Steven Heine

Truths are illusions whose illusionary nature has been forgotten. . . . Nietzsche, Gay Science

Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Program, Pennsylvania State University

1. Nishitani and Postmodernism

One of the major contributions in Nishitani Keiji's modern philo-
sophical exposition of Zen is his discussion of the question of history in a
comparative light with Western religious, philosophical, and social scien-
tific approaches. Nishitani's main theme probably is the ideological
encounter between religion and science as well as religion and nihilism,
as critically seen from the standpoint of Buddhist emptiness (Śīnyatā), or
what Kyoto School thinkers refer to as absolute nothingness (zettai mu).
Yet, Jan Van Bragt comments in the introduction to his translation of
Nishitani Religion and Nothingness, "From within the Kyoto School, the
treatment of history in the final two essays [on "īnyatā and Time" and
"īnyatā and History"] has been received as the strongest and most
original part of the book. For the Western reader, on the other hand,
these chapters may well be the hardest to digest . . . [for] our view of
history seems to be systematically dismantled before our very eyes, stone
by stone." Further, in Nishitani "the whole construction [of history as an
objectifiable process] is reduced to so much rubble."¹ For Van Bragt,
Nishitani's approach to history is significant in the way that he stimulates
other Kyoto School thinkers and at the same time "offends" (in the
positive Kierkegaardian sense) Westerners whose presuppostions are rad-
ically undercut by his penetrating analysis.

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