness as whathe calls, in the parlance of Shinran’s Shin Buddhism, theworkings of Other-power (tariki).

As Nishitani and others have pointed out (see NKC IX, 212ff.;Nishitani 1991, 161ff.), Tanabe’s criticisms often fail to dojustice to Nishida’s thought, and we should not forget theimpetuses Tanabe acknowledges having received from his erstwhilementor. Yet, on the other hand, his criticisms were not without theirpoint, and his provocations certainly did serve as counter-impetusesthat spurred Nishida on, not just to clarify, but also to furtherdevelop his philosophy of absolute nothingness (see Sugimoto 2011;Kopf 2004). No doubt in large part due to the persistent attentiongiven by Tanabe’s “logic of the specific” to thehistorical world, to the irrational element of the specific throughwhich the individual and the universal must be mediated, and to thedialectical relations between finite beings, Nishida gradually movedtoward a much more dynamic conception of absolute nothingness as theself-determination of the dialectical world, a self-determinationwhich takes place only by way of the mutual interactions betweenindividual persons, things, and their social-historical contexts.

3.5 Nishitani’s Three-field Topology: Being, Nihility, and Emptiness

In the tradition of the Kyoto School, Tanabe’s role has oftenbeen seen, justly or unjustly, as more of a dialectical counterpointthan an independent alternative to Nishida. Following the lead ofNishida’s own creative appropriation of Tanabe’s critiqueof his middle-period philosophy of place, many subsequent Kyoto Schoolfigures have tended to incorporate Tanabe’s dialectical thinkinginto, rather than seeing it as a replacement for, Nishida’stopological thinking of absolute nothingness. To be sure, suchthinkers as Takeuchi Yoshinori and Hase Shōtō wereprofoundly influenced by Tanabe who, inspired by Shin Buddhism,understands absolute nothingness in terms of the absolute mediation ofOther-power. Yet many others received their primary impetus fromNishida and from Zen. Although Nishida’s conception of a kenoticand dialectical self-determination of the place of absolutenothingness was inspired by Shin Buddhism and Christianity as well asZen Buddhism, later Kyoto philosophers such as Nishitani, Abe, andUeda relates their thought primarily to Zen even as they alsocontinued to engage in dialogue with Shin Buddhism and Christiantheology and mysticism.

Tanabe’s method of thinking, as we have seen, was intenselydialectical, a method he developed through his prolonged study ofHegel. Nishitani, on the other hand, began his study of Westernthought by focusing on Bergson, Schelling, Nietzsche and the Germanmystics. Between 1937 and 1939 Nishitani studied with Heidegger, whowas at the time beginning to grapple with the question of nihilism,and whose phenomenology had developed into a thinking of the“clearing of being” or what he would later characterize asa “topology of being” (Heidegger 1975, Vol. 15, 335).Influenced no doubt in part by his contact with Heidegger (andevidently in turn influencing Heidegger, who frequently invited him tohis house to learn about Zen), Nishitani developed, in his own highlyoriginal manner, existential and phenomenological aspects ofNishida’s topology of absolute nothingness.

The problem of nihilism gradually became a major focus ofNishitani’s personal and scholarly attention. Nishitaniunderstood the historical phenomenon of nihilism as a vacuousnothingness that assaults the modern world, a world bereft of itsethical and religious moorings. Despite Nishitani’s appreciationof the profundity of his mentor Nishida’s philosophy, he thoughtit failed to adequately address this crucial modern problem (see Ueda2011a). According to Nishitani, Nishida’s philosophy, whether itbe his early thought of “pure experience” or his laternotion of “action-intuition,” begins already from astandpoint where the dualistic consciousness of the ego has alreadybeen broken though (see NKC IX 247–48; Nishitani 1991,184–85). For his part, Nishitani was concerned with the questionof how to think the topological pathway leading to such a breakthroughto non-duality.

The question of how to open up an existential path to the place ofabsolute nothingness was particularly acute given the prevalence ofthe pendulum swing between two extremes endemic to modernity: on theone hand, an extreme reification of the subjective ego together with acorresponding objectification and technological manipulation ofthings; and, on the other hand, a reactive nihilism which threatens tonullify the very reality of both the self and things. For Nishitani,humanism and science were incapable of overcoming this dilemma ofreification vs. nullification; in fact, they had helped create it. Inan age of secular egoism and anti-religious nihilism, how could anexperience of the place of absolute nothingness take place?

To begin with, Nishitani says we must heed the call ofNietzsche’s madman and cease fleeing from the experience ofnihilism. God as the highest being is dead, and it remains an openquestion whether he can be reborn as absolute nothingness. In anycase, the venture of Nishitani’s philosophy of Zen is moreconcerned with the existential imperative of letting go of attachmentsthan it is with immediately grasping hold of a new concept for God. Inorder to finally free humans from their egoistic obsessions andmanipulative objectifications in the dualistic “field of[reified] being and [dualistic] consciousness,” Nishitani arguedfor the necessity of first boldly stepping back into the “fieldof nihility.”

Yet the real breakthrough to a non-dualistic reaffirmation of self andworld only occurs when the relative nothingness of nihility is in turnbroken through to a genuine experience of absolute nothingness or trueemptiness on the “field of emptiness.” Nishitani thusexplained the personal encounter with nihilism as an experience of theextreme relative nothingness of “nihility” or“vacuous nothingness” (kyomu), and for him thecentral task of “overcoming nihilism by way of passing throughnihilism” entailed transgressing beneath (i.e.,“trans-descending”) the “field of nihility” tothe “field of emptiness” (see NKC X, 109 and 122ff.;Nishitani 1986, 97 and 108ff.).^[15] As mentioned earlier (subsection 3.2), the “field ofemptiness” is not a vacuum of relative nothingness that assaultsbeings from without; it is an open clearing wherein beings are neithernullified nor reified but rather let be in the mutual freedom of theircoming to be and passing away in unobstructed interrelation with oneanother. It is also the place in which a genuine interpersonalencounter can take place (Nishitani 2004; Davis 2017).

While Nishitani’s “field of emptiness” (kūnoba) corresponds in many respects to what Nishidacalls the “place of absolute nothingness” (zettai-muno basho), Nishitani takes the peculiar problems that beset themodern secular and technological world, as well as postmoderncritiques of metaphysics and subjectivity (especially those ofNietzsche and Heidegger), far more seriously than did Nishida.Nishitani also connects his thought much more explicitly with thetradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism than did Nishida, writing on,and writing from, what he calls the “standpoint of Zen”(see NKC XI; and Nishitani 2009).

3.6 Ueda’s Two-layered World: Linguistic Horizons within the Empty-Expanse

Ueda Shizuteru was a student of Nishitani’s who became arenowned Eckhart scholar as well as a scholar and lay master of Zen(see Müller et al. 2022). For decades he was also at the centerof the revival of Nishida studies that began in the 1980s. LikeNishitani, Ueda explicitly orients himself to and from the standpointof Zen and takes a topological, phenomenological, and existentialapproach to the idea of absolute nothingness (Ueda 2011c). Followingin the tradition of the Kyoto School’s dialogue with Westernphilosophers, in one of his influential works Ueda engages the work ofHusserl, Heidegger and other phenomenologists to articulate areligiously charged philosophy of what he calls “twofoldbeing-in-the-world” (nijūsekainaisonzai) (USS IX;see also Döll 2011, 2020; Krummel 2022).

While the first layer in which the self is located is the historicalhorizon of the everyday life-world, this horizon itself is ultimatelyfound to rest in an absolutely “empty-expanse,” a place ofabsolute nothingness that both enfolds the everyday world as well asgrounds the radical freedom of the individual “self-negatingself” (see USS IX, 22–24 and 324ff.). Ueda finds this ideaof returning, by way of absolute self-negation, to a primordialwellspring of existence that is “empty and free”(ledig und frei) in Meister Eckhart, and, in an even morerarified form, in Zen Buddhism (see Davis 2008a). It is from thelatter that he borrows the term “empty-expanse”(kokū) as a topological expression forśūnyatā.

For Ueda, then, the two-layered-world is inhabited by atwo-layered-self. This is how Ueda understands what Nishitani referredto as a “self that is not a self.” The self, asbeing-in-the-world, ultimately realizes itself in a moment of absoluteself-negation where it dies to itself and stands as a“non-ego” or “hollow-being” in the“hollow-expanse” which envelops the horizonal life-world.The true self, as a self that becomes itself by passing through theabsolute negation of its ego, is thus a two-layeredbeing-in-and-beyond-the-world; it stands in the horizon of the worldwhich, in turn, rests in the empty-expanse of absolutenothingness.

This empty- or hollow-expanse is, to be sure, beyond conceptualunderstanding, insofar as concepts have as their medium the world oflanguage and its determinations of meaning. Nevertheless, what liesbeyond the reach of language is not to be understood as an ineffablemystical realm to which one ascends and remains, but rather is to beexperienced in extreme moments from the limits of language as thatwhich at once tears through and mends, exceeds and encompasses,transcends and transforms our linguistic horizons of intelligibility.Insofar as we do not close in on ourselves and rigidify our linguisticdelimitations of the world, we can open ourselves up to the silence ofthis surrounding expanse of unlimited openness, which in turn allowsus to speak and act more freely and responsibly in our worlds oflinguistic significance (see Ueda 2011b).

3.7 The “Self that is not a Self” and the Nothingness of Radical Subjectivity

Ueda argues that both the ego of the Cartesiancogito, aswell as the non-ego (Sanskrit:anātman; Japanese:muga) of Buddhism, must ultimately be comprehended on thebasis of an understanding of the self as a repeatedmovementthrough a radical self-negation to a genuine self-affirmation.Ueda’s formula for this movement is: “I, not being I, amI.” Even when one says “I am I,” if we listenclosely there is a pause, a breath, between the first and the second“I.” Precisely that opening—which necessarily occursas a moment in the ceaseless movement by which the identity of theself is constituted—is the “ecstatic space” whereinan open encounter with others is possible.

A genuine encounter with another person no longer takes place simplywithin my, or your, or even our world-horizon. Ueda uses the greetingof the bow as a concrete example to illustrate how mutualself-negation—the emptying of all ego-centered presumptions andagendas—returns us to a communal place where we, paradoxically,share “nothing” in common. “There, by way of makingoneself into a nothingness, one returns into the infinite depths ofthat ‘between’ where there is neither an I nor a you.… Then, when we rise again so as to come back to life anew andface one another, this becomes a matter of, as Dōgen puts it:thus am I; thus are you” (Ueda 1991, 67; see USS X, 107ff.).Open to others, and to the empty-expanse in which together we dwell, Iam I (USS X, 23–24).

Nishitani had earlier used the expression “the self that is nota self” to characterize the shared endeavor of Nishida andTanabe as that of thinking “a ‘self that is not aself’ turning on the axis of absolute nothingness” (NKCIX, 238; Nishitani 1991, 175). The idea of the true self as a“self that is not a self” expresses an essential aspect ofwhat Nishida and other Kyoto School thinkers call—following D.T. Suzuki, who in turn gleaned the idea from theDiamondSutra—the “logic ofsoku-hi,” a logicof “is and is not” or affirmation by way of negation (seeNKZ XI, 398–99; Nishida 1987, 70; Akizuki 1996, 109–152;Yusa 2019). Nishida strikingly claims that the self is, at bottom, aself-contradiction, and that it can truly be itself only in theprocess of thoroughly negating and thus opening itself (NKZ VI, 290,377–78, 401). The self finds its most originary freedom, and itsmost open engagement with others, through a radical self-negationwhich returns it, not to a higher Will or encompassing Being, but tokenotically self-negating absolute nothingness that, in turn, findsexpression only in the interaction of truly self-determiningindividuals. For Nishida, the true individual is an interpersonalself-determining focal point of the self-determination of absolutenothingness, in other words, an interactive and creative element of acreative world (see NKZ VIII, 343ff.).

Nishitani’s first book,The Philosophy of RadicalSubjectivity, sought a more originary conception of the humansubject than had been developed in modern Western philosophy. Ingeneral, for Nishitani, modern “subjectivity” remainsbound by a reifying attachment to things and ultimately to the ego.Nishitani did recognized certain advances in the direction of a truly“radical subjectivity” in modern ideas such as that ofindividual “autonomy.” For example, the Kantian idea ofthe ethical “person,” which opens itself to a universalstandpoint by way of a negation of the self-will of the ego, suggestedfor Nishitani a “kind of standpoint of‘non-ego’” (see NKC I, 60). However, the autonomy ofthe Kantian ethical subject can also be seen as asserting a sublatedform of self-will, namely in its will to form as well as to conform tothe universal. Nishitani finds profounder intimations of a trulyradical subjectivity in both Meister Eckhart’s mystical theologyand Nietzsche’s radical atheism, each of which in its own waygoes beyond, or digs beneath, attachments to and sublations of egoity.Ultimately Nishitani returns to the language of Zen Buddhism toexpress his conception of the “radical subjectivity of non-ego[muga]” as a “subjective nothingness”(shutai-teki mu) (NKC I, 88).

This radical subjective nothingness is not to be confused with therelative nothingness of a “subjective consciousness” whichsets itself over against, and objectifies, the world. As withZen’s kōan of nothingness (mu), a realization ofthe radical subjectivity of non-ego (mu-ga) entails breakingthrough the dualistic barrier that artificially separates self andworld. For Nishitani, this breakthrough is expressed as “theself-awareness of the bottom dropping out” (NKC I, iii). It is aradical return, or “trans-descendence,” to “thebackground of our own selves,” to theUngrund on whichwe originally possess “not a single thing”(mu-ichi-motsu) (NKC XI, 243).

With Nishitani’s conception of a radical “subjectivenothingness,” understood as a “standpoint ofemptiness” realized on the “field of emptiness,” wefind an explicit appropriation of both the psychological and themeontological (ormu-logical) paradigms of nothingness foundin the traditions of East Asia. The notions of non-ego (muga)and “no-mind” or “mind of nothingness”(mushin) are thought in terms of the spontaneous openness ofthe heart-mind that stands within the field of emptiness, an openplace which grants beings the free space needed for their unobstructed(muge) interactivity.

As we have seen, Nishida, Nishitani, and Ueda each conceived ofabsolute nothingness in both an existential and a topological sense.Although Tanabe eschewed the topological conception of absolutenothingness, nevertheless, by understanding both the relative self andthe absolute in terms of a ceaseless movement of affirmation by way ofradical negation, he too, in his own way, philosophically appropriatedthe East Asian paradigms of psychological and meontologicalnothingness.

4. Political Ventures and Misadventures

It should be clear by this point that the philosophical stakesinvolved in the Kyoto School’s thought are high—indeedthey invite us to rethink many of our most basic concepts and ways ofexperiencing the world and ourselves. For this very reason KyotoSchool thinkers promise to be especially valuable partners in anypost-Eurocentric forum of philosophical dialogue. Genuine philosophy,after all, thrives on the opportunity to call its fundamentalpresuppositions into question, even if stubbornly Eurocentricphilosophers fail to heed this crucial calling of their discipline.Unfortunately, the world of politics tends to be a far lessself-critical and thus less genuinely dialogical forum ofintercultural relations. The history of Western imperial domination ofAsia is well documented (see Panikkar 1969), and post-colonialcritique of Western imperialism plays a prominent role in contemporaryacademia. At the same time, in the field of East Asian studies, KyotoSchool thinkers are frequently accused of contributing to thepolitical ideology of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and early1940s. However, we need to carefully examine the sense in which andthe extent to which the political thought of the Kyoto School isdeserving of its tainted reputation in this regard.

