Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.   

Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.   

Nishitani understands human existence as consisting in three fields: consciousness, nihility and emptiness. Nihility is as part of the fabric of reality as Being is, it is relative nothingness, and emptiness is absolute nothingness, where the “absolute negation” as the negation of negation becomes the “great affirmation”.   

In the openness of śūnyatā realised by nihility overcoming itself, one completely oversteps the confines of self-consciousness and comes to be free of egocentrism, anthropocentrism and even theocentrism, thus allowing ultimate reality to manifest itself in all its fullness.  

We will be focusing on two important works of Nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness.

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⌛ Timestamps

(0:00) Introduction: Keiji Nishitani

(4:24) The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism

(8:12) Religion and Nothingness

(14:36) Consciousness, Nihility, Emptiness

(19:13) Cosmic Individual