The Religious Ethics of Keiji N
ISHITANI
Kyohei MIKAWA
1. Introduction
2. The Crisis of Human Ethos and Religion s Role in 1950s 3. Reflexive Self and the Multi-Directional Historicity 4. Reflexive Self and the Problems of Religious Institutions 5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
In Religion and Nothingness, Keiji NISHITANI presents his existentialist philosophy of religion based on the Buddhist ultimate truth ‘emptiness’ (Skt. śūnyatā). In the ontological sense, ‘emptiness’ does not confine its implication to the nihility of all beings, but it rather entails the radical affirmation of all reality as a result of the absolute negation of all existence. According to NISHITANI, one of the foremost Kyoto School philosophers, ‘emptiness’ is the existential standpoint in which one surpasses the limit of reason and the ontological border of nihility, and through this reflexive formation of the self one reaches the existential frontier that unfolds the possibility of absolute affirmation of all existence. Therefore, “the field of sunyata is nothing other than the field of the Great Affirmation.1”
Whereas NISHITANI gained recognition as an advocate of the Buddhist existential philosophy of religion, many of his writings on ethics also deserve an equal amount of attention. However, most Kyoto School scholars were confronted with many obstacles when presenting their philosophy of ethics as a potential source for people s morality. One of the challenges they had to face was the intellectual audience s projection of shadowy images of the Kyoto School philosophers as ‘war collaborators,’ especially during the post-war period. This charge is based on two “notorious” public conferences. The first one took place from the end of 1941 to 1942. NISHITANI himself along with other Kyoto philosophers such as Takasaki
Masaaki, Tayama Iwao, and Suzuki Seiko met three times, and their debates were published under the title “The Standpoint of World History and Japan.2” Another conference was held in 1942 with the theme of “Overcoming Modernity” (kindai no chokoku). The panelists included
NISHITANI, Suzuki, and Shimomura Torataro in addition to some other literati. Although the
conferences gained public recognition for furnishing the theoretical justification for the Greater East Asia War (daitoa senso), because of the public awareness, the meetings were perceived as examples of “intellectuals cooperation for war” and were unsympathetically criticized by leftists and liberal intellectuals after the defeat of Japan in the war. However, many of their criticisms were, in fact, not condemnations against the contents of the philosophy itself; rather those critics were inclined to pick parts of debates held in the conferences and utilize them as points of criticism for their own purposes.3 Hence, the philosophical values of the Kyoto School were concealed by the background of Japanese intellectual history.
I believe that the degraded value of the postmodern philosophy of the Kyoto School needs to be considered and is worthy for scholastic reevaluation. On another continent, for instance, Heidegger s philosophical achievement should not be lost because of his official endorsement of Nazi Germany, nor can the way Nietzsche ended his life be a reason to ignore his philosophy and his tremendous influence on later generations. Regardless of the charge against the Kyoto School thinkers, the overall characteristics of their philosophical orientation seem to be the opposite of the foundation of Japanese imperialism that they were accused of supporting. In light of these concerns, I will first present NISHITANIs view on the problems of the relation between ethics and religious affiliation since the Meiji period. Then I will explain how NISHITANI sought to solve the problem from a historicist standpoint. Here I will argue that the underlying concept that sustains his ethics is “reflexivity” and the constitution of the self. In the final section of this paper, I will attempt to show that NISHITANIs reflexive approach to individual self-formation is also essential for the institutional transformation of preexisting religious traditions.
2. The Crisis of Human Ethos and Religion’s Role in 1950s
The Contemporary Problems of Religion4, published in 1951, is one of NISHITANIs major
2 OHASHI, Ryosuke. Philosophy of Kyoto School—Various Images and a Potential of its Philosophy. Kyoto. 2004. 63. （大橋良介『京都学派の思想―種々の像と思想のポテンシャル』2004. 人文書院63） 3 Ibid. 64.
writings on society and moral crisis. This short essay―some 25 pages long in the original Japanese edition―begins with his concerns of the problem of the human ethos crisis in Japanese society. He discerns two root problems of the moral challenge of Japan: 1) In contemporary Japanese society, whereas people seek for religious affiliations, they are inclined not to accept them; 2) In corresponding to the first issue, religions that are provided for people or the ways in which religions are provided for them entail some elements from which the general public prefers to abstain.5 Since the subsequent discussions about these problems in the original texts are useful to understand NISHITANIs basic perspectives on morality, religion, and society, I will illustrate a summary of his argument in the following.
