Dancing Through Nothing

Nietzsche, the Kyoto School, and Transcendence

BRIAN SCHROEDER

I should only believe in a God who knew how to dance. And when I saw my
Devil I found him serious, thorough, deep, and solemn: it was the Spirit of
Heaviness—through him do all things fall. Not with wrath but with laughter
does one kill. Come, let us kill the Spirit of Heaviness!
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Z:I “On Reading and Writing”

Here lies the secret of Nietzsche’s Dionysus: on the outside we see a strong
and heroic figure who does not shrink even from a religion of Satan,
but on the inside, beneath the exterior garments, lies the heart of a sage
overflowing with infinite love.
—Tanabe Hajime, Philosophy as Metanoetics

The most remarkable feature of Nietzsche’s “religion” may be the sound of

laughter that echoes through it. He teaches that one can laugh
from the ground of the soul, or rather that the soul’s “groundless ground”
is laughter itself.
—Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism

Nietzsche and the Early Kyoto School

A mong the Western thinkers who have most influenced the thinking of the
so-called Kyoto school, especially the philosophies of Tanabe Hajime and
Nishitani Keiji, Nietzsche clearly stands in the forefront.1 His proclamation of
the death of God, the “greatest of events,” signals also the demise of traditional
conceptions of divinity, self, subjectivity, and transcendence. In full response
to Nietzsche’s herald call for a revaluation of all values, in their respective ways
Tanabe and Nishitani advance nonmetaphysical, nontheistic conceptions of
transcendence and the self. One finds in them a language freed from many
Western metaphysical presuppositions, yet wholly capable of engaging that

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 37, 2009.

Copyright © 2009 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 45

very metaphysical tradition from a new hermeneutical perspective, all the

while advancing their own cultural, philosophical, and religious commitments
and inquiries. They recognize in Nietzsche’s thinking an attempt to develop a
genuine world philosophy—that is, a thinking that is not conditioned by and
thus confined to the strictures of the predominantly rational metaphysics that
had heretofore characterized the movement of Western reflection. Nietzsche
thought that few contemporary and future readers (for at least the following
century) would be able to understand his philosophical vision, as they were too
constrained culturally and linguistically by the very metaphysics he sought to
subvert and overcome. Visionary though he was, however, he could not foresee
the emergence of the thinking one finds in the Kyoto school, which in its own
way is likewise concerned to develop a world thinking.2
The Kyoto school, which has the distinction of formulating the first genu-
inely comparative philosophy of religion, is characterized primarily by its
active engagement with post-Kantian European thinking. Taking its point of
departure from the thinking of Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945), widely consid-
ered modern Japan’s first original philosopher, the Kyoto school came into
its own via Nishida’s students and successors, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1961)
and Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990), who through their original contributions
helped shape and solidify the school’s early identity by their association with
contemporary European thinking of the day. Both Tanabe and Nishitani studied
in Germany during the years between the first and second world wars (Tanabe
in 1922–24, Nishitani in 1936–39), engaging the history of Western thought
from its ancient through to its modern expressions, with particular focus on
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, and Bergson,
mediated by direct encounters with Husserl and especially Heidegger, the very
thinkers with whom Nishida had sent them to study. Upon returning to Japan,
they commenced the work for which the Kyoto school is primarily known: the
interaction of European and East Asian thinking.
In contrast to the tendency in modern Western thinking to separate philosophi-
cal and religious discourse, Asian philosophy is and has always been generally
religious in orientation. This is no less true of the early Kyoto school, whose
distinguishing characteristic was its adoption of a decidedly religious orientation
at a time when the major currents of European thinking, such as existentialism
and phenomenology, were moving away from such a stance. This led many of the
thinkers associated with the Kyoto school also to engage seriously the Western
theological tradition. Conversely, this engagement exercised a significant influ-
ence on certain currents of twentieth-century radical theology, exhibited by an
unprecedented openness to and interaction with non-Western traditions, particu-
larly Buddhism, in an attempt to move beyond the pale of comparison by actively
incorporating fundamental insights of Buddhism as a means to deepening their
own metaphysical and ethical grounds.

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 46 BRIAN SCHROEDER

Pioneers in establishing a cross-cultural dialogue based on an essentially

comparative approach, the Kyoto school philosophers nevertheless generally
assert the superiority of the East Asian tradition over that of the European (primar-
ily with respect to the question of the status of nothingness and the overcoming
of nihilism, construed as the fundamental problem of contemporary thought
and culture). And while the thinking of the Kyoto school is diverse and resists
any particular identification (indeed, there are some associated with the Kyoto
school who resist that very nomenclature), several basic themes emerged that
have since molded and facilitated its reception in the West: its trenchant analysis
and critique of nihilism as the fundamental problem of the contemporary era,
its unique interpretation of the individual existent, its recognition of the death
of God, and, most important for the purpose of the present essay, its rethinking
of the meaning of transcendence.

Kenosis and Nothingness

For Nishitani, as well as for Tanabe, the issue is straightforward, according to

Jan Van Bragt: “The West has nowhere to go but in the direction of the Eastern
(Buddhist) ideal, but it cannot do so except from its own Western (Christian)
premises.”3 Taking this bold statement as a starting point, let us consider the
revaluation of what may well be the greatest casualty of both radical theology and
postmodern thinking, namely, the concept of transcendence. Certainly no other
concept has been so thoroughly assaulted in the past two centuries, often with
justification. The contemporary focus on immanence as opposed to transcen-
dence has provoked many progressive thinkers to dismiss transcendence as the
vestige of an oppressive past metaphysics, with the unfortunate consequence of
their becoming closed to the potential and actual power that a revalued notion of
transcendence can bring. Although transcendence is not a concept one normally
associates with Nietzsche, both Tanabe and Nishitani offer readings of his phi-
losophy that help them to advance their own reinterpretations of transcendence.
And even if their philosophical approaches differ fundamentally, they share
significant similarities due to their common Buddhist orientation as mediated
through their incorporation of certain Christian theological concepts.
While few philosophers today would identify Nietzsche as a radical theo-
logical thinker—that is, as one in continuity with the intellectual and prophetic
currents of Christianity—Nietzsche’s thinking is in fact deeply theological at
heart, and the death of God is his most profound and misunderstood theologi-
cal observation. The kenotic theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer, for one, has long
argued this position, having recognized early on, along with several others,
the Kyoto school’s important contribution in helping to inspire a new theology
by means of its insights into such topics as transcendence, dialectic, God, and

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 47

kenosis, stemming from their various Buddhist perspectives.4 The kenosis or

self-emptying of the Godhead that constitutes the initial movement of the death
of God has been virtually ignored or suppressed by Christian imaginative and
theological consciousness, not to mention by philosophy, resulting in the pre-
dominance of traditional or orthodox conceptions of transcendence and of Being
as divine entity. This is what many, if not most, consider “God,” and certainly
Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of God implies the impossibility or,
stated otherwise, the nothingness of such transcendence.
Many, if not most, equate or at least connect the notions of transcendence and God.
According to Nietzsche, God is “the will to nothingness pronounced holy” (A 18).
Precisely at this juncture, though, Tanabe takes a significant point of departure from
Nietzsche, distinguishing the Buddhist will of nothingness from the Nietzschean
will to nothingness. Tanabe writes: “The will of nothingness is not a will to noth-
ingness that wills nothingness as its goal. The will to nothingness may be a will to
being, but this is not the case with the will of nothingness, since the latter is not a
will engaged in the quest for nothingness by itself. It is a will that seeks ‘no-thing’
by simultaneously abandoning its own immediate will and being made to abandon
its every immediate desire. This is the very process that takes place in the awakening
to Buddhahood.”5 This insightful passage underscores that there are diverse ways
of interpreting nothingness that overlap and illuminate one another. An important
question is whether and to what extent Nietzsche’s philosophy remains confined to
the very metaphysics that he seeks to overcome (überwinden) and just how much
Buddhist thinking, especially Zen, signals such an overcoming or breakthrough
(Durchbruch). The nothingness that becomes “present” in the kenosis of the death of
God inverts or, rather, radically immanentizes the movement of transcendence, con-
joining the abstraction of pure thought with the concretion of lived experience.