4.1 The Razor’s Edge of “Cooperative Resistance”

The political ventures and misadventures of philosophers—fromSocrates and Plato to Marx and Heidegger in the West, and fromConfucius and Hanfeizi to Gandhi and Nishida in theEast—represent an often enduring though hardly always endearingaspect of their legacies. Relating the “ideal” world ofphilosophy to the “real” world of political action is aperilous, if arguably obligatory, undertaking.

The pitfalls of political intervention are particularly deep whenphilosophers find themselves in a nation headed down a road towardinjustice and disaster. What is a philosopher to do in such asituation? Barring straightforward complicity, there appear to bethree choices: withdraw intoreclusion, stand up in overtresistance, or attempt to negotiate a reorientation by meansofimmanent critique orcooperative correction.While many intellectuals in wartime Japan took the first course, somecourageous Leftists braved the second course. Both Tosaka Jun and MikiKiyoshi, the key figures of what is sometimes called the “leftwing of the Kyoto School,” died in prison in 1945 as a result oftheir intellectual resistance. The majority of the Kyoto Schoolthinkers, however, including Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, took thethird course of action.

In retrospect Nishitani wrote: “My attempt was, on the one hand,to explain where Japan was situated within the world to thoseintellectuals remaining on the sidelines [of politics]; and, on theother hand, with respect to the extremely nationalistic thought thatwas becoming increasingly prevalent at the time, I attempted fromwithin to open up a path for overcoming this extremenationalism” (NKC IV, 384). Rather than either stand up and die,or sit out and wait, Nishitani and other members of the Kyoto Schoolattempted to walk the razor’s edge of what ŌhashiRyōsuke has called “anti-establishment cooperation”or “cooperative resistance” (hantaiseitekikyōryoku) (see Ōhashi 2001, 20ff.).

To be sure, the question of how successfully the Kyoto School managedto carry out this “cooperative resistance” (and thequestion of whether they cooperated more than resisted) is debatable,especially given the fact that they did not succeed in altering thedisastrous orientation of the regime. Their intentions of cooperativeresistance notwithstanding, the fact is that their political writingswere more or less successfully co-opted by the extreme nationalismthat they were more or less trying to reorient or overcome fromwithin. Nevertheless, we must take care to separate their ideals fromthe reality they were attempting to influence, and bear in mind theconstraints of their chosen path of immanent critique.

Whatever the political failings of the Kyoto School thinkers may be,it is clear that certain crudely one-sided condemnations are at leastas simplistic and misleading as are the occasional attempts ofoverzealous acolytes to whitewash everything they ever said or wrote.It is, for example, highly misleading to sum up the KyotoSchool’s various philosophies of history as “a thinlydisguised justification … for Japanese aggression andcontinuing imperialism,” or to claim that “no group helpeddefend the state more consistently and enthusiastically … andnone came closer … to defining the philosophic contours ofJapanese fascism” (Najita & Harootunian 1998, 238–39;for a severe critique of such polemical claims, see Parkes 1997 and2011). The latter dishonor, namely that of attempting to givequasi-philosophical expression to Japanese fascism, surely goes to theproponents of “Imperial Way Philosophy,” who in factharshly attacked the “world-historical philosophy” of theKyoto School for being insufficiently Japan-centric (see Ōhashi2001, 71–72).

Judicious critics of the wartime political writings of the KyotoSchool must surely try to steer a middle course between and beyondwhat James Heisig aptly calls the “side-steppers and theside-swipers” (see Heisig 1990, 14). With this balance in mind,in the following sections let me highlight some of the key points andepisodes of the Kyoto School’s wartime political ventures andmisadventures.

4.2 Nishida’s Reluctant “War over Words” and his Ambivalent Universalism

In 1943 Yatsugi Kazuo, a member of the Center for National Strategy,approached Nishida and asked him to contribute a scholarly account ofJapan’s role in East Asia, that is, to help provide a rationalefor the creation of the so-called “Greater East AsiaCo-Prosperity Sphere.” Nishida is said to have burst out inanger, shouting something like: “What on earth do governmentofficials and militarists think these days, that scholars are likeartisans from whom they can order something to be tailor made?”And yet Yatsugi apparently countered to the effect that not onlyprominent Japanese scholars, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, but alsoWestern philosophers, such as Kant and Adam Smith, did not neglect toapply their theoretical insights to practical social and politicalcircumstances (see Ōhashi 2001, 47). In the end Nishida did agreeto write an essay, “Principles for a New World Order” (NKZXII, 426–434; see Arisaka 1996), though his original text wasedited and “simplified” by a sociologist serving as ago-between. Nishida was even then disappointed that his attempt to“bring out the dimension of universality present in the Japanesespirit” seemed to have had no effect on Prime MinisterTōjō Hideki and his bellicose regime (see Yusa 1994,124).

From today’s vantage point, Nishida’s political writingsappear highly ambivalent. On the one hand, his resistance to fascismand totalitarianism is unmistakable. Indeed it comes as no surprisethat he was in danger of being arrested—and apparently only hispublic stature and the fact that he had influential sympathizerswithin the moderate ranks of the government kept this fromhappening—when one reads the warning given in his 1941 speechdelivered directly to the emperor: “Any totalitarian system thatnegates outright the role of the individual is but ananachronism” (NKZ XII, 271; see Yusa 1994, 111). Even in hismost compromised text, “Principles for a New World Order,”Nishida urgently claims that the “co-prosperity sphere”mustnot entail either ethnocentrism, expansionism,imperialism, colonialism, or totalitarianism (see NKZ XII,432–33). Elsewhere Nishida made clear that his vision was of amulticultural world wherein neither the West would subsume the Eastnor vice versa (NKZ XIV, 404–5), wherein “variouscultures, while maintaining their own individual standpoints, woulddevelop themselves through the mediation of the world” (NKZ VII,452–53).

On the other hand, Nishida did think that nations—and inparticular the Japanese nation with the emperor at its spiritualcenter—had a special role to play in the historical formation ofthis truly “worldly world” (sekai-teki sekai).Moreover, in his writings he did affirmatively employ such problematicphrases as “all the world under one roof”(hakkō-ichiu) and the “imperial way”(kōdō). While there is certainly room for criticismhere in light (and hindsight) of the historical record ofJapan’s political and cultural “leadership” (infact, domination) of East Asia at this time, the issue of how tocritically evaluate Nishida’s theoretical interventions iscomplicated by the hermeneutical fact that today we read suchcatchwords and phrases through the semantic lenses of the right wingideologues who in the end succeeded in carving their definitions intothe annals of history. It must be kept in mind that, at the time, theprecise meaning of these phrases was still in dispute. Ueda Shizuteruhas aptly spoken of Nishida’s “tug-of-war overmeaning,” a struggle which he ultimately lost (Ueda 1994, 97;also see Goto-Jones 2005). Yusa Michiko writes in this regard:“Rather than invent a new vocabulary that would rise above thefray, [Nishida] took up the jargon and slogans of the day and soughtto redeem them from their petty provincialism by opening them up to amore universal perspective” (Yusa 1994, 131).

Nevertheless, even after we have carried out a hermeneuticallysensitive reconstruction of the context, and after we have finishedreading between and behind the lines of his political texts, thereundoubtedly remain a number of problematic aspects of Nishida’spolitical thought, especially his idealistic view of the emperorsystem and Japan’s purported world-historical calling to take ona leadership role in the formation of an East Asia world (see Davis2006, 227–38; Osaki 2021, 117–256; Arisaka 2020).Affirming the central place of the emperor in Japan as “anidentity of contradictions,” Nishida cryptically writes:“Our [i.e., Japan’s] national polity is not simply atotalitarianism. The Imperial House is the beginning and the end ofour world, as the absolute present that embraces past andfuture” (NKZ XII, 430).^[16] And with regard to the central role of Japan in East Asia, he claimsthat “in order to build a particular world, a central figurethat carries the burden of the project is necessary. In East Asiatoday there is no other but Japan” (NKZ XII, 429; Arisaka 1996,102).

Critics may argue that Nishida’s universalism is still plaguedby an exemplary particularism,^[17] and that he succeeds in questioning Eurocentrism only by way ofshifting the locus of the concrete universal to Japan. Yoko Arisakaargues that “the chief claim of the defenders—thatNishida’s philosophical ‘universalism’ isincompatible with nationalist ideology—fails becauseuniversalist discourse was used both as a tool of liberation andoppression in Japan’s case” (Arisaka 1999, 242). Arisakacritically adds, however, that “the idea that a particularnation may be the bearer of a universal principle, such as freedom ordemocracy, and that, therefore, its actions in history serve a higherend, should be familiar from recent American experience” (ibid.,244; also see Maraldo 1994, 355).

To be fair to Nishida, we should confess that we today have yet tosolve the post-Enlightenment aporia of how to reconcile universalhumanism with cultural particularity (a debate we inherit in part fromthe Kant-Herder controversy). In other words, the question remains ofhow to configure a multicultural world of dialogue instead of eitheran imperialistic monoculture or a clash of civilizations. In oursearch for an answer to this urgent question, we may still have muchyet to learn from a critical appropriation of Nishida’s thought(see Feenberg 1995; Maraldo 1995; Elberfeld 1999; Kopf 2011; Davis2013a; Krummel 2014; and Goto-Jones 2002, 2005, 2008, 2009).

4.3 Controversial Wartime Symposia, and Nishitani’s Nation of Non-Ego

Nishida’s ambivalent political stance—between apost-imperialistic vision of a multicultural new world order on theone hand and an assertion of Japan’s destined world-historicalrole in realizing this vision on the other—was carried forthinto even more controversial political engagements by his studentsNishitani Keiji, Kōyama Iwao, Kōsaka Masaaki, SuzukiShigetaka, and to a lesser extent Shimomura Toratarō. Asmentioned in subsection 2.1, a significant, if stigmatizing, stage inthe formation of the identity of the Kyoto School involved theparticipation of several of its members in two wartime symposia, theLiterary World’s 1942 symposium on “OvercomingModernity” (reprinted in Kawakami & Takeuchi 1979; Englishtranslation in Calichman 2008) and the 1941–43 roundtablediscussions published serially in the journalChūōkōron and later as a monograph,TheStandpoint of World History and Japan (Kōsaka et al 1943;English translation in Williams 2014).

TheOvercoming Modernity symposium has been aptlycharacterized as “a premature challenge to the questions thathave yet to be answered today” (Minamoto 1994, 200). Even one ofthe most critical accounts of this symposium—an account whichargues that the “only destination reached by the symposium onovercoming modernity was the place where Japan itself had beenovercome by modernity”—concedes that: “It is,nevertheless, important to point out that the very critique mounted byJapanese against modernity prefigured precisely all of those doubtsand obsessions concerning subjectivity, cultural difference, and evenracism that have become the signatures of a Western and putativelyglobal discourse that marks our own historical conjuncturetoday” (Harootunian 2000, 94).

As discussed in subsection 2.2, the Kyoto School participants spoke ofan overcoming of modernity that can take place only by way of passingthrough modernity, a stance that represented acountertendency to the rejection of modern Western rationality by theJapanese Romantic School and other participants in the symposium. Inother words, the Kyoto School participants did not lament themodernization-via-Westernization of Japan, nor did they nostalgicallyplea for a return to a pre-modern age; rather, they called for afurther step forward, but one that would involve creatively recoveringviable elements of Japanese tradition at the same time as building onthe best of what could be learned from the West. This stance shows upclearly in Nishitani’s debate with Kobayashi Hideo, who arguedfor a rejection of modernity and a return to the pre-modern Japaneseclassics (see Kawakami & Takeuchi 1979, 217ff.). Throughout hiscareer Nishitani consistently spoke of overcoming modernity only byway of passing through it, and in this process tradition was to becreatively appropriated, not conservatively retreated to. He wrote:“There is no turning back to the way things were. … Ourtradition must be appropriated from the direction in which we areheading, as a new possibility” (NKC VIII, 183; Nishitani 1990,179); and: “Simply put, the backward looking return to traditionis straightaway to be forward looking” (NKC XIX, 104). Later inlife Nishitani continued to stress that Japanese Buddhistorganizations need to embrace their historicality, which means tomodernize and then postmodernize; only in this way can they continueto play a vital role in Japanese society as well as offer thepossibilities of their ways of life to the wider world (Nishitani2006, 36–38).

In theChūōkōron discussions as well the KyotoSchool resolutely attempted to think from the “standpoint ofworld history.” Problematically, however, they asserted aleadership role for Japan in the present moment, which they viewed asa turning point in world history. If the standpoint of world historyhad indeed been first opened up by both Western universalismand imperialism, they argued, it was the non-Western nationof Japan that was in a unique position to free the world from thechains of the latter in order to realize the true potential of theformer.

In his book written around the same time,View of the World andthe Nation (1941), Nishitani went so far as to claim that thiswas the moment in time when the “focal point of worldhistory” was to become the Japanese nation, just as previouslyworld history had centered on the Roman Empire and then later on theBritish Empire. However, Nishitani argued, unlike the former twoempires Japan’s historical mission was to bring about a worldthat has “no specific center” but rather consists ofvarious “politically and culturally unified spheres” (NKCIV, 298–300). The Japanese nation would be able to carry outthis mission, he crucially adds, only if it incorporates a religiousspirit of self-negation, thus becoming what he calls a “nationof non-ego” rather than a self-centered aggressive empire (NKCIV, 285–86). In this idealistic vision, which unfortunately hadlittle to do with the cruel realities of Japanese expansionism, Japanwas to be an altogether new kind of empire, a self-negating andcompassionate one that would help other nations to cooperatively formtheir own identities, rather than an aggressive and“imperialistic” one that would remold others into inferiorreplicas of itself. (It remains for us to ask how best to characterizetoday’s political superpowers and economic empires, and how torelate their ideologies to their realities.)

If there is a lasting merit to Nishitani’s wartime politicalwritings and theChūōkōron discussions, itmight be found in part in their critique of the contradictions andhypocrisies of Western imperialism (see, for example, Kōsaka etal. 1943, 348ff.), together with their insistence that Japan’s“leading role” in Asia not become that of an imperialistor colonizer (see ibid., 204–5; also see Nishitani’s“My View of ‘Overcoming Modernity’,” reprintedin Kawakami & Takeuchi 1979, 32). The lasting infamy of theChūōkōron discussions, on the other hand, canbe found not only in their idealistic political naïveté,but also in their idealization and even whitewashing of politicalrealities (such as Japanese aggression in China and other parts ofAsia), as well as in such disturbing specific suggestions as that of“Japanizing” or “half-Japanizing” some of the“more superior” ethnic groups in Asia in order to assistin instituting the Japanese led “Co-Prosperity Sphere”(Kōsaka et al. 1943, 262–63, 337).

