Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture) Paperback – May 1, 2001

Writing as someone beginning to explore the Kyoto school, I found this book very helpful and largely understandable. Over the years I have read many Zen and Chan studies, including the two volume history of Zen written by Heinrich Dumoulin ( Zen Buddhism: A History, India & China (Volume 1)  and  Zen Buddhism: A History (Japan) (Treasures of the World's Religions) (Volume 2) ). My first encounter with more contemporary Buddhist philosophy was another book by Dumoulin, a short work entitled  Zen Buddhism in the 20th Century , which seemed to function as an addendum to the larger two volume history. It was my first encounter with Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji, the three principal philosophers of the Kyoto school, all discussed in this book by James Heisig.I would not recommend reading in the Kyoto school unless you have spent some time reading Buddhism and 19th and 20th century western philosophy. If you have acquired some skill in understanding these areas, Heisig's book is an excellent place to start learning the essentials of the Kyoto school. Each philosopher is presented in an individual section with chapters kept short, allowing difficult material to be presented in a manageable format. I found Heisig's writing clear and logical explaining important themes and their development. While each philosopher is explored individually, the relationships between them, which could be contentious and difficult, are woven throughout the book in a timely manner revealing points of difference and similarity. Western influences which hallmark the Kyoto school and make it unique in philosophical discourse are introduced in a non-technical manner, but a potential reader of this book should have some cursory understanding of Hegel, Heidegger, Kant, and Nietzsche to better interact with Heisig's presentation. The writing seems to be geared for the educated beginner. The last one hundred pages contain excellent end notes, an extensive bibliography, and a detailed index.The Kyoto school was largely concerned with introducing western philosophy and its emphasis on rationalism to Japan, but in most cases, the Japanese philosophers were discontented by western notions of a transcendental subject and a metaphysics grounded in Being. The Buddhist and Shinto influences in their native culture promoted a remodeling of philosophical practice that introduced the themes of intuition, impermanence, and nothingness to philosophical discourse. The Kyoto school is an interesting hybrid of Asian religion and western rationalism. Each philosopher develops his ideas within "fields" of consciousness that are dichotomous and inter-relational: Nishida's Logic of Locus (relying on Buddhist enlightenment), Tanabe's Logic of the Specific (directed toward historical concerns), and Nishitani's "standpoint of emptiness" (with concerns of phenomenal and noumenal worlds, faith and nihilism, time, and monotheism). While the mind and mental activity, especially in terms of subject/object dialectic, are important in the Kyoto school, issues involving volition, ethics, and the body also attracted their attention, and Heisig includes these issues in his study. I had the impression the book's presentation of the Kyoto school was well rounded and comprehensive.Heisig also deals with issues regarding the school's activity during World War II. While I realize the importance of this issue, I found that the inclusion of this material tended to put a drag on the reading. The mind moves from the heights of dialectical pursuits and metaphysical concerns to somewhat tedious historical information and speculation that questions intent and motivations. How much culpability can be affixed to Japanese intellectuals for the development of a pathological political ideology found in prewar and wartime Japan? Heisig's conclusions seem fair though gendered toward a sympathetic reading of the material. His interpretation seems correct to me. Political statements made by these philosophers can be seen as ordinate patriotism or efforts to mollify the threatening. Their comments in a broader context of militant nationalism and racism suffers them to suspicion and misinterpretation. Tanabe might be the exception. His Logic of the Specific necessarily took his thinking to political concerns and Japanese nationalism, but it was a logic subjected to the intellectual subtleties of a dialectical process, a logic easily abused and subverted by less rational men. Judgement on the Kyoto school now belongs to a higher court. Philosophers of our time can still find much good in the work of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani.

"Philosophers of Nothingness" is everything the leaders in the field of modern Japanese philosophy say it is, and more. Although I approached the book expecting to find it full of exotic jargon, I was surprised to find the philsophical language familiar and the presentation easy to follow. Heisig writes with a style that must be the envy of his colleagues: clear, engaging, and with fluency that pulls you along through even the most difficult material. His decision to isolate the technical material into notes written in prose style makes the book still more accessible to readers who might otherwise be frightened off by references to the vast amount of Japanese resources that lay behind the book. Translations into English of the three philosophers that he treats--Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani--are numerous enough, but picking them up without sufficient understanding of where they are coming from caused many of us no end of confusion. Thanks to Heisig, we now have a general matrix in which to fit their ideas. The challenge of the Kyoto School to "Western" philosophers has never been more evident. If there is one complaint I have, it is that Heisig did not include a translation of the preface that Raimon Panikkar, the celebrated Catalan philosopher, wrote for the original Spanish edition of the book.