Murphy Shimamoto
Nishitani and Nietzsche: Doubt and Ironic Absurdity
Nishitani’s Attempt to Discard Nietzsche and Why We Should Not Accept It
Introduction
This paper seeks to demonstrate how Nishitani misunderstands Nietzsche in order to support his own philosophical project. It claims that Nishitani is firmly anchored in the Cartesian tradition, struggling within its philosophical paradigm of certainty and doubt about subjects and objects, seeking its revision by regrounding it on an Eastern relational ontology. In order to protect against Nietzsche’s philosophical ironism, Nishitani tries and fails to reduce Nietzsche’s philosophy to being grounded on the natural sciences, which if successful would make Nietzsche subject to Nishitani’s critique. Furthermore, we examine Nietzsche’s philosophical understanding of language and argue that it gives better, more justified reasons for belief than does the faith based approach of Nishitani. In the final section we argue that we need not worry about Nishitani’s moral concerns regarding Nietzsche’s solution to nihilism for his irony is separable from it. We even suggest that an ironic stance has the potential to be morally preferable to and more useful than Nishitani’s.
Doubt and Absurdity
Nishitani is undoubtedly extremely critical of Descartes. According to Nishitani (1993), “When Descartes entertained the possibility of doubting everything that presents itself to us by suspecting it all of being the illusion of a dream…considering that this doubt itself was the only thing beyond doubt, arrived at the conclusion cogito, ergo sum, he was engaged from the very start in a process of methodical doubt. This is something fundamentally different from the self-presentation of the Great Doubt,” (18-19). For Nishitani, this was a grave error on Descartes’ part as it precluded him from disclosing a religious perspective, leaving him merely within the realm of philosophy. By this Nishitani (1993) means that, “the basic difference between religion and philosophy, comes to this: in religion one persistently pushes ahead in a direction where doubt becomes a reality for the self and makes itself really present to the self. This sort of real doubt may, of course, show up in philosophical skepsis, but philosophy tends to transfer it to the realm of theoretical reflection, and within those confines seek an explanation and solution of the problem,” (18). For Nishitani, methodological doubt is problematic because it forms an abstract conceptual doubt, severed from concrete existence and what Nishitani considers its fundamental problems (such as religion, morality, etc.). Furthermore, it is liable to lapse into nihilism due to its separation of subject and object. Against such conceptions Nishitani (1993) urges us to, “step beyond the field of a fundamental separation of subject and object,” in order to, “really and truly get in touch with the realness of either the self or things,” (35). It is only after one has undergone the Great Doubt, where the doubt of the external world is followed by an internalized doubt of one’s self, that one can reach the standpoint of śūnyatā and non-ego samādhi where subject and object are experienced primordially. Any attempt which Nishitani considers to be founded on the Cartesian ego, such as Sartre’s existentialism, fails to achieve this stance (as do materialist standpoints, such as Marx’s, operating from the opposite polarity). Nishitani is, however, unable to similarly dismiss Nietzsche.
In Daybreak, Nietzsche (1997) writes, “The Limit of humility. - Many have no doubt attained to that humility which says: credo quia absurdum est and sacrificed their reason to it: but, so far as I know, no one has yet attained to that humility which says: credo quia absurdus sum, though it is only one step further,” (176). In this case we clearly see Nietzsche’s perspective on the absurdity of finding Truth not only externally but internally as well. Nietzsche does not suffer from the fault that Nishitani attributes to figures such as Sartre and Descartes of philosophizing from a firmly grounded subjective ego. Nishitani is fully aware of the fact that Nietzsche is no mere assertion of egoism. He makes this explicit when he (1993) claims, “Nietzsche, as early as in The Birth of Tragedy, took up a position well beyond the standpoint of the ego,” (65). Despite their similarities, Nishitani is unwilling to accept the standpoint from which Nietzsche attempts to confront what they consider the core problem facing philosophy, nihilism. This is because Nishitani believes he can solve this problem with the ‘true’ religion that he explains philosophically. Therefore, what he (1990) describes as Nietzsche’s “ironical method,” (72) does not suit his purposes. Confronted with Nietzschean irony as the deepest solution to the problem of nihilism, Nishitani reverts to the modern framework of Cartesian philosophy, one centered around doubt and certainty, in order to offer his religious solution. However, Nishitani is painfully aware that Nietzsche’s critiques have made this framework philosophically untenable. Therefore, in order to salvage this framework Nishitani attempts to rope Nietzsche back into it by portraying his philosophy as grounded on mechanistic science. Before demonstrating that Nietzsche’s demolition of the framework of modern philosophy rests on other and stronger grounds, which undermine the validity of Nishitani and many other Kyoto school thinkers’ projects, it must be said what precisely is meant here by Nietzsche’s philosophical irony.
