henk oosterling avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing hegel on buddhism

7/25/2019 Henk Oosterling Avoiding Nihilism by Affirming Nothing Hegel on Buddhism

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HEGEL ON BUDDHISM

Henk Oosterling

The image of Buddha is in the thinking posture with feet and arms inter-twined so that a toe extends into the mouththis [is] the withdrawal intoself, this absorption in oneself. Hence the character of the people who

adhere to this religion is one of tranquility, gentleness, and obedience, acharacter that stands above the wildness of desire and is the cessation ofdesire. Great religious orders have been founded among these peoples; theyshare a common life of tranquility of spirit, in quiet, tranquil occupation ofthe spirit, as do the Bonze in China and the shamans of Mongolia. Attain-ment of this pure, inward stillness is expressly declared to be the goal forhuman beings, to be the highest state. (L2 27, 564/461)

1. Introduction

The Hegelian discourse on Buddhism culminates in this image: the medi-tating Buddha swallowing himself. This image expresses for Hegel abso-lute immediacy, unarticulated in-itself. The toe-sucking posture resemblesthe snake swallowing its own tail as a symbol for eternity, for the in-nite. The nite being of the human body of the Buddha is united with

the in

nite substance of divine power. It is devoid of negativity, at leastin a dialectical sense, because its substance has not been objectied. Thedivine substance is not negated, made abstractly conscious in afor-itself.The divine rests fully in-itself. As one critic of Hegel phrased it in a quasi-mystical wordplay: Are swallower and swallowee the same. Are theydiferent? This indeterminacy is structural, not epiphenomenal. Subject,object and abject are smeared across one another unrecognizably.1 ForHegel awareness of human limitedness is a necessary step to an identi-

cation, a union and uniting, with divine power and a precondition for

1 Timothy Morton, Romanticism and Buddhism. Hegel on Buddhism, Praxis Series 20,par. 14. See: http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/buddhism/morton/morton.


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subjectivity. In Buddhism this essential rupture with immediacy has nottaken place.

This thinking posture bears witness to an incomprehensible intimacythat not so much represents meditationit is not a symbolas it con-cretely embodies immediacy. The image triggers all sorts of associationsthat, psycho-analytically, can divert, pervert and subvert the Hegeliantexture in diferent directions. Hegel positions all world religions withina hierarchy of collective consciousness that realize their essence in Chris-tianity as the consummate religion with the Father, the Son and the HolyGhost as the exemplary triad. Retrospectively this power play is criticized

as an ideological construct that favors Western metaphysics and politi-cally legitimizes Western expansionism. Hegels negative evaluation ofBuddhisms nirvana can even be understood as an articulation of the

Western horor vacui, the fear for emptiness. I will however concentrateon other aspects in Hegels texture. I draw only one thread out of theHegelian tapestry: the evaluation of Buddhist emptiness as the Void andnothingness. In spite of the fact that Hegels positioning of Buddhism isin itself not nihilistic, his identication of Buddhism as a religion that isfocused on nothingness has determined the modern debate on nihilismthat even persists in the 21st century.

The dialectician Slavoj iek still qualies nirvana as a primordialoid. He frequently cites from Brian Victorias Zen at War to illustrate

the fascist, nihilistic mentality of Zen followers and criticizes the navehippy mentality of Western Buddhism as a perfect legitimization for latecapitalism. Its adherers are accused of refusing to take a stand against

capitalist consumerism. Their refusal of revolutionary commitment totruthful political action, due to their quietism, is contrasted by iek in aquasi-ironical Hegelian gesture with the revolutionary activist mentalityof the man that institutionalized the Christian Church: St. Paul.2 But isieks disqualication of Buddhism as one of the modes of postmodernnihilism the only option?

2 See: Henk Oosterling, Radikale Mediokritt oder revolutionre Akte? ber funda-mentales Inter-esse, in: E. Vogt, H. J. Silverman (Hrgs.), ber Zizek. Turia+Kant, Vienna2004, pp. 4262; From Russia with Love: Avoiding the Subject. Why is Zizeks St Paul aLeninist? in International Journal in Philosophy and Theology, 2009, pp. 236253.


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Within the dialectical tradition the accusation of nihilism is very per-sistent.3When we follow the trace back to the days of Hegel, the problem

already starts with the very image that startled him: the toe sucking Bud-dha. The choice of this image is already a mistake. Hegel found this weirdpicture of what he thought was the Buddha in one of the books he con-sulted frequently for his analysis of Buddhism: Friedrich Creutzers Sym-bolik und Mythologie der alten Vlker (Leipzig and Darmstadt, 1819). Thisplate however does not represent the Buddha, it refers to a Hindu subject:BrahmNaryana in the context of one of the canonical texts, theLaws of

Manu. Hegel was even mistakenin retrospectas to the specic nature

of Buddhism, because he relied mainly on sources that focused on the lifeof the Tibetan lamas. The diference between Buddhism and Lamaism, hestates in the Lectures of 1824, is only supercial. (L2 24, 307/211)

These mistakes are exemplary for Hegels research on what enabledhim indirectly to position himself in the controversy on pantheism asatheism. F. H. Jacobi thematized a proto-nihilist atheism in a book on Spi-noza in 1785. Together with Schelling and Hlderlin Hegel read this bookas a student and discussed the hen kai pan (one and all) principle, but thecontroversy haunted his thoughts till his very last days. His treatment ofthis controversy foreshadowed the nihilism debate that was installed asa philosophical topic by Nietzsche and still resonates in ieks disquali-cations of Buddhism in the Western hemisphere as New Age spiritual-ity and Pop Buddhism. iek lifts Hegels parti pris over the turn of thecentury into the rst decade of the 21st century.

Is it possible to revalue Hegels analysis of Buddhism on a more arma-

tive basis? Can the tight chain that connects nirvana, void and nothing-ness be broken? In order to throw some light on a diferent understandingof nothingnessand by implication to redirect the nihil in nihilismI will rstly clarify how Hegel applied his sources on Buddhism for thepositioning of this determinate phase of religious consciousness in hissystematic philosophy (2) and why he kept shifting its position in thediferent series of Lectures. (3) Then I will turn the tables by focusingon Buddhisms interpretation of Hegels philosophy. I will briey describe

the way Kyoto school based Buddhist thinkers try to reconcile Zen Bud-dhism with Hegelian philosophy (4) and how they interpret nirvana

3 Adornos remarks on nihilism in Negative Dialectics(1973, orig. 1966) scorn the possi-bility of believing in nothing and qualify the image of Nirvana positively as nothingnessas something (380).


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as emptiness. This will enable me to formulate an armative approachto the Void that favors relationality over identity, and armation overnegation. (5) Returning to ieks accusations I will counter these withcurrent philosophical projects that have integrated the Kyoto armativeapproach to the Void in their philosophy: French philosophy of difer-ences, especially in the works Jacques Derrida and the cooperative worksof Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari. (6)

2. Historical context

Was Hegel a religious man? There has been much debate on this issue.During his lifetime Hegel frequently balanced on the edge of what wastolerable for the authorities.4An accusation of atheism would have beenthe end of his career as a university professor. It happened to Fichte in the1790s at the University of Jena. If atheism starts with the proclamation ofthe death of God then Hegel is a suspect too. Gods death was not for therst time proclaimed by Nietzsches madman on the marketplace in The

Gay Science (section 108/125/343) and more prominently in Thus SpokeZarathustra. Kant had already spoken about faith within the limits of rea-son, proposing that we speak about morality as if God does not exist. Theinternalizing efect of this denial was appreciated by Hegel: methodologi-cally sublation (Auhebung) focuses on internalization after the necessaryalienation from ones self. The result of this rupture, i.e. of transcendingof ones limits and realizing one is always part of a more encompassing

whole, is called subjectivity.

