The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method
El concepto de vacuidad en Nishitani Keiji y la culminación
del método fenomenológico
Ricardo Baeza
Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Alemania
ISSN: 0123-5095 E-ISSN: 2389-9441
Cuestiones de Filosofía Vol. 10 - N° 34. Enero - junio, año 2024, pp. 41-60.
Artículo de Investigación
Resumen
La fenomenología tiene sus orígenes
históricos en el pensamiento de Edmund
Husserl. Este autor desarrolló el método
fenomenológico, que tiene como objetivo
llegar a las “cosas mismas”. El desarrollo
del concepto de fenomenología continúa a
través del trabajo de Nishitani Keiji. En la
fenomenología de este autor, perteneciente
a la llamada “Escuela de Kioto”, se llega
a la comprensión de la “cosa misma”
como vacío. Este concepto esencial de su
pensamiento se analiza en la primera sección
del presente artículo. La segunda sección se
y Meister Eckhart, así como en su recepción
en el pensamiento de Nishitani Keiji. Estos
autores son ejemplos paradigmáticos de
un tipo de pensamiento que no puede
enmarcarse dentro de las tradiciones
metafísicas y onto-teológicas occidentales y
orientales. En la tercera sección, se explica
cómo la experiencia del vacío culmina en
la aspiración última de la fenomenología
de llegar a las “cosas mismas”. Esencial
en esta sección es la confrontación de
Nishitani con el pensamiento de Heidegger.
Finalmente, en la última sección, y a modo
de conclusión, se hace una propuesta sobre
posibles líneas de investigación basadas en
los desarrollos de Heidegger y Nishitani.
Palabras clave:
Recepción / Received: 04 de diciembre del 2023
Evaluado / Evaluated: 12 de enero del 2024
Aprobado / Accepted: 9 de febrero del 2024
Historia del artículo / Article Info:
Correspondencia / Correspondence: Ricardo Baeza. Albert-
Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Friedrichstr. 39 Freiburg,
Alemania (Código Postal: 79098). Correo-e: r.bae@web.de
Citación / Citation: Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness
in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the phenomenological
method, Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
41
42 Cuestiones de Filosofía No. 34 - Vol. 10 Año 2024 ISSN 0123-5095 Tunja-Colombia
Abstract
Phenomenology has its historical origins in Edmund Husserl´s thought. This
author developed the phenomenological method, which aims to reach the
“things themselves”. The development of the concept of phenomenology is
further continued through the work of Nishitani Keiji. In the phenomenology
of this author belonging to the so-called “Kyoto School”, one arrives at
the understanding of the “thing itself” as emptiness. This essential concept
as well as their reception in the thought of Nishitani Keiji. These authors are
paradigmatic examples of a type of thinking that cannot be framed within
the Western and Eastern metaphysical and onto-theological traditions. In the
third section, it is explained how the experience of emptiness culminates in
the ultimate aspiration of phenomenology to reach the “things themselves”.
Essential in this section is Nishitani’s confrontation with Heideggerian
thought. Finally, in the last section, and by way of conclusion, a proposal
is made regarding possible lines of research based on the developments by
Heidegger and by Nishitani.
Keywords:
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Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
The understanding of Reality as emptiness in Nishitani Keiji
Being is only being if it is one with emptiness
Nishitani Keiji (1982, p. 124)
Phenomenology has its historical origins in the work of Edmund Husserl.
This author developed the phenomenological method, which aims to reach
the “things themselves”. For Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990), disciple of
Heidegger in the 1930s during a stay of the Japanese thinker in Freiburg,
the understanding of reality as emptiness culminates the ultimate aim of
phenomenology to reach the “things themselves”. His most notable work,
Religion and Nothingness, published in 1961, delves into the concept of
emptiness in the Buddhist philosophy. Nishitani interprets fundamental
experiences of the Buddhist tradition in a phenomenological sense. According
to Nishitani’s conception as it presented in this work, after the disappearance
of the hegemony of the eld of consciousness –where the self experience
reality in terms of concepts and representations– extinguished by the irruption
of the eld of nihility, and the arrival of the eld of emptiness, reality does not
appear distorted by the interference of the mind. As will be seen in the second
section of this article, the radicality that certain authors possess in the Eastern
Buddhist tradition is analogous to others in the Western Christian tradition.
respectively. Before delving into this topic, the following lines analyze the
elds of existence in the thought of Nishitani Keiji.
