Nishitani Keiji
Kyoto School · East Asia · 1900 to 1990
Japanese philosopher who held that the emptiness beneath nihilism can become a ground for a fuller life.
What it is
Nishitani Keiji (1900 to 1990) was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School, the group of thinkers who worked to join Western philosophy with East Asian traditions, Buddhism above all. He studied under Nishida Kitarō, who began the school, and became one of its leading members.
Nihilism, the sense that nothing has meaning, became a major focus of his work. He used the idea of emptiness for a standpoint beyond nihilism, one in which things are met as they truly are.
The main ideas
- Through nihilism, not around it. He said that the problem of his life had been the overcoming of nihilism by means of nihilism. The way beyond nihilism, on this view, runs through it and not around it.
- Fields. He described a series of fields, or standpoints. On the field of nihility, the self and all things become one great question mark. Beyond it lies the field of emptiness, in which things are met as they are, on their own ground.
- Emptiness. He took from Mahāyāna Buddhism the idea of emptiness, and used it for a standpoint beyond both clinging to being and the despair of nihilism.
- Zen and mystics. His thought stands close to Zen, and he drew on the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, whose idea of a Godhead beyond God he found close to his own.
What it looks like in practice
Imagine someone who loses a job, or someone close to them, and finds that nothing seems to matter. A friend urges them to cheer up. Nishitani would say instead that this emptiness should be faced, because only past it can things appear again as they are. This is an illustration of his thinking, not his own words.
Books and moments
- Religion and Nothingness. A work of his in English, on emptiness and its relation to Western nihilism.
- After the war. After the Second World War Nishitani was barred from public posts and for several years lost his university position.
Questions and criticism
- The war years. After the war Nishitani was barred from public posts and removed from his university position. It is fair to ask how far the thought of the Kyoto School supported the state in wartime, and how far it resisted it.
- Is emptiness an answer? It is fair to ask whether the move from nihility to emptiness is a reasoned step or a leap of experience that cannot be argued for.
- Buddhist or philosophical? Whether his work is philosophy that uses Buddhist ideas, or Buddhism put into philosophical terms, is an open question.
Close neighbours
The pages on Nishida Kitarō and Watsuji Tetsurō cover the philosophers around him in the Kyoto School, and the page on Meister Eckhart covers the mystic he drew on. The page on Friedrich Nietzsche covers a thinker of nihilism that his own work answers.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Who they connect to
Influenced by
- Nishida Kitaro · He was a leading student of Nishida and carried the Kyoto School forward.
Other Kyoto School thinkers
- Nishida Kitaro · 1870 to 1945
- Watsuji Tetsuro · 1889 to 1960
Sources we used
- Kyoto School · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
- Keiji Nishitani · Wikipedia, read on 29 October 2026