Nietzschean Irony
Nietzsche (2001) claims that, “the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth, but in its age, its embeddedness, its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seem to contradict each other, there was never any serious fight to begin with,” (111). For Nietzsche there is no Truth per se, there is no way in which the world really is. Instead Nietzsche describes his understanding of philosophy and religion as a series of perspectives to solve certain problems in people’s lives. One should then abandon the pointless endeavor of arguing about the meaning of life, existence of the universe, etc. and instead argue only about a philosophy’s “greater or lesser degree of usefulness for life,” (Nietzsche 2001: 111). It is worth remembering that usefulness is not some intrinsic property to a human essence nor is it a metaphysical law of nature, for in Nietzsche’s philosophy there can be no such thing. Hence his claim, “False conclusions from utility - When one has demonstrated that a thing is of the highest utility, one has however thereby taken not one step towards explaining its origin: that is to say, one can never employ utility to make it comprehensible that a thing must necessarily exist. But it is the contrary judgment that has hitherto prevailed - and even in the domain of the most rigorous sciences…It reminds us of the reasoning of Columbus: the earth was made for man, therefore if countries exist they must be inhabited,” (Nietzsche 1997: 26). For usefulness is determined by one’s own perspective and the combination of contingencies which construct it.
Now, Nietzsche’s philosophy might sound inherently paradoxical and Nishitani has no problem insinuating that for his own purposes. For it might be asked, if all descriptions of the world are driven by what organisms consciously and unconsciously deem useful based on a collage of contingent factors, how can Nietzsche’s own philosophical description be the true description of existence and not just another contingency? Simply, if everything is relative how is that statement not itself relative? Nietzsche’s answer is quite simple, it is relative and not necessarily applicable to others. Nietzsche (2001) writes, “Strong teeth and good digestion too— this I wish thee! And once my book’s agreed with you, then surely you’ll agree with me!,” (21). This poem perfectly encapsulates Nietzsche’s philosophical irony. Nietzsche will later go on to suggest that knowledge is grounded in the body and its experiences in the world and furthermore that some schools of thought are determined based on the diets of certain peoples, etc. Whether or not one accepts this dietary epistemology is not pertinent. What is fundamental is that what Nietzsche implies here is that only if one has had sufficiently similar experiences to Nietzsche, to the degree that his description of his experiences in his own life resonate with oneself, will you agree with him. Questions about Truth, essences, etc. are discarded. Nietzsche does not believe that he can explain the world as it is necessarily and for everyone. He is merely describing a philosophy which he considers useful for living his own life joyously. While this does mean that Nietzsche’s argument is circular, he understands logic itself to be a tool which one should accept when useful and eject when not, for “What is the origin of logic in man’s head? Surely it arose out of the illogical…The predominant disposition, however, to treat the similar as identical - an illogical disposition, for there is nothing identical as such - is what supplied all the foundations for logic…every great degree of caution in inferring, every sceptical disposition, is a great danger to life. No living being would be preserved had not the opposite disposition…been bred to become extraordinarily strong,” (Nietzsche 2001: 112). Therefore, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not Nietzsche’s understanding is a vicious or virtuous circle. What is clear, however, is that Nietzsche does not adopt a paradoxical philosophical position, but an ironic position in which such paradoxes are irrelevant. Hence, he can say things like, “For it does in fact exhibit a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in this book faith in morality is withdrawn - but why? Out of morality!,” (Nietzsche 1997: 4). Within the paradigm of Nietzsche’s philosophical irony, the fact that his perspectivism is itself only the expression of a certain perspective is not problematic. He humbly acknowledges its accidental derivation. It is simply, insofar as he can tell, the most useful description for his purposes, something which he believes about every other philosophical system.1
We must therefore be wary of claims, especially those echoed by Nishitani (1990), that Nietzsche reduces everything to a will to power and that from such a point one can, “see the reality of this world,” (47). Nietzsche does not understand his will to power as the new true description of the world as it is, always has been, and will be. It is rather only Nietzsche’s description of choice, by which he can comprehend his own experience, history, philosophy, etc. and which he considers as a useful tool for his life and his quest to escape nihilism. Nishitani even points out, but does not pay sufficient attention to, the fact that Nietzsche describes his solution to nihilism, amor fati, as his innermost nature. Therefore, Nietzsche does not unveil “this fictitious world without meaning or purpose as the only reality,” (Nishitani 1990: 48). Were Nietzsche to do that he would have walked back his project of going beyond good and evil, beyond truth. For the fact that, “an essentially mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world,” (Nishitani 1990: 239) only resonates if one continues to think of meaning along the lines of the previous paradigm (meaning as something transcendent, God-given, etc.). Just because the world is not what it was thought to be does not mean it is the opposite of what it was thought to be. Nietzsche has moved beyond such absolute categories, displacing meaning, truth, etc. from being located transcendentally or metaphysically, instead finding them concretely in the variety of individual perspectives. Nishitani’s philosophical project, of course, cannot stomach an ironic stance and so he attempts to pull Nietzsche back down and make him susceptible to his critique.