Nevertheless Hegel criticized Kants Enlightenment aporia: the con-tradictory or antinomical conclusions of the systematic analytics of selfconsciousness. Hegel concluded that this unhappy consciousnes of theskeptic or cynic had to be overcome by reidentication with an all encom-passing totality, and in doing this becoming innite in our nitude. Inthis context Hegel raised the issue of the death of God several times in

Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).5 He had stated this already at the endof Believing and Knowing that was published in the Critical Journal of

Philosophy of 1802. This urged some commentators to call him the rst

4 Terry Pinkard,Hegel: A biography, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press,2000, p. 577.

5 Hegel, Werke in 20 Bnden, Bd. 3, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1999, pp.547/572.


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death of God theologian.6But we have to be aware of the fact that thisconclusion was less an existential outcryas with Nietzschethan anepistemological necessity.

In Hegels days atheism was supposed to be disguised as pantheismand for many a critical commentator of Spinoza spinozism was synony-mous with pantheism.7Hegel owed a lot to Spinoza: omnis determinationegatio est, everything is determined by negation, is a key clause to hissystematic exploration of thought. Hegels interpretation of spinozism asa philosophy that difered from pantheism was thus indirectly politicallymotivated. As a university professor in the Prussian State Hegel did not

like to be unclear about this issue. Nonetheless, it is quite clear that inHegels own mind, thephilosophy of religion was crucial to his enterprise.8Philosophy, not religion was Hegels project.

Formal-ontologically Being progresses from a given position via nega-tion and contradiction to sublation that positions subjectivity as col-lective consciousness (World Spirit) on more articulated levels of truth.Self-consciousness of being limitedniteand the realization of in-niteness through coming to realize that one is always part of all encom-

passing totality is the bottom line of Hegels exposition of religious faith.This subject constituting rupture even counts for God. Without man ashis negationJesusand the redeemerChristas the upbeat to theHoly Ghost, even God would have been unaware of his existence. This isa rather blasphemous conclusion. It kept haunting Hegels eforts to wardof accusations of atheism.

At a certain stage of the historic unfolding of the religious truthorthe truth of religionBuddhism is dealt with. A biographical detail isinstructive. Hegel was motivated to lecture on the philosophy of reli-gion after being asked by his former student Hermann Friedrich WilhelmHinrichs to write a preface to Hinrichs book on the philosophy of religionfrom a Hegelian standpoint. Hegel used the opportunity of the preface

6 See Charles Taylor, Hegel. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975,

p. 495.7 There is a link between Spinozism and Chinese religion that was used by spinozists

who wanted to stay under cover in order not te be accused of atheism. This was for the rsttime thematized by Pierre Bayle: Bayles identication of Spinozism with oriental thoughtexemplies a need to come to terms with new and potentially dangerous ideas by locatingthem in a geographically remote part of the world. See: Thijs Weststeijn, Spinoza sinicus:An Asian Paragraph in the History of the Radical Enlightenment, in Journal of the Historyof Ideas, Vol. 68, Number 4 (October, 2007), p. 561.

8 Pinkard, Hegel, p. 578.


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to articulate his basic position on what he saw as the key modern issuesin the philosophy of religion and to take some swipes at those who hethought had taken the wrong turn in the debate.9He is dealing here withpost-Kantian thinkers as Reinhold, Jacobi, Friedrich von Schlegel, andbefore all Schleiermacher. For the latter the core business of religion isthe feeling of absolute dependence. Hegels polemical and provocativemoods and his acidic sarcasm are up in this text. To shock his Romanticadversaries he compared the feeling of absolute dependence with that ofa totally dependent dog that wags its tail when it gets its bone. An endur-ing academic and personal hostility towards the Romantics inuenced

Hegels interpretation of Oriental philosophy.Since knowing and understanding are Hegels core business, whatsources did he consult for an adequate, up to date understanding ofBuddhism? Given the sporadic and biased knowledge that was availablein his days, he was relatively well informed and his writings were well-researched.10 He consulted records of Jesuit missionaries, travel reportsand translations of Eastern philosophical texts. He frequently returnedto Henry Thomas Colebrookes Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Soci-

ety for Chinese and Indian history, culture, and religion. For BuddhismHegels main sources were the sixth and seventh volumes of the ency-clopedic Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande; oder,Sammlung aller Reisebeschreibungen that was published in 1750. Next tothis encyclopedia the work of Samuel Turner had great inuence on hissystematic explorations.11Turner had visited the court of the Dalai Lamaand the Panchen Lama. His reports informed Hegel about Lamas or high

teachers as reincarnations of previous Lamas, i.e. about humans thatlike animals in Hinduisms pantheonare worshiped as particular beingsbecause they incarnate a universal divine substance. Not as a symbol, butunmediated.

9 Idem, p. 498.10 As to the subject of oriental religions his main sources are analyzed by Reinhard

LeuzesDie ausserchristlichen Religionen bei Hegel,Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht1975).

11 Samuel Turner, Copy of an Account Given by Mr. Turner, of His Interview withthe Teshoo Lama at the Monastery of Terpaling, Enclosed in Mr. Turners Letter to theHonourable the Governor General, Dated Patna, 2d March, 1784, in Asiatic Researches1: 197205; An Account of a Journey in Tibet in Asiatic Researches 1: 207220; An Accountof an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, in Tibet: Containing a Narrative of aJourney through Bootan, and Part of Tibet (London, 1800).


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In contrast to Buddhism, records on and texts of Hinduism werealready available in the 18th century. From the days of Herodotus, Straboand Marco Polo historians and explorers had written down their experi-ences and observations. Due to the long occupation of great parts of Indiaby the British Empire written observations of ocials of the East IndianCompany determined the view on Eastern religion. Of course their colo-nial interests biased these observations and inuenced their judgment onthe ideas and behavior of the indigenous people and their rituals. Imagesof yogis were printed in travel reports. Because Buddhism was mentionedby John Toland as the religion of Fothe Chinese name for Buddha

Hegel refers to Buddhism also as the religion of the Fo. He is howevermainly focusing on Lamaism.Translations of religious Chinese textsI Ching and Tao Te Ching

and Hindu textsLaws of Manu, Bhagavadgtwere already publishedin Hegels lifetime. By that time publications were at hand on the struc-tural relations between Sanskrit and European languages. Franz Boppsanalyses, published in 1816, enabled Hegel to analyze Hinduism more ade-quately than Buddhism. Yet his knowledge on Buddhism was inaccurate,

not being able to distinguish between the diferent schools of Hnayna,Mahyna, Vajrayna and following his scientic sources in situating Bud-dhas life around 1000 B.C. This explains his historical estimation of Bud-dhism as preceding Hinduism. On top of that he mixed up the life timeof Siddhartha Gautamasupposed to be only one of many Buddhas

varying from some forty years before Christ (L2 24, 308/211) to the intro-duction of Buddhism in China around 67 A.D.12

In contrast to Hinduism Buddhism was less known. This has a geo-political background too. Buddhism was driven from its homeland inNorthern India, as a result of which texts of the dharma were shatteredand dispersed across languages as Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and some Chi-nese dialects. Information on Buddhism became ready at hand only afterthe exploration of the transhimalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet in thesecond half of the 19th century. By then systematic insights in linguisticOrientalism had deepened. New research provided both tools and infor-

mation to acknowledge and evaluate the importance of Buddhism, as wasdone by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, two erce critics of Hegel.