Absolute Nothingness and the Death of God

The Kyoto school first recognized that what conjoins the East and the West
philosophically is precisely the issue of nihilism; how the two traditions approach
and deal with the question is what separates them. A crucial difference is that
between a Buddhist conception of time, which is, according to Nishitani, “at
once circular and rectilinear,” and the thought of the “eternal recurrence,” which
Nietzsche calls “the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the ‘meaning-
less’), eternally. The European form of Buddhism” (WP 55).6 Nietzsche is, to
be sure, fundamentally a Western thinker, but his thinking also marks the West’s
deepest moment of radical transformation—the death of God—and it is here
that Tanabe and Nishitani can recognize him as a kindred spirit.
Both Tanabe and Nishitani retain the prominent concept of “absolute
nothingness” (Jp. zettai mu, mattaku mu) from the teachings of their mentor

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 48 BRIAN SCHROEDER

Nishida Kitaro, albeit refining and extending it in unique and at times mutually
informative ways.7 This concept derives from and is practically synonymous
with the key Mahayana, especially Madhyamika, Buddhist term sunyata (Jp. ku).
The various forms of Buddhism that flowered in East Asia, particularly Ch’an
and Zen, in large measure resulted from interaction between Indian Mahayana
and Chinese Daoism. The standpoint of absolute nothingness reflects the move-
ment of Dao: “doing nondoing” or “acting nonacting” (Ch. wei wuwei), the
spontaneous, unconditioned way of natural existence. The simultaneous unity
and difference of all entities, absolute nothingness or emptiness, does not mean
“nonbeing” in the sense of the conceptual opposite of “being.” There is neither
a temporal nor a spatial disjunction expressed in the difference between absolute
nothingness and being or between absolute nothingness and the relative nothing-
ness of nonbeing. Absolute nothingness is the “standpoint” (Jp. tachiba)—not
the ground (Grund)—from which all that is and is not emerges as it is grasped
by the non-egocentric self. After Nishitani’s critical appropriation of it, the term
standpoint assumed an important role for some in the Kyoto school, including
Tanabe, as it denotes a fundamentally spatial orientation, not a purely conceptual
one. The term ground is not adequate to express absolute nothingness, as it is
precisely the dominance of reason, or metaphysics, that is called into question
insofar as reason postulates the dualism of subject and object. This dualism
denotes “the field of ‘consciousness,” therein reinforcing the sovereign status
of the I, the egoistic self that must be broken through in order to actualize the
fundamental standpoint of “non-ego” or “no-self ” (Sk. anatman; Jp. muga).8
“As an Existenz of non-ego,” says Nishitani, “being, doing, and becoming in
time all emerge into their nature on the field of emptiness which is their absolute
negation. And on this field [Jp. ba] constant doing is constant non-doing.”9
Borrowing the terminology of Nicolas Cusanus, absolute nothingness is the
absoluta coincidentia oppositorum in and through which “the present moment
is unfolded [explicata] by time, for nothing is found in time except the ‘now.’”10
Absolute nothingness signifies the fundamental unity that encloses all differ-
entiation (though, according to Tanabe, this standpoint is only reached dialecti-
cally). The “field of bottomlessness” or “the None in contrast to, and beyond
the One,” absolute nothingness is not the negation that grounds nihilism but,
to use a key term employed by Nishida, the locus or place (Jp. basho) wherein
there is nothing that is not present;11 in other words, everything exists on its own
as it is. In Cusanus’s thinking, God is the simultaneous center and noncenter,
the absolute maximum and absolute minimum, the infinite ground and finite
limitation of all that is. Similarly, claims Nishitani, “on the field of sunyata, the
center is everywhere. Each thing in its own selfness shows the mode of being of
the center of all things. Each and every thing becomes the center of all things
and, in that sense, becomes an absolute center. This is the absolute uniqueness
of things, their reality. . . . Only on the field of sunyata can the totality of things,

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 49

each of which is absolutely unique and an absolute center of all things, at the
same time be gathered into one.”12 The “field of sunyata” (Jp. ku no ba), though
not the ground of being, is nevertheless the locus of the “circuminsessional
relationship” wherein “each thing is on the home-ground of every other thing
even as it remains on its own home-ground.”13 Only on this “home-ground”
(Jp. moto) is it possible to apprehend “true self-centeredness [as] a selfless
self-centeredness: the self-centeredness of a ‘self that is not a self.’”14 In short,
says Nishitani, “emptiness is self.”15 To realize non-ego is to locate oneself not
as a fixed identity but as a process in the greater process of existence, a drop
in the sea apart from which the drop could not be. Non-ego is thus neither an
ontological nor an epistemological position; it only has meaning in the context
of the movement toward self-realization, or nirvana, which is possible only from
the standpoint of absolute nothingness.

Nihilism and Paradoxical Ambiguity

Early in his intellectual formation Nishitani follows Nietzsche’s appraisal of

nihilism and the ressentiment that both engenders and issues forth from it. The
nothingness that attends nihilism, however, is not absolute nothingness but,
rather, “relative nothingness”—that is, a concept of nothingness relative to the
concept of being. According to Nishitani, Nietzsche approaches the absolute
nothingness of Zen Buddhism philosophically, but even his apprehension of the
nothing is that of a “relative absolute nothingness” insofar as he remains tied to
a standpoint of will.16 Commenting on both Nietzsche and Heraclitus (whom
Nietzsche holds in highest esteem among the Presocratics), Nishitani writes:
“They do not contain the other-centeredness by which they become ‘empty’
and make all others their master. . . . They cannot be said to have arrived at the
authentic self-centeredness of absolute emptiness that holds all dharmas in its
grip, that, master wherever it is, makes wherever it is true. However one looks at
it, theirs remains a standpoint of ‘will,’ not the standpoint of sunyata.”17 Given
that Nishitani was studying with Heidegger just when the latter was deeply
immersed in Nietzsche’s philosophy, it is no wonder that Nishitani should reflect
Heidegger’s influential interpretation of Nietzsche as the “last metaphysician”
on the grounds that his philosophy culminates a trajectory of thinking beginning
with Descartes in its radical subjectivization of the will to power as the “will
to will.”18
Although the stance of the will to power allows us to say “that our self is, in
fact, ‘that,’ we cannot say that ‘that’ in itself is, in fact, our self,” writes Nishitani:
“In other words, although one can speak of a ‘self that is not a self,’ one cannot
yet speak of a ‘self that is not a self.’ This brings us to a fundamental difference
between the position of Nietzsche and the position of Zen.”19 Whether this is