Modern Philosophy and Science
Nishitani thinks he can definitively reject Nietzsche, ironic perspectivism, and Nietzsche’s suggestions for solving nihilism by associating his philosophy with the mechanistic natural sciences. Nishitani (1993) is interested in, “delving into the ground of human existence, and, at the same time, searching anew for the wellsprings of reality itself,” (xlviii) and to, “illuminate reality and the essence and actuality of man,” (xlix). These are aims which ironic philosophers such as Nietzsche consider fundamentally unanswerable, built on old illusions, and pseudo-problems irrelevant to our lives. Hence, it is better to pass them by. Nishitani, however, clings to these aims and even to the particularly modern drive to ground philosophy on certainty against doubt. Therefore, as Nishitani is critiquing the Cartesian paradigm of philosophy to invent his own understanding of the world which satisfies his problems, such as nihilism, he attempts to close the path Nietzsche offers by claiming that his critiques are valid for Nietzsche’s philosophy as well. In this endeavor he is fatally misguided.
According to Nishitani (1990), “this was Nietzsche’s method: to confront through science the great problems that arose from the depths of history,” (93). It appears that Nishitani wants to argue that despite Nietzsche’s claims to the contrary, his philosophy does have a ground, that ground being the natural sciences and its mechanistic worldview. Thus, “Nietzsche’s thought came to maturity after passing through the purgative fires of the mechanistic world view and so was able to enter into confrontation with the new way of being human concealed in the emergence of modern natural science,” (Nishitani 1993: 57). We must ask why does Nishitani do this? Why does he (1990) claim that, “this kind of “gay science,” where one throws oneself into the abyss of scientific conscience, when the soul becomes amor fati and the self becomes fate, yields the richest harvest and also the greatest joy of existence,” (94). The answer lies in the fact that if Nishitani can plausibly claim that Nietzsche’s philosophical answer to nihilism is inseparable from his taking the natural sciences at face value, then Nishitani would be able to brush him aside in favor of his own understanding. He is convinced he can do so because of his confidence in his critiques of Descartes. For Nishitani (1993), “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy,” (10), and “that such a mechanistic view of the world would come into being and that the world itself would turn into a word of death were…already implicit in Descartes’ identification of matter with extension and his consideration of that extension as the essence of things,” (11). Now, we need not go into Nishitani’s sophisticated, and often convincing, critique of Descartes. We can even accept Nishitani’s critiques wholeheartedly. However, we must insist that this in no way undermines Nietzsche.
All that Nishitani does in critiquing Descartes is enact an ontological shift. He moves away from an ontology of identity, where the thinking subject represents objects to itself, towards a relational ontology, where subjects and objects mutually determine and are defined through their interrelations. It might be fair to draw an analogy between Kant’s Copernican Revolution, which reversed the previous paradigm of understanding the relation between subjects and objects, to Nishitani’s, which we could describe as a Buddhistic or Eastern Revolution in the ontology of subjects and objects. Irrespective of which view is more accurate, neither is a relevant critique of Nietzsche’s own appropriation of the natural sciences and mechanistic causality. Nietzsche (2001) writes, “We call it ‘explanation’ but ‘description’ is what distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. We are better at describing - we explain just as little as all our predecessors…we have perfected the picture of becoming but haven’t got over, got behind the picture…we haven’t thereby understood anything…And how could we explain! We are operating only with things that do not exist - with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces. How is explanation to be at all possible when we first turn everything into a picture - our picture! It is enough to view science as an attempt to humanize things as faithfully as possible; we learn to describe ourselves more and more precisely…There is an infinite number of processes that elude us in this second of suddenness,” (113). Again, any element which plays a role in Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be judged solely on the basis of whether or not it is conducive for Nietzsche and those like him to live joyously. The goal of describing the world as it is, getting to the true ontology which will allow us to understand and explain existence, is entirely irrelevant for someone operating within the Nietzschean paradigm of epistemology. Such a project is pre-emptively passed over as fruitless. And for Nietzsche (1997), “Science has, moreover, become something very useful to everyone: if on account of this utility very many predestined for the vita activa now…beat out for themselves a path to science,” (29). Nietzsche’s philosophy is not grounded on the natural sciences but rather makes use of it ironically for its own purposes. We can clearly see, however, why Nishitani would like to suggest otherwise. If it were the case that Nietzsche’s philosophy was constructed on these foundations, then Nishitani might believe that if he could prove that these foundations were built on a faulty ontology then Nietzsche’s solution to nihilism and his ironic philosophy could be discredited. However, once Nietzsche moves towards philosophical ironism his stance is self-sustaining, impervious to any ontological shake-ups.