For Nishitani, the eld (ba
) of consciousness “is the point at which the
seer and the seen are discovered, at ground, to be one” (1982, p. 114). The
of the entity as substance (jittai
). For Nishitani, the substance grasped
1 Regarding the guiding principle of the phenomenological method, Husserl writes: „Wir wollen uns
schlechterdings nicht mit bloßen ‘Worten’, das ist mit einem bloß symbolischen Wortverständnis,
Besonderungen haben. Bedeutungen, die nur von entfernten, verschwommenen, uneigentlichen
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“Such original selfness must lie beyond the reach of reason and be impervious
eld of consciousness is, in this sense, the psycho-physical construct formed
by thoughts and emotions. To arrive at the true understanding of the thing
as emptiness, it is necessary to dismantle the internal structure of the eld of
consciousness from within. However, this dismantling is not achieved through
reason itself, but through a collapse of reason by way of embracing the eld of
nihility
scatters and fades away like fog over a bottomless abyss when laid out on the
intimately related to the presence of anguish, disrupts the linear, substantial
and subjective view of reality. In this existential situation, “self and things
alike, at the ground of their existence, turn into a single great question mark”
by the assumption of the eld of nihility. The doubt that Nishitani mentions
the very distinction is overstepped, the self become the Great Doubt” (p. 18).
That doubt becomes “Great Doubt” precisely indicates the transcendence of
Doubt” is beyond the subject/object dichotomy. It is a “nullifying” totality.
As a consequence of its eruption, things cease to be “objects” originated by
the representation of a “subject”. As will be seen in the third section of this
article, Nishitanian’s conception of the emergence of negative nothingness
owes much to the unfolding of the phenomenological method in Heidegger’s
work. The irruption of negative nothingness has the function of disrupting the
negative nothingness, according to Nishitani, must be “run quickly across”
(p. 137). Negative nothingness grants the vision of the unreality of both the
being and the subject. From an existential standpoint, interiority becomes
phenomenon of the “Great Doubt” within the Nishitanian conception.
What precisely brings Nishitani to the culmination of the unfolding of
phenomenology is the existential description of the experience of emptiness.
This pre-conceptual and post-mental stage is the very place of the manifestation
45
Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
of the phenomenon itself, which Nishitani understands as voidness (kokū
) and emptiness (śūnyatā ). The concept of emptiness mentioned here
comes from the Sanskrit language, not Japanese. It has an essential relationship
with the Japanese concepts of selfness (soku-hi
) and void (kū ), which
are fundamental in the Buddhist conception of reality. The Chinese translation
of the concept of śūnyatā
; void in Japanese), which may also
mean sky (Marra, 1999, pp. 179-180). The empty sky is the emptiness that
can contain all particular things and is all particular things. According to
Nishitani, that every entity is emptiness means that everything possesses the
character of illusion at its foundation; that everything is, in essence, illusory
appearance (Nishitani, 1982, p. 109). It also means that the being of things in
emptiness is truly more real than what is normally taken as the reality of things
(for example, their supposed substance): “It is the point at which the self is
truly on its own home-ground. Here plants and trees have penetrated to the
bottom to be themselves; here tiles and stones are through and through tiles and
stones; and here, too, in self-identity with everything, the self is radically itself.
To know “without knowing” indicates an existential form of understanding of
phenomena located beyond or “further back” from rational thought. It is the
“silent” understanding that transcends the parameters of rational thought and
its eminently dual mode of understanding reality.