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 50 BRIAN SCHROEDER

truly reflective of Nietzsche’s position is debatable, as concepts such as the

“will,” “ego,” “soul,” and even “self ” are highly problematized in his philosophy
(see TI “Errors” 3; WP 488). In any event, this issue will not be resolved here.
Nevertheless, Nishitani does maintain that the notion of an absolute nothingness
has never been truly grasped by the Western philosophical tradition, including
Heidegger, though he acknowledges the advancements of both Nietzsche and
Heidegger on this question. Only the mystical thinking of Meister Eckhart and his
student Jakob Böhme, who were indirect influences on Nietzsche and Heidegger,
approaches the apprehension (not comprehension) of absolute nothingness, an
apprehension of the Godhead (Gottheit) of God (Gott) expressed as the ground-
less (Ungrund ) or abyss (Abgrund ).20
Tanabe also recognizes this but rejects mysticism as a possible way “suited
to ordinary, ignorant persons such as [himself].”21 Both Nishitani and Tanabe
want to develop this mystical apprehension in the language of philosophy—for
Tanabe, in the realm of dialectics; for Nishitani, in the realm of existential phe-
nomenology and hermeneutics—thereby giving greater philosophical clarity
to an otherwise somewhat hermetic discourse. Put another way, each is con-
cerned with developing a philosophy that engages theology and Buddhology,
and each proceeds from the “field of nihility” to advance the relative nihilism
of existential atheism in order to arrive at a fundamentally nontheistic religious
standpoint—absolute nothingness.
For Nietzsche, nihilism is an ominous threat because it is a reactive form
of the will to power: “a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion
against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will”
(GM III:28). Nietzsche recognizes nihilism as both “ambiguous” and “a normal
condition” and classifies it in two main types: active and passive. Active nihilism
denotes an “increased power of the spirit,” whereas passive nihilism, exemplified
by Buddhism, represents a “worn out, exhausted” spirit (WP 22–23). This is a
view that Nietzsche held even in his early writing, contrasting the perspective of
artistic affirmation, exemplified by the gods Apollo and Dionysus, to “a Buddhist
negation of the will” (BT 7). Tanabe can recognize the historical context of
Europe that prompted Nietzsche to “proclaim the doctrine of the will to power
as an active nihilism that could redeem Europe,”22 and Nishitani can observe
that “ironically, it was not in his nihilistic view of Buddhism but in such ideas as
amor fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche came
closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahayana.”23 Regardless, Nietzsche’s
assessment of Buddhism as a passive form of nihilism is arguably the result
of his misunderstanding the concept of nirvana and interpreting compassion
(Sk. karuna) as pity (Mitleid [WP 64]). There is no indication in Nietzsche’s
critique that he is aware of the distinction between Theravada and Mahayana,
and therefore the subtleties in Mahayana attending the concepts of compassion
and dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada) were lost on him.24

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Nishitani and Tanabe are aware of Nietzsche’s limited understanding

of Buddhism, especially in its expression as Zen.25 From this Nishitani
concludes that Nietzsche is unable, due to his contextual linguistic and
cultural constraints, to fully grasp or realize the essence of nihility as merely
the relativizing of absolute nothingness. While Nietzsche is able to locate
the I-ego as a grammatical construct, a “fiction,” a “play on words” (TI
“Errors” 3), he is unable to grasp nothingness absolutely, as his thinking
remains locked in the relativity of the language of affirmation/negation
and active/reactive. Hence Nishitani pronounces Nietzsche’s construal of
nothingness as the most reaching account thus produced in Western thinking,
a relative absolute nothingness, but one that nevertheless falls short of the
Zen Buddhist apprehension of an absolute nothingness that not only dissolves
all relativity but paradoxically makes the difference of relativity possible in
the first place. Is one to surmise that Nishitani is claiming that the thought
of paradox eludes Nietzsche, that his remains bound to the very metaphysics
that he seeks to overcome?26
The notion of absolute nothingness is implicit in the paradox of dependent
origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada), or what the Buddha called “the Middle
Way.” Another member of the Kyoto school, Abe Masao, decisively frames the
question of this paradox with respect to the relation between transcendence and
immanence and also the nihilism of metaphysical dualism:
The Middle Way breaks through dipolarity; it is the overcoming of dipolarity
itself. In this sense the Buddhist notion of the Middle Way is quite different
from the Aristotelian idea of mesotes. The interdependence which is implied
in the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-origination is neither transcendence
nor immanence nor a middle position which is of dipolar nature and in which
transcendence and immanence as two poles are directly interacting with each
other. To realize the Middle Way even such a middle position must be overcome;
because, however dynamic the middle point may be, it is involved in the duality of
transcendence and immanence. A complete overcoming of dipolarity, including
the middle point which attempts to function as a mediator between the two
conflicting poles, is essential for the realization of the Middle Way and dependent
co-origination.27

Is the paradox of dependent origination implicit, even if unrecognized and

therefore unrealized, in Nietzsche’s crucial observation of the ambiguity of
nihilism? Does the ambiguity of nihilism reflect a fundamentally dialectical
relation between its active and passive expressions? Does this ambiguity not
only allow for but also make possible for Nietzsche the very transformation of
a debilitating nihilism into one that is “consummate” and “ecstatic” (WP 1055),
an active nihilism that enables the actualization of self-overcoming—the future,
absolutely affirmative, übermenschliche will? Could this be a revalued or
reimagined thought of transcendence—a “transcendence” of transcendence and
immanence altogether? These questions will be addressed later.

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Absolute Nothingness and Power

Tanabe’s philosophy is dialectical in its approach and bears many affinities

with Hegel’s speculative dialectics, especially the concept of mediation. Yet
Tanabe shares Nietzsche’s refusal of any metaphysical teleology.28 Still, it is only
through dialectical thinking, Tanabe argues, that one can arrive at the standpoint
of absolute nothingness.
Tanabe’s name for the absolute is Other-power (Jp. tariki), which has nothing to
do with a transcendent other or the entity God. Rather, “since this absolute is the
negation and transformation—that is, conversion [metanoesis]—of everything
relative, it may be defined as absolute nothingness.”29 Tanabe elaborates the
meaning of Other-power, a notion that he borrows from Shinran (1173–1262),
the founder of True Pure Land (Jp. Jodo Shin-shu) Buddhism: “When we speak
of Other-power, the Other is absolute precisely because it is nothingness, that is,
nothingness in the sense of absolute transformation. It is because of its genuine
passivity and lack of acting selfhood that it is termed absolute Other-power.
Other-power is absolute Other-power only because it acts through the mediation
of the self-power of the relative that confronts it as other. Only to that extent is
genuine, absolute Other-power mediated by self-power. In this way, the absolute
becomes absolute mediation.”30 Absolute nothingness is absolute transforma-
tion as well as the necessary condition for absolute transformation. Succinctly
stated: “Nothingness means transformation.”31 For Tanabe, self-transformation
is possible via the mediation of Other-power, which in turn is absolute only
because of its mediation by the relational relativity of self-power (Jp. jiriki).
The concept of self-power is characteristic of the philosophy of Zen adopted by
Nishida and Nishitani. Self-power and Other-power are perhaps best interpreted
respectively as internal affectivity and external affectivity. In other words, self-
power is the becoming-external of the interior egoistic will that manifests itself
as action. Conversely, Other-power is the affectivity exerted on the ego-self to
the point of shattering the unity of the individual will, thereby calling the self to
question the extent of its own sovereign freedom. This is the realization of self-
awareness (Jp. jikaku) on which is predicated metanoesis.32 It is critical to note
that Other-power is not to be construed in terms that might suggest the volunta-
ristic imposition of another will on the self, even though Other-power is associ-
ated with infinity.33 Other-power is radically passive and real only insofar as it is
perceived by the I-self and allowed to destabilize or break through the resistances
of the egoistic will. Though often construed as diametrically opposed, according
to Tanabe, “what is impossible with jiriki becomes possible with tariki, though
both tariki and jiriki remain complementary to one another.”34 With respect to
the Western tradition metanoetics seeks a middle path between existentialism,
exemplified primarily in the philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and the
philosophy of freedom, as found in Schelling.35