Nishitani (1993) tries to recover his critique arguing that, “while granting the profoundness with which Nietzsche’s “philosophy” exposes the fundamental barriers that man comes up against in modern times…Nietzsche’s standpoint of Eternal Recurrence and the Will to Power was not able fully to realize the meaning of the historicity of historical things. And the fundamental reason for this lies in the fact that the Will to Power…was still conceived of some “thing” called “will.” So long as it is regarded as an entity named will…Nietzsche are inseparably connected with the problems of time, eternity, history, and the like,” (234-235). Here again, Nishitani fundamentally, and perhaps wilfully, misunderstands Nietzsche’s critique. He is aware that the Nietzsche standpoint of the Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence are held ironically, he even said so himself. Yet, now Nishitani seeks to undermine Nietzsche’s standpoint as if they were held unironically. He intentionally muddles the boundaries between Nietzsche’s personal solutions for his nihilism and the ironic epistemology whence it grows. Nishitani can disagree with the former but can say nothing at all to the latter. If Nietzsche is intent on demolishing a house with a hammer to build one he would like to live in, then what Nishitani does is equivalent to saying that one must not tear down that house because now the walls and roofs relate in such a way that the structure is stable and will not collapse. Nishitani (1993) goes on to claim, “There is no home-ground at all to be sought in the world of that pure becoming, that circular world-time turning eternally within itself…this radical view seems pregnant with a grave problem…The natural sciences, social sciences, and historical sciences represent the standpoint of positivistic theory in their persistent turning to the past in search of “causes” or of a home-ground in the sense of a “beginning.” The standpoint of progress represents the standpoint of idealistic praxis,” (226). This again misses Nietzsche’s profound epistemological point. Resurrecting Kant’s antinomy about the beginning of time has no relevance at all against Nietzsche.2 For he does not strive to depict the world as it must be but rather describe it in such a way that he and those like him have a path out of nihilism. Were Nishitani to recognize this irreconcibly different standpoint he would have to confess that his philosophy cannot uproot Nietzsche. Nishitani, however, is firmly rooted in the tradition of modern philosophy and so seeks to invent an explanation of existence as it must be (he even does so on the basis of doubt). In this way we can say that Nishitani and those like him are more firmly rooted in object logic than are Nietzsche and his heirs. Nishitani attempts to redescribe the relations between subjects and objects in a way which suits his purposes whereas Nietzsche abandons the whole endeavor. Nishitani wants to uncover a primordial and universal ground for philosophy, which for some reason only he, not any other philosopher in the thousands of years of the discipline, could pull off, while Nietzsche discards questions about ground all together.
Faithful Language and Atheistic Language
Just because the Nietzschean epistemological paradigm and that of modern philosophy, of which Nishitani is fundamentally a member, are irreconcilable and cannot disprove one another, does not mean we may not have valid reasons for preferring Nietzsche’s path. The ironic standpoint is preferable for many reasons, but here we will assert that it has a better account of language and in the following section we will contend that it is more useful and less dangerous for our world.
Nietzsche (1954) writes that, “One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor…Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes birth, but must at the same time fit, innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf wholly equals another,” (45-46). From this perspective, given the fact that all our statements within language are a series of metaphors used for our purposes, the presupposition that our interpretations of our own experience could somehow pierce through the particularities we encounter and reach some deeper, more profound, universal essence(s) is misguided. All we do is pick up metaphors for particulars insofar as they are useful for our lives and ditch them when they cease to be. For Nietzsche (2001), “At bottom, all our actions are incomparably and utterly personal, unique, and boundlessly individual…we translate them into consciousness…the world of which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities and thereby debased to its lowest common denominator,” (213). Therefore, based on Nietzsche’s redescription of language as a series of generalized metaphors, we have good reasons to not rush into the unsubstantiated assumption that our descriptions of our experiences can depict the world as necessarily and universally is. That would be universalizing our particular..