4.4 The “Ōshima Memos”: Record of a Think Tank for Navy Moderates

It is now evident that the political activities of the Kyoto Schoolduring the war were even more involved—and even more filled withambiguity—than was previously thought. Ōhashi Ryōsukediscovered and published in 2001 some wartime notebooks of ŌshimaYasuma, a student of Tanabe’s (Ōhashi 2001). Thesenotebooks document in detail secret meetings regularly held by KyotoSchool members (including Tanabe and Nishitani but not Nishida) at thebequest of the Japanese navy between February 1942 and just before theend of the war. While on the one hand the existence of these secretmeetings demonstrates an even more intimate connection between theKyoto School and the military than was previously known, on the otherhand it is crucially significant that they were in cooperation with acertain moderate faction of the navy, a faction that was opposed tothe extremists that dominated the army. There had long existed aconsiderable tension between the bellicose arrogance of the army andthe comparatively more moderate and worldly stance of the navy. As thepolitically more powerful army was setting a war-bound course forPearl Harbor, some reticent navy officials evidently petitioned theKyoto School to shed light on the political situation from their“world-historical standpoint,” presumably in order to swaypublic sentiment in a more prudent direction.

In short, the “Ōshima Memos” help reveal how theKyoto School found themselves in a position where they were called onto fight a “war of thought” on two fronts: against Westernimperialism, they felt called on to delineate a world-historical rolefor Japan in freeing itself and other Asian peoples from colonizationand exploitation by the Western empires; and, against Japaneseultra-nationalism, they felt that it was up to them to convince thepublic and the military of the illegitimacy of an imperialisticresponse to Western imperialism.

Ōshima Yasuma had himself published, in 1965, an often overlookedaccount of these meetings under the title, “The Pacific War andthe Kyoto School: On the Political Participation ofIntellectuals” (Ōshima 2000, 274–304; also see Horio1994, 301ff.). In this article, Ōshima summarized the evolvingpurpose of the secret Kyoto School meetings in three stages: In thevery first meetings (which apparently took place prior to thosedocumented in the recovered notebooks), the main theme was “howto avoid the outbreak of war.” Since war in fact broke out verysoon thereafter, the theme quickly switched to “how to bring thewar to a favorable end as soon as possible, by way of rationallypersuading the army.” To do this they reportedly agreed that itwould be necessary to overthrow the cabinet of Tōjō Hideki.However, according to Ōshima, all criticism of Tōjō andthe army had to be expurgated in the discussions published in thepages ofChūōkōron, and the statements of theKyoto School had to be “veiled in two or three layers ofcloth” in order to avoid censorship and persecution. Towards theend of the war, the theme of the secret meetings is said to havechanged to that of “how to handle the postwarsituation.”

Among these three themes only the second is recorded in any detail inthe notebooks that were discovered and published by Ōhashi as the“Ōshima Memos.” Although there may well have beenpreliminary discussions on how to avoid war, more explicit referencesto overthrowing Tōjō Hideki, and more lengthy discussionsabout postwar issues, these do not in fact show up in the recoverednotebooks. Nevertheless, the “Ōshima Memos” do showus a more detailed and uncensored account of the Kyoto School’s“war of thought” on two fronts during a tumultuous andtragic time of what was, in fact, Japan’s imperialistic responseto Western imperialism.

4.5 After the War: Tanabe’s Metanoetic Turn and Nishitani’s Other Cheek

Their ambivalent wartime stance between supporting the nationalisticideology and subjecting it to critique from a pluralistic and globalperspective—in other words, their attempt to walk arazor’s edge of “cooperativeresistance”—ironically earned the Kyoto School a suspectreputation in Japanbothbefore and after the end ofthe war. As Nishitani confided later to a student: “During thewar we were struck on the cheek from the right; after the war we werestruck on the cheek from the left.”

During the war, the stance of the Kyoto School was considered toocosmopolitan and insufficiently nationalistic, even anti-war. Thediscussions published inThe Standpoint of World History andJapan were branded by the Imperial Way ideologues as“ivory-tower speculations that risked reducing the Empire tosimply one more category of world history,” and furtherprintings of the book were reportedly stopped by the governmentcensors (see Horio 1994, 291). After the war, the Kyoto School’sidealistic attempts to impart meaning and direction to Japan’s“world historical mission” were seen—especially byliberals and leftists that had at long last been freed from repressionand persecution—as support for itsde factomilitaristic fascism. Nishitani and others were purged for severalyears from their university positions. Even when they were laterreinstated, the stigma of the Kyoto School as having “cooperatedin the war” was hardly erased. Their political thought inparticular was dismissedin toto, and it was not untildecades later that the topic of “overcoming modernity” wasonce again given serious critical attention (see Kawakami &Takeuchi 1979; Hiromatsu 1989; and Ōhashi 1992, 143ff.).

The Kyoto School thinkers rarely responded directly to their criticsafter the war, and we can only speculate on the reasons for this (seeHorio 1994, 300). They accepted suspension from their posts withoutcomment or complaint, and continued on with their philosophizing,albeit without the overtly political element of their thought.Nishitani, for example, came into his own as a philosopher of religionin the postwar era. He continued to philosophically develop Easternideas, those of Zen Buddhism in particular, in dialogue with medievalChristian mysticism as well as postmodern existentialism andphenomenology and in response to what he saw as the central problem ofmodernity, namely, nihilism. In his mature attempts to “overcomenihilism by way of passing through nihilism” (NKC XX, 192), wefind a significant thread of continuity with his pre-war and wartimeattempts to overcome (Western) modernity by way of passing through it.But it is nevertheless possible to mark a crucial and self-critical“turn” in his thinking with regard to the question of thepolitical role—or, as it turns out, the lack of one—to beplayed by the Japanese state in this overcoming of modernity andnihilism by way of passing through them (see Davis 2008b).

Tanabe got a head start on the postwar critics and toward the end ofthe war began thinking his way through a radical crisis ofself-critique. Hardly less controversial than the roundtablediscussions of the younger members of the Kyoto School have beenTanabe’s application—or misapplication—of his“logic of the specific” to a discourse on the legitimacyof the self-assertion of the Japanese nation-state as an archetype forothers. The “logic of the specific” had originally beenconceived, in critique of Bergson and Nishida, as a reappraisal of thelogical and ethical role that ethnic specificity plays in mediatingthe particular individual and universal humanity. AdaptingHegel’s political philosophy, Tanabe thought that thenation-state could both embody the ethnic specificity of the peopleand raise it out of its inherent irrationality. As a concreteuniversal, the nation-state was, if not the absolute itself, in somesense the dialectical manifestation of the absolute on earth.

The critical lapse came when Tanabe irrationally proposed that the“relative absolute” of the Japanese nation-state couldserve as a kind of “supreme archetype” for other nations(see THZ VI, 232–33). James Heisig writes that, in so doing,Tanabe “took a step that was fatal but really unnecessary, ifnot outright inconsistent with the principles of his logic….According to his own logic, the community of the human race is to bemade up of a community of nations that have found a way to transcendtheir specificity without transcending time and culture. Each nationmay come about as an instance of the generic universal, but nothing inthe logic of the specific allows any one instance to become anarchetype for the others. It is as if Tanabe were quoting himself outof context” (Heisig 2001, 136–37; also see Heisig1994).

Tanabe finally came to his senses and, in a striking metanoetic turn,renounced these political assertions and dove into the philosophy ofreligion.Philosophy as Metanoetics, the first parts of whichwere delivered as lectures in 1944 before the end of the war, wascomposed not only as a personal self-critique, but also as a call toself-critique on the part of the entire nation, and indeed ultimatelyas a call for an “absolute critique” of human rationalityas such (see the Preface to THZ X; Tanabe 1986). It is the last ofthese that is the central theme of the book: the idea that the humanreason is inevitably driven to antinomies through which it mustrepeatedly die to its own self-power in order to be reborn againthrough the workings of an Other-power. It is nevertheless true that“one looks through that work in vain for any admission of guiltfor particular actions or statements that he had made” (Heisig2001, 151). In any case, Tanabe’s public (if vague) repentancewas no more successful than the silence of other Kyoto School thinkersin convincing the majority of postwar Japanese academics to refrainfrom throwing the baby of their philosophical insights out with thebathwater of their political misadventures.

Only in the past few decades has the reputation of the Kyoto Schoolbeen significantly rehabilitated in Japan, due in part to a generalrecovery of the nation from immersion in the march of postwar economicprogress and evasion of unresolved cultural aporias, in part to ageneral reaffirmation of cultural identity (including all too often apendulum swing back to ethnocentric reassertions of “Japaneseuniqueness”), and in part to the positive attention the Schoolhas received from scholars in the West. It is worthwhile noting, asFujita Masakatsu does in his preface toThe Philosophy of theKyoto School, that prior to 2001 surprisingly few articles orbooks had appeared in Japan with a thematic focus on the “KyotoSchool” as such, even though hundreds of studies had treated“Nishida Philosophy.” Yet there are promising signs thatwe are entering a new academic era in which critical yet appreciativework on the Kyoto School can be cooperatively undertaken in Japan, inthe West, and recently even in other parts of East Asia (see Fujita etal. 2003; Heisig 2004;Synthesis Philosophica 2004; Fujita& Davis 2005; Hori & Curley 2008; Heisig & Uehara 2008;Lam & Cheung 2009; Bouso & Heisig 2009; Davis, Schroeder,& Wirth 2011; Elberfeld & Arisaka 2014; Yusa 2017; Davis2020a; Liao et al. 2022).

Despite the persistence of a faction of polemical intellectualhistorians, many philosophers worldwide today view the politicalmisadventures of the Kyoto School as lamentable footnotes to the maintext of their laudable philosophical endeavors. While research intotheir political thought—regarding what it tried to say then andregarding what it can or cannot help us to think now—remainsnecessary and important, at the end of the day many are likely toagree with James Heisig when he emphatically writes: “Onehas … to ignore the greatest bulk of the writings of thesethinkers to arrive at the conclusion that anything approaching orsupporting the imperialistic ideology of wartime Japan belongs to thefundamental inspiration of their thought” (Heisig 2001, 6).The philosophical and cross-cultural legacy of the Kyoto School lieselsewhere.

5. The Cross-Cultural Legacy of the Kyoto School

5.1 Between and Beyond East and West

In this concluding section, let us return to the question of thelegacy of the Kyoto School with regard to comparative orcross-cultural philosophy. Today many scholars, in Japan as well as inWestern countries, are calling this “world philosophy”(Itō et al. 2020), a term I take to mean any approach tophilosophy that does not restrict its purview and the sources on whichit draws to any one tradition, such as the tradition of Westernphilosophy. As mentioned at the outset, the Kyoto School thinkers wereall dedicated scholars of various fields and figures of Westernphilosophy; and yet, at the same time, they kept one foot firmly intouch with their native East Asian traditions, those ofMahāyāna Buddhism in particular. This bipedal stance placedthem in an extraordinary position between “East and West”and allowed them to go beyond this binary abstraction.

It is important to bear in mind that the philosophies of the KyotoSchool do not simply drift impartially on the seas of academiccomparison, nor do the Kyoto School philosophers see themselvesprimarily as mediators of interreligious dialogue. As existentiallyengaged cross-cultural philosophers, they are above all seekers aftertruth, and they argue passionately for the validity of seeing the selfand the world in certain ways. As we have seen, while each member ofthe Kyoto School has his own vision of the truth, they share (anddebate) certain fundamental ideas, such as one or another version ofthe core notion of absolute nothingness and the idea of coming to agenuine self-awareness by way of emptying the ego. And however muchtheir texts reflect an intimate dialogue with and criticalappropriation of ideas from Western philosophers, it can be said thatmany of their main theses nevertheless reflect a distinctly East AsianMahāyāna Buddhist and Japanese cultural influence.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that they merely gave modernexpression to traditional East Asian Buddhist thought or Japaneseculture. It would be more accurate to say that their philosophies arecritical andcreative developments of thesetraditions. Even this way of putting it would not do justice to theinfluence exerted on their thought by the Western philosophies withwhich they grappled so intensely. Although Hisamatsu, Nishitani, Abe,Ueda and others do explicitly philosophize from the standpoint of Zen,and although Takeuchi, Hase, and others do so from the standpoint ofShin Buddhism, it would be misleading to simply and withoutqualification characterize either Nishida’s or Tanabe’smultifaceted philosophies as “Eastern” or“Buddhist.”

For example, Tanabe’s early “logic of the specific,”with its concern for the manner in which ethnic specificities mediateparticular individuals and universal humanity, can be read more as acritical appropriation of Hegelian dialectical logic and politicalphilosophy than as any straightforward development of East Asian orBuddhist thought. And in his various later writings on the philosophyof religion, Tanabe wanders between a preference for Shin Buddhism,Christianity, and finally Zen Buddhism (see Himi 1990, 129–341).With regard to Nishida, an acute concern with questions ofepistemology, logic, individual autonomy, creativity, and thehistoricity of the world are essential to his thought in ways that aremore “modern Western” than “traditionalEastern”; and Nishida at times explicitly indicates hisdissatisfaction with what he sees as related weaknesses in traditionalEastern thought.

Of course, one might respond: even if Nishida methodologically takeshis questions from Western philosophy, his responses to thesequestions reflect his East Asian roots at least as much as his Westernstudies. To the Western ontological question of being, his answer is ameontology of absolute nothingness. It might be that his systematicphilosophical articulations of the idea of absolute nothingness owemore to Western than Eastern texts. Yet, he nevertheless understandshimself to have autonomously (i.e., in the process of engaging in anonsectarian philosophical search for truth) given expression to theformless origin that is harbored in the traditions of the East. Inretrospect Nishida wrote: “It is not that I conceived of my wayof thinking in dependence on Mahāyāna Buddhism; and yet ithas come into accord with it” (NKZ XIV, 408). Nishitani couldhave said something similar of his career path, which led him throughthe study of Western philosophy and mysticism and “back”to the standpoint of Zen. Other Kyoto School thinkers took even lessof an Occidental excursion before making what Hölderlin called a“homecoming though the foreign.” And some, like Hisamatsuand Takeuchi, began their scholarly pursuits with a self-understandingas a Zen or Shin Buddhist thinker.

Perhaps most controversial, from a cross-cultural political point ofview, is Nishida’s and other Kyoto School thinkers’suggestion that modern Japanese culture and philosophy in particularhas the potential to make room for the cooperative meeting of thestrengths of East and West (see NKZ XIV, 416–17; also Nishida1964, 365). What are we to make of such bold and sweeping claims?There appear to be two problematical assertions involved: first, anoverly generalized, if not at times hypostatized, split of culturalspheres into “East” and “West”; and second, aclaim that an idea with deeper roots in the so-called East, namelyabsolute nothingness, can be developed so as to provide thephilosophical meeting place of both East and West.^[18]

Even sympathetic readers of the Kyoto School are often highly criticalof this type of comparative thinking in terms of “East”(tōyō) and “West”(seiyō). Although he affirms that “theKyoto-school philosophers give the west a way into the east like noneother,” James Heisig complains that “the East” whichthe Kyoto School sets up over against “the West” issomething of an invention: “At best, it is one constellation ofa heritage too long and too plural to be represented fairly byJapan” (Heisig 2001, 271–72). John Maraldo goes furtherand claims that “the problems Nishida deals with are universal,and his way of dealing with them contrasts as much with other Asianphilosophers as with philosophers of the so-called West”(Maraldo 1995, 196). Is it necessary and are we ready to do as Maraldosuggests, and “put ‘East’ and ‘West’ torest”?