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The self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung) that Nietzsche advocates is solely a

matter of self-power, on Tanabe’s reading; therefore, it is an affirmation and nega-
tion only of being, not of nothingness. Moreover, since Nietzsche’s philosophy
lacks “the concepts of nothingness and negation[, it] naturally fails to produce
a sense of true discontinuity or authentic transcendence, and cannot escape
direct ongoing immanence. That is why, despite similarities in motivation and
structure, there are inevitable differences between the orientation of Nietzsche’s
thought and the way of metanoetics.”36 These differences and similarities are
reflected in Tanabe’s construal of Nietzsche’s most “terrible” and “liberating”
thought—the eternal recurrence. Nevertheless, it is evident that for Nietzsche,
Tanabe, and Nishitani what is at stake is nothing less than the radical overcom-
ing or transformation of radical nihilism and self—a nonmetaphysical “ecstatic
transcendence,” to use a phrase employed by Nishitani.37

Will to Power and Absolute Negation

Is the will to power, wherein the egoistic self is overcome to make way for a
completely new “self,” tantamount to the actualization of the Buddhist non-ego
that makes possible the emergence of the “true self ”? This rests in part on the
degree of value that one assigns to existence. Even though Buddhist philosophy
as a whole affirms being as illusory in the sense of being absolutely transient,
existence as Buddha nature is fully meaningful as it is. But because existence
has for so long in the West been assigned value in relation to a transcendent
origin, from a God now dead, for Nietzsche, value, meaning, and truth are only
now able to be actually affirmed, created, because there is no meaning in itself
to which being can lay claim.
Closed to the standpoint of absolute nothingness, Nietzsche “tried to make
absolute being the basic principle of philosophy,” writes Tanabe: “He took the
‘idealistic’ standpoint of reason represented by Kant and converted it into a
‘factual’ standpoint of life. In place of the metanoetic negation of reason that
sees reason as the manifestation of absolute nothingness, he offered an affir-
mation of life whose basic essence consists in the will to power that seeks to
place all things under the control of the self. . . . He forgot that the philosophical
position he was espousing is possible only through the absolute negation of
reason. Simply to negate reason and reject the abstraction of concepts results
only in doing away with philosophy itself.”38 This interpretation is somewhat
idiosyncratic and difficult to sustain, especially when considering Nietzsche’s
declaration that life itself is the will to power and thus subordinates the self to it,
not the other way around: “This world is the will to power—and nothing besides!
And you yourself are also this will to power—and nothing besides!” (WP 1067).
But what exactly does the “absolute negation of reason” mean for Tanabe? From

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the standpoint of metanoetics, it can only mean the complete submission of the
self to Other-power. Yet as Tanabe emphasizes time and again, self-power qua
Other-power necessarily entails Other-power qua self-power. The dialectic is
fundamentally reciprocal; moreover, this is necessitated by the standpoint of
absolute nothingness. Tanabe’s critique of Nietzsche only holds if his premise
is true that the Nietzschean self is the full and actual embodiment of the will to
power and that the will to power is solely at the service of the self.
If Tanabe is on target in apprehending that Nietzsche does not effect an
absolute negation of reason in his thinking, perhaps it is because, as Nishitani
phrases it, “seen from the standpoint of the Great Will, human reason, the prin-
ciple of secularism, is nothing more than an instrument of the flesh; or, rather,
the flesh itself is the Great Reason. For the flesh is more elemental than reason
and, as such, belongs to the whole man.”39 Here, however, reason is a transfigured
reason, a resurrected reason that is the fullness of interdependent existence, a
fullness that simultaneously negates and affirms the self, but now the “self ” as
the expression of the will to power, not as a “will to will.” This radical trans-
formation is made possible only through the historical event in consciousness
of the death of God. Through this death all nihilism is ecstatically converted
in the thought of the eternal recurrence, which takes the form of a “religion”
for Nietzsche: the will to power. Indeed, he refers to the eternal recurrence as a
“prophecy” (WP 1057), as a “divine” mode of thinking. It is the religion in which
“‘sin’—any distance separating God and man—is abolished: precisely this is the
‘glad tidings.’ Blessedness is not promised, it is not tied to conditions: it is the
only reality—the rest is a sign with which to speak of it” (A 33).
On the plane of Buddhist thought, the affirmation of becoming as eternal
recurrence releases one from samsara through its simultaneous dialectical
negation and affirmation as nirvana. What for Buddhism was affirmation via
acceptance as endurance (passive nihilism) is for Nietzsche, who radically
transfigures Christianity through the affirmation of the death of God, affirma-
tion via “destruction” as the maximization of “relative strength” (active nihilism
[WP 23; emphasis added]).

Eternal Recurrence and Transcendence

Even though Nietzsche’s thought of the eternal recurrence differs markedly from
“the recurrence of world processes found in mythical religions,” and thus cannot
be characterized as ahistorical, Nishitani contends that the ecstatic transcendence
of the Übermensch, while avoiding the Christian eschatological fulfillment of
history (the second coming of Christ), is nevertheless “transhistorical” in pre-
serving the infinity of time “only at the cost of history’s inability to discharge
its full historicity.”40 This is a powerful critique, particularly because it reads

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 55

Nietzsche in full continuity with the Western theological tradition. However, it

is precisely at this level that Nishitani’s interpretation, despite recognizing the
fundamentally eschatological orientation of the Übermensch, fails to grasp the
apocalyptic, which is to say, the radical theological significance of the death of
God.41 Nietzsche’s thought of the eternal recurrence, predicated on the death
of God, signals a break with the archaic concept of eternal return, inasmuch as
historical time is now the only time, irreversible and forward moving but only
so as the absolute fullness of time.42 The eternal recurrence as apocalypse is
the absolute embodiment of the kenosis (or “discharge”) of the transcendent
Godhead in and as history. From the perspective of radical theology, this is
concrete actuality, the once-and-for-all historical event of the death of God.
This reading strongly challenges Nishitani’s concern that the eternal recur-
rence fails to fully radicalize history because its sense of historicity is grounded
transhistorically by the Übermensch.
In the eternal return, time moves both forward and backward, endlessly
creating, destroying, and re-creating itself but all the while remaining bound
in its infinite reversibility to an absolute primordial beginning. The death of
God signifies a dual movement of diremption and conjoining: a break with the
past but also a new nonmetaphysical unity, a bonding of transcendence and
immanence, of infinity and finitude, of eternity and space-time. This is evinced
most prominently in Nietzsche’s vision of the eternal recurrence, wherein time
is conceived and experienced as irreversible and forward moving, thereby real-
izing what is impossible for a purely primordial thinking, namely, the radical
dimension of futurity. At the heart of this teaching is the relation between the
apocalyptic and the eschatological.
Is it possible to think of eschatology as the transcendence, or overcoming,
of transcendence? Would such a transcendence be also simultaneously a tran-
scendence of immanence or at least of any prior conceptions thereof ? In its
most radical interpretation, the death of God is the complete deconstruction of
all operative or previously known conceptions of totality, whether conceived
in terms of a pure transcendence, a pure immanence, or some intertwining of
transcendence and immanence. Is eschatology then a transcendence of every
possible totality and the simultaneous death of God and death of the subject?
Could this simultaneous death make possible an infinite responsibility to total-
ity, such as one encounters in Nietzsche, that does not render either the Other
abstract or the ego-self sovereign? But if the death of God is finally also the
transcendence, and thus destruction, of totality, then is the infinite responsibility
that one finds, for instance, in the Buddhist bodhisattva ideal itself a negation
of totality that destroys every possible totality or at least dissolves the hold of
totality in each and every moment that infinite responsibility is recognized?
Nietzsche’s understanding of responsibility, which ushers in a new conception of
infinity alongside a “new justice” (GS 289), is just such an affirmation of totality,