The aforementioned assumption rests upon the faith that our language, either in itself (when it speaks philosophically) or when it talks about itself, can somehow transcend language and its contingent particularities. This means that the whole endeavor to explain the world as it truly is, the philosophical project from at least Plato until Nietzsche (and many after him), is also based on circular reasoning. For after Nietzsche’s critique, one can see that those who attempt to answer these charges must do so in language. Even if one says something along the lines that self-awareness is antecedent to language, they must express that very claim in a particular vocabulary.3 Hence, they must already presuppose that when they give an answer to Nietzsche’s critique, the vocabulary in which they do so is capable of transcending particulars. In this account, we must already presuppose that our language can express the transcendent or the universal in order to argue that our language can express the transcendent or the universal. This becomes difficult after reading Nietzsche and extremely implausible after Wittgenstein, Rorty, Quine, J.L. Austin, and the like. Hence, unlike philosophical irony which can provide good reasons for its circularity, we should consider jettisoning this paradox of transcendent universal language as a vicious circle. Nishitani attempts to critique Nietzsche by saying, “In other words: how is it possible for history to become radically historical by virtue of its historicity being carried through to a transhistorical ground? the question leads us inevitably, I think, to the relationship between history and the standpoint of śūnyatā,” (Nishitani 1993: 213). Nishitani might well be right that the search for a transhistorical ground leads to his philosophy, but after Nietzsche we can say that such a search is pointless and a gross overestimation of language’s potential. For all Nishitani’s talk about the importance of relationality in his ontology, he seems to restrict this relationality exclusively to the domain of subjects and objects. He seems to have not considered that his vocabulary and philosophy could be inseparably related to and derivative of the vocabularies and philosophies which he himself has encountered and argues against. He presumed that his philosophical exposition could penetrate, in an unmediated way, into the reality of the universe. He assumes that the ontological fact about existence is relationality but that this relationality does not apply to his philosophical language, which somehow transcends ontological relationality and directly uncovers the world as it is. Nishitani does not want his philosophy to be explainable as a result of his personal philosophical intentions which he attempts to justify in a philosophical context against other philosophers. This, according to Nietzsche and many others, is a failure to understand how language functions.
Furthermore, philosophical language already believes that most language does not transcend particulars, i.e. that every other manner of speaking and describing experience which does not describe it in a compatible way to the one being proposed misunderstands the universal. Therefore, why should we not follow Nietzsche in eliminating the special status of just one more vocabulary. Why not agree with Nietzsche (2006) when he says, “How lovely is it that there are words and sounds; aren’t words and sounds rainbows and illusory bridges between things eternally separated?…how would there be something outside me? There is no outside! But forget this with all sounds; how lovely it is that we forget! Have names and sounds not been bestowed on things so that human beings can invigorate themselves on things? It is a beautiful folly, speaking: with it humans dance over all things. This is why Zarathustra had to, “With you I unlearned my faith in words and values,” (221).
Nishitani (1993) cannot follow suit, however, for that would mean forsaking his entire project which, as we mentioned before, meant “delving into the ground of human existence, and, at the same time, searching anew for the wellsprings of reality itself,” (xlviii) and to, “illuminate reality and the essence and actuality of man,” (xlix). We must therefore see if Nishitani can supply better reasons than Nietzsche’s for believing in the transcendent capabilities of his vocabulary. Rorty (1978) describes philosophies like Nishitani’s as wanting to, “get behind reasons to causes, beyond argument to compulsion from the object known, to a situation in which argument would be not just silly but impossible, for anyone gripped by the object in the required way will be unable to doubt or to see an alternative,” (159). So how does Nishitani assert a position in which our experience/knowledge of objects allows us to adopt the standpoint through which we will necessarily see things the way Nishitani does. He, unfortunately, reverts to faith, “Only when such an extreme is reached, however, is the fundamental conversion able to occur. It is the turnabout from the Great Death to the Great Life. It is something of which we cannot ask why. There can be no conceivable reason for it, and no conceivable basis for it to take hold of…That is to say, this conversion is an event taking place at a point more elemental than the dimension on which events occur that can be spoken of in terms of reasons and bases…But a reason that is on the side of God or Buddha is not the sort of reason man is after when he asks why, (The Book of Job cuts deeply into this state of affairs.),” (Nishitani 1993: 231). Therefore, from the ironic standpoint, of which Nietzsche is an exemplar, we have reasons which we can make intelligible to others about why we do not have faith that our language can transcend itself and depict the essence of man or the essence of reality, whereas for Nishitani we must keep faith in an experience beyond intelligible reasons and about which, self-admittedly, there are no reasons. For those of us, fortunately or unfortunately, who are not privy to divine revelation, who have not been granted special access to see the world, objects, and ourselves as they really are, we have better reasons for adopting the ironic standpoint. We should be wary of following any philosopher claiming to have depicted existence as it really is. That includes Nishitani’s master, Nishida, who says, “Situations of extreme misfortune, moreover, are bound to awake religious awareness in everyone of us. Religion is a spiritual fact. Philosophers may not invent religion on the basis of their own systems of thought; their task is rather to explain this already existing spiritual reality,” (Nishida 1996: 1). If we do not believe in the capacity of language to explain, and certainly not to explain the fact of reality, then we should continue speaking in an atheistic or agnostic language as opposed to this faith based religious one. If a believer says that we do not believe because we have not met Christ or are not believing hard enough or have not had the transcendent experience which is a prerequisite for belief, then it seems we must resort to the better description of language offered by philosophical irony.