12 Hegels major source on this is Francis Buchanans article on Burmese Buddhism inAsiatic Researches.Buchanan also suggests the existence of several Buddhas.


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So by the time Hegel gave his rst series of Lectures in 1824 scienticanalyses of Buddhism were not yet vast and far less accurate than in thesecond half of the 19th century. It was mainly Mahyna Buddhism with

Hnayna elements through the Tibetan Lama accounts of Turner thatprovided Hegel with information on a particular sect of Tibetan Bud-dhism: the Gelugpa that was headed by the Dalai Lama.13

3. Systematical incorporation in the system

Notwithstanding the simplistic qualications by critics of Hegelian

thought as to the forced incorporation of all available knowledge into hisdialectical system, sequential reading of the diferent versions of Hegels

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religions bears witness to the fact that heupdated his knowledge and diversied positions continuously. In retro-spect his categorization of Buddhism might seem inadequate, but giventhe limited and biased knowledge that was available to him his inquisitiveshifting and rephrasing show a keen awareness of aspects that still arerelevant today. However, his philosophy was still metaphysically rooted

in the Western tradition that emphasizes Being rather than Becoming,and interprets Nothing as a privation of Being. Hegels evaluation of theEastern notion of emptiness is inuenced by this tradition. In the nalfoundation of his systematic philosophy in Science of Logic the notion ofNothing appears at the very beginning as the negation of absolute Being.This Being is historically anchored in the texts of Parmenides. Its nega-tionNothingleads to the systematic conclusion that the contradiction

between something instead of either being or not being is

rst and forall an instance of becoming: growth and decay, progress and decadence,these are all manifestations of this dialectical conguration. Becoming ishistorically anchored in the philosophy of Heraclites. But how is Nothingsituated historically? That is where Buddhism enters the world stage as amethodologically necessary, transitional state of mind.

References in Hegels other texts

In order to pinpoint and evaluate Buddhisms positioning it is instructiveto briey locate Hegels incorporation of Buddhists thought in the publica-

13 This the main thesis of Mortons article. Within this specic perspective Buddhismturns out to be a mixture of asceticism with a limited philosophical view of the absoluteas the Void, shot through with xenophobic superstition. See 3 and 8.


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tions that precede the period of his Lectures on philosophy of religion. Ina long chapter on religion at the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit(1807)little details about Oriental philosophies can be found. The chapter (b) on

the Religion of the plant and the animal, in which he refers to ideas andrituals of the Indian Hindu-religion, is systematically positioned betweenthe religion of the light in Persia (a) and that of creation by craftsmen inEgypt and in Greece (c). Buddhism is not mentioned.

In the rst publication of Science of Logic(18121816) a reference to Bud-dhism is made in a remark added to paragraphs in Book I: the Doctrine ofBeing. As already referred to, there is no equivalent for the fundamentalnotion of Nothing in the European history of philosophy. In referring toBuddhism Hegel can instantiate the Nothing as an articulation of the Voidor Nothingness found in Buddhism: As we know in the Oriental systems,principally in Buddhism, nothing, the void, is the absolute principle.14Butthis VoidHegel refers to it with this English termis voided of any sub-

jectivity. There is no discursive self reection. Negativity has come to astandstill in Buddhism. At the very end of Book I in the paragraphs onMeasure a new remark is added in the second edition of 1832 on the rela-

tion between Spinoza and Hinduism and Buddhism within the contextof pantheism. I will return to this remark at the end of my exposition ofthe Lectures.

In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy the exposition of OrientalPhilosophy is a prelude to Western philosophy that was inaugurated bythe Pre-Socratics. Hegel mentions Confucius, the I Ching, and Daoism aselements of Chinese Philosophy. Under the heading of Indian Philosophyhe deals with the Samkhya-philosophy and the philosophy of Gautama

and Kanade. Samkhya is one of the six schools of classical Indian phi-losophy, categorized under Hinduism but originally a Buddhist doctrinebased on a dual ontology: the dialectical tension between purusha (con-sciousness) and prakriti (phenomenal realm of matter). The dialecticalforce of Oriental thoughtChinese philosophy with its duality of yin and

yang, the Trimurti of Brahm, Vishnu, and Shiva in Hinduismmust haveintrigued Hegel, because it was proof for his dialectical insights in the

formal-ontological foundation of the World and of History.

15

In 1827 Hegel reviewed Humboldts book on the Bhagavadgt in theJahrbcher fr wissenschaftliche Kritik. We must now recognize in regard

14 See Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London/New York:Humanities Press, 1969/2002, p. 83.

15 See for the following passage Hegel, Werke, Bd. 11, pp. 131204.


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to Hindu mythology that it does in fact contain these basic determina-tions of the concept, the development of the concept. This trinity is thebasic form, the abstract basic form of spirit; this is what the Hindus rep-resent as Trimurti (L2 24, 327/230). For Hegel this is the ultimate proofof the universal validity of his dialectic ontology. Hegel even qualiedGautamas philosophy of Nyaya, i.e. a method of reasoning and inves-tigation, as a very articulated dialectic.16 And he refers to Kanada, aHindu sage who lived either around the 6th or 2nd century B.C., and whofounded the philosophical school of Vaisheshika. Kanada developed atheory of physics, based on dvyanuka (biatomic molecule) and tryanuka

(triatomic molecule). His belief that all living beings are composed of veelementswater, re, earth, air, etherstrongly suggested a transition toEleatic thinkers and Pre-Socratics.

In the second and third edition of 1827 and 1830 of HegelsEncyclopedia(1817) references are made to animal worshiping in Indian religion and tothe reincarnation of lamas within the context of atheism and pantheism.Hegel cites from the Bhagavadgt in an 1823 published Latin translationby the writer, literature critic and translator August Wilhelm von Schlegel

(17671845), brother of the earlier mentioned Friedrich von Schlegel. Helets Krishna explain the omnipresence in all beings, which enables him tosort out some misunderstandings on spinozism as pantheism. A referenceto Colebrookes remark on Indian religion as being monotheistic due tothe abstract universality of the Brahman principle is valued in a typicaldialectical turn of phrase: this positioning is not incorrect.17

In sum, we may conclude that in Hegels work Buddhism is sporadi-

cally referred to and that the scarcely available information initially hadto meet the formal criteria of the Hegelian system. Hegel applies inter-nal and external categories. The triad of internal categorization of anyreligion always contains 1) the metaphysical concept of a divinity, 2) itsconcrete representation in texts and symbols, and 3) a practical cultus.The external categories are derived from the dialectical division of the Sci-ence of Logic: Being, Essence, and Concept, but now in the mode of deter-minateness and nitude. In the Oriental religionsand by implication

in BuddhismBeing is therefore qualied as prereective immediacy or

16 Eastern thinking already developed a vast tradition of dialectical thinking. Hegel,Werke, Bd. 18, p. 164.

17 Hegel, Werke, Bd. 10, p. 385.


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undiferentiated substance. The divine substance is completely envelopedin itself, like a toe-sucking Buddha.

In this positing of the in-itself the experience of religion is not yetarticulated discursively as for-itself, let alone exhaustively conceptualized,the realization of which nally culminates in full internalization as thein-and-for-itself. Or in terms of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy:Intellectual substantiality is in India the end, while in Philosophy it is ingeneral the true commencement; Intellectual substantiality is the oppo-site of the reection, understanding, and the subjective individuality ofthe European.18Oriental religions primarily deal with substance as unme-

diated immediacy on a practical basis. The Buddhist Truth is fully realizedin the act, as is mirrored in Hegels mistaken choice for the Hindu image.Originally Buddhism lacks institutions, is even anti-institutional per de-nition given Gautamas resistance against the sophistry of Brahmanic tra-dition. In short, it also lacks the societal articulations of subjectivity.