I myself think this complex issue requires a careful and nuancedresponse, in part because “the East” and “theWest” are not in fact isomorphically oppositional terms. While Icertainly agree with the wish to avoid overgeneralizations andpolitically charged polarizations, and while I think the Kyoto Schoolphilosophers do need to be read critically in this regard, I amequally wary of a “globalization of thought” that amountsto a de facto colonization of “non-Western” traditions by“Western” methods and categories of thinking; and simplyrefraining from speaking of “the West” could amount tomerely evading and thus exacerbating this problem. Moreover, while itis indeed important to debunk essentializing, homogenizing, andusually self-aggrandizing conceptions of “the West” or“Western civilization,” a tradition that has in truth beenfar more fruitfully “entanlged” with other traditions andfar more varied that historical narratives centered on a pantheon ofgreat white men would have it (see Elberfeld 2017, 21–127; MacSweeney 2023), the threads of theGreco-Roman-Judeo-Christian-Euro-American traditions and cultures havenevertheless been woven together coherently enough to warrantsometimes and in some contexts speaking of “the West.”

By contrast, “the East” (or “Asia” for thatmatter) is a more irredeemably problematic concept, since it refers toa far less coherently woven set of traditions and cultures, especiallyfrom the perspective of India (which, for example, did not appropriateany Chinese tradition the way China appropriated Buddhism). Some maywant to argue that, from Japan’s perspective, or at least from aJapanese Buddhist perspective that weaves together Indo-Sino-Japanesethreads, it may still make some sense to speak sometimes in terms of“the East.” Yet such usages of this term are not onlyovergeneralizing but also Japan-centric. I therefore think it is bestto restrict our broadest generalizations in this case to “EastAsia” or “Mahāyāna Buddhism” or“Japan,” and to bear in mind that even these expressionsreduce a diverse manifold to a broad concept. The concept of“the East” goes too far, crossing the line from aheuristically useful generalization to a distortingly homogenizingovergeneralization.

To be sure, as Thomas Kasulis reminds us (Kasulis 2018, 36 and 41),generalizations are not universalizations; by definition there areexceptions to any general definition of something. The bigger thegeneralization, the more exceptions will it have. Still, we cannotthink without generalities, and it is no doubt a matter of“practical wisdom” (phronēsis) to know whento construct and when to deconstruct them. Thus, even though we mustbe careful to discern the appropriate contexts in which it makes senseto speak in such vast and abstract terms, it is no more advisable tounequivocally annihilate general concepts such as “theWest” and “East Asia” than it is to narrowly defineor absolutize their relative coherences and mutual differences.

With regard to the hermeneutics of modern cross-cultural thinking, ingeneral I believe that the attempt to obliterate the borders thatseparate cultural spheres is as unrealistic and potentially perniciousas is the attempt to hermetically seal them up. Border lines betweencultures (as between languages) exist, but they are always porous andshifting, and each culture is in itself varied and mobile. Needless tosay, defining, comparing, contrasting, and above all evaluating therelative worth of various traditions, remain undertakings fraught withtheoretical, ethical and political pitfalls. The theoretical andcultural legacies of colonialism and Orientalism remain with us longafter the political empires have receded. Moreover, in thesepostcolonial or decolonial times we all too often experience reactivefabrications of homogeneous cultural identity and assertions ofcounter-superiority, reactions which ironically reinforce the samekind of colonial divisions and obsessions with unadulteratedself-identity that were in part imposed by, or imported from, theworst of the West.

In Japan, certain retroactive constructions of identity and reactivecounter-assertions of superiority have taken the form of what iscallednihonjin-ron: theories of “Japaneseness”or “Japanese uniqueness” (see Dale 1986). In modernJapanese history, such reactive cultural self-obsessions andself-assertions have taken either the form of denying Japan’sdeep-rooted traditional connections with its East Asian neighbors, orthe form of claiming that Japan has uniquely embodied and perfected“the essence of the East.” If the former type of claim ismost in evidence in postwar and contemporary Japan, the latter isfound, for example, in the Meiji thinker Okakura Tenshin’sdeclaration that, while “Asia is one,” Japan alone is“the real repository of the trust of Asiatic thought andculture” (Okakura 2000, 1 and 5).

Where do the Kyoto School thinkers stand with respect to such culturewars? To be sure, theChūōkōron discussions inparticular often asserted that modern Japan was uniquely suited toinstitute and represent the “Greater East Asia Co-ProsperitySphere,” and this undoubtedly reflected a widespread post-MeijiJapanese conflation of political, industrial, and military developmentwith cultural superiority. Nishida also felt that modern Japan was ina unique political and cultural position to host a fruitful marriageof East and West, and Tanabe went so far as to set the nation of Japanup as an archetype for others. In the Kyoto School’s wartimepolitical writings, there indeed remains much grist for the mills ofcontemporary cultural critics, especially for those with hermeneuticalblindfolds or purportedly perfect hindsight. Yet a critique of theirpolitical misadventures and cultural assertions, as necessary as itis, may in fact reveal something more peripheral than central to thecross-cultural thinking of the Kyoto School. It is at least necessaryto keep both eyes open: one ready to criticize and the other willingto learn.

We should note that even when Nishida broadly contrasts “Westernbeing” with “Eastern nothingness,” he in factimmediately goes on to explore finer distinctions between the Greek,Roman, and Judeo-Christian threads of the Western tradition, andbetween the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese threads of the Easterntradition. If his essentializing or overgeneralizing of these threadsdoes remain in various respects problematic, it is nevertheless hardlythe case that he and the other Kyoto School thinkers never questionedthe homogeneity of either “the East” or “theWest.” Secondly, although they have been accused both ofcontributing to the “myth of Japanese uniqueness” and of“reverse Orientalism” (see Dale 1986 and Faure 1995), thecase is far from this simple. In a time of uncritical culturalself-adulation by the Japanese ultranationalists in power, Nishidaboldly urged that “both the strong points and weaknesses of ourculture should be openly and honestly pointed out,” for“we cannot take any one culture and call ittheculture” (Nishida 1964, 351 and 353).

Fighting a conceptual war simultaneously on two fronts, againstWesternand Japanese ethnocentrisms, Nishida wrote that“until now Westerners have thought that their own culture is themost superior human culture that exists, and that human cultureinevitably develops in the direction of their own culture—hence,as Easterners and other peoples who are lagging behind advanceforward, they must become the same as [Westerners].” Even someJapanese, he regrets, think this way. And yet, he objects,“there is something radically different in [the culture of] theEast.” According to Nishida, the development of the West willsubsume this difference no more than the East will subsume the West.Even if humanity does share a common root (what he calls, adapting anexpression from Goethe, an “ur-culture” of multiplepossibilities), the development of its branches and leaves is a matterof diversification, not homogenization. Globalization should thus bethought of, in Nishida’s vision, as many branches of the sametree supplementing one other on the basis of both their deep-rootedcommonalityand their irreducible diversity (NKZ XIV,402–6 and 417).

To be sure, there inevitably remains for us the question of the“place” and manner in which this global communicationbetween cultures should take place. But without a “view fromnowhere,” the only thing we can do is to attempt to criticallyand creatively take up ideas that have particular genealogies anddialogically develop them into what are provisionally more universallyviable forms. Just as concepts of democracy, hermeneutics, and indeedphilosophia itself have particular cultural lineages, so dothe ideas of emptiness (Japanese:kū; Sanskrit:śūnyatā), nothingness (Japanese:mu;Chinese:wu), and the true self (shin no jiko) as anon-ego (Japanese:muga; Sanskrit:anātman)that opens itself to an encounter with others by radically emptyingitself. Nevertheless, all of these ideas may very well contributesomething to an intercultural dialogue concerning the very place andmanner in which a genuine encounter between cultures and individualscan and should take place. The locution “world philosophy”is, to my mind, best understood as a multifaceted forum forcross-cultural dialogue concerning such issues, a forum that is itselfalways in the process of being co-constructed by all those whoparticipate in it.

5.2 Japanese Philosophy in the World

It is not, therefore, necessarily ethnocentric for Japanese thinkersto suggest the potential efficacy of introducing into a globalphilosophical dialogue ideas that derive from Japanese, East Asian, orMahāyāna Buddhist traditions. The “Japanesephilosophy” of the Kyoto School is best understood as acontribution to such an intercultural conversation, and not merely asa reactive opposition to philosophical Eurocentrism or indeed“philosophical Euromonopolism.” In any case, we must becareful in how we understand the noun “philosophy” and themodifier “Japanese” when we speak of “Japanesephilosophy” (see Davis 2020b).

Although the question of whether “philosophy” existed innon-Western traditions is today being intensely debated, with more andmore scholars referring not only to “Indian philosophy”and “Chinese philosophy” but also to “Africanphilosophy” and “Indigenous philosophy,” the KyotoSchool philosophers themselves never doubted that“philosophy,” in the literal and historically specificsense, is originally a cultural product of the Western tradition. Butthey also recognize that it, like Western science and technology, hasuniversal implications that can be developed by peoples around theglobe. This does not mean that they think Western philosophy is freeof unrecognized cultural biases and limitations, or that traditionalAsian traditions have nothing essential to offer the development ofphilosophy in a post-Eurocentric world. They recognize the differencebetween the global potentialities and the still parochial actualitiesof philosophy, and their Japanese contributions aim to make philosophymore, not less, worldly.

In an illuminating study of the debates surrounding the concept of“philosophy” in Japan since the Meiji period(1868–1912), John Maraldo has isolated four senses in which thenotion of “Japanese philosophy” has been used: (1) Westernphilosophy as it happens to be practiced by Japanese scholars; (2)traditional Japanese thought (Confucian, Nativist, Buddhist, etc.) asit was formulated prior to the introduction of Western philosophy; (3)a form of inquiry which has methods and themes that are Western inorigin, but that can be applied to pre-modern, pre-Westernized,Japanese thinking; and (4) a kind of reverse Orientalism that assertsthe superiority of specifically Japanese ways of thinking.

Maraldo argues for the superior viability of the third of theseconceptions, in part because it pays due hermeneutical attention tothe Greek origins of the heretofore prevailing methods and themes of“philosophy.” And yet, crucially, he also stresses thatthe very methods and themes of philosophy are essentially always“in the making,” and that the production of“Japanese philosophy” will have to “strike a balancebetween reading (pre-defined) philosophy into [Japan’straditional] texts and reading alternatives out of them, constructingcontrasts to that [pre-defined] philosophy [of the West]”(Maraldo 2004, 238–44). The Kyoto School in particular can beunderstood to have taken up the challenge of critically and creativelyappropriating philosophy so as to free up for questioning many of itspre-defined Western conceptions.

A text by Ueda on Nishitani’s philosophy insightfully addressesthe question of the adjective “Japanese” as follows:“If we are to use the characterization ‘Japanese’,this does not signify merely a particularity of Japan, but rather mustbe understood in the sense that a certain area of universal primalhuman possibility has been historically realized particularly inJapan. Hence, ‘European’ does not straightaway mean‘global’, but rather that a certain area of universalprimal human possibility has been historically realized particularlyin Europe. … If we understand ourselves as theparticularization of something universal, this means, at the sametime, that we can understand others as different particularizations ofsomething universal. Only then, with the communication betweenparticular and particular, can something universal come to berealized” (Ueda 1996, 309).

In this passage, which recalls Nishida’s vision of communicationbetween diversely determined branches of a shared yet essentiallyindeterminate root ur-culture, Ueda gives us a clue as to how we mightbest understand the cross-cultural contributions of the Kyoto School.They are philosophers who strive to express something universal from aparticular standpoint. But this does not at all mean that they attemptto reduce universality to their own particularity; for the latter isin turn understood as one particular expression of the formlessur-culture, the indeterminate source of possibilities for individualand cultural determination, that is to say, the originary nothingnessthat we all share. The Kyoto School thus presents us with a unique setof attempts to give philosophical form to this formless wellspring ofboth commonality and singularity.

The degree to which the Kyoto School thinkers were successful in theirboldly paradoxical quest to give philosophical form to the formlesscan be debated. It is less easy to deny the exigency of the questitself. If philosophy today is to mature beyond its Eurocentric andeven “Euromonopolistic” pubescence (see Davis 2020b,28–33), then it is necessary to deepen its quest foruniversality by way of radically opening it up to a diversity ofcultural perspectives. If cultural pluralism, for its part, is toavoid falling into a relativistic antagonism or isolationism, it mustentail a metamorphosis rather than an abandonment of the philosophicalquest for universality (see Fujita 2013; Maraldo 2013). In any case,we should understand the thought of the Kyoto School, not as a set ofexclusively Japanese versions of philosophy, but rather as a set ofJapanese contributions to the content of—and indeed to the veryformation of the forum of—a global dialogue of “worldphilosophy” in the making.

Bibliography

Works by the Kyoto School

Abbreviations Used in this Article

NKCNishitani Keiji chosakushū [Collected Works ofNishitani Keiji], Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1986–95. (Volume numbersare given in Roman numerals.)
NKZNishida Kitarō zenshū [Complete Works ofNishida Kitarō], Tokyo: Iwanami, 1987–89. (Volume numbersare given in Roman numerals.)
THZTanabe Hajime zenshū [Complete Works of TanabeHajime], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1964. (Volume numbers are given inRoman numerals.)
USSUeda Shizuteru shū [Collected Writings of UedaShizuteru], Tokyo: Iwanami, 2001–2003. (Volume numbers are givenin Roman numerals.)

Anthologies Containing Works by More than One Kyoto School Author

The texts contained in these anthologies are not listed hereseparately. (For a complete list of Western language translations ofworks by Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani, Takeuchi, and Ueda, see theNanzan Institute for Religion and Culture website linked tobelow.)

