1 ZEN BUDDHISM · TODA Y ANNUAL REPORT OF THE KYOTO ZEN SYMPOSIUM No. 15 November 1998 1 'i~ti; ~"Yl 11 ~ ~· GEPA THE KYOTO SEMINAR FOR RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY ~-~ fi o~L f &­ ~ ~'- ·HI ~ o "), ~ ..:. ::¡ Biblicteca -o )",. ' l")d "" Cover Calligraphy by ZEN BUDDHISM T Seiko Hirata -ANNUAL REPORT OF THE KYOTO ZE No. 15 November 1998 ((J(atsu)) (a shout to awaken trainees) CONTENTS NISHIDA'S PHILOSOPHY, NISHITANI'S PHILOSOPHY, AND ZEN Aections on the Notion ofReality in the Thought ofNishida and Nishitani - Bernard Stevens .. ... ...................... ..... ..................... ......... l Nishida's Philosophy of Religion: A Religious Philosophy -Michiko Tusa .............................................................. 15 The Bodily Manifestation of Religious Experience and Late Nishida Philosophy -Augustín Jacinto Z. ....... ................... .............. ..... ........... 33 Questions Posed by Nishida's Philosophy -Fujita Masakatsu .......................................................... 51 The Language of the Kyoto School of Philosophy - Yagi Seiichi ................................................................. 65 Nishitani Revisited -jan Van Bragt ............................................................. 77 Emptiness, History, Accountability: A Critica! Examination of Nishitani Keiji's Standpoint - John C. Mara/do . 97 The Problem of the Other in Self-Awareness -Hase Shótó ................................................................. 119 Practicing Philosophy as a Matter of Life and Death opyright © 1998 by the Kyoto Seminar for Religious Philosophy, Kyoto, -Graham Parkes ... ........................................................ 139 apan. Al! rights reserved. No reproduction or translation without written Gyakutaió and Gyakuen: Nishida's Philosophy, Nishitani's permission from the publisher. Philosophy, and Zen -Horio Tsutomu ............................................................ 155 Published by Mterword . 169 Cumulative Listing of Contents, Vols. l-15 ... ............................ 175 The Kyoto Seminar for Religious Philosophy Index of Authors, Vols. l-15 ................................................ 189 Tenryü-ji Institute for Philosophy and Religion 68 Susukinobaba-ch6, Ukyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, 616-8385 Japan ~(.,~--..;· r§ y~ Reflections on the Notion of Reality in the Thought of Nishida and Nishitani BERNARD STEVENS 1 T FIRST GLANCE, Zen no kenkyü ~ O)~JfJ'¿ [A study of the good] may seem A somewhat disappointing, despite the fact that in many ways it consti­ tutes the fountainhead ofKyoto-school philosophy. It can appear to be a k.ind of schematization and flattening of Hegel's Phiinomenologie des Geistes (POERTNER and HEISE 1995, pp. 336-38)/ with a few colorful references to non-Western thought thrown in to lend it sorne apparent originality. It can be regarded as moving in the realm of the obvious, and seen as the result of an adequate but average understanding ofWestern philosophy. It does not strike one immediately as being a milestone in the history of philosophical thought. And I must admit that m y first reading of the book left me with an impression clase to this. However, after becoming better acquainted with the philosophy of the Kyoto school as well as with its Japanese and Asían cultural background, I have gradually changed my view and have recently rediscovered this book in a new light. Zen no kenkyü does indeed appear to be a relatively simple work. But it is, I believe, the type of simplicity Heidegger told us we must try to regain: not the simplicity of simple-mindedness, nor the simplicity of the infancy of the Spirit, but the simplicity of das Anfiingliche, "the beginning," or das Ursprüngliche, "originality." The very simplicity ofthis book makes for its difficulty, in a way comparable to the way that archaic Greek thought, in its embryonic form, contains too much conceptual richness and too many levels of meaning to be easily transcribed into the more "scholastic" discourse of the conventional academia. This book contains-and this might also be 1 Hercafter abbreviated as ZK. Translated into English asAn Inquiry into the Good (hercafrer IG), by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives (NISHIDA 1990). 2 POERTNER and HEISE (1995, pp. 336-38) havc convincingly demonstrated the inAuence of the English neo-Hegelian Thomas Hill Green on Nishida's Zen no kenkyii. l STEVENS THE NOTION OF REALITY IN NISHIDA ANO NISHITANI linked to the semantic structure of the Japanese language-a type of (NISHITANI 1961; hereafter SN)3 and Nishida Kitaro: Sano hito to shiso "plurivocity" that cannot be exhausted by the "univocity" aimed at by mod­ ®"93~~!'!~- -'(-0)}\.c.\l;l,~ (NISHITANI 1985),' his monograph on Nishida. ern philosophy with its scientific and racional ambitions. When, for example, Nishitani states in his introduction to Shükyo to wa This "archaism" of Zen no kenkyü contributes to its perfection. Nishida nanika that "the inquiry into religion attempted here proceeds by way of himself declared that, although he felt unsatisfied with the book in his later problems judged to lay hidden at the ground of the historical frontier we call years, he couldn't change it because "one's thoughts have a living integrity at 'the modern world,' with the aim of delving into the ground of human exis­ each point oftime" (ZK, p. 6; IG, p. xxxi). He also added that "what lay deep tence and, at the same time, searching anew for the wellsprings of reality in my thought" while writing the book was not limited to its apparent "psy­ itself" (SN, p. 2; RN p. xlvii), I personally understand this statement as a per­ chologism," but already contained what was to develop into such later fect continuation of what Nishida was attempting to do through his notion notions as "absolute will" ( zettai ishi ~M :'f.$), "place" ( basho ~pfr ), "dialec­ of "pure experience." Indeed, pure experience-a concept that is meant, among other things, to counter the obliterating preeminence of the intellec­ ~ tical universal" ( benshohoteki ippansha #~iEitá~-A~~ ), "acting intuition" (koiteki chokkan and tual over the volitional in modern thought-is precisely "the ground of r-L...., 1p!:8~i1!~), "historie~! reali~" (r~kis~itek~ ~~t:uzai J!f~ÉI~~f:E). Thus the notlon of "pure expenence" ()unsut ketken :W.#if,I~) human existence" and the "wellsprings of reality itself," since Nishida saw in ~ -' that forms the core of Zen no kenkyü is not "overcome" in Nishida's later phi­ it the main access to "the problem of human life" Uinsei no mondai ~l losophy but is continued, with its various seminal potentialities progressively }\.~O)r",M) as well as to the "unconscious unifYing force" (muishiki toitsu explored and new viewpoints opened, new concepts discovered, and new ryoku ?Wi:'f.~llHJc - :1J) that functions both at the heart of human consciousness possibilities enabled that in no way negate the original ones. and at the heart of reality as a whole. Although Nishida's approach to the reli­ rr And I believe it is not just the la ter philosophy of Nishida that is seminally gious problem in Zen no kenkyü is psychological and epistemological as contained in Zen no kenkyü, but also the various aspects of the philosophy of opposed to the existencial approach of Nishitani, the "immanentist realistic" the Kyoto school as a whole. Moreover-although this might sound like standpoint ( or "radical realist" standpoint) constructed in Zen no kenkyü still ) remains the basis without which Nishitani's impressive intercultural enter­ ~ somewhat of an overstatement-it is not just the philosophy of the Kyoto­ school philosophers that was affected but also that of people who, like us prise might not have been possible. today, took Nishida's endeavor seriously and attempted to follow the path of This appears clearly when Nishitani speaks of religion "as the self-awareness thought he opened for future generations. It seems to me that one of the of reality, or, more correctly, the real self-awareness of reality" Uitsuzai no jit­ most thought-provoking notions of Zen no kenkyü in this respect is Nishida's suzaitekina jikaku ~ ffO)~{E~ t:t § 1t ). Nishitani explains further that ~ - ~ notion of reality Uitsuzai ~{E) or the universe (uchü +ii) as a "manifesta­ by the self-awareness of reality I mean both our becoming aware of tion of God" (ka mi no hyogen t$ O)~JJI.). The following pages do not offer an reality and, at the same time, the reality realizing itself in our aware- 4~ explanation of that notion, but just a few hints at sorne of the steps that can ness .... In this sense, the realness of our existen ce, as the appropria- ~ lead in its direction. tion of reality, belongs to reality itself as the self-realization of reality ,~1 itself. (SN,p.8;RN p.S) The Ground Common to Nishitani and Nishida This question of "reality," which Nishitani views here from an existential­ religious standpoint, had been considered by Nishida from an epistemological The author who has probably influenced me the most in my new estimation of Nishida's philosophy is Nishitani Keiji, whose writings, being more acces­ 3 Translated into English as Religion and Nothingness (hereafter RN) by Jan Van Bragt ( NISHI­ sible to Western ways of thought than those of Nishida, often prove more TANI 1982). appealing to the European reader. Two books ofNishitani's in particular have 4 Translated into English as Nishida KitariJ (hereafter NK) by Yamamoto Seisaku and James clarified my understanding of Nishida: Shükyo to wa nanika *~~t¡±friJf.p W. Heisig (NISHITANI 1991). 2 3 STEVENS THE NOTION OF