ABSTRACT
Both Jean-Paul Sartre and Nishitani Keiji grapple with the problem of a fundamental and absolute nothingness. Nishitani, however, argues that Sartre forestalls the problem of nothingness and anchors his thought in human subjectivity and action. Such reticence (the preservation of the ego despite its radical unmooring) is to be trapped, as Nishitani’s use of the Zen phrase articulates it, in ‘the Demon’s Cave on Black Mountain.’ This chapter explores Nishitani’s critique of Sartre’s inability to break free from the Demon’s Cave into a truly liberated philosophy. Such liberation demands what Nishitani and Zen call the ‘Great Death’ of the ego-self and therefore a transformed relationship to nothingness and emptiness (śūnyatā).