The eminently dual nature of rational knowledge has been further emphasized
in modernity. René Descartes, in his work of 1637 Discourse on the Method,
presented the central philosophical assertion of his thinking: “I think,
therefore I am” (Cogito, ergo sum). With this discovery, Descartes believed
he had found the fundamental truth that could not be doubted and that would
serve as the starting point for his entire philosophical system. Nishitani, in
reference to the fundamental discovery by the French philosopher, comments:
“His cogito, ergo sum expressed the mode of being of that ego as a self-
centered assertion of its own realness. Along with this, on the other hand, the
things in the natural world came to appear as bearing no living connection
with the internal ego” (1982, p. 11). The absence of connection with the
and emotions. In this sense, Descartes’s statement could be transformed into:
“I think, therefore I do not exist”. The emergence of a mental and emotional
2 Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences.
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“screen” between consciousness and the self, and between consciousness
life” just as the encounter of consciousness with its abyssal and absolute
depth. It is necessary to quiet the mind to uncover a more essential mode
of understanding reality. Therefore, according to Nishitani, philosophical
endeavor must be linked to meditation. Meditation leads to the “silent”
than the mere “mental” or rational knowledge proposed by Descartes.
Descartes inaugurates the modern mode of understanding reality. Nishitani
asserts that Cartesian thinking is unfolded and reworked in Kant’s work
(p. 132). For Nishitani, the fundamental consequence of the adoption of
Cartesianism is that “Kant looks on things from the very outset as objects”
(p.133). The preeminence of the subject/object duality leads to the emergence
of nihilism and existentialism in Western philosophy as philosophical
currents and as fundamental experiences. An example of this existentialist
and nihilistic drift is found, according to Nishitani, in the work of Sartre.
According to the Japanese philosopher, Sartre “describes existentialism
as a subjective standpoint” (p. 31). For Nishitani, “Sartre has shifted the
foundations of this awareness from God to nihility, from theism to atheism.
In this shift we get a glimpse of the distance that modern man has gone since
he began to pursue his own path to the awareness of subjectivity” (p. 31).
Nishitani understands that the emergence of negative nothingness, like the
rise of nihilism, are epochal phenomena. Both phenomena, according to this
universal nature of nihilism is understood as the macrocosmic correlate of
the unfolding of inner nothingness. The relationship between interiority and
exteriority is central to understanding the unfolding of nihilism on a planetary
scale. Nishitani writes: “At present, most people think that to transform society
is one thing and to transform man is another, and that the former should be
achieved before the later. But in reality, these two aspects cannot be separated
from each other so easily” (1966, p. 1). This historical aspect, uncovered
through Nishitani’s engagement with the philosophies of Nietzsche and
Heidegger, is analyzed in the work The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, published
in 1949. In this work, Nishitani asserts: “The esencial thing is to overcome our
inner void, and here European nihilism is of critical relevance in that it can
impart a radical twist to our present situation and thereby point a way toward
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Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
overcoming the spiritual hollowness” (1990, p. 178). For Nishitani, nihilism
must be overcome from within nihilism itself. It is not enough to simply step
outside of it; one must delve deeper, listen to what nihilism is telling us, in
order to reach the “negation of negation” or, in other words, the transcendence
of nihilism from within, from its very essence. As mentioned previously, the
hegemony of the eld of reason and the emergence of modern nihilism are
situated in modernity. Now the overcoming of rational thinking has become
the fundamental problem that philosophy confronts in its post-metaphysical
stage. The Heideggerian concept of “metaphysical thinking,” as well as the
theme of overcoming nihilism, are analyzed in the third section of this article.
Eckhart is conducted. According to Nishitani, both authors are paradigmatic
examples of a type of discourse that precisely does not allow itself to be framed
within the so-called “metaphysical thinking”. According to Nishitani, both
authors demonstrate a mode of understanding being that closely aligns with
the proposal of the Japanese philosopher himself.