4. Revised series of the lectures

In Hegels manuscript only a few general remarks are made on Orientalreligions: in general it is [in] the Orient [that we nd this] undividedintuition, this intuition of God in all things without distinction; God isall things, hen kai pan (M 99/5). Obviously pantheism is an issue fromthe start. Starting with the general category of religion of nature in whichman is not yet aware of his free subjectivity and divine power is an assetof human beings, Hegel categorizes Chinese, Indian, Persian and Egyp-

tian religion according to their ability to externalize and internalizethe representation of a divine entity. Buddhism remains unmentioned.None of these religions do yet acknowledge the Absolute as free spirit.It is either an empirical entity like the wind, the sky, cows, apes, bulls orhuman beings or a pure abstraction. Magic as the power of the individualto directly inuence nature is negated in the formal objectication of thedivine power in Chinese religion that worships human beings, like theemperor and genii (Shen). Not as symbols, but in actuality. In Hinduismon the one hand a multitude of beings such as elephants and cows are

venerated, but on the other an impersonal metaphysical substance, i.e. asupernatural divine power as Brahman entersthe stage of world history.

18 Hegel, Werke18, p. 167.


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Lectures of 1824: migration of the soul into the nothing

This initial categorization is expanded in the Lectures of 1824, which are

mainly based on the notes written down by students after the Lectures.Now Buddhism comes to the fore as a transitional stage within the religionof magic that also includes religious consciousness of the African, Eskimo,and Chinese. All these are stepping stones to Hinduism, the religion offantasy that precedes the religion of the good (Persian light religion) andthe religion of the riddle (Egyptian religion). In Chinese religion magic aspower over nature is objectied in human beings like the emperor andthe spirits or genii. The cultus is embedded in daily life ceremonies, agri-cultural rites and ancestor veneration. A general power that overrules theemperor is not introduced, because the principle of Heaven (Tian) is not

yet grasped as a general principle in relation to the power of the emperor.Hegel mainly stresses the institutionalized power of the emperor, posi-tioning him as a prototype of an objectied form of divine power: Thus inChina the emperors lordship over nature is a fully organized monarchy(L2 24, 303/207).

Next to this secular power a spiritual power (L2 24, 307/211) unfoldsitself. This rst formalization is the key stage in the transition from magicto more properly dened religion: Religion begins here (L2 24, 305/209).The raw immediacy of magic reects within itself: Prima facie theadvance is that the innite aspect, the essential aspect, is comprehendedin a deeper, more genuine way than heretoforeor that another spiri-tual moment becomes objective for consciousness, for subjective spirit,[at this stage] as compared with what we have been considering up to this

point (L2 24, 304/208). This objectication constitutes the second phaseof religious awareness, to use a less articulated term than consciousness:Thought comes to itself as what rests and abides within itself, namelyspirit(L2 24, 305/209). Objectication is no longer formal but actual, beit still immediate, consisting initially in the fact that it is a singular self-consciousness (L2 24, 3067/210). Religious substance becomes an arma-tive relationship with this power: Being-Within-Self as thoughtitself, and

this is the distinctive essentiality of self-consciousness (L2 24, 306/209).Consciousness contemplates and meditates.Hegel then positions Buddhism. It is described as the religion of the Fo

(L2 24, 307/211). This religion comes from China, and in historical fact it issomewhat later than the form in which power is the dominant element(L2 24, 311/214). Originally, Hegel remarks, Buddhism came from Burma,India and Ceylon, their God Buddha is venerated as Gautama, depicted


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in the attitude of self-absorption with head bent and arms folded over hisbreast (L2 24, 314/217). No toe-sucking yet. Gautama is not identied asthe secular person that later becomes the Buddha. He is one of a seriesof deceased Buddhas that are contrasted with living lamas as the DalaiLama. The fact that Hindu Brahmans see Gautama as the ninth incarna-tion of Vishnu, explains partly this Hindu image. Then a second shift ismade. Chinese, Mongols, Tibetans, Burmese, and Ceylonese all practice areligion we know under the form of Lamaism (L2 24, 307/211). As men-tioned before, these mistakes reect the scientic insights of Hegels days.To him the diference between the Fo and Lamaism is only supercial.

Lamaism deals with living people through which the divine power trans-migrates, while the Fo is concerned with a (re)capturing of Buddhahoodfor salvation.

Lamaism practices tranquility, repose and contemplation. This is wherethe theoretical attitude begins (L2 24, 309/211). Practical power and desireare negated by peaceful being-within-self (L2 24, 309/212). This cultushas institutional manifestations, but it is individualized since an individ-ual can unify himself with theoretical substantiality whenever he wants.

Still a thin discursive line links it to the transmigration of souls as a char-acteristic of magic religions, but immortality of the soul (in the broadestsense) is what now for the rst time emerges (L2 24, 309/212). This is not

yet spiritual in an objectied way, being encapsulated in immediacy, i.e.,a bodily, sensuous shape (L2 24, 310/213).

More than the immortality of the soul another doctrine is explored andexplained by Hegel: the constituting principle of nothing: However var-ied people and things may be, there is thus only one principle from whichthey stem, in which they are, through which they subsist, and to whichthey revertthis one principle is the nothing, completely unqualied,simple and pure (L2 24, 312/215). Hegel emphasizes that this nothingshould not be understood as not being. He suggests that, since it is purelyidentical with itself, being thought itself, it is a substantive being (L2 24,312/215) eternally at rest, free of determinations. The souls do no longer

wander for they become completely identical with the God Fo (L2 24,

313/215216). Free of desires the goal is reached as nirvana, being identi-cal with God, but conceptualized as Nothing, as the Void of the Scienceof Logic.

In positioning nirvana this way Hegel implicitly subscribes a Mahynaview that he found in the Allgemeine Historie der Reisen. Hegels sourcesdo mention the diference between the Hnayna and Mahyna methodof attaining nirvana, respectively by getting free from all worldly misery


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and by denying desires in order to attain Buddhahood, but Hegels treat-ment of Buddhism does not explore these modalities. Although in retro-spect he fails to grasp the specic non-Western articulation of emptiness

or the Void, i.e. of nirvana, he does not present nothing as a mere priva-tion of being. Wordings like annihilation of self come to the fore in theLectures of 1831 which are only known by their publication in an editionof Hegels works done by his friends shortly after his death.

Lectures of 1827

In the 1827 Lectures, again mainly based on students notes, Hegel returns

to the theme that he, in his student years in Tbingen discussed withSchelling and Hlderlin: one and all, hen kai pan. In this series of LecturesChinese religion of the state is conceived as an intermediate phase. InHegels account of how the emperor performs his divine powers he comesto speak of the sect of the Dao. (L2 27, 555/453) This sect was allowedto withdraw in self established monasteries into the mountains in orderfor the Shen to attain immortality. The principle of the Way (Dao) liftsthe religion of magic up to the being-within-self that in the next phaseof religious consciousness is articulated in Buddhism and Lamaism.