Regarding the first issue, according to NISHITANI, people s emerging attitude towards religion is attributed to the lack of a religious or spiritual atmosphere in their everyday lives, which is customarily generated by the traditions of each historical period. Until the Meiji period, Buddhism and Confucianism were the vital sources for the religious awareness of human individuals and the formation of selfhood. These are the ways in which religions provided people with an exemplary way of living at that time. However, the essential parts of religion were not able to sustain their status any longer in people s ordinary lives and were accordingly buried into the backdrop of public life ever since the Meiji period. While the reasons for the exclusion of the vital part of religions will be explained later (in the discussion of second issue raised in the beginning of this section), the noteworthy social phenomenon in these contexts is that the absence of religions from the everyday lives of people consequently created a void for ethical teachings which is purportedly filled with religions. At the same time, it was since Meiji that Western science, technology, and philosophy began to be introduced to Japan and rapidly permeated into people s lives. The imported Christianity and Western philosophy could have filled the empty moral space; however, they were not able to penetrate into people s conscience as a major ethical guide with the same degree that Buddhism and Confucianism had achieved during the pre-Meiji era.
Given this empty space, the Japanese government attempted to plug in the national polity (kokutai) based on the divine nation mythos (shinkoku shinwa) of Amaterasu as the universal education for people. In the end, this national ideology ended in failure and was not able to provide a steady educational system, with people accelerating the exclusion of religions potential role to aid moral teachings. Hence, NISHITANI points out, “It became a normative perception that it is natural for people to be indifferent to religion and that it is peculiar for
people to seek for religion.”6 Despite the consequent malfunctions of the moral educational system, NISHITANI still claims that “there is nothing other than religion that can fill the empty space.”7 He continues to argue;
...that is to say, philosophy, because of its characteristics, cannot rapidly penetrate into society. However, simultaneously the void space was a result of the loss of traditional atmosphere of religion and of the fact that religion was not able to exert a direct influence [on people s consciences]. I think that on this point there is a dilemma that religion faces in contemporary Japan. In other words, whereas people are aware of the only medicine that cures the illness, the conditions to gulp this [medicine] remain dispersed. The way that overcomes that [dilemma] is nothing other than standing on a creative position that newly establishes a tradition.8
Following this explanation of the sensitivity of the absence of religion, which is a “medicine” for the human ethos crisis, NISHITANI next shifts his attention from the historical and social background to religion itself and elucidates the reason why the general public prefers to stay away from religion further. NISHITANI continues to argue that there is a gap between the beliefs of preexisting religious traditions (kisei shukyo dantai) and the spiritual demands from the general public.9 This separation is, in many parts, attributed to the direction the religious traditions had taken; that is, the advancement in the doctrinal progress. On one hand, this development is regarded as the essential and constructive achievement for the growth of the religious tradition. On the other hand, in NISHITANIs view, the development of doctrines has a problem in maintaining the intimate relation [of the religion] with the general public. One of its shortcomings is that it can increase the distance between religious traditions and ordinary people because the doctrinal advancement deepens the philosophical underpinnings only within themselves, and this internal “expansion” of theories is not necessarily linked to the cultivation of faith or religion itself. This internal expansion means that “the religious institution remains ‘self-preserving’ on its own... On the other hand, it means that it is isolating itself from the general public [in its external direction] to the same degree that it preserve itself [in its internal direction].10” Therefore, the advancement of doctrines in religious traditions can make religions “blind” to being mindful of the spiritual or religious (seishin teki) demands from ordinary people.
6 Ibid. 65. 7 Ibid. 65. 8 Ibid. 65. 9 Ibid. 66.
This point refers back to an earlier statement of “standing on a creative position which newly establishes a tradition.” In my reading, what NISHITANI means by the “establishment of a tradition” points to the modernization of religious institutions. However, it also connotes the inevitable entailment of confronting the issues of the religious self-directed awareness (shukyoteki jikaku) of an individual. This is because NISHITANI believed that in order for institutions or nations to make a successful transformation, first individuals have to alter themselves. Otherwise, any attempts at social or structural changes would necessarily be ruined in the superficial operations. In other words, institutional and personal transformations have to take place through mutually affecting and being affected by the gradual alternation of each other. In NISHITANIs view, the solution for the former is the constructive self-criticism of religion and, for the latter, the key is in the attainment of religious self-awareness. Although these two are seemingly different operations, according to my reading of NISHITANI, I think that the underlying concept for both procedures is “reflexivity.” The following section will explain this term more fully.
