Full Book (PDF): The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism by Nishitani Keiji
As a past reader of Nishitani in both the original Japanese and English translation, I find this manuscript to be the most accessible and clearly written of any book-length work I have read by him. It shows Nishitani as a vital and vigorous thinker, and serves as an introduction to his widely acclaimed Religion and Nothingness.
The summaries of the relation to nihilism of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, and Stirner, a nearly forgotten figure in intellectual history, are all perspicacious. Even the chapters on Nietzsche, about whom volumes are written these days, provide new insights. The brief section on the problem of nihilism for Japan is unprecedented in the English literature, and the sketches on karma and historicity whet the appetite for the more extensive and difficult expositions in Religion and Nothingness.
It will be mandatory reading for an understanding of both Nishitani’s thought and the problem of nihilism. Scholars and other persons interested in nihilism, in Nietzsche, and/or in contemporary Buddhist or Japanese philosophy, will greatly profit from a study of this book.
– John C. Maraldo, Department of Philosophy, University of North Florida
This is a fine translation of an important work in the corpus of Nishitani’s early writings. The translation is timely both because of the Western interest in Nishitani as a preeminent contemporary Japanese philosopher and because of the continuing Western perplexity about the problems Nishitani addresses. Nishitani is one of the world’s greatest living philosophers and even in this early work of his that brilliance shines through.
– Thomas P. Kasulis, Department of Philosophy, Northland College
Nishitani Keiji was for many years Professor of Religious Philosophy at Kyoto University and the leading thinker of the “Kyoto School” of philosophy. He died in 1990. Graham Parkes is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, the editor of Heidegger and Asian Thought and Nietzsche and Asian Thought, and the author of Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology. Setsuko Aihara has taught Japanese at the University of Hawaii and Harvard University, and is the author of Strategies for Reading Japanese: A Rational Approach to the Japanese Sentence.
Contents
Chapter One – Nihilism as Existence
1. Two Problems
2. Nihilism and the Philosophy of History
3. European Nihilism
Chapter Two – From Realism to Nihilism: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach
1. Hegel’s Absolute Idealism and Radical Realism
2. Schopenhauer—Will as Real—The Nullity of Existence
3. Kierkegaard—Becoming and Existence
4. Feuerbach—Critique of Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics
Chapter Three – Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Consummate Nihilist
1. The Significance of Nihilism in Nietzsche
2. Radical Nihilism
3. Nietzsche’s Interpretation of Christianity
4. The Concept of “Sincerity”—”Will to Illusion”
Chapter Four – Nietzsche’s Affirmative Nihilism: Amor Fati and Eternal Recurrence
1. Value-Interpretation and Perspectivism
2. The Problem of Amor Fati
3. Love of Fate as “Innermost Nature”—Suffering—Soul
4. The Idea of Eternal Recurrence: The “Moment” and Eternity
5. Eternal Recurrence and Overcoming the Spirit of Gravity
6. Love of Fate and Eternal Recurrence
7. The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
Chapter Five – Nihilism and Existence in Nietzsche
1. “God is Dead”
2. Critique of Religion
3. The Stages of Nihilism
4. Nihilism as Existence
5. The First Stage of Existence
6. The Second Stage of Existence
7. Nihilism as Scientific Conscience
8. Science and History as Existence
9. “Living Dangerously” and “Experimentation”
10. The Third Stage—Existence as Body
11. The Dialectical Development of Nihilism
Chapter Six – Nihilism as Egoism: Max Stirner
1. Stirner’s Context
2. The Meaning of Egoism
3. Realist, Idealist, Egoist—”Creative Nothing”
4. From Paganism to Christianity
5. From Christianity to Liberalism
6. From Liberalism to Egoism
7. Ownness and Property—All and Nothing
8. The State and the Individual
Chapter Seven – Nihilism in Russia
1. Russian Nihilism
2. Bazarov’s Nihilism—”Fathers and Sons”
3. Nihilism as Contemplation—”Notes from Underground”
Chapter Eight – Nihilism as Philosophy: Martin Heidegger
1. Existentialism as a Discipline
2. The “Ontological Difference”
3. Transcendence and Being-in-the-World
4. Being-toward-Death and Anxiety
5. Finitude—Metaphysics—Existence—Freedom
Chapter Nine – The Meaning of Nihilism for Japan
1. The Crisis in Europe and Nihilism
2. The Crisis Compounded
3. The Significance of European Nihilism for Us
4. Buddhism and Nihilism
Appendix – The Problem of Atheism
1. Marxist Humanism
2. Sartrean Existentialism
3. Atheism in the World of Today