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 56 BRIAN SCHROEDER

one that is also, and by virtue of, an affirmation of nihilism or the dissolution
of totality. Such a sense of responsibility is grounded, or rather ungrounded,
on the affirmation of the apocalyptic death of God, the death of transcendence
itself—“a divine way of thinking” (WP 15)—and on the eschatological embodi-
ment of that affirmation and responsibility—the Übermensch.43 Now the mantle
of responsibility lies solely and fully on the shoulders of humanity and is of
a purple that will fade with time but for that reason must be continually dyed
and mended.44

Critical Transcendence and Embodiment

The minjung mask dance, an old Buddhist ritual, the significance of which has
been revitalized by contemporary Korean liberation theology, serves as a model
of an existential, embodied approach for realizing transcendence. A difficult term
to translate, minjung is a combination of two Chinese words—min (people) and
jung (masses)—and appropriately applies to any individual or group of individu-
als that are oppressed either politically, socially, or economically, through the
prejudices of sex, race, color, nationality, or creed. The minjung aspire to what
Hyun Young-hak calls “critical transcendence,” a concept that signifies both
negation and going beyond.45 Nishitani describes transcendence in a similar
manner, linking it to absolute nothingness, which “represents the endpoint of
an orientation to negation. It can be termed an absolute negativity, inasmuch as
it is a standpoint that has negated and thereby transcended nihility, which was
itself the transcendence-through-negation of all being. It can also be termed
an absolute transcendence of being, as it absolutely denies and distances itself
from any standpoint shackled in any way whatsoever to being.”46 In other words,
only from the standpoint of non-ego on the field of emptiness is it possible to
simultaneously enact the absolute negation requisite for an absolute transcen-
dence of existence as it is here and now so as precisely to be fully embodied in
the here and now.47
The minjung experience a critical transcendence as they participate in the
mask dance. In the nineteenth century the mask dance was transformed into a
play performed for the sake of the minjung. In the dance, the villagers are able
to vent their frustration and rage toward their oppressors. The mask dance takes
the form of a sociopolitical satire in which the minjung are able to poke fun
at and ridicule their rulers, both political and religious, as well as themselves
and their own fate in the world, thereby displacing the negative, destructive
internal energies associated with the nihilistic feelings of social and political
powerlessness. Hyun writes:
In and through the mask dance, the minjung, the ordinary folks, experience and
express a critical transcendence over this world and laugh at its absurdity . . . the

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 57

minjung lament their lot but do it with humor. They laugh at and make fun of
their own fate in this world, thereby transcending their own conditions. They
find themselves standing over and beyond the entire world, which includes not
only the rulers and leaders but also themselves and their own religion. They not
only see correctly the reality of the world, which neither the rulers nor leaders
can see because of their obsession with or separation from the world, but also
envision another reality over against and beyond this one which neither the rulers
or leaders can see either.48

In the mask dance, a sense of “objectivity” is thus afforded to the minjung. This
objectivity or critical transcendence is not given to the people from the “outside”;
it emerges from the experience of the minjung themselves.
One of the central concerns of the minjung is the utilization of the energy
manifest in the critical transcendence of the mask dance for bringing about the
state of justice. The “conscientization” of the minjung about their oppression,
which “explodes into reality” in the dance, provides the necessary impetus for
the transformation of a potentially self-destructive energy (Kr. han) into a viable
praxis.49
What is critically transcended in the mask dance is han: the accumulated,
suppressed, unresolved sense of resentment and revenge against the injustices
suffered by the minjung.50 The force or energy of han can manifest itself in two
ways: either as a destructive negating force or as a positive affirming force. It is
the latter that the minjung hope to channel and utilize for the purpose of social
transformation. Han is characterized primarily as a feeling; it is not a mere
theoretical concept. It is embodied feeling that may express itself artistically
as in the mask dance or, in the words of minjung theorist Suh Nam-dong, as
a “tendency for social revolution” brought on by “a feeling with a tenacity of
will for life.”51
Han can manifest itself as “fearful han,” as a destructive, violent, vengeful
force capable of negating to the point of self-destruction. In order to transform
han into an affirmative force, the critical transcendence afforded to the minjung
needs to be actualized. This is accomplished through the mechanism of dan,
meaning literally “to cut.” Accumulated han must therefore be met with continu-
ous dan.52 Dan is self-denial, a detachment of oneself from the “vicious circle” of
han. What is denied, though, is not the yearning for individual rights and freedoms
or the place of the individual in society; rather, dan is a willful commitment to
place unselfishly the needs of the society, of the minjung as a whole, before the
needs of individual existence. Dan does not signify the complete negation of the
individual ego or will. Rather, dan both preserves and negates the individual self,
thereby making community a genuine possibility. According to Nishitani, “Lack
of selfishness is what is meant by non-ego, or ‘emptiness’ (sunyata).”53 In terms
of praxis, in order to reverse the oppressive structure of top-down politics, there
must be a denial of the sovereignty of the individual will in order to realize the
greater subjecthood of the community.

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 58 BRIAN SCHROEDER

Neither han nor dan is a once-and-for-all event; rather, they are part of a
process that functions as a release valve at times for the built-up pressure of
accumulated resentment, anger, and even hatred and at other times as a fuel for
social transformation or praxis. There is a fundamental unity between han and
dan that allows han to be transfigured by dan, thus raising han to a higher, more
positive level of power.
Does the play between han and dan offer a key insight toward tackling the
problem of nihilism? Han and ressentiment are two names for the same phe-
nomenon, yet they differ insofar as han is recognized and understood by the
minjung (hence the development of the mechanism of dan), whereas ressentiment
develops, for the most part, without being detected until it is too late. This is due
largely to the individualistic nature of ressentiment, which follows suit with the
Western history of ideas, reinforced in the Enlightenment ideals that to this day
still govern much social, ethical, and political discourse.