The thought of Dōgen and Meister Eckhart and its reception in Nishitani
Despite being a practitioner of meditation in a Rinzai school temple, Nishitani
most important philosophical work is Shōbōgenzo (
). It is considered
of zazen meditation over mere theoretical knowledge. The ultimate goal of
this meditation is to reach the “empty” substratum beyond the mental plane
formed by thoughts and emotions. To refer to the absolute immediacy of
Genjōkōan (
), which can be translated as “immediately manifest here
distinctive individuality of each entity and, on the other hand, to the absolute
ultimate identity: “When all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is illusion and
enlightenment, practice, birth, death, Buddhas, and sentient beings. When all
things are without self, there is no illusion or enlightenment, no birth or death,
mental plane formed by thoughts and emotions is what gives the substantial
character of reality characteristic of Nishitani’s eld of consciousness. Stripped
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of substantial character, the reality re-appears as real in its unreality. Because
it lacks substance, individuality is illusory in its reality and real in its manner
of being illusory. Through the original, non-objective, non-substantial Self, a
self transformed into a subject becomes possible. The essence of this latter
absolutely empty. Subjectivity is nothing other than the Self in itself projected
suggesting the same thing. To practice or ‘observe’ the Way of the Buddha is
261). The concept of Dasein refers to Heidegger, an author who is analyzed
in the third section of this article. Here, just mention that Heidegger’s concept
of Dasein points towards a non-metaphysical understanding of the concept
of human being. The metaphysical tradition has understood human beings in
various ways: an idea (Plato), as a creation of God (medieval scholasticism),
as a subject (modern thought). All of these ideas, rather than illuminating this
concept, conceal it.
or destruction of the core of the psycho-physical construct formed by thoughts
perception of time as a process that produces changes is transcended in the re-
cognition of the Self: “We set the self out in array and make that the whole world.
We must see all the various things of the whole world as so many times. These
things do not get in each other’s way any more than various times get in each
other’s way” (p. 49). The whole world is a manifestation of the Self. If the Self
ignores its absolute foundation, the world unfolds as substantial, disconnected,
and as temporal multiplicity. In this existential situation, when the Self look at the
entire world is completely free of all objective dust; right here and now there is
no second person!” (p. 62). As the world is a temporal and a-temporal unfolding
of the Self, it is impossible to assign an ontological character to the existence of
49
Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
a subject (kakujin
the a-substantial essence of Being-time, or existential moment (uji
). It is
passing from one moment to the next” (1982, p. 161). The essence of time is thus
in non-time in a temporal manner. Wholeness always arises as wholeness, but the
tonality of the present moment is determined by the way in which consciousness
tonality that leads to the apparent concealment of the Self. Concealment should
this author transforms the previous Buddhist conception that postulates
enlightenment as a potential inherent to each being, which can be individually
all other beings are not present in enlightenment, and the totality of reality is not
Buddha is therefore not merely a potential that can be actualized by a subject, but
the empty core of reality. In non-time, it is understood that there is nothing but the
Self. This is illumination which transforms everything accidental, transmuting it
dōjijōdo
(
), or “simultaneous attainment of the way” (Masao, 1997, pp. 73-75).
practice, but rather it is intrinsically present in every act and everyday experience.
The simultaneous nature of the attainment of enlightenment precisely indicates
essence of the Self and the essence
of reality. Both essences are, as observed, emptiness.
The thought of Meister Eckhart has a surprising essential relationship with
He was a Dominican friar and a disciple of Albertus Magnus, who was also
teacher of Thomas Aquinas. Within Eckhart’s corpus, there is a work written
in Latin, which is incomplete, as well as more than a hundred sermons and
several treatises written in High German, the vernacular language of the
master. Part of the content of these sermons and treatises was condemned by
the Catholic Church. Meister Eckhart died during the inquisitorial process in
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Avignon in 1327. However, his condemnation did not prevent his teachings
from spreading throughout Europe through direct disciples of the master
such as Johannes Tauler or Heinrich Seuse.
