Francesca Greco – European Nihilism on Japanese Soil
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 2023-05-16

6th Annual Conference of the 
European Network of Japanese Philosophy 
"(Counter)influences" 
Budapest, 2021

Francesca Greco – European Nihilism onJapanese Soil: Interwoven Influences in a Global Philosophical Perspective

One of the most intriguing and intricate encounter between the European and the Japanese culture is, in my view, the philosophical reception of nihilism in Japan on the background of the old familiarity with the nothingness rooted in the Japanese thinking. My contribution to the 6th Conference of the ENOJP places itself in the framework of a globalized philosophizing and aims to address some possible reciprocal (counter)influences between European and Japanese thought on the topic of nihilism. How the notion of nihilism arose in the middle of Europe, how it has been
understood in modern Japan and how its appropriation in the Japanese philosophy influences an actual discourse about contemporary forms of nihilism are the leading questions of the present proposal. In my presentation I will first briefly sketch the emergence of nihilism at end of the
18th century in German speaking regions. My depiction will cover the imprint of Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) prophecy and establishment of that diversified current of thought. In the second place, I will switch my historical and philosophical focus to the reception and adaption of the European nihilism in Japan during the modernization era (近代化). The pejorative strain of nihilism in Europe gains in Japan a very different meaning thanks to the merge of it with preexistent spiritual traditions and philosophical treatises, as we can observe in Nishitani’s (1900–1990) philosophy. His distinction between nihilum (虚無) and emptiness (空) and his judgment of his
contemporary Japanese culture will be the second part of my presentation. In my final section I will articulate and reflect about the influences of a Japanese approach to nihilism in a global philosophical perspective on the background of contemporary forms of nihilism. At the end of the presentation we will have schematically opened three different possibilities concerning the understanding of and the dealing with nihilism, which it should provide a rich ground for discussions.

Francesca Greco is currently a research member of the DFG funded research project Histories of Philosophy in a Global Perspective (Geschichten der Philosophie in globaler Perspektive) directed by Prof. Dr. Rolf Elberfeld at the University of Hildesheim, where Francesca is also working on a PhD project in philosophy in the field of intercultural philosophy, especially Japanese philosophy with the provisional title Form of Negativity. Not, Nothingness, Relationality (Formen der Negativität. Nicht, Nichts, Relationalität) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rolf Elberfeld and PD. Dr. Katrin Wille. Among her publications we find Der Ort der Wahrheit. Heideggers Ortsdenken mit Blick auf die Philosophie Nishidas (2017), Ricordare il dimenticato Vattimo e la ‘vocazione nichilista dell’ermeneutica’ oltre un pensiero dualista (2018), Orten und Grenzen: Übergangsräume im Philosophieren Nishida Kitarōs (2020), Ein Blick ins Werk »Storia delle storie generali della filosofia« aus globaler Perspektive (2021), Reformulating the Position of Indifferentism in the Japanese Buddhist Philosophy and several video conferences accessible from YouTube.


Conference Program:
https://enojp2021.elte.hu/program


European Network of Japanese Philosophy:
http://enojp.org/


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