hegel triggered ex negativo a long-lasting debate on nihilism in western thought in
different
registers: russian literature, modern philosophy, and postmodern politics.
Hegels Philosophy of the Historical Religions
in hinduism on the one hand a multitude of beings such as elephants and cows are venerated, but on the other an impersonal metaphysical substance, i.
e.
a supernatural divine power as brahman enters the stage of world history.
18 hegel, Werke 18, p. 167.
? 62 henk oosterling
Lectures of 1824: Migration of the Soul into the 'Nothing'
this initial categorization is expanded in the lectures of 1824, which are mainly based on the notes written down by students after the lectures. now buddhism comes to the fore as a transitional stage within the religion of magic that also includes religious consciousness of the African, eskimo, and Chinese. All these are stepping stones to hinduism, the religion of fantasy that precedes the religion of the good (Persian light religion) and the religion of the riddle (egyptian religion). in Chinese religion magic as power over nature is objectified in human beings like the emperor and the spirits or genii. the cultus is embedded in daily life ceremonies, agri- cultural rites and ancestor veneration. A general power that overrules the emperor is not introduced, because the principle of heaven (Tian) is not yet grasped as a general principle in relation to the power of the emperor. hegel mainly stresses the institutionalized power of the emperor, posi- tioning him as a prototype of an objectified form of divine power: "thus in China the emperor's lordship over nature is a fully organized monarchy" (l2 24, 303/207).
next to this 'secular power' a 'spiritual power' (l2 24, 307/211) unfolds itself. this first formalization is the key stage in the transition from magic to more properly defined religion: "religion begins here" (l2 24, 305/209). the raw immediacy of magic reflects within itself: "Prima facie the advance is that the infinite aspect, the essential aspect, is comprehended in a deeper, more genuine way than heretofore--or that another spiri- tual moment becomes objective for consciousness, for subjective spirit, [at this stage] as compared with what we have been considering up to this point" (l2 24, 304/208). this objectification constitutes the second phase of religious 'awareness', to use a less articulated term than consciousness: "thought comes to itself" as "what rests and abides within itself, namely spirit" (l2 24, 305/209). objectification is no longer formal but actual, be it "still immediate, consisting initially in the fact that it is a singular self- consciousness" (l2 24, 306-7/210). religious substance becomes an affirma- tive relationship with this power: being-Within-self as "thought itself, and this is the distinctive essentiality of self-consciousness" (l2 24, 306/209). Consciousness contemplates and meditates.
hegel then positions buddhism. it is described as 'the religion of the fo' (l2 24, 307/211). this religion "comes from China, and in historical fact it is somewhat later than the form in which power is the dominant element" (l2 24, 311/214). originally, hegel remarks, buddhism came from burma, india and Ceylon, "their god buddha is venerated as gautama", "depicted
avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 63
in the attitude of self-absorption with head bent and arms folded over his breast" (l2 24, 314/217). no toe-sucking yet. gautama is not identified as the secular person that later becomes the buddha. he is one of a series of deceased buddhas that are contrasted with living lamas as the dalai lama. the fact that hindu brahmans see gautama as the ninth incarna- tion of vishnu, explains partly this hindu image. then a second shift is made. Chinese, mongols, tibetans, burmese, and Ceylonese all practice a "religion we know under the form of lamaism" (l2 24, 307/211). As men- tioned before, these mistakes reflect the scientific insights of hegel's days. to him the difference between the fo and lamaism is only superficial. lamaism deals with living people through which the divine power trans- migrates, while the fo is concerned with a (re)capturing of buddhahood for salvation.
lamaism practices tranquility, repose and contemplation. "this is where the theoretical attitude begins" (l2 24, 309/211). Practical power and desire are negated by "peaceful being-within-self" (l2 24, 309/212). this cultus has institutional manifestations, but it is individualized since an individ- ual can unify himself with 'theoretical substantiality' whenever he wants. still a thin discursive line links it to the transmigration of souls as a char- acteristic of magic religions, but "immortality of the soul (in the broadest sense) is what now for the first time emerges" (l2 24, 309/212). this is not yet spiritual in an objectified way, being encapsulated in "immediacy, i. e. , a bodily, sensuous shape" (l2 24, 310/213).
more than the immortality of the soul another doctrine is explored and explained by hegel: the constituting principle of 'nothing': "however var- ied people and things may be, there is thus only one principle from which they stem, in which they are, through which they subsist, and to which they revert--this one principle is the nothing, completely unqualified, simple and pure" (l2 24, 312/215). hegel emphasizes that this 'nothing' should not be understood as not being. he suggests that, since it is purely identical with itself, being thought itself, it is 'a substantive being' (l2 24, 312/215) eternally at rest, free of determinations. the souls do no longer wander "for they become completely identical with the god fo" (l2 24, 313/215-216). free of desires the goal is reached as nirvana, being identi- cal with god, but conceptualized as nothing, as the void of the Science of Logic.
in positioning nirvana this way hegel implicitly subscribes a maha? ya? na view that he found in the Allgemeine Historie der Reisen. hegel's sources do mention the difference between the hi? naya? na and maha? ya? na 'method' of attaining nirvana, respectively by getting free from all worldly misery
64 henk oosterling
and by denying desires in order to attain buddhahood, but hegel's treat- ment of buddhism does not explore these modalities. Although in retro- spect he fails to grasp the specific non-Western articulation of emptiness or the void, i. e. of nirvana, he does not present 'nothing' as a mere priva- tion of being. Wordings like 'annihilation of self' come to the fore in the lectures of 1831 which are only known by their publication in an edition of hegel's works done by his friends shortly after his death.
Lectures of 1827
in the 1827 lectures, again mainly based on students' notes, hegel returns to the theme that he, in his student years in tu? bingen discussed with schelling and ho? lderlin: one and all, hen kai pan. in this series of lectures Chinese religion of the state is conceived as an intermediate phase. in hegel's account of how the emperor performs his divine powers he comes to speak of 'the sect of the dao'. (l2 27, 555/453) this sect was allowed to withdraw in self established monasteries into the mountains in order for the shen to attain immortality. the principle of the Way (Dao) lifts the religion of magic up to the being-within-self that in the next phase of religious consciousness is articulated in buddhism and lamaism. An exploration of daoism, in which hegel referred to a book on lao-zi (551-479 b. C. ) that was published in 1823 and that deals with the life and speeches of lao-zi, sets an in between: dao "is a distinctive god, reason" (l2 27, 548/446-447). hegel focuses on 'measure' as the core concept of reason, acknowledging dao as 'the return of consciousness into itself' (l2 27, 557/454). fo and dao are not explicitly connected. records on Chan buddhism or Zen buddhism were not yet available.
in this version of the lectures the religion of heaven (Tian) "is acknowl- edged as the highest ruling power" (l2 27, 548/446) that transcends magic and power but while governing moral conduct is still bound to empiri- cal consciousness. it remains formal and abstract. referring to the Papal reproach of Catholic orders in China for their inadequate translation of tian as 'god', hegel agrees with his sources that "tian designates wholly indeterminate and abstract universality; it is the wholly indeterminate sum of the physical and the moral nexus as a whole" (l2 27, 549/446). in the final analysis it is still the emperor who rules nature, be it under the guidance of tian. "the heaven of the Chinese or tian, by contrast, is some thing totally empty" (l2 27, 550/447). emptiness is interpreted 'empirically': the Chinese tian is not populated like the Christian heaven. emptiness is conceived as a privation, as space in which something is lacking, in short as negation.
avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 65
A dialectical structure of reasoning always attracts hegel's attention. in the margin of his notes on the 26th of June 1827 he writes: "it is quite note- worthy that the determination 'three' immediately comes into play to the extent that dao is something rational and concrete" (l2 27, 558/455), fol- lowed by the opening sentences of the Tao Te Ching: dao (reason) produc- ing the one, the one producing the two, the two producing the three and the three the whole universe. hegel concludes: "unless three determina- tions are recognized in god, 'god' is an empty word" (l2 27, 559/456). dao stays abstract as long as self-consciousness is not ruptured: "thus lao-zi is also a shen, or he has appeared as buddha" (l2 27, 560/456). in this way emptiness connects daoism and buddhism in hegel's conclusion.
in this series of lectures buddhism/lamaism is positioned beyond the realm of magic as the religion of being-Within-self. hegel's exposition has become more developed and balanced with buddhism still preceding hin- duism, but now as an autonomous phase that expands the abstract uni- versality and theoretical substantiality of the dao and tian. buddhism is even "the most widespread religion on earth" (l2 27, 563/460). the tricky topic of pantheism--and by implication of atheism--is gradually woven into his explanation. "here we find the form of substantiality in which the absolute is a being-within-self, the one substance; but it is not grasped just as a substance for thought and in thought (as it is in spinoza); instead it has at the same time existence in sensible presence, i. e. in singular human beings" (l2 27, 564/460).
it is against this background that the mistaken image of the toe-sucking 'buddha' suddenly appears, followed by the statement that "the ultimate of highest [reality] is therefore nothing or not-being" (l2 27, 565/461). in contrast to the 1824 lectures hegel now rephrases buddhist nothing- ness in Western ontological categories as not-being. this state of being is paradoxically strived for "through ceaseless internal mindfulness, to will nothing, to want [nothing], and to do nothing. (. . . ) thus the theoretical moment finds expression here: that this pure nothing, this stillness and emptiness, is the highest state; that the individual is [something] formal" (l2 27, 566/462). the individual does not think and as such remains for- mal and abstract, not yet universal and concrete. expressions as 'negative mental attitude', 'a merely negative nature' are now frequently used. once these ontological and epistemological qualifications gather psychological connotations the implied pantheism tends towards atheism, in spite of hegel's warning that "at first glance it must astonish us that humans think of god as nothing; that must be extremely strange. more closely consid- ered, however, this characterization means nothing other than that god
66 henk oosterling
purely and simply is nothing determinate, is the indeterminate. (. . . ) that does not mean that god is not, but rather that god is the empty, and that this emptiness is god" (l2 27, 567-8/464). the divine being is not lacking anything, but is full of emptiness, to phrase it speculatively.
Connecting eastern religion via Anaxagoras' rational principle of Nous with Western religion hegel finalizes this historical sightseeing with schellingian intellectual intuition. he rephrases this as 'intuiting intelli- gence', in order to emphasize immediacy. this is disqualified as 'a lower level of consciousness' (l2 27, 572/468). the romantic option indirectly equals oriental pantheism. both demand a complementing sublation via representation and conceptuality: "just as the sun sets in the west, so it is in the West that human beings descend into itself, into its own subjectiv- ity" (l2 27, 572/469; italic ho). hegel opposes the oriental and occidental way of experiencing, representing and thinking the world with spinoza as an in between. but once in hen kai pan--one and all--'pan' is under- stood as everything, we should discern between the view that everything is god (Allesgo? tterei) and the doctrine that the All is god (Allgo? tterei). in this shift pantheism becomes atheism, as Jacobi's analysis of spinozism try to argument. but this is countered by hegel: 'pan' stands for universality (Allgemeinheit) and not for collective totality (Allesheit). 19
hegel sees a parallel between spinoza's concept of substance and the oriental principle of unity. however, what is still lacking is a Kantian overdetermination of this substance by subjectivity. only then the singu- larity of the individual is united with the universality of god through self reflective particularity. in the dialectical shortcut of a speculative phrase this means that separation unites. hegel's systematic exposition of this overdetermination of substance by subjectivity as a stepping stone to the unfolding of the absolute idea is the key to an understanding of Science of Logic. oriental consciousness has not yet reached the state of a rupture-- for-itself--in which substantial immediacy is objectified in order to be reconciled in concrete universality. man has not yet come to realize that a necessary negation of god--as if he does not exist--is a precondition
19 hegel collaborated with the editor of the first german collected edition of spinoza's Works, that were published in 1802-03. he compared some french translations. so the impact of spinoza's philosophy was wrong, but "this is not to say that hegel had a deep and scholarly knowledge of spinoza". see: g. h. r. Parkinson, 'hegel, Pantheism, and spi- noza', in: Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 38, no. 3 (Jul. /sep. , 1977), p. 449. Parkinson also accuses hegel of a very specific interpretation of spinoza's 'omnis determinatio negatio est' in order to incorporate this into his system.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 67
for their reunion through idealization, conceptualization and identifica- tion. then and only then man realizes his spirituality in a twofold way: in understanding it and incorporating it in a self conscious cultus. "but at this point, at the level of nature religion which we are now dealing with, this spirituality is not yet spirituality as such, it is not yet a spirituality that is thought or universal; instead it is sensible and immediate spirituality" (l2 27, 575/471).
Lectures of 1831
hegel dies in 1831 while reworking Science of Logic, lecturing on religion in the summer. this last series of lectures is published posthumously, edited by his students and friends. herein buddhism is once more 'upgraded'. now hinduism precedes buddhism that in its turn is completely focused on the practice of annihilation. Chinese religion has become the religion of measure. the dialectical triad for immediate religion is redefined as measure (Chinese religion), abstract unity (hinduism) and annihilation (lamaism, buddhism), all categorized under the heading: religions of rup- ture (Entzweiung). lamaism and buddhism dissolve the dialectical ten- sion between the Chinese religion of measure and hinduism as abstract unity. is a reading of this rearrangement against the background of hegel reediting Science of Logic, instructive?
measure is qualitatively determined quantity and as such is situated at the end of Science of Logic's book i: the doctrine of being. measure is the overture to book ii: the doctrine of essence. this starts with essence as reflection in itself, positing a yet unarticulated reality as Appearance (Schein). All is appearance (maya), as is stated in both hinduism and buddhism. in hegel's system reality systematically articulates itself only to unfold itself at the end of the doctrine of essence. this in its turn is the prelude to the very first movement of the doctrine of Concept: sub- jectivity. then substance has returned to itself full circle through the contingency of its accidents, the realization of which opened man's con- sciousness for subjectivized substantiality. only by now being has become being in-and-for-itself.
notwithstanding all this the presentation of buddhism/lamaism in this last series of lectures is very brief. but every new phase--Chinese, indian, buddhism/lamaism--is characterized in the very first sentences in terms of pantheism. in the excerpts of the student david friedrich strauss, who attended hegel's last course, and who also coming from tu? bingen visited hegel a few days before his death to share memories, the second chapter
68 henk oosterling
on 'the splitting up (Entzweiung) of the religious Consciousness in itself ' contains a systematic remark on the relationship between substance and accidents "which are determined as a kind of being that is nothing, as a nullity. (. . . ) All that subsists is this change, and the later thought of as unity is the substantive. this is the oriental or spinozist substance" (l2 31, 727/617). the word 'pantheism' has become a key term: "We have now to consider the more specific forms in which pantheism has defined itself as religion" (l2 27, 549/446, footnote 100).
Cross-referring to Science of Logic (sol) of 1832 the controversy on pan- theism is indirectly referred to in a newly added remark at the end of book i on measure: "in the true trinity there is not only unity but union, the conclusion of the syllogism is a unity possessing content and actu- ality, a unity which in its wholly concrete determination is spirit". in hinduism, hegel proceeds, "this is only to submerge all content in the void, in a merely formal unity lacking all content. thus siva, too, is again the great whole, not distinct from brahma, but brahma himself. in other words, the difference and the determinateness only vanish again but are not preserved, are not sublated, and the unity does not become a con- crete unity, neither is the disunity reconciled". then the crucial passage is made to buddhism via annihilation and the lack of subjectivity: "the supreme goal for man placed in the sphere of coming-to-be and ceasing- to-be, of modality generally, is submergence in unconsciousness, unity with brahma, annihilation; the buddhist nirvana, nibbana etc. , is the same" (sol, 328/29). the nirvana stands for annihilation, for unity with the divine as absolute nothingness.