The concept of nothingness in Meister Eckhart’s work not only refers to the
creature itself but also to the very essence of the Self and of divinity. In the
sermon in medieval High German titled “Surrexit autem Saulus de terra”,
Eckhart comments on the moment of Paul’s conversion, after being struck
by lightning. Four distinct senses of the concept of nothingness are described
saw Nothing, and the Nothing was God; for when he saw God he calls that
Nothing. The second: when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third: in
all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: when he saw God, he saw all
that Eckhart calls the “creature”. This plane has not yet been transcended
in this initial sense of the experience of nothingness. The experience of
nothingness is here uncovered by the creature itself. The destruction of the
“creaturely” mode of experiencing nothingness is the theme of the second
sense. Here, nothingness ceases to be “something” situated “before” the Self.
The co-belonging of being and nothingness is described in the third sense,
where all things appear interpenetrated by nothingness. The fourth sense,
In Eckhart’s philosophy, the concept of God does not point towards the
existence of a being or a supra-being situated in front of the Self. If it were
so, his thinking would still be within the framework of the Western onto-
theological and metaphysical tradition. The crux of his work lies precisely in
this rupture from this tradition, which inaugurates a type of thought whose
that leads to the transition from the onto-theological conception to the non-
dual is that of “spiritual poverty”. Through the de-appropriation of every
creaturely mode of understanding the Self and God, consciousness arrives at
spiritual poverty titled “Beati pauperes spiritu”, asserts:
then I wanted nothing and desired nothing, for I was bare being and the
knower of myself in the enjoyment of truth. Then I wanted myself and
51
Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
wanted no other thing: what I wanted I was and what I was I wanted, and
thus I was free of God and all things. But when I left my free will behind
and received my created being, then I had a God (p. 421).
As observed in the quote, Eckhart places the creative act within the very will
of the Self, and not in a supra-being situated outside it. This original will of the
What it wants is, and what is
the act of wanting and its realization. The will of the creature operates in time
and arises from a state of lack and forgetfulness of the Self. The latter must be
denied or transcended if one wishes to uncover the original will of the Self.
The mode “without mode”, that is, the trans-rational mode of overcoming the
creaturely will, leads to transcending the metaphysical and onto-theological
with the creature is transcended in the absolute knowledge of the Self,
divinity reappears as emptiness. Nishitani, in this sense, comments: “Absolute
nothingness signals, for Eckhart, the point at which all modes of being are
transcended, at which not only the various modes of created being but even the
modes of divine being” (1982, p. 61).
Eckhart, in this same sermon, implores the essential God or divinity to liberate
him from the onto-theological God, who is the being or supra-being situated
in front of the Self: “Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, for my
essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures” (2009, p.
424). To the essential God, who is pure emptiness and absolute unity with the
Self, he asks to transcend the conception of God as an object. Nishitani, in relation
the pursuit of subjectivity necessitates the distinction between God and godhead.
For the ground of subjectivity is to be found only at the point that one reaches
beyond God for the absolute nothingness of godhead” (Nishitani, 1982, p. 63).
Eckhart, in this sense, asserts: “For in that essence of God in which God is above
being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this
man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence, which is eternal,
and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore, I am unborn,
and according to my unborn mode I can never die” (2009, p. 424).
The dichotomy God/creature is transcended in the discovery of the eternal
Self. The absence of knowledge or self-knowledge of the Self is what causes
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the emergence or transformation of the Self into a creature. According to
Eckhart, the transformation of the Self into a creature must be transcended if
one wishes to attain happiness. The concept that Eckhart uses to refer to the
of consciousness with the creature, is “blessed”:
but this cannot make me blessed, for with this I acknowledge myself as a
creature. But in my breaking through, where I stand free of my own will,
of God’s will, of all His works, and of God himself, then I am above all
creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and
shall remain for evermore (p. 424).