3. Reflexive Self and the Multi-Directional Historicity
So far, beginning with a brief account of NISHITANIs existential philosophy based on Buddhist ultimate truth, I pointed out that the negative approach of emptiness to reality is the one that opens up the absolutely affirmative aspect of all beings. After that, I introduced the criticism against Kyoto School philosophers from public intellectuals. Here, the point was that their charges during the post-war period hindered the Kyoto School philosophy from receiving substantial scholastic attention for a long time. Accordingly, my conviction was that their philosophical orientation must not be labeled as a collaborator of nationalism, but rather it should be reexamined as a potential source for the solution of the contemporary human ethos crisis. Next, I moved on to present the two root problems of the moral crisis in the 1950s according to NISHITANIs understanding. One problem was the emergence of the empty space for morality since the Meiji period, and the other was the increasing distance between religious institutions and the general public as the result of the former groups turning toward inward cultivation of their institutional self. Having identified these fundamental problems of Japanese society and religion, in this section I will direct attention to the solution of these challenges. I believe that for overcoming these challenges the chief concept is the ‘reflexive’ constitution of selfhood.
Even though NISHITANI himself does not use the term ‘reflexive’ to present his philosophy, there are many statements in his works that imply the significance of reflexivity for the
appropriate constitution of the personhood and religious institutions11. For instance, the idea of reflexivity and a model of the reflexive constitution of the self can be seen in his writings on the relation of human existence to historicity. NISHITANI claims that human beings constitute their selfhood in relation to historie, geschichte―this distinction will be ultimately dissolved. In German theology, the idea of “historical” is divided into two concepts: historie and
geschichte. Whereas historie refers to the transmission from the past time, geschichte means
‘to happen’, ‘to occur’, or ‘the generation of an event into the present moment.’12 This conception of “historicity” means that “human existence itself essentially has the characteristic that is historical. In a word, the existence of human beings becomes possible only in an environment in which something ceaselessly comes forward into existence in an original manner.13” Thus, “historical” does not only refer to the past, but rather it should be conceived in terms of a reciprocal exchange between the past and present. The connection of these two can be easily seen; for instance, when one thinks about the past, he will eventually have to reach a point of asking the meaning of the past to the human beings in the present time. At that point, the problem of the past expands and transforms into the issues of human existence. Then, for that reason he tries to identify himself with the people in the past time and look towards the present from that identified standpoint of the past. Once this procedure took place, the past cannot merely remain the past which is independent from the present or human life of any historical time. As NISHITANI comments, “while the past remains the past, and the present continues to be the present, the past and present are simultaneous.”14
Directly related to this point, the “future” also can be seen in the operation of geschichte because “the generation of an event into the present moment” ―as stated earlier―is understood as a “summoning from the future.” This implies that the status of the present is not only dependent upon the past, but it is also penetrating into the future. According to
NISHITANI, this penetration is, in other words, the future s action to “continuously drop the
shadow onto the present”15 as the nature of the present. It is precisely in that present time that the future locates itself. Therefore, tracing the past unfolds its relations to the present and
11 NISHITANI often uses Japanese word kyodan 教団 when he refers to the subject of institutional
transformation, rather than bukkyo (Buddhism).
12 NISHITANI, Keiji. Self-Awareness of Humans in Buddhism. Collected Works of Nishitani Keiji Vol.17. Tokyo. 1990. 186. （西谷啓治「仏教における人間の自覚」『西谷啓治著作集 第一七巻』1990. 創 文社186.）
13 Ibid. 186. 14 Ibid. 188. 15 Ibid. 188.
future. In so far as time flows, in this sense, its direction is not merely from the past to the present and future (uni-directional), but they are in all cases mutually bi-directional. “Centralizing the present, the future is directed towards the past in the present moment. Problems ‘happening’ that are connected with the future in the present moment are simultaneously directed towards the past, and then they are illuminated forward by the light of the past in relation to the past.”16 Because of these interpenetrative relations of the past, present, and future, each concept of time ceaselessly constitutes their sliding identity and always remains subject to change, simultaneously influencing the constitution of other time. This formation of one s own identity―of ‘time’ in this example―in the multi-directional environment is what I would like to name “reflexive constitution of identity.” In relation to the concept of time, human existence is not an exception to this reflexive self-constitution. As explained earlier, human beings have an ontological characteristic that is historical. When one investigates the past, he inevitably faces the human problem of the present time. Since the present is comprised of the footprints of the future, the problems of humans in the present are also subject to change, thus human beings also need to constantly rethink, readjust, reevaluate, and reconstitute their own existence and condition in the multi-directional environments of the spacio-temporal framework. Thus, human beings are always required to reflexively constitute the self, yet they maintain their own identities, but they are only sliding identities due to their nature to be subject to change. This reflexive approach towards existence, I argue, is the most important attitude for religious institutions and their survival in
NISHITANIs view. If this reflexive attitude were not adopted, one s life ceases, and any
religious institution would not be able to survive because without the reflexive constitution of the self or the institution, none of them would engage with readjustment or reevaluation of their identity in accord with the constant alteration of their whole environment. NISHITANI
argues that this static tendency is precisely what religious institutions are facing.