5. hegel in buddhist Perspective: Affirming emptiness as Plenitude and suchness beyond subjectivity
did hegel's analysis and valuation of buddhism's void as nothingness determine the critical debate on the 'nihil' in the second half of the 19th century? "there can be no doubt that the person who contributed most to the nihilist interpretation of nirvana during the nineteenth century was the german philosopher hegel. for him, the buddhist nirvana is sim- ply nothingness . . . ",20 Kao professor on Japanese religion bernard faure concludes. that is why 19th century scholars like edgar Quinet called
20 bernard faure, Unmasking Buddhism, malden/oxford: Wiley-blackwell 2009, p. 25.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 69
the buddha the great Christ of emptiness and ernest renan disqualified buddhism as the Church of nihilism. schopenhauer's critical revaluation of hegel's views on buddhism resulted in his philosophical pessimism and nietzsche diagnosed western culture as inherently nihilistic, trying to overcome this by a revaluation of all values proposing onto-political quasi-concepts as the overman, Will to Power, and the eternal return.
but faure also recognizes positive elements in hegel's analysis. subtle nuances enable the keen reader of hegel's work to comprehend emptiness beyond mere nothingness. 21 i agree with faure that the heirs of hegel are to blame, with Z? iz? ek as one of the most recent exponents. they either made a caricature out of buddhism or transformed hegel's formal-ontological approach of nothingness into existential, moral and political variations of nihilism. yet faure's remark that the buddhist emptiness "is merely another name for plenitude"22 needs some explanation. this rephrasing of hegel's position already prefigures a (Zen) buddhist interpretation of nothingness and emptiness that reminds us of the experiential focus of nagarjuna (c. 150-250 A. d. ) a monk who developed a view on emptiness he called 'the middle Way' or 'the middle Path'. nagarjuna scorns the isolation of emptiness as a separate phenomenon and its articulation as a concept.
it is evident that faure's analysis does not imply that hegel was a nihil- ist, nor does it disqualify hegel's systematic philosophy as a proto-form of nihilism. if nihilism means lacking a positive and enduring foundation of the meanings, values and truths that motivate man's actions--positively formulated: stating that the basic value, meaning and truth is the 'nihil'-- then hegelian philosophy is the opposite of nihilism. however, faure's accusation stands once we acknowledge the influence of hegelianism, due to the critique it engendered and the basic concepts it provided for disil- lusioned and anti-metaphysically focused generations of scholars to come.
hegel triggered ex negativo a long-lasting debate on nihilism in western thought in different registers: russian literature, modern philosophy, and postmodern politics.
in order to actualize hegel's positioning of buddhism i expose it to a more profound misunderstanding of buddhist thought. the eastern
21 morton too acknowledges that "what hegel actually produces, along with many others, is a sense of a positive nothingness that exists alongside phenomena" inspite of the fact that "he, in strictly buddhist terms, becomes guilty of the very nihilism he is berating in what he beholds" (? 6).
22 faure, Unmasking Buddhism, p. 25.
? 70 henk oosterling
reception of hegelian thought implicitly addresses his understanding of nothingness. buddhist scholars of the Kyoto school who are famous for their intercultural focus23 have explored the productive relations between buddhism and Christian thought from the other side of the divide. hegel's philosophy was already known in Japan the decades after Japan opened its borders and markets for the West in the second half of the 19th century. but it was the centenary of his death in 1931 that caused a breakthrough,24 as happened in france under the guidance of Alexander Koje`ve. 25 the most prominent philosopher who integrated hegelianism in Japanese thought was Kitaro nishida (1870-1945). this founding father of the Kyoto school stressed the relational focus of hegel's thinking and thematized an experiential nothingness. 26 nihilism was further explored by nishida's former student Keiji nishitani (1900-1990) who, after hav- ing studied in germany and having persuaded Karl lo? with to come and teach in Japan, wrote extensively on nihilism. 27 masao Abe (1915-2006) deepened the insights in the relation between emptiness and affirmation focusing on the suchness (sanskrit: tathata? ; Jap. konomama) of things. A brief survey of their ideas redirects hegel's notion of 'emptiness'.
Nishida: Pure Experience in Between of General and Particular
the maha? ya? na concept of ? Absolute nothingness? (zettai mu) is the foun- dational concept of nishida's philosophy. like hegel nishida too under- stands the 'self' in terms of a contradictory identity: it is both A & -A.
23 see: rolf elberfeld, Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), Das Verstehen der Kulturen. Mod- erne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach der Interkulturalita? t, Amsterdam/Atlanta: rodopi 1999, chapter 3.
24 see: gino Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 1892-1996. A Survey, tokyo: Japan library 1997, p. 169.
25 Koje`ve proposed a philosophical anthropological reading of hegel's dialectical phi- losophy. his courses influenced many a hegelian critical adept: georges bataille, Jacques lacan, Jean hippolyte and Jean-Paul sartre attended his courses. After World War ii Koje`ve unfolded a futuristic vision in which Japanese consciousness and aestheticism played a crucial role in the realization of hegel's idea of man's ultimate way of living after 'the end of history'. francis fukuyama's famous book on this topic refers more to Koje`ve than to hegel.
26 see: david dilworth, (transl. ) Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, by nishida Kitaro: ? the logic of the Place of nothingness and the religious Worldview? (basho-teki ronri to shukyo-teki sekaikan), honolulu: university of hawaii Press, 1987. nishida frequently discussed his ideas with daisetz t. suzuki, the Zen scholar who would later bring Zen to the West. see: daisetz t. suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton: Princeton uP, 1970 (orig. 1938).
27 Keiji nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of NIHILISM, Albany: suny Press 1990.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 71
however, for him 'essence' that precedes the rupture between subject and object, is realized--in the twofold meaning of the word--not as a concept but as a pure experience ( junsui keiken)--a notion he picked up in the work of William James--that cannot be grasped in discursive arguments. When nishida speaks about pure experience as enlightenment, he has Zen's satori in mind. Against this background nishida, a Zen practitioner himself, defines enlightenment as ? the ultimate seeing of the bottomless nothingness of the self. ? 28
in hegelian terms, what is problematized here is the dialectical ten- sion between the general and the particular, the one and the many or the whole and its parts. these are tensionally unified in the singular. this however is not a conceptual unison, let alone a notional sublation. for nishida the one and the many coincide as absolute contradictory self- identity (zettai mujunteki jiko doitsu). the self however is not understood as the unity of consciousness: "in the depths of our selves there is nothing to be found; everywhere is ? nothingness? ; instead we find absolute ? unity? , by transcending everything related to the self. "29 no-thing or nothingness is not a concept, it is an experience of being fully related to everything and nothing in particular.
there is a metalogical problem as well. for an identity to be truly con- tradictory one has to suppose that both sides of the logical dichotomy are true, since this is what makes them contradictory. but for buddhists there is no such assertion. buddhist thought denies a permanent, self-identical entity through time. moreover, the totality of all there is is not a thing. its negation therefore is not a thing either. Just like that of its parts the 'thingness' of the whole--and by implication of emptiness as lack of this substantial whole--results from fixations of ever changing interacting forces on different scales. teleology does not direct these interactions. the contradiction is ephemeral. only 'extreme' hypostasized notions of an atomic, unchanging being or deterministic causality might produce a contradiction. instead of substantial identity--the 'i= not i' in a fichtean articulation--nishida stresses the interrelated nature between parts both within individuals and between them as parts of a whole. 30
Pure experience is the experience of what unites in difference. it is a corporeal experience of embedded relationality, superseding the
28 idem, p. 81.