An exploration of Daoism, in which Hegel referred to a book on Lao-zi(551479 B.C.) that was published in 1823 and that deals with the life andspeeches of Lao-zi, sets an in between: Dao is a distinctive god, reason(L2 27, 548/446447). Hegel focuses on measure as the core concept ofreason, acknowledging Dao as the return of consciousness into itself(L2 27, 557/454). Fo and Dao are not explicitly connected. Records on

Chan Buddhism or Zen Buddhism were not yet available.In this version of the Lectures the religion of heaven (Tian) is acknowl-edged as the highest ruling power (L2 27, 548/446) that transcends magicand power but while governing moral conduct is still bound to empiri-cal consciousness. It remains formal and abstract. Referring to the Papalreproach of Catholic orders in China for their inadequate translation ofTian as God, Hegel agrees with his sources that Tian designates whollyindeterminate and abstract universality; it is the wholly indeterminate

sum of the physical and the moral nexus as a whole (L2 27, 549/446). Inthe nal analysis it is still the emperor who rules nature, be it under theguidance of Tian. The heaven of the Chinese or Tian, by contrast, is some-thing totally empty (L2 27, 550/447) Emptiness is interpreted empirically:the Chinese Tian is not populated like the Christian heaven. Emptiness isconceived as a privation, as space in which something is lacking, in shortas negation.


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A dialectical structure of reasoning always attracts Hegels attention. Inthe margin of his notes on the 26th of June 1827 he writes: It is quite note-

worthy that the determination three immediately comes into play to theextent that Dao is something rational and concrete (L2 27, 558/455), fol-lowed by the opening sentences of the Tao Te Ching: Dao (reason) produc-ing the One, the One producing the Two, the Two producing the Three andthe Three the whole universe. Hegel concludes: Unless three determina-tions are recognized in God, God is an empty word (L2 27, 559/456). Daostays abstract as long as self-consciousness is not ruptured: Thus Lao-zi isalso a Shen, or he has appeared as Buddha (L2 27, 560/456). In this way

emptiness connects Daoism and Buddhism in Hegels conclusion.In this series of Lectures Buddhism/Lamaism is positioned beyond therealm of magic as the religion of Being-Within-Self. Hegels exposition hasbecome more developed and balanced with Buddhism still preceding Hin-duism, but now as an autonomous phase that expands the abstract uni-

versality and theoretical substantiality of the Dao and Tian. Buddhism iseven the most widespread religion on earth (L2 27, 563/460). The trickytopic of pantheismand by implication of atheismis gradually woven

into his explanation. Here we nd the form of substantiality in which theabsolute is a being-within-self, the one substance; but it is not grasped justas a substance for thought and in thought (as it is in Spinoza); instead ithas at the same time existence in sensible presence, i.e. in singular humanbeings (L2 27, 564/460).

It is against this background that the mistaken image of the toe-suckingBuddha suddenly appears, followed by the statement that the ultimateof highest [reality] is therefore nothing or not-being (L2 27, 565/461).In contrast to the 1824 Lectures Hegel now rephrases Buddhist nothing-ness in Western ontological categories as not-being. This state of being isparadoxically strived for through ceaseless internal mindfulness, to willnothing, to want [nothing], and to do nothing. (...) Thus the theoreticalmoment nds expression here: that this pure nothing, this stillness andemptiness, is the highest state; that the individual is [something] formal(L2 27, 566/462). The individual does not think and as such remains for-

mal and abstract, not yet universal and concrete. Expressions as negativemental attitude, a merely negative nature are now frequently used. Oncethese ontological and epistemological qualications gather psychologicalconnotations the implied pantheism tends towards atheism, in spite ofHegels warning that at rst glance it must astonish us that humans thinkof God as nothing; that must be extremely strange. More closely consid-ered, however, this characterization means nothing other than that God


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purely and simply is nothing determinate, is the indeterminate. (...) Thatdoes not mean that God is not, but rather that God is the empty, and that

this emptiness is God (L2 27, 5678/464). The divine being is not lackinganything, but is full of emptiness, to phrase it speculatively.Connecting Eastern religion via Anaxagoras rational principle of Nous

with Western religion Hegel nalizes this historical sightseeing withSchellingian intellectual intuition. He rephrases this as intuiting intelli-gence, in order to emphasize immediacy. This is disqualied as a lowerlevel of consciousness. (L2 27, 572/468) The Romantic option indirectlyequals Oriental pantheism. Both demand a complementing sublation via

representation and conceptuality: just as the sun sets in the west, so it isin the West that human beings descend into itself, into its own subjectiv-ity (L2 27, 572/469; italic HO). Hegel opposes the Oriental and Occidental

way of experiencing, representing and thinking the world with Spinozaas an in between. But once in hen kai panone and allpan is under-stood as everything, we should discern between the view that everythingis God (Allesgtterei) and the doctrine that the All is God (Allgtterei). Inthis shift pantheism becomes atheism, as Jacobis analysis of spinozism tryto argument. But this is countered by Hegel: pan stands for universality(Allgemeinheit) and not for collective totality (Allesheit).19

Hegel sees a parallel between Spinozas concept of substance and theOriental principle of unity. However, what is still lacking is a Kantianoverdetermination of this substance by subjectivity. Only then the singu-larity of the individual is united with the universality of God through selfreective particularity. In the dialectical shortcut of a speculative phrase

this means that separation unites. Hegels systematic exposition of thisoverdetermination of substance by subjectivity as a stepping stone to theunfolding of the absolute idea is the key to an understanding of Science of

Logic. Oriental consciousness has not yet reached the state of a rupturefor-itselfin which substantial immediacy is objectied in order to bereconciled in concrete universality. Man has not yet come to realize thata necessary negation of Godas if he does not existis a precondition

19 Hegel collaborated with the editor of the rst German collected edition of SpinozasWorks, that were published in 180203. He compared some French translations. So theimpact of Spinozas philosophy was wrong, but this is not to say that Hegel had a deepand scholarly knowledge of Spinoza. See: G. H. R. Parkinson, Hegel, Pantheism, and Spi-noza, in:Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Jul./Sep., 1977), p. 449. Parkinson alsoaccuses Hegel of a very specic interpretation of Spinozas omnis determinatio negatioest in order to incorporate this into his system.


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for their reunion through idealization, conceptualization and identica-tion. Then and only then man realizes his spirituality in a twofold way:

in understanding it and incorporating it in a self conscious cultus. But atthis point, at the level of nature religion which we are now dealing with,this spirituality is not yet spirituality as such, it is not yet a spirituality thatis thought or universal; instead it is sensible and immediate spirituality(L2 27, 575/471).

Lectures of 1831

Hegel dies in 1831 while reworking Science of Logic, lecturing on religion inthe summer. This last series of Lectures is published posthumously, editedby his students and friends. Herein Buddhism is once more upgraded.Now Hinduism precedes Buddhism that in its turn is completely focusedon the practice of annihilation. Chinese religion has become the religionof Measure. The dialectical triad for immediate religion is redened asmeasure (Chinese religion), abstract unity (Hinduism) and annihilation(Lamaism, Buddhism), all categorized under the heading: religions of rup-

ture (Entzweiung). Lamaism and Buddhism dissolve the dialectical ten-sion between the Chinese religion of measure and Hinduism as abstractunity. Is a reading of this rearrangement against the background of Hegelreediting Science of Logic,instructive?

Measure is qualitatively determined quantity and as such is situatedat the end of Science of Logics Book I: the Doctrine of Being. Measure isthe overture to Book II: the Doctrine of Essence. This starts with Essenceas Reection in itself, positing a yet unarticulated Reality as Appearance

(Schein). All is appearance (maya), as is stated in both Hinduism andBuddhism. In Hegels system Reality systematically articulates itself onlyto unfold itself at the end of the Doctrine of Essence. This in its turn isthe prelude to the very rst movement of the Doctrine of Concept: Sub-

jectivity. Then Substance has returned to itself full circle through thecontingency of its accidents, the realization of which opened mans con-sciousness for subjectivized substantiality. Only by now Being has become

being in-and-for-itself.Notwithstanding all this the presentation of Buddhism/Lamaism in thislast series of Lectures is very brief. But every new phaseChinese, Indian,Buddhism/Lamaismis characterized in the very rst sentences in termsof pantheism. In the excerpts of the student David Friedrich Strauss, whoattended Hegels last course, and who also coming from Tbingen visitedHegel a few days before his death to share memories, the second chapter


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on The Splitting up (Entzweiung) of the Religious Consciousness in Itselfcontains a systematic remark on the relationship between substance andaccidents which are determined as a kind of being that is nothing, as anullity. (...) All that subsists is this change, and the later thought of asunity is the substantive. This is the Oriental or Spinozist substance (L231, 727/617). The word pantheism has become a key term: We have nowto consider the more specic forms in which pantheism has dened itselfas religion (L2 27, 549/446, footnote 100).