Blessedness is not, therefore, something external that can be obtained through
the acquisition of material or spiritual achievements. Blessedness is the joy
of being. In it, and from it, occurs the movement of the Self’s departure
from its most intimate essence. In Eckhartian mysticism, blessedness is
not understood in an ontic sense. In a strict sense, one cannot win or lose
creature must unfold in order to rediscover what has always been present.
Nishitani comments: “Eckhart conceived of this as the soul ‘breaking through’
absolute nothingness, a point at which not a single thing remains” (1982, p.
62). Blessedness is emptiness itself. For Eckhart, the onto-theological God,
just like the creature and “all things”, has its origin in the Self. In his work,
the departure and forgetfulness of the Self is understood as birth: “In my
birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things: and
if I had so willed it, I would not have been, and all things would not have
been. If I were not, God would not be either” (Meister Eckhart, 2009, p. 424).
The absolute will of the Self determines existential unfolding in the sense of
a gift. This means that the unfolding does not seek to achieve something in
a predetermined future. The absolute will of the Self does not seek to obtain
“something”. This understanding of will belongs to the creature. The concept
of will is going to be essential for understanding how phenomenology, in
Heidegger and Nishitani, breaks with metaphysical and onto-theological
thought. The next section of this article deals with this topic.
53
Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
The experience of emptiness and the culmination of the phenomenological
method: Nishitani’s confrontation with Heidegger’s thought
unreality of both the thing and the subject. Nishitanian’s conception of
the emergence of negative nothingness owes much to the unfolding of the
phenomenological method in Heidegger’s work. In 1929, in his opening
course (Antrittsvorlesung) titled What is Metaphysics? (Was ist Metaphysik?),
Heidegger analyzes the concept of nothingness (Nichts) in such a way that
. For Heidegger, while
metaphysical thought –which arises from Nishitanian eld of consciousness–
is characterized by the inquiry into beings –and in this sense, thus arrives
at the concept of “substance”– the question concerning nothingness does
not aim towards “something” (Heidegger, 1976, p. 107). Heidegger states
that the answer to the question of nothingness cannot be attained through
conventional thinking. This kind of thinking would only arrive at a formal
concept of nothingness, but not at “nothingness itself” (das Nichts selbst) (p.
109). Both Nishitani and Heidegger, as it can be seen, posit the apprehension
of the concept of nothingness through the assumption of its fundamental
existential experience. Nishitani writes: “In Heidegger’s terms, the being of
beings discloses itself in the nullifying of nothingness (das Nicht nichtet).
originally subjective and, at the same time, where everything appears more
in accord with its suchness” (Nishitani, 1982, p. 109).
That the subject becomes more originally subjective implies within Heidegger’s
existential analysis a turn towards the most proper possibility of being,
which is intimately related to the experience of negative nothingness through
anxiety (Angst). In his 1927 work Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), Heidegger
distinguishes between the concept of anxiety and that of fear. According
to this German thinker, anxiety, unlike fear, lacks an object. Furthermore,
anxiety possesses an ontological level higher than that of fear: anxiety can
appear without fear, but never fear without anxiety (Heidegger, 1977, p. 247).
subject and object, and therefore compels Dasein to return to itself and take
Regarding the reception of Heidegger’s thought in Japan (Buchner, 1989).
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charge of its most proper possibilities of being. As observed, both authors have
the same existential starting point in the experience of negative nothingness,
which is understood by both as a form of transcendence.
The similarity between both authors does not only refer to the mode of
apprehension and understanding of negative nothingness. Both resort to
Meister Eckhart to carry out the phenomenological analysis of the overcoming
of rational or metaphysical thought. In this sense, in the 1940s, Heidegger
appropriated the concept of releasement (Gelassenheit) from Meister Eckhart.