Calichman, Richard F. (ed. and trans.), 2008,OvercomingModernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. (Contains an introduction to and translation of the1942 symposium on “Overcoming Modernity” in whichNishitani Keiji and other Kyoto School affiliated philosophersparticipated. The Japanese text of the symposium can be found inKawakami et al. 1979.)
Dilworth, David A. and Valdo H. Viglielmo with AgustínJacinto Zavala (eds.), 1998,Sourcebook for Modern JapanesePhilosophy: Selected Documents. Westport: Greenwood Press. (Avaluable anthology containing translations of selected works byNishida, Tanabe, Kuki, Watsuji, Miki, Tosaka, and Nishitani, togetherwith helpful editorial material.)
Frank, Fredrick (ed.), 2004 (first edition 1982),The BuddhaEye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School, Bloomington: World Wisdom.(While somewhat misnamed as an anthology of the Kyoto School, thiscollection does include a good selection of essays by Nishitani, Ueda,and other modern Japanese religious thinkers.)
Fujita, Masakatsu (ed.), 2001,Kyōtogakuha notetsugaku [The Philosophy of the Kyoto School], Kyoto:Shōwadō. (Contains primary texts from, and critical essayson, eight Kyoto School philosophers.)
––– (ed.), 2018b,The Philosophy of theKyoto School, Robert Chapeskie with John W. M. Krummel (trans.),Singapore: Springer. (A translation of Fujita 2001.)
Heisig, James W., Thomas P. Kasulis and John C. Maraldo (eds.),2011,Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Honolulu: Universityof Hawai‘i Press. (This encyclopedic anthology contains aselection of representative works by all members of, and thinkersaffiliated with, the Kyoto School.)
Jacinto Zavala, Augustín (ed.), 1995,Textos de lafilosofía japonesa, Michoacán: El Colegio deMichoacán.
Kawakami, Tetsutarō, Takeuchi Yoshimi et al., 1979,Kindai no chōkoku [The Overcoming of Modernity], Sendai:Fuzanbō.
Kōsaka, Masaaki, Nishitani Keiji, Kōyama Iwao, andSuzuki Shigetaka, 1943,Sekaishi-teki tachiba to Nihon [TheWorld-Historical Standpoint and Japan], Tokyo:Chūōkōronsha. (Contains controversial rountablediscussions by Kyoto School philosophers discussing politics duringthe war.)
Ōhashi, Ryōsuke (ed.), 1990, revised edition 2012,Die Philosophie der Kyōto-Schule, Freiburg: Karl Alber.(This landmark anthology contains valuable introductions by theeditor, as well as German translations of key essays by Nishida,Tanabe, Hisamatsu, Nishitani, Kōyama Iwao, Kōsaka Masaaki,Shimomura Toratarō, Suzuki Shigetaka, Takeuchi Yoshinori,Tsujimura Kōichi, and Ueda Shizuteru.)
–––, 2001 (ed.),Kyōtogakuha toNihon-kaigun [The Kyoto School and the Japanese Navy], Kyoto: PHPShinsho. (Contains notes taken at secret meetings of Kyoto Schoolphilosophers discussing politics during the war.)

Other Works by Kyoto School Philosophers

Abe, Masao, 1985,Zen and Western Thought, William R.LaFleur (ed.), London: Macmillan Press (published in North America byUniversity of Hawai‘i Press).
–––, 1990, “Kenotic God and DynamicSunyata,” inThe Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-ChristianConversation with Masao Abe on God, Kenosis, and Sunyata, John B.Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives (eds.), Maryknoll, New York: OrbisBooks, pp. 3–65.
–––, 1997a, “Buddhism in Japan,” inCompanion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, Brian Carr andIndira Mahalingam (eds.), London and New York: Routledge, pp.746–791. (Provides an overview of the history of JapaneseBuddhism, ending with D. T. Suzuki as a modern Buddhist thinker andNishida as a Buddhism-inspired philosopher.)
–––, 1997b,Zen and ComparativeStudies, Steven Heine (ed.), London: Macmillan Press (publishedin North America by University of Hawai‘i Press).
–––, 2003,Zen and the Modern World,Steven Heine (ed.), Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.(Includes Abe’s articles on Nishida.)
Hase, Shōtō, 2003,Yokubō no tetsugaku:Jōdokyou sekai no shisaku [Philosophy of Desire: An Inquiryinto the World of Pure Land Buddhism], Kyoto: Hōzōkan.
–––, 2005,Kokoro ni utsuru mugen: kūno imāju-ka [The Infinite Reflected in the Heart-Mind: TheImaging of Emptiness], Kyoto: Hōzōkan.
–––, 2010,Jōdo to wa nanika: Shinranno shisaku to do ni okeru chōetsu [What is the Pure Land?The Thought of Shinran and Transcendence on Earth], Kyoto:Hōzōkan.
Hisamatsu, Shin’ichi, 1960, “The Characteristics ofOriental Nothingness,” Richard DeMartino (trans.),Philosophical Studies of Japan, 2: 65–97.
–––, 2002,Critical Sermons of the ZenTradition, Christopher Ives and Tokiwa Gishin (ed. and trans.),New York: Palgrave.
–––, 1982,Zen and the Fine Arts,Gishin Tokiwa (trans.), Tokyo: Kodansha.
Keta, Masako, 1992,Shūkyō-keiken no tetsugaku:Jōdokyō-sekai no kaimei [Philosophy of ReligiousExperience: An Elucidation of the World of Pure Land Buddhism], Tokyo:Sōbunsha-sha.
–––, 1999,Nihirizumu no shisaku [TheThought of Nihilism], Tokyo: Sōbunsha-sha.
–––, 2011,Nishida Kitarō ‘Zen nokenkyū’ [Nishida Kitarō’s ‘An Inquiryinto the Good’], Kyoto: Kōyō shobō.
–––, 2017, “The Self-Awareness of Evil inPure Land Buddhism: A Translation of Contemporary Kyoto SchoolPhilosopher Keta Masako,” Melissa Anne-Marie Curley, Jessica L.Main, Melanie Coughlin (trans.),Philosophy East and West,67(1): 192–201. (A representative work of an importantcontemporary philosopher associated with the Kyoto School, accompaniedby a substantial introduction by the translators.)
Kuki, Shūzō, 2004,A Philosopher’s Poetry andPoetics, Michael F. Marra (trans. and ed.), Honolulu: Universityof Hawai‘i Press.
–––, 2004,The Stucture of Iki, inThe Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of KukiShūzō, Hiroshi Nara (ed.), Honolulu: University ofHawai‘i Press.
Miki, Kiyoshi, 2024,Miki Kiyoshi’s The Logic ofImagination: A Critical Introduction and Translation, John W. M.Krummel (trans.), New York: Bloomsbury.
Nishida, Kitarō, 1958,Intelligibility and the Philosophyof Nothingness, Robert Schinzinger (trans.), Honolulu: East-WestCenter Press. (Contains translations of three important essays.)
–––, 1964, “The Problem of JapaneseCulture,” Masao Abe (trans.), inSources of JapaneseTradition, Vol. 2, Ryusaku Tsunoda et al. (eds.), New York:Columbia University Press, pp. 350–365.
–––, 1970,Fundamental Problems ofPhilosophy, David A. Dilworth (trans.), Tokyo: Sophia UniversityPress.
–––, 1973,Art and Morality, David A.Dilworth (trans.), Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
–––, 1986, “The Logic ofToposand the Religious Worldview,” Michiko Yusa (trans.),TheEastern Buddhist, 19(2): 1–29 & 20(1):81–119.
–––, 1987,Intuition and Reflection inSelf-Consciousness, Valdo Viglielmo et al. (trans.), New York,SUNY.
–––, 1987,Last Writings: Nothingness andthe Religious Worldview, David A. Dilworth (trans.), Honolulu:University of Hawai‘i Press. (Contains a translation of“The Logic of Place and the Religious World-view” as wellas introductory and critical essays by the translator.)
–––, 1990,An Inquiry into the Good,Masao Abe and Christopher Ives (trans.), New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.
–––, 1990,La culture japonaise enquestion, Pierre Lavelle (trans.), Paris: PublicationsOrientalistes de France.
–––, 1999,Logik des Ortes. Der Anfang dermodernen Philosophie in Japan, Rolf Elberfeld (trans.),Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. (Contains translationsof Nishida’s prefaces to his books and of three of his keyessays.)
–––, 1999,Logique du lieu et visionreligieuse de monde, Sugimura Yasuhiko and Sylvain Cardonnel(trans.), Paris: Editions Osiris.
–––, 2005, “General Summary” fromThe System of Self-Consciousness of the Universal, in RobertJ. J., Wargo,The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of NishidaKitarō, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, pp.186–216.
–––, 2012a,Place and Dialectic: Two Essaysby Nishida Kitarō, John W. M. Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo(trans.), Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. (Containstranslations of “Basho” [Place] and “Logic andLife” as well as an insightful and informative introduction byJohn Krummel.)
–––, 2012b,Ontology of Production,William Haver (trans.), Durham and London: Duke University Press.(Contains translations of “Expressive Activity,”“The Standpoint of Active Intuition,” and “HumanBeing.”)
Nishida, Kitarō, 2002,Shin Nishida KitarōZenshū [New Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō], FujitaMasakatsu and Kosaka Kunitsugu (eds.), Tokyo: Iwanami. (This newrevised and rearranged edition of Nishida’s works containshelpful editorial material, such as citation information forNishida’s references.)
Nishitani, Keiji, 1982,Religion and Nothingness, Jan VanBragt (trans.), Berkeley: University of California Press.
–––, 1984, “The Standpoint of Zen,”John C. Maraldo (trans.),The Eastern Buddhist, 18(1):1–26.
–––, 1986,Was is Religion?, DoraFischer-Barnicol (trans.), Frankfurt: Insel Verlag.
–––, 1990,The Self-Overcoming ofNihilism, Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara (trans.), Albany:SUNY.
–––, 1991,Nishida Kitarō,Yamamoto Seisaku and James W. Heisig (trans.), Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.
–––, 1999, “Emptiness and Sameness,”inModern Japanese Aesthetics, Michele Marra (ed.), Honolulu:University of Hawai‘i Press.
–––, 1999,La religión y lanada, Raquel Bouso García (trans.), Madrid: EdicionesSiruela.
–––, 2004, “The I-Thou Relation in ZenBuddhism,” in Franck 2004, pp. 29–53.
–––, 2006,On Buddhism, SeisakuYamamoto and Robert E. Carter (trans.), Albany: SUNY.
–––, 2008, “My Views on OvercomingModernity” in Calichman 2008, pp. 51– 63.
–––, 2012,The Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji1900–1990: Lectures on Religion and Modernity, JonathanMorris Augustine and Seisaku Yamamoto (trans.), Lewiston: The EdwinMellen Press.
Ōhashi, Ryōsuke, 1984,Zeitlichkeitsanalyse derHegelschen Logik. Zur Idee einer Phänomenologie des Ortes,Munich: Karl Alber. (A provocative Kyoto School oriented reading ofHegel.)
–––, 1992,Nihon-tekina mono,Yōroppa-tekina mono [Things Japanese, Things European],Tokyo: Shinchōsha. (Insightfully treats a range of cultural andphilosophical issues relating to modern Japan, the Kyoto School andassociated thinkers.)
–––, 1994,Das Schöne in Japan.Philosophisch-ästhetische Reflexionen zu Geschichte undModerne, Rolf Elberfeld (trans.), Köln: DuMont Buchverlag.(A classic philosophical interpretation of Japanese aesthetics.)
–––, 1995,Nishida-tetsugaku no sekai[The World of Nishida Philosophy], Tokyo: Chikuma.
–––, 1998,Hi no genshōron josetsu:Nihontetsugaku no roku tēze yori [Prolegomenon to aPhenomenology of Compassion: From Six theses of Japanese Philosophy],Tokyo: Sōbunsha. (Includes chapters on the contemporary relevanceof key ideas of Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani, and Hisamatsu.)
–––, 1999,Japan im interkulturellenDialog, München: Iudicium. (Contains a range of essays onJapan’s relation to the West, with chapters on and frequentreference to the Kyoto School.)
–––, 2013,Nishida Kitarō: Hontōno Nihon wa kore kara to zonjimasu [Nishida Kitarō: I Knowthat the Real Japan is Still to Come], Kyoto: Minerva. (Anilluminating philosophical biography.)
–––, 2018a,Kyōsei no patosu[Pathos of Being Together], Tokyo: Kobushi Shobō. (The Japaneseversion of a major work by the leading figure of what could beconsidered the fourth generation of the Kyoto School.)
–––, 2018b,Phänomenology derCompassion: Pathos des Mitseins mit den Anderen, Freiburg &Munich: Verlag Karl Alber. (The German version of a major work by theleading figure of what could be considered the fourth generation ofthe Kyoto School.)
Takeuchi, Yoshinori, 1983,The Heart of Buddhism, JamesW. Heisig (ed. and trans.), New York: Crossroad.
Takeuchi, Yoshinori, 1999,Takeuchi Yoshinorichosakushū [Collected Works of Takeuchi Yoshinori], Kyoto:Hōzōkan.
Tanabe, Hajime, 1959, “Todesdialektik,” inMartinHeidegger zum siebzigsten Geburtstag: Festschrift, GüntherNeske (ed.), Pfullingen: Neske, pp. 93–133.
–––, 1969, “The Logic of Species asDialectics,” David Dilworth and Satō Taira (trans.),Monumenta Nipponica, 24(3): 273–88.
–––, 1986,Philosophy as Metanoetics,Takeuchi Yoshinori (trans.), Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.
–––, 2000,Zangedō toshite no tetsugaku– Shi no tetsugaku [Philosophy as the Way of Metanoetics,The Philosophy of Death], Hase Shōtō (ed.), Kyoto:Tōeisha.
–––, 2003, “Shūkyōtetsugaku nokadai to zentei” [The Tasks and Presuppositions of thePhilosophy of Religion], inBukkyō toseiyōtetsugaku [Buddhism and Western Philosophy], TanabeHajime, Kosaka Kunitsugu (ed.), Tokyo: Kobushibunko, pp.9–42.
Tosaka, Jun, 2014,Tosaka Jun: A Critical Reader, Ken C.Kawashima, Fabian Schafter, and Robert Stolz (eds.), New York: CornellUniversity Press. (A collection of key essays by, and critical essayson, this former student and Marxist critic of Nishida who somescholars consider to be a member of “the left wing of the KyotoSchool.”)
Ueda, Shizuteru, 1982, “Emptiness and Fullness:Śūnyatā in Mahāyāna Buddhism,” James W.Heisig and Frederick Greiner (trans),The Eastern Buddhist,15(1): 9–37. (Outlines many of the contours of Ueda’sunderstanding of Zen by way of interpreting the Ten OxherdingPictures.)
–––, 1991,Ikiru to iu koto: keiken tojikaku [What is Called Life: Experience and Self-Awareness],Kyoto: Jinbunshoin.
–––, 1992,Nishida Kitarō o yomu[Reading Nishida Kitarō], Tokyo: Iwanami. (The first of manyinfluential books on Nishida by Ueda, in which Ueda develops his ownthought by way of carefully reading Nishida’s texts, beginningwithAn Inquiry into the Good.)
–––, 1983a, “Ascent and Descent: ZenBuddhism in Comparison with Meister Eckhart (Part 1),” James W.Heisig (trans.),The Eastern Buddhist, 16(1):52–73.
–––, 1983b, “Ascent and Descent: ZenBuddhism in Comparison with Meister Eckhart (Part 2),” Ian Astlyand James W. Heisig (trans.),The Eastern Buddhist, 16(2):72–91.
–––, 1989, “The Zen Buddhist Experience ofthe Truly Beautiful,” John C. Maraldo (trans.),The EasternBuddhist, 22(1): 1–36.
–––, 1990, “Freedom and Language inMeister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism (Part One),” Richard F. Szippl(trans.),The Eastern Buddhist, 23(2): 18–59.
–––, 1991, “Freedom and Language inMeister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism (Part Two),” Richard F. Szippl(trans.),The Eastern Buddhist, 24(1): 52–80.
–––, 1992, “The Place of Man in the NohPlay,” Paul Shepherd (trans.),The Eastern Buddhist,25(2): 59–88. (In the first part of this essay, Ueda outlineshis account of “living-in-the-double-world.”)
–––, 1993a, “Zen and Philosophy in theThought of Nishida Kitarō,” Mark Unno (trans.),Japanese Religions, 18(2): 162–193. (ExaminesNishida’s early attempt to develop a philosophy of pureexperience on the basis of his practice of Zen.)
–––, 1993b, “Pure Experience,Self-Awareness, ‘Basho’,”EtudesPhénoménologiques, 18: 63–86.
–––, 1994a, “The Practice of Zen,”Ron Hadley and Thomas L. Kirchner (trans.),The EasternBuddhist, 27(1): 10–29. (Succinctly introduces Ueda’sinterpretation of the practice of Zen.)
–––, 1994b, “Nishida, Nationalism, and theWar in Question,” in Heisig & Maraldo 1994, pp.77–106. (Ueda’s influential response to the controversysurrounding Nishida’s political writings.)
–––, 1995, “Nishida’sThought,” Jan Van Bragt (trans.),The Eastern Buddhist,28(1): 29–47.
–––, 1996, “Nishitani Keiji:Shūkyō to hishūkyō no aida” [NishitaniKeiji: Between Religion and Non-Religion], inShūkyō tohishūkyō no aida [Between Religion and Non-Religion],Nishitani Keiji, Ueda Shizuteru (ed.), Tokyo: Iwanami, pp.287–316.
–––, 2004,Zen y la filosofia, RaquelBouso (ed.), Barcelona: Editorial Herder.
–––, 2011a, “Contributions to Dialoguewith the Kyoto School,” Bret W. Davis (trans.), in Davis &Schoeder & Wirth 2011, pp. 19–32. (In this essay composedespecially for this volume, Ueda reflects on the problem of nihilismin an age of globalization and on the contributions to a globalphilosophical dialogue made by Nishida’s philosophy of“absolute nothingness” and Nishitani’s philosophy of“emptiness.”)
–––, 2011b, “Language in a TwofoldWorld,” Bret W. Davis (trans.), in Heisig & Kasulis &Maraldo 2011, pp. 765–784. (Based on texts originally written in1990 and 1997, Ueda prepared this essay to represent his thought inthis first comprehensive sourcebook of Japanese philosophy.)
–––, 2011c,Wer und was bin ich: ZurPhänomenologie des Selbst im Zen-Buddhismus, Freiburg:Verlag Karl Alber. (A valuable collection of some of Ueda’sessays written in German. Earlier versions of the first four chaptersare available in English translation in Ueda 1982, 1989, 1992, and1983a. For a review of this book and overview of Ueda’s thought,see Davis 2013g).
–––, 2018 [1965],Die Gottesgeburt in derSeele und der Durchbruch zu Gott. Die mystische Anthropologie MeisterEckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des ZenBuddhismus, new edition edited by Wolf Burbat, Freiburg/Munich:Verlag Karl Alber.
–––, 2019, “Horizon and the Other Side ofthe Horizon,” John W.M. Krummel (trans.), inContemporaryJapanese Philosophy, edited by John W.M. Krummel, New York: Romanand Littlefield, pp. 93–106.
–––, 2022, “Meister Eckhart’sMysticism in Comparison with Zen Buddhism,” Gregory S. Moss(trans.),Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 14(2):128–152. (A translation of a programmatic chapter in Ueda2018.)
Watsuji, Tetsurō, 1988,Climate and Culture: APhilosophical Study, Geoffrey Bownas (trans.), New York:Greenwood Press.
–––, 1996,Watsuji Tetsurō’sRinrigaku: Ethics in Japan, Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert Carter(trans.), Albany: SUNY Press.