Cross-referring to Science of Logic (SoL) of 1832 the controversy on pan-theism is indirectly referred to in a newly added remark at the end of

Book I on Measure: In the true trinity there is not only unity but union,the conclusion of the syllogism is a unity possessing content and actu-ality, a unity which in its wholly concrete determination is spirit. InHinduism, Hegel proceeds, this is only to submerge all content in the

void, in a merely formal unity lacking all content. Thus Siva, too, is againthe great whole, not distinct from Brahma, but Brahma himself. In other

words, the diference and the determinateness only vanish again but arenot preserved, are not sublated, and the unity does not become a con-

crete unity, neither is the disunity reconciled. Then the crucial passageis made to Buddhism via annihilation and the lack of subjectivity: Thesupreme goal for man placed in the sphere of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be, of modality generally, is submergence in unconsciousness, unity

with Brahma, annihilation; the Buddhist Nirvana, Nibbana etc., is thesame (SoL, 328/29). The nirvana stands for annihilation, for unity withthe divine as absolute nothingness.

5. Hegel in Buddhist perspective: arming emptiness as plenitude andsuchness beyond subjectivity

Did Hegels analysis and valuation of Buddhisms void as nothingnessdetermine the critical debate on the nihil in the second half of the 19thcentury? There can be no doubt that the person who contributed mostto the nihilist interpretation of nirvana during the nineteenth century

was the German philosopher Hegel. For him, the Buddhist nirvana is sim-ply nothingness...,20 Kao professor on Japanese Religion Bernard Faureconcludes. That is why 19th century scholars like Edgar Quinet called

20 Bernard Faure, Unmasking Buddhism, Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2009, p. 25.


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the Buddha the great Christ of emptiness and Ernest Renan disqualiedBuddhism as the Church of nihilism. Schopenhauers critical revaluationof Hegels views on Buddhism resulted in his philosophical pessimismand Nietzsche diagnosed western culture as inherently nihilistic, tryingto overcome this by a revaluation of all values proposing onto-politicalquasi-concepts as the Overman, Will to Power, and the Eternal Return.

But Faure also recognizes positive elements in Hegels analysis. Subtlenuances enable the keen reader of Hegels work to comprehend emptinessbeyond mere nothingness.21I agree with Faure that the heirs of Hegel are toblame, with iek as one of the most recent exponents. They either made

a caricature out of Buddhism or transformed Hegels formal-ontologicalapproach of nothingness into existential, moral and political variationsof nihilism. Yet Faures remark that the Buddhist emptiness is merelyanother name for plenitude22 needs some explanation. This rephrasingof Hegels position already pregures a (Zen) Buddhist interpretation ofnothingness and emptiness that reminds us of the experiential focus ofNagarjuna (c. 150250 A.D.) a monk who developed a view on emptinesshe called The Middle Way or The Middle Path. Nagarjuna scorns the

isolation of emptiness as a separate phenomenon and its articulation asa concept.

It is evident that Faures analysis does not imply that Hegel was a nihil-ist, nor does it disqualify Hegels systematic philosophy as a proto-form ofnihilism. If nihilism means lacking a positive and enduring foundation ofthe meanings, values and truths that motivate mans actionspositivelyformulated: stating that the basic value, meaning and truth is the nihil

then Hegelian philosophy is the opposite of nihilism. However, Fauresaccusation stands once we acknowledge the inuence of Hegelianism, dueto the critique it engendered and the basic concepts it provided for disil-lusioned and anti-metaphysically focused generations of scholars to come.Hegel triggered ex negativo a long-lasting debate on nihilism in westernthought in diferent registers: Russian literature, modern philosophy, andpostmodern politics.

In order to actualize Hegels positioning of Buddhism I expose it to

a more profound misunderstanding of Buddhist thought. The Eastern

21 Morton too acknowledges that what Hegel actually produces, along with manyothers, is a sense of a positive nothingness that exists alongside phenomena inspite of thefact that he, in strictly Buddhist terms, becomes guilty of the very nihilism he is beratingin what he beholds (6).

22 Faure, Unmasking Buddhism, p. 25.


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reception of Hegelian thought implicitly addresses his understanding ofnothingness. Buddhist scholars of the Kyoto school who are famous fortheir intercultural focus23have explored the productive relations betweenBuddhism and Christian thought from the other side of the divide.Hegels philosophy was already known in Japan the decades after Japanopened its borders and markets for the West in the second half of the19th century. But it was the centenary of his death in 1931 that caused abreakthrough,24as happened in France under the guidance of AlexanderKojve.25 The most prominent philosopher who integrated Hegelianismin Japanese thought was Kitaro Nishida (18701945). This founding father

of the Kyoto school stressed the relational focus of Hegels thinking andthematized an experiential nothingness.26 Nihilism was further exploredby Nishidas former student Keiji Nishitani (19001990) who, after hav-ing studied in Germany and having persuaded Karl Lwith to come andteach in Japan, wrote extensively on nihilism.27 Masao Abe (19152006)deepened the insights in the relation between emptiness and armationfocusing on the suchness (Sanskrit: tathat; Jap. konomama) of things. Abrief survey of their ideas redirects Hegels notion of emptiness.

ishida: pure experience in between of general and particular

The Mahayana concept of Absolute Nothingness(zettai mu) is the foun-dational concept of Nishidas philosophy. Like Hegel Nishida too under-stands the self in terms of a contradictory identity: it is both A & -A.

23 See: Rolf Elberfeld, Kitaro Nishida (18701945), Das Verstehen der Kulturen. Mod-erne japanische Philosophie und die Frage nach der Interkulturalitt, Amsterdam/Atlanta:Rodopi 1999, chapter 3.

24 See: Gino Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought 18921996. A Survey,Tokyo: Japan Library 1997, p. 169.

25 Kojve proposed a philosophical anthropological reading of Hegels dialectical phi-losophy. His courses inuenced many a Hegelian critical adept: Georges Bataille, JacquesLacan, Jean Hippolyte and Jean-Paul Sartre attended his courses. After World War IIKojve unfolded a futuristic vision in which Japanese consciousness and aestheticismplayed a crucial role in the realization of Hegels idea of mans ultimate way of living after

the end of history. Francis Fukuyamas famous book on this topic refers more to Kojvethan to Hegel.

26 See: David Dilworth, (transl.) Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview,by Nishida Kitaro: The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview(Basho-teki Ronri to Shukyo-teki Sekaikan), Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.Nishida frequently discussed his ideas with Daisetz T. Suzuki, the Zen scholar who wouldlater bring Zen to the West. See: Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton:Princeton UP, 1970 (orig. 1938).