29 dilworth, Last Writings, p. 110.
30 see: elberfeld, Das Verstehen der Kulturen, pp. 110/138 ff.
? 72 henk oosterling
Cartesian and Kantian dualities of mind-body and subject-object. As 'cor- poreal' realization--the thinking posture of the toe sucking 'buddha'--it can only be grasped in spatial terms. the issue in Kyoto Zen buddhist thought is not time but place. nishida refers to Plato's chora, as the form of all forms that itself in not yet formed, but that is perhaps too metaphys- ical a comparison. Place or basho must be understood beyond the duality of matter and form or the mind-body dichotomy as a physically oriented field of consciousness, a being-in or an inbetweenness. 31
nishida's logic of place (basho) focuses on form. the Japanese word for form is kata. this word also describes the repetitive practice of basis techniques in the martial arts: as a dance of stylized forms that 'flow' with- out intention from the body of the martial artist. but it too counts for tea ceremony (cha do) or flower arrangement (ikebana). it is all about finding the proper form in the proper place. for Japanese culture the stylization of form, dissolving intention in direct acting, is crucial. in this experience agency becomes 'acting intuition'. nishida's logic of place allows him to fuse momentariness and eternity, particularity and universality.
"the crux of the difference between nishida and hegel may be viewed as a distinction between process and completion. in hegel's case, the manifestation of the unfolding (. . . ) is at the same time a witness to its own necessity. (. . . ) nishida, for his part, is not interested in the dialectical unfolding as such but rather in the actual completion of the process in the place of absolute nothingness. "32 in affirming the radicalized phenomenal- ity of things the 'autonomy' of the field of consciousness is realized.
Nishitani: Emptiness as Plenitude
nishitani adds a nietzschean tone to the debate on nothingness. his book on nihilism analyzes different tendencies of nihilism in the West, mainly focusing on nietzsche's claim that nihilism eventually can become affir- mative and creative. this corresponds with an affirmative presentation of emptiness (sanskrit: sunyata; Jap. ku) that results from the insight that
31 the Japanese word for person is ningen, that literally means: being (nin) of the inbe- tween (gen). this 'relational' constituent is sublated in hegel's notion of the subject. see: h. oosterling, ? A Culture of the inter. Japanese notions of ma and basho? in: heinz Kim- merle & henk oosterling (eds. ), Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural perspective. On the Possibility of Common Judgements in Arts and Politics, Wu? rzburg: Ko? nigshausen & neumann 2000, pp. 61-84.
32 maren Zimmermann, " 'nishida's 'self-identity of Absolute Contradiction' and hegel": Absolute negation and dialectics", in: J. W. heisig ed. nanzan, Frontiers of Japanese Phi- losophy, nagoya: 2006, p. 195.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 73
nothingness (mu) in the final instance is a experience of fullfilment. nishi- tani too emphasizes the embeddedness of the self: it is rather a nod of relations than a substance. other Japanese scholars have enhanced this insight by pointing at a constitutive inbetweenness of Japanese culture.
'nihilism' now is focused on insubstantial connectedness. As no-thing this becomes affirmative once in a continuity of momentary conscious selves the ephemeral 'i' is acknowledged to be the fixation of the flow of unique singular moments. in hegel's system these 'absolute' positions (an sich), posing itself initially as all there is, i. e. absolute, enrich them- selves in the process of objectification (fu? r sich) and subjectivation (an und fu? r sich), a process driven by negativity. to nishitani the nothing that haunts 'unhappy consciousness' is just a relative nothingness. the abso- lute individual--to phrase it paradoxically--that arises in an absolute present experiences an affirmative emptiness as plenitude, as being ful- filled in itself and as such being fully present to the world. of course these phrases appear non-sensical in the light of everyday existence where the 'i' is psychologically evident and pragmatic urgency demands calculated anticipations all the time.
but what is at stake here is precisely the radicality of this everyday- ness, that is devoid of Hinterwelten, as nietzsche called the totalistic mind frames that Western philosophy produced time and again to ward off the unbearable lightness of being: "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 maha? ya? na". but in the final instance the maha? ya? na point of view on emptiness "cannot be reached even by nihilism that overcomes nihilism, even though this latter may tend in that direction. "33 Adorno acknowledges this at the end of Negative Dialectics when he comes to speak about the ineffective overcomings of nietzsche's nihilism "that was meant differently yet supplied fascism with slogans (. . . ) And yet the light- ing up of an eye, indeed the feeble tail-wagging of a dog one gave a tidbit it promptly forgets, would make the ideal of nothingness evaporate. "34
33 Keiji nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Albany new york: suny Press 1990, p. 180.
34 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 380.
? 74 henk oosterling
Abe: The Suchness of Things
nishida's and nishitani's expositions give us a first clue for an understand- ing of nothingness in a concrete and affirmative sense. Japanese Zen bud- dhism acknowledges, notwithstanding the primacy of appearances, the experiential 'truth' of nothingness that is grasped in a radical affirmation of these appearances. the intentional subject dissolves in 'acting-intuition' that realizes the empty mind or no-mind (mu shin). this is not a unar- ticulated immediacy, but the result of 'form'al training: Zen's active sit- ting or the unmovable movement in martial arts performs the 'essence' of nothingness. but what does this say about nirvana? in his comparative study Zen and Western Thought masao Abe focuses on three problems in buddhism: the significance of nirvana for contemporary thought and life, the idea of purity in maha? ya? na buddhism and emptiness as suchness.
Abe realizes that the negative connotation of nirvana "even occurs in the buddhist world. "35 he offers six arguments for understanding nirvana 'beyond nihilism' and the last one is, in hegelian perspective, very instruc- tive: "what significance does nirvana have in regard to understanding the meaning of history? " recalling the momentariness history has no begin and no end: "eternity manifests itself in the here and now. "36 the emphasis shifts to the now and here as "the realization of nirvana. "37
As for the purity, Abe criticizes the 'third position above and outside the process' from which purity is objectified and conceptualized. Purity is not the counter-concept of impurity. it is the ground from which an objectified opposition can arise. indirectly criticizing hegelian dialectics, Abe states that purity is not the sublated enlightenment as an end, on the contrary: it is the unsaid 'ground' of our existence as a whole. 'origi- nal purity, however, is not a state which is objectively observable, but is realization . . . "38 this is the corporeal and spatial realization of emptiness in the maha? ya? na sense that was grasped by nishida through a logic of place.
nishitani's analysis of emptiness as fullness is further specified by Abe: fullness manifests itself as the suchness (sanskrit: bhuta tathata? ; Jap. : kono no mama) of things. but "everything is just as it is" implies that "every-
35 masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, William r. lafleur (ed. ) hampshire/london: macmillam Press ltd 1985, p. 205.
36 masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 215. 37 idem, p. 214.
38 idem, p. 220.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 75
thing is different from everything else. And yet while everything and everyone retained their uniqueness and particularity they are free from conflict because they have no self-nature. "39 exit dialectics. this sounds a bit weird, but this insight shows perfectly how historicity and objectifica- tion are nullified in the realization of emptiness. the fullness of emptiness realizes itself once the unique suchness--the as-it-is-ness--of things is affirmed in the non-willing of an individual. in objectifying matter West- ern thought aims at manipulating it as an object that in the very act of objectification constitutes the subject. it pretends to change things pro- gressively in order to realize completion. in doing this it instrumentalizes the suchness of things. "how can we overcome this fundamental restless- ness and return to suchness? to do so is the raison d'e^tre and essential task of religion. "40 At this point Abe reminds us of the metaphor of the snake swallowing its own tail as a symbol of eternity, of a full circle. but this image also reminds him of emptiness in as far the self tries to grasp itself, as the toe sucking buddha: "through the death of ego-self, no-self is realized". "this is because the realization of suchness is the positive aspect of the realization of emptiness.