Nishitani’s religious experience, bred out of the Great Doubt, allows him to have a certainty, religious certainty, about the true nature of existence which cuts deeper than Descartes’ intellectual certainty generated through intellectual doubt. Nietzsche, considering such efforts futile and evincing a lack of honesty, has passed by the project of achieving certainty about existence. The Great Doubt promises a revision of modern philosophy and object logic, whereas Nietzsche’s philosophical irony, more radically, profoundly, and convincingly, moves beyond it all together. Nishitani, working firmly within the tradition of modern philosophy, replaces Cartesian ontology with a relational ontology, in order to ground a philosophy in which he can maintain the endeavor to uncover a true and certain picture of the world, but one which allows for the certainty of religion in a Buddhist sense. If we accept Rorty’s description of figures like Descartes as mediating between Christianity and the Copernican Revolution to preserve Christian ethics while simultaneously substantiating the natural sciences intellectually, then it appears reasonable to claim that Nishitani and those like him perform a similar task between the natural sciences and philosophies which have arrived from the West and their Japanese collage of Buddhist and Confucian ethics, culture, and worldviews, etc. This then would explain why Nishitani’s main target is Descartes and why he is heavily interested in reducing all modern western philosophy after him to being derivative of the Cartesian ego. For were he to do so successfully, then his critiques would be capable of dismantling the West’s philosophical tradition and would demonstrate the universally true character of his own. However, as should be clear, western philosophers such as Nietzsche have already moved beyond such philosophical paradigms and cannot be honestly reduced to the natural sciences and the model of the Cartesian subject. Therefore, as Nishitani failed in his reductive and muddled treatment of Nietzsche, and as Nietzsche supplies us with better reasons for adopting his views than Nishitani does, we should consider discarding Nishitani and those of his kind in favor of philosophical irony.
Language Useful for Agnostics
Nishitani is not just opposed to Nietzsche’s solution to nihilism because he feels that it fails to capture his religious experience, but also because he is personally opposed to it on moral ground. He writes, “that the world is in this sense “ungodly, immoral, and inhuman” is the expression of an atheism, lack of faith, and amoralism at a stage far beyond the traditional forms of non-belief….Such radical thoroughness was possible only because he had first opened up in his own person the scientific-existential standpoint,” (Nishitani 1990: 90), and that, “Nietzsche’s atheism…a human self-will which can be called a kind of daemonic infinite drive, lies hidden even behind the man-centered reason of modern secularism,” (Nishitani 1993: 251). We need not worry about Nishitani’s moral distaste for Nietzsche’s own positive solutions to his nihilism, for they are separable from Nietzsche’s ironic stance. Nishitani is quite right when he describes Nietzsche as a reversal of Christian morality. However, that has to do with Nietzsche’s personal quest to overcome Christian nihilism to his satisfaction. We can adopt his epistemological irony and come up with descriptions of our experience and suggestions for moral behavior completely at odds with Nietzsche if we so choose. Instead of Nietzschean atheism against Christianity which leads to his reversal of it, we can become ironic agnostics and consider questions about God entirely irrelevant for our social relations. Nishitani would like to deny us this option, saying, “for to be unconcerned with religion will be taken here already constituting a kind of relationship to religion,” (Nishitani 1993: xlviii). That seems unlikely, although we can understand why Nishitani must make this claim to salvage his project. As Nishitani’s philosophy is not related in any meaningful way to Norse mythology or Mayan folklore, our ironic agnosticism, which passes by the questions of God and overcoming God, should likewise be untethered.