27 Keiji Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of NIHILISM,Albany: SUNY Press 1990.


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However, for him essence that precedes the rupture between subject andobject, is realizedin the twofold meaning of the wordnot as a notionbut as a pure experience (junsui keiken)a notion he picked up in the

work of William Jamesthat cannot be grasped in discursive arguments.When Nishida speaks about pure experience as enlightenment, he hasZens satoriin mind. Against this background Nishida, a Zen practitionerhimself, denes enlightenment as the ultimate seeing of the bottomlessnothingness of the self.28

In Hegelian terms, what is problematized here is the dialectical ten-sion between the general and the particular, the one and the many or

the whole and its parts. These are tensionally uni

ed in the singular. Thishowever is not a conceptual unison, let alone a notional sublation. ForNishida the one and the many coincide as absolute contradictory self-identity (zettai mujunteki jiko doitsu). The Self however is not understoodas the unity of consciousness: In the depths of our selves there is nothingto be found; everywhere is nothingness; instead we nd absolute unity,by transcending everything related to the self.29No-thing or nothingnessis not a notion, it is an experience of being fully related to everything and

nothing in particular.There is a metalogical problem as well. For an identity to be truly con-

tradictory one has to suppose that both sides of the logical dichotomy aretrue, since this is what makes them contradictory. But for Buddhists thereis no such assertion. Buddhist thought denies a permanent, self-identicalentity through time. Moreover, the totality of all there is is not a thing.Its negation therefore is not a thing either. Just like that of its parts thethingness of the wholeand by implication of emptiness as lack of thissubstantial wholeresults from xations of ever changing interactingforces on diferent scales. Teleology does not direct these interactions.The contradiction is ephemeral. Only extreme hypostasized notions ofan atomic, unchanging being or deterministic causality might produce acontradiction. Instead of substantial identitythe I= not I in a FichteanarticulationNishida stresses the interrelated nature between parts both

within individuals and between them as parts of a whole.30

Pure experience is the experience of what unites in diference. Itis a corporeal experience of embedded relationality, superseding the

28 Idem, p. 81.29 Dilworth,Last Writings, p. 110.30 See: Elberfeld, Das Verstehen der Kulturen, pp. 110/138 f.


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Cartesian and Kantian dualities of mind-body and subject-object. As cor-poreal realizationthe thinking posture of the toe sucking Buddhait

can only be grasped in spatial terms. The issue in Kyoto Zen Buddhistthought is not time but place. Nishida refers to Platos chora, as the formof all forms that itself in not yet formed, but that is perhaps too metaphys-ical a comparison. Place or basho must be understood beyond the dualityof matter and form or the mind-body dichotomy as a physically orientedeld of consciousness, a being-in or an inbetweenness.31

Nishidas logic of place (basho) focuses on form. The Japanese wordfor form is kata. This word also describes the repetitive practice of basis

techniques in the martial arts: as a dance of stylized forms that ow with-out intention from the body of the martial artist. But it too counts for teaceremony (cha do) or ower arrangement (ikebana). It is all about ndingthe proper form in the proper place. For Japanese culture the stylizationof form, dissolving intention in direct acting, is crucial. In this experienceagency becomes acting intuition. Nishidas logic of place allows him tofuse momentariness and eternity, particularity and universality.

The crux of the diference between Nishida and Hegel may be viewedas a distinction between process and completion. In Hegels case, themanifestation of the unfolding (...) is at the same time a witness to itsown necessity. (...) Nishida, for his part, is not interested in the dialecticalunfolding as such but rather in the actual completion of the process in theplace of absolute nothingness.32In arming the radicalized phenomenal-ity of things the autonomy of the eld of consciousness is realized.

ishitani: emptiness as plenitudeNishitani adds a Nietzschean tone to the debate on nothingness. His bookon nihilism analyzes diferent tendencies of nihilism in the West, mainlyfocusing on Nietzsches claim that nihilism eventually can become ar-mative and creative. This corresponds with an armative presentation

31The Japanese word for person is ningen, that literally means: being (nin) of the inbe-tween (gen). This relational constituent is sublated in Hegels notion of the subject. See:

H. Oosterling, A Culture of the Inter. Japanese Notions of Ma and Basho in: Heinz Kim-merle & Henk Oosterling (eds.), Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural perspective.On the Possibility of Common Judgements in Arts and Politics, Wrzburg: Knigshausen &Neumann 2000, pp. 6184.

32 Maren Zimmermann, Nishidas Self-Identity of Absolute Contradiction and Hegel:Absolute Negation and Dialectics, in: J. W. Heisig ed. Nanzan,Frontiers of Japanese Phi-losophy, Nagoya: 2006, p. 195.


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of emptiness (Sanskrit: sunyata; Jap. ku) that results from the insight thatnothingness (mu) in the nal instance is a experience of fulllment. Nishi-

tani too emphasizes the embeddedness of the self: it is rather a nod ofrelations than a substance. Other Japanese scholars have enhanced thisinsight by pointing at a constitutive inbetweenness of Japanese culture.

Nihilism now is focused on insubstantial connectedness. As no-thingthis becomes armative once in a continuity of momentary consciousselves the ephemeral I is acknowledged to be the xation of the owof unique singular moments. In Hegels system these absolute positions(an sich), posing itself initially as all there is, i.e. absolute, enrich them-

selves in the process of objectication (fr sich) and subjectivation (anund fr sich), a process driven by negativity. To Nishitani the nothing thathaunts unhappy consciousness is just a relative nothingness. The abso-lute individualto phrase it paradoxicallythat arises in an absolutepresent experiences an armative emptiness as plenitude, as being ful-lled in itself and as such being fully present to the world. Of course thesephrases appear non-sensical in the light of everyday existence where theI is psychologically evident and pragmatic urgency demands calculatedanticipations all the time.

But what is at stake here is precisely the radicality of this everyday-ness, that is devoid of Hinterwelten,as Nietzsche called the totalistic mindframes that Western philosophy produced time and again to ward ofthe unbearable lightness of being: Ironically, it was not in his nihilistic

view of Buddhism but in such ideas as amor fati and the Dionysian asthe overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche came closest to Buddhism, and

especially to Mahyna. But in the nal instance the Mahyna point ofview on emptiness cannot be reached even by nihilism that overcomesnihilism, even though this latter may tend in that direction.33 Adornoacknowledges this at the end of Negative Dialectics when he comes tospeak about the inefective overcomings of Nietzsches nihilism that wasmeant diferently yet supplied fascism with slogans (...) And yet the light-ing up of an eye, indeed the feeble tail-wagging of a dog one gave a tidbitit promptly forgets, would make the ideal of nothingness evaporate.34

33 Keiji Nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Albany New York: SUNY Press 1990,p. 180.

34 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 380.


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Abe: the suchness of things

Nishidas and Nishitanis expositions give us a rst clue for an understand-

ing of nothingness in a concrete and armative sense. Japanese Zen Bud-dhism acknowledges, notwithstanding the primacy of appearances, theexperiential truth of nothingness that is grasped in a radical armationof these appearances. The intentional subject dissolves in acting-intuitionthat realizes the empty mind or no-mind (mu shin). This is not a unar-ticulated immediacy, but the result of formal training: Zens active sit-ting or the unmovable movement in martial arts performs the essenceof nothingness. But what does this say about nirvana? In his comparative

study Zen and Western ThoughtMasao Abe focuses on three problems inBuddhism: the signicance of nirvanafor contemporary thought and life,the idea of purity in Mahyna Buddhism and emptiness as suchness.