18 hegel, Werke 18, p. 167.
? 62 henk oosterling
Lectures of 1824: Migration of the Soul into the 'Nothing'
this initial categorization is expanded in the lectures of 1824, which are mainly based on the notes written down by students after the lectures. now buddhism comes to the fore as a transitional stage within the religion of magic that also includes religious consciousness of the African, eskimo, and Chinese. All these are stepping stones to hinduism, the religion of fantasy that precedes the religion of the good (Persian light religion) and the religion of the riddle (egyptian religion). in Chinese religion magic as power over nature is objectified in human beings like the emperor and the spirits or genii. the cultus is embedded in daily life ceremonies, agri- cultural rites and ancestor veneration. A general power that overrules the emperor is not introduced, because the principle of heaven (Tian) is not yet grasped as a general principle in relation to the power of the emperor. hegel mainly stresses the institutionalized power of the emperor, posi- tioning him as a prototype of an objectified form of divine power: "thus in China the emperor's lordship over nature is a fully organized monarchy" (l2 24, 303/207).
next to this 'secular power' a 'spiritual power' (l2 24, 307/211) unfolds itself. this first formalization is the key stage in the transition from magic to more properly defined religion: "religion begins here" (l2 24, 305/209). the raw immediacy of magic reflects within itself: "Prima facie the advance is that the infinite aspect, the essential aspect, is comprehended in a deeper, more genuine way than heretofore--or that another spiri- tual moment becomes objective for consciousness, for subjective spirit, [at this stage] as compared with what we have been considering up to this point" (l2 24, 304/208). this objectification constitutes the second phase of religious 'awareness', to use a less articulated term than consciousness: "thought comes to itself" as "what rests and abides within itself, namely spirit" (l2 24, 305/209). objectification is no longer formal but actual, be it "still immediate, consisting initially in the fact that it is a singular self- consciousness" (l2 24, 306-7/210). religious substance becomes an affirma- tive relationship with this power: being-Within-self as "thought itself, and this is the distinctive essentiality of self-consciousness" (l2 24, 306/209). Consciousness contemplates and meditates.
hegel then positions buddhism. it is described as 'the religion of the fo' (l2 24, 307/211). this religion "comes from China, and in historical fact it is somewhat later than the form in which power is the dominant element" (l2 24, 311/214). originally, hegel remarks, buddhism came from burma, india and Ceylon, "their god buddha is venerated as gautama", "depicted
avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 63
in the attitude of self-absorption with head bent and arms folded over his breast" (l2 24, 314/217). no toe-sucking yet. gautama is not identified as the secular person that later becomes the buddha. he is one of a series of deceased buddhas that are contrasted with living lamas as the dalai lama. the fact that hindu brahmans see gautama as the ninth incarna- tion of vishnu, explains partly this hindu image. then a second shift is made. Chinese, mongols, tibetans, burmese, and Ceylonese all practice a "religion we know under the form of lamaism" (l2 24, 307/211). As men- tioned before, these mistakes reflect the scientific insights of hegel's days. to him the difference between the fo and lamaism is only superficial. lamaism deals with living people through which the divine power trans- migrates, while the fo is concerned with a (re)capturing of buddhahood for salvation.
lamaism practices tranquility, repose and contemplation. "this is where the theoretical attitude begins" (l2 24, 309/211). Practical power and desire are negated by "peaceful being-within-self" (l2 24, 309/212). this cultus has institutional manifestations, but it is individualized since an individ- ual can unify himself with 'theoretical substantiality' whenever he wants. still a thin discursive line links it to the transmigration of souls as a char- acteristic of magic religions, but "immortality of the soul (in the broadest sense) is what now for the first time emerges" (l2 24, 309/212). this is not yet spiritual in an objectified way, being encapsulated in "immediacy, i. e. , a bodily, sensuous shape" (l2 24, 310/213).
more than the immortality of the soul another doctrine is explored and explained by hegel: the constituting principle of 'nothing': "however var- ied people and things may be, there is thus only one principle from which they stem, in which they are, through which they subsist, and to which they revert--this one principle is the nothing, completely unqualified, simple and pure" (l2 24, 312/215). hegel emphasizes that this 'nothing' should not be understood as not being. he suggests that, since it is purely identical with itself, being thought itself, it is 'a substantive being' (l2 24, 312/215) eternally at rest, free of determinations. the souls do no longer wander "for they become completely identical with the god fo" (l2 24, 313/215-216). free of desires the goal is reached as nirvana, being identi- cal with god, but conceptualized as nothing, as the void of the Science of Logic.
in positioning nirvana this way hegel implicitly subscribes a maha? ya? na view that he found in the Allgemeine Historie der Reisen. hegel's sources do mention the difference between the hi? naya? na and maha? ya? na 'method' of attaining nirvana, respectively by getting free from all worldly misery
64 henk oosterling
and by denying desires in order to attain buddhahood, but hegel's treat- ment of buddhism does not explore these modalities. Although in retro- spect he fails to grasp the specific non-Western articulation of emptiness or the void, i. e. of nirvana, he does not present 'nothing' as a mere priva- tion of being. Wordings like 'annihilation of self' come to the fore in the lectures of 1831 which are only known by their publication in an edition of hegel's works done by his friends shortly after his death.
Lectures of 1827
in the 1827 lectures, again mainly based on students' notes, hegel returns to the theme that he, in his student years in tu? bingen discussed with schelling and ho? lderlin: one and all, hen kai pan. in this series of lectures Chinese religion of the state is conceived as an intermediate phase. in hegel's account of how the emperor performs his divine powers he comes to speak of 'the sect of the dao'. (l2 27, 555/453) this sect was allowed to withdraw in self established monasteries into the mountains in order for the shen to attain immortality. the principle of the Way (Dao) lifts the religion of magic up to the being-within-self that in the next phase of religious consciousness is articulated in buddhism and lamaism. An exploration of daoism, in which hegel referred to a book on lao-zi (551-479 b. C. ) that was published in 1823 and that deals with the life and speeches of lao-zi, sets an in between: dao "is a distinctive god, reason" (l2 27, 548/446-447). hegel focuses on 'measure' as the core concept of reason, acknowledging dao as 'the return of consciousness into itself' (l2 27, 557/454). fo and dao are not explicitly connected. records on Chan buddhism or Zen buddhism were not yet available.
in this version of the lectures the religion of heaven (Tian) "is acknowl- edged as the highest ruling power" (l2 27, 548/446) that transcends magic and power but while governing moral conduct is still bound to empiri- cal consciousness. it remains formal and abstract. referring to the Papal reproach of Catholic orders in China for their inadequate translation of tian as 'god', hegel agrees with his sources that "tian designates wholly indeterminate and abstract universality; it is the wholly indeterminate sum of the physical and the moral nexus as a whole" (l2 27, 549/446). in the final analysis it is still the emperor who rules nature, be it under the guidance of tian. "the heaven of the Chinese or tian, by contrast, is some thing totally empty" (l2 27, 550/447). emptiness is interpreted 'empirically': the Chinese tian is not populated like the Christian heaven. emptiness is conceived as a privation, as space in which something is lacking, in short as negation.
avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 65
A dialectical structure of reasoning always attracts hegel's attention. in the margin of his notes on the 26th of June 1827 he writes: "it is quite note- worthy that the determination 'three' immediately comes into play to the extent that dao is something rational and concrete" (l2 27, 558/455), fol- lowed by the opening sentences of the Tao Te Ching: dao (reason) produc- ing the one, the one producing the two, the two producing the three and the three the whole universe. hegel concludes: "unless three determina- tions are recognized in god, 'god' is an empty word" (l2 27, 559/456). dao stays abstract as long as self-consciousness is not ruptured: "thus lao-zi is also a shen, or he has appeared as buddha" (l2 27, 560/456). in this way emptiness connects daoism and buddhism in hegel's conclusion.