According to the philosopher from Meßkirch, this concept indicates nothing
less than the very essence of thinking (1983, p. 38). In his dialogue about the
concept of releasement, Heidegger begins by relating conventional thinking
to the concept of will. Conventional thinking operates through the dichotomy
between the thinker and the thought. Thinking, in this sense, is always thinking
“about something”. This tendency of conventional thinking to want to think
“something” conceals the very essence of thinking. Therefore, Heidegger starts
by asserting that to reach the essence of thinking, one must negate the will
through the will (p. 38). The act of denying the will through the will implies,
evidently, the emergence of the will. However, the origin of the will that denies
itself is distinct from the origin of the will that unconsciously operates by
unfolding rational thought. This other will arises from releasement, Gelassenheit
or the essence of thinking. Its movement of denial opens the possibility for
the emergence of existential dispositions of “silence” and “listening”. Both
existential dispositions should not be understood in a metaphysical or rational
sense. From another and transrational perspective, silence is the Self. From it
and within it unfolds a world, which becomes improper due to the absence of
with the noise of the mind. Essential listening is not aimed at capturing
listening is silence itself. “Silence” and “listening” have, in this sense, an
essential relationship of co-belonging.
The relationship between the volitional negation of will mentioned here and
rational and mental thinking from another that is essential, original and trans-
work, one of the fundamental consequences of the emergence of metaphysical
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Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
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thinking is the phenomenon of the “forgetting of Being” (Seinsvergessenheit).
as “something” threatening or as “something” entirely absent. In both cases,
the fear of emptiness, and in the second, as an entity that ultimately must be
ignored for lacking reality. In his confrontation with nihilism and Nietzsche’s
work, Heidegger asks whether the very absence of a proper question about
nothingness is the origin of the unfolding of metaphysical thinking. If so,
nihilism would be “an essential non-thinking about the essence of nothingness”
(das wesenhafte Nicht-denken an das Wesen des Nichts) (1961, p. 44).
scape, it seeks a foundation in beings. This foundation, in turn, is constituted
as another being or as a supra-being. That the supra-being is called the good
(Plato), God (medieval scholasticism), or the will to power (Nietzsche) shows
to what extent the unfolding of metaphysics has marked the course of history.
The fact that the comprehension of the being by the self always becomes
eld
of consciousness. This comprehension, according to Heidegger, emerges in this
sense through an act of “placing the being before oneself.” The act of “placing
before oneself” is, according to Heidegger, representation (Vorstellung).
Representation has as its starting point the dualistic experience of the being.
Representation is re-presentation. The encountered is presented to the
representing self, towards it, back to it, and in opposition to it (1997, p. 28). The
transformation of the Self into a “representing self” indicates, within Nishitani’s
conception, the phenomenon of the emergence and hegemony of the eld of
consciousness. The “modeless” mode of rediscovery of the Self is releasement
(Heidegger) or meditation (Nishitani). That the mode of access to the Self
lacks, paradoxically, a mode, indicates the incapacity of conventional thought
to access it. This type of conventional, predominantly mental thinking, arising
be brought to a state of complete silence. In Heidegger, this disposition is called
waiting “without waiting”. While the improper and rational understanding of the
concept of waiting tends to relate the act of waiting to some future event, waiting
“without waiting” lacks an object. Heidegger, in his discourse on releasement,
emphasizes that indeed one waits for “something”, but at the moment when
Waiting in
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this original sense reveals the being in its truth through releasement as the act
of letting-be, overcoming the traditional relationship between consciousness
and being as a subject-object relationship. The traditional relationship reveals
60). This historical development led to the emergence of the split between
consciousness and the being. The being, separated from consciousness, appears
as an autonomous and substantial entity. Through the act of waiting “without
waiting”, consciousness transcends this historical, metaphysical, and improper
mode of understanding the being to reach its essence.
