ABSTRACT
In contemporary Western academia, broadly speaking, there are two prominent approaches to modern Japanese philosophy in general, and to the Kyoto School in particular.2 On the one hand, there are theWestern scholars of Japanese intellectual history who have concluded that many Japanese thinkers, including those associatedwith theKyoto School, were ‘overcome bymodernity’rather than successfully carrying out an ‘overcoming of modernity’.3 For this group, the Kyoto School is more pre-than postmodern, and its reformulation of Eastern ways of thinking is less a viable alternative to Eurocentric modernity than an assertion of ‘reverse Orientalism’ (Faure 1995).4 On the other hand, there are theWestern philosophers and scholars of religion who primarily view the Kyoto School thinkers as dialogue partners who are capable of significant and novel contributions to the theoretical and existential aporias of the present.5 This group anticipates that those Japanese philosophers, who are not only intimately familiar with Western philosophy, but also able to freely draw on Buddhist, East Asian, and traditional Japanese ways of thinking, might be capable of offering fresh insights for addressing the now global problems of (Western) modernity. Nishitani Keiji’s thought has frequently become the subject matter of both types
of Western scholarship. On the one hand, in part echoing earlier postwar critiques in Japan, a number of Western scholars have censured Nishitani – especially his political writings in the first half of the 1940s – on charges of ‘collaboration in the war’ (senso¯ kyo¯ryoku). On the other hand, Nishitani’s philosophy of Zen continues to gain wide recognition for its unique contributions to existentialist phenomenology and the philosophy of religion. Elsewhere I have discussed some central themes in Nishitani’s philosophy of
Zen.6 In this essay I shall examineNishitani’s politicalwritings and their place in his overall path of thought. My analysis here aims to be both critical and sympathetic, that is to say, I wish both to throw out the bath water and yet preserve the baby of his thought. I believe that, when discussing the ventures and misadventures of the Kyoto School’s political thought, one must remain committed to steering a critical yet non-polemical course through the standoff between what James Heisig has aptly labeled ‘the side-steppers and the side-swipers’ (Heisig 1990: 14). In other words, one must seek neither to whitewash nor to vilify. As we shall see, no simple verdict is possible with regard to Nishitani’s political thought; rather,
we must take pains to understand it in its profound, often troubling and always thought-provoking ambiguities. My primary focus in this chapter will be on the ambiguities and tensions within
Nishitani’s wartime political thought, including his critique of imperialism and his ideas on the relation between politics and religion. I will also consider his postwar critique of certain problems that beset a democratic politics based solely on human rights. In the end I will remark on how after the war Nishitani returns from his problematical political response to the problem of Eurocentric modernity, to a more fundamental engagement with the existential and interpersonal problems that beset the modern age.
