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Keiji Nishitani

Japanese philosopher (1900–1990)

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Biography

Nishitani was born 1900 in a small town in the Ishikawa prefecture. He was fourteen years old when his father died of tuberculosis, a disease he suffered from too as a child. Nishitani received most of his schooling in Tôkyô where he lived with his mother after his father's death. He did not pass the physical examination of the prestigious Daiichi High School and waited another year to attempt to enroll after recovering that year in Hokkaidô. That year he indulged in the works of Natsume Sôseki. His works inspired some of Nishitani's interest in Zen.

In a memoir he writes that he was afflicted by great suffering after the loss of his father. Facing this despair, he decided to take up the study of philosophy. He writes:

My life as a young man can be described in a single phrase: it was a period absolutely without hope... My life at the time lay entirely in the grips of nihility and despair... My decision then, to study philosophy was in fact – melodramatic as it might sound – a matter of life and death.

In his highschool period he became interested in Zen and especially D. T. Suzuki's interpretation of Zen Buddhism and was less interested in grades. He not only read Japanese works but concerned himself with Western resources. He read works from authors like Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Emerson, Carlyle, Strindberg and was intrigued by works like the Bible and Nishida's "Thought and Experience."

Inspired by Nishida's works, he enrolled into the philosophy department of the Kyoto Imperial University, where he studied under Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime, both philosophers categorised into the Kyoto School. In comparison to their work, that tended to be more abstract, Nishitani included his own experiences with Zen Buddhism in his work. Another point of distinction is that he did not just use the language of Western philosophy to better articulate his thoughts; he criticised Western ideas from a Buddhist perspective.

After his graduation in 1924 he taught philosophy at local highschools for eight years and assumed a lectureship in the Ôtani University until 1935. In that time he was interested in Schelling and composed a number of works about him and translated two works of Schelling into Japanese.

At the age of 37 he received a scholarship to study under Bergson, but because of Bergson's poor health he was the appointed to go to the University of Freiburg, where he spent two years studying under Heidegger.

Nishitani held the principal Chair of Philosophy and Religion at Kyoto University from 1943 until becoming emeritus in 1964. He then taught philosophy and religion at Ōtani University. At various times Nishitani was a visiting professor in the United States and Europe. His themes of teaching did not differ in the philosophy and religion department, because in Japanese thought these are not easily distinguishable. As years passed he focused more and more on Buddhist themes and rather used Western ideas to elucidate them.

In the years after the Second World War Nishitani's interest with the topic of nihilism coincided with a resurgence of concern in Europe with the very same topic. In 1949 Nishitani discussed the topic of nihilism in a small group and shortly after composed more and more writings about the topic resulting in his book nihirizumu.

According to James Heisig, after being banned from holding any public position by the United States occupation authorities in July 1946, Nishitani refrained from drawing "practical social conscience into philosophical and religious ideas, preferring to think about the insight of the individual rather than the reform of the social order."

In James Heisig's Philosophers of Nothingness Nishitani is quoted as saying "The fundamental problem of my life ... has always been, to put it simply, the overcoming of nihilism through nihilism."

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