4. Reflexive Self and the Problems of Religious Institutions
In one of his lectures at the Daichi no kai 大地の会 in 1971, NISHITANI talked about the problems of religious institutions （kyodan 教団） since the Meiji era, and further presented the direction that those institutions must take in order to become the source which provides the ethical foundations for the people s morality. NISHITANI said that religious institutions can manifest the real meaning of religion once they achieve the ceaseless reconstruction of
themselves from within.17 This reflexive attitude towards one s own tradition is the one that bridges the gap between the general public and religious institutions, which has been the dilemma of religion since the Meiji period. The tendencies of privatization of religions were based on the unidirectional way, which religious institutions formed their own identity especially through the doctrinal advancements. As was discussed earlier, the unidirectional formation refers to the inward focus of the institutional formation, and it often contributed to people s abstention from religious affiliation. As I argued, according to NISHITANIs account of self-formation in the section on the reflexive self and the multidirectional historicity, one must be willing to tirelessly re-constitute himself in order to sustain his existence as a human being whose ontological foundation is grounded in multidirectional historicity. I think that this reflexive model of self-formation is not only essential for an individual, but also for the constitution of religious institutions. NISHITANI said in the lecture,
...regarding the gap between society and religious institutions, what is at stake for religious institutions is the problem of reinterpretation [uketorinaosi] as I said just a little bit ago. Reinterpretation means, in a word, to return to the place that sustains the source of the tradition. It also means to disentangle the tradition ... or to interpret it in the true sense. ... Another point is to return to the tradition or the source, that is, to regenerate the tradition. This means to revive the fundamental vitality of living that has been operating within the tradition.18
The institutional formations need both deconstruction and reconstruction of the tradition. This process is consistent with NISHITANIs existential metaphysics based on emptiness whose philosophical orientation was regeneration of all beings from being in the state of absolute negation to the state of radical affirmation. The quotation above also reflects and demonstrates his view on the existential metaphysics by applying the model of individual formation to the transformation of religious institutions. This model of personal formation also makes a parallel with the adaptation of reflexivity in the process of institutional constitution.
Human beings must constantly reconstitute their identity in accordance with the ceaselessly altering their environments. Because of this impermanence, they are always required to reconsider and be aware of problems in order to sustain their own existence with the multidirectional perspectives of historicity. Only in that negotiation, humans can secure an ontological structure that sustains their existence in their environments, as NISHITANI argues. What is noteworthy here―I think―is that their re-constitutions never deprive them of their
own identity, rather the reformulation of selfhood allows one to possess a sliding identity, which is a prerequisite for adapting their existence to the altering environments. What the quoted passage above suggests is that this reflexive attitude to life also must be adapted to the constitution of religious institutions. NISHITANI claims that they also must revisit the doctrines, rituals, or ethos of their own tradition in order to identify themselves with the core of the tradition. Once they touch on the core that has been operating deep inside the tradition, the regeneration of the tradition becomes possible, and people in the tradition would obtain the possibility of bringing the core of their religion to the surface of the religious institutions that exist in the present time. This constructive self-criticism always has to proceed in relation to the multidirectional historicity of their environments. In other words, while internally returning to their own tradition, religious institutions must face their external environments and be aware of the religious ethos of people in society.19 Through the tireless reflexive constitution of the institutional self, religious traditions become able to contribute to providing the moral foundation for people who once turned away from religion.
5. Conclusion
Philosophers of the Kyoto School were confronted with criticisms during the post-war era. However, their philosophical achievement should not be buried under a mountain of criticism. One of NISHITANIs contributions was establishing his Buddhist existentialism within the comparative approach to religion. His philosophical achievement, as NISHITANI himself points out in a number of his writings, must not to be confined to an intellectual exercise; rather, it must perform its praxis-oriented ethics in real human society. NISHITANIs reflexive approach to ethics has the potential to be further adopted as a solution for the human ethos crisis in contemporary world. Thus, I believe that the idea of the reflexive constitution of the self and the institution can be very useful for founding an ethical source for many people.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deep appreciation to my teachers and friends who supported me to write this article. Especially, I would like to thank Professor Dr. James Ketelaar who introduced me Kyoto School philosophy at the University of Chicago, and Professor Dr. Miriam Levering whose academic advice on my research helped immensely.
