This essay focuses on Nishitani Keiji’s 西谷啟治 early and late thinking, in the discourse on world history and modernity during wartime and the postwar meditation on emptiness and historicity in Religion and Nothingness. Following the first part of the analysis, I will trace Nishitani’s critical indebtedness to Heidegger’s existential-phenomenological analysis of historicity in Being and Time, and thereby analyze how Nishitani attempts to solve the aporia of modernity by recourse to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. The essay will conclude with some critical remarks that discern the limits and hidden dangers in Nishitani’s philosophical project.
目次
1 Introduction 491 2 War, Buddhism, and Historical Consciousness 492 3 Emptiness and Historicity in Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness 496 4 Critique of Modern Historical Consciousness 500 4.1 Historical Consciousness in Christianity 501 4.2 Historical Consciousness in the Age of Enlightenment 501 4.3 Historical Consciousness in Nietzsche’s Nihilism 503 4.4 Historical Consciousness in the Buddhist Standpoint of Emptiness 503 5 Concluding Remarks 504 References 505