in this series of lectures buddhism/lamaism is positioned beyond the realm of magic as the religion of being-Within-self. hegel's exposition has become more developed and balanced with buddhism still preceding hin- duism, but now as an autonomous phase that expands the abstract uni- versality and theoretical substantiality of the dao and tian. buddhism is even "the most widespread religion on earth" (l2 27, 563/460). the tricky topic of pantheism--and by implication of atheism--is gradually woven into his explanation. "here we find the form of substantiality in which the absolute is a being-within-self, the one substance; but it is not grasped just as a substance for thought and in thought (as it is in spinoza); instead it has at the same time existence in sensible presence, i. e. in singular human beings" (l2 27, 564/460).
it is against this background that the mistaken image of the toe-sucking 'buddha' suddenly appears, followed by the statement that "the ultimate of highest [reality] is therefore nothing or not-being" (l2 27, 565/461). in contrast to the 1824 lectures hegel now rephrases buddhist nothing- ness in Western ontological categories as not-being. this state of being is paradoxically strived for "through ceaseless internal mindfulness, to will nothing, to want [nothing], and to do nothing. (. . . ) thus the theoretical moment finds expression here: that this pure nothing, this stillness and emptiness, is the highest state; that the individual is [something] formal" (l2 27, 566/462). the individual does not think and as such remains for- mal and abstract, not yet universal and concrete. expressions as 'negative mental attitude', 'a merely negative nature' are now frequently used. once these ontological and epistemological qualifications gather psychological connotations the implied pantheism tends towards atheism, in spite of hegel's warning that "at first glance it must astonish us that humans think of god as nothing; that must be extremely strange. more closely consid- ered, however, this characterization means nothing other than that god
66 henk oosterling
purely and simply is nothing determinate, is the indeterminate. (. . . ) that does not mean that god is not, but rather that god is the empty, and that this emptiness is god" (l2 27, 567-8/464). the divine being is not lacking anything, but is full of emptiness, to phrase it speculatively.
Connecting eastern religion via Anaxagoras' rational principle of Nous with Western religion hegel finalizes this historical sightseeing with schellingian intellectual intuition. he rephrases this as 'intuiting intelli- gence', in order to emphasize immediacy. this is disqualified as 'a lower level of consciousness' (l2 27, 572/468). the romantic option indirectly equals oriental pantheism. both demand a complementing sublation via representation and conceptuality: "just as the sun sets in the west, so it is in the West that human beings descend into itself, into its own subjectiv- ity" (l2 27, 572/469; italic ho). hegel opposes the oriental and occidental way of experiencing, representing and thinking the world with spinoza as an in between. but once in hen kai pan--one and all--'pan' is under- stood as everything, we should discern between the view that everything is god (Allesgo? tterei) and the doctrine that the All is god (Allgo? tterei). in this shift pantheism becomes atheism, as Jacobi's analysis of spinozism try to argument. but this is countered by hegel: 'pan' stands for universality (Allgemeinheit) and not for collective totality (Allesheit). 19
hegel sees a parallel between spinoza's concept of substance and the oriental principle of unity. however, what is still lacking is a Kantian overdetermination of this substance by subjectivity. only then the singu- larity of the individual is united with the universality of god through self reflective particularity. in the dialectical shortcut of a speculative phrase this means that separation unites. hegel's systematic exposition of this overdetermination of substance by subjectivity as a stepping stone to the unfolding of the absolute idea is the key to an understanding of Science of Logic. oriental consciousness has not yet reached the state of a rupture-- for-itself--in which substantial immediacy is objectified in order to be reconciled in concrete universality. man has not yet come to realize that a necessary negation of god--as if he does not exist--is a precondition
19 hegel collaborated with the editor of the first german collected edition of spinoza's Works, that were published in 1802-03. he compared some french translations. so the impact of spinoza's philosophy was wrong, but "this is not to say that hegel had a deep and scholarly knowledge of spinoza". see: g. h. r. Parkinson, 'hegel, Pantheism, and spi- noza', in: Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 38, no. 3 (Jul. /sep. , 1977), p. 449. Parkinson also accuses hegel of a very specific interpretation of spinoza's 'omnis determinatio negatio est' in order to incorporate this into his system.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 67
for their reunion through idealization, conceptualization and identifica- tion. then and only then man realizes his spirituality in a twofold way: in understanding it and incorporating it in a self conscious cultus. "but at this point, at the level of nature religion which we are now dealing with, this spirituality is not yet spirituality as such, it is not yet a spirituality that is thought or universal; instead it is sensible and immediate spirituality" (l2 27, 575/471).
Lectures of 1831
hegel dies in 1831 while reworking Science of Logic, lecturing on religion in the summer. this last series of lectures is published posthumously, edited by his students and friends. herein buddhism is once more 'upgraded'. now hinduism precedes buddhism that in its turn is completely focused on the practice of annihilation. Chinese religion has become the religion of measure. the dialectical triad for immediate religion is redefined as measure (Chinese religion), abstract unity (hinduism) and annihilation (lamaism, buddhism), all categorized under the heading: religions of rup- ture (Entzweiung). lamaism and buddhism dissolve the dialectical ten- sion between the Chinese religion of measure and hinduism as abstract unity. is a reading of this rearrangement against the background of hegel reediting Science of Logic, instructive?
measure is qualitatively determined quantity and as such is situated at the end of Science of Logic's book i: the doctrine of being. measure is the overture to book ii: the doctrine of essence. this starts with essence as reflection in itself, positing a yet unarticulated reality as Appearance (Schein). All is appearance (maya), as is stated in both hinduism and buddhism. in hegel's system reality systematically articulates itself only to unfold itself at the end of the doctrine of essence. this in its turn is the prelude to the very first movement of the doctrine of Concept: sub- jectivity. then substance has returned to itself full circle through the contingency of its accidents, the realization of which opened man's con- sciousness for subjectivized substantiality. only by now being has become being in-and-for-itself.
notwithstanding all this the presentation of buddhism/lamaism in this last series of lectures is very brief. but every new phase--Chinese, indian, buddhism/lamaism--is characterized in the very first sentences in terms of pantheism. in the excerpts of the student david friedrich strauss, who attended hegel's last course, and who also coming from tu? bingen visited hegel a few days before his death to share memories, the second chapter
68 henk oosterling
on 'the splitting up (Entzweiung) of the religious Consciousness in itself ' contains a systematic remark on the relationship between substance and accidents "which are determined as a kind of being that is nothing, as a nullity. (. . . ) All that subsists is this change, and the later thought of as unity is the substantive. this is the oriental or spinozist substance" (l2 31, 727/617). the word 'pantheism' has become a key term: "We have now to consider the more specific forms in which pantheism has defined itself as religion" (l2 27, 549/446, footnote 100).
Cross-referring to Science of Logic (sol) of 1832 the controversy on pan- theism is indirectly referred to in a newly added remark at the end of book i on measure: "in the true trinity there is not only unity but union, the conclusion of the syllogism is a unity possessing content and actu- ality, a unity which in its wholly concrete determination is spirit". in hinduism, hegel proceeds, "this is only to submerge all content in the void, in a merely formal unity lacking all content. thus siva, too, is again the great whole, not distinct from brahma, but brahma himself. in other words, the difference and the determinateness only vanish again but are not preserved, are not sublated, and the unity does not become a con- crete unity, neither is the disunity reconciled". then the crucial passage is made to buddhism via annihilation and the lack of subjectivity: "the supreme goal for man placed in the sphere of coming-to-be and ceasing- to-be, of modality generally, is submergence in unconsciousness, unity with brahma, annihilation; the buddhist nirvana, nibbana etc. , is the same" (sol, 328/29). the nirvana stands for annihilation, for unity with the divine as absolute nothingness.