Abe realizes that the negative connotation of nirvana even occurs inthe Buddhist world.35He ofers six arguments for understanding nirvanabeyond nihilism and the last one is, in Hegelian perspective, very instruc-tive: what signicance does nirvana have in regard to understanding the

meaning of history? Recalling the momentariness history has no beginand no end: eternity manifests itself in the here and now.36The emphasisshifts to the now and here as the realization of nirvana.37

As for the purity, Abe criticizes the third position above and outsidethe process from which purity is objectied and conceptualized. Purityis not the counter-concept of impurity. It is the ground from which anobjectied opposition can arise. Indirectly criticizing Hegelian dialectics,

Abe states that purity is not the sublated enlightenment as an end, on

the contrary: it is the unsaid ground of our existence as a whole. Origi-nal purity, however, is not a state which is objectively observable, but isrealization...38This is the corporeal and spatial realization of emptinessin the Mahyna sense that was grasped by Nishida through a logic ofplace.

Nishitanis analysis of emptiness as fullness is further specied by Abe:fullness manifests itself as the suchness (Sanskrit: bhuta tathat; Jap.: konono mama) of things. But everything is just as it is implies that every-

35 Masao,William R. Laeur (ed.) Hampshire/London: MacMillam Press LTD 1985,p. 205.

36 Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 215.37 Idem, p. 214.38 Idem, p. 220.


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thing is diferent from everything else. And yet while everything andeveryone retained their uniqueness and particularity they are free fromconict because they have no self-nature.39Exit dialectics. This sounds abit weird, but this insight shows perfectly how historicity and objectica-tion are nullied in the realization of emptiness. The fullness of emptinessrealizes itself once the unique suchnessthe as-it-is-nessof things isarmed in the non-willing of an individual. In objectifying matter West-ern thought aims at manipulating it as an object that in the very act ofobjectication constitutes the subject. It pretends to change things pro-gressively in order to realize completion. In doing this it instrumentalizes

the suchness of things. How can we overcome this fundamental restless-ness and return to suchness? To do so is the raison dtre and essentialtask of religion.40 At this point Abe reminds us of the metaphor of thesnake swallowing its own tail as a symbol of eternity, of a full circle. Butthis image also reminds him of emptiness in as far the self tries to graspitself, as the toe sucking Buddha: Through the death of ego-self, no-self isrealized. This is because the realization of suchness is the positive aspectof the realization of Emptiness.41

In the strict sense nihilism now has to do with fullness and suchness.This is far from being the nihilist interpretation that states that the sub-

ject is imprisoned in senseless nihility as to the values that regulate hisbehavior. Acting still has an axiological focus. Even political categories assolidarity can be applied to the Buddhist perspectiveat least in the Bud-dhism of the Middle Path of Nagarjunawhere enlightenment impliesthe salvation of all others: compassion validates actions, even after theend of history. It is the active dimension of an ontology of relations. Asa radical inter-estbeing in betweenthis action is however is beyondcalculation.

6. Conclusion: avoiding the subject

Of course the presentation of the Japanese Hegel reception is far morecomplex. According to some critics, in spite of all quasi-mystical doubletalk Kyoto schools discourse is implicitly enacting the rupture of subjec-tivity: Nishida, by insisting on a contradictory identity, has embraced the

39 Idem, p. 223.40 Idem, p. 224.41 Idem, p. 226.


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very object logicabandoned by the Buddhists as well as by modern West-ern philosophers such as Nietzsche, James and Derrida. (...) The ironyis that Western gures such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, James and Derrida

have tried to develop a methodology to attain what, in efect, Nishida callsa logic of the Eastby abandoning the very categories that Nishida resur-rects from more traditional Western philosophy.42This is an interestingobservation, even more interesting once we realize that at least three ofthese Western thinkers were signicantly inuenced by Eastern thought.

When we also take into account that Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derridaexplicitly criticized Hegel, this complex intercultural web of ideas mightgive us an indication of new dimensions of contemporary nihilism.

While iek is tarrying with the negative in order to reinstitutesubjectivity,43 French philosophers of diferencenext to Derrida alsoMichel Foucault, Jean-Franois Lyotard and Gilles Deleuzerevitalizenihilism from within by articulating an armative nihil in their respec-tive oeuvres. They focus on the now here as nowhere, circumscribe theimplosion of time and space in quasi-concepts as event and singular-ity that respectively break with the past-present-future chronology and

the logic of particulars and universality. This all started by deconstruct-ing Hegels philosophical edice, inspired by Nietzsche and Heidegger, inthe 1960s. Once sublation of contradictory forces to a higher identity isdeconstructed, what is left is a eld of diferences and webs of relations.In deconstructing universal claims these philosophers of diferences, liter-ally, a-void the subject, showing that it is a xation within a eld of forces,articulating diferences and relations. They explicitly have found inspira-tion in Buddhist philosophy, an inspiration that can easily be traced in

their texts over the years.44This urged some commentators to label Der-ridas deconstruction as a diferential logic, comparing it with the Bud-dhist logic of sunyata.45

The most explicit armative presentation of the nihil beyond sub-jectivity can be found in the work of philosophers that are as severelycriticized by Zizek as the Neo-Buddhists: Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guat-

42 David Putney, Identity and the unity of experience: A critique of Nishidas theory ofself, in: Asian Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1991, p. 141.

43 Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative. Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, Dur-ham: Duke University Press, 1993, p. 218.

44 References to Zen-texts, Japanese culture and oriental practices vary from casualremarks to more systematic elaborations. See: Henk Oosterling, Scheinheiligkeit oderHeiligkeit der Schein. Subjektkritische Beschftigungen mit Japan, in: Das Multiversum der

Kulturen, Heinz Kimmerle (ed.) Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi Elementa 1996, pp. 103122.45 Robert Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1984, p. 89.


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tari. Deleuzes anity with Buddhism is made explicit in Nietzsche andPhilosophy(1962). He redenes Spinozas immanence as praxis of expres-sion in which Substance is co-existential with the actual and possible

expressions of its modes.46 This transcendental empiricism is furtherelaborated in The Logic of Sense (1969). There the Zen riddle comes tothe fore as a constituent superciality that breaks with the opposition ofdeep and supercial: Returned to the surface, the sage discovers objects-events, all of them communicating in the void which constitutes theirsubstance. (...) The event is the identity of form and void. (. ..) The voidis the site of sense.47A comparison with Nishidas pure experience as aconstituting immanence is at hand. This immanence persists in Deleuzescooperation with Flix Guattari. In What is Philosophy? (1991) they situatethought-nature, that logic can only show, according to a famous phrase,

without ever being able to grasp it in propositions or relate it to a ref-erence. Then logic is silent. Paradigm for paradigm, it is then in agree-ment with a kind of Zen Buddhism.48There is no doubt that the Orientthought, but it thought the object in itself as pure abstraction, the emptyuniversality identical to simple particularity.49

Is there still an all encompassing whole from which all particulars aresensed? In one of his lasts last texts, Deleuze refers to Spinoza statingthat immanence is not immanence to substanceas Hegel would haveitbut that substance and modes are in immanence: We will say of pureimmanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. Life is singularized asa life, yet this is all encompassing. It is not immanence to life, but theimmanent that is in nothing is itself a life. Life is a transcendental eld,that can only be grasped through its immanence. A life is the imma-

nence of immanence, absolute immanence (...) to the degree that is goesbeyond the aporias of the subject and the object that Johann Fichte, inhis last philosophy, presents the transcendental eld as a life, no longerdependenton a Being or submitted to an Actit is an absolute immedi-ate consciousness whose very activity no longer refers to a being but isceaselessly posed in a life.50

46 See: Gilles Deleuze,Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, New York: Zone Books 1997(orig. 1968).

47 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, London: Continuum 2001 (orig. 1969), p. 155.48 Gilles Deleuze & Flix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, Londen/New York: Verso 1994

(orig. 1991), p. 140.49 Deleuze & Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 94.

henk oosterling avoiding nihilism by affirming nothing hegel on buddhism

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