Nihilism and Self-Overcoming

The way to overcome the nihilism attending the thought of eternal recurrence,
Zarathustra declares, is through laughter and dance, an embodied activity
of Yes-saying (Ja-sagen). Only thus is the reactive egoistic consciousness
overcome while simultaneously affirmed anew as the active will to power. As
Maurice Blanchot incisively observes, “Nihilism would be identical with the
will to overcome nihilism absolutely.”54 Nihilism is overcome then in its very
affirmation, not in the extreme nihility of pure negation. But what form will
such an affirmation take?
Nishitani locates in Nietzsche a “religious laughter,” which invites comparison
with the same in Zen Buddhism: “A paradigmatic example of a religion that
has attained the stage of being able to laugh is Zen Buddhism, the history of
which also reverberates with laughter of different kinds.”55 Is this laughter the
very affirmation that will overcome nihilism? Both Zen Buddhism’s sense of play
and Zarathustra’s dancing levity expose the ego, the I, the self, for the illusion
and trickster that it is and in so doing overcome the ignorance (Sk. avidya) that
promotes so much suffering (Sk. dukkha) in the first place. Indeed, even a thinker
as serious as Tanabe (in both tone and subject matter, not to mention personal
life) recognizes that “the egoism that lies directly on the surface of Nietzsche’s
will to power is nothing more than a disguise. Though the mask be that of a
devil, the reality is that of a sage.”56 The expression of the Great Affirmation of
Buddhism bears close affinity to Nietzsche’s affirmation of the seeming nihility
of the eternal recurrence. But if Nishitani could state in his early writing that the
will to power as amor fati represents an essentially affirmative, creative perspec-
tive, he later qualified his stance and correlated the eternal recurrence with the

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 DANCING THROUGH NOTHING 59

“mythical idea of an unending transmigration” that would deny the possibility

of an absolute freedom or creativity, implying only “an ecstatic transcendence
to nihility.”57 In a crucial passage, Nishitani writes:
With Nietzsche we find a turnabout on this nihilism that results in the standpoint
of Eternal Recurrence as a disclosure of the Will to Power. . . . Nevertheless,
insofar as the Will to Power comes down in my analysis to a worldview of Eternal
Recurrence, it is my view that the meaning it gives to history as its last and final
ground, on the field of ecstatic transcendence, is only based on a negative pole.
Yet we must not overlook the positive pole in Nietzsche’s thought. Within the
perspective available from the standpoint of the Will to Power, all meaning in
history that had been transformed into meaninglessness in nihility was tentatively
restored in an affirmative manner in conjunction with the reaffirmation of all
“world interpretations” as attempts of the Will to Power to posit values. The
standpoint of the Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence is a standpoint of the Great
Affirmation, which could only appear after a nihilistic Great Negation.58

Despite their similarities, Nishitani locates a certain type of nihilism in Nietzsche

that is not completely vanquished inasmuch as time is confined to the negative
pole of historical time. In other words, according to Nishitani, Nietzsche strives
for the release of time from the nihility of historical temporality, a release that
overcomes the nihilistic hypothetical transcendent unity posited over against
becoming. Yet while he locates a radical difference and alterity within space-time,
Nietzsche fails to realize the simultaneous oneness and uniqueness of all entities,
namely, absolute nothingness. In this sense, Nishitani maintains, Nietzsche’s
thinking remains confined to the standpoint of a relative absolute nihilism.
Are Nishitani’s “absolute transcendence of being” and Nietzsche’s self-
overcoming of ressentiment one and the same? On Nishitani’s account, non-ego
is actualized as self-denial, whereas for Nietzsche self-overcoming is the affirma-
tion of the illusory nature of the ego and the nihility of the eternal recurrence.59
Are they so far apart at this point? Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of
God also marks the death of the self and ushers in the carnivalesque play of
postmodernity.60 Ressentiment is overcome or ecstatically transcended through
the playfulness of donning masks, of creating anew identities and meaning for
life. Seen from the field of absolute nothingness, non-ego (Sk. anatman)—the
“true self ” manifest in dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada)—means
every self, since there is no persisting substantial individual “self.” The self is
a mask, and every mask, as Nietzsche states, is merely a mask for other masks,
an infinite procession of masks with ultimately nothing behind them. “In this
sense,” claims Nishitani, “the field of emptiness is a field of absolute transcen-
dence . . . [and] at the same time an absolute immanence.”61 The play of the mask
is like the play of Zen, “the standpoint where non-ego is self, where the true self
emerges into its nature from non-ego.”62 To embrace the element of the mask,
as Nietzsche recognizes, is to affirm that existence is a constructed reality and
because of that is able to be transformed and ecstatically transcended. Thus

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 60 BRIAN SCHROEDER

are laughter, satire, and irony grasped as essential and necessary for breaking
through the paralyzing effect of nihilistic ressentiment and effecting, accord-
ing to Tanabe’s interpretation, a radical conversion of both self and culture, a
metanoesis predicated not only on a profound realization of one’s limitations
but equally on the joy of an absolute Yes-saying, possible only in the light of
God’s death.

Great Affirmation and Ecstatic Trans-descendence

Whether in Zarathustra’s laughter, the minjung mask dance, or Zen practice,

the transcendence of ethical or compassionate being emerges as at once an
accumulation of strength and a renunciation of it.63 Is this the point, as Nishitani
seems to contend, where the Zen Buddhist ethic breaks with Nietzsche’s ethic
of revaluation based on the will to power? Or is Zarathustra in his unique way
also a master of Zen? Even Tanabe, who refuses the path of Nietzsche and the
Zen masters due to “a kind of self-centered elitism that makes it impossible for
them to pass beyond into the freedom of absolute nothingness by renouncing and
letting go even of the noble self,” is able to recognize that “the way of Zen, which
seeks to awaken people to the Buddha nature latent within them, is close to the
thought of Zarathustra here in its teaching of the will to power” and affirms in a
move undoubtedly surprising to most Western readers Nietzsche’s proclamation
of the Übermensch as evocative of the “Buddhist bodhisattva-ideal.”64
What is most striking in the end is that Tanabe and Nishitani recognized
long before most Western readers that the embodiment of active will to power
in Nietzsche is not that of a tyrannical will but, rather, of a will determined by
what Zen knows as self-power.65 Both Tanabe and Nishitani ultimately refuse
Nietzsche’s philosophy on the grounds of being too firmly rooted in a conception
of self as will and therefore of being. If this is so, then could it be that Nietzsche’s
revalued notion of self is the very expression of ecstatic transcendence, of what
Nishitani incisively terms “ecstatic trans-descendence”—that is, the affirmation
of transcendence in immanence?66
If a hallmark of the “philosophy of the future” (GS 289, 343, 372 [and also of
radical theology and what Schelling called “philosophical religion”]) is the pro-
gression toward a genuine world thinking, one that not only opens itself to other
world perspectives but also grounds and reveals itself in the immanence of this
worldly existence, then it is imperative that the concept of transcendence not be
relegated to the graveyard of obsolete metaphysical jargon. Rather, if it is to be truly
transformative and meaningful for a postmetaphysical world, then transcendence
needs to be fully and absolutely actualized or, in other words, embodied. This
does not mean, however, that Zen or Buddhism presents, as Hisamatsu Shin’ichi
writes, “some kind of [human] ‘deification’—a naïve figment of the modern

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imagination—nor does it posit a transcendent God, as does dialectical theology.

The critical focus of Zen is the affirmation of the ‘sacred in [humankind]’ by
retrieving the sacred from the realm of the transcendent and returning it to that of
human subjectivity. Zen is not simply a rational position. It is a rational position
paradoxically identical with the nonrational. It is not simply an immanent position,
but one of transcendental immanence. Zen and Mahayana Buddhism must be seen
in this light.”67 In thinkers such as Nietzsche, Tanabe, and Nishitani, one finds not
only the theoretical resources but also the will to ecstatically trans-descend the
nihilistic abyss left by the death of God. In such ecstasy is made possible the Great
Affirmation of an absolute Yes-saying to life here and now, but an affirmation
inseparable from the equally great responsibility to the Earth and its inhabitants
that ensues from the metanoesis of self-overcoming.
“Jetzt bin ich leicht, jetzt fliege ich, jetzt sehe ich mich unter mir, jetzt tanzt
ein Gott durch mir” (Z:I “Vom Lesen und Schreiben”).

