Amanda Fernandes - Overcoming Modernity: A Comparative Study between Heidegger and Nishitani
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 2019-01-27

ENOJP4 Hildesheim 2018
Panel 4: Nishitani and Heidegger

Overcoming modernity: a comparative study between Heidegger and Nishitani’s perspectives.

Amanda Fernandes (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain)

Abstract: The “destruction” of the modern subject occupies a prominent place in Heidegger’s efort to overcome metaphysics, along with the disclosure of the danger of modern technology. Similarly, Nishitani Keiji’s criticism of the Cartesian ego is an important subject in his philosophical project. According to the Japanese philosopher, modern subjectivity is associated with the problem of nihilism, as well as the dispute between religion and science, seen by him as “the most fundamental problem facing contemporary man” (RN, 46). In Religion and Nothingness (Shūkyō towa nani ka, 1961) it is possible to distinguish Heidegger’s inluence when Nishitani exposes the problems behind the Cartesian dualistic structure of reality as a historical issue. Nishitani uses the vocabulary used by German philosophers of his time to airm that the deinition of the subject as a thinking thing (res cogitans), capable of knowing the material world (res extensa) by concepts and representations, is not a philosophical opinion among others; it characterizes our way of being in the world today. Heidegger and Nishitani both claimed that this dualistic perspective of opposition between subject and object is responsible for determining who we are and also deines our relationship with the world. Nonetheless, we aim to show how this interpretation of the Cartesian cogito can be problematic because of its anachronism, since it shows an inluence of the Kantian concept of representational knowledge as the result of the interaction between object and subject and Kant’s understanding of the Cartesian self as a thinking subject. According to Alain de Libera (L’ Archéologie du sujet, I and II, Vrin, 2007 and 2008 and Sujet insigne et Ich-Satz. Deux lectures heideggériennes de Descartes, 2009) it is evident that the Cartesian subject of Heidegger is a Kantiied one, since Descartes does not use the expression 
 subject” to characterize the res cogitans or defend the representational perspective of apprehension. Despite this issue, this comprehension of the Cartesian self was capable of spreading throughout the modern history of philosophy. Therefore, in order to understand Nishitani’s criticism, it is imperative to trace Heidegger’s inluence in this matter, considering the evidence that Nishitani’s thought corresponds with the German perspective of the problem. This perspective seems to have taken root in the tradition from Kant to Heidegger, becoming the most notorious version of Cartesianism. Thus, this presentation examines how Nishitani’s criticism of the Cartesian cogito converges with Heidegger’s. By considering their philosophical work and cultural backgrounds we aim to discuss how their interpretation of the Cartesian self has implications for their diagnosis of the problem of modernity and their attempt to overcome it.

This talk took place at the fourth annual conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy [ENOJP], 5 – 8 September 2018, Universität Hildesheim, Kulturcampus Domäne Marienburg, Germany.

More informations:
http://enojp.org/
http://chisokudopublications.blogspot.com/
https://enojp4.wordpress.com/

Art Direction: Robin Alberding & Jerome Ebeling (CC-BY 3.0)