Nishitani is opposed to Nietzsche’s, “attempt to posit a new way of being human beyond the frame of the “human,” to forge a new form of the human,” (Nishitani 1990: 56), because he sees in it, “It is primarily in Nietzsche that atheism comes to its truly radical subjectivization,” (Nishitani 1993: 56). From a Nietzschean perspective we could easily reinterpret this and claim that Nishitani and those like him are the real egoists. For whereas we recognize the contingency of our language and the uniqueness of our own experience and, importantly, those of others, Nishitani spuriously posits his own language as the benchmark capable of describing not only his experience, but that of everyone else, the foundations of the universe, etc. From this vantage we are the humble ones whereas Nishitani and his ilk, while preaching self-negation and the elimination of the ego, give their ego universal pretentions when they proffer their experience and preferred ways of living as the universal standard.
Additionally, we should feel total equanimity about discarding Nishitani, in favor of philosophical irony, for both moral and practical reasons.4 In order to suggest this, we should glance at his essay, The I-Thou Relation in Zen Buddhism. In It Nishitani paints his pretty picture of the perfect social relation in which, “the reality of the encounter between man and man and the absolute opposition that belongs to it. Only in this case the I and the Thou are not simply I and Thou. Since the I is the Thou, and the Thou is the I, both are absolutely nondifferentiate…absolutely related to one another and therefore relative…It is nonrelation as absolute opposition, and as relative on the plane where all relations have been utterly transcended,” (Nishitani 2004: 48). We should already be able to dismiss this on the basis of its reification of terms such as the absolute and its dependence on transcendence. However, we should also do so without regrets for practical reasons. Nishitani’s splendid image of two individuals relating to each other and reaching a state where they both negate and affirm themselves and each other relies on mutual recognition. Both parties already need to be willing and capable of relating to each other in the aforementioned way. Nishitani critiques philosophers like Hobbes and systems built on the law because they fail to achieve this celestial standard of interpersonal interaction, but he fails to mention why those systems became relevant in the first place. It is because mutual recognition is not a given in interpersonal relations. Insofar as people choose not to recognize each other, to affirm and negate themselves and the other, Nishitani is quite right when he states that their alternatives are, “total hostility, an absolute animosity of the one to the other…And where the two cannot share the same sky, the one must kill the other…Should this be out of the question, they will have to resign themselves to a compromise by means of a universal and its law,” (Nishitani 2004: 44). Nishitani has no theory for how we can get the other to mutually affirm themselves and negate themselves in the way we want them to. He merely describes theoretically and abstractly the possibility of such a thing occurring when both parties already agree.5 Social relations are problematic only when that agreement does not exist. Therefore, in terms of informing our social praxis, Nishitani is totally irrelevant (although he may be of some interest to certain monks).
This non-confrontation with the actual problem of social relations permeates the entire piece. He (2004) writes, “the universal acts as a kind of obstruction to absolute individuality…Where men encounter each other as wolves, the state or its laws might serve to check their individuality…the general structure of those relationships is conditioned by the universal,” (41), and, “this imperfect freedom implies as well an imperfect sameness or equality. Subordination to a universal law cannot totally absorb or destroy the freedom of the individual as an individual. To recover that freedom, unimpeded by law, he may have to escape from the prison of the universal,” (42). Here we see Nishitani decrying common means of regulating social relations because they do not conform to his transcendent, metaphysical standards of perfection. Again, if we take the ironist path we have already abandoned the absurd search for absolute freedom, perfect freedom, etc. But more importantly Nishitani seems to misunderstand how law can potentially be understood and justified. He (2004) seems to suggest that all people run the risk of deifying the law to the extent where they, “become attached to law,” (50). Nishitani personally disapproves of this because he thinks that one can reach some ethereal absolute freedom if they follow his path instead of being caught in the trap between their absolute individuality and the universal which constrains it. Yet, his conception of the problem of law, it seems, exists only amongst philosophers. Most people do not think of the law through the prism of this metaphysical jargon but as a functional tool which regulates social interactions. For example, Nishitani (2004) says, “the rigor of moral law can never extinguish self-love,” (42), but to that we should ask, who cares? The purpose of prohibitions against murder, rape, and theft are not to eliminate self-love or to impose a universal which hemms in absolute individuality, but to stop murder, rape, and theft. If we think of law in a functional sense, we would then have no reason to be beguiled by Nishitani’s metaphysical jargon and the transcendental, and perhaps naive, promises of perfect freedom and perfect harmony.
