Episode #216 ... The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism - Kyoto School pt. 1 - Nishitani

What It Covers

Keiji Nishitani's philosophy examines nihilism through Zen Buddhism and Kyoto School thought, arguing Western approaches treat nihilism as a problem requiring solutions rather than an experiential gateway to understanding being's fundamental nature.

Key Questions Answered

• •Western nihilism response: European philosophy treats nihilism as a problem requiring solutions through creating meaning or values, smuggling in Abrahamic assumptions about moral order and Platonic assumptions about stable forms that must exist to provide meaning.
• •Nihilism as experiment: Understanding nihilism requires individual lived experience beyond theoretical definitions or static feelings. Each person's encounter with nihilism differs fundamentally, making it impossible to capture fully through language or universal descriptions alone.
• •Shunyata (emptiness): The self lacks fixed essence or independent existence. Like words gaining meaning through relationships to other words, the self exists only through interdependent connections to surrounding conditions, constantly changing without durable foundation.
• •Great doubt practice: Questioning the questioner reveals nothingness at the self's foundation. This radical nihilistic inquiry into stable meanings, identities, and forms opens access to immediate being experience that Western dualistic subject-object frameworks typically block.