Rochester Institute of Technology

bxsgla@rit.edu

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Christa Acampora, Silvia Benso, Claudio Ciancio, Bret
Davis, Lissa McCullough, Maurizio Pagano, and Graham Parkes for their com-
ments and editorial suggestions on this and earlier versions of the essay. Part of
this essay was published previously as “Trans-discendenza estatica. Religione
e metanoesi in Nietzsche, Tanabe, e Nishitani,” trans. Silvia Benso, Annuario
Filosofico 23 (2007): 397–420, and is reprinted with permission.

NOTES
1. The appellation “Kyoto school,” which appears to have originated sometime in the early
1930s, refers to approximately two dozen philosophers associated with the Kyoto Imperial
University and connected through their association with the thinking of Nishida Kitaro and
Tanabe Hajime. For a history and critical overview of the Kyoto school, see James W. Heisig,
Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2001); Bret W. Davis, “The Kyoto School,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. Edward N. Zalta (2006), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/.
I will follow the East Asian convention of indicating the surname first (e.g., Nishitani Keiji),
except when citing works in which the author’s name is given following the Western practice of
placing the given name before the surname.
2. See Bret W. Davis, “Introducing the Kyoto School as World Philosophy,” The Eastern
Buddhist 3, no. 4/2 (2002): 142–70.
3. Jan Van Bragt, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Religion and Nothingness, by Keiji Nishitani,
trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), xxxvii.
4. For Nishitani’s views on kenosis and ekkenosis, see Keiji Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1982), 25, 58–59. See also Thomas J. J. Altizer, “Kenosis and Sunyata in the Contemporary
Buddhist–Christian Dialogue,” in Masao Abe: A Zen Life of Dialogue, ed. Donald W. Mitchell
(Boston: Charles E. Tuttle, 1998), 151–60; “Buddhist Emptiness and the Crucifixion of God,”

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 62 BRIAN SCHROEDER

in The Emptying God: A Buddhist–Jewish–Christian Conversation, ed. John B. Cobb Jr. and
Christopher Ives (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1990), 69–78; “Emptiness and God,” in The Religious
Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji: The Encounter with Emptiness, ed. Taitetsu Unno (Berkeley:
Asian Humanities Press, 1989), 70–81; and “Buddhism and Christianity: A Radical Christian
Viewpoint,” Japanese Religions 9, no. 1 (March 1976): 1–11. For a comparison among Nishida’s,
Nishitani’s, and Altizer’s views of kenosis, see Steve Odin, “Kenosis as a Foundation for
Buddhist–Christian Dialogue: The Kenotic Buddhology of Nishida and Nishitani of the Kyoto
School in Relation to the Kenotic Christology of Thomas J. J. Altizer,” The Eastern Buddhist 20,
no. 1 (1987): 34–61.
5. Tanabe Hajime, Philosophy as Metanoetics, trans. Takeuchi Yoshinori (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 119.
6. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 219.
7. The following abbreviations will be used to designate the etymological origin of various
important Asian terms: Ch. = Chinese, Jp. = Japanese, Kr. = Korean, Sk. = Sanskrit. All macrons
and other diacritical marks for these terms have been removed.
8. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 9. Nishitani prefers to translate anatman as “non-
ego” rather than use the standard rendering of “no-self ” or “nonself ” in order to more forcefully
differentiate the Buddhist notion of a “self that is not a self ” (Religion and Nothingness, 216)
from the ego-self of Western metaphysics, determined in large measure by the Cartesian cogito
(Religion and Nothingness, 300). For the sake of consistency, the term non-ego will be used
throughout this essay. A problematic term to translate, in Buddhist thinking anatman does not
denote the mere dialectical opposite of self as nonself. T. R. V. Murti writes that anatman is “the
denial of substance (atman), of a permanent substantial entity impervious to change” (cited in
Hans Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness: Foundations for a Buddhist–Christian Dialogue, trans.
James W. Heisig [New York: Paulist Press, 1980], 11). Buddhism does not deny the existence
of the ego-self, only that it is originary in its individuated manifestation or is the transcendental
condition for the possibility of knowing. All beings are interconnected and therefore exist in a
state of contingent mutual codependency or dependent origination (Sk. pratityasamutpada). The
teaching of anatman expresses this nonhierarchical state of differentiated unity.
9. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 252.
10. Nicolas of Cusa, The Layman: About Mind (Idiota de Mente), trans. Clyde Lee Miller
(New York: Abaris, 1979), 73. Cusanus’s protomodernism (that is, the notion of a mathematically
defined universe) melds with mysticism at this point, drawing on the conception of the “eternal
now” grasped by Meister Eckhart and later Kierkegaard, among others, and revived by modern
Zen thinking.
11. Nishitani Keiji, “Science and Zen,” trans. Richard D. Martino, in The Buddha Eye: An
Anthology of the Kyoto School and Its Contemporaries, ed. Frederick Franck (Bloomington, Ind.:
World Wisdom, Inc., 2004), 125.
12. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 146.
13. Ibid., 150.
14. Ibid., 249.
15. Ibid., 151.
16. Ibid., 66.
17. Ibid., 265.
18. See Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God Is Dead,’” in Off the Beaten Path,
ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
157–99; and “Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” trans. Bernd Magnus, in The New Nietzsche,
ed. David B. Allison (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 64–79. See also Nishitani, Religion and
Nothingness, 235.
19. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 216.

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20. See ibid., 67. What stands out in Eckhart for Nishitani is that nothingness is accorded a
salvific and not an ontological function. This point cannot be sufficiently underscored, as it is
essential for Nishitani’s own attempt to reconcile the differences between Asian and European
thinking, a reconciliation that engages not only philosophy but religion as well. On Eckhart’s
relationship to Zen, see Ueda Shizuteru, “‘Nothingness’ in Meister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism
with Particular Reference to the Borderlands of Philosophy and Theology,” trans. James W. Heisig,
in Franck, The Buddha Eye, 157–69.
21. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 90.
22. Ibid., 104.
23. Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. Graham Parkes with Setsuko
Aihara (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 180.
24. Dependent origination is a fundamental metaphysical concept common to all schools
of Buddhism. Along with the concept of karma (literally, action or deed), it forms the Buddhist
conception of causality, stating that all phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent nexus
of cause and effect. Because all phenomena are thus conditioned and transient or impermanent,
they have no real independent identity and thus no permanent, substantial existence, even if to the
ordinary mind this is not apparent. All phenomena are therefore fundamentally empty (Sk. sunya).
25. See Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 103.
26. For a view that Nietzsche moves beyond the standpoint of simply recognizing the inherent
contradiction and ambiguity in Western philosophy and embraces a paradoxical discourse, see
Rogério Miranda de Almeida, Nietzsche and Paradox, trans. Mark S. Roberts (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2006).
27 Abe Masao, “Mahayana Buddhism and Whitehead,” in Zen and Western Thought, ed.
William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1985), 157.
28 Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, lvi–lvii.
29. Ibid., li.
30. Ibid., 18.
31. Ibid., 22.
32. The term metanoesis (literally, from the Greek: meta, “after” or “other than,” noesis,
“rational thought”) means “conversion” (Jp. tenkan) or transformation of one’s attitude, thoughts,
and feelings to the point of “repentance” (Jp. zange) and assumes a central and critical importance
especially for Tanabe in his later work. The very notion of conversion or transformation draws
Tanabe and Nishitani into close proximity with Nietzsche and each other, although not necessarily
into the same standpoint.
33. See Kiyozawa Manshi, “The Great Path of Absolute Other-Power,” trans. James W. Heisig,
in Franck, The Buddha Eye, 241–45.
34. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 9; also see 25.
35. Ibid., 151.
36. Ibid., 106–7.
37. See Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 33, 55, 93, 171, 211–12, 232, 245–46.
38. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 107–9.
39. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 233.
40. Ibid., 211, 213.
41. I have written elsewhere:
The terms “apocalypse” and “eschatology” are often conflated in meaning even though in
actuality they are significantly different. Both terms convey, however, a sense of terminus. What
distinguishes their respective meanings though is the dimension of knowledge—specifically,
knowledge of the end of history. That is to say, even though both concepts connote a teleological
dimension, only apocalypse truly conveys this meaning insofar as it posits a telos able to be
comprehended as such. Eschatology, on the other hand, makes no determinative proposition