Nishitani wants to sweeten the deal by assuring us that his philosophy could lead us to a state, “Where the other is at the center of the individual, and where the existence of each one is “other-centered,” absolute harmony resigns. This might be called “love” in the religious sense…Thus, absolute opposition is at the same time absolute harmony,” (Nishitani 2004: 48). However, we should ask whether this matters at all. What use does an undefined vague term such as other-centered give us? The answer is not much, in fact it is about as specific, and therefore valuable, as phrases like all you need is love and other platitudes. What it possesses in mystical aura it lacks in any meaningful use. If Nishitani were to say that one needs to undergo this relation for other-centeredness to manifest itself clearly in oneself, then again what Nishitani says is entirely irrelevant for those who have not experienced his version of divine revelation. Would we not be better off actually talking to each other as concrete existing human beings and doing our best to live together and make compromises, as opposed to chasing some metaphysical, transcendent standard of the perfect social relation. Nishitani would say no, hence his polemical remarks against compromise. However, perhaps compromise would be preferable.
Nishitani’s desire to come up with a universal criteria for how one should act (or more accurately the procedure through which one will have the religious experience which will awaken oneself to how they ought to act) is extremely problematic. When one sets up a universal language which defines what love actually is, then love can only mean the erasure of the other as other. Despite the fact that in Nishitani’s case both oneself and the other reciprocally affirm and negate each other and themselves, this is, explicitly, a conversion experience in which one becomes something which one was not before (or they awaken to what they were deep down instead of living in a state of ignorance). There is no room for tolerating the other or loving the other as the other. Instead Nishitani wants to insist that one can only have a stable relationship and true experience of religious love with someone insofar as they conform to Nishitani’s ideal of perfect interpersonal existence. This seems to me analogous to a Christian saying he has no problem loving a Jew only so long as they convert to Christianity and statements like only Christians or heterosexual couples or members of the same tribe or political party can truly love each other. Perhaps for Nishitani, only Buddhist masters and disciples can truly love each other (religiously). The structure is the same even though he insists upon different, his own, criteria. Why not abandon this useless notion of love in favor of recognizing others and other types of love for what they are concretely rather than imposing an abstract standard to which everyone, if they were not ignorant and knew what was good for them, should conform to in the name of the truth. Instead of monologically looking within ourselves to finally reveal the perfect ideal for social relations, why should we not speak, work, and act together creatively to construct our society? That seems to me to be preferable, and also less dangerous.
Conclusion
Unable to reduce Nietzsche to the natural sciences, we see that between the philosophical paradigms of these two philosophers there can be no reconciliation. However, Nietzsche gives us much better reasons for taking up philosophical irony than Nishitani’s religious faith is capable of. Furthermore, whereas Nishitani merely swaps out Descartes ontology and puts his faith in a religious experience beyond all doubt, which will be able to substantiate his revised object logic and moral behavior, Nietzsche performs a much deeper and transformative move in philosophy when he passes by the subject-object binary all together. Furthermore, once one adopts philosophical irony, they need not worry about Nishitani’s protestations against Nietzsche’s immorality for one’s ironic stance need not be the same as Nietzsche’s (and as discussed in the final section, an ironic stance could even illuminate a moral path preferable to and more useful than Nishitani’s). Hence, Nishitani fails in his attempt to move beyond Nietzsche and it seems that Nietzsche himself clears a more fruitful path for philosophy.
Notes
1 One should pay particular attention to the fact that Nietzsche is always addressing his friends, i.e. those people whose lives have sufficiently similar experiences to accept his description of his life as useful for their own.
2 It should be noted that just because the natural sciences have not yet come up with a satisfactory answer to these questions for Nishitani does not mean they might never. That should make us hesitant against rushing into Nishitani’s conclusions.
3 Even if self-awareness of consciousness predates language, which it almost certainly does, that does not entail that language is capable of transcendent explanations or grasping universals.
4 This section is heavily indebted to Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
5 He does, however, hint at an option when he discusses Buddhist masters caning their disciples to meditate properly. If he sees no problem in expanding violence to society in order to make people relate to each other in the Zen manner, then we should have no qualms in ditching his project entirely. If, however, this advice is only relevant to Buddhist master-student relationships, then it is completely irrelevant to society.
Works Cited
The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries. Edited by Frederick Franck, World Wisdom, 2004.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge UP, 1997.
---. The Gay Science. Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian del Caro, Cambridge UP, 2001.
---. The Portable Nietzsche. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin, 1954.
---. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian del Caro, Cambridge UP, 2006.
Nishida Kitarō. The Logic of “Topos” and the Religious Worldview. Translated by Yusa Michiko, Eastern Buddhist Society, 1996.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Translated by Jan Van Bragt, U of California P, 1993.
---. The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Translated by Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara, State U of New York P, 1990.
Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton UP, 1979.