The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, livre ebook

Translation of an important work by the contemporary Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.

Nishitani Keiji was for many years Professor of Religious Philosophy at Kyoto University, and since his retirement has been Professor Emeritus at Otani Buddhist University in Kyoto. Graham Parkes is Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is the editor of Heidegger and Asian Thought and Nietzsche and Asian Thought. Setsuko Aihara teaches Japanese at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is the author of Reading Japanese: Strategies for Decoding Japanese Sentence Structure.

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Notes on Texts

Preface to the First Edition

One
Nihilism as Existence

1. Two Problems

2. Nihilism and the Philosophy of History

3. European Nihilism

Two
From Realism to Nihilism: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach

1. Hegel's Absolute Idealism and Radical Realism

2. Schopenhauer—Will as Real—The Nullity of Existence

3. Kierkegaard—Becoming and Existence

4. Feuerbach—Critique of Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics

Three
Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Consummate Nihilist

1. The Significance of Nihilism in Nietzsche

2. Radical Nihilism

3. Nietzsche's Interpretation of Christianity

4. The Concept of "Sincerity"—"Will to Illusion"

Four
Nietzsche's Affirmative Nihilism: Amor Fati and Eternal Recurrence

1. Value-Interpretation and Perspectivism

2. The Problem of Amor Fati

3. Love of Fate as "Innermost Nature"—Suffering—Soul

4. The Idea of Eternal Recurrence: The "Moment" and Eternity

5. Eternal Recurrence and Overcoming the Spirit of Gravity

6. Love of Fate and Eternal Recurrence

7. The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism

Five
Nihilism and Existence in Nietzsche

1. "God is Dead"

2. Critique of Religion

3. The Stages of Nihilism

4. Nihilism as Existence

5. The First Stage of Existence

6. The Second Stage of Existence

7. Nihilism as Scientific Conscience

8. Science and History as Existence

9. "Living Dangerously" and "Experimentation"

10. The Third Stage—Existence as Body

11. The Dialectical Development of Nihilism

Six
Nihilism as Egoism: Max Stirner

1. Stirner's Context

2. The Meaning of Egoism

3. Realist, Idealist, Egoist—"Creative Nothing"

4. From Paganism to Christianity

5. From Christianity to Liberalism

6. From Liberalism to Egoism

7. Ownness and Property—All and Nothing

8. The State and the Individual

Seven
Nihilism in Russia

1. Russian Nihilism

2. Bazarov's Nihilism—"Fathers and Sons"

3. Nihilism as Contemplation—"Notes from Underground"

Eight
Nihilism as Philosophy: Martin Heidegger

1. Existentialism as a Discipline

2. The "Ontological Difference"

3. Transcendence and Being-in-the-World

4. Being-toward-Death and Anxiety

5. Finitude—Metaphysics—Existence—Freedom

Nine
The Meaning of Nihilism for Japan

1. The Crisis in Europe and Nihilism

2. The Crisis Compounded

3. The Significance of European Nihilism for Us

4. Buddhism and Nihilism

Appendix The Problem of Atheism

1. Marxist Humanism

2. Sartrean Existentialism

3. Atheism in the World of Today

Notes

Index