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regarding the nature of the end or completion of time and/or history, or even whether it will of
necessity occur. (“Apocalypse, Eschatology, and the Death of God,” in Nietzsche and Levinas:
“After the Death of a Certain God,” ed. Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo [New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009], 236)
Also see my Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence (New York: Routledge, 1996),
142–47, for a development of these themes as they pertain to Nietzsche’s philosophy.
42. On the difference between the eternal return and the eternal recurrence, see my “Blood
and Stone: A Response to Altizer and Lingis,” New Nietzsche Studies 4, nos. 3–4 (2000–2001):
29–41; and “Absolute Atonement,” in Thinking Through the Death of God: A Critical Companion
to Thomas J. J. Altizer, ed. Lissa McCullough and Brian Schroeder (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2004), 65–87.
43. On this point, see my “Can Fig Trees Grow on Mountains? Reversing the Question of
Great Politics,” in Difficult Justice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics, ed. Asher Horowitz
and Gad Horowitz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 148–71.
44. The preceding two paragraphs also appear (with some revision here) in my “Apocalypse,
Eschatology, and the Death of God.”
45. Hyun Young-hak, “A Theological Look at the Mask Dance in Korea,” in Minjung Theology,
ed. Commission on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis, 1981), 50–54.
46. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 97.
47. The theme of embodiment is central to Daoist, Buddhist, and Zen philosophy. On the
relationship among Daoism, Buddhism, and the cultivation of inner strength (Ch. ch’i or qi; Jp. ki),
see Huai-Chin Nan, Tao and Longevity: Mind–Body Transformation, trans. Wen Kuan Chu (York
Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1984); Yuasa Yasuo, The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy,
trans. Shigenori Nagatomo and Monte S. Hull (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1993). Responding to Yuasa’s work and branching off Nietzsche’s declaration in Zarathustra that
“the body is a great reason,” Nagatomo articulates a theory of bodily attunement with respect to
Dogen Kigen’s philosophy (a fundamental source for the Kyoto school, especially for Nishitani
and Abe) and phenomenology in Shigenori Nagatomo, Attunement Through the Body (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992). On the relationship between Zen and humanism, also
with reference to Dogen and phenomenology, see T. P. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person (Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 1981), especially 142–54.
48. Hyun, “A Theological Look at the Mask Dance in Korea,” 50.
49. Ibid.
50. See Suh Nam-dong, “Toward a Theology of Han” and “Historical References for a
Theology of Minjung,” in Commission on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of
Asia, Minjung Theology, 55–68 and 178–80. Also see Suh Kwang-sun David, “A Biographical
Sketch of an Asian Theological Consultation,” in Commission on Theological Concerns of the
Christian Conference of Asia, Minjung Theology, 23–28, for an introductory commentary on Suh
Nam-dong’s articles.
51. Suh, “Toward a Theology of Han,” 58.
52. Ibid., 64–65.
53. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 60.
54. Maurice Blanchot, “The Limits of Experience: Nihilism,” in Allison, The New
Nietzsche, 126.
55. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, 66.
56. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 112.
57. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, 48–50; Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness,
244, 246.
58. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 211–12.

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59. On this issue, see Graham Parkes, “Nietzsche and Nishitani on the Self-Overcoming of
Nihilism,” International Studies in Philosophy 25, no. 2 (1993): 51–60.
60. See Mark C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984), 34–51.
61. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 265.
62. Ibid., 264. On the relation between self and mask, see Graham Parkes, “Facing the
Self with Masks: Perspectives on the Personal from Nietzsche and the Japanese,” in Self and
Deception: A Cross-Cultural Philosophical Enquiry, ed. Wimal Dissanayake and Roger Ames
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 287–313; and “Facing the Masks: Persona
and Self in Nietzsche, Rilke, and Mishima,” MOSAIC: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study
of Literature 20, no. 3 (1987): 65–79.
63. Despite its long and well-known stance on the primacy of compassion, the question
of philosophically grounding, or articulating, an intersubjective ethics has been historically a
difficulty for Buddhist thinking. This difficulty is not lost on thinkers such as Nishitani and Abe
Masao, another figure associated with the Kyoto school. In fact, because of Japan’s long interest in
this century in Western thought, this problem is more pronounced than ever. Still, neither Nishitani
nor other Kyoto school thinkers proffer a viable solution to this problem, often finding themselves
confronted with the same barriers to resolving this issue that existentialism and phenomenology
encountered. Quoting extensively from Abe, Hans Waldenfels summarizes his critique of Buddhist
ethics on three basic points: First, there seems to be a tendency, especially in Zen, to not fully
recognize the positive and creative aspects of human thinking, thus leading, knowingly or not,
to a degeneration of “nonthinking” as a “not thinking.” Second, Buddhism has failed to “answer
the question of the grounding of [human] ethical responsibility and of [our] social and historical
behavior.” And third, “a future task for Buddhism [is] to actualize the possibility of embracing
scientific rationality in terms of Non-discriminating Wisdom” (Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness,
96–97). Nishitani’s task with regard to the issue of ethics, notes Waldenfels, is to provide an
entry into this question through the standpoint of absolute nothingness. Ultimately, however, the
problem hinges on the status of the historicity of time. For Abe’s views on Nietzsche, see his “Zen
and Nietzsche,” in LaFleur, Zen and Western Thought, 135–51.
64. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, 114, 113. Meaning literally from the Sanskrit
“enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva),” this term is the central concept of Mahayana Buddhism,
referring to an awakened being (buddha) that compassionately refuses to enter nirvana in order to
continue to assist with the awakening or enlightenment of other beings.
65. For an incisive treatment of the question of will, see Bret W. Davis, “Zen After Zarathustra:
The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism,” Journal of
Nietzsche Studies 28 (2004): 89–138.
66. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 171–72, 174–76. Nishitani borrows the term from
Takeuchi Yoshinori, another member of the Kyoto school.
67. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, “Zen as the Negation of Holiness,” trans. Sally Merrill, in Franck,
The Buddha Eye, 171; translation modified slightly.

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