Works on the Kyoto School

Journals and Special Issues of Journals

Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 36(3), 2011.(A special issue devoted to Nishida’s philosophy.)
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 14(2), 2022. (Aspecial issue on “The Legacy of Kyoto School Philosopher UedaShizuteru.”)
The Eastern Buddhist New Series, 25(1), 1992. (A specialedition, “In Memoriam Nishitani Keiji1900–1990.”)
The Eastern Buddhist New Series, 28(2), 1995. (A“Nishida Kitarō Memorial Issue.”)
Études phénoménologique, 18, 1993.(A special issue devoted to “L’école deKyōto.”)
European Journal of Japanese Philosophy, since 2016.(Frequently includes articles on Kyoto School philosophers.)
Journal of Japanese Philosophy, since 2013. (Frequentlyincludes articles on Kyoto School philosophers.)
Nihon no tetsugaku [Japanese Philosophy],2000–2017. (Frequently included articles on Kyoto Schoolphilosophers.)
Nihon-tetsugaku-shi kenkyū [Research in the Historyof Japanese Philosophy], since 2003. (Frequently includes articles onKyoto School philosophers.)
Revue philosophique de Louvain, 1994 (no. 4, Novembre).(A special issue devoted to the theme: “La réceptioneuropéenne de l’école de Kyōto.”)
Synthesis Philosophica, 37, 2004, Zagreb, Croatia. (Aspecial issue devoted to “Japanese Philosophy,” witharticles in German, English, and French, many of which are written byleading Japanese scholars of the Kyoto School.)
Zen Buddhism Today, 14, 1997. (An important collection ofarticles on the theme: “Religion and the Contemporary World inLight of Nishitani Keiji’s Thought.”)
Zen Buddhism Today, 15, 1998. (An important collection ofarticles on the theme: “Nishida’s Philosophy,Nishitani’s Philosophy, and Zen.”)

Other Works on the Kyoto School

Akitomi, Katsuya, 2022,Gensho kara/e no shisaku: NishidaKitarō to Heideggā [Thinking from/to the Inception:Nishida Kitarō and Heidegger], Tokyo: HōsōdaigakuKyōzai.
Akizuki, Ryōmin, 1996,Zettai-mu to basho: Suzuki-zengakuto Nishida-tetsugaku [Absolute Nothingness and Place:Suzuki’s Zen Studies and Nishida’s Philosophy], Tokyo:Seishisha.
Arisaka, Yoko, 1996, “The Nishida Enigma: ‘ThePrinciple of the New World Order’,”MonumentaNipponica, 51(1): 81–106.
–––, 1999, “Beyond East and West:Nishida’s Universalism and Postcolonial Critique,” inBorder Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory, FredDallmayr (ed.), New York: Lexington Books, pp. 237–252. (Aninsightful critical treatment of the ambiguities in Nishida’scultural and political philosophy.)
–––, 2020, “The Controversial CulturalIdentity of Japanese Philosophy,” in Davis 2020a, pp.755–79.
Berque, Augustin (ed.), 2000,Logique du lieu etdépassemente de la modernité, two volumes,Bruxelles: Ousia.
Brink, D. A., 2021,Philosophy of Science and the KyotoSchool: An Introduction to Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, andTosaka Jun, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. (Includes translationsof and commentary on texts in which these Kyoto School philosophersinterpret the latest developments in science, such as quantummechanics and relativity theory.)
Bouso, Raquel and James W. Heisig (eds.), 2009,Frontiers ofJapanese Philosophy 6: Confluences and Cross-Currents, Nagoya:Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
Bowers, Russell H. Jr., 1995,Someone or Nothing:Nishitani’s “Religion and Nothingness” as aFoundation for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, New York: PeterLang.
Buchner, Harmut (ed.), 1989,Japan und Heidegger,Sigmaringen: Thorbecke. (Contains documents of, and essays about, therelation between Heidegger and the Kyoto School.)
Buri, Fritz, 1997,The Buddha-Christ as the Lord of the TrueSelf: The Religious Philosophy of the Kyoto School andChristianity, Macon: Mercer University Press.
Carter, Robert E., 1997,The Nothingness Beyond God: AnIntroduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarō, secondedition, St. Paul: Paragon House.
–––, 2013,The Kyoto School: AnIntroduction, with a foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.
Cobb, John B. Jr. and Christopher Ives (eds.), 1990,TheEmptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abeon God, Kenosis, and Sunyata, Maryknoll, New York: OrbisBooks.
Curley, Anne-Marie, 2020, “Miki Kiyoshi: Marxism, Humanism, andthe Power of Imagination,” in Davis 2020a, 447–463.
Dalissier, Michel, 2009, “Nishida Kitarō and ChinesePhilosophy,” in Lam & Cheung, pp. 211–250. (Anintriguing account of Nishida’s study of classical Chinesephilosophy and the influence it exerted on his thought.)
Dallmayr, Fred, 1993, “Heidegger and Zen Buddhism: a Saluteto Nishitani Keiji,” in Fred Dallmayr,The OtherHeidegger, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp.200–226.
Davis, Bret W., 2002, “Introducing the Kyoto School as WorldPhilosophy: Reflections on James. W. Heisig’sPhilosophersof Nothingness,”The Eastern Buddhist, 34(2):142–170.
–––, 2004, “The Step Back throughNihilism: The Radical Orientation of Nishitani Keiji’sPhilosophy of Zen,”Synthesis Philosophica, 37:139–59. (An introduction to the central themes ofNishitani’s thought, focusing on his topological phenomenologyof a “trans-descendence” through nihilism to the“field ofśūnyatā.”)
–––, 2006, “Toward a World of Worlds:Nishida, the Kyoto School, and the Place of Cross-CulturalDialogue,” in Heisig 2006, pp. 205–245.
–––, 2008a, “Letting Go of God forNothing: Ueda Shizuteru’s Non-Mysticism and the Question ofEthics in Zen Buddhism,” in Hori & Curley 2008, pp.221–250.
–––, 2008b, “Turns to and from PoliticalPhilosophy: The Case of Nishitani Keiji,” in Goto-Jones 2008,pp. 26–45.
–––, 2011a, “Nishitani after Nietzsche:From the Death of God to the Great Death of the Will,” in Davis& Schroeder & Wirth 2011, pp. 82–101.
–––, 2011b, “Nothingnessand (notor) the Individual: Reflections on Robert Wilkinson’sNishida and Western Philosophy,”The EasternBuddhist, 42(2): 143–156.
–––, 2013a, “Nishida’s MulticulturalWorldview: Contemporary Significance and Immanent Critique,”Nishida Tetsugakkai Nenpō [The Journal of the Societyfor Nishida Philosophy], 10: 183–203.
–––, 2014, “Ethical and ReligiousAlterity: Nishida after Levinas,” in Elberfeld & Arisaka2014, pp. 313–341.
–––, 2017, “Encounter in Emptiness: TheI-Thou Relation in Nishitani Keiji’s Philosophy of Zen,”in Yusa 2017, pp. 231–254.
–––, 2019, “Expressing Experience:Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen,” in GereonKopf (ed.),Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy,New York: Springer, pp 713–38.
––– (ed.), 2020a,The Oxford Handbook ofJapanese Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. (Containschapters on the major Kyoto School philosophers by leading scholars inthe field.)
–––, 2020b, “Introduction: What IsJapanese Philosophy?” in Davis 2020a, pp. 1–79.
–––, 2021, “Commuting Between Zen andPhilosophy: In the Footsteps of Kyoto School Philosophers andPsychosomatic Practitioners,” in Francesca Greco, Leon Krings,and Yukiko Kuwayama (eds.),Transitions: Crossing Boundaries inJapanese Philosophy, Nagoya: Chisokudō Publications, pp.71–111.
–––, 2022a,Zen Pathways: An Introduction tothe Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism, New York: OxfordUniversity Press. (Makes reference to Kyoto School interpretations ofZen throughout and contains a chapter on their understanding of therelation between Zen and philosophy.)
Davis, Bret W., Brian Schroeder and Jason M. Wirth (eds.), 2011,Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the KyotoSchool, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (A collection ofessays by North American, Japanese, and European scholars aimed atengendering multilateral exchanges between the Kyoto Schoolphilosophies and such Continental figures as Kant, Nietzsche,Heidegger, Arendt, Löwith, Habermas, Merleau-Ponty, Irigaray,Levinas, Derrida, and Marion.)
Denker, Alfred et al. (eds.), 2013,Heidegger-Jahrbuch 7:Heidegger und das ostasiatische Denken, Freiburg & Munich:Alber Verlag. (Contains a number of essays by and on thinkersaffiliated with the Kyoto School.)
Döll, Steffen, 2005,Wozu also suchen? ZurEinführung in das Denken von Ueda Shizuteru, Munich:iudicium. (Contains a scholarly and informative introduction toUeda’s thought, together with an annotated translation of his“The Place of Self-Awareness.”)
–––, 2011, “Ueda Shizuteru’sPhenomenology of Self and World: Critical Dialogues with Descartes,Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty,” in Davis & Schroeder &Wirth 2011, pp. 120–137.
–––, 2020, “Ueda Shizuteru: The Self ThatIs Not a Self in a Twofold World,” in Davis 2020a, pp.485– 499.
Elberfeld, Rolf, 1999,Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945).Moderne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach derInterkulturalität, Amsterdam: Rodopi. (Compellingly arguesfor Nishida’s significance as a cross-culturalphilosopher.)
Elberfeld, Rolf, 1999,Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945).Moderne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach derInterkulturalität, Amsterdam: Rodopi. (Compellingly arguesfor Nishida’s significance as a cross-culturalphilosopher.)
Faure, Bernard, 1995, “The Kyoto School and ReverseOrientalism,” inJapan in Traditional and PostmodernPerspectives, Charles Wei-Hsun Fu and Steven Heine (eds.), NewYork: State University of New York Press, pp. 245–281.
Feenberg, Andrew, 1995, “The Problem of Modernity inNishida’s Philosophy,” inAlternative Modernity,Andrew Feenberg, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.169–192.
Elberfeld, Rolf and Yōko Arisaka (eds.), 2014,Kitarō Nishida in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts,Freiburg & Munich: Alber Verlag. (Contains a rich variety ofessays by Japanese, European, and American scholars on Nishida in thecontext of twentieth century philosophy.)
Faure, Bernard, 1995, “The Kyoto School and ReverseOrientalism,” inJapan in Traditional and PostmodernPerspectives, Charles Wei-Hsun Fu and Steven Heine (eds.), NewYork: SUNY Press. (A severely critical treatment of the nationalisticaspects of the Kyoto School.)
Fujita, Masakatsu (ed.), 1997,Nihon kindai shisō omanabu hito no tame ni [For Students of Modern Japanese Thought],Kyoto: Sekaishisōsha. (Contains helpful introductory chapters onmembers of the Kyoto School and other key thinkers in modernJapan.)
–––, 1998,Gendaishisō toshite noNishida Kitarō [Nishida Kitarō as ContemporaryThought], Tokyo: Kōdansha. (An introduction to Nishida, focusingon the idea of pure experience, the critique of dualism, and thequestion of language in his early writings.)
––– (ed.), 2000ff.,Nihon no tetsugaku[Japanese Philosophy], Kyoto: Shōwadō. (An annual journalpublished by the Department of Japanese Philosophy at KyotoUniversity.)
––– (ed.), 2001,Kyōtogakuha notetsugaku [The Philosophy of the Kyoto School], Kyoto:Shōwadō. (Contains primary texts from, and critical essayson, eight Kyoto School philosophers.)
–––, 2011a,Nishida Kitarō noshisaku-sekai [The World of Nishida Kitarō’s Thought],Tokyo: Iwanami. (Gathers ten lucid and insightful essays on a range ofkey issues in Nishida’s philosophy.)
–––, 2011b, “Logos and Pathos: MikiKiyoshi’s Logic of the Imagination,” Bret W. Davis withMoritsu Ryū and Takehana Yōsuke (trans.), in Davis &Schroeder & Wirth 2011, pp. 305–318.
–––, 2013, “The Significance of JapanesePhilosophy,” Bret W. Davis (trans.),Journal of JapanesePhilosophy, 1: 5–20.
–––, 2018a,Nihon tetsugaku-shi [TheHistory of Japanese Philosophy], Kyoto: Shōwadō. (Based ontwo decades of lectures on the history of modern Japanese philosophyat Kyoto University by one of the leading contemporary scholars in thefield.)
––– (ed.), 2018b,The Philosophy of theKyoto School, Robert Chapeskie with John W. M. Krummel (trans.),Singapore: Springer.
–––, 2020, “The Development ofNishida’s Philosophy: Pure Experience, Place,Action-Intuition,” in Davis 2020a, pp. 389–415.
Fujita, Masakatsu, et al. (eds.), 2003,Higashiajia totetsugaku [East Asia and Philosophy], Kyoto: NakanishiyaPress.
Fujita, Masakatsu and Bret W. Davis (eds.), 2005,Sekai nonaka no nihon no tetsugaku [Japanese Philosophy in the World],Kyoto: Shōwadō. (A collection of articles by Western,Chinese and Japanese scholars attempting to hermeneutically situateand critically evaluate the significance of modern Japanese philosophyin the world.)
Goto-Jones, Christopher S., 2002, “If not a clash, thenwhat? Huntington, Nishida Kitarō, and the politics ofcivilizations,”International Relations of the AsianPacific, 2: 223–43.
–––, 2005,Political Philosophy in Japan:Nishida, The Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity, London: Routledge.(A provocative new interpretation of the political dimensions ofNishida’s philosophy, which argues that Nishida’spolitical thought should be understood neither in terms of Japaneseultranationalism, nor in terms of Western liberalism, but rather as amodern development of Eastern and in particular MahāyānaBuddhist thought.)
––– (ed.), 2008,Re-politicising the KyotoSchool as Philosophy, London: Routledge.
–––, 2009, “The Kyoto School, theCambridge School, and the History of Political Philosophy in WartimeJapan,”Positions, 17(1): 13–42.
Hanaoka, Eiko, 2009,Zen and Christianity: From the Standpointof Absolute Nothingness, Kyoto: Maruzen.
Harootunian, Harry, 2000,Overcome by Modernity: History,Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.
Hashi, Hisaki, 1999,Die Aktualität der Philosophie.Grundriss des Denkwegs der Kyoto-Schule, Wien: Doppelpunkt.
Hattori, Kenji, 2004, “‘Kyōtogakuha-saha’zō” [The Image of the “Left-Wing of the KyotoSchool”], in Ōhashi 2004, pp. 23–43.
Heisig, James W., 1994, “Tanabe’s Logic of theSpecific and the Spirit of Nationalism,” in Heisig & Maraldo1994, pp. 255–288.
–––, 1998, “Kyoto School,” in E.Craig (ed.),Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London:Routledge.
–––, 1999, “Philosophy as Spirituality:The Way of the Kyoto School,” inBuddhist Spirituality:Later China, Korea, Japan and the Modern World, TakeuchiYoshinori (ed.), New York: Crossroad, pp. 367–388.
–––, 2001,Philosophers of Nothingness: AnEssay on the Kyoto School, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘iPress. (A lucid introduction to the Kyoto School, focusing on keyideas of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani; includes a wealth of valuablereferences to the debates that have surrounded the School, and anextensive multilingual bibliography. For a review, see Davis2002.)
––– (ed.), 2004,Japanese PhilosophyAbroad, Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. (Avaluable collection of scholarly articles presented at aninternational conference on the past and future of studies of“Japanese philosophy” in the various regions of theworld.)
––– (ed.), 2006,Frontiers of JapanesePhilosophy, Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.(The first of an ongoing series of anthologies that focus largely onthe Kyoto School. See also Hori & Curley 2006; Heisig & Uehara2008; Lam & Cheung 2009; and Bouso & Heisig 2009.)
–––, 2016,Much Ado About Nothingness:Essays on Nishida and Tanabe, Nagoya: Chisokudō. (Collects arange of important essays on Nishida and Tanabe by one of the leadingscholars in the field.)
Heisig, James W., Thomas P. Kasulis and John C. Maraldo (eds.),2011,Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Honolulu:Hawai‘i University Press.
Heisig, James W. and John C. Maraldo (eds.), 1994,RudeAwakenings: Zen, The Kyoto School, and the Question ofNationalism, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Heisig, James W. and Uehara Mayuko (eds.), 2008,Frontiers ofJapanese Philosophy 3: Origins and Possibilities, Nagoya: NanzanInstitute for Religion and Culture.
Heisig, James W. and John C. Maraldo (eds.), 1994,RudeAwakenings: Zen, The Kyoto School, and the Question ofNationalism, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. (Awell-rounded landmark collection of articles on the politicalcontroversy surrounding the Kyoto School.)
Heisig, James W. and Uehara Mayuko (eds.), 2008,Frontiers ofJapanese Philosophy 3: Origins and Possibilities, Nagoya: NanzanInstitute for Religion and Culture.
Himi, Kiyoshi, 1990,Tanabe tetsugaku kenkyū:Shūkyōgaku no kanten kara [Studies of the Philosophy ofTanabe: From the Perspective of Religious Studies], Tokyo:Hokujushuppan. (The most comprehensive single-author work onTanabe’s thought, with a predominant focus on the several stagesof his later philosophy of religion.)
Hiromatsu, Wataru, 1989,“Kindai nochōkoku”-ron [Theories on “OvercomingModernity”], Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Hori, Victor Sōgen and Melissa Anne-Marie Curley (eds.),2008,Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 3: Origins andPossibilities, Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion andCulture.
Horio, Tsutomu, 1994, “TheChūōkōronDiscussions, Their Background and Meaning,” in Heisig &Maraldo 1994, pp. 289–315.
Ives, Christopher (ed.), 1995,Divine Emptiness and HistoricalFullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with MasaoAbe, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity PressInternational.
Jacinto Zavala, Agustín, 1989,Filosofía de latransformación del mundo: Introducción a lafilosofía tardía de Nishida Kitarō,Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán. (One of manyvaluable texts and translations by the premier Spanish-speakingNishida and Kyoto School scholar.)
–––, 2001, “On Some Elements of theConcept of Basho,”Dokkyo International Review, 14:119–134.
Kasulis, T. P., 1981,Zen Action/Zen Person, Honolulu:University of Hawai‘i Press. (A classic philosophicalintroduction to Zen Buddhism.)
–––, 1982, “The Kyoto School and theWest,”The Eastern Buddhist, 15(2): 125–45. (Anearly review article which includes insightful critical responses tothe literature on the Kyoto School that had appeared in the West priorto 1982.)
–––, 2018,Engaging Japanese Philosophy: AShort History, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. (Themagnum opus of one of the leading scholars in the field. Containslengthy treatments of Nishida and Watsuji among other premodern andmodern Japanese philosophers.)
Kopf, Gereon, 2001,Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen,Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self, Richmond, Surry: CurzonPress.
–––, 2004, “Between Identity andDifference: Three Ways of Reading Nishida’s Non-Dualism,”Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 31(1): 73–103.(A good account of how Nishida’s dialogue with his critics,Takahashi Satomi and Tanabe Hajime, assisted him in the pursuit of aphilosophy of non-dualism that does not reduce difference toidentity.)
–––, 2011, “Ambiguity, Diversity, and anEthics of Understanding: What Nishida’s Philosophy CanContribute to the Pluralism Debate,”Culture andDialogue, 1(1): 21–44.
––– (ed.), 2019,The Dao Companion toJapanese Buddhist Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer. (Containschapters on Nishida, Hisamatsu, Nishitani, and Ueda.)
Krummel, John W. M., 2012, “Basho, World, andDialectics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of NishidaKitarō,” in Nishida 2012a, pp. 3–48.
–––, 2014, “World, Nothing, andGlobalization in Nishida and Nancy,” in Leah Kalmanson and JamesMark Shields (eds.),Buddhist Responses to Globalization,Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 107–29.
–––, 2015,Nishida Kitarō’sChiasmatic Chorology: Place of Dialectic, Dialectic of Place,Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (A very well researched andinsightful monograph on Nishida’s philosophy.)
–––, 2022, “Ueda Shizuteru’sPhilosophy of the Twofold,”Comparative and ContinentalPhilosophy, 14(2): 153–161.
Kosaka, Kunitsugu, 1995,Nishida Kitarō: Sono shisōto gendai [Nishida Kitarō: His Thought and the ContemporaryAge], Kyoto: Minerva.
–––, 1997,Nishida Kitarō o megurutetsugakusha gunzō [The Group of Philosophers SurroundingNishida Kitarō], Kyoto: Minerva. (Contains clear presentations ofNishida’s thought in relation to that of Tanabe, TakahashiSatomi, Miki, Watsuji, and Hisamatsu.)
–––, 2001,Nishida tetsugaku to gendai:Rekishi, shūkyō, shizen o yomi-toku [Nishida Philosophyand the Contemporary Age: Explaining History, Religion, and Nature],Kyoto: Minerva.
Lai, Whalen, 1990, “Tanabe and the Dialectics of Mediation:A Critique,” inThe Religious Philosophy of TanabeHajime, Taitetsu Unno and James W. Heisig (eds.), Berkeley: AsianHumanities Press, pp. 256–276.
Lam, Wing-keung and Cheung Ching-yuen (eds.), 2009,Frontiersof Japanese Philosophy 4: Facing the 21st Century, Nagoya: NanzanInstitute for Religion and Culture.
Laube, Johannes, 1984,Dialektik der absoluten Vermittlung.Hajime Tanabes Religionsphilosophie als Beitrag zum “Wettstreitder Liebe” zwischen Buddhismus und Christentum, Freiburg imBreisgau: Herder.
Liao, Chin-ping, 2018,Shūkyō-tetsugaku nokyūsairon: Kōki Tanabe-tetsugaku no kenkyū[Soteriology of Philosophy of Religion: A Study of Tanabe’sLater Philosophy], Taiwan University Press.
Liao, Chin-ping, and Kawai Kazuki (eds.), 2022,Kiki no jidaito Tanabe-tetsugaku: Tanabe Hajime botsugo 60 shūnen kinenronshū [Tanabe’s Philosophy in a Time of Crisis:Essays Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Death of TanabeHajime], Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppan Kyoku.
Liao, Chin-ping, et al. (eds.), 2022,Higashi-ajia ni okerutetsugaku no seisei to hatten: kanbunka no shiten kara [TheOrigin and Development of Philosophy in East Asia: From anIntercultural Perspective], Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppan Kyoku.(Contains forty-four chapters by Chinese, Japanese, and a few otherscholars on various aspects of modern philosophy in East Asia,including many on members or affiliates of the Kyoto School.)
Light, Steven, 1987,Shūzō Kuki and Jean-PaulSartre: Influence and Counter-Influence in the Early History ofExistential Phenomenology, Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUniversity Press.
Mafli, Paul, 1996,Nishida Kitarōs Denkweg, Munich:Iudicium Verlag.
Maraldo, John, 1995, “The Problem of World Culture: Towardsan Appropriation of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nation andCulture,”The Eastern Buddhist, 28(2):183–197.
–––, 1997, “Contemporary JapanesePhilosophy,” inCompanion Encyclopedia of AsianPhilosophy, Brian Carr and Indira Mahalingam (eds.), London andNew York: Routledge, pp. 810–835. (A rich overview that situatesthe Kyoto School in the wider context of modern and contemporaryJapanese philosophy.)
–––, 2003, “Rethinking God: Heidegger inthe Light of Absolute Nothingness, Nishida in the Shadow ofOnto-Theology,” inReligious Experience and the End ofMetaphysics, Jeffery Bloechl (ed.), Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, pp. 31–49.
–––, 2004, “Defining Philosophy in theMaking,” in Heisig 2004, pp. 220–245. (An informative andthought-provoking essay on the question of what “Japanesephilosophy” has meant and should mean.)
–––, 2005, “Ōbei no shiten kara mitaKyōtogakuha no yurai to yukue” [The Whence and Whither ofthe Kyoto School from a Western Perspective], Azumi Yurika (trans.),in Fujita & Davis 2005, pp. 31–56. (An excellent criticalessay on the question of defining the “Kyoto School,”which unfortunately has yet to be published in English.)
–––, 2006, “The War Over the KyotoSchool,”Monumenta Nipponica, 61(3): 375–401. (Aninsightful review article on Goto-Jones 2005 and Williams 2005.)
–––, 2013, “Japanese Philosophy as a Lenson Greco-European Thought,”Journal of JapanesePhilosophy, 1: 21–56.
–––, 2017,Japanese Philosophy in the Making1: Crossing Paths with Nishida, Nagoya: Chisokudō. (Collectsa range of important essays on Nishida by one of the leading scholarsin the field.)
–––, 2019,Japanese Philosophy in the Making2:Borderline Interrogations, Nagoya: ChisokudōPublications. (A second volume of revised essays by this leadingscholar. Contains essays on the philosophies of Watsuji, Tanabe, andKuki, and on issues in political and environmental philosophy.)
–––, 2020, “Nishida Kitarō: Self,World, and the Nothingness Underlying Distinctions,” in Davis2020a, pp. 361–372.
–––, 2023,Japanese Philosophy in the Making3:Alternatives with Tracks through Zen, Nagoya:Chisokudō Publications. (A third volume of revised essays by thisleading scholar. Contains essays on Nishitani and Ueda amongothers.)
Marchianò, Grazia (ed.), 1996,La Scuola di Kyōto:Kyōto-ha, Messina: Rubberttino.
Matsumaru, Hideo, 2013,Chokusetsu-chi no tankyū:Nishida, Nishitani, Haideggā, Daisetsu [An Investigationinto Immediate Knowledge: Nishida, Nishitani, Heidegger, D. T.Suzuki], Yokohama: Shunpū-sha.
Matsumaru, Hisao, Yoko Arisaka, and Lucy Christine Schultz (eds.),2022,Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō, New York:Springer.
Mayeda, Graham, 2006,Time, Space, and Ethics in thePhilosophies of Watsuji Tetsurō, Kuki Shūzō, and MartinHeidegger, London & New York: Routledge.
–––, 2020a,Japanese Philosophers on Societyand Culture: Nishida Kitarō, Watsuji Tetsurō, and KukiShūzō, Lanham, MD: Lexington.
–––, 2020b, “Kuki Shūzō: APhenomenology of Fate and Chance and an Aesthetics of the FloatingWorld,” in Davis 2020a, pp. 523– 541.
McCarthy, Erin, 2010,Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhoodthrough Continental, Japanese, and Feminist Philosophies, Lanham,MD: Lexington. (Insightfully and provocatively brings Watsuji’sethics into dialogue with contemporary issues in Continental andfeminist philosophy.)
–––, 2020, “Watsuji Tetsurō: TheMutuality of Climate and Culture and an Ethics of Betweenness,”in Davis 2020a, pp. 503– 522.
Minamoto, Ryōen, 1994, “The Symposium on‘Overcoming Modernity’,” in Heisig & Maraldo1994.
Mitchell, Donald W. (ed.), 1998,Masao Abe: A Zen Life ofDialogue, Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co. (Consists of thirty-fivechapters by different authors reflecting on the significance ofAbe’s dialogues with philosophers and theologians in theWest.)
Morisato, Takeshi, 2021,Tanabe Hajime and the KyotoSchool, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. (An accessibleintroduction to Tanabe’s thought.)
Müller, Ralf, Raquel Bouso, and Adam Loughnane (eds.), 2022,Tetsugaku Companion to Ueda Shizuteru, New York: SpringerPublishing.
Nagatomo, Shigenori, 1995,A Philosophical Foundation of MikiKiyoshi’s Concept of Humanism, Lewiston, NY: Edwin MellenPress.
Nakamura, Yūjirō, 1983,Nishida Kitarō,Tokyo: Iwanami.
–––, 1987,Nishida tetsugaku nodatsukōchiku [The Deconstruction of Nishida Philosophy],Tokyo: Iwanami.
Neto, Antonio Florentino, and Oswaldo Giacoia Jr. (eds.), 2017,A Escola de Kyoto e suas fontes orientais, Campinas, Brasil:Editora Phi.
Ōhashi, Ryōsuke (ed.), 2004,Kyōtogakuha noshisō [The Thought of the Kyoto School], Kyoto: Jinbunshoin.(Contains five chapters that critically examine past and presentimages of the “Kyoto School,” and seven chapters thatexplore the potential of Kyoto School thought in various areas ofcontemporary philosophy.)
Ōhashi, Ryōsuke and Akitomi Katsuya, 2020, “TheKyoto School: Transformations Over Three Generations,” in Davis2020a, 367–387. (An introduction to the Kyoto School byprominent representatives of its two most recent generations ofscholars.)
Osaki, Harumi, 2019,Nothingness in the Heart of the Empire:The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Kyoto School in ImperialJapan, Albany: State University of New York Press. (A criticalinterpretation of the wartime political writings of the KyotoSchool.)
Ōshima, Yasuma, 2000, “Daitōasensō toKyōtogakuha: Chishikijin no seijisanka ni tsuite” [ThePacific War and the Kyoto School: On the Political Participation ofIntellectuals], inSekaishi no riron: Kyōtogakuha norekishigaku ronkō [Theory of World History: The KyotoSchool’s Writings on History], Mori Tetsurō (ed.), Kyoto:Tōeisha, pp. 274–304.
Parkes, Graham, 1884, “Nietzsche and Nishitani on the Selfthrough Time,”The Eastern Buddhist, 17(2):55–74.
–––, 1997, “The Putative Fascism of theKyoto School and the Political Correctness of the ModernAcademy,”Philosophy East and West, 47(3):305–336.
–––, 2011, “Heidegger and JapaneseFascism: An Unsubstantiated Connection,” in Davis &Schroeder & Wirth 2011, pp. 247–265.
Parkes, Graham, 1997, “The Putative Fascism of the KyotoSchool and the Political Correctness of the Modern Academy,”Philosophy East and West, 47(3): 305–336. (A criticalresponse to polemical treatments of the nationalistic aspects of theKyoto School, including those by Pincus 1996 and Faure 1995.)
Pincus, Leslie, 1996,Authenticating Culture in ImperialJapan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics,Berkeley: University of California Press. (A highly critical treatmentof the implications of cultural nationalism in Kuki’saesthetics.)
Piovesana, Gino K., 1994,Recent Japanese PhilosophicalThought, 1862–1996: A Survey, revised edition including anew survey by Naoshi Yamawaki: “The Philosophical Thought ofJapan from 1963 to 1996,” Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library(Curzon Press Ltd). (A classic survey of modern Japanesephilosophy.)
Stambaugh, Joan, 1999,The Formless Self, Albany: SUNYPress. (Insightfully discusses Dōgen, Hisamatsu, andNishitani.)
Standish, Paul and Naoko Saito (eds.), 2012,Education and theKyoto School of Philosophy: Pedagogy for Human Transformation,New York: Springer.
Stevens, Bernard, 2000,Topologie du néant: Uneapproche de l’école de Kyōto, Paris:Éditions Peeters.
–––, 2020,Heidegger et l’écolede Kyôto. Soleil levant sur forêt noire, Paris : lesEditions du Cerf.
–––, 2023,Kyoto School in ComparativePerspective: Ideology, Ontology, Modernity. Lanham, MD: LexingtonBooks. (Contains chapters on Nishida and Nishitani as well as on theKyoto School affiliated psychiatrist Kimura Bin and the liberalpolitical theorist and intellectual historian Maruyama Masao.)
Suares, Peter, 2011,The Kyoto School’s Takeover ofHegel: Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe Remake the Philosophy ofSpirit, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Sugimoto, Kōichi, 2011, “Tanabe Hajime’s Logic ofSpecies and the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarō: A Critical Dialoguewithin the Kyoto School,” in Davis & Schroeder & Wirth2011, pp. 52–67.
Takeda, Atsushi, 2001,Monogatari“Kyōto-gakuha” [The Story of the“Kyoto School”], Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha.(An engaging biographical account of the interpersonal relations andscholarly activities of the Kyoto School.)
Tanaka, Kyūbun, 2000,Nihon no “tetsugaku” oyomitoku [Reading Japanese “Philosophy”], Tokyo:Chikuma Shinsho. (Consists of introductory chapters on Nishida,Watsuji, Kuki, and Miki.)
Townsend, Susan C., 2009,Miki Kiyoshi 1897–1945:Japan’s Itinerant Philosopher, Boston: Brill.
Tremblay, Jacynthe, 2000,Nishida Kitarō: Le jeu del’individuel et de l’universel, Paris: CNRSEditions.
Tremblay, Jacynthe, 2024,Le Soi égaré:Entretiens avec Nishida Kitarō, Premièresérie, Montréal: Les Presses del’Université de Montréal.
Tsunetoshi, Sōzaburō, 1998,Nihon no tetsugaku omanabu hito no tame ni [For Students of Japanese Philosophy],Kyoto: Sekaishisōsha. (Consists of introductory chapters mostlyon Kyoto School philosophers.)
Ueda, Shizuteru (ed.), 1992,Jōi ni okeru kū[Emptiness in Passion], Tokyo: Sōbunsha. (An important collectionof essays on Nishitani.)
––– (ed.), 1994,Nishida-tetsugaku[Nishida Philosophy], Tokyo: Sōbunsha. (An important collectionof essays on Nishida.)
––– (ed.), 2006,Zen to Kyoto-tetsugaku[Zen and Kyoto Philosophy], Kyoto: Tōeisha. (An importantanthology on the most significant twentieth century Japanesephilosophers who were engaged in the study and practice of Zen.)
Ueda, Shizuteru and Horio Tsutomu (eds.), 1998,Zen togendaisekai [Zen and the Modern World], Kyoto: ZenbunkaKenkyūsho. (Consists of chapters on Nishida, D. T. Suzuki,Nishitani, and Hisamatsu, addressing the relation of their thought toZen.)
Ueda, Yoshifumi, 1990, “Tanabe’s Metanoetics andShinran’s Thought,” inThe Religious Philosophy ofTanabe Hajime, Taitetsu Unno and James W. Heisig (eds.),Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, pp. 134–149.
Unno, Taitetsu (ed.), 1989,The Religious Philosophy ofNishitani Keiji, Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. (A landmarkcollection of responses to Nishitani’s philosophy ofreligion.)
Unno, Taitetsu and James W. Heisig (eds.), 1990,The ReligiousPhilosophy of Tanabe Hajime, Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press. (Alandmark collection of responses to Tanabe’s philosophy ofreligion.)
Unno, Taitetsu, 1998,River of Fire, River of Water: AnIntroduction to the Pure Land Tradition of Shin Buddhism, NewYork: Double Day. (An accessible and engaging introduction to ShinBuddhist thought.)
Waldenfels, Hans, 1980,Absolute Nothingness: Foundations fora Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, J. W. Heisig (trans.), New York:Paulist Press. (An important early Western work focusing on Nishitanifrom the perspective of Buddhist-Christian dialogue.)
Wargo, Robert J. J., 2005,The Logic of Nothingness: A Studyof Nishida Kitarō, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘iPress. (A landmark philosophical study which traces the earlydevelopment of Nishida’s thought from out of the context ofJapanese philosophy in the Meiji period, and which focuses inparticular on the subsequent development of his unique “logic ofbasho”.)
Wilkinson, Robert, 2009,Nishida and Western Philosophy,Surrey, UK: Ashgate. (An account of Nishida’s philosophy whichsets his thought in the context of his Zen background as well as hiscritical dialogue with Western philosophers such as James, Bergson,Fichte, the Neo-Kantians, and Hegel. For a review, see Davis2011d.)
Williams, David, 2005,Defending Japan’s Pacific War:The Kyoto School Philosophers and Post-White Power, London &New York: Routledge. (A highly provocative revisionist account of thePacific War and defense of the Kyoto School’s wartime politicalthought, which centers on an interpretation of Tanabe as a pioneer“post-White” political philosopher.)
–––, 2014,The Philosophy of JapaneseWartime Resistance: A Reading, with Commentary, of the Complete Textsof the Kyoto School Discussions of “The Standpoint of WorldHistory and Japan,” New York: Routledge.
Yusa, Michiko, 1994, “Nishida and Totalitarianism: APhilosopher’s Resistance,” in Heisig & Maraldo 1994,pp. 107–131.
–––, 1997, “Contemporary BuddhistPhilosophy,” inA Companion to World Philosophies,Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp.564–572.
–––, 2002,Zen & Philosophy: AnIntellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō, Honolulu:University of Hawai‘i Press. (A very informative and lucidaccount of Nishida’s personal and scholarly life, including hisrelations with other Kyoto School thinkers.)
––– (ed.), 2017,The Bloombury ResearchHandbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, New York:Bloomsbury. (Contains a number of chapters devoted to developing thethought of philosophers associated with the Kyoto School.)
–––, 2019, “D. T. Suzuki and the‘Logic of Sokuhi,’ or the ‘Logic ofPrajñāpāramitā’,” in Gereon Kopf(ed.),The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy,Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 589–616.

Other Cited Sources

Aristotle,Introduction to Aristotle, second edition,Richard McKeon (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Bercholz, Samuel and Sherab Chödzin Kohn (eds.), 1993,The Buddha and His Teachings, Boston: Shambhala.
Buchner, Harmut (ed.), 1989,Japan und Heidegger,Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.
Cleary, J. C. (trans.), 1999,Wumen’s Gate, inThree Zen Classics, Berkeley: Numata Center for BuddhistTranslation and Research.
Dale, Peter, 1986,The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, NewYork: St. Martin’s Press.
Dallmayr, Fred, 1996,Beyond Orientalism, Albany: SUNYPress.
Davis, Bret W., 2013b, “Forms of Emptiness in Zen,” inSteven Emmanuel (ed.),A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy,West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 190–213.
–––, 2013c, “Heidegger and AsianPhilosophy,” in François Raffoul and Eric S. Nelson(eds.),The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger, New York:Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 459–471.
Derrida, Jacques, 1992,The Other Heading: Reflections onToday’s Europe, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas(trans.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Eckehart, Meister, 1963,Deutsche Predigten und Traktate,Josef Quint (ed. and trans.), München: Carl Hanser.
Elberfeld, Rolf, 2017,Philosophieren in einer globalisiertenWelt: Wege zu einer transformativen Phänomenologie,Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber.
Friedländer, Paul, 1969,Plato: An Introduction,second edition, Hans Meyerhoff (trans.), Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.
Fukuyama, Francis, 1992,The End of History and the LastMan, New York: The Free Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1989,Das Erbe Europas, Frankfurt:Suhrkamp.
Garfield, Jay L., 1995,The Fundamental Wisdom of the MiddleWay:Nāgārjuna’sMūlamadhyamakakārikā, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
Habermas, Jürgen, 1979,Communication and the Evolutionof Society, Thomas McCarthy (trans.), Boston: Beacon Press.
Heidegger, Martin, 1956,Was ist das—diePhilosophie?, Pfullingen: Neske.
–––, 1975ff.,Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurtam Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Itō Kunitake, Yamauchi Shirō, Nakajima Takahiro,Nōtomi Noburu (eds), 2020,Sekai-tetsugaku-shi [WorldHistory of Philosophy or History of World Philosophy], 9 volumes,Tokyo: Chikuma Shoten.
Izutsu, Toshihiko (trans.), 2001,Lao-tzu: The Way and ItsVirtue, Tokyo: Keio University Press. (A bilingual edition)
Kasulis, T. P., 1981,Zen Action/Zen Person, Honolulu:University of Hawai‘i Press.
Kenneth K. Inada, 1993,Nāgārjuna: A Translation ofhis Mūlamadhyamakakārikā with an IntroductoryEssay, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications.
Liu, JeeLoo and Douglas L. Berger (eds.), 2014,Nothingness inAsian Philosophy, New York: Routledge.
Mac Sweeney, Naoíse, 2023,The West: A New History inFourteen Lives, New York: Dutton.
Najita, Tetsuo and H. D. Harootunian, 1998, “Japan’sRevolt against the West,” inModern Japanese Thought,Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,pp. 207–272.
Nakamura, Hajime (ed.), 1975,Bukkyō-go daijiten[Large Dictionary of Buddhist Terms], Tokyo:Tōkyōshoseki.
Nishimura, Eshin (ed.), 1994,Mumonkan [The GatelessBarrier], Tokyo: Iwanami.
Panikkar, K. M., 1969,Asia and Western Dominance,Collier Books.
Parkes, Graham (ed.), 1987,Heidegger and Asian Thought,Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
–––, 1996, “Nietzsche and East AsianThought: Influences, Impacts, and Resonances,” inTheCambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M.Higgins (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.356–383.
Plato, 1961,The Collected Dialogues of Plato, EdithHamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.
Said, Edward, 1978,Orientalism, New York: VintageBooks.
–––, 1993,Culture and Imperialism, NewYork: Vintage Books.
Schürmann, Reiner, 1978,Meister Eckhart: Mystic andPhilosopher, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Wagner, Rudolf G., 2003,A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing:Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text andCommentary, Albany: State University of New York Press.
Watson, Burton, 1968,The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu,New York: Columbia University Press.
Williams, Paul, 1989,Mahāyāna Buddhism: TheDoctrinal Foundations, London/New York: Routledge.
Zhang, Dainian, 2002,Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy,Edmund Ryden (trans.), New Haven and London: Yale UniversityPress.

Academic Tools

How to cite this entry.
Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
The Encyclopedia Now Needs Your Support
Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free

Browse

About

Support SEP

Mirror Sites

View this site from another server:

USA (Main Site)Philosophy, Stanford University

Info about mirror sites

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Movatterモバイル変換