5. hegel in buddhist Perspective: Affirming emptiness as Plenitude and suchness beyond subjectivity
did hegel's analysis and valuation of buddhism's void as nothingness determine the critical debate on the 'nihil' in the second half of the 19th century? "there can be no doubt that the person who contributed most to the nihilist interpretation of nirvana during the nineteenth century was the german philosopher hegel. for him, the buddhist nirvana is sim- ply nothingness . . . ",20 Kao professor on Japanese religion bernard faure concludes. that is why 19th century scholars like edgar Quinet called
20 bernard faure, Unmasking Buddhism, malden/oxford: Wiley-blackwell 2009, p. 25.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 69
the buddha the great Christ of emptiness and ernest renan disqualified buddhism as the Church of nihilism. schopenhauer's critical revaluation of hegel's views on buddhism resulted in his philosophical pessimism and nietzsche diagnosed western culture as inherently nihilistic, trying to overcome this by a revaluation of all values proposing onto-political quasi-concepts as the overman, Will to Power, and the eternal return.
but faure also recognizes positive elements in hegel's analysis. subtle nuances enable the keen reader of hegel's work to comprehend emptiness beyond mere nothingness. 21 i agree with faure that the heirs of hegel are to blame, with Z? iz? ek as one of the most recent exponents. they either made a caricature out of buddhism or transformed hegel's formal-ontological approach of nothingness into existential, moral and political variations of nihilism. yet faure's remark that the buddhist emptiness "is merely another name for plenitude"22 needs some explanation. this rephrasing of hegel's position already prefigures a (Zen) buddhist interpretation of nothingness and emptiness that reminds us of the experiential focus of nagarjuna (c. 150-250 A. d. ) a monk who developed a view on emptiness he called 'the middle Way' or 'the middle Path'. nagarjuna scorns the isolation of emptiness as a separate phenomenon and its articulation as a concept.
it is evident that faure's analysis does not imply that hegel was a nihil- ist, nor does it disqualify hegel's systematic philosophy as a proto-form of nihilism. if nihilism means lacking a positive and enduring foundation of the meanings, values and truths that motivate man's actions--positively formulated: stating that the basic value, meaning and truth is the 'nihil'-- then hegelian philosophy is the opposite of nihilism. however, faure's accusation stands once we acknowledge the influence of hegelianism, due to the critique it engendered and the basic concepts it provided for disil- lusioned and anti-metaphysically focused generations of scholars to come.
hegel triggered ex negativo a long-lasting debate on nihilism in western thought in different registers: russian literature, modern philosophy, and postmodern politics.
in order to actualize hegel's positioning of buddhism i expose it to a more profound misunderstanding of buddhist thought. the eastern
21 morton too acknowledges that "what hegel actually produces, along with many others, is a sense of a positive nothingness that exists alongside phenomena" inspite of the fact that "he, in strictly buddhist terms, becomes guilty of the very nihilism he is berating in what he beholds" (? 6).
22 faure, Unmasking Buddhism, p. 25.
? 70 henk oosterling
reception of hegelian thought implicitly addresses his understanding of nothingness. buddhist scholars of the Kyoto school who are famous for their intercultural focus23 have explored the productive relations between buddhism and Christian thought from the other side of the divide. hegel's philosophy was already known in Japan the decades after Japan opened its borders and markets for the West in the second half of the 19th century. but it was the centenary of his death in 1931 that caused a breakthrough,24 as happened in france under the guidance of Alexander Koje`ve. 25 the most prominent philosopher who integrated hegelianism in Japanese thought was Kitaro nishida (1870-1945). this founding father of the Kyoto school stressed the relational focus of hegel's thinking and thematized an experiential nothingness. 26 nihilism was further explored by nishida's former student Keiji nishitani (1900-1990) who, after hav- ing studied in germany and having persuaded Karl lo? with to come and teach in Japan, wrote extensively on nihilism. 27 masao Abe (1915-2006) deepened the insights in the relation between emptiness and affirmation focusing on the suchness (sanskrit: tathata? ; Jap. konomama) of things. A brief survey of their ideas redirects hegel's notion of 'emptiness'.
Nishida: Pure Experience in Between of General and Particular
the maha? ya? na concept of ? Absolute nothingness? (zettai mu) is the foun- dational concept of nishida's philosophy. like hegel nishida too under- stands the 'self' in terms of a contradictory identity: it is both A & -A.
23 see: rolf elberfeld, Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), Das Verstehen der Kulturen. Mod- erne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach der Interkulturalita? t, Amsterdam/Atlanta: rodopi 1999, chapter 3.
24 see: gino Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 1892-1996. A Survey, tokyo: Japan library 1997, p. 169.
25 Koje`ve proposed a philosophical anthropological reading of hegel's dialectical phi- losophy. his courses influenced many a hegelian critical adept: georges bataille, Jacques lacan, Jean hippolyte and Jean-Paul sartre attended his courses. After World War ii Koje`ve unfolded a futuristic vision in which Japanese consciousness and aestheticism played a crucial role in the realization of hegel's idea of man's ultimate way of living after 'the end of history'. francis fukuyama's famous book on this topic refers more to Koje`ve than to hegel.
26 see: david dilworth, (transl. ) Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, by nishida Kitaro: ? the logic of the Place of nothingness and the religious Worldview? (basho-teki ronri to shukyo-teki sekaikan), honolulu: university of hawaii Press, 1987. nishida frequently discussed his ideas with daisetz t. suzuki, the Zen scholar who would later bring Zen to the West. see: daisetz t. suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton: Princeton uP, 1970 (orig. 1938).
27 Keiji nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of NIHILISM, Albany: suny Press 1990.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 71
however, for him 'essence' that precedes the rupture between subject and object, is realized--in the twofold meaning of the word--not as a concept but as a pure experience ( junsui keiken)--a notion he picked up in the work of William James--that cannot be grasped in discursive arguments. When nishida speaks about pure experience as enlightenment, he has Zen's satori in mind. Against this background nishida, a Zen practitioner himself, defines enlightenment as ? the ultimate seeing of the bottomless nothingness of the self. ? 28
in hegelian terms, what is problematized here is the dialectical ten- sion between the general and the particular, the one and the many or the whole and its parts. these are tensionally unified in the singular. this however is not a conceptual unison, let alone a notional sublation. for nishida the one and the many coincide as absolute contradictory self- identity (zettai mujunteki jiko doitsu). the self however is not understood as the unity of consciousness: "in the depths of our selves there is nothing to be found; everywhere is ? nothingness? ; instead we find absolute ? unity? , by transcending everything related to the self. "29 no-thing or nothingness is not a concept, it is an experience of being fully related to everything and nothing in particular.
there is a metalogical problem as well. for an identity to be truly con- tradictory one has to suppose that both sides of the logical dichotomy are true, since this is what makes them contradictory. but for buddhists there is no such assertion. buddhist thought denies a permanent, self-identical entity through time. moreover, the totality of all there is is not a thing. its negation therefore is not a thing either. Just like that of its parts the 'thingness' of the whole--and by implication of emptiness as lack of this substantial whole--results from fixations of ever changing interacting forces on different scales. teleology does not direct these interactions. the contradiction is ephemeral. only 'extreme' hypostasized notions of an atomic, unchanging being or deterministic causality might produce a contradiction. instead of substantial identity--the 'i= not i' in a fichtean articulation--nishida stresses the interrelated nature between parts both within individuals and between them as parts of a whole. 30
Pure experience is the experience of what unites in difference. it is a corporeal experience of embedded relationality, superseding the
28 idem, p. 81.
29 dilworth, Last Writings, p. 110.