Final considerations
Although in Heidegger, the mode of access “without access” leading to the
experience of the entity as emptiness is reached, it is in Nishitani where the
The phenomenological method, from its origins in Husserl, attempts to
of judgment” (epoché). Consciousness is thus freed from its attachment to
thoughts and emotions in order to, in this way, reach “the things themselves”.
this sense, the transition towards a trans-rational form of thinking has not yet
been accomplished. The being is not experienced as emptiness, but is rather
placed “in quotation marks”. Husserl’s phenomenology remained captive to
Cartesianism by distinguishing consciousness from the being. If one considers
the development of the phenomenological method from its inception in Husserl
to its culmination in Nishitani, the concept of epoché can be understood as
the preconception of Heidegger’s releasement, which serve as a bridge to the
supra-rational understanding of the entity as emptiness. This step arises from
the movement of disconnection of consciousness from thoughts and emotions.
In the historical inception of phenomenology as a philosophical discipline, this
moment of lucidity appears in Husserl in a germinal way. It is in Heidegger’s
thought where the seed begins to grow, becoming –following this metaphor–a
great tree that bears many fruits. The fruits are emptiness itself. In order to
savor them, the “representing self” must be transmuted into the absolute Self.
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Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
eld of consciousness and
Heideggerian metaphysical thought) has a “centrifugal” force that pulls the
releasement creates the
“centripetal” force necessary for the assumption of trans-rational thought.
The phenomenological approach to the experience of emptiness does not
not imply the emergence of a “gnoseological leveling” of all that is real.
Each entity, in this sense, possesses its own characteristics that distinguish
it from others. However, it arises from the empty, omnipresent, and eternal
depths of absolute consciousness. The culmination of phenomenology in the
experience of emptiness also does not imply its end. The realization of a
phenomenological analysis that enables the understanding of the transition
from absolute consciousness to relative consciousness, and vice versa, remains
pending. In this sense, the analysis of the body is fundamental. If already in
Heidegger the concept of the body takes on a dynamic that transcends the
understanding inherent to the natural sciences, the phenomenological analysis
unfold in the transition from relative to absolute consciousness remains.
These pending tasks that phenomenology faces today should not be understood
as truths yet to be discovered in a latent state. Another point in common between
Heidegger and Nishitani lies precisely in how both authors understand the concept
of truth, which does not have to do with the validity of a statement about a being in the
sense of an adaequatio rei ad intellectum, but rather with an act of “unconcealment”
(ἀλήθεια). From the perspective of emptiness, the Self is the truth (Nishitani, 1965,
p. 100). Describing, from a phenomenological standpoint, the stages of the Self
and its modes of manifestation implies to conduct a phenomenological analysis of
all the “subtle” and “physical” bodies that the Self “inhabits” in its transition from
pure consciousness to the understanding of the being as substance. It also remains
to strip the Heideggerian concept of Dasein of its neutral character. This does
not imply denigrating it through gender conceptions of an ontic nature, but rather
elevating it towards an ontology of the primordial masculine and the primordial
feminine as original forces. The phenomenon of absolute consciousness is thus
seen as non-dual duplicity, and not as undetermined unity. The phenomenological
the eminently “henological” traditions of the East (i.e. Advaita Vedanta) and the
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Meister Eckhart, the mystical transcendence leads here to the rediscovery of the
Self is, in turn, self-identical with divinity (Eckhart) does not lead to a henological
conception but to a trans-metaphysical one.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that phenomenology, understood in this way,
is not just another discipline within philosophy but precisely philosophy in its
post-metaphysical stage. As Heidegger himself writes, the time of rational or
metaphisical systems is over, but the time of the construction of the essential
shape of beings from the truth of Being has not yet come (1989, p. 5). The
construction mentioned here cannot be achieved, therefore, through mere logical
reason, but only through a leap or existential transition from the representational
self to the absolute Self. The fact that such a transition uses rational and logical
language does not imply, in this case, a regression to metaphysical thought.
remains, which, from the silence and listening to its own essence, unfolds its
timeless becoming as a detached state of openness to the absolute.
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Baeza, R. (2024). The concept of emptiness in Nishitani Keiji and the culmination of the
phenomenological method. Cuestiones de Filosofía, 10 (34), 41-60.
https://doi.org/10.19053/uptc.01235095.v10.n34.2024.16889
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