Nihilism | Encounter with Nothingness

Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.

Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.

Nishitani understands human existence as consisting in three fields: consciousness, nihility and emptiness. Nihility is as part of the fabric of reality as Being is, it is relative nothingness, and emptiness is absolute nothingness, where the “absolute negation” as the negation of negation becomes the “great affirmation”.

In the openness of śūnyatā realised by nihility overcoming itself, one completely oversteps the confines of self-consciousness and comes to be free of egocentrism, anthropocentrism and even theocentrism, thus allowing ultimate reality to manifest itself in all its fullness.

We will be focusing on two important works of Nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness.

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ Religion and Nothingness
https://amzn.to/3ND4IQs
▶ The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
https://amzn.to/3N1JiwG

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🎶 Music used

1. Mesmerize – Kevin MacLeod
2. Dark Ambient Background Music - The Lost – CO.AG Music
3. Mysterious Ambient Background Music – The Rake – CO.AG Music
4. Peaceful Ambient Background Music – Heroes – CO.AG Music

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📝 Sources

- Nishitani, K. (1990). The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Translated by Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara.
- Nishitani, K. (1982). Religion and Nothingness. Translated with an introduction by Jan Van Bragt.
- Phillips, S. H. (1987). Nishitani's Buddhist Response to "Nihilism". Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 55(1), 75-104.
- Bragt, J.V. (1987). Religion and Science in Nishitani Keiji. In Zen Buddhism Today: Annual Report of the Kyoto Zen Symposium (No. 5-8, p. 161). Kyoto Seminar for Religious Philosophie.
- Smith, J. R. (1994). Nishitani and Nietzsche on the selfless self.
- Heisig, J. W. (2001). Philosophers of nothingness. University of Hawaii Press.
- Parkes, G. (2015). Nishitani on Practicing Philosophy as a Matter of Life and Death.
- Balogh, L. (2020). Nothingness, the Self, and the Meaning of Life: Nishida, Nishitani, and Japanese Psychotherapeutic Approaches to the Challenge of Nihilism. Journal of Philosophy of Life, 10(1), 98-119.
- John Vervaeke - The View from Above: A Transformation of Perspectival and Participatory Knowing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5iGCW3fDb4
- Nihilism and Non-duality w/ Jared Morningstar - Voices with Vervaeke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4uN-y_8-BE
- Religion and Nothingness (Keiji Nishitani) - Introductory dialogue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzO-KJyeIWc&t
- Religion and Nothingness Q&A with Tetsuzen Jason Wirth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS8lQiEVg&t

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⌛ Timestamps

0:00 Introduction: Keiji Nishitani
4:24 The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
8:12 Religion and Nothingness
14:36 Consciousness, nihility, emptiness
19:13 Cosmic Individual

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#nothingness #nihilism #nishitani