30 see: elberfeld, Das Verstehen der Kulturen, pp. 110/138 ff.
? 72 henk oosterling
Cartesian and Kantian dualities of mind-body and subject-object. As 'cor- poreal' realization--the thinking posture of the toe sucking 'buddha'--it can only be grasped in spatial terms. the issue in Kyoto Zen buddhist thought is not time but place. nishida refers to Plato's chora, as the form of all forms that itself in not yet formed, but that is perhaps too metaphys- ical a comparison. Place or basho must be understood beyond the duality of matter and form or the mind-body dichotomy as a physically oriented field of consciousness, a being-in or an inbetweenness. 31
nishida's logic of place (basho) focuses on form. the Japanese word for form is kata. this word also describes the repetitive practice of basis techniques in the martial arts: as a dance of stylized forms that 'flow' with- out intention from the body of the martial artist. but it too counts for tea ceremony (cha do) or flower arrangement (ikebana). it is all about finding the proper form in the proper place. for Japanese culture the stylization of form, dissolving intention in direct acting, is crucial. in this experience agency becomes 'acting intuition'. nishida's logic of place allows him to fuse momentariness and eternity, particularity and universality.
"the crux of the difference between nishida and hegel may be viewed as a distinction between process and completion. in hegel's case, the manifestation of the unfolding (. . . ) is at the same time a witness to its own necessity. (. . . ) nishida, for his part, is not interested in the dialectical unfolding as such but rather in the actual completion of the process in the place of absolute nothingness. "32 in affirming the radicalized phenomenal- ity of things the 'autonomy' of the field of consciousness is realized.
Nishitani: Emptiness as Plenitude
nishitani adds a nietzschean tone to the debate on nothingness. his book on nihilism analyzes different tendencies of nihilism in the West, mainly focusing on nietzsche's claim that nihilism eventually can become affir- mative and creative. this corresponds with an affirmative presentation of emptiness (sanskrit: sunyata; Jap. ku) that results from the insight that
31 the Japanese word for person is ningen, that literally means: being (nin) of the inbe- tween (gen). this 'relational' constituent is sublated in hegel's notion of the subject. see: h. oosterling, ? A Culture of the inter. Japanese notions of ma and basho? in: heinz Kim- merle & henk oosterling (eds. ), Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural perspective. On the Possibility of Common Judgements in Arts and Politics, Wu? rzburg: Ko? nigshausen & neumann 2000, pp. 61-84.
32 maren Zimmermann, " 'nishida's 'self-identity of Absolute Contradiction' and hegel": Absolute negation and dialectics", in: J. W. heisig ed. nanzan, Frontiers of Japanese Phi- losophy, nagoya: 2006, p. 195.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 73
nothingness (mu) in the final instance is a experience of fullfilment. nishi- tani too emphasizes the embeddedness of the self: it is rather a nod of relations than a substance. other Japanese scholars have enhanced this insight by pointing at a constitutive inbetweenness of Japanese culture.
'nihilism' now is focused on insubstantial connectedness. As no-thing this becomes affirmative once in a continuity of momentary conscious selves the ephemeral 'i' is acknowledged to be the fixation of the flow of unique singular moments. in hegel's system these 'absolute' positions (an sich), posing itself initially as all there is, i. e. absolute, enrich them- selves in the process of objectification (fu? r sich) and subjectivation (an und fu? r sich), a process driven by negativity. to nishitani the nothing that haunts 'unhappy consciousness' is just a relative nothingness. the abso- lute individual--to phrase it paradoxically--that arises in an absolute present experiences an affirmative emptiness as plenitude, as being ful- filled in itself and as such being fully present to the world. of course these phrases appear non-sensical in the light of everyday existence where the 'i' is psychologically evident and pragmatic urgency demands calculated anticipations all the time.
but what is at stake here is precisely the radicality of this everyday- ness, that is devoid of Hinterwelten, as nietzsche called the totalistic mind frames that Western philosophy produced time and again to ward off the unbearable lightness of being: "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 maha? ya? na". but in the final instance the maha? ya? na point of view on emptiness "cannot be reached even by nihilism that overcomes nihilism, even though this latter may tend in that direction. "33 Adorno acknowledges this at the end of Negative Dialectics when he comes to speak about the ineffective overcomings of nietzsche's nihilism "that was meant differently yet supplied fascism with slogans (. . . ) And yet the light- ing up of an eye, indeed the feeble tail-wagging of a dog one gave a tidbit it promptly forgets, would make the ideal of nothingness evaporate. "34
33 Keiji nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Albany new york: suny Press 1990, p. 180.
34 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 380.
? 74 henk oosterling
Abe: The Suchness of Things
nishida's and nishitani's expositions give us a first clue for an understand- ing of nothingness in a concrete and affirmative sense. Japanese Zen bud- dhism acknowledges, notwithstanding the primacy of appearances, the experiential 'truth' of nothingness that is grasped in a radical affirmation of these appearances. the intentional subject dissolves in 'acting-intuition' that realizes the empty mind or no-mind (mu shin). this is not a unar- ticulated immediacy, but the result of 'form'al training: Zen's active sit- ting or the unmovable movement in martial arts performs the 'essence' of nothingness. but what does this say about nirvana? in his comparative study Zen and Western Thought masao Abe focuses on three problems in buddhism: the significance of nirvana for contemporary thought and life, the idea of purity in maha? ya? na buddhism and emptiness as suchness.
Abe realizes that the negative connotation of nirvana "even occurs in the buddhist world. "35 he offers six arguments for understanding nirvana 'beyond nihilism' and the last one is, in hegelian perspective, very instruc- tive: "what significance does nirvana have in regard to understanding the meaning of history? " recalling the momentariness history has no begin and no end: "eternity manifests itself in the here and now. "36 the emphasis shifts to the now and here as "the realization of nirvana. "37
As for the purity, Abe criticizes the 'third position above and outside the process' from which purity is objectified and conceptualized. Purity is not the counter-concept of impurity. it is the ground from which an objectified opposition can arise. indirectly criticizing hegelian dialectics, Abe states that purity is not the sublated enlightenment as an end, on the contrary: it is the unsaid 'ground' of our existence as a whole. 'origi- nal purity, however, is not a state which is objectively observable, but is realization . . . "38 this is the corporeal and spatial realization of emptiness in the maha? ya? na sense that was grasped by nishida through a logic of place.
nishitani's analysis of emptiness as fullness is further specified by Abe: fullness manifests itself as the suchness (sanskrit: bhuta tathata? ; Jap. : kono no mama) of things. but "everything is just as it is" implies that "every-
35 masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, William r. lafleur (ed. ) hampshire/london: macmillam Press ltd 1985, p. 205.
36 masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 215. 37 idem, p. 214.
38 idem, p. 220.
? avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing 75
thing is different from everything else. And yet while everything and everyone retained their uniqueness and particularity they are free from conflict because they have no self-nature. "39 exit dialectics. this sounds a bit weird, but this insight shows perfectly how historicity and objectifica- tion are nullified in the realization of emptiness. the fullness of emptiness realizes itself once the unique suchness--the as-it-is-ness--of things is affirmed in the non-willing of an individual. in objectifying matter West- ern thought aims at manipulating it as an object that in the very act of objectification constitutes the subject. it pretends to change things pro- gressively in order to realize completion. in doing this it instrumentalizes the suchness of things. "how can we overcome this fundamental restless- ness and return to suchness? to do so is the raison d'e^tre and essential task of religion. "40 At this point Abe reminds us of the metaphor of the snake swallowing its own tail as a symbol of eternity, of a full circle. but this image also reminds him of emptiness in as far the self tries to grasp itself, as the toe sucking buddha: "through the death of ego-self, no-self is realized". "this is because the realization of suchness is the positive aspect of